badgolferman wrote:

Perhaps you should access Google Groups and inspect the newsgroup's
statistics there. Maybe it will suit your purposes better than what I
post to the group. There used to be a way to view that data in the
older version of Google Groups.

According to Google Groups, alt.home.repair had the following
statistics for 09/2015:
Total Posts: 5486
Total Topics: 354

My newsreader tabulated:
Number of threads ................... 430
Number of articles .................. 5594

One thing to consider is the x:no-archive bit which some people set.
Since I download the headers daily to my newsreader that setting
doesn't apply. It looks like Google Groups honors that setting, thus
the potential difference in our numbers.