Nerd's corner

Danny Jo

Danny Jo

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Nerd\'s corner

I am intrigued by the prodigious industry of a few dedicated forumites, supported by a small army of less frequent contributors, not to mention the vast hordes of lurkers. So here are the stats, with some approximations (I can't count them all, but the total of my estimates in each activity category adds up to the same as the total for all posts on YBW forums - around 1.4 million).

Slide2b.jpg



Slide1a.jpg


Am I sad, or what?
 
Re: Nerd\'s corner

If I read this correctly there are 1500 or so people who contribute the majority of activity although there are 15000 or so registered and with lower levels of activity. Can you do a correction for length of time registered, to present a picture that takes account of the difference between those who only recently arrived and those who've simply been here longer? I am a sociologist to trade and assure you there's nothing nerdly about being intrigued about this kind of thing /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
Re: Nerd\'s corner

Excellent work. Perfect use of your time and most interesting, to boot. I was immediately attracted by the Subject Line.

So, there' only 1538 who actually engage in forum activity in any real way. Or 510 who are particularly regular.

Best not let Dan and the IPC men see this thread!!
 
Re: Nerd\'s corner

OK, that's done quantity. Now how about correlating quality with number of posts. What we need is an index of the net usefulness of contributions so that 100 profound posts could be balanced against 20,000 inanities. Get calculating, your job isn't finished yet!!
 
Re: Nerd\'s corner

[ QUOTE ]
OK, that's done quantity. Now how about correlating quality with number of posts. What we need is an index of the net usefulness of contributions so that 100 profound posts could be balanced against 20,000 inanities. Get calculating, your job isn't finished yet!!

[/ QUOTE ]

I just gave this thread a 5 star rating with the little used (never used?) rating tool at the bottom of the page. Don't know what will happen next...
 
Re: Nerd\'s corner

Whay Hay ! I never tried that little box before. Does it get me free beer in the Lounge if I give Jimi and Kawasaki 5 stars. Can I suck up to the prefects ?
 
Re: Nerd\'s corner

[ QUOTE ]
Can you do a correction for length of time registered, to present a picture that takes account of the difference between those who only recently arrived and those who've simply been here longer?

[/ QUOTE ] Only by cutting and pasting the "registered on" column from the several hundred pages on the Users database.

I'd better fess up to what's behind this. For a little while now I have been working on a PhD thesis entitled "The sociodynamic and psychokinetic forces driving interactions in the virtual world of Internet discussion fora with particular reference to population control and the causes of contributor attrition."
 
Re: Nerd\'s corner

[ QUOTE ]
I just gave this thread a 5 star rating

[/ QUOTE ] Gee, thanks. Now I really am going to need that crash helmet when I'm on board.
 
Re: Nerd\'s corner

[ QUOTE ]
....d the causes of contributor attrition." ...

[/ QUOTE ]
You picked a good time for it then, there's been a bit of attrition over the last few days!
 
Re: Nerd\'s corner

[ QUOTE ]
Can I suck up to the prefects ?

[/ QUOTE ] Yes, but I think you mean the barons. That would make you an accolyte. Full list of forumite categories below:

1. Lurker

2. Newbie (1-5 posts)

3. Nascent regular (6-100 posts)

4. Mature regular (101 - 999 posts). In mature forumites one can identify several distinct subspecies:

4.1 Techies

4.2 Clowns (these are of two sorts: intelligible, and unintelligible - the latter commonly feign a Scottish accent).

4.3 Trollistas (although congenital trollistas are usually culled in infancy, the rarer late onset form of trollista is much more disruptive)

4.4 Rising stars (these span the political spectrum from traditionalists to revolutionaries)

4.5 Empire builders (treating the forums as their personal turf and gathering around them acolytes, until they have enough to morph into barons)

4.6 Acolytes (see above)

4.7 Cut-n-paste artists

4.8 Babes (without these delicious contributors, the forums would lapse into sterility)

4.9 Bores (for a typical profile, click on "Freestyle" above)

5. Denizens (>1000 posts)

5.1 Baron denizens (possessing either great charm, knowledge, originality, wit or just plain cunning, and surrounded by accolytes, these formidable forumites are unassailable by the masses; in the defence of their turf they engage in occasional scurmishes with other barons, but these are usually bloodless affairs characterised by liberal use of "smilies")

5.2 Expert denizens (mature techies)

5.3 Specialist denizens (a denizen that has so comprehensively cornered a segment of the market that his name is used as a byword for it - except in the case of Lakesailor, where the name had previously be allocated to another segment)

5.4 Granpas (a denizen that keeps harping on about how much better things were in his youth)

5.5 Survivors (accolytes who can survive cutting remarks and have been canny enough to stay out of the most vicious turf wars).

I'm still working on the causes of attrition.
 
Re: Nerd\'s corner

I'd watch it.
I've been doing the Cliff Correspondence Course for Improving Your Profile and feel a slur about to be heaped on my denizenship. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
Re: Nerd\'s corner

For your next exercise can you plot the decline in view rate as a thread is pushed off the first page?

<sadness>
I have thought about building a screen scraper to make periodic calls to the forum, say once a minute, on the first few pages, to do just this but have not got round to it.
</sadness>

Off in search of a life now...
 
Re: Nerd\'s corner

Okay - nice work! But just to hot up the pace a little, could you put some forumite names to the different forumite categories?

Just by way of illustration you understand /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
Re: Nerd\'s corner

The most interesting statistic to come out of it is that the vast majority (8300) only post a maximum of 5 times before realising what they are doing with their time.

The first graph is a skewed distribution curve with "normal" at 1 -5 posts, me and 1027 others who are showing as an anomaly (we know what we are doing, but we just can't help it) in the middle and if you are at the right hand end.....
 
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