Useless SDMB Statistics (and long, too)

Prompted by this question, on May 30 I looked through the threads in each forum over the past year and ran some statistics on them. The raw data is available here (4.5 MB .ZIP file; expands to Excel format) for anyone interested in further exploration.

Overview
There were 70819 total lines of data (each line is a thread), with 1702 moved threads, making for 69117 actual threads active over the last year.
1702 threads moved = 2.46% of total active threads
1578 threads locked = 2.28%
2954 threads with no replies = 4.27%
7513 members who started threads:

1. astro (623 threads)
2. ralph124c (476)
3. Jinx (447)
4. Lobsang (431)
5. Eve (403)
6. Phlosphr (313)
7. Ranchoth (307)
8. Johnny L.A. (293)
9. Otto (268)
10. Sampiro (261)

All Forums, Before Subscription
Because there is no timestamp (available to us, anyway) for when a thread is viewed, we need some way to estimate which threads were made before and after subscription plan went into effect at noon March 22. I used the timestamp from the last post in each thread for this purpose. As most threads are active for less than one day (in terms of posts made to it), I think this should be “good enough.”

56540 threads active
1424 threads moved = 2.52%
1376 threads locked = 2.43%
2492 threads with no replies = 4.41%
Views per thread: mean = 491, median = 240
Replies per thread: mean = 20, median= 9
Estimated thread active lifespan: mean = 7.2 days, median = 0.9 days (this is the length of time between the OP and the last post to each thread)
Estimated views per day: 93,812 (for all threads)

All Forums, After Subscription
12577 threads active
278 threads moved = 2.21%
202 threads locked = 1.61%
462 threads with no replies = 3.67%
Views per thread: mean = 548, median = 266
Replies per thread: mean = 21, median= 10
Estimated thread active lifespan: mean = 9.1 days, median = 0.9 days
Estimated views per day: 99.857
I’ve pointed out elsewhere that thread and post creation activity continues on a downward trend, but by these numbers it appears that there is a greater degree of participation, in that each thread started gets more replies and views since subscription.

The following statistics for each forum are for the entire year. Also, moved threads are included in the calculations – they were removed for the combined calculations above to avoid double-counting.

About This Message Board
1195 threads active
22 threads moved = 1.84%
77 threads locked = 6.44%
65 threads with no replies = 5.44%
665 members who started threads:

1. Lobsang (46 threads)
2. Quasimodem (14)
3. Jim B. (14)
4. Jinx (11)
5. NoClueBoy (10)

Comments on Cecil’s Columns
641 threads active
31 threads moved = 4.84%
12 threads locked = 1.87%
34 threads with no replies = 5.30%
560 members who started threads:

1. tracer (5 threads)
2. Spiff (5)
3. Priceguy (5)
4. SCSimmons (4)
5. Snakespirit (3)

Comments on Staff Reports
252 threads active
20 threads moved = 7.94%
7 threads locked = 2.78%
7 threads with no replies = 2.78%
221 members who started threads:

1. tracer (3 threads)
2. smootman (3)
3. jkim78 (3)
4. beccabee52000 (3)
5. RM Mentock (3 – No. 6 started 2 threads)

General Questions
25208 threads active
761 threads moved = 3.02%
612 threads locked = 2.43%
989 threads with no replies = 3.92%
5012 members who started threads:

1. Jinx (301 threads)
2. ralph124c (219)
3. gypsymoth3 (174)
4. astro (171)
5. Ranchoth (131)

Some of the most frequently-occurring words in GQ thread titles:
how: 1959 occurrences
what: 1915
what’s: 450
why: 1445

Great Debates
4513 threads active
153 threads moved = 3.39%
104 threads locked = 2.30%
60 threads with no replies = 1.33%
1428 members who started threads:

1. ralph124c (80 threads)
2. astro (77)
3. Reeder (72)
4. december (69)
5. BrainGlutton (68)

Some of the most frequently-occurring words in GD thread titles:
Iraq: 187 occurrences
Bush: 185
war: 112

Cafe Society
12387 threads active
35 threads moved = 0.28%
59 threads locked = 0.48%
760 threads with no replies = 6.14%
2650 members who started threads:

1. Sampiro (164 threads)
2. Eve (153)
3. Ranchoth (118)
4. Otto (100)
5. Mr. Blue Sky (97)

Some of the most frequently-occurring words in CS thread titles:
star: 151
episode: 110 (I assume these are Star Wars Episodes)
LOTR: 107 occurrences (the phrase “Lord of the Rings” appears 21 times)
Simpsons: 79 (the string “Simpson” appears 116 times)
trek: 78 (the phrase “Star Trek” appears 68 times)
enterprise: 74 (I assume these are also Star Trek threads)
wars: 66 (the phrase “Star Wars” appears 54 times)
Potter: 60 (the phrase “Harry Potter” appears 61 times – there was one appearance of the word Potter’s)

In My Humble Opinion
9161 threads active
383 threads moved = 4.18%
124 threads locked = 1.35%
269 threads with no replies = 2.94%
2536 members who started threads:

1. astro (146 threads)
2. Phlosphr (99)
3. Isabelle (80)
4. Lobsang (78)
5. Wesley Clark (64)

Looking for opinions? IMHO says:
help: 343 occurrences in thread titles
advice: 295

MPSIMS
11979 threads active
249 threads moved = 2.08%
235 threads locked = 1.96%
715 threads with no replies = 5.97%
2581 members who started threads:

1. Eve (175 threads)
2. astro (123)
3. Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor (123)
4. Lobsang (114)
5. Johnny L.A. (107)

The BBQ Pit
5483 threads active
48 threads moved = 0.88%
348 threads locked = 6.35%
55 threads with no replies = 1.00%
1735 members who started threads:

1. Lobsang (70 threads)
2. Reeder (46)
3. Diogenes the Cynic (40)
4. Biggirl (35)
5. danceswithcats (33)

Feel the hate:
fucking: 228 occurrences in thread titles
fuck: 220 (the string “fuck” in various guises appears a total of 503 times)
stupid: 108
bush: 107 (I didn’t check on the capitalization, but evidently the word is a popular subject of the Dopers’ ire. And yes, this and the above words are ranked next to each other, though of course that doesn’t imply any linkage.)

Forum Participation
Not all members participate in all forums. Of the 7513 members captured in this snapshot:
3526 started threads in only 1 forum (46.93%)
1478, 2 forums (19.67%)
856, 3 forums (11.39%)
662, 4 forums (8.81%)
476, 5 forums (6.34%)
335, 6 forums (4.46%)
143, 7 forums(1.90%)
34, 8 forums (0.45%)
3, 9 forums (0.04%)

DAMN Lobsang! 46 threads started in ATMB alone. the guy behind you only had 14. your also in the leed in the pit. your deffinetly getting your $4.95 worth. astro is up there also. with out you two guys, i don’t think we’d have any new threads.

so who are the three people who participated in all 9 forums? **Lobsang **one of them maybe??

The three are:
Chicago Faucet, who started a total of 128 threads last year
Priceguy (97), and
paperbackwriter, (44)

Lobsang has hit all forums except for CoCC and CoSR.

Did you run a bot through the boards, or did you get access to the raw vBulletin MySQL database? How?

No bot. No SQL. At the bottom of each forum are three drop-down boxes that allow you to sort and restrict the threads you want to view – you’ll then have to page through all the results, which is a lot of work, but the information is available to anyone. And I have time on my hands (hey, who wants to hire a data maniac?).

Anyway, on further thought…

Some of the threads captured in this snapshot were actually started a long, long time ago – some going back to the early days of the SDMB’s web presence. If we restrict the sample to only threads that were actually started within the last year, the numbers change:

All Forums, Before Subscription
Views per thread: mean = 456, median = 236
Replies per thread: mean = 19, median= 9
Estimated thread active lifespan: mean = 3.01 days, median = 0.88 days
Estimated views per day: 85,590

All Forums, After Subscription
Views per thread: mean = 525, median = 264
Replies per thread: mean = 20, median= 9
Estimated thread active lifespan: mean = 4.10 days, median = 0.89 days
Estimated views per day: 94,888

If we further restrict the post-subscription sample to only threads started since 2004-03-22, we get:
All Forums, After Subscription
Views per thread: mean = 475, median = 253
Replies per thread: mean = 18, median= 9
Estimated thread active lifespan: mean = 2.06 days, median = 0.82 days
Estimated views per day: 81,806

We should expect these last set of figures to be lower as they would be skewed by just-opened threads that have not received their share of views and replies.

Hmmm, and here I thought I had a low profile.

That can’t be right. I’ve started waaaaaay more threads in CS (158) than The Pit (76).

When I searched for the threads you started in CS over the last year, I get 82 hits. 158 is the result when the timespan is set to “beginning.” Anyway, the data I have shows that of the threads you’ve started, 85 were active in CS over the last year, and 35 in the Pit. One should expect my data to differ slightly from the current search results for two reasons: one, depending on how often you start threads, the few days between May 30 and now may make a difference, and two, my data shows threads active within the last year, though they may have been started earlier – and thus will show a higher number. The roughly 2:1 ratio of CS/Pit threads you’ve started holds true in all instances, though.

Anyway, I’m back with more forum-specific numbers for everybody:

Replies Per Thread

          Mean   Median
ATMB      10.7     5
CoCC      13.5     6.5
CoSR      15.1     9
GQ         9.8     6
GD        42.9    27
CS        20.4    10
IMHO      22.1    14
MPSIMS    23.0    10
Pit       43.7    29

Views Per Thread

          Mean   Median
ATMB       313     155
CoCC       556     328
CoSR       525     384
GQ         277     176
GD         839     578
CS         481     232
IMHO       457     268
MPSIMS     476     226
Pit       1447    1034 (WOW!)

GD and Pit get the most replies and views per thread. I guess it must be good entertainment.

Views-to-Replies Ratio

ATMB      29.2
CoCC      41.1
CoSR      34.8
GQ        28.3
GD        19.5
CS        23.5
IMHO      20.7
MPSIMS    20.7
Pit       33.1

Earthling, that’s insane! Are you from Mars ?

:eek: I’m lost for words.

[sub]It won’t last long[/sub]

The stats are melting my brain…

Really? I’ve heard a lot of Dopers saying they “don’t read Great Debates” or “don’t participate in the Pit”, but I thought that was… well, not entirely true anyway. As it turns out, it probably was. Only three posters to start threads in all nine forums? Fancy that.

Of course, there are other posters who participate in all fora, they just don’t start threads in all of them. Some folks hardly start any threads at all. With myself as an example, I don’t have an exact count, but I’m pretty sure less than 1% of my posts are new threads (I’ve started at least one thread in every forum but the Pit, but that’s just an indicator that I have a lot of posts). Combine my few threads with my few overall posts in, say, GD, and it’s not surprising that out of ten thousand posts only one is a thread in GD.

Ditto that. On my nearly 6000 posts (my current total plus 3124 previously), only a handful have ever been new threads. A few in the Pit, a couple in MPSIMS and GQ, probably several in GD.

:shrug: Dunno why, really. Just never was much into initiating threads.

Yeah, I had figured that thread-starters might not be representative of the posting population as a whole, but there’s no good way to sample posts and associate them with both usernames and forums – and at an average of ~20 replies for the 69,117 threads, I’m not about to go look at every one of the 1.4 million of so posts involved.

That said, the last poster to each thread is displayed in the forum view, so that information is handily available. From the data I’ve already collected, then, there are 6,287 unique last-posters, and the forum breakdown is:

Usernames occurring in only 1 forum   2586  (41.13%)
                            2 forums  1250  (19.88%)
                            3 forums   837  (13.31%)
                            4 forums   657  (10.45%)
                            5 forums   495   (7.87%)
                            6 forums   306   (4.87%)
                            7 forums   119   (1.89%)
                            8 forums    32   (0.51%)
                            9 forums     5   (0.08%)

It’s interesting that the percentages here don’t differ dramatically from those of the thread-starters, so the pattern may be valid after all. What’s surprising to me, though, isn’t that so few people participate in all nine forums, but so many participate in only one.

In case anyone is curious, the 5 names in this list are:
Colibri
Czarcasm
NoClueBoy
Northern Piper
t-keela

So, Earthling, who’s the reigning thread-killer?

The Top 10 threadkillers for the last year, in absolute numbers:

 1. bibliophage     454 threads ended
 2. Czarcasm        413
 3. DrMatrix        375
 4. Q.E.D.          287
 5. Cajun Man       283
 6. handy           268
 7. Mangetout       260
 8. Lynn Bodoni     254
 9. Exapno Mapcase  229
10. AskNott         219

It is no surprise that mods and admins have finished off the most threads, so let’s re-sort the list with members only:

 1. Q.E.D.          287
 2. handy           268
 3. Mangetout       260
 4. Exapno Mapcase  229
 5. AskNott         219
 6. rjung           211
 7. Chronos         207
 8. NoClueBoy       196
 9. GMRyujin        192
10. Otto            186

In terms of threadkilling efficiency, which is defined as the number of threads killed in relation to the total number of posts made, the highest numbers belong to users with the lowest post-counts – which makes sense, if one thinks about it. However, because of estimation errors (I did not get an exact count of the number of posts each user made over the last year), strange results (e.g., E[sub]TK[/sub] > 1 – oh yeah, this is looking so scientific now!) show up with these users, so we’ll artificially limit the calculations to only those who have made at least 100 posts last year:

 1. Cajun Man   0.73 threads killed per post made
 2. DrMatrix    0.58
 3. KP          0.47
 4. audilover   0.38
 5. TJdude825   0.38
 6. moriah      0.35
 7. xash        0.35
 8. AskNott     0.34
 9. Czarcasm    0.33
10. bbeaty      0.31

Once again, we re-sort with members only:

 1. KP          0.47
 2. audilover   0.38
 3. TJdude825   0.38
 4. moriah      0.35
 5. AskNott     0.34
 6. bbeaty      0.31
 7. bonzer      0.26
 8. scotandrsn  0.25
 9. Rick        0.24
10. FriarTed    0.23

Oh, I meant to ask:

How does this work?

Hm. So if AskNott comes nosing around one of my threads, I’m screwed.

OK, but how many members do we have now???

(impressive stat collection, btw)