How many one post wonders?

[andygirl]

As I’m writing, there are 11169 registered posters. Thankfully, they don’t all post… I can see the board falling over and dying. Eep.

Tuba, I was wondering if you have any idea of how many or what percentage of posters register, post once or twice, or even… say, under 5 times, and make their merry way out of here? I don’t mean die hard lurkers, I mean the people who run up to the boards, poke them, and run away giggling.

Just curious.

[Chronos]

We don’t keep track of statistics on this, and it would probably give the server a heart attack if we tried a brute-force search of the entire member database, but you can get a good feel for it by taking a small sample. Some time when the server isn’t very busy (after most of the Californians go to bed, for instance), pick twenty userids at random, and look at the profile for each. If I recall correctly, the evidence seems to be that over half of all registered users have 1 or less posts.

[Biggirl]

*Originally posted by Chronos *
**If I recall correctly, the evidence seems to be that over half of all registered users have 1 or less posts. **

This must be some kind of statistical logic. Half the posters have 1 post. Or less. Hmmmm. Let me think about that for a minute.

[bibliophage]

I will reproduce my post from the August GQ thread Help me do the math. What’s the Median and Mode for number of posts per member?

I picked 25 user ids more-or-less at random and looked at their post counts. Assuming this is a representative sample, the mode is zero posts and the median is one post. The data:

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 7 9 10 11 17 20 33 56 223

For comparison purposes, the mode on the vBulletin community is also zero posts. (They have the members function enabled, which makes it easier). Their median is either one or two (they don’t make it quite easy enough for me to tell without counting.)

So somewhere around 36% of those who register never bother to post at all, and about 24% post only once. These data constitute only a small sample, so the estimates may be off.

[Biggirl]

Thanks biblo for opening my eyes and relieving some of my ingorance!

[Una_Persson]

What I did: Starting at poster number 100, I counted up every 100 poster numbers and tabulated all the posts they had from 5:30 to 5:45 PM CST today. Thus, I have 112 samples.

Number 9500 returned “invalid”, so I took 9501 in their place.

Two of the posters were BANNED. One was an Admin (an Admin I had never heard of before!).

The sum is 12,214. The average is 109.05 posts/User.

The median is 3. The mode is 0 (28 repeats), followed by 1 (23 repeats). Thus, 25% never posted, and 20.5% posted once.

So, this is a bit larger sampling than bibliophage has posted about, and gives a bit more insight into the typical posting patterns.

Poster Posts
Number
100	42
200	281
300	957
400	3
500	0
600	76
700	1
800	14
900	25
1000	1
1100	133
1200	2625
1300	2
1400	130
1500	338
1600	10
1700	15
1800	50
1900	1
2000	600
2100	19
2200	37
2300	3288
2400	1
2500	8
2600	4
2700	1
2800	3
2900	1026
3000	105
3100	1
3200	3
3300	0
3400	13
3500	1
3600	0
3700	4
3800	1
3900	0
4000	3
4100	0
4200	0
4300	0
4400	262
4500	0
4600	0
4700	1
4800	1
4900	0
5000	0
5100	36
5200	1
5300	1
5400	0
5500	201
5600	1
5700	0
5800	530
5900	6
6000	48
6100	0
6200	161
6300	92
6400	0
6500	9
6600	12
6700	7
6800	0
6900	212
7000	2
7100	1
7200	10
7300	0
7400	54
7500	1
7600	0
7700	0
7800	2
7900	3
8000	5
8100	2
8200	0
8300	0
8400	1
8500	1
8600	106
8700	2
8800	53
8900	0
9000	62
9100	3
9200	0
9300	14
9400	1
9501	174
9600	1
9700	0
9800	1
9900	14
10000	79
10100	1
10200	5
10300	1
10400	0
10500	2
10600	2
10700	1
10800	192
10900	0
11000	15
11100	0
11200	0

So where’s my thanks?

[Biggirl]

Anthracite The best globetrotting, SDMB cheerleading, software writing, coal experting, self-doubting, lesbian erotica writing, statistic gathering, ignorance reliever there ever was!

[Coldfire]

I could get my statisic book out and tell y’all about relative sample size vs. population size. But I won’t

Good work, Anthracite!

[Smeghead]

Now I’m curious about the Mystery Moderator…

[bibliophage]

I’m glad I’m not the only one around here with time to waste, Anthracite.

By the way, the mystery administrator is sphelan who has 10 posts, the last one in February. “Sean’s one of our fabulous tech guys,” says TubaDiva of him here

jdavis also has administrator status, even though he has only 66 posts. I wonder how many others there are that I’ve never heard of.

[bibliophage]

*Originally posted by bibliophage *

jdavis also has administrator status, even though he has only 66 posts. I wonder how many others there are that I’ve never heard of.

That didn’t come out right. Of course I know who jdavis is. What I meant was, who else, besides sphelan, is an administrator without the fact being common knowledge around here. In particlar, I have often wondered if Slug Signorino would have to register as a lowly member if he ever decided stoop to the level of posting here.

[Lemur866]

Anthracite, you are truly a goddess.

Did you know I posted a question about coal a week ago? But it dropped like a stone before you saw it. Well, someone with as much time on their hands and as much data mining skills as you do can probably dig it up and resurrect it.

I am in awe of you, truly.

[tshirts]

Here’s the most definitive data available to the public.
When the software was converted last July the Members list was turned on for a couple of hours and Bill H. got some fantastic data. Have your calculator switched on!

Get your Most-Active-Posters here

[Una_Persson]

*Originally posted by Lemur866 *
Did you know I posted a question about coal a week ago? But it dropped like a stone before you saw it. Well, someone with as much time on their hands and as much data mining skills as you do can probably dig it up and resurrect it.

OK, I answered your question in GQ. But a link would have been the polite thing to do regardless, hmmmmmmm?

[TubaDiva]

*Originally posted by bibliophage *
**

*Originally posted by bibliophage *

jdavis also has administrator status, even though he has only 66 posts. I wonder how many others there are that I’ve never heard of.

That didn’t come out right. Of course I know who jdavis is. What I meant was, who else, besides sphelan, is an administrator without the fact being common knowledge around here. In particlar, I have often wondered if Slug Signorino would have to register as a lowly member if he ever decided stoop to the level of posting here. **

There’s quite a few Chicago Reader staff that have administrative privileges on the board. Not all of them have the time or inclination to join our reindeer games, so you’ll probably never see them.

As for Slug, I’m not even sure if he’s online, much less on the site; Ed has described him as being nearly as much of a technophobe as Our Beloved Leader.

your humble TubaDiva

[User_10K]

*Originally posted by Anthracite *

Poster Posts
Number
100	42
:
:
9900	14
**10000	79   *** That's ME! *****
10100	1
:
:
11200	0

So where’s my thanks?

Wow! My 79 puts me in the top 16% of the posters.

**Thanks Anthracite! ** I’d have never guessed that on my own!

[iampunha]

So where do my 3000 posts put me? I suppose given that there are 11000 registered named here, and fewer than 110 of them have 3000 posts, I’m in the top 1 percent?

Go me!

[Soul_of_the_Machine]

*Originally posted by Anthracite *
**What I did: Starting at poster number 100, I counted up every 100 poster numbers and tabulated all the posts they had from 5:30 to 5:45 PM CST today. Thus, I have 112 samples.
:
So where’s my thanks? **

Thanks!

But I don’t see how you can find out the info for user#100, user#200, etc. without the Membership list.

Even then, how you can find the people with no posts.
They won’t turn up in a search.

[Bottle_of_Smoke]

Quite simple, Soul of the Machine. Click on you Profile button to display your profile. Then look at the end of the URL at the top of your browser window. It should say userid=8633 (your number). Antthracite most likely just changed this number to 100, then 200, etc. to pull up the profiles of those users.

[Una_Persson]

*Originally posted by Bottle of Smoke *
**Quite simple, Soul of the Machine. Click on you Profile button to display your profile. Then look at the end of the URL at the top of your browser window. It should say userid=8633 (your number). Anthracite most likely just changed this number to 100, then 200, etc. to pull up the profiles of those users. **

Yes, that is how I did it. It goes pretty quickly, in truth, to do it that way.