# I'm bored, so I downloaded my posting history and here are some stats **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [July 2, 2021, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-bored-so-i-downloaded-my-posting-history-and-here-are-some-stats/945520 "2021-07-02T17:23:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2021, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-bored-so-i-downloaded-my-posting-history-and-here-are-some-stats/945520/1 "2021-07-02T17:23:33Z")
(Don’t know where to put this, but since it is kind of ‘about this message board’, just placed it here.) Bored, so I downloaded my posting history, imported the CSV into Excel, did some data cleanup (removing quotes, mostly), threw together some basic pivot charts and here are my stats: Posts Number of Posts: 27,112 Posts per day: 3.71 First post, was actually an OP posted on July 7th, 2001: [Has there been a “live” suicide on American TV?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-there-been-a-live-suicide-on-american-tv/74132/1) Words Most words in a single post: [3,078](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-days-that-shook-my-world/128223/27), but “The Journey” easily outpaced that with 6k of words… but I broke it up into 6 posts for clarity purposes. 496 1-word posts (for some reason, a word + a URL counts as one word… so I’ll accept that.) 296 2-word posts 2 posts exactly 1,255 words long, the largest word count with more than 1 entry Total words written on the SDMB: 1,995,480 Average words per post: 74 Words per day: 273 Topics Total Topics created by yours truly: 10,406 Topics per day: 1.42 Top 10 Topics which I replied: Bakers Dozen - 811 posts Clusterfuck - 677 Mueller Investigation and Crimes - 571 Disgraced Ex-President Trump’s 2016 Campaign thread - 379 Impeachment Enquiry - 292 Butt-Hurt Trump Takes to Twitter - 245 Trump Associates Coordinated with Russians - 205 Clusterfuck 2: 201 100 Most Influential People - 146 American Coup - 140 The above 10 topics were a combined 3,667 posts, or 13.5% of my total posting activity. And, given the topics, you can see that much of my time was dealing with You Know Who. Date/Time Most prolific year: 2019, with 3,103 posts Least prolific (full) year: 2005, with 499 posts Most prolific hour: 3-4pm, 2,020 posts (there’s a 25% chance I’ll post something in this time block, so press refresh often!) Least prolific hour: 9-10am, 53 posts ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2021, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-bored-so-i-downloaded-my-posting-history-and-here-are-some-stats/945520/2 "2021-07-02T18:42:21Z")
Does Discourse have a utility for that type of analysis, or did you brute force it? And what time zone are you posting from (so we can know when to look for your activity)? ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2021, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-bored-so-i-downloaded-my-posting-history-and-here-are-some-stats/945520/3 "2021-07-02T18:49:03Z")
Central (US). I brute forced it via Pivot _tables_ in Excel. I said ‘charts’ in the OP, I offer my usual defense: go with what I mean, not what I say. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2021, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-bored-so-i-downloaded-my-posting-history-and-here-are-some-stats/945520/4 "2021-07-02T19:05:57Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Central (US). > > I brute forced it via Pivot _tables_ in Excel. l said ‘charts’ in the OP, I offer my usual defense: go with what I mean, not what I say. 😉 I’m pretty sure I used to see you posting Greasemonkey scripts. I’m not really equipped to go with either one, much of the time. ---
**Author:** ![TheGunIsMightierThanThePen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thegunismightierthanthepen/32/2981_2.png) [@TheGunIsMightierThanThePen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheGunIsMightierThanThePen)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2021, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-bored-so-i-downloaded-my-posting-history-and-here-are-some-stats/945520/6 "2021-07-02T20:13:51Z")
Very interesting. I’m fairly sure you’ve written more words on this board alone than I have in my elementary + junior high + high school + college + professional career combined (and the world is better off for it!) I don’t know whether the SDMB owns the copyright to our posts, but if not, when it comes time to write your memoirs, consider bundling up all these posts and selling them in a multi-volume printed form. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2021, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-bored-so-i-downloaded-my-posting-history-and-here-are-some-stats/945520/7 "2021-07-02T20:18:45Z")
I think it’s @BigT who did the Greasemonkey. Excel has a way of downloading a bunch of web pages? ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2021, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-bored-so-i-downloaded-my-posting-history-and-here-are-some-stats/945520/8 "2021-07-02T21:06:27Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Least prolific hour: 9-10am, 53 posts This I found interesting. You are more likely to post between 2-3am than 9-10am. That seems pretty unusual. Unless maybe this doesn’t take time zone differences into consideration. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2021, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-bored-so-i-downloaded-my-posting-history-and-here-are-some-stats/945520/9 "2021-07-02T21:07:05Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I think it’s @BigT who did the Greasemonkey. > > Excel has a way of downloading a bunch of web pages?  Indeed I did. I presume he went to his Activity page (from clicking on his avatar in the top menu) and then clicked the “Download All” button on the side. I just did it myself, and, after a little bit, @system sent me a message with a 13.3 MB zip file. Inside of it are several CSV files, one of which is user\_archive.csv and contains all of my posts and PMs. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2021, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-bored-so-i-downloaded-my-posting-history-and-here-are-some-stats/945520/10 "2021-07-02T21:14:39Z")
Yup. Then did what I mentioned upthread. ---
**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/codinghorror/32/4242_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/codinghorror)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2021, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-bored-so-i-downloaded-my-posting-history-and-here-are-some-stats/945520/11 "2021-07-02T22:40:51Z")
Note that your downloaded activity will also include any deleted posts. Part of the design thesis of Discourse is “your data belongs to you”, that’s why there’s a download button on everyone’s user profile. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2021, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-bored-so-i-downloaded-my-posting-history-and-here-are-some-stats/945520/12 "2021-07-02T23:46:54Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > You are more likely to post between 2-3am than 9-10am. I think it’s GMT. 9-10am GMT is 4-5am Central. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2021, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-bored-so-i-downloaded-my-posting-history-and-here-are-some-stats/945520/13 "2021-07-02T23:54:05Z")
Okay, so then it _is_ a time zone thing. That makes sense. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2021, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-bored-so-i-downloaded-my-posting-history-and-here-are-some-stats/945520/14 "2021-07-03T00:23:55Z")
Ah, OK, I didn’t know about that “download my activity” feature. I’ll have to keep that in mind, in case I ever get curious, too. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2021, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-bored-so-i-downloaded-my-posting-history-and-here-are-some-stats/945520/15 "2021-07-07T14:54:48Z")
Given how up in the air everything is about this place (seemingly, tbh), there is no reason not to download your history NOW. If we close in a year and I don’t D/L again, I’ll still have 90%+ of my posting history… which is better than zero.