Looking around the boards, it seems that the view to post ratio is usually about 20 to 1.
Has this been expressed before? Does it already have a name like “Gaudere’s Law”?
there are exceptions 
I’ve noticed it too. It really depends on the thread though. Some have “teaser” titles and, when you get in, you realize it’s not that interesting of a thread and leave. Some are insanely boring titles and it drops like a rock unread and unposted.
Some are games and you get a really close view to post ratio.
But yeah, overall, I’d say 1 in 20 is an accurate estimate. It’s about what I figured though I’m not that geeky to calculate it.
Get kabbes in to calculate it. He’s our man for calculating all this other stuff having to do with posting ratios and all of that.
F_X
I just did a quick average of the view to post ratios for the 50 most recent MPSIMS threads, minus stickies, and found that there were a total of 30,624 views to 2,323 posts for a view/post ratio of 13.18 to 1. (I make no claims that those 50 posts are representative of all MPSIMS posts, I acknowledge that there are likely other statistical methods which would derive a more accurate estimate of view to post ratios and I also do not know if n=50 is sufficient. In other words, I know how to calculate what I just calculated and that is about it.)
I wonder if this varies by forum, so I’m off to do some quick calculations for other forums! For more view to post discussion, this thread is about the highest view to post ratio on the boards.
My apologies, I forgot to add 50 posts to MPSIMS due to the fact that each original post is also a post. So with the 50 original posts added, that’s 30,624 views, 2,373 posts, and a view/post ratio of 12.91 to 1 in MPSIMS.
Here are the total views and posts for the most recent 50 threads in each forum as of approximately the time of this post, and the view/post ratio calculations. I summed all the views and then summed all the posts, and added 50 posts to each total for one original post per thread. I haven’t done any global view to post ratio across all forums.
ATMB views: 10540
ATMB posts: 703
ATMB ratio: 15.00
CCC views: 21896
CCC posts: 675
CCC ratio: 32.44
Staff Reports views: 13499
Staff Reports posts: 510
Staff Reports ratio: 26.47
GQ views: 9071
GQ posts: 413
GQ ratio: 21.96
GD views: 43060
GD posts: 2781
GD ratio: 15.48
CS views: 17279
CS posts: 1085
CS ratio: 15.93
IMHO views: 20859
IMHO posts: 1375
IMHO ratio: 15.17
Pit views: 52008
Pit posts: 2135
Pit ratio: 24.36
After all this, I’d have to say that yeah, it seems to be about 20 to 1.
Any math errors, data entry errors or other errors are completely my fault. I apologize for any errors in advance.
geeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!
That was cool. Thanks lel.
Yes, lel… you are indeed an über-geek.
F_X
Also factor in what constitutes a “view”. Chances are it includes:
- Any time someone presses “refresh”.
- Any time someone clears their Internet cache (something I do regularly) and looks at a thread, later.
- When somebody looks at the result of their latest posting.
Soo… Probably the read-to-post ratio is considerably lower.
Well, considering the amount of work lel did, we can honor that by calling the 20:1 view-post ratio lel’s law.
lel’s law! HUZZAH! HIP HIP HURRAY!
I once did a full analysis of this kind of thing by forum. Unfortunately I think it got lost in the great purge.
IIRC the Pit has by far the lowest views:posts ratio, thus proving its “get in there” approach. It’s typically below 10.
I also analysed posts per thread amongst other things (the pit was one of the longest for this too, along with GD). Ah, a tear for results gone forever.
pan
kabbes, I hope I have not been offensive in doing a few large addition and division problems. I did remember you having done some type of calculations and did a search for them first before doing this, but didn’t find anything either. In fact, those were the basis for kabbes’s law, right?