July 24, 2006

11:44 AM

Ever wondered which sites Metafilter users link to the most? I've updated Metafilter Sources for the first time in two years, showing that Youtube and Flickr are now in the top 20, and that Wikipedia is now the most popular external source ever. Move over, Newsfilter... It's Wikifilter time!

Also, I updated the Metafilter Stats charts through June 2006. More analysis inside.
posted by waxpancake to MetaFilter-related at 11:44 AM (40 comments total)

If you look at the comment/thread growth, it looks like Mefi's experiencing a summer slump, which seems to happen around this year every year. If you look at the user growth, it seems that Matt's cover charge manages to keep the influx of new users virtually the same month to month.

In the top 20 charts, we see that this thread from April and this one from January had enough comments to break into the Most Commented Threads chart. While several days this year broke into the most commented chart, not one day this year has had enough front-page posts to break into the top 20.

So, there you go.
posted by waxpancake at 11:45 AM on July 24, 2006 [1 favorite]

Cool! Thanks.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:46 AM on July 24, 2006

Very cool, and congrats to ^!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:48 AM on July 24, 2006

I sidebarred this thread, thanks.
posted by jessamyn at 11:52 AM on July 24, 2006

Is there any way to elongate the lower axis on the graphs? With seven years' worth of data, the tabs are getting a little hard to read.

And, thanks for the update!
posted by yhbc at 11:52 AM on July 24, 2006

I don't know what Wikipedia is. Maybe I can look it up somewhere?
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:54 AM on July 24, 2006 [1 favorite]

If you look at the user growth, it seems that Matt's cover charge manages to keep the influx of new users virtually the same month to month.

I think that this might be a flawed graph. Are you accessing the DB directly? Do you actually have any way of knowing if the user accounts are paid for? I could write a script to sign up for seven thousand new accounts, but not pay for any. In fact, maybe I will.
posted by Plutor at 11:58 AM on July 24, 2006

11224 different sources in 7 years. Wow.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 12:00 PM on July 24, 2006

andy baio is my hero.
posted by shmegegge at 12:06 PM on July 24, 2006

ZDnet. Heh.
posted by cortex at 12:19 PM on July 24, 2006

Once again, the most popular proves to be the most useless.
posted by mischief at 12:20 PM on July 24, 2006

9622 = Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon.

And what the hell happened in March 2006?
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 12:20 PM on July 24, 2006

May we have one day next month when FPPs with links to any of the top 25 sources are blocked? Like, "outside-the-box day", but with a less lame name somehow.
posted by Wolfdog at 12:26 PM on July 24, 2006

Top 25, top 50... whatever it takes.
posted by Wolfdog at 12:27 PM on July 24, 2006

Brand New Links Day!
posted by cortex at 12:33 PM on July 24, 2006

I'm kind of surprised that the number of FPPs/mo. has stayed so (relatively) steady since early 2001 or so, especially since total comments/mo. has skyrocketed.
posted by aaronetc at 12:38 PM on July 24, 2006

Actually, now that I look again, it seems like maybe we had a small but sustained increase in FPPs beginning in December '04 -- I suspect that breaking the graph there would produce significantly different lines of best fit on either side. Still, not that big a difference given the influx of users and cacophony of discussion.
posted by aaronetc at 12:43 PM on July 24, 2006

I don't know what to do with all this data!
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:46 PM on July 24, 2006

Proof positive, if anyone still needed it, that there just aren't that many good Web sites.
posted by paulsc at 12:51 PM on July 24, 2006

I'm impressed that the geocitiies.com "data transfer exceeded" page ranks at #9.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 1:11 PM on July 24, 2006

This is very interesting in a kind of navel-gazing way.
posted by sveskemus at 1:34 PM on July 24, 2006

Nice to see that the only one of the first nine "top days by number of posts" outside of September 2001 is August 1, 2005, which was anastasiav's "Take Back MetaFilter" contest.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 1:38 PM on July 24, 2006

SeizeTheDay: Actually, there were 37,348 unique domains linked to by Metafilter since it began. 11,225 domains had more than one link, but I excluded from the completely list the 26,123 domains that had only been linked to once.

Plutor: Because I've been doing this for a while, Matt was kind enough to provide a dump that only included users that have completed the signup process. The user growth numbers are accurate and a thousand fake users wouldn't affect it.
posted by waxpancake at 1:54 PM on July 24, 2006

I don't know what Wikipedia is. Maybe I can look it up somewhere?

Did you mean wiped?
posted by soyjoy at 2:06 PM on July 24, 2006

Looking at the New User graph, I have a question for the Mefi-elders: Prior to the November 2004 "Grand Reopening" [Is there a formal term for this event?] there were a trickle of n00bs allowed.

Were these given to diginitaries? Nobel Prize Winners? How were they so carefully selected?

Was it as hard as becoming a Swiss citizen?
posted by yeti at 4:13 PM on July 24, 2006

I believe there was a secret sign-up page that certain savvy folks found.
posted by aaronetc at 5:43 PM on July 24, 2006

I like that one of the top 10 commented threads ever is the mushroom thread.

Mushroom mushroom.
posted by blacklite at 5:51 PM on July 24, 2006

I got my account in a small window that opened on April 1st and 2nd 2004. I think there were like 25 people allowed in on each of those days. I had been lurking on and off since 9/11, and had been lurking consistently for around 6 months straight before I got in.

Most of the people in the 14k range, including many of our best compatriots, got in by exploiting a secret method to sign up, that I really wish I had found at the time...

Matt also regularly gave accounts to people that were the subject of FPPs, so they could participate.
posted by blasdelf at 5:57 PM on July 24, 2006

i did that too, blasdelf, and i'm a 14ker...it was at noon california time, and it took me a bunch of tries. Only the very early 14kers (and late 13kers) snuck in via backdoors and stuff, i think.
posted by amberglow at 6:34 PM on July 24, 2006

Because I've been doing this for a while, Matt was kind enough to provide a dump that only included users that have completed the signup process. The user growth numbers are accurate and a thousand fake users wouldn't affect it.

That's simultaneously nice to know and disappointing. Here I was all prepared to game the system.
posted by Plutor at 7:12 PM on July 24, 2006

Go CBC, go!

Once they implement video and photo sharing, the CBC will be unbeatable! Like My Little Pit Pony!
posted by GuyZero at 7:45 PM on July 24, 2006

Waxy! You're Back!

:-)

Are They Hot? or Not?
posted by baylink at 8:28 PM on July 24, 2006

I have two posts to Metafilter. One of them cracked the top 20 mst active. So I'm batting .500. ;-)
posted by frogan at 10:10 PM on July 24, 2006

So, I signed up in the $5 era, and I know that before that it went by a few people a day, but what is that HUGE peak in between? Are those people that couldn't get an account during the X a day period and ALL signed up for $5 once it was available, or was it temporarily free?
posted by easternblot at 11:35 PM on July 24, 2006

"I think there were like 25 people allowed in on each of those days."

There were only supposed to be 10 each day. Instead, there were a total of ~160 of us. Matt mentioned at the time, and when he looked at the code later, that he never figured out why the code was broken.

My first impression when looking at the linked sources was to grumble about how it proves that MeFi is NewsFilter. But, of course, I'd wager that the true Best of the Web pages are mostly going to be one-offs or otherwise from rarely linked-to domains.

Still, that's a lot of obviously straight news sources like BBC and the Guardian. On the other hand, for a US-centric site, isn't it nice to see that we have good taste in news sources? :)
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 12:31 AM on July 25, 2006

I have two posts to Metafilter. One of them cracked the top 20 mst active. So I'm batting .500.

Given that number of comments is definitely not an indicator of post quality, you may be right, but in exactly the opposite way you think.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:17 AM on July 25, 2006

Hmm. The Top 20 Most Active Threads chart is fun, but it's limited to only front page stuff. It would be interesting to see a similar breakdown for Ask MetaFilter and MetaTalk.
posted by gramschmidt at 1:29 PM on July 25, 2006

Were these given to diginitaries? Nobel Prize Winners? How were they so carefully selected?

Was it as hard as becoming a Swiss citizen?

Back in the days of yore when signups were closed, when you clicked 'New User' on the navigation bar at the top you got taken to http://www.metafilter.com/newuser1.cf (something like that) which read "Sorry, we aren't taking signups now."

Switch the URL to http://www.metafilter.com/newuser2.cf, however, and you were on the page where you filled out all the information fields and clicked register.

I found it on my own after trying different things for an hour or so, as did others I'm sure. There was, supposedly, another way in that I've never heard the details about.

I have a feeling that the reason so many notable personalities came from the 14Ks was that you really had to give a shit in order to get in, and at least be able to add one and one.
posted by Ryvar at 7:43 AM on July 26, 2006

Also, if I remember, one of the5k.org's iterations used Mefi as the backend authentication, and that was a way around closed logins on Mefi. Someone else here would probably know more.
posted by waxpancake at 5:16 PM on July 26, 2006

Anyone else find it interesting that Sept 2001 holds the record for month with the most threads?
posted by eustacescrubb at 7:22 PM on July 26, 2006