People who have favorited Kid Charlemagne's commentary have also snaked about.... February 5, 2010 7:38 AM   Subscribe

If I had a feature or utility that would let me see who has favorited comments I have made I promise I would feed and water him every day. And clean out his stall.

I'm all for the quality not quantity arguments that have been made in the past (and will be made in the future). I'm not in a race to be the most favorited big, hairy, smart-assed guy at the ball.

What I would like to see is who has favorited my stuff many times, and/or what percentage of user X's favorites I represent, and whose stuff I'm favoriting. Now that I say this, it would also be cool if I could look at who else people who are favoriting my stuff are also favoriting or who else is favoriting stuff I've favorited.
posted by Kid Charlemagne to Feature Requests at 7:38 AM (37 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

you can determine this information from your "activity" page from your user profile.
posted by HuronBob at 7:43 AM on February 5, 2010


go to your profile.
click the number next to "favorited by others:"
posted by shmegegge at 7:43 AM on February 5, 2010


and for a specific comment you've made click the "# favorites" text in the byline of the comment.
posted by shmegegge at 7:44 AM on February 5, 2010


[snark]And then we can all have a nice circle jerk.[/snark]

I like the idea personally. I do not like the idea for the site.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:44 AM on February 5, 2010 [1 favorite]


There are lots of ways to get there.

At the top left menu of any page, click on "Recent Activity". Then, in the top left tab-like menu, click on "Recent Favorites". That will take you to a quick-view of "My Contributions Saved As Favorites".

If you go through the profile like shmegegge describes, you can sort your "contributions saved as favorites" in 3-or-so different ways.
posted by muddgirl at 7:45 AM on February 5, 2010


As for the more complicated requests, I think infodump might help you there?
posted by muddgirl at 7:46 AM on February 5, 2010


[snark]And then we can all have a nice circle jerk.[/snark]

Yeah! hey o wait-

"snark"


Siiiiiigh.
posted by The Whelk at 7:47 AM on February 5, 2010 [1 favorite]


I'd be more interested in knowing who hasn't favorited my stuff. Those fuckers need to pay.
posted by quin at 7:52 AM on February 5, 2010 [14 favorites]


drop fishbike and memail and offer to clean out his stall and he may drop you a report that has:
Stats for:username

Who does username favorite the most?

Who does username favorite the most?
(percent of their comments+posts since you joined)
(limited to users you've favorited 5+ times)

Who favorites username the most?
(simple count of favorites)

Who favorites username the most?
(percent of your comments+posts since they joined)


Who are username's top 10 mutual favorites?
(by simple count of whoever has favorited the other the least)

Who are username's top 10 mutual favorites?
(by percentage favorited of others posts since joining)

Of the threads where username has been active, who else has been active in the highest percentage?
(limited to threads active after the comparison user has joined MetaFilter)

Of the threads where other users have been active, in whose has username also been the most active by percentage?
(limited to threads active after username has joined MetaFilter)

Who has favorited the same items as username the most?
He did this for me and it was quit a surprise in some places, and predictable in others.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:57 AM on February 5, 2010


Yeah, if you're interested in seeing who you've given favorites to, you've got to go to the infodump. Pretty straightforward file format though.
posted by pravit at 7:58 AM on February 5, 2010


Yeah, fishbike did this for me (and lots of other folks) in a meTa that I'm too lazy to find. As cjorgensen says, the results were both surprising and predictable.
posted by rtha at 8:03 AM on February 5, 2010


I'd be more interested in knowing who hasn't favorited my stuff. Those fuckers need to pay.

I need to know who unfavorites my stuff, that drives me up the wall.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:11 AM on February 5, 2010


I need to know who unfavorites my stuff, that drives me up the wall.

I know, right? It's like, OMG why don't you like me any more, you're giving me a complex!!! Was it because I wouldn't accept your flag pin?!
posted by davejay at 8:17 AM on February 5, 2010


drop fishbike and memail and offer to clean out his stall

Yep, this. FishBike has built a nice little private utility that he seems to be willing to run on request that churns out all kinds of fun number crunching on this front, and it's pretty kickass.

It's also really, really not something that we're looking at implementing on the site itself.

If you feel like digging into such stuff yourself and have an analytical bent, you can check out the Infodump and churn out your own custom numbers.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:17 AM on February 5, 2010


FishBike has built a nice little private utility that he seems to be willing to run on request that churns out all kinds of fun number crunching on this front, and it's pretty kickass.

Just confirming I am still totally willing to run this for people. In case anyone might feel guilty about the effort involved, it's pretty much just cut-and-paste your name into the script, let it run a few minutes, cut-and-paste the results into a comment or MeFiMail.

Given how scrolly it makes things when posted in threads, at this point it's probably best if we stick to doing this by MeFiMail, though in any sort of datawankery thread, if something interesting is uncovered, I don't think anybody would mind it showing up in a comment too.
posted by FishBike at 8:22 AM on February 5, 2010 [3 favorites]


Comment about MeFi is not a contest
posted by wheelieman at 9:03 AM on February 5, 2010


But I'm winning!
posted by The Whelk at 9:07 AM on February 5, 2010


It looks an awful lot like losing!
posted by The Whelk at 9:07 AM on February 5, 2010


Is this something I'd have to have a tv comment on MetaFilter much more frequently and cleverly to appreciate?
posted by aught at 9:36 AM on February 5, 2010


But I'm winning!

Wait a second, we haven't even defined what the victory conditions of MetaFilter are!

How do you know this isn't like one of those trick quizzes where you start with a perfect score and lose a point for every question you answer? The ones teachers sometimes give out to make a point about reading the instructions before you start answering questions on the test.

Maybe every comment you make, every favorite you get, pushes you ever closer to losing at MetaFilter...
posted by FishBike at 9:40 AM on February 5, 2010


I already won MetaFilter. It's a fundamental property of who I am. I can't lose.

But you guys go ahead and sort things out for that second place position, just try not to hurt anybody's feelings, okay?
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 9:55 AM on February 5, 2010


Wait a second, we haven't even defined what the victory conditions of MetaFilter are! (FishBike)

Dudes: Metafilter is Calvinball. The only rules are that you never play the same way twice. Victory condition currently in play: the next fifteen people to favorite this comment win.
posted by ocherdraco at 10:02 AM on February 5, 2010 [1 favorite]


Sneaky there ocherdraco but we all know it's unfavorite double reversal day!
posted by The Whelk at 10:04 AM on February 5, 2010 [1 favorite]


I happen to be brandishing the negation of unfavorite double reversal day card, Whelk. So's you know.
posted by ocherdraco at 10:13 AM on February 5, 2010


kudos on working the words 'hairy' 'ass' and 'ball,' into one sentence.
posted by jonmc at 10:22 AM on February 5, 2010


JONMC +10 POINTS PLUS MEGANEGA UNPOINTS

*rings the Bell Of Many Things* Choose a thing! A THING!
posted by The Whelk at 10:23 AM on February 5, 2010


Fishbike did my numbers awhile back, and it was really neat.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:31 AM on February 5, 2010 [1 favorite]


Echoing the FishBike recommendations. He ran my stats too. I thought it was really interesting.
posted by amyms at 10:49 AM on February 5, 2010


Favorites are like jokes: if you have to explain...
posted by Cranberry at 11:47 AM on February 5, 2010


"...I promise I would feed and water him every day."

That's what you said about the hamster and I don't need to remind you how that turned out right?
posted by vapidave at 12:11 PM on February 5, 2010 [2 favorites]


Armagedon!
posted by cjorgensen at 12:46 PM on February 5, 2010


We finally know what the Ooey-Klabooie was.
posted by The Whelk at 12:51 PM on February 5, 2010


Hey, if all posts are © their original authors, can I collect a royalty on "datawankery" since I was the first person to use it? I bet I could make a killing off of cortex and FishBike alone.
posted by desjardins at 1:43 PM on February 5, 2010


I'm not in a race to be the most favorited big, hairy, smart-assed guy at the ball.

Did somebody say my name?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:03 PM on February 5, 2010


From the top of the thread: "...and/or what percentage of user X's favorites I represent..."

The report script I've been running for the last little while didn't cover this angle, but I've done some work on it this evening, and now it does. Future reports will include two new sections:
  • Top 10 people by % of their total favorites that came from you
  • Top 10 people by % of their total favorites that go to you
There are some inclusion criteria similar to other sections to try to make sure the statistics are at least slightly meaningful.

I'm also going to try to include a couple of tag-based mutual activity lists, sort of like the "who else comments in the threads where I comment" analysis, except going beyond just commenting in the same threads. This'll be more like "who else is interested in the same tags that I'm interested in", but without mentioning any specific tags.
posted by FishBike at 6:24 PM on February 5, 2010


So, FishBike, can why is the awesomeness of the data you sent not on some web page somewhere? And how many of us have to give you five bucks to get this kind of display?

And hey, there's a name I recognize in there.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 12:56 AM on February 6, 2010


So, FishBike, can why is the awesomeness of the data you sent not on some web page somewhere? And how many of us have to give you five bucks to get this kind of display?

Heh, well, assuming you mean some kind of web-based interface to the reporting script, the main reason is the amount of effort involved, and the high effort:fun ratio. Writing SQL queries is pretty easy and the payoff is quick. It's all about the numbers, man!

Thinking about it a bit, there's the whole business of setting up the database on some kind of hosting service that doesn't mind intensive CPU and disk use for minutes at a time, then writing a web front end to run the script, all of which sounds like a lot of work and is all stuff I think I'm pretty rusty at.

There are at least a couple of types of security issues to worry about as well. Like what if some little Bobby Tables comes along? I know there are ways to prevent those kinds of things, but people are devious so there's a lot to consider. Then how do we check that you are running a report for yourself and not someone else?

For the latter, I had an idea earlier this week for a general MeFi web add-on user authentication mechanism, involving a user making up a password for this kind of thing and editing their profile page to include an SHA-1 hash of that password. Then any external site that wants to check that you are who you say you are just prompts for this password, hashes it, and compares to the one on your profile page. Obviously this isn't designed for high security, but anybody who can get around it can more easily just download the Infodump anyway.
posted by FishBike at 6:31 AM on February 6, 2010


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