Is it possible to search for users based on # of posts/comments/questions?

February 4, 2006 1:35 PM

Is it (would it be) possible to search for users based on # of posts/comments/questions? (Based on a few earlier threads, I'm curious as to how many accounts have been set up solely to ask question(s).)
posted by aberrant to Feature Requests at 1:35 PM (11 comments total)

It's not now possible, and I hope it never is. Scoreboards (of which this concept is a variant) aren't a site feature conducive to quality.
posted by majick at 4:20 PM on February 4, 2006

Not from Metafilter, but it's partially what the Contribution Index does. All the user pages are public, and the formatting is standardized, so an external script can handle it.
posted by Gyan at 4:25 PM on February 4, 2006

Gyan: I actually wrote a script to do that, but I figured Matt wouldn't like me crawling 33K user pages to get the data to parse.
posted by aberrant at 5:53 PM on February 4, 2006

Whoever compiled the Contribution Index had to traverse all user pages. I suppose as long as you just extract statistical signals, rather than personalized lists, it's fine, but Matt ought to weigh in on that.
posted by Gyan at 6:40 PM on February 4, 2006

Metafilter Contribution Index Calculator
posted by AwkwardPause at 10:05 PM on February 4, 2006

Yeah, I know about the Contribution Index. It doesn't do what I was hoping to do, though. I would like to determine how many folks have used AskMe to get an answer to a single question, and then disappeared. Why? Just curious.
posted by aberrant at 10:28 PM on February 4, 2006

you know, I would like this idea if it weren't for the fact that we get enough history digging used as an insult or attack in threads as it is. I would rather that, if you were merely curious about the stats as they stand, mathowie maybe come in and say "approx X number of people have joined and only ever contributed to askme, out of the Y number total registered users."
posted by shmegegge at 11:13 PM on February 4, 2006

Shmegegge, if the list were of users who posted a single question to AskMe and then didn't post anything else, how would that enable history digging for the purposes of insult or attack in other threads?
posted by aberrant at 11:21 PM on February 4, 2006

that wouldn't, but I was responding to what you asked for, not that.
posted by shmegegge at 9:52 PM on February 5, 2006

Then you apparently missed the part where I wrote

I'm curious as to how many accounts have been set up solely to ask question(s).
posted by aberrant at 5:25 PM on February 6, 2006

no. I saw that, which is why I said "I would rather that, if you were merely curious about the stats as they stand, mathowie maybe come in and say "approx X number of people have joined and only ever contributed to askme, out of the Y number total registered users."

My post specifically, from the outset, makes it clear that I don't like the feature you asked for as described, but thought that matt should come in and enlighten you as to what you wanted to know.

stop being a dick.
posted by shmegegge at 5:27 PM on February 6, 2006