Site Stats June 5, 2007 1:12 PM   Subscribe

Is there an official stats page?
posted by sluglicker to MetaFilter-Related at 1:12 PM (70 comments total)

I was wondering who the top 10 FP posters were (quantity). I remember reading someone's profile and they posted every day for a year or so. I spent about an hour searching this site and didn't find what I was looking for, though similar questions have been asked and answered many times. Please excuse my bringing this up again. I thought this earlier discussion was pretty interesting, and also this quaint discussion about whether or not it was time to limit users to starting one thread per day. And unless the info is considered private, how many unique visitors per day? Thought it would be cool to see these and other site stats published.
posted by sluglicker at 1:16 PM on June 5, 2007


4 out of Mefi 5 doctors are NYD.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:19 PM on June 5, 2007


Not official, but here is the Mefi Contribution Index. It appears to be gorked right now.
posted by dios at 1:26 PM on June 5, 2007


There's the contribution index, but it seems to be broken at the moment.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:26 PM on June 5, 2007


Jinxy goodness.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 1:27 PM on June 5, 2007


Yeah, I saw that but figured it couldn't be right. Matt's got well over 1000 FFPs and I'm sure that he hasn't had much time in the past few years to post much. My guess is that the top 10 are over 1000 each, but who are they?
posted by sluglicker at 1:36 PM on June 5, 2007


i am top fpp poster.
posted by Stynxno at 2:03 PM on June 5, 2007


The date still isn't working for me (shows all 0s), but it's pretty easy to comprehend that Matt has over 1,000 posts. You can read about the early days over at Refi. Matt was pretty much the only poster for the first year making a post or two a day. He still makes posts regularly and without the time limitation. In fact, I wouldn't suprised to see that Matt was the majority of the first 1,000 posts.
posted by dios at 2:05 PM on June 5, 2007


stinky!
posted by dios at 2:06 PM on June 5, 2007


"Gorked" and "broken" don't quite cover it. I'm #21? I posted 2 threads, ever.
posted by cribcage at 2:07 PM on June 5, 2007


I'm pretty sure last time I checked I was in the top 25, and I was at around 175 posts to the front page at that time.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 2:08 PM on June 5, 2007


I don't think all of the top 10 have posted in the thousands. As of maybe or 8 months ago, my old uid was still among the top 10, but only just with 379, and prolific posters were poised to pass me. jonson is now at 476, even passing Miguel, with 459.
posted by Dave Faris at 2:16 PM on June 5, 2007


What the...
posted by interrobang at 2:20 PM on June 5, 2007


Metafilter Contribution Index: Let's Celebrate Quantity over Quality!

(yeah, I know, some posters can do both)
posted by vacapinta at 2:34 PM on June 5, 2007


Oh, and I'm betting delmoi has the most comments. A friend of mine was browsing mefi and actually asked me "So, is this guy delmoi like, required to comment in every thread?"
posted by vacapinta at 2:39 PM on June 5, 2007 [2 favorites]


Man, the list gets borked and I still don't make the top 25. (the list being borked being the only way I'm likely to hit the top 25).

Ah well, if you can't have fame, you can always take infamy.

*pulls out flame-thrower and starts 'taking infamy' out on fellow Mefites*

*whistles under breath*
posted by quin at 2:56 PM on June 5, 2007


I think it's safe to assume the poster is leading the league in slugging percentage.
posted by brain_drain at 2:58 PM on June 5, 2007


I wouldn't be surprised if my ranking as contributor matched my user number.
posted by micayetoca at 3:00 PM on June 5, 2007


Oh, and I'm betting delmoi has the most comments.
Morelike jonmc.
posted by peacay at 3:13 PM on June 5, 2007


Wow, jonmc is pretty likely to hit 18,000 total comments on the Meta-sites today.
posted by cgc373 at 3:21 PM on June 5, 2007


I was wondering who the top 10 FP posters were (quantity)

Never mind THAT, who are the top 10 sexiest? Let me know and I'll be in my bunk.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:25 PM on June 5, 2007


Y'all are off with the delmoi and jonmc guesses.

delmoi: 153 posts, 12.4k comments
jonmc: 97 posts, 13k comments


amberglow: 301 posts, 17k comments

Add in amberglow's 2k AskMe and 3.6k Meta, and it's not even close.
posted by dios at 3:28 PM on June 5, 2007


No, I think it's amberglow with 22874 total comments versus 18575 for jonmc. 17050 for delmoi.

I'm pretty sure that jonmc is in second place after amberglow. I don't see how anyone is going to catch up to amberglow anytime soon. He's also at the top of the ratio list, too.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 3:32 PM on June 5, 2007


who has the most deleted comments would be a more interesting question :p
posted by Stynxno at 3:37 PM on June 5, 2007


Most deleted posts would be Postroad by a factor of 4 or so.

Most deleted comments would probably be quonsar.
posted by dios at 3:38 PM on June 5, 2007


Oh I bet it is a power law distribution. If I had a matrix of the number of comments I bet I could come up with an exponent in Matlab, its an academic task. I wonder what the exponent looks like in relation to income distributions, etc.
posted by geoff. at 3:52 PM on June 5, 2007


EB, how did you tally those totals? When I look at jonmc's stats, I see a total of 17,996 comments across all sites.
posted by cgc373 at 4:00 PM on June 5, 2007


Ethereal Bligh,

How do you figure on the ratios? Do you mean ratios of favorites to posts/comments?
posted by serazin at 4:01 PM on June 5, 2007


EB, how did you tally those totals? When I look at jonmc's stats, I see a total of 17,996 comments across all sites.
posted by cgc373 at 6:00 PM on June 5


That total on that page is not accurate.

Use the user page.

MeFi: 97 posts, 13058 comments
MetaTalk: 20 posts, 4700 comments
Ask MeFi: 21 questions, 817 answers

Assuming you count answers as comments (which EB did), then you get: 13058+4700+817=18,575
posted by dios at 4:04 PM on June 5, 2007


How do you figure on the ratios? Do you mean ratios of favorites to posts/comments?
posted by serazin at 6:01 PM on June 5


The contribution index calculates contributions per day.

So it's: (# of posts + # of comments) / (number of days a member) = ratio of contribution per day.
posted by dios at 4:06 PM on June 5, 2007


Gotcha.
posted by serazin at 4:06 PM on June 5, 2007


EB's numbers for jonmc come from a hand tally off the summary on his main profile page, which is larger than the number for the comment activity subpage for reasons I can't remember right at the moment. Possibly to do with difference in tracking comments in vs. not in deleted threads?
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:06 PM on June 5, 2007


Or what dios said.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:07 PM on June 5, 2007


Okey-dokey. Thanks, dios, cortex, et al. My takeaway lesson is, I can't trust the numbers on the site, no matter where I see 'em. Stupid numbers.
posted by cgc373 at 4:12 PM on June 5, 2007


The "ratio" has always bothered me. I understand its supposed to account for the fact that an older user has had more time to make comments. Fair enough.

But on the other hand, there's some other correction factor missing. If someone has been here for 2 weeks and has been making 20 comments a day, it's just not the same as someone who has been here for 4 years and has been making 20 comments a day for that entire time! There's a longevity correction missing but I've also seen this problem before in other forms (e.g. How do you weight reviews? Doesn't a place with 20 5-star reviews rate higher than one that got only one 5-star review?) and there's no good answer.
posted by vacapinta at 4:17 PM on June 5, 2007


Yeah, I've never been a really big fan of the ratio either. Mainly because I didn't really post much my first couple of years here and there is no way I'm ever going to catch up.

And because my Metafilter metrics are the axle around which my entire universe revolves, this makes me sad.
posted by quin at 4:31 PM on June 5, 2007


It might be more interesting to track periods of heavier and lighter usage—describing, say, a few different rough categories from lurking to prolific in four or five stages, weighted by subsite—and describe someone's tenure by changes in category. Plot that as a color-coded graph (maybe a colored stripe for each subsite, one pixel per week for macro view and one per day for detail). Would give an at-a-glance view of general posting activity patterns, at least.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:05 PM on June 5, 2007


Yeah, that sound good. Can we have that? :)
posted by quin at 5:21 PM on June 5, 2007


Isn't this where jonmc would step in and say you should have to subtract your user id from your posting total?
posted by YoBananaBoy at 5:55 PM on June 5, 2007


time to limit users to starting one thread per day
MetaFilter history: here's where the posting limit came in.
posted by tellurian at 6:15 PM on June 5, 2007


What's the URL for the leaderboard?
posted by aubilenon at 6:31 PM on June 5, 2007


Oh, and I'm betting delmoi has the most comments. A friend of mine was browsing mefi and actually asked me "So, is this guy delmoi like, required to comment in every thread?"
posted by vacapinta at 2:39 PM on June 5 [+] [!]


It's in the terms of the parole agreement that dios secured in the Andorran High Court of Appeal (matt/jess/josh, presiding). "The Duclod Three", they called them -- amberglow, jonmc, delmoi...
posted by blasdelf at 6:38 PM on June 5, 2007


If your urine is thick, you need to drink more water.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:29 PM on June 5, 2007


Do I win MeFi Yet??????
posted by The Deej at 9:03 PM on June 5, 2007


Not with six question marks in a row, you don't.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:00 PM on June 5, 2007


I wish someone would fix the contribution index. I want to see how far I've fallen since my days at the top.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 10:22 PM on June 5, 2007


Not with six question marks in a row, you don't.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken


Well how the hell else am I supposed to convey pathetic desperation??????!
posted by The Deej at 10:24 PM on June 5, 2007


Three interrobangs in a row are equivalent.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 10:37 PM on June 5, 2007


I've been thinking for a while about building a more comprehensive MeFi statistics site, including graphs and some composite analysis. This is partly because the MeFi contribution index is evidently semi-abandoned, and partly because there's a great deal more possible analysis than that Hersham supplies.

Matt, do you have any objections to such a thing? Does Hersham have any explicit arrangement with you? I've spent some time thinking about the data-gathering side of it, and for a combination of courtesy/respect and robustness motivations, the strategies I favor would have a negligible footprint on your server.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:08 PM on June 5, 2007


For my part—which doesn't exist except in this comment and in other possibly related comments that may exist in future—I say you oughta do it, Ethereal Bligh. And you oughta get cortex's help, since he clearly loves this sort of project and has administrative access beyond that of mere users. As long as there's no strain on the site's hardware, of course.
posted by cgc373 at 11:54 PM on June 5, 2007


I agree, I'm totally awesome. Thanks, you guys.
posted by jonson at 12:09 AM on June 6, 2007


I'm in the top ten qualitatively. I'm also the sexiest.

/really can't back that up

/at all
posted by brundlefly at 12:32 AM on June 6, 2007


Excuse me, but that troll you just pasted is over ten years old; I've perused my logs and found myself referencing said troll over two hundred times. Thank you.
posted by 29 at 1:04 AM on June 6, 2007


Good day... sir!
posted by blasdelf at 1:33 AM on June 6, 2007


Jonson's posting something daily is the secret to his high favorite count, as all but the most mediocre front page post will get you 10 or 20 favorites. (Since all his links are solid gold, though, everything he posts gets many more than that.)
posted by Dave Faris at 7:17 AM on June 6, 2007


all but the most mediocre front page post will get you 10 or 20 favorites

Running some numbers against this seems (for a very small sample set, granted) to bear it out, though Dave Faris' estimate is a little high (or his take on "all but the most mediocre" took a big scoop out of the 6/3 stable).

For the 22 posts to the front page on June 3rd (pacific time), there's a grand total of 287 favoirtes, with an average favorited count of just over 13.

- 14 of those posts received single-digit favorites, including three with a single favorite each.

- No post received zero favorites.

- Of the remaining 8 posts, 4 recieved between 10 and 20 favorites, 3 received between 21 and 40, and one received a whopping 83.

- The median was 7 favorites.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:53 AM on June 6, 2007


Numbers, numbers, everywhere. I love you all.
posted by Bugbread at 8:38 AM on June 6, 2007


Yeah. "most mediocre" was probably the wrong way to phrase it. There are some topics that people post that are interesting to only a very small segment of the people who read the site, and while they might love the topic to death, it won't make very many favorites, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's mediocre.
posted by Dave Faris at 8:58 AM on June 6, 2007


it won't make very many favorites, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's mediocre.

Yeah. I've taken to listening to the MeFi podcast on my commute to and from work (perfect time to listen to it, I've found), and I noticed that Jessamyn almost always has one or two favorite posts that "didn't really get favorited a whole lot" but she liked them for various reasons.

Also, I try not to favorite anythings out of sheer "like" anymore. I have way too many favorites, and only favorite posts that I think I will probably need to find at a later time. If it's a really good post I usually just say so in the thread.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 2:05 PM on June 6, 2007


Honestly, the favoriting system is fundamentally flawed. It is more of a petty popularity contest as much as it is used as a reference pointer. In places where it goes off the rails, it really really does. Like Miko's comment in that teen aged pole-vaulter thread ... 104 favorites last time I looked. I didn't think what Miko wrote was really all that great as to make 104 people click that favorite link. I assume they were more voting against the frat-boy sexism straw man that was created by it. But in the end, how futile and impotent is that action? I guess I still haven't figured out why we've got it, but I'd have to assume that it hasn't worked the way it was originally intended.
posted by Dave Faris at 2:51 PM on June 6, 2007


Thanks for pointing that comment out, Dave. It was hawt!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:55 PM on June 6, 2007


I think there was discussion a while back of replacing the actual favorited-count with a symbol representing "this has been favorited", but I can't remember where or when or what details came out of it. I think that'd be a sound idea, regardless—it'd retain the favoriting system itself (useful for user and admin both) while removing the sense of a running tally.

I disagree that the favoriting system itself is fundamentally flawed, however; it's darned handy in a number of ways, and makes for an interesting metric besides. But masking favorite counts, at least in-thread, strikes me as worth doing.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:14 PM on June 6, 2007


What???? It's a "favorites" thing!!!! Now you tell me!
posted by The Deej at 5:08 PM on June 6, 2007


Jonson's posting something daily is the secret to his high favorite count

Now that you have discovered my secret, Faris, I must plot your utter destruction. Even the compliments you pay me in the very same comment will not save you, as I suspect the faintest hint of saracasm in them.
posted by jonson at 6:34 PM on June 6, 2007


Bring it on, bitch.
posted by Dave Faris at 6:45 PM on June 6, 2007


(and I mean that in the nicest possible way.)
posted by Dave Faris at 6:47 PM on June 6, 2007


Ithere a graph that shows number of members over time? I am a 21k who joined in January 2005. I notice that only 2 years later I have seen some 50-something-ks. 3 years to get to 21k, 2 years to add another 30k.

It would be interesting to see a graph to show growth, especially spikes related to events: 9/11, elections, etc.
posted by The Deej at 9:26 AM on June 8, 2007


OK, so maybe there is a graph somewhere that shows responses to my questions in MeTa.

It would look like this: _______________________________
posted by The Deej at 9:12 PM on June 10, 2007


I have a similar problem The Deej.

Here's a chart that goes up to June 2006. waxy.org/mefi is out of date by a year now, but up to 6/06 was the go-to for stats.
posted by carsonb at 10:44 PM on June 10, 2007


Yay, thanks carsonb...

::sniff:: at least someone cares...

I was tempted to start a new MeTa, but I would have probably gotten the old "Please post this in the already open thread."
posted by The Deej at 5:46 AM on June 11, 2007


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