Ten percent of nothin' is, let me do the math here... nothin' and a nothin', carry the nothin'... December 13, 2011 11:00 AM   Subscribe

An Infodump Question™ and followup to this post: What is the average number of favorites per post received for each of the various MeFi subsites? Per comment? Average number of favorites given and received for the userbase?
posted by zarq to MetaFilter-Related at 11:00 AM (23 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

And while I'm asking... how many favorites have been given and received by mefites in total over the history of the site?
posted by zarq at 11:02 AM on December 13, 2011


how many favorites have been given and received by mefites in total over the history of the site?

That's a little tough to answer because the number fluctuates. People remove favorites and there's no record of that. At this moment there 7,767,509 recorded favorites. The maximum auto-incrementing favorite ID is 8277470. That's probably a good approximation of the total number of favorites ever given. There will be some things inflating that number like testing, but it should be pretty close.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:20 AM on December 13, 2011 [1 favorite]


pb: "The maximum auto-incrementing favorite ID is 8277470."

Wow. That's a lot of favorites.
posted by zarq at 11:30 AM on December 13, 2011


Average favorites per post, comment, and user is going to be low because the site hasn't always had favorites. It might make sense to start with the addition of favorites (sometime in 2006?) and get the averages from that point on. Of course people can go back to the first post and add it as a favorite today, but the averages for the first six or seven years of the site are going to be low.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:35 AM on December 13, 2011


pb: "It might make sense to start with the addition of favorites (sometime in 2006?) and get the averages from that point on."

That makes sense. Perhaps broken down by year from 2006 onward makes more sense then.
posted by zarq at 11:38 AM on December 13, 2011


They'll just count as two favorites, pretty certain.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:39 AM on December 13, 2011


What about favorites added, then removed, then re-added?

Yeah, that would roll the auto-incrementing ID forward twice.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:42 AM on December 13, 2011


Yeah, while leaving only one actual favorite as a row in the db/infodump.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:44 AM on December 13, 2011


For simplicity, let's go with including posts that have received at least one favorite. Of those, here are the average number of favorites/post by subsite:

Mefi: 14
Ask: 7
Projects: 2
Music: 4
Jobs: 1
IRL: 1
MetaTalk: 5

And including only comments that have received at least one favorite, the average number of favorites/comment by subsite:

Mefi: 4
Ask: 3
Projects: 1
Music: 1
IRL: 1
MetaTalk: 3
posted by pb (staff) at 11:51 AM on December 13, 2011 [3 favorites]


Just to make this annoying I am going to favorite and de-favorite and re-favorite a comment by zarq from 2004 46 different times.
posted by shakespeherian at 11:59 AM on December 13, 2011


Ok, I've 2005 covered.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:11 PM on December 13, 2011


Put a 'got' in there. You decide where.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:12 PM on December 13, 2011


pb: "For simplicity..."

Huh. Much lower in MeFi and Ask than I expected. I thought they would average about 20 and 10, respectively.

Also, thanks, pb! :)
posted by zarq at 12:12 PM on December 13, 2011


shakespeherian: "Just to make this annoying I am going to favorite and de-favorite and re-favorite a comment by zarq from 2004 46 different times."

I checked to make sure I'd commented in 2004 and came up with this post.
posted by zarq at 12:16 PM on December 13, 2011


Meanwhile, I have been sending out MeMails for people giving me favorites on the 5,000s and none of you fuckers have replied.
posted by griphus at 12:22 PM on December 13, 2011


griphus: "Meanwhile, I have been sending out MeMails for people giving me favorites on the 5,000s and none of you fuckers have replied."

I got a memail from somebody once for giving them their 6666th comment. For the life of me, I can't remember who.
posted by zarq at 12:28 PM on December 13, 2011


er.... 6666th favorite.

....bloody typos. I blame Cthulhu....
posted by zarq at 12:29 PM on December 13, 2011


When I was doing research for the AoIR presentation, I was real surprised to find such a contrast between favoriting behaviour from comparable 2006 and 2010 threads. The 2006 one was just before favorites were introduced (in late Spring of that year). As such, that thread only had TWO post-post favorites (and both were explainable for other reasons...I think one of them was actually me, for research reference purposes). But the 2010 one had hundreds of favorites, for all manner of reasons.

My point is, to get an accurate answer to this question, you really need to track and scale the popularity of favorites over time by subsite and topic (and probably other factors) to get an accurate picture of what's been going on. A raw, unscaled count would get watered down in uninteresting ways.
posted by iamkimiam at 1:22 PM on December 13, 2011


They'll just count as two favorites, pretty certain.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:39 PM on December 13


TIL how to favourite my favourite posts to infinity and beyond!
posted by Decani at 1:32 PM on December 13, 2011


Piggyback question!

What's the most-favorited comment from the pre-favorites era?
posted by Sys Rq at 1:35 PM on December 13, 2011


What's the most-favorited comment from the pre-favorites era?

If we define the pre-favorites era as any post made before May 10, 2006, the top 5 favorited comments are: 1 (190), 2 (118), 3 (112), 4 (106), 5 (105).
posted by pb (staff) at 2:00 PM on December 13, 2011 [5 favorites]


Meanwhile, I have been sending out MeMails for people giving me favorites on the 5,000s and none of you fuckers have replied.

You're just not trying hard enough. I MSpainted a stegosaurus for the mefite who gave me my 7777th favorite. And a parasaruolophus for some other milestone number.
posted by phunniemee at 3:27 PM on December 13, 2011


pre-favourites #5 from Divine Wino is just stupendous and will change the way I shave for the better (or result in permanent disfigurement).
posted by arcticseal at 7:41 PM on December 13, 2011


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