The Forge Archives

Some interesting numbers I came up with while fiddling around on the Memberlist.

The top 10 posters are responsible for 40% of the total posts (+40%)
The top 20 posters are responsible for 60% of the total posts (+20%)
The top 40 posters are responsible for 75% of the total posts (+15%)
The top 80 posters are responsible for 90% of the total posts (+15%)

Don't know what that means, if anything, but I found it interesting.

(erases her wisecrack before posting. moving straight into something constructive)

It would be interesting to look at those figures again in three months.  There are a lot of new, very active, very engaging people.  Give them a little time to catch up and I think you'll see those numbers broaden out a bit.

Laurel

The numbers would only broaden out if the Old Guard stopped posting.  Merely having many new active posters is not enough to change the top brackets much.

That said, I don't see any problem here.  I've never heard of a tightly-knit online community where the numbers didn't shake out more or less that way.  If you want to see a representation of newbie vs. oldbie activity, looking at a rolling sum of the last twelve months might be more useful than an overall history.

That would be interesting.  

Clinton is there anyway to do a "Posts in the last 30 days" column?

Also some of the posters here are more involved in all the topics while some, like me, may look around but hardly ever get involved in any of the discussions here except those that really interest them.  Or ones they feel they need to add to.  

Most of my posts are down in the Little Fears section.  But I still wander up here everynow and then.

PeterAmthor
i have nothing left
http://peteramthor.darkgod.net

Quote from: ValamirSome interesting numbers I came up with while fiddling around on the Memberlist.

The top 10 posters are responsible for 40% of the total posts (+40%)
The top 20 posters are responsible for 60% of the total posts (+20%)
The top 40 posters are responsible for 75% of the total posts (+15%)
The top 80 posters are responsible for 90% of the total posts (+15%)

Don't know what that means, if anything, but I found it interesting.

See Zipf's Law. Also useful for world-building purposes (populating cities and such).

-- Reimer Behrends

At Laurel's suggestion, it being about 3 months later, I figured it might be interesting to take another look at these.

The top 10 posters are responsible for 38% of the total posts (from 40%)
The top 20 posters are responsible for 53% of the total posts (from 60%)
The top 40 posters are responsible for 69% of the total posts (from 75%)
The top 80 posters are responsible for 85% of the total posts (from 90%)

So it looks like from these numbers that we do, in fact, have an infusion of prolific new posters who are posting more in the aggregate than those in the top 10.  I'd suspect these numbers over the past 3 months are driven by the number of new members attracted to the Riddle of Steel forum which has generated alot of lively discussion.  

Perhaps we'll see a similiar effect when Cartoon Action Hour ramps up and the new Underworld is released.

Ok, slow day at work today and its been about 3 months since the last time I took a look at this, so I figured I revisit it.

The top 10 posters have made 37% of the total posts (down from 40% and 38%)
The top 20 posters have made 50% of the total posts (down from 60% and 53%)
The top 40 posters have made 66% of the total posts (down from 75% and 69%)
The top 80 posters have made 81% of the total posts (down from 90% and 85%)

So the trend seems to be a welcome diversification of our posting base and a gradually decreasing reliance on posts from the most prolific posters.

I also thought it might be interesting to take a look at the progression of posters.

There are 5 members with more than 800 posts
There are 15 members with between 400-800 posts
There are 20 members with between 200-400 posts
There are 34 members with between 100-200 posts
There are 43 members with between 50-100 posts
There are 56 members with between 25-50 posts
There are 91 members with between 10-25 posts
There are 89 members with between 5-10 posts

There are 120 members who've made only a single post
There are 124 members who've never made a single post.

So only about 20% of the total membership have posted at least 25 posts and only about 8% of the total membership have posted at least 100 posts.

38% of all members are mostly or entirely lurkers or non participants (or perhaps duplicate memberships?)

Any ideas on how typical such a distribution is for web forums.  I wish there was an easy way to sort on "date of last post".  It might be interesting to see how many current poster we have.

Ok, time for the quarterly post analysis once again.

The top 10 posters have made 35% of the total posts (down from 40%, 38% and 37%)
The top 20 posters have made 46% of the total posts (down from 60%, 53% and 50%)
The top 40 posters have made 61% of the total posts (down from 75%, 69% and 66%)
The top 80 posters have made 76% of the total posts (down from 90%, 85% and 81%)

So the trend seems to be continueing towards a wider posting base with fewer of the new posts being dominated by the more prolific posters.  


There are now 9 members with more than 800 posts (up from 5, +4)
There are 18 members with between 400-800 posts  (up from 15, +3)
There are 28 members with between 200-400 posts (up from 20, +8)
There are 42 members with between 100-200 posts (up from 34, +8)
There are 58 members with between 50-100 posts (up from 43, +15)
There are 72 members with between 25-50 posts (up from 56, +16)
There are 112 members with between 10-25 posts (up from 91, +21)
There are 120 members with between 5-10 posts (up from 89, +31)

There are 150 members who've made only a single post (thats up from 120 but down in % terms from 14% to 13%)
However there are now 312 members who've never made a single post (up from 124 and in % terms up to 28% from 14%).

So we've picked up a whole passel of lurkers.

We remain at about 20% of the total membership haveing more than 25 posts.
We've crept up to about 9% (from 8%) of the total membership haveing at least 100 posts.

The number of lurkers or largely non participating posters (less than 5 posts) has skyrocketed from 38% to 59% of total members.

One could put a positive spin on that and suggest that the larger number of lurkers is consistant with a wider awareness of the Forge and a larger base of people who sign on just to check us out, indicating that more people at least know about us to do so.

Any ideas on how to encourage more participation from the lurkers?  Any lurkers reading this who want to chime in?

I admit, I've been a lurker here for the 1 or 2 weeks I've been a member of the Forge.  To be honest I've spent almost all the time I've been on (which has been quite a bit) doing searches and reading back threads as well as the newer threads.  And buying copies of Sorcerer, Dust Devils, and Soap and reading them as well (looking forward to TROS and Sorcerer Supplments, Inspectres and others, but, well, I do have bills to pay...)

Its gratifying to find a group of people who really think about and discuss rpgs this way.  I've been in a state of almost constant revelation since I started reading.  I've been waiting for some of the things that now buzz through my skull to settle down.  At the same time I've been intimidated.  My concern is asking questions that have already been answered, sometimes extensively.  My instinctual response to that has been to do a lot of searching, which has yielded some great rewards, but gives me some reluctance to jump in the pool without finding everything I can about what has been said already.  

All the same I'm intersted in starting and particpating in discussions here.  And I'm not sure what could be added that would have caused me to participate sooner.  I hesitate to say to try polling type question threads(although I'm waiting for the 'last three games' post thread to roll around again)

Hmmm....I see I haven't contributed an idea.  Well hopefully just some understanding.

regards,

Trevis

I just have a question about the statistics.  Is there any way to sort with respect to most recent posts?  Someone a while back on this thread made a remark about the "Old Guard," which got me (as a newbie) looking at the memberlist.  I notice that a large number of the apparent Old Guard (joined early, lots o' posts) have not posted (that I have seen) much lately.  I wonder if that might be a useful statistic for the Forge: the rate of loss, somehow rated in terms of a loss of average posting rate or a period of more than X non-posting or whatever.

Anyway, just a thought.

Hey Trevis, I'm impressed.  Kudos to you for your efforts to self educate.  While we love to answer questions, you are correct in thinking many have been answered extensively.  Of course, truth be told, every time we answer a question we actually learn a little bit more ourselves because such questions force us to be able to distill lofty thoughts into articulate and coherent sentences ;-)  Looking forward to your (and any others doing the same) future contributions.

Cle, I asked the same question a while back and the answer is currently no.  But perhaps with the new automatic statistics Clinton will be rolling out next week we might.

Clehrich's point about newer versus older posters has been floating around in my head, too.

I noticed a month or so ago that although I was relatively new to the site (August 14, 2002, according to the memberlist), I was already in the top fifty posters. Today I see that I've broken into the top forty. Glancing over the list of those above me, maybe a quarter of them are from 2002, the rest from 2001. Only one joined after I did. Of the top twenty posters, only three are not 2001 registrations; of the top ten, only one (Pale Fire, March 2002, #10) are not registered by July of that first year.

Granted, those top ten are ubiquitous here, there are some names in the next ten that are not so immediately familiar, and at least a couple in the next twenty that I don't recognize.

I use to watch the total posts on game-related forums at Gaming Outpost, as popularity rose and fell on them. The cutoff for the top twenty posters here is now five hundred posts; I'm about 55% of that, despite posting almost every day, usually more than one per day. Catching up with people who have that much of a head start is not a simple matter of them not posting for a few days.

--M. J. Young

The simple fact that we keep track of these things always makes me want to post more.  It's that stupid competitive streak - tempered by the fact that I hate posting if I don't have real data to add.

Anyway, an Alternative to dropping out old members, would be to simply limit the time period that you take the samples from.  For instance, if you only look at posts over the last year, I'll bet that your numbers for the top folks come out a little different.  Note, I don't mean to look at just people who joined in the last year, but to artificially change the "start date" of posts considered to a more recent date.  That would eliminate all the "old gaurd" who are no longer active, but still give you a clear picture of who's active today.

Of course, a lot of this is purely academic.  There's no brass ring to be won for being the Top Poster.  

It does all make me want to be a more active member of the place though, so perhaps it's still a useful measurement. :)

-wade jones
dialectic LLC

Ok, technically we aren't due for another statistics update for a couple of weeks yet, but I had a hankering to see if the recent open invite Birthday Bash had any effect on the numbers so you're getting them early.

I will say that being up to 1420 members from 1114 last time is either very impressive or very scary depending on how one looks at it.

The top 10 posters have made 33% of the total posts (down from 40%, 38%, 37% and 35%)
The top 20 posters have made 44% of the total posts (down from 60%, 53%, 50% and 46%)
The top 40 posters have made 59% of the total posts (down from 75%, 69%, 66% and 61%)
The top 80 posters have made 73% of the total posts (down from 90%, 85%, 81% and 76% )

Again the trend continues towards a wider posting base with fewer of the new posts being dominated by the more prolific posters.


There are now 10 members with more than 800 posts (up from 9, +1)
There are 23 members with between 400-800 posts (up from 18, +5)
There are 29 members with between 200-400 posts (up from 20, +1)
There are 55 members with between 100-200 posts (up from 42, +13)
There are 60 members with between 50-100 posts (up from 58, +2)
There are 84 members with between 25-50 posts (up from 72, +12)
There are 151 members with between 10-25 posts (up from 112, +39)
There are 147 members with between 5-10 posts (up from 120, +27)

This is an interesting collection of data.  What this suggests is that during the last couple of ground swells of new members several folks found the site useful enough to continue posting rather than dropping away.  This would account for the swell of posters in the 25-50 range and in the 100-200 range as those groups "move up" in post totals.  The relative lack of new members at the very high end (200+) is indicative of the rather vast gulf between the most prolific posters and everyone else who actually has a life ;-)

I'd also note the sizeable swell of member in the 10-25 and 5-10 posts range which suggest to me that some of the lurkers have grown comfortable enough with the site to begin contributing.  Hopefully we'll see that swell also move up in the ranks indicating that several of them are sticking around long term and adding a welcome dose of fresh blood to our discussions.


There are 169 members who've made only a single post (thats up from 150 but down in % terms from 13% to 12%)
However there are now 434 members who've never made a single post (up from 312 and in % terms up to 31% from 28%).

These numbers are very close in % terms to what we had last time around which seems to indicate that we're converting new members to at least casual participants almost as quickly as they're signing on.  Which is pretty amazing.


We've dropped to 18% (from 20%) of the total membership haveing more than 25 posts, due obviously to the large number of new members we've acquired over the past couple of months.  That number should go back up if we can keep enough of the new members interested to at least stick around long enough to post 25 times.

We've dropped back to 8% (from 9%) of the total membership haveing at least 100 posts.  This will be a very difficult number to maintain, because it requires at least 1 new 100 level poster for every 12 new members.  There are currently 58 members in the 50-100 post range.  That means half of them (or double the number that did this time around) will need to hit 100 posts if we have another 300+ surge of membership.  Difficult, but an admirable goal.  Not that post volume is the only (or even most important) measure of quality, but I think this number is indicative of the number of people willing to committ hours of time to the Forge as an indicator of what a valuable place it is.

The number of lurkers or largely non participating posters (less than 5 posts) has increased to 61% from 59% of total members.   Again, that this number did not increase more is indicative of the number of lurkers who have become participants over the last couple of months.  Certainly a good thing, and certainly in line with the number of new names I've seen frequenting the forums of late.

One final note that I'll add in this regard, is unlike a few months back where the number of new contributing members could be traced directly back to a single forum (for The Riddle of Steel), this time around I'm seeing alot more new names out in the general forums, and a Ton of new people...perhaps more than I have in nearly a year...jumping into the Indie Design and RPG theory discussions.

In the long run I think this is a Very Good Thing(tm), but it risks a couple of pitfalls:

namely 1) beleagured regulars who've grown weary at covering old ground over again numerous times in quick succession, and 2) great game ideas in the indie design forum that aren't given the attention they deserve because of the volume of game ideas cropping up.

I think the current "batch" (if it isn't too insulting to use that term) of new posters deserves a heaping amount of credit for their willingness to scour through the ever increasing volume of articles on the site.   I've been very impressed with their willingness to self educate, their ability to ask specific and sensible questions, and their willingness to accept criticism of game designs graciously and in the spirit of constructivness that they were offered with...(not to mention that several of those game ideas have been pretty cool)

I can't think of a single new poster whose name I've begun to see regularly (with the lone exception of that Outwar spamming guy) who hasn't been (and hopefully will continue to be) an asset to this site.