[quote="Diderot Mirabeau":3asx956r]
1) Ashcroft Burnham - 917 posts = 21% = 6.5 per day
2) Beathan - 361 posts = 8% = 7 per day
3) Claude Desmoulins - 317 posts = 7% = 1.8 per day
4) Patroklus Murakami - 286 posts = 7% = 1.8 per day
5) Aliasi Stonebender - 269 posts = 6% = 1.6 per day
6) Diderot Mirabeau - 229 posts = 5% = 1.4 per day
7) Gwyneth Llewelyn - 225 posts = 5% = 1.4 per day
Pelanor Eldrich - 149 posts = 3% = 0.9 per day
9) Justice Soothsayer - 144 posts = 3% = 0.9 per day
10) Chicago Kipling - 137 posts = 3% = 0.9 per day
21% of all posts by top-1; 49% of all posts by top-5; 68% of all posts by top-10[/quote:3asx956r]
This week's statistics look like this:
1) Ashcroft Burnham - 1030 posts = 21.61% = 6.78 per day
2) Beathan - 416 posts = 8.73% = 6.40 per day
3) Claude Desmoulins - 318 posts = 6.67% = 1.43 per day
4) Patroklus Murakami - 310 posts = 6.50% = 1.45 per day
5) Aliasi Stonebender - 289 posts = 6.06% = 1.31 per day
6) Diderot Mirabeau - 274 posts = 5.75% = 1.27 per day
7) Gwyneth Llewelyn - 238 posts = 4.99% = 1.07 per day
Pelanor Eldrich - 159 posts - 3.34% = 0.72 per day
9) Justice Soothsayer - 154 posts = 3.23% = 0.73 per day
10) Gxeremio Dimsum - 143 posts = 3% = 0.77 per day
The distribution of posts between posters maintain the pattern that we have seen in the last handful of updates: Over 21% of all posts by the top-1; 50% of all posts by the top-5; and almost 70% of all posts written by the top-10.
However, I have taken the liberty this week of going one level deeper to try to address the well-founded criticism that a post is not just a post and that there can be a huge difference between posting a one-line announcement saying "The <insert government body here> will meet in the Rathaus on Wednesday 7th at 3:00PM" and posting a longer treatise discussing how SL gravity would affect the realistic reproduction of the flight of a dove and how to plan for this using LSL2.
I have therefore taken a first stab at going one step deeper and assessing the average, relative length of forum the top-10 forum contributors' posts. However, as this task - if it were to be done perfectly - would have entailed going through some 3,000 posts I have substituted a simplified approach using some emulation of a stratified selection of posts to yield an estimated average post length.
I will explain the method further at the end of this post. But first the results:
1) Ashcroft Burnham - Index 100 * 1,030 posts = 1,030 points
2) Beathan - Index 46.8 * 416 posts = 194 points
3) Patroklus Murakami - Index 37.15 * 310 posts = 115 points
4) Claude Desmoulins - Index 25.69 * 318 posts = 81 points
5) Gwyneth Llewelyn - Index 26.43 * 238 posts = 63 points
6) Gxeremio Dimsum - Index 44.05 * 143 posts = 63 points
7) Diderot Mirabeau - Index 19.97 * 274 posts = 55 points
Aliasi Stonebender - Index 18.35 * 289 posts = 53 points
9) Justice Soothsayer - Index 25.99 * 154 posts = 40 points
10) Pelanor Eldrich - Index 15.71 * 159 posts = 25 points
As you can see the method of taking into account an estimated, average post length nuances the results considerably. One notable result is that the list is far more top-schewed than the previous table indicated. This in my view is grounds for concern by anyone who desires to have the forums support the expression of a diverse collection of viewpoints on CDS affairs.
I will as a result ask that the matter of representativity of diverse points of view on the forums be discussed and if deemed necessary further investigated in order to sensibly decide on possible measures to promote the diversity of viewpoints in the future.
Of course the above is a sheer quantitive analysis and it does not take into account that one poster may using three words have a greater impact than someone who takes a day to present a single point effectively if ever at all.
It also needs to be said that the results adjusted for post length do not take into account the differentiation in representation between a relatively new poster and a longtime poster as it merely counts the accumulated mass of posts and makes no attempt to paint a picture of the situation as it is in the forum right now apart from using the 10 most recent posts in the calculation to find the average length of posts. This means naturally that posters who have been here longer will be 'discriminated against' in the results compared to more recent citizens.
The method I have used to reach the "index" value as quoted in the above is as follows:
For each poster in the top-10 select 30 historical posts. 10 of these should be the most recent, 10 should be the oldest and 10 should be approximately in the middle (i.e. looking up all pages of historical posts, choosing the "middle page" (rounded down if necessary) and selecting the bottom 10 of these posts.
Two types of posts have been excluded from the survey: Transcripts and posting of forum moderation guidelines. A case may well be argued for not excluding any posts or indeed for excluding more types of posts or parts of posts. As it is all posts not falling in the above categories have been included in their entirety - including quotes from other posters and signatures.
The entire text of these 30 posts was copied and pasted into OpenOffice Writer. Tools / Word Count was used to count the number of words and characters in total (excluding spaces and line break) and the resulting numbers were divided by 30. The index was then finally obtained using the base of the poster with the highest value. This yielded the following results:
1) Ashcroft Burnham: 20,443 total words = 681 words per post, 119,942 total characters = 3,998 characters per post. Index: 100
2) Beathan: 9,567 total words = 319 words per post, 58,517 total characters = 1,951 characters per post. Index: 46.8
3) Claude Desmoulins: 5,240 total words = 175 words per post, 31,632 total characters = 1,054 characters per post. Index: 25.9
4) Patroklus Murakami: 7,598 total words = 253 words per post, 43,865 total characters = 1,462 characters per post. Index: 37.15
5) Aliasi Stonebender: 3,758 total words = 125 words per post, 21,886 total characters = 729 characters per post. Index: 18.35
6) Diderot Mirabeau: 4,092 total words = 136 words per post, 23,247 total characters = 775 characters per post. Index: 19.97
7) Gwyneth Llewelyn: 5,414 total words = 180 words per post, 31,781 total characters = 1,059 characters per post. Index: 26.46
Pelanor Eldrich: 3,212 total words = 107 words per post, 19,174 total characters = 639 characters per post. Index: 15.71
9) Justice Soothsayer: 5,296 total words = 177 words per post, 31,749 total characters = 1,058 characters per post. Index: 25.99
10) Gxeremio Dimsum: 9,005 total words = 300 words per post, 52,329 total characters = 1,744 characters per post. Index: 44.05
The average word length was calculated as a form of sanity check. The results varied between 5.6 to 6 characters per word, which falls within ordinary results I believe.
The survey was carried out on the forums as they looked on the afternoon (around 3PM CET) and in the time it took to carry out the survey a few posters had managed already to make the results outdated by submitting new posts to the forum.
As I have pointed out the process is rather long and even if not complicated at least logistically heavy and somewhat tedious. As it was carried out manually there may very well be errors in the assumptions, calculations or results and I encourage anyone interested in this perspective to do their own comparisons, verifications and to contribute to the debate pointing out any flaws or omissions as this will also inform the SC when we decide to discuss the issue.