P&WA Statistics for pattylou

[Bystander]

(snip)This is off topic, and I apologise for that.
I don't know if a pm woud be more appropriate, or a new thread, or a GD thread... ? So, again, apologies for being off topic.
I'd be curious about the following:
1. If you were to chart or graph the number of posters in politics, how much of the claimed decrease would you actually see compared to a year ago, and how much "variance" would there be in any particular data point? (in other words, how do you know that participation at any given point - ie now, really represents a trend or not.)
(Anecdotally, I have noticed you and Andre participating on PWA more, lately - and of those who participate less - well some of them have been banned! heh.)
2. Do the complaints tend to come from one "side" of the political divide or the other?
From my personal experience, I am participating less than several months ago --- (snip)I don't think you can look at participation on such a charged forum as politics, in isolation of the incredibly politically dynamic country that we are living in at the moment. People post because of world events; thus world events affect the nature and frequency of posts. (snip)

PF's been running long enough to make some quantitative statements re. "participation."
On the homepage you'll see total posts and total threads for each forum: for the science, math, and engineering you'll notice an average of 5 -10 posts per thread; for philosophy, GD, and P&WA you'll notice 20 -30 posts per thread. This isn't noticeably different from a year ago.
Once you get into the individual fora you see "posts" and "views" for each thread. This ratio will give you a "hint" at participation, or interest, in the thread topics. Science, math, engineering run 30 - 100 views per post. Philosophy and P&WA run 10, maybe a little less. Again, no real change from year or two ago.
Conclusion? There are small, very active groups of participants in philosophy, and in P&WA.

 

[Evo]

What Pattylou's post was referring to was the number of active members posting, not the number of posts.

 

[Bystander]

In which case, one goes to "Search," inserts one user name at a time, and looks for all posts in P&WA. The data's available, just not in the finished form to answer the question "pl" asked.

I just picked 10 names (not at random), and accounted for 3k of 58k posts; one inactive, no bans, and didn't really look for active time spans. There are all sorts of statistical games to be played with such data; it's a matter of patience vs. how much one really wants to know about P&WA.

 

[Pengwuino]

I don't know about you guys but it seems like half the things said in the Philosophy section seem to be disguised crackpottery 1+1=3 kinda crap.

 

[loseyourname]

I don't know about you guys but it seems like half the things said in the Philosophy section seem to be disguised crackpottery 1+1=3 kinda crap.

Yeah, it has spilled over since T&D has closed, but this has what to do with the topic of this thread?

 

[Evo]

Yeah, it has spilled over since T&D has closed, but this has what to do with the topic of this thread?

bystander mentioned the posts in philosophy, I think pengwuino was responding to that.

 

[loseyourname]

bystander mentioned the posts in philosophy, I think pengwuino was responding to that.

Good point.

Anyway, to actually contribute to this thread, I haven't done any statistical analysis, but if I had to guess just based on my own period of registration here, I'd say that the hard science forums have more total participants, but the ones in politics and philosophy tend to be more active. If I had to guess at possible reasons for this, philosophy and politics seem to be topics more conducive to hyperactive discussion. Usually, the science and math sections seem to be one person asks a question and the question is answered. Also worth noting is the simple fact that science is a discipline advanced mostly through experimentation, which cannot take place on a forum. Philosophy and politics, on the other hand, are pretty much theoretical disciplines, and the forum format is very conducive to theorizing, and, of course, to arguing over competing theories. Another thing with politics and philosophy is that the answers just aren't as cut and dry as in math and science, which invites disagreement.

 

[Pengwuino]

It seems like outside of PWA adn Philosophy, there's a huge variety of people who contribute to various sections. Inside those subforums however, it's the same people saying the same thing on a daily basis.