One True Thread: Activity by User - 128 Days

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Technical notes and comments
(PNG version for non-SVG browsers or slow links)
Older version (88 days)

This graph is a somewhat different visualization of user activity on the One True Thread of Time, using my own peculiar ranking system. Each OTTer gets a ranking based on three factors: total number of posts [width of bar]; length of time active on the thread [length of bar]; and something I call "regularity" [color of bar], a measure of how uniform the timing of their posts has been.

As usual, don't take this too seriously. My calculations make no distinction between someone posting a "LOL" and BlitzGirl posting another Boom De Yada. This is just for fun—it's not intended to be a serious analysis of anyone's contribution to the OTT.

NEW FEATURE: The broken line down the center of each user's bar shows the user's actual posting pattern over the user's history.

NOTE: I've updated the ranking algorithm since the last version, to reduce the impact of the regularity (R) factor, so people like KarMann who return after a long gap aren't dropped quite as precipitously down the graph. Specifically, I now use the square root of R in the ranking. Since R varies between zero and one, this increase the value, but increases it more for low scores than for high scores: .16 increases to .40, but .49 only increases to .70.

Graph of One True Thread: Count, Span, and Regularity of Posts by User (SVG format)

Technical notes

Disclaimer: I like finding ways to visualize numbers, but I am not a mathematician (much less a statistician); I just played one briefly in college (thirty-odd years ago).

The user ranking is a straight product P · A · R of three values: post count; active interval; and regularity.

Regularity is why SBN and k.bookbinder are several rows apart, even though they have nearly the same number of posts over nearly the same span of time. But SBN posts nearly every day, and k.bookbinder's posting history has several long gaps.

A lack of regularity should not be taken as a lack of dedication to Time! I intend no criticism by analyzing posting regularity. I'm well aware that many of us have Outside commitments—how many marriages were there over 124 days of Time? As SBN commented about the 78-day version of this graph, "To look at it another way, my life is considerably more boring than Opiboble's, allowing me to waste spend way too much time on Time."

A final note: I lack the code-fu to distinguish between mscha and newpixbot. This graph combines their post activity, which improves their joint ranking both by regularity and by post count. You can easily see how mscha's post frequency increases after the introduction of newpixbot on day 27—thankfully, since without mscha and newpixbot the OTT would have certainly missed hundreds of ONGs.