[FR] The Year 2007 - a Review

[tacens clamo]

2007 at Freerpepublic - Part 1
Preliminary Note
I'd rather like this thread to stay in the open, i.e., at Other Sites Chat. Therefore, as far as individual persons are discussed, please stick to their statistical, not personal behaviour.
Motivation
In April, 2007 I got interested in the stats of Freerepublic. As the management of FR - in contrast to DC, for example - doesn't give you any numbers, I took a look at the site itself. Thankfully, it's clearly structurized, no fancy stuff, not even frames, so this was easy to do.
I posted my observation at FR - and was banned shortly after. Why do I go on? The basic motivation is: because it can be done The database has a nice size and shows lots of interesting behaviour typical for websites (more of Zipf's law later)

General Numbers
In 2007, 25,185 freeper made 7,372,425¹ posts in 187,719 threads, starting with this classic one of jennyp:

To: Jim Robinson
Happy New Year, Jim!
Please nuke my account.
431 posted on 01/01/2007 12:00:01 AM PST by jennyp (Just a one-day suspension? That's bait & switch!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 424 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

and ending rather unspectacularly with

To: End Times Crusader
No. Ron Paul is a libertarian. In a sense, that is a “RINO”, too, because many of those principles collide with Conservative Republicanism.
254 posted on 12/31/2007 11:59:56 PM PST by AmericanInTokyo (Your FR Pledge: Bookmark It Today! "I Won't Support Mitt/Rudy/McCain/Huckster in General Election")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 249 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

Less than 1.4% of all posts were pulled, leaving 7,273,925.

When do Freepers post
The daily posting behaviour seems to be representative for a (north) American posting-board:

Most posts are done during business hours, and in the early evening...There's a peek at 3 AM PST = 12 AM EST. It seems to be some kind of pookie18 -effect: A regular thread started around eastern midnight most days.

Over the year, we get this picture:

Least posts are made at Thanksgiving and at Christmas, with a minimum of 9454 posts at Dec, 25th. You have to go way into the past to find another day with less than 10,000 posts! Generally, the second half of the year wasn't so busy: on average, there were less than 20,000 posts per day.

edit: For comparison...


---------------------------------------------------------------------
¹ :Stating the numbers this way, an egregious accuracy is implied. I'm fairly convinced of my data retrievel procedure, but I allow for an absolute error of +/- 500 (and that's still quite impressive
)

[jlogajan]

As always, you data mine like no one else.

I really expect that as the campaign season heats up in the months ahead, there'll be more FR posting.

[tacens clamo]

As always, you data mine like no one else.

I really expect that as the campaign season heats up in the months ahead, there'll be more FR posting.

Thanks
Here's an older, not so detailed pic:

I doubt that FR will reach the niveau of 2004 - so the hardware should be sufficient even if it heats up a little bit

[tacens clamo]

2007 at Freerpepublic - Part 2
Posts per Freeper
As stated earlier, there were 7,372,425 posts and 25,185 freeper, i.e., an average of 293 post per freeper. But the posts are of course not evenly distributed. A typical distribution is shown by Darwin Central itself: The posters
are ordered by their rank, i.e., the number of posts they contributed since the very beginning of D.C. . I took the data at Jan 8th, 2008 - and Patrick Henry was leading the pack with 9588 posts. Those who never posted are omitted. The number of posts is logarithmitically scaled and we get the following picture:

Now, compare this with the similar graph for Freerepublic:

Granted, the numbers are way bigger But, what sticks out are the ~400 busiest posters..
Let's have a look at the Top 15:

1. kathyinalaska : 30,156 (83 p.d.)
2. luvw : 25,212 (69 p.d.)
3. nwarizonagranny : 25,126 (69 p.d.)
4. pissant : 23,461 (64 p.d.)
5. mylife : 23,038 (63 p.d.)
6. chicagoconservative2: 20,998 (57 p.d.)
7. cindy : 17,721 (49 p.d.)
8. salvation : 17,653 (48 p.d)
9. sunkenciv : 17,519 (48 p.d.)
10. sandrat : 17,374 (47 p.d.)
11. fuddfan : 17,147 (47 p.d.)
12. clintnsuhks :17,118 (45 p.d.)
13. stephenjohnbanker: 16,233 (44 p.d.)
14. calpernia : 16,073 (44 p.d.)
15. eternalvigilance : 15,319 (42 p.d.)

That takes some persistence!

[ElkNotMoose]

Is the DC chart representative of Zipf's Law (somehow)?

[Doctor Stochastic]

Zipf's law really hasn't got much content. More detailed information is needed, such as whether the law is a power law or some other form. It's hard to get such information because of the noise. Plotting frequency vs rank is much like plotting pressure vs 1/pressure. The slope of the line plotted above has more imeaning.

Randomly generated data also follow Zipf's law. http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/li92random.html

The problem is that it is difficult to generate data that doesn't follow Zipf's law.

http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/W/W96/W96-0106.pdf

http://www.santafe.edu/research/publica ... /199103016

[radioastronomer]

2007 at Freerpepublic - Part 2
Posts per Freeper
As stated earlier, there were 7,372,425 posts and 25,185 freeper, i.e., an average of 293 post per freeper. But the posts are of course not evenly distributed. A typical distribution is shown by Darwin Central itself: The posters
are ordered by their rank, i.e., the number of posts they contributed since the very beginning of D.C. . I took the data at Jan 8th, 2008 - and Patrick Henry was leading the pack with 9588 posts. Those who never posted are omitted. The number of posts is logarithmitically scaled and we get the following picture:
-snip-
Granted, the numbers are way bigger But, what sticks out are the ~400 busiest posters..
Let's have a look at the Top 15:

1. kathyinalaska : 30,156 (83 p.d.)
2. luvw : 25,212 (69 p.d.)
3. nwarizonagranny : 25,126 (69 p.d.)
4. pissant : 23,461 (64 p.d.)
5. mylife : 23,038 (63 p.d.)
6. chicagoconservative2: 20,998 (57 p.d.)
7. cindy : 17,721 (49 p.d.)
8. salvation : 17,653 (48 p.d)
9. sunkenciv : 17,519 (48 p.d.)
10. sandrat : 17,374 (47 p.d.)
11. fuddfan : 17,147 (47 p.d.)
12. clintnsuhks :17,118 (45 p.d.)
13. stephenjohnbanker: 16,233 (44 p.d.)
14. calpernia : 16,073 (44 p.d.)
15. eternalvigilance : 15,319 (42 p.d.)

That takes some persistence!

kathyInAlaska is freeper #13. In reality No. 3 after JR and John. #3-#12 I think are either no longer posting or never existed. (I would need to go back and look at 3-12 to make sure)

[tacens clamo]

kathyInAlaska is freeper #13. In reality No. 3 after JR and John. #3-#12 I think are either no longer posting or never existed. (I would need to go back and look at 3-12 to make sure)

FYI: Here is the list of the freepers of the first day, i.e., Nov. 28th, 1998 1997¹:

• Freeper Nr <-> Name <-> Banned <-> Year of the Last Post
• 1 JimRobinson no 2008
• 2 Unknown yes
• 3 Eric no 2008
• 4 Justsomeboob no
• 5 Amcon1 no
• 13 DHunt10325 no
• 14 KathyinAlaska no 2008
• 15 MaxMonroe no 2006
• 16 EdMillar no 2004
• 18 Barb no
• 22 fjh no 2006
• 25 HalT no 2004
• 26 PaulfromLkwdOh no 2002
• 27 Scotsman no 2007
• 28 ArleneT no
• 29 Jeff no
• 30 Major no
• 31 oregon no
• 32 Wallaby no 2008
• 33 altura no 2008
• 36 JesseGilbert no
• 38 SElliott no
• 39 MonroeDNA yes 2006
• 40 C7pilot no 2005
• 41 CEO no
• 43 Bob no 2008
• 44 jeffo no 2006
• 45 DaninWichita no 2007
• 46 turdbird yes
• 47 katze no 2003
• 48 BobJ no 2008
• 49 Eschoir yes
• 50 Stephen no
• 51 Patrick no 2003
• 52 firehat no 2008
• 53 Texvegan no
• 54 Rhonda no
• 55 cdjones no 2008
• 56 BobS no 2008
• 57 Howard no
• 58 NeilEWright no 2008
• 59 mass55th no 2008
• 60 PRoeder277 no
• 62 DebMcScott no
• 63 Doodletee no
• 64 jpress no
• 65 grreta no
• 66 DiZadroga no 2006
• 67 Buffalo no
• 68 Keith no 2008
• 69 rw4site no 2008
• 70 PaulRM no
• 71 dorothy no 2008
• 72 JayHowardSmith no 2008
• 73 LynnH96005 no

There are 56: 17 are posting still in 2008, 26 stopped posting prior to 2001 (so the year of their last post could not be given....)
------
¹ edit: corrected the year (thanks, jalapeno)

[tortoise]

I had a sick number of posts before I was banned. A good bit north of 10,000 if I remember correctly. As was the case with a lot of people here I suspect.

Of course, I essentially never visit TOS nor miss it. It seems to collect the dregs of the gene pool these days.

[Ichneumon]

I had a sick number of posts before I was banned. A good bit north of 10,000 if I remember correctly. As was the case with a lot of people here I suspect.

I've got 14,373 posts there.

[js1138]

I had a sick number of posts before I was banned. A good bit north of 10,000 if I remember correctly. As was the case with a lot of people here I suspect.

I've got 14,373 posts there.

Yes, but adjusted for length and content, that would be 143,730.

[tacens clamo]

I had a sick number of posts before I was banned. A good bit north of 10,000 if I remember correctly. As was the case with a lot of people here I suspect.

I've got 14,373 posts there.

Impressive, but Kathy In Alaska posts ~15,000 in half a year!

[tortoise]

I had a sick number of posts before I was banned. A good bit north of 10,000 if I remember correctly. As was the case with a lot of people here I suspect.

I've got 14,373 posts there.

If I remember correctly my final tally was in the 11,000-12,000 range. What kills me is the amount of effort that represents. It is not like I was pulling cretard nonsense out of my ass; a lot of the time I made some effort on accuracy and literacy. On the other hand, I will grant that a fair fraction of that was spent on glib one-liners intended to yank chains or pimp-slap an idiot.

[tacens clamo]

Zipf's law really hasn't got much content. More detailed information is needed, such as whether the law is a power law or some other form. It's hard to get such information because of the noise. Plotting frequency vs rank is much like plotting pressure vs 1/pressure. The slope of the line plotted above has more imeaning.

Randomly generated data also follow Zipf's law. http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/li92random.html

The problem is that it is difficult to generate data that doesn't follow Zipf's law.

http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/W/W96/W96-0106.pdf

http://www.santafe.edu/research/publica ... /199103016

Thanks for the input - I always like to read the articles you are presenting:
Vide: only the x-axis is logarithmically scaled, so, we don't see Zipf's law but something exponentially distributed:




If we plot the frequency of the number of posts, we get something like this:


Again, the x-axis is logarithmically scaled.

And now for the empirical laws:

[Jalapeno]

kathyInAlaska is freeper #13. In reality No. 3 after JR and John. #3-#12 I think are either no longer posting or never existed. (I would need to go back and look at 3-12 to make sure)

FYI: Here is the list of the freepers of the first day, i.e., Nov. 28th, 1998:

...

Just a correction for accuracy...The year was 1997

[DerTrommler]

I had a sick number of posts before I was banned. A good bit north of 10,000 if I remember correctly. As was the case with a lot of people here I suspect.

I've got 14,373 posts there.

Yeah, but your posts are so short!

[tacens clamo]

2007 at Freerpepublic - Part 3
Out-times
On a normal day, there will be at most three minutes elapsing between two consecutive posts. Everything over five minutes is quite unusual, and a lapse of 10 minutes is almost certainly indicating a problem at FR. Often, it is jokingly stated, that these problems are scheduled during the 'thons - and the sketch of the out-times in 2005 doesn't contradict this hypothesis:

postdistance-2005.jpg

However, in 2006, the situation changed and the service gets worse generally: while there were only five intermissions longer than 10 minutes in 2005, we have 14 in 2006...

postdistance-2006.jpg

... and 20 in 2007!

postdistance-2007.jpg

A preference for the 'thon periods can't be seen anymore - most months have their out-times. As the stats of Part 1 imply a decline of traffic in the last three years, perhaps, the hardware isn't overloaded, but just outdated.
On the positive side: While in 2006, FR had six intermission of one hour and longer - the longest taking over six hours! - in 2007, this number was cut in half and none of the breaks took longer than two hours.

[MineralMan]

I have a question. When you refer to "posts" in your charts and data, are you referring to original postings of stories, or are you including the replies to those postings?

[ASA Vet]

I have a question. When you refer to "posts" in your charts and data, are you referring to original postings of stories, or are you including the replies to those postings?

If I were responding to your question the answer would be a simple, "Yes."

[jlogajan]

A preference for the 'thon periods can't be seen anymore - most months have their out-times.

Brilliant!

I suspected the association of outages with 'thon's was most likely to be related to observer attention correlation.

My guess has always been that JR it too lazy to engage in such behavior regardless of its alleged psychological effectiveness.

[tacens clamo]

I have a question. When you refer to "posts" in your charts and data, are you referring to original postings of stories, or are you including the replies to those postings?

I refer to all posts, i.e. all replies...

[tacens clamo]

2007 at Freerpepublic - Part 4
Most Popular Threads in 2007

Free Republic is the premier online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web.. So, what do these conservatives gather around? Here are the 10 most popular threads of 2007, at least, regarding the number of replies:

1. • Anna Nicole Smith has died according to ABC News
   • posted 02/08/2007 12:39:03 PM PST by kcvl
   • 25,619 posts
   • 25,594¹ posts in 2007
2. • Anna Nicole Smith, The Investigation Posted
   • posted on 03/09/2007 8:53:08 PM PST by mom4kittys
   • 20,471 post in total
   • 20,467¹ posts in 2007
3. • Will FR embrace socialism to make way for Rudy Giuliani as a Republican presidential candidate?
   • posted 04/21/2007 6:42:25 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
   • 18,418 post in total
   • 18,358¹ posts in 2007
4. • Anna Nicole Smith, The Investigation #3
   • posted 04/07/2007 3:14:35 PM PDT by mom4kittys
   • 17,435 post in total
   • 17,422¹ posts in 2007
5. • The OFFICIAL weekly "24" Season 6 Live thread!
   • posted 01/11/2007 10:03:27 AM PST by OXENinFLA
   • 13,791 post in total
   • 13,788¹ posts in 2007
6. • 'The Nativity Story' Movie Problematic for Catholics, "Unsuitable" for Young Children
   • posted 12/04/2006 7:52:47 PM PST by Pyro7480
   • 16,255 post in total
   • 12,966¹ posts in 2007
7. • American Idol 2007--Live Thread (Part II)
   • posted 03/13/2007 5:46:36 AM PDT by silent_jonny
   • 12,339 post in total
   • 12,328¹ posts in 2007
8. • Will the Pope's Pronouncement Set Ecumenism Back a Hundred Years?
   • posted 07/22/2007 7:40:38 PM PDT by xzins
   • 12,721 post in total
   • 12,243¹ posts in 2007
9. • American Idol 2007--Live Thread (Part I)
   • posted 01/15/2007 3:32:39 PM PST by silent_jonny
   • 11,228 post in total
   • 11,228¹ posts in 2007
10. • The Hobbit Hole XXXIV - But better than rain or rippling streams...
    • posted 08/07/2007 7:52:15 AM PDT by HairOfTheDog
    • 11,116 post in total
    • 10,907¹ posts in 2007

Only one of these threads belonged to the rubric "news". Guess which? Right, the thread Number 3, started by Jim Robinson himself. Two threads were filed in the forum "religion", another two stashed in the "backroom", leaving five threads in the category "chat".
Some main events in 2007 aren't reflected in this list, for example, the Virginia Tech Shootings. This may be due to the fact that there were much more - if shorter - threads covering events of real importance.

----------------------------
¹Pulled replies are not counted in this number

[tacens clamo]

Just for completion:

p-2002-l.jpg

p-2003-l.jpg

p-2004-l.jpg

[tacens clamo]

p-2005-l.jpg

p-2006-l.jpg

[GSlob]

2007 at Freerpepublic - Part 4
Most Popular Threads in 2007

Free Republic is the premier online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web.. So, what do these conservatives gather around? Here are the 10 most popular threads of 2007, at least, regarding the number of replies: [threads list]
...

Thanks. I was under the impression that mega-threads like Rudy Purge thread were much more rare.