Atlas forum leaderboard

[Virginiá]

Looks like we have a new up-and-comer, and he's rising fast:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?action=profile;u=13825

AlwaysBernie
--------------------------------------
Posts: 448 (49.778 per day)
Registered: 9 days ago

In just a few short years, he stands to surpass the progress that even legends like BRTD and Al have made, which took many, many years to achieve. You guys need to step things up a notch before he snatches your glory away!

[Virginiá]

Buffalo Bill is rising fast at a daily average post rate of roughly 58% 62.3 posts/day! He is riding a wave of often meaningless and/or ambiguous garbage posts right to the top!

This is an exciting time to be alive.


edit: changed 57 to 58 posts a day as it literally went up a 1 between the time I started this post and the time I finished

edit 2: changed 58 to 62.3 as in the span of 1~ hour he climbed another 4.3 posts/avg. I'm not even going to bother updating again. He's on fire!

[Virginiá]

Is it possible to do "most posts this year" tracking or other similar things.

Actually I think that is a fine idea. Right now, this thread only serves to show a few minute changes here and there between the same 10 posters, some of whom have stopped posting long ago or are outright banished from Atlasland.

Curious if the stats for such a thing are even available to the right people.

[Virginiá]

You don't need the Wayback Machine.  Like I said, for a given poster, it's easy enough to figure out how many posts they made over a given time interval.  Just go to their profile page, click on the "latest posts" link, and then look at how many posts they made over the time interval in question.  Since the posts are numbered, it's simple.

The question being asked though was whether the forum software has a way of sorting who is posting at the greatest rate at any particular time.  And to that, the answer is (AFAIK) no.  All you can do is guess who the most likely suspects are, and then check their profiles accordingly.

A series of direct database queries could probably do this. Is that an option for you? If so, assuming Dave didn't make any heavy modifications to the posts/threads table, I could download SMF and put those queries together. It seems they offer downloads for legacy versions (of which this board is running afaik)

[Virginiá]

Off-topic, but going through the statistics page, I noticed that November 2016 saw the largest influx of new users in Atlas history, at 547 new users for the month. The 2nd biggest month was, weirdly enough, September 2010 at 504 new users. After that, the 3rd largest doesn't even come close to those two as far as I can tell. Hell, comparatively, 2008 numbers were very underwhelming given that election's intensity.

I wonder why those two months, but Sept 2010 in particular, saw such large, isolated increases. Nov in a presidential election year makes a lot more sense than Sept of a midterm.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?action=stats

[Virginiá]

It seems like every presidential election since Atlas was created, the activity in the year(s) after are a decent bit more than the previous iteration. The circus that we call the 2016 presidential election does seem to have given its own special boost to activity as well. The only thing that doesn't seem to have followed a similar upward trend is the number of new registrants per month. 2008, 2012 & 2016 were only modest years for new members despite the presidential election going on, yet each time, were followed by a year(s) of booming user growth. I wonder why that is.

It's pretty interesting to look at the statistics page though. All sorts of neat trends to see. If Trump keeps things at least modestly interesting, the next 4 years might be a great time for the growth of this forum.

[Virginiá]

Where can I find said statistics page?

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?action=stats

[Virginiá]

I just noticed the Male:Female ratio has gone up from 16.3:1 -> 16.4:1

Come on Atlas

In other non-depressing news, the forum continues to have activity that is often higher or at least on par with October 2014. One area the forum does consistently better with is online users. Going by statistics, this forum has come a long way since 2013.

[Virginiá]

Dang good idea Siren/Morden! Going back to this:

I think it was 18:1 when I joined

I see now that on March 21st, 2015, the Male:Female ratio was an astronomical  22.1 1

So by now we've seen a near 6 point drop. Atlas has come a long way!

[Virginiá]

Even though the number of new posts per day is dropping off from the post-inauguration numbers, the number of new registrations on the forum remains strong.  Over 100 new registrations in March, which means we've now had three consecutive months with over 100 new registrations for the first time since 2013.  Somehow, new people are managing to find the forum.

We seem to be at least slightly coming off the Trump high in some ways:

Threads per day: Settling back down into Fall 2015 range, which is still high - higher than 2013/2014.
Posts per day: We seem set to hit about 40,000 - 42,000 posts for the month, which if it stays that way is still higher than just about any other time period for Atlas except 2016, which was very high, and 2010, where it was about even. Another way to look at it is Mar 2017 may see as many posts/threads as Nov 2008.
Users/day: This is one strong part. Atlas is still getting almost double the number of users online per day than in March 2013 (and almost every other month in '13)

I just wonder if this is a new baseline or if activity is still poised to go further down. Given how Trump is stirring certain parts of America into a constant frenzy, I feel like heightened political interest could continue. I feel like if Atlas had a more active What-If board and other subjects not dependent on the media, it would probably see more activity.

I need to stop checking these stats so much.

[Virginiá]

Yesterday was Atlas's most active day of the month, going by # of posts. 3rd highest in thread count, 2nd highest in user registrations, although the max users online count was unremarkable.

I found it interesting because the day prior to yesterday was somewhat unremarkable:

Monthly Summary   New Topics   New Posts   New Members   Most Online
2017-03-27              41                  1307             4                        317
2017-03-28              74                  1802             8                        285


I wonder why activity bumps like that happen seemingly out of the blue.

[Virginiá]

I'm wondering if Atlas will sink back into the mid-high 30,000-monthly posts range now that the initial confirmations/100 days stuff is about over. The average number of posts per day seems to be somewhere between 1150 - 1250, which on its own would amount to high 30k/per month. Although I suppose it is still better than 4 years ago, where <mid-2013 was averaging low 30k - high 20k (or less) per month. The next ~5 months should definitely test out the idea of whether or not Trump being Trump is enough to sustain the activity boost this site has gotten. Overall, it does seem like the forum is growing quite a bit.

What Atlas really needs is more activity not based around the media. Whether it be more active games or TL section.

[Virginiá]

April only had 1% more posts than the same month four years ago, so we may have dropped back down to "normal" activity levels, following the Trump-fueled sugar high of the last year.

On the upside, the typical online user count per day has almost doubled from 2013 (and even on the slower days still being a lot higher)

I think part of the problem is, as I've mentioned before, Atlas feeds on media cycles, so if its slow(er) everywhere else, it trickles down here, and vice versa.

[Virginiá]

Something tells me today is going to have an above average number of posts on the forum.

If you were to mean the average of this month, or over the past month, it would be upwards of 1400 or 1500, respectively. Trump's Russia woes and a spate of various elections have been good to Atlas. May was the most active month since January.

The level of activity for Atlas right now seems very unprecedented for a non-federal election year. Given that next year is the midterm, and the year after that will probably see major early buzz for the presidential election, this kind of activity could easily become the new normal for this forum.

[Virginiá]

I am assuming that between Comey and the UK election, we will break 1500 today, yes.  And possibly much more than that.

You were right of course - Atlas hit 2,557 posts today, with a high point of 499 users online at the same time. That is the most posts in a single day since Nov 10th.

[Virginiá]

Next milestone will be BRTD hitting 80,000 posts.

The time has arrived. BRTD has blown past the fabled 80,000 post milestone!

[Virginiá]

To be fair, Kal did take a long break, so in a ways, he is just making up for lost time. It will all average out soon enough o

[Virginiá]

A18 and Roach were worse. I'd say Eharding was too but I don't think he ever got above 45.

I'm not sure how long he kept this up for, but EHarding at times had > 50 posts a day, and I remember a handful of days where he literally was pushing somewhere between 80 - 90 posts (per day)

[Virginiá]

Btw, fun fact: Now that Antonio is making almost 400 more posts per month than BRTD is, he's on pace to make it to 100,000 posts before BRTD does (some time in early 2025 or so). 

Luckily we'll probably all be dead by then in the nuclear fallout.

I get that Antonio was posting a lot, but for some reason it never really felt like it. Maybe he was primarily focused on boards I do not frequent.

[Virginiá]

Looks like September saw a bit of a slowdown in posting on the forum, and, with just a day and a half left in the month, we're not going to reach 40,000 posts for September, meaning the streak of 40,000+ months ends at four.  But we're still markedly ahead of the pace from the same month four years ago, so Trump continues to be good for business here.

To be fair, September has one less day than August, and with the average post per day almost always >1100, if we had that extra day this month as well, we'd crack 40,000.

In that sense, this month is only marginally less than August, with a consolation prize that it will probably end with around 30 more user registrations.

[Virginiá]

Looking at the stats, I'm curious now at what point does Trump's effect on user activity here wear off? 2017 has been more active than any year prior except 2016, and in most cases substantially more active. It should figure then that 2020 would probably be a pretty banner year for Atlas, activity-wise.

[Virginiá]

Looks we are ending the night with over 3,100 posts. That's the most since the 2016 election, and basically the equivalent of over two high activity days in one.

[Virginiá]

This forum is going to burn itself out lol

We hit 2,000 posts yesterday (or rather a few hours ago I guess!) for no real reason at all. Nothing too important happened yesterday, at least in terms of what would cause a spike in activity here. In fact every day since Dec 1st has been a super high activity day, with like 1600 - 1800 posts, even on weekends, which is pretty rare.

What are you doing Atlas?!??

[Virginiá]

Anyone want to predict tomorrow's post count?

It depends how quickly the election is called, and to a degree who wins (a Jones win would probably cause some excitement).

I'm going to say 2100 - 2400.

[Virginiá]

We're already at 1500 posts today, and it's only about 6pm on the East Coast.

I'm sticking with max of 2400 now, but I think we'd be even higher now if the site wasn't lagging so bad. It takes me like 40 seconds to refresh the page.