How Partisan is Atlas?

[John Dule]

I thought this might be a fun thread to make. While this forum is pretty aggressive sometimes, I think we often focus too heavily on the partisan posts and don't realize that a lot of the material on here is either essentially neutral or just non-partisan. In order to operationalize this, I looked back through the last five pages of my posts (125 posts) and rated each of them as either "left-wing," "right-wing," or "apolitical/neutral."

An example of a left-wing JD post would be this:

If Trump's personality was a state, it'd be Florida.

Because I hate Florida and also hate Trump, this counts as "left-wing."

An example of a right-wing post would be this:

I can't speak for anyone else, but I wasn't saying his career was over because of this. I was saying it was over a long time ago because he's an insincere person and an uninspiring hack.

An attack on Beto O'Rourke counts as "right-wing" because I'm going after a Democratic candidate from a right-leaning perspective. I should note that attacks on Dem candidates that simultaneously praise other Dem candidates (like the one in my signature) are counted as "neutral." Other examples of "neutral" posts include:

Everything I say sounds like something I would say because I have said it.

I'm going to have my political science degree completed this coming May.

Exactly. Why would a "garden-variety" Republican have won Michigan?

The first is a bit sassy, but not political. The second is just an anecdote about myself-- also not political. The third, while political, is just an opinion about the realities of the race and not a normative statement. All three of these fall into the "apolitical/neutral" basket.

In my post history, I counted 17 left-wing posts, 38 right-wing posts, and 70 apolitical/neutral posts. This means that most of my partisan posts (about 70%) were right-wing, but partisan comments accounted for less than half of my overall posting. Thus, I received a score of +20% right-wing, -8% partisan. Here's what this would look like on a graph:



If anyone is interested to see where they would rank based on these metrics, feel free to do your own analysis of your past posts (1-5 pages or so) and comment below with your scores. I'll add you to the chart, and maybe we can begin to see that Atlas isn't as partisan as we all seem to think it is. (I'd do this myself for other users, but you guys know the intent behind your posts better than I do.)

[lfromnj]

Great work, a bit too much work myself to rate myself because a lot of my recent posts are on Atlasia where I am partisan but more arguing against labour and often just sh**t posting.

[Kingpoleon]

I bet Runeghost & Fuzzy would do well here.

For BRTD, can we have a “nonsense posts” category?

[President of the great nation of 🏳️‍⚧️]

In the past 100 posts:
Left-wing: 27 (81.82% of political posts)
Right-wing: 6 (18.18%)

+64% LW, -34% partisan, if I'm doing my calculations correctly.

[John Dule]

I bet Runeghost & Fuzzy would do well here.

For BRTD, can we have a “nonsense posts” category?

Yeah, the problem is that this doesn't measure how obnoxious the poster is. So Landslide Lyndon, for example, might score very non-partisan because so many of his posts are just substance-free ad hominems.

Here's what Peebs looks like on this chart. I also analyzed 74 Higgins posts just to see where he'd end up... it wasn't pretty. I firmly believe that what makes a poster obnoxious is not their political beliefs, but how belligerent they are in discussing them ad nauseam.

[CEO Mindset]

I haven't left my house in two weeks because I keep being banned from places due to spitting on anyone saying anything favorable about the other party.

[Dr. MB]

58 left, 31 neutral, 11 right.

Some of them were pretty hard though. And like 60% are Atlasia votes or bills.

[TJ in Oregon]

In the past 100 posts:

54 neutral, 43 right, 3 left

Of the political posts, 93.5% right, 6.5% left
Political posts are 46% of the total.

[America Needs R'hllor]

In my recent 5 pages:

Left: 38
Neutral: 75
Right: 12

So I guess it means -10% partisan. I'm not sure how you calculated the right-wing percentage, but substracting the Right percentage from the Left makes for a 52% left-wing score.

The neutral ones are mostly informative posts about Israeli politics, Individual Politics rankings and lists (which all show my partisan lean but aren't outright partisan), and foreign policy posts that are usually not very partisan (ie attacking Trump's foreign policy and isolationism at the same time, looking at things from above). The Right-wing ones are usually attacks on people like Corbyn, related to Israel. Honestly, I feel I'm more partisan than that lately since my volume of sh**tposting increased, but I like making lists in Individual Politics, I discuss foreign policy quite a lot and I dicuss the Democratic Primary in a way that isn't exactly partisan because it both criticizes and praises candidates, so it inflated the neutral numbers.

[free my dawg]

Last 5 pages (excluding low-effort content like Atlasia ballots and the listening thread):

68% left-wing
30% neutral
2% right-wing

[John Dule]

What I've got so far:



You'll notice I did a few other users as well. Badger's results were... unsurprising. With Lyndon, his "right-wing" posts were all just Bernie-bashing.

[lfromnj]

What's yellowhammers most recent left wing post? Also thanks for doing me. Tough to go through atlasia.

[Kingpoleon]

Feel free to try me!

(I don’t know how this will go)

[RI]

I went back through my last eight pages of posts and picked out only the substantive ones (i.e. not just entering polls or responding to data requests). Using a pretty broad definition of partisanship (including ideological statements not discussing people or parties), I get 89 neutral, 40 right-wing, and 9 left-wing. That's 36% "partisan" posts of which 82% were "right-wing." If you don't include ideology-only posts, the number jumps to 108 neutral of 138.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

How do you count posts like this one?

Richard Falk is a hero.

No he isn't, but he's also not even slightly relevant to whether the US government recognizes the Armenian Genocide or not. Keep your eyes on the ball, Fuzzy Bear.

The main point of the post is to vindicate a Democratic-led initiative in the House over against the Trump administration and its hardest core of Congressional handmaidens, but it also contains a pot shot at the anti-Zionist crowd. Personally, I'm going to count it as left-leaning overall.

Left: 23
Right: 4
Nonpartisan: 98

Many of the nonpartisan posts are still political, in the sense of being about politics or even defending or attacking specific political figures, just not on ideological grounds. For example, I'm counting this post as nonpartisan:

It'd be easier to list youngish, charismatic American politicians who didn't turn out to be some combination of reckless, oversexed, and stupid. That's why I'm not clamoring for Hill's head over this.

I'm also counting my sparring with IceSpear and Dingo Joe on the subject of rural America as non-ideological in character, although they might consider it right-wing, in which case my count of right-wing posts rises to 7.

Of my four right-wing posts, one is attacking JacobinAmerican from the right in the Armenian Genocide thread (in which I also attacked Fuzzy Bear from the left multiple times), and the rest are all about either religion or the British Labour Party or both.

[lfromnj]

It would be interesting to do a few more people and do a FF HP poll on them. Then it would be nice to see the correlation between how left and right wing you are and how partisan you are to your FF percentage.

[Gracile]

This seems like an interesting concept, though I'm having a hard time pinning down what exactly is a "left-wing" or "right-wing" post - and much of my posts are based on predictions that tend to be pretty neutral.

[John Dule]

What's yellowhammers most recent left wing post? Also thanks for doing me. Tough to go through atlasia.

YH made a post or two complimenting a Democrat, if I recall. You might say that's not necessarily "left-wing," but the X-axis score is mostly used to denote how bipartisan a person can be in criticizing their own side and conceding points to the other side.

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

Past 100 posts:

26 Left
72 Apolitical
3 Right

idk why this doesn't add up to 100 but w/e

so overall not really political (most of these posts were from my proportional results thread or timelines like Gravelanche which I counted as apolitical, since it's not really serious) but when I am it's very left-wing.

[John Dule]

Updated chart:



A few things of note:

1) For those of you asking how to score certain posts... it's hard to say. You'd be the best judge of what your intent was, so I'd leave that up to you. Some of this is hard to score-- for instance, Lyndon spends a lot of time crapping on Tulsi Gabbard, but he's attacking her from a left-wing perspective, so how should I count that? I ultimately decided to count it as "right-wing" even though it isn't technically, because it shows that he's willing to go after people on "his side."

2) Kingpoleon is now rated as the least extreme person on this site, and Nathan is the least partisan overall.

3) A cluster is forming in the upper left hand corner, with three of the most obscenely obnoxious posters on the site all grouped together (as I've indicated). My suspicion is that if/when I add GeneralMacArthur's scores, he'll be within about 5% of those guys.

[Progressive Pessimist]

This is what I came up with. There was some subjectivity with what each post could be categorized with, of course:

Left: 57
Neutral: 57
Right: 2

It doesn't seem right to me, but it's what I thought made the most sense for my last five pages.

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

Past 100 posts:

26 Left
72 Apolitical
3 Right

idk why this doesn't add up to 100 but w/e

so overall not really political (most of these posts were from my proportional results thread or timelines like Gravelanche which I counted as apolitical, since it's not really serious) but when I am it's very left-wing.

If we want to categorize my anti-Gabbard stuff as right-wing (even if it's attacking from a left-wing perspective) then it's like this:
22 Left
72 Apolitical
7 Right

[John Dule]

Past 100 posts:

26 Left
72 Apolitical
3 Right

idk why this doesn't add up to 100 but w/e

so overall not really political (most of these posts were from my proportional results thread or timelines like Gravelanche which I counted as apolitical, since it's not really serious) but when I am it's very left-wing.

If we want to categorize my anti-Gabbard stuff as right-wing (even if it's attacking from a left-wing perspective) then it's like this:
22 Left
72 Apolitical
7 Right

Eh, I suppose you could quantify it either way. Maybe I'll write up a more cohesive operationalization for this if a lot of people really want to participate. The good thing is that we can collect a lot of data points from every user, so even if a few comments are hard to quantify, the general trend for each user will be pretty visible.

[Kingpoleon]

Updated chart:



A few things of note:

1) For those of you asking how to score certain posts... it's hard to say. You'd be the best judge of what your intent was, so I'd leave that up to you. Some of this is hard to score-- for instance, Lyndon spends a lot of time crapping on Tulsi Gabbard, but he's attacking her from a left-wing perspective, so how should I count that? I ultimately decided to count it as "right-wing" even though it isn't technically, because it shows that he's willing to go after people on "his side."

2) Kingpoleon is now rated as the least extreme person on this site, and Nathan is the least partisan overall.

3) A cluster is forming in the upper left hand corner, with three of the most obscenely obnoxious posters on the site all grouped together (as I've indicated). My suspicion is that if/when I add GeneralMacArthur's scores, he'll be within about 5% of those guys.

I have to say, I thought a random selection of my posts would tilt one way or the other more. But yes, I’m the only self-identified centrist with as many posts as I have. In fact, I think I’m probably the only very active centrist poster excluding bronz (the troll).

[John Dule]

I have to say, I thought a random selection of my posts would tilt one way or the other more. But yes, I’m the only self-identified centrist with as many posts as I have. In fact, I think I’m probably the only very active centrist poster excluding bronz (the troll).

Some of this is very unscientific, but the fact that we're basically getting the results we expect indicates to me that we're on to something.