Help Needed - Average MGoUser Activity
Hey everyone,
I’m interested in collecting some data on average user activity here on MGoBlog. I found myself wondering about how often I post here and how much of my work day is wasted clicking the banner atop the page and looking for a new ‘Hello’ post.
I thought this might make for an interesting case study, so I’m asking for some help from my fellow MGo-addicts. Simply follow this link to my Google Doc spreadsheet, enter your Username, your MGoPoint total, and how many years you’ve been active (be as exact as possible using decimal places to account for months). Columns D through G will automatically populate based on the numbers you input into B and C.
After the data is collected I’m going to do some basic analysis and will return some averages, standard deviations, and probably a cool chart or two, along with some other insights depending on what I find.
This will be my first (debatably) major contribution to the site, so your help is greatly appreciated!
February 24th, 2012 at 12:32 PM ^
You can also click "Users by MGoPoints", although you would need to click on each user for the date they joined.
February 24th, 2012 at 12:37 PM ^
The division per year says it's trying to divide by 0 and not working.
February 24th, 2012 at 12:46 PM ^
You're averaging more points per "game" than MJ did; hope Brian is paying you equivilant money.
February 24th, 2012 at 1:25 PM ^
More Beveled Guilt is good....maybe I'll get a cut.
As others have said, the open thread and pos-bang era made things a bit different. And it used to be that you got points for posts you started in a thread....not sure if it was one or two...but if that was true, at least 1200+ of those came from one post. Don't think that happens anymore.
And general FYI, now that no one else was using the spreadsheet, I edited the by year category so the formula works on mine.
February 24th, 2012 at 12:38 PM ^
But people with accounts prior to the posbanging system dying will most likely have a much greater number of points, and a seemingly higher ratio of activity/time spent on mgoblog.
February 24th, 2012 at 12:44 PM ^
I know people from the early times that have made 1 or 2 funny/solid posts, that dont post anymore that are well into the hundreds, whereas I know exactly how many posts I've made.
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February 24th, 2012 at 12:46 PM ^
You're right. If anyone knows what date the system changed I'll factor that in somehow, or at least make not of it in the final analysis. It won't affect anyone who joined after that.
Also, Mods giving point bumps to people will skew the data as well.
February 24th, 2012 at 1:02 PM ^
Malwarefest 2011? Pos-bangs and everything changed after that debacle. It was roughly about 1/25/2011, as that was the night my wife and I found out our baby is a boy, and my Hard drive crashed, and I had to use my phone for everything. I am still waiting on the commerative T-shirt
February 24th, 2012 at 12:46 PM ^
than most, but I don't post all the time. I do however, check at least 10 times a day (probably more like 50), to see if there is anything new.
February 24th, 2012 at 12:58 PM ^
Agreed, I've been around for awhile (well before the end of the posbang era), and have very rarily contributed to the forums until the past few months (hence the low point total), but would say I average refreshing MGoBlog atleast 2-3 times an hour during the awake hours of the day
February 24th, 2012 at 1:16 PM ^
Look at almost every post - even most of the OT ones, refresh and average of 20x per day but do not post often.
If Mgo and the RR era have done anything for me personally - it was to revive my obsession with M football that had faded as time and distance from Ann Arbor grew. (FYI - This is NOT a positive in Mrs. AZBlue's eyes.)
February 24th, 2012 at 5:05 PM ^
February 24th, 2012 at 1:11 PM ^
I think there are a lot of us who fall into this category. I've been here since '05, and refresh about 25 times a day, but I post maybe every other week? (Or more likely, six posts in three days, then a two month lull.)
February 24th, 2012 at 1:17 PM ^
Yeah I would say a good majority of my points came during the great MGoPoint posbang parties we used to have. Ah, the good times.
February 24th, 2012 at 12:50 PM ^
My unscientfic observation: I know work gets in the way of my Mgoblog time frequently.
February 24th, 2012 at 2:24 PM ^
That's a posbang, right there.
February 24th, 2012 at 12:51 PM ^
I've been here for almost a year now, but my points have been inflated by the various open threads we've had for games. I'm sure there's quite a few like that too
February 24th, 2012 at 12:52 PM ^
Kidding aside.
There was a poster that performed research within the past year on the same concepts for a class. Maybe try searching for his post. He used the same type of methods that Brian used for his Leaders and Legends poll.
February 24th, 2012 at 1:09 PM ^
Same here. Been reading the blog for probably a year and a half or so, but really only post once and a while when something comes up that i feel i can actually add some decent commentary to. I do check the blog pretty much once an hour every day, on the hour, for the entire 12-15 hour work day.
February 24th, 2012 at 2:38 PM ^
I definitely check it way more than I should... I probably also post way more than I should - which isn't much anyways. Much like this post right here, I rarely have anything significant to add.
February 24th, 2012 at 1:20 PM ^
I have been on since sometime in 2009. Rarely post, read two or three times daily. So your data is poo.
February 24th, 2012 at 1:47 PM ^
avatar need to post much, much more frequently.
February 24th, 2012 at 1:26 PM ^
Thanks for your feedback everyone.
I think the direction I will take with this will be to calculate some type of 'contribution' metric. The word 'activity' is misleading for the reason that many of you pointed out - many people view the site but don't post.
Not sure how the posbang / point bumps will impact this yet.
February 24th, 2012 at 2:08 PM ^
It's going to be difficult to quantify individual Mgoblog "activity". If you are looking to gather posting frequency data, you could have users:
1. Head to their my MGoPoints activity page
2. Sort data by "operation"
3. Total up (or, more likely, estimate/calculate via beginning and ending page numbers) all the posts categorized as "insert"*
4. ???
5. Crash Server/Profit
As for quantifying other types of activity, yeah, no clue. Perhaps Brain could help you.
*My oldest MGoInsert date is 05/28/2010, so I'm guessing somewhere around there might need tol be "day zero" for your calculations.
February 24th, 2012 at 7:20 PM ^
Is there a spot to list all the points I've been docked for comments that went a little too far over the line?