Help Needed - Average MGoUser Activity

Submitted by beenplumb on

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!

M-Wolverine

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.

Vivz

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.

 

JHendo

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

AZBlue

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.)

Hank Hill

February 24th, 2012 at 5:05 PM ^

I am in the same boat. I had an old account in the New Math days, made one post with that account, got ripped to shreds, and ran away with my tail tucked between my legs. I have since grown up and only jump in on pos-bangs, what are you drinking threads, and some of the OT stuff. I did want to create a new post about Jim Harbaugh's recent comments while being a ball boy at the Indiana basketball game last week.
I did not see anything on the forums in regards to it. http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaab-the-dagger-college-basketball-blog/…. I just don't have the required minimum points to start a new thread.

Plus the girlfriend asked one day what I spend so much time looking at on "The Blog". When I told her I read all the front page entries and the diaries and spend a lot of time reading the forums and laughing and/or getting angry. When she asked what some of the comments I posted on the forum were, I told her that I didn't comment. She was very upset that I spent hours reading these things every day and never responding to anything. I heeded her advice and have started to become a more active member of the MGoCommunity. I was however told just recently that my user name and Avatar detract from what I actually say because everyone hears Hank Hill's voice narrating what I am saying.

I do admit that I am an addict and have a serious problem. I check the blog constantly.

Lionsfan

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

This is Michigan

February 24th, 2012 at 12:52 PM ^

I'm going to need to sign an IRB approved consent form before I agree to participate.



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.

Pasadena_Blue

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.

beenplumb

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.

DeuceInTheDeuce

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.