A Snapshot Of The MGoMiddleClass

INTRODUCTION:

After some comments in a previous diary, I decided to do another brief snapshot of point data, this time focusing on the MGoMiddleClass.

Granted, karma means much more than points on MGoBlog these days, but nonetheless I have found these little dives to be entertaining if nothing else, and hopefully the blog has as well.

METHOD:

In a nutshell, I took the next 450 users after the so-called “Top 300” and pasted all their points data into Excel and then ran a few descriptive statistics as I had for everything else. The data was collected at approximately 2:30 PM on August 13^th, so it is reasonably current.

DATA:

The table below shows the results –

DISCUSSION:

I never thought about looking at the point spread by page for the “Top 300” or the Bolivia group because it would not have been particularly intriguing, for on one end, there are nearly 48,000 points separating Brian from the bottom of the “Top 300”, and about a billion points separating the worst of Bolivia from most others with negative point totals. This group was a little different.

From the top to the bottom of this sample group, there is only an 1,192 point spread, and indeed, if you note in the table, the average difference between the top and bottom users listed on a given page is only 77 points, with an average separation between users of 3 points. In other words, this is a far more competitive group when it comes to relative position than the “Top 300”, as a mere few posts per day can potentially move a user a couple spaces each day.

I also looked at Z-scores, and I would say that this is a fairly tight distribution compared to any other group of users, skewed towards those with larger totals, of course, but not Brian’s Z-score in the “Top 300” group, which sits in the 7 to 8 range even in the other group.

CONCLUSION:

Again, the points themselves do not mean much, but it is an interesting window into just how much content and posting and/or thread material is generated by this site and who generates it.  It is also a small window into the history of the site in a way, showing how different tiers of users (which I admittedly arbitrarily established) have been affected by the changes here over time. The “Top 300” distribution, for example, is comprised mainly of site veterans, content contributors and mods who benefitted greatly from a time when points did matter. This group here is mainly newer users and veterans who do not post as frequently, and they fall into a far tighter group than any other on MGoBlog. Indeed, with an average of 1,394 points and a median of 1,318, this is not a terribly skewed distribution.

OTHER NOTES:

I am considering ways, without having direct access to tables, of doing an actual dive into board karma, so that might be in the future.