Most Active Commenters

hankfdh
March 25, 2008, 08:23 AM posted in General Discussion
I was doing some research on the distribution of comments per user and came across a few interesting stats:

  • There were 12887 comments by 1331 users over the last 3 months
  • The most active 20% of users contributed 87% of all comments (not quite in line with Pareto, 80/20 rule-compliant)

The top commenters?
(# posts - username)

586 - bazza
515 - auntie68
408 - amber
403 - RJBerki
391 - henning

368 - changye
341 - calkins
318 - xiaohu
278 - rich
232 - casie

217 - clay
211 - goulniky
192 - AuntySue
191 - tvan
189 - julesong

188 - john
165 - french
157 - sparechange
147 - jennyzhu
143 - wei1xiao4

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bazza
March 25, 2008, 09:05 AM

I need to get out more. hehe

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henning
March 26, 2008, 05:16 AM

However, weighting in the quality of the sources Bazza dug up, his contribution needs to adjusted upwards by a large factor. No matter how you approach it, he will be on the top of the list. And he has been consistently been up there since the dawn of CPod time.

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henning
March 25, 2008, 09:31 AM

I guess "the most active 20%" does only include users with at least one post? How does that number look if the complete user base is taken into account (even more meaningful: numbers restricted to paying users). Didn't goulnik post an "all-time" MUD analysis several months ago (even considering pre-V2 user-name changes?). casie - you are a phenomenon. A native Mandarin speaker being one of the most active users at a Mandarin learning site - for the mere fun (?) of helping out clumpsy foreigners with their helpless Mandarin attempts. That is almost an overdose of altruism. But whatever reason you do that for: Thanks a lot! :)

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John
March 25, 2008, 10:01 AM

I am humbled that I am only #16. The users make all the difference!

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henning
March 25, 2008, 10:07 AM

John, but if you add up Jenny's, Amber's, Clay's, and your posts you get a round 960 "CPod posts". And that is even more than Bazza has.

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rsmith91
March 25, 2008, 10:44 AM

Wow - 12887 comments in 3 months means about 140 a day. And I'm also impresed that 1331 users posted comments - it's great to see CPod creating such a huge community.

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goulnik
March 25, 2008, 10:50 AM

henning, I'm humbled to be there, don't recall posting any mud here ;-) though that's the kind of game I love to play. In fact, I have a comment parser on one of my mashup scripts, but I don't run it systematically (tends to timeout). Incidentally, I'm about to add some word analysis stuff to my recent character analysis post.

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billglover
March 25, 2008, 10:54 AM

I clearly have a lot more work to do if I am ever going to appear on one of these lists. It would be intersting to see how many silent (but active) users there are. For some reason I remained a silent user for quite some time before I started to comment on the site. Even now I don't comment as much as I should.

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henning
March 25, 2008, 10:54 AM

Arg. MAU, sorry! You can divide my number by 2, every second post is a correction.

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billglover
March 25, 2008, 11:00 AM

@Henning: Is that another vote for the ability to preview comments?

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cassielin
March 25, 2008, 09:09 AM

Wow, i am one of them! Thank you hankfdh for sharing this research. And i found that those guys are so familiar that i can see them everywhere on Chinesepod. Thank you guys for your interesting, useful, brilliant and innovative comments, i learned a lot from Chinesepod and you guys! I will keep on studying hard and cherish the rest of my college life(only one more week later, i will leave my college and start my internship time. ) I love you Chinesepod, I love chinese and English! I love you all the poddies!

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billglover
March 25, 2008, 12:14 PM

@henning: I almost wrote that, but then realised that there were potential downsides to allowing users to be able to make changes to their comments. Imagine what effect it would have on the "flow" of conversation if people were able to modify their comments. Bill: "I think Cpod is amazing." A: "I agree." B: "Me too." C: "I think everyone here agrees with Bill." Now if I was able to go back and modify my original comment to say the opposite, it would appear that A, B, and C were all in agreement with me. Probably an extreme example, but worth thinking about.

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goulnik
March 25, 2008, 12:37 PM

I hate to admit, but I had the same thoughts as billgloveruk, with some worry that the thread might get all mixed up. Not sure why this should be a problem, that feature is available in most forums and doesn't create havoc. So I'm with henning, with the additional request of displaying posts in reverse chronological order, so as not to scroll down looongs pages (at least the option to select sort order).

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pchenery
March 25, 2008, 12:50 PM

I'm one of those "silent" users, content to do more reading than posting. The user feedback, especially on the language related posts, really augments my learning. Thanks and keep those post coming !

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billglover
March 25, 2008, 12:51 PM

I think two things that mitigate (but in no way remove) the issue of mixing up the thread are threaded comments (not sure these would be a good idea here) and the ability to quote previous posts. This way the quote would remain intact even if the original entry was modified. The conversations on ChinesePod have a lot in comment with blogs rather than a forums. One user writes a post or article and others subsequently comment. I don't know of many blogs that allow you to correct or modify your previous comments. Please let me know if there are any as I'd be interested in seeing how they work. @goulniky: Sorting would be a great addition. I get round this by using an rss reader, but there are some strange bugs in the links in the rss feeds whereby you often can't identify who made the original post.

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rich
March 25, 2008, 01:06 PM

First, wow, I'm still on this list even though I've been kind of mute the last week or so, as I am struggling to get myself to write my two essay's for Chinese politics and Chinese economics class... eeek! Second, really is good to have Casie here, and to see her posting so much (looks like she is my rival on posts though, ha ha... gotta keep posting :P) Third, on comment editing, like it was said, many forms have this. What has to done is that the post itself with have a note at the bottom saying *Editted [time/date]*. Yet what would also be nice, even if edited, one could see the original post. I haven't been using many forums except this one, so I am not sure if that last one is an existing feature. It also should be that if you've posted, and within X minutes, and no one has followed up on your post, that the *Editted* tag wouldn't be needed, etc.

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RJ
March 25, 2008, 07:55 PM

I should talk less and study more. -RJ

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jimkahl
March 25, 2008, 10:01 PM

To all of you who are in the top 20 - a very big thank you from those of us who are more or less babies when it comes to Mandarin. I know I definitely appreciate the insights and words of wisdom that all of you provide. Please keep it up

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clockbean
March 25, 2008, 10:05 PM

Bazza is top of the heap for comments but on word count he probably is way down the list. Is he 'gaming' the system?!

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henning
March 25, 2008, 11:43 AM

A vote for comment editing, not just for comment preview.