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Kuciwalker
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of Schmooism
Feb 2001
time: 00:30
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There. That's a good thread title  and I'll explain what it's referring to in a minute. What I just did was, for several categories, sum up the total number of posts and total number of threads, and took the average posts/thread. I think this has a lot of significance regarding the character of a forum. First, here are my results:
Total threads: 87433
Total posts: 2090820
Total average: 23.91
OT threads: 18736
OT posts: 779997
OT average: 41.63
Civ3 threads: 27456
Civ3 posts: 509203
Civ3 average: 18.55
Demogame threads*: 9082
Demogame posts*: 215883
Demogame average: 23.77
Apolyton/Community threads: 3749
Apolyton/Community posts: 80792
Apolyton/Community average: 21.55
RoN threads: 1342
RoN posts: 12812
RoN average: 9.55
GalCiv threads: 362
GalCiv posts: 3878
GalCiv average: 10.71
MoO3 threads: 1401
MoO3 posts: 20812
MoO3 average: 14.86
Civ2 threads: 9670
Civ2 posts: 187199
Civ2 average: 19.36
SMAC threads: 6850
SMAC posts: 188321
SMAC average: 27.49
CtP2 threads: 4149
CtP2 posts: 51324
CtP2 average: 12.37
CtP threads: 2782
CtP posts: 82402
CtP average: 29.62
Alt. Civs threads: 1572
Alt. Civs posts: 28338
Alt. Civs average: 18.03
Now, what conclusions could I hope to draw from this?
First let us look at the stats for all of Poly. Average of 23.91 posts per thread, or slightly over one page per thread. There are two possible causes for this (at least that I can think of). First, people in general dislike going to two pages. Second, on average, the active interest of people in a thread is just enough to carry it for that long. I think it is a combination of the two.
Now, let us look at RoN. It has a measly 9.55 posts per thread. That's not even half a page. I think that with such a small and not-quite-disinterested demographic, there aren't enough people or interest to keep a thread going very long. People in the civ3 strat forum have HUGE threads discussing a specific strategy. RoN doesn't have enough interest or people to accumulate that many posts about one topic.
Compare this to the OT, with 41.63 posts per thread! Just over two pages. People in OT are used to longer threads, for one thing, but that's a chicken-and-egg problem. I think people in the OT are serious enough about what they're debating (a bit too serious, sometimes, but what else are mods for?  ) that they aren't discouraged until the third page pops up. And many aren't discouraged there, as evidenced by the 500-posts-and-it-dies rule.
There are anomalies. Notedly, SMAC and CtP. I've never really browsed those forums, but since they're small you'd think they'd be like RoN et al. SMAC's high posts per thread average could be due to the recent demogame, which could significantly counterbalance the rest of the forum. However, looking at the stats for the demogames, they come out at 23.77 posts per thread, very close to the overall average. It could be that back then the default threads per page was 25 back then, but look at the Civ2 forums. It's a mystery.
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CerberusIV
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People who find their way to the OT forum are simply more inclined to say something when they get here.
Also it isn't very difficult to get OT posters to rant on for several hundred posts about the US president of the time, terrorism, the Middle East, protectionism, ... etc. You can only generate so much discussion about whether the Gallic Swordsman in Civ3 PTW costs too many shields to build or similar topics in the game forums.
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DAVOUT
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AUERSTADT
Jun 2002
time: 05:30
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I am not sure that the spams increase the average number of posts. Lets take a recent example, the thread titled
Hamas talks out of its rump, world didnt expect any less.
This thread was deliberately attacked (and eventually killed) by a spamming commando including
SlowwHand
Skywalker
FrustratedPoet
Spiffor
Azazel
Bebro
Dom Pedro II
Together they wrote 14 posts
Three serious posters nevertheless were not discouraged and wrote a total of 3 posts
Opened at 15.02 by Vesayen, the thread was killed at 20.13 by Dom Pedro II with a grand total of 17 posts, which is significantly below average. I would therefore conclude that spamming does not explain the hight average number of post per thread observed on the OT forum.
NOTE analysing a successful spamming attack
The attack was obviously carefully planned and coordinated.
SlowwHand opened the operation with an elogious (and apparently innocent) comment on the use of the word rump.
Skywalker, in the role of the bad cop, states that it is the second thread on the same subject.
Then FrustratedPoet launch a lethal accusation : The commas in thread titles annoy millions.
He is immediately thumbed up by Spiffor.
Which causes Skywalker to lol
It is the moment chosen by Azazel to widely open the pre-decided field of discussion in expressing his interest tfor the punctuation : What is wrong with commas in thread titles ?
Bebro suggests a broad explanation : They are evil.
SlowwHand of course desagrees and offers a new path of discussion : There is nothing wrong with commas in thread titles. It is the lack of apostrophe, I find, disturbing.
At this point of his reading, a compassionate lurker would be sorry to learn that the disturbed behaviour of Slowwhand was due to the lack of apostrophe which till now he never considered as potentially harmful.
But Spiffor neglects harshly SlowwHand distress, and elaborates pompously on the proper way to make titles in general and thread titles in particular.
Slowwhand disagrees again with Spiffor who advocated for the use of *and* instead of commas, and opens another subject : semi-colons are most neglected; of that, I have no doubt.
About what, Spiffor quite ambiguously recommends : Don’t mess with semi-colons.
Not surprisingly, SlowwHand answers : No, I like semi-colons. Semi-colons rock.
Spiffor then describes with verve his considerable use of semi-colons, aiming to successively demonstrate that he loves semi-colons more than SlowwHand does.
At this stage, the kill is elegantly made by Dom Pedro II giving semantic considerations on the word rump. This clearly answer the opening spam of SlowwHand, and shows the degree of perfection (and efficiency) reach by some spammers gangs.
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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:30
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You can't draw ANY conclusions from the number of posts per thread--
IN smax multiplayer we have lots of threads with over a hundred "turn passed" posts.
The relative high posts in OT have little to do with seriousness and more to do with the fact that OT is the place people come when they want to comment on SOMETHING . . . it is likely to have a larger number of people and there is more spam than I have seen in a lot of the other sub-areas
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27-08-2003 09:09
Smiley 
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