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NEOGAF - A Data-Driven View

Grildon Tundy

Gold Member
Edit: The Gaming Discussion version can be found here: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/neogaf-a-data-driven-view-pt-2-gaming-discussion-section.1640785/
And the Communities one here: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/neogaf-a-data-driven-view-pt-3-communities-section.1640829/

Original Post Below:


My friend and I are working on a business venture that requires learning how to parse website data, and I thought: why not start with an interesting subject that doesn't have much existing research? NeoGAF! Note that this is only a view of Off-Topic for now. Hopefully Gaming will come in the future.

Stay tuned for a trip down memory lane where we'll look at the most popular threads by month since 2018.

But for now, let's start with some highlights:
  1. The average lifespan of an Off-Topic thread is 28 days. However, the median is drastically lower at 2 days.
    1. This means the majority of threads are short-lived compared to the ones that stick around and pull the average up
    2. If the thread makes it to one month, it's in the top 10% in terms of longevity
  2. An average thread gets 61 comments; the median gets 29. Most threads die before seeing Page 2 :messenger_loudly_crying::messenger_loudly_crying::messenger_loudly_crying:
  3. There are anywhere from ~35-50 views for every comment: Who are all these lurkers?!? Come on out--we want to talk to you!
More findings:
  1. There are around 215 new threads posted in Off-Topic each month, or about 2,500 per year
  2. 380 Users created an Off-Topic thread so far in 2022, at an average of 3.7 threads apiece
GAF is a forum, so let's check out who's generating the most discussion.

Congratulations to ForAcademicPurposes ForAcademicPurposes : Out of 380 people, you're 2022's most "engaging" OP-to-date with 582 comments per thread on average! Special shoutout to the Top 10, too: OmegaSupreme OmegaSupreme , Amiga Amiga , Bartski Bartski , Represent. Represent. , S Star-Lord , ArtHands ArtHands , near near , K kikkis , & Draugoth Draugoth ! (NOTE: OP's had to have submitted at least 2 threads in 2022 to be included in order to remove outliers).

Mz4OwaS.png


The longest-running Off-Topic thread is: Stock-Age: Stocks, Options, and Dividends, oh my! Below you can see a list of other long-termers:

31xPGwn.png


Finally, let's take a look at the most popular threads by month since 2018. Many of these are were umbrella topics for discussions that are still going on today ("What, are you listening too?", "Anyone seen any good movies lately?"). But others are snapshots in time:

April 2019 - Game of Thrones Season 8 Discussion
October 2019 - My Fucking Nutjob Neighbor
January 2020 - Mask Efficacy OT Wuhan!! Got You All In Check

qD81fbq.png


That's all for now. Hoping to put something together for the Gaming section in the future.

EviLore EviLore , FYI, thought you might find some of this interesting.
 
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That's great! I know that for a while GAF was experiencing a lot of growth, but I haven't seen data regarding that lately. I was wondering recently if we've kind of hit a plateau when it comes to active users. I could be wrong, but it seems a bit slower to me lately.

This is all interesting data, though. Nice job!
 
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Amiga

Member
Movie/TV threads regularly get the most attention. Sports doesn't seem to get much traction for how popular it is in the mainstream.
politics is a minefield that cost many casualties so most are avoiding it or it would easily top the discussions, also tends to get ugly fast. the extreme passion it generates is why the biggest networks are based on politics.
 
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Grildon Tundy

Gold Member
That's great! I know that for a while GAF was experiencing a lot of growth, but I haven't seen data regarding that lately. I was wondering recently if we've kind of hit a plateau when it comes to active users. I could be wrong, but it seems a bit slower to me lately.

This is all interesting data, though. Nice job!
I don't have user numbers, though you could infer them from the number of new posts per month. There was a huge drop when Politics got nuked. Seems pretty steady since.
Episode 2 Good Job GIF by Star Wars

Is there a gif breakdown metric?
I am working on getting down to comment-level detail, but unfortunately I don't think I can see which posts have gifs or not. I wanted to do something like "reactions received per gif posted" but probably can't
Posting a lot doesn’t make you the most engaging it just means you are always posting. I am super engaging with my dumb jokes and minimal post
I hear you. Thats why I measured comments per post and not numbers of posts.
 
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jason10mm

Gold Member
Open the politics area back up for a 24 hour then deleted free for all and watch those metrics EXPLODE :p

Like most forums, there are the plank owners and lots of casuals. How can you monetize the forum if its just a few hundred regulars?

Evilore: "I've found a wayyyyy" :p

The solution is obvious on youtube....outrage sells!
 

Grildon Tundy

Gold Member
Here's another way of looking at engagement--

gw3QDL1.png


Edit: I don't think it's the case the threads end because of these last posts. The intention was to estimate posting frequency with this as a proxy since I don't have comment-level detail data yet.
 
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Chittagong

Gold Member
I want to, and the data is grabbable, but the problem is I don't know how to automate going through each user like you can for thread info.

Edit: Actually, think I just figured it out. More to come.

The challenge here is that reactions are a fairly recent thing, so if you include someone who has been a member for a decade before reactions were available, their reaction ratio will be much worse than for someone who joined after reactions were introduced.
 

Doczu

Member
The challenge here is that reactions are a fairly recent thing, so if you include someone who has been a member for a decade before reactions were available, their reaction ratio will be much worse than for someone who joined after reactions were introduced.
So you're telling me to step up my game? Shit fam, say no more!

YOU GET A RECATION, YOU GET A REACTIO, YOU GET A REACTION. YOU WOULD GET TWO IF I COULD. REEEAAAAAACTIIIOOOONSSSSS!
So Excited Reaction GIF
 

Grildon Tundy

Gold Member
The challenge here is that reactions are a fairly recent thing, so if you include someone who has been a member for a decade before reactions were available, their reaction ratio will be much worse than for someone who joined after reactions were introduced.
Way ahead of you fam. Unfortunately I think the way to control for it is to cut out members who signed up prior to reactions being a thing. Unless evilore wants to give me access to the raw data lol
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
Way ahead of you fam. Unfortunately I think the way to control for it is to cut out members who signed up prior to reactions being a thing. Unless evilore wants to give me access to the raw data lol
How about determining post counts per member with a COUNTIF post date later than reaction date
 

Biff

Member
Any way to track overall forum engagement over time?

I don't know about you guys but the forum feels as alive as it ever has since, erm, "The Event".

I'm sure this is easily trackable via SimilarWeb or whatever. But just the feeling of the community, how quickly people reply to threads, the return of hilarious insta first-posts, great GIFs... I dunno - Neogaf feels like it's now finally "back".
 

Grildon Tundy

Gold Member
How about determining post counts per member with a COUNTIF post date later than reaction date
I don't have comment-level detail, unfortunately, just aggregate comment counts, reaction scores, account creation and most recent activity dates. So can't do that.

Doing what I can working with the data that's scrapable. I'd love to have full access to the server-side data. Thatd really open it up
 

Grildon Tundy

Gold Member
Any way to track overall forum engagement over time?

I don't know about you guys but the forum feels as alive as it ever has since, erm, "The Event".

I'm sure this is easily trackable via SimilarWeb or whatever. But just the feeling of the community, how quickly people reply to threads, the return of hilarious insta first-posts, great GIFs... I dunno - Neogaf feels like it's now finally "back".
Hey, Biff, see my reply above. The data i can grab is really limited. If I had a full server-side data set we could really do a deep dive
 
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