‘Nacle Numbers: The Commenters [updated]

96 comments

1. HA! At least I’m not the MOST verbose person in the ‘nacle.

   This was a hoot. Thanks again for your fun and interesting stats work.

2. I think I’ll post as Brigham Young, Jr. from now on.

   Is it young Brigham, son of Brigham, or an amaIgam of Brigham and Joseph Jr., or all these and more?! I can’t describe how happy this makes me.

   ~

3. I should add that I could be in worse company re: verbosity. 🙂

   If you are taking votes for more stats, mine would be to do monthly averages for commenters. I think it would be interesting to see if and when people go through spurts.

4. Heh, my wife (who is in the other room drying her hair and doing her morning blogging) called me over to share her incredulous surprise at my commenting. Guess I should comment less frequently and all. 😛

5. Ziff, that’s awesome!

   Sigh… I need to get out more…

6. All hail to Ray, King Komment!

   Since commenters are so important to all the blogs, there ought to be some sort of Niblet category based on the community-building of all this — commenting on most blogs, or most comments on blog not one’s own, or something.

7. Wow, Ziff, this is amazing. Where would be be without computers and the Internet?

   FYI, I’ll claim at least one of the comments attrributed to BRM (I originally commented as GBH, but one of the spoilsports who police comments at BCC changed it), as well as the comments by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Shoeless Joe.

   The other thing this reinforces for me is that what we call the bloggernacle really is pretty small. Most of the interaction takes place among

8. Y’know, Ziff, I am utterly mystified that your neural pathways stimulate enough endorphins to apparently enjoy such statistical endeavors, not to mention the stamina to perform them (I’m waayyyy too ADD).

   Amazing. Great job!

9. Looks like the editor understood my use of the less than sign as an HTML tag and dumped the rest of my comment.

   I meant to say the 98% of the interaction in the bloggernacle takes place among a few hundred people. Small potatoes, really.

10. Makes you wonder if the idea of a vocal minority having disproportionate leverage applies doubly here.

11. Small potatoes, really.

    I prefer to think of us as members of the vanguard, Mark.

    I wonder how many “lurkers” there are. I’ve heard they are the silent majority of the bloggernacle.

12. Wow! Just wow. It’s funny to see everyone listed like that.

13. They *must* be, ECS, given how many thousand visitors we have every day and how few comments are left. Even if they all signed themselves “anonymous” I wish they would drop a word to let us know they have been there.

14. Right on.

15. Oh good grief, I’m embarrassed that my name appears on any of these lists. It’s a clear indication that I should be studying more and blogging less. (What else is new….)

    But thanks, as always, for all the wonderfully detailed analysis, Ziff!

16. Lawyers – hands-down.

17. I’m with ECS. There are tons of lurkers, all silently reading.

    If I remember correctly, Slashdot, a geek discussion site, said at one point that about 5% of readers leave comments.

    Commenters are the tip of the iceberg.

18. Wow, Ziff, thanks for doing all these statistics. I’ve really enjoyed these posts. I had no idea that I made so many comments. I guess I’m not really a lurker anymore.

19. GST: Word.

20. Next study: number of comments/posts by occupation.

21. The Gini thing is really interesting. It confirms to me that I’ve become a bit of a slacker when it comes to commenting on other blogs, even though I read them regularly. (Actually, I have the same problem with writing comments as with writing posts–I start a lot that I never finish! But looking at these numbers, I’m thinking that maybe I just need to aim for shorter comments. 🙂 )

    Like Mark, I’m struck by how much of the conversation in the bloggernacle is between a group of people about the size of a ward. Though it’s quite the ward, what with Father Abraham, King Benjamin, and Bruce R. McConkie all dropping by.

22. Impressive as hell, as usual, Ziff. And just as fun. Thanks so much for this series.

23. I’ve really loved this series of posts. Can we expect yearly updates?

24. Thanks for all your kind comments. Idahospud, you’ll be happy to know that most everyone I know–especially my wife–shares your opinion. I must have something oddly wired in my head, though, because I love looking at data. I love to generate a frequency table and guess who’s going to be the biggest commenter at FMH, or whose comments are going to be the longest on average, and then check it against the results.

    jjohnson, I would love to do yearly updates. I would particularly like to increase my blog sample from 11 to something like ten times that many, given how many interesting Mormon blogs there are out there. I just don’t know if I’ll have the time, though.

    Lynnette, I agree that the Gini coefficients are fascinating. As you can see, you’re certainly not alone in mostly commenting at your own blog. Isn’t that an issue that was raised at the Niblets in the past few years–lamented as one of the worst things in the ‘nacle is that everyone just comments at their own blog?

    m&m, speaking of Gini coefficients, I think that’s what really distinguishes you from most of the other top commenters. Most write at a blog or two or three, but you really comment quite regularly at a whole bunch of blogs (including I’m sure more than were even in my sample.)

    Ronan, great idea! Now I just need to get everyone to tell me their occupation. Seth, I’m sure you’re right, that y’all lawyers have the most to say.

    ECS, Ardis, and a random John, I assume you must be right about the ratio of lurkers to commenters. It would be interesting to know what it is. As I’m sure I’ve said before, and as you can see from my sorry comment numbers in the table, I pretty much only comment here at ZD although I read quite a few other blogs quite regularly. So it’s not just dedicated lurkers who bump the traffic numbers up, it’s we lazy bloggers who comment elsewhere but don’t have the energy to comment everywhere we go.

    Mark, thanks for revealing the secret of some of the funny commenter names. For my part, I’ll admit to being Leonard McCoy and the GOP police. It is interesting to see how few people, really, make most of the comments. I wonder how much this would change if I could increase my sample size to look at a bunch more blogs. Certainly there are lots of blogs that largely share commenters, but each blog probably has at least some commenters who are unique to that blog, that is, who pretty much only comment at that one blog.

    Dan, not at all. I think this is just a signal that you need to comment more! After all, in the neverending war of words between you and DKL, you have the lead, but only just barely. 😉 He could overtake you with just a few well-placed wordy comments.

25. So where is Ray? I can hardly believe he hasn’t shown up to take his bow!

26. I don’t think he reads ZD much. He’s always around at T&S though, isn’t he? Perhaps you all could point it out to him.

27. m&m, speaking of Gini coefficients, I think that’s what really distinguishes you from most of the other top commenters. Most write at a blog or two or three, but you really comment quite regularly at a whole bunch of blogs (including I’m sure more than were even in my sample.)

    Is that statistical evidence that I need to get a life more than anyone else? 🙂

28. Or maybe it’s just evidence of the breadth in my life? Ha.

    Or that I’m really good as using aggregators.

29. Not at all, m&m. After all, if people who write lots of comments need to get a life, then people who gather data and make big charts about how many comments those people write are the ones who really need to get a life. 🙂

30. m&m, I think it means that you are a good citizen of the bloggernacle.

    One of the disheartening things that these tables point out is that I comment more than I should. So many other people say so much more, with a lot fewer comments.

31. Okay, I put a message addressed to Ray on our “Notes from All Over” — having him find this that way would be more fun than writing to him directly.

32. This is wicked cool, even if just to see the smart-assed comments and armchair theology quanitified. And did I really comment 10 times at FMH? Weird.

    And isn’t Curtis DeGraw at 123 actually Ray as well?

33. I’m only leaving this comment because I’m trying to make next years list. I’ve got like 7 comments already in 2008!

34. Ziff, if you do decide to do this again, let us know if there is any way we could package the T&S data for you to make it easier for you to do the numbers.

    I thought it was really interesting to see how small a number of regular commenters there are. At T&S we get somewhere over 2000 “visits” on a given day. Some of those are repeats etc etc., but the 5% number arJ cites from slashdot is probably not a bad guess, for T&S anyway.

35. My sins shouted from the rooftops.

36. Also, why did you choose to normalize the numbers for the gini coefficient? Not that its wrong, as it is still a meaningful number, I’m just curious why.

37. Norbert, thanks. You’re right. I was afraid that I would fail to combine names for people who comment under different names, but clearly that fear didn’t move me to actually get on the stick and get it right. I’m planning to update the post in a couple of days once (I hope) any other of my errors have been pointed out.

    Frank, thanks so much for the offer. I will definitely take you up on it if I’m able to do ‘Nacle Numbers for 2008.

    Adam, sins? Why not “hobbies”?

    Thanks, Ardis, good idea. Ray, when you get to reading this, congratulations on being the most talkative commenter of the year!

38. I tried to comment before as “Anonymous” but I guess my comment went into moderation. I’m going to have to ask my question as myself. Well, as one of myselves.

    Here’s the question for you professional bloggers; something that’s been bugging me for awhile…

    I’ve only been commenting on the blogs for about six months. I read them for awhile before ever blogging and still read a lot without commenting. That won’t change, even to make a name for myself in the blogging world. 🙂 ) (I’ve only just learned how to use the blog aggregators, after all.)

    I started out with a name, rather arbitrary, (“East Coast”). Then my husband “outed” me to my in-laws. I never get snippy on Times & Seasons but to reserve the right to be snippity or talk about my in-laws elsewhere and to protect my intellectual privacy, I chose another name to comment on the other blogs. (That was also an arbitrary name and chosen because I had just been looking up how fast aspirin decomposes in a liquid.) Now it’s getting a little ridiculous to use the two names.

    So: how do I aggregate my pseudonyms?

    Thanks all and congrats to Ray (or condolences to your wife or something like that).

39. Good question, Frank. I thought it would be more meaningful in proportions because the total number of comments across the different blogs varies so dramatically. So writing a particular number of comments at a high traffic blog can mean something quite different from writing the same number at a low traffic blog. Take your 323 comments at T&S, for example. You’re clearly a frequent participant, but you’re nowhere near being the most talkative, not with Adam’s 1479 sins shouted from the rooftops. But if you had written 323 comments here at ZD, you would have been by far the most prolific commenter, clearly dominating the discussion.

    So I normalized the comment numbers to try to handle that difference in meaning. I figured that contributing the same percentage of a blog’s comments across blogs would constitute a better standard for spreading one’s comments equally than contributing the same number across blogs.

40. One of the disheartening things that these tables point out is that I comment more than I should. So many other people say so much more, with a lot fewer comments.

    I don’t believe that for a second. 😛

41. Researcher, unfortunately, I don’t know that it’s possible to link up your pseudonyms.

    The problem is this: Each blog has a database that has all the information about all its posts and comments, including who wrote them. For posts and any comments written by bloggers at that blog while they were logged in, the database doesn’t actually have their name, but instead a pointer to their account. This means that it’s easy to go back and change the name associated with all those posts and comments, simply by changing the name on the account. The pointers in the database would all still point to the same account; they would just retrieve a different name from it. So for example if I changed my name to “Biff”, all my posts would automatically be changed to say they were written by Biff.

    Unfortunately, for comments written by people who aren’t logged in at the blog (basically everyone who’s not a blogger there), the blog’s database doesn’t save a pointer to anything. It just saves the literal text string (“Researcher” or “East Coast”) that you entered in the comment form. Since those text strings aren’t linked to anything, there’s not an easy way to go back and change them. The only way I can think of would be to ask bloggers at the individual blogs to go back and change your comment names manually in their databases, which would be a pain because they would have to find and change every instance, every comment, separately.

    This issue is further complicated by the fact that most blogs will set a cookie on your computer so that if you go and comment once under the name “East Coast”, if you go back again, the comment form will already be prefilled with your name. But this connection between your comments is illusory; it doesn’t represent anything in the blog’s database that can be changed easily.

    But I could be wrong. Anyone who knows more about this stuff please feel free to correct me.

42. One of the disheartening things that these tables point out is that I comment more than I should. So many other people say so much more, with a lot fewer comments.

    I don’t believe that for a second. 😛

    Me either, Mark. Don’t change a thing. We like your comments just the way they are.

43. Don’t listen to the girls, Mark. (They’re just girls, after all.) And besides, man, you really do need to put a sock in it. 1300 comments? Sheesh. Some people have no life.

    Remember, “having a life” is defined as making 843 or fewer comments per year.

44. Researcher: “how do I aggregate my pseudonyms?”

    You just did. Everybody knows Researcher!

45. Well, thanks, Steve, that makes me feel better. Just a few minutes ago I was bemoaning the fact that after having lived in our current location for almost four years I could go to a middle school concert last night and not know a single soul (besides my kids). Someone… somewhere… knows who I am. Or at least my pseudonym.

    And thanks, Ziff, I don’t need my comments linked up or counted or anything, I just wanted to ensure that I was acting in an intellectually honest way and this was the first chance to ask anyone.

    Still waiting with baited breath for Ray to show up…

46. Wow, Zifff. Way to go!
    I think I remember asking about this stuff, but I had no idea that you had access to this info.
    I’m surprised that my name is on the lists, too. Mostly that I have one really long comment out there. (no idea on what blog or thread, though). We should verify for the longest thread people (myself included) that the comments were original words, and not huge blocks of copied/pasted text.
    As I recall, I tried to take a break from blogging last year (Q1) so my numbers will artificially deflated. And, this year I’ve started up at Exponent, so I’m sure I’ll have way more next year. (but, like Eve said, maybe that’s an indication that I should be doing more things, elsewhere. Like reading a book or playing with my children)
    sigh.
    Good work, Ziff.

47. Fine, Ardis, but if you add my comments under my T&S author name (Curtis DeGraw – yep, that’s me) . . . then add the comments on Mormon Momma and Mormon Matters . . .

    I’ve never been accused of being shy or concise.

48. Didn’t read #32 – and it gave me an excuse to add another comment. Thanks, Norbert!

49. Ziff, you’re welcome. *tongue in cheek* I think this is three in a row. Cool! 🙂

50. I’m done now. Just thought 4 would be appropriate.

51. Well, it’s about darned time, Ray! You should read a lot of these comments as our lifting you up on our shoulders and carrying you around the ‘nacle amidst cheers.

    It’s painful to put hours and hours into researching and writing a post, and have it collect five or six comments (I should know). We need Ray, and a hundred more variations of him.

52. Ardis, it’s been instructive to me to read your perspective on T&S posts and comments. Like most of us (I suspect) I read a lot more than I comment on. But I confess I’m often hesitant to comment at T&S in particular. It seems like such a big blog with so many people already commenting and so many lawyers (!) that I feel more self-conscious (if I’m going to say anything I’d better think it through and through and THROUGH!) whereas here at ZD my siblings already know I’m basically a goofball and put up with me anyway, so I feel more comfortable just dashing off whatever comes out of my smart mouth.

53. After all, if people who write lots of comments need to get a life, then people who gather data and make big charts about how many comments those people write are the ones who really need to get a life.

    Touché. 🙂

54. The pathology that draws lawyers to blog is truly fascinating. Didn’t someone write a post about that once?

    Eve, one of the reasons I love Z’s Daughters is that it’s completely lawyer-free. (except for the pesky commenters). That, and you’re all fabulously brilliant and excellent writers to boot.

55. Wow, I’m #13 in standard deviation — not the first time I’ve been listed as a standard deviate.

56. Awesome as usual Ziff. I was worried that the commenter edition of the series would be boring compared to the previous editions, but it wasn’t at all. Very fascinating results, especially the gini coefficient.

57. ECS, we LOVE our pesky lawyer commenters :)–especially when you make comments like that one!

    Given the number of lawyers who do amateur theology on the side, Lynnette our theologian once facetiously entertained the idea of starting an amateur law blog. I think it’s a fabulous idea.

58. Yup, I think there’s a lot of us lurkers out there. What great fun it is to read and think and then….almost get up the courage to add something!

59. Ima, 1 down, just 2680 to go! (If you want to beat Ray for 2008, that is, which I assume is all of our cherished goal….)

60. Eve, I think it’s a great goal for the year.

61. I’m going to study Ray’s techniques.

62. Over time I might be able to emulate the master of comments.

63. I’m sort of amazed I’m up there as high as I am — I think that’s me; there’s a few people posting with “Sarah” but no URL that are not me.

    I’m also extremely pleased to see that I posted at least once on every blog in your sample. I was looking, and didn’t see many others with something in every column (myself, Rusty, Naismith… now I’ll be late to work, so I’ll stop here.)

64. Oh, and I’m pretty sure that not all of the Mormon Mommy Wars ones are me — I think I’ve posted maybe 25-30 comments there… unless I’m just forgetting a REALLY large number of comments. I mean, yeah, I’ve posted more at Times & Seasons than at M* (I contributed something like twenty comments on the “clean up the sidebar” thread alone) but I don’t think I’ve posted more at MMW than anyplace else.

65. Kiskilili (40) Eve (42),

    Thank you. That’s awfully nice of you to say.

    But aren’t you impressed by many of the people who apparently only comment 100-200 times per year? As I looked down that list of names, I saw many who are consistently enlightening and insightful, and who I have come to think of as friends. The realization that I say so much less in ten times as many words makes me think that I need to start being the traditionally masculine strong, silent type. After all, I do not want to open myself to a charge of gender confusion.

    Kaimi (43),

    I’m thinking of a word that starts with “d” and ends with “ammit!!!” That’s what I feel like saying when I realize that at least half of those comments were made in haste and are poorly thought through, or which express views which I may no longer hold. The good thing about blogging is that it feels like a conversation among friends, where you can backtrack, correct yourself, or restate something in a better way. The downside is that our idiocy is now digitally preserved forever, I guess, for the entire world to see. Honestly, when I think back on some of the exchanges I’ve had with people in blogland, it is so mortifyingly embarrassing that I feel like crawling into a hole somewhere. Maybe the only option for me is to continue to post under the blogonym of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Then they might let me do a guest post here about the wonderful specialness of the ewig-weibliche.

66. LOL, Eve. But you shouldn’t take for granted that because someone passed the bar exam and practices law for a living, they aren’t amateurs. 🙂

67. Eve, T&S bloggers have two or three degrees each, and sometimes when I look at Nate’s posts I amuse myself by counting the number of words I don’t recognize; when I read Jonathan’s, I marvel that I do know all the words yet still can’t understand the sentences. How do you think I feel writing for T&S as a dropout without any degree to my credit? I’m so incredibly grateful for even a two-word comment that proves somebody reads a post, even if there isn’t anything more to say than that!

68. This may be the geekiest thing I’ve ever read on the Internet.

    Good job!

69. #65 – (blush) Why, Thank You!

70. Susan M, why thank you! As an avowed geek, I take that to be high praise.

    Ardis, I’m glad to hear that you feel intimidated by your co-bloggers too, just because it means I’m not alone. But I have to count you among the intimidating crowd too. I love that with the flick of a wrist (well, I’m sure it takes more effort than that) you can place any current discussion of some church practice in its full historical context.

    Mark, I love that you write so many comments, particularly since, along with Kaimi, I think you are one of the most consistently funny commenters in the bloggernacle. And I also agree with Ardis–it’s nice that you write lots of comments just so that fewer posts languish commentless.

    ECS, I’m glad that we’re still able to attract you all wonderful lawyer commenters even if we aren’t members of the cult, er, club.

    Sarah, sorry I mixed your comments up with another Sarah (or more than one?) Thanks for pointing it out. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to disentangle you in my data since I don’t have the URL link data behind the names in my data. Perhaps I’ll have to figure out a way to include that next time.

    Ima, thanks for de-lurking to say hi!

    Jacob, I’m glad you enjoyed this. Frankly, I thought this would probably be the most boring post of the lot too, so I’m glad you found the Gini coefficients interesting. You can see, though, that I didn’t have the energy to really delve very deeply into the data. I just fell back on my favorite habit of making a big chart.

    Ray, I’m glad you stopped by to take your bow. Sorry I got your data merged incompletely.

    Researcher, sorry I over-answered your question with an answer that wasn’t even getting at what you were asking. I’m glad Steve was able to allay your concern.

    Jessawhy, I went looking for your really long comment and found that my program erred in processing data for that post and I ended up assigning each comment’s length to the commenter before. Oops! I spot-checked a few other threads and it looks like this was an isolated problem. Sorry if I led you to overestimate your own long-windedness. 🙂 You may now feel free to doubt my data for yet another reason (in addition to all those listed in the post). I’ll try to get that thread’s processing corrected and straighten out the “longest comment” list.

    Norbert, sorry if I’ve mixed up your comments with someone else’s like I did with Sarah’s. Here are a couple of the comments from FMH that I thought were yours: this one on Rebecca’s “Observations in Vienna”, this one on fMhLisa’s “Paper or Plastic? Neither please” and this one on ECS’s “No Children are Illegitimate”. Of course I guess if they’re not, I don’t really have the energy to go back and check them all, but still it would be nice to know.

71. Honestly, when I think back on some of the exchanges I’ve had with people in blogland, it is so mortifyingly embarrassing that I feel like crawling into a hole somewhere.

    Mark, now you’ve made my day. And all this time I’ve thought I was the only one who felt this way! There are several exchanges I’ve been in that I now find so humiliating that I’m occasionally gripped by a strange, horrifying but irresistible compulsion to read them over in all their gory detail, just to ascertain that yes, my blithering idiocy is still there, preserved in amber for time and all technological eternity.

    Maybe the only option for me is to continue to post under the blogonym of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Then they might let me do a guest post here about the wonderful specialness of the ewig-weibliche.

    Oh, but you should submit that one to FMH. They tend to attract a much larger, more eccentric, and more combative readership. 😉 I predict you’ll go to 300 comments at least.

72. Ziff,
    It’s not a big deal, because the number of comments I’ve written is negligible, but Sam B. is a different person than Sam MB/smb.

    But overall, that probably wouldn’t throw your numbers off by more than 20 or 30.

73. Here’s something funny. The first two entries google returns for ewig-weibliche resolve to byu dot edu.

74. Adris, I agree with Ziff–degree or no degree, I think you’re definitely playing in your league over there at T&S. And I think I might be actually able to comment more intelligently on Nate’s law posts than on your history ones, which invariably remind me that I know almost nothing about Mormon history. (Yes, the Mormons. Founded by Joseph Smith in 1830, right?) So when you get deep into a dissection of Fawn Brodie or the Mormon Meadows Massacre, I’m always like, whoa, baby! How does she KNOW all that stuff?

    But you make a very good point that it’s nice to know someone’s reading, and you’ve inspired me to try to do that more often.

75. Sam B., thanks. I think I have you two separated properly–Sam MB/smb/Sam B (no period after “B”) has 929 comments– and you, with a period after “B” have 214. I appreciate you linking to your website with the comment forms to make the two of you easier to separate.

    Of course, if you sometimes comment under Sam B (without a period), then I’ve probably got the numbers wrong. I thought I had seen Sam MB use this name sometimes to comment on other blogs, and then link back to BCC.

    Anyway, if I’ve got this wrong, I’ll add this to my list of errors to try to correct.

76. No Eve, you aren’t the only one who embarrasses themselves on the internet.

    I did it at least three times in the last month.

    I can never run for major political office. Too much of a target-rich environment considering how much I’ve written online.

77. “I can never run for major political office. Too much of a target-rich environment considering how much I’ve written online.”

    See; there is a benefit to blogging.

78. add another short comment to the 2008 list.

    this was fun.

79. I’m so surprised that I had less than 100 comments last year. Though I’m much less likely to comment on the five biggest blogs, once the tally goes over 80 it is unlikely I have anything to say that wasn’t already said, and probably said better.

80. Johnna, sorry if I’ve made an error, which I guess has been established is entirely possible :). I show you with 34 comments as Johnna, plus 22 more if you also post as “Johnna Cornett.”

    I know what you feel about not having anything to add. I only begin to read lots of threads after they’re quite long, and I typically find several comments that I read and nod and think happily, “That’s what I would have said if I were more articulate!”

    mfranti, thanks. Good to see you here!

81. i stop by on occasion to lurk but i never have anything of value to add to the brilliant discussion.

    so i stick to what i know and hang out on fMh or MM.

    i feel safe there.

82. Must

83. keep

84. my

85. words

86. per

87. comment

88. count

89. down.

90. Someone’s gunning for a Niblet.

91. That’s too much information.

92. I think there’s only one person posting as Snow White. Apparently, she is surrounded by little people.

93. Fun post — thanks for doing all that work.

94. Ziff, I didn’t think you made an error. But thanks for revealing what my lower-than-100 number was, that is fun to know.

    And hey, maybe I will feel more free to comment in the future, knowing I’m less than half the comment monster I could be. Frex, today I wouldn’t normally post since the conversation wrapped up 18 days ago.

    Heck, today I wouldn’t be checking up on my favorite blogs, except for needing some more-fun-than-usual break from routine, since today’s routine is rerouted into being home with a sick kid.

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