Comments on the 6-Month Projections
I made the chart in the previous post by extrapolating member post counts 6 months into the future, based on current post counts (excluding posts that the forum system does not count) and post rates over the last 6 months. That's the primary purpose of this thread: to make these projections for fun and then see how they come out.
The results are only estimates because members change their posting rates over time, some speeding up, some slowing down. Sometimes new members appear who I hadn't realized were approaching the Top 50. Sometimes it's easy to spot them inching up the rankings every 6 months.
Changed members
Something unprecedented showed up in my results this time. Only one new member is projected to join the Top 50 and only one current Top 50 member is projected to fall out of the Top 50 in the next 6 months! There are usually at least a handful of each, but the list has turned very stable, so the primary changes from now to July are merely changes in rank.
The one member projected to join the Top 50:
-aggie- (#32)
The one member projected to fall out of the Top 50:
arn (currently #48)
Will
arn seek revenge on
-aggie- for this indignity? Nope. arn has never paid much attention to his post count.
Member closest to but not in the Top 50:
Eraserhead, missing the Top 50 by 99 posts (0.55 posts/day, or 1 post every 1.8 days)
Next closest:
arn -- by 224 posts (1.24 posts/day)
skunk -- by 247 posts (1.36 posts/day)
No other members were within 300 posts of the Top 50.
Notice that
Eraserhead and
skunk also just missed the current Top 50, another sign of the high stability of the list.
Changes at the top
In these projections,
mad jew and
mkrishnan retain the top 2 spots, while
Eidorian (projected #3) passes
Doctor Q (projected #4). Unless she
gets a new hobby,
jessica. leaps into the Top 10 at #5, passing
Mr. Anderson, who continues his slow descent, although he drops by only 1 slot -- last time it was 3 slots.
Abstract and
jsw swap their order, from #6 and #7 with
jsw ahead to #7 and #8 with
Abstract ahead.
jessica.'s arrival drops
Blue Velvet one slot to #9, while
bartelby holds his position at #10. That of course means that one member must have dropped out of the Top 10. It's
edesignuk, moving from #9 to #11.
Calling the race
Largest margin of victory:
jessica. (#5) over
Mr. Anderson (#6) by 3,427 posts, which is smaller than margins we've seen in past 6-month contests.
Next largest:
mkrishnan over Eidorian by 2,846 posts
mad jew over mkrishnan by 2,820 posts
jsw over Blue Velvet by 1,437 posts
No other margin is more than 1,000.
Note that
mkrishnan lost one race by almost the same amount that he won another. The average of the post counts of the member ahead of him (
mad jew) and the member behind him (
Eidorian) is 29,373 and
mkrishnan's post count is 29,386, only 13 posts over the average. In other words, he is almost exactly halfway between his neighbors.
Smallest margin of victory:
Lau over
Queso by only 2 posts!
Next smallest:
MacNut over jessica. by 14 posts
xUKHCx over leekohler by 15 posts
Interestingly, in the projections 6 months ago leekohler won a close race by the same amount: 15 posts.
Highest projected rise in rank:
r.j.s, up 21 slots from last place (#50) to the middle of the pack (#29)
Next highest:
iJohnHenry, up 14 slots, landing right after r.j.s at #30
DoFoT9, up 13 slots to #33
No other increases were in double digits.
Highest projected loss in rank (while still in the Top 50): a five-way tie!
CanadaRAM,
IJ Reilly,
Rower_CPU,
emw,
Applespider, each dropping 8 slots
Next highest:
dmw007 and vniow, each dropping 7 slots and barely staying in the Top 50 at #47 and #50
Five members, all in the Top 15, are projected to hold their current rank:
mad jew (#1)
mkrishnan (#2)
Abstract (#7)
bartelby (#10)
PlaceofDis (#14)
Excluded and inactive members
Banned members are excluded from my calculations. The "bot" accounts don't count either. Otherwise,
MacBytes would rank #21 with 15,836 posts by July.
The number of inactive members (those who aren't around or who mostly lurk) has risen to 13 out of the Top 50 spots (26%). The Top 50 members with less than 10 posts in the last 6 months are:
mad jew (#1)
Mr. Anderson (#6)
jsw (#8)
~Shard~ (#15)
wdlove (#19)
devilot (#21)
bousozoku (#28)
IJ Reilly (#39)
eyelikeart (#40)
Rower_CPU (#43)
emw (#44)
Applespider (#45)
dmw007 (#47)
Trivia
According to these projections, by July 4 there will have been 808,611 total posts by the Top 50 members, 56,189 more posts than those 50 members have today. That's less than in the preceding 6 months but similar to the number from January to July 2009. It appears that our top members post more from July to January than from January to July. Speculation about the reason is welcome!
The average Top 50 member will have 16,172 posts total, having made 1,124 posts in the 6 months between now and July. That's 6.2 posts/day, not the lowest we've seen, but lower than last time. Again, this could be related to which 6 months it covers.
For the first time, having 20,000 posts won't guarantee that you'll get into the Top 10. However, if
edesignuk makes exactly one less post in the next 6 months, that won't be true, since he would have a projected 19,999 posts!
It is projected to take 10,298 posts to make the Top 50. That is exactly the number it takes right now! The reason is that
Eraserhead, currently with 9,703 posts, has been averaging only about 2.7 posts per day, not quite enough to catch inactive member
vniow within 6 months. He'll make up only 496 of the 595-post gap.
As I predicted last time, having 10,000 posts will no longer be a guarantee for getting into the Top 50.
Eraserhead and
arn and
skunk are each expected to have more than 10,000 posts without making the list.
Useless Trivia
The member in slot 42 is by tradition declared the
Oracle Who Knows the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. For this list the honor goes to
leekohler.
Consecutive members with user names of the same length:
Eidorian and Doctor Q and jessica. (slots #3-4-5, length 8)
wdlove and yellow (slots #19-20, length 6)
CanadaRAM and IJ Reilly (slots #38-39, length 9)
leekohler and Rower_CPU (slots #42-43, length 9)
Queso and vniow (slots #49-50, length 5)
There are three pairs of consecutive members where the length of user name changes by 8, two of them going from 3 to 11:
jsw to Blue Velvet (increase of 8)
Mitthrawnuruodo to -aggie- (decrease of 8)
emw to Applespider (increase of 8)
Three members have user names whose length is divisible by their Top 50 slot number:
mad jew (length 7 divisible by slot 1)
Doctor Q (length 8 divisible by slot 4). Maybe Doctor Q planned it that way!
Mr. Anderson (length 12 divisible by slot 6)
Six members did the reverse trick:
devilot (slot 21 divisible by length 7)
iJohnHenry (slot 30 divisible by length 10)
Nermal (slot 36 divisble by length 6)
eyelikeart (slot 40 divisible by length 10)
Lau (slot 48 divisible by length 3)
vniow (slot 50 divisible by length 5)
None of the Top 50 members joined MacRumors on the 13th day of the month. That's ironclad proof that 13 is an unlucky number!
Actually, none of the Top 50 members joined on the 12th, 14th, 28th, 29th, 30th, or 31st of the month. Notice that, instead of a random distribution, those days are in two ranges (12-14 and 28-31). Isn't that spooky?
The most common join-days of the month for the Top 50 members are the 4th (
Blue Velvet,
~Shard~,
MacNut,
Chundles,
Queso) and the 19th (
Doctor Q,
jessica.,
sushi,
Sun Baked,
-aggie-).
Even More Useless Trivia
Member whose ratio of slot number to user name length is closest to pi:
wdlove (19/6 = 3.17), the same slot # and length that rdowns had last time
The only member of the Top 50 whose member number is a square:
MacNut, member number 3249, the square of 57.
There are only two other members with 2500 or more posts whose member number is a square. One is
mnkeybsness, member number 1764, the square of 42. A prize of 65536 brownie points goes to the first person to identify the other "square" forum member with over 2500 posts!
