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Top 50 Posters Extrapolated, July 2013

Ah, remembering the days when I coveted a spot anywhere in that list. I was determined, my time was absolutely worthless, and I had just enough knowledge to say something (probably) factual on a thread topic, but not actually provide anything resembling an answer to the question. It was the perfect diabolical plan for my inevitable rise to the top!

Then I hit 5,000 posts, and kinda realized that I was content at having reached that benchmark. Not the most prolific of posters, but also well known in the community. I decided to take a break from the forums for a while at this point; I had gotten all caught up in post-count fever, and my time spent reading and posting in topics had become more of a chore to reach a silly goal, rather than about the lively conversing and learning that I enjoy. Since my return, I've made just over 1000 posts. I can't remember specifically how long it took me to make my original 5k nor the subsequent 1k, but I can almost guarentee the 5k took much less time to acumulate than the next 1k.

To all those post-crazy Top 50'ers out there - I can only hope you do what you do because of a personal purpose, whether that be for fun, education or what have you. If this is indeed the case, I say let that posting passion burn as bright as you can make it. ;)
 
^^^^ Interesting post by SkyBell.

Overall I sense a race by many posters to get that next title, and even in this thread I sense that there's a sense of rewarding/recognizing quantity over... over... something.

Doctor Q said:
Now if I could just measure post quality, that would really be something to study!
Click to expand...

Ah, yes, that's the ticket!

While it may be difficult (but certainly not impossible; there are ways) to measure individual post qualities, I humbly suggest that figuring out overall poster qualities may be quite possible.

I had a post written up on some ideas, but it was lost prior to the weekend (timed out during composition) and I won't have time to re-create it until maybe tomorrow, and there may be some dependencies on what vBulletin can do, but if basic stats can be made to come from vBulletin then getting a handle on poster quality is do-able.
 
Nice chart like always Q. The only reason I didn't make it higher this year is due to extra projects at work. That really slowed my posting here down to a couple posts per week. :/
 
Doctor Q said:
Anyone can look at anyone's profile page to get their current post count. That's what I do. But moderator or not, you can't look at somebody's post count from a given date in the past, so I rely on the history of post counts I've recorded over the years. So anyone could have gathered the data, but only I was foolish enough to actually do it!
Click to expand...

I was wondering why you got rid of the all members page or whatever it was called. The one where you could see every member by post count rank or whatever you wanted to sort them as.
 
-aggie- said:
Well, I was hoping to get some response from Doctor Q on it, but since you serve in that capacity now.....;)
Click to expand...
The explanation I linked to was from Doctor Q. Perhaps you missed it, so I'll quote it here:
Doctor Q said:
When it's enabled it gets traffic from bots, and generating the sorted list takes more than an iota of processor time. So when it's disabled it's to improve overall site performance. I miss it too, but we can still find any user's post count from their user profile.
Click to expand...
MacNut said:
I miss the days when insults used to be masked by sarcasm.
Click to expand...
It wasn't offered as an insult, but a sincere question.
 
GGJstudios said:
The explanation I linked to was from Doctor Q. Perhaps you missed it, so I'll quote it here:


It wasn't offered as an insult, but a sincere question.
Click to expand...
So then the proper response is, "You know you asked this question before" and not have it sound condescending.
 
MacNut said:
So then the proper response is, "You know you asked this question before" and not have it sound condescending.
Click to expand...
Or, I could just not worry about the fact that some people look for any excuse to be offended, even when no offense is intended. I wasn't being condescending, but if someone wants to take it that way, it's not my problem.
 
GGJstudios said:
Or, I could just not worry about the fact that some people look for any excuse to be offended, even when no offense is intended. I wasn't being condescending, but if someone wants to take it that way, it's not my problem.
Click to expand...
Or just take the high road and not say anything. Of course that would get in the way of posting.;)
 
[MOD NOTE]
Lets stay on topic - this is about the top 50 Posters.
 
Post counting in Terminal

People brave enough to use Terminal can get post counts from the command line. If you know a user's member number you can type
curl -s https://forums.macrumors.com/members/12345/ | grep 'Total Posts:' | cut -d: -f2 | cut -d\> -f2 | cut -d\< -f1​
Replace 12345 with the member number. The result will be their post count. (The command is one long line, even if it wraps in this post. Make the window wide enough to see it.)

You can get a user's member number by clicking their name to go to their profile page and noticing the number at the end of the URL.

Let's try it on MacNut (member number 3249):
curl -s https://forums.macrumors.com/members/3249/ | grep 'Total Posts:' | cut -d: -f2 | cut -d\> -f2 | cut -d\< -f1
17,232​
 
Doctor Q said:
People brave enough to use Terminal can get post counts from the command line. If you know a user's member number you can type
curl -s https://forums.macrumors.com/members/12345/ | grep 'Total Posts:' | cut -d: -f2 | cut -d\> -f2 | cut -d\< -f1​
Replace 12345 with the member number. The result will be their post count. (The command is one long line, even if it wraps in this post. Make the window wide enough to see it.)

You can get a user's member number by clicking their name to go to their profile page and noticing the number at the end of the URL.

Let's try it on MacNut (member number 3249):
curl -s https://forums.macrumors.com/members/3249/ | grep 'Total Posts:' | cut -d: -f2 | cut -d\> -f2 | cut -d\< -f1
17,232​
Click to expand...

Interesting. Does MR have associated metadata with a post total? As in date/time and of each post? that then can be binned? What about # of times been quoted? Give a sense of most quoted or amt of up votes/post (perhaps most useful advice? who knows), words per post..etc

If so, all sorts of statistical goodness can be had (ie replication of your charts, times users post most often...seasonality, time of day, etc)
 
Last edited:
Doctor Q said:
People brave enough to use Terminal can get post counts from the command line. If you know a user's member number you can type
curl -s https://forums.macrumors.com/members/12345/ | grep 'Total Posts:' | cut -d: -f2 | cut -d\> -f2 | cut -d\< -f1​
Replace 12345 with the member number. The result will be their post count. (The command is one long line, even if it wraps in this post. Make the window wide enough to see it.)

You can get a user's member number by clicking their name to go to their profile page and noticing the number at the end of the URL.

Let's try it on MacNut (member number 3249):
curl -s https://forums.macrumors.com/members/3249/ | grep 'Total Posts:' | cut -d: -f2 | cut -d\> -f2 | cut -d\< -f1
17,232​
Click to expand...

Very neat, I did it and it worked. However, is there any advantage to using Terminal over just looking at a profile page for the count? Can any of the thing dukebound85 asked about be done?
 
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