Followers Among the Top 50
Top 50 Members with 20 or More Followers
Code:
Rank Followed Number of Followers
---- ---------------- -------------------
1 Applejuiced 145
2 DoFoT9 122
3 eyoungren 117
4 Weaselboy 73
5 Eidorian 63
6 Hellhammer 53
7 Doctor Q 42
8 Scepticalscribe 35
9 Intell 25
10 rdowns 24
11 maflynn 23
12 robbieduncan 23
13 SandboxGeneral 23
14 bartelby 23
15 C DM 21
16 Newtons Apple 21
This round's Most Followed seems to be following (heh) Doctor Q's hypothesis on Likes and Followers from Jan 2018, at least regarding followers:
I'd guess that Likes accumulate somewhat proportionally to posts, while Followers grow at a much slower rate. For example, suppose famous zoologist Duke Lemur posts regularly about marsupials. The fixed number of people who have similar interests in marsupials might Follow him, with an occasional new marsupials-interested forum member joining the group. But every time he posts, the subset of those Followers who see the post will Like it. There's still a bit of likely correlation, however, because interested members are more likely to see his posts, and become Followers, if he posts more.
I will post deltas at a later time, but there's little change here:
- Member @DoFoT9 wasn't listed in Jan 2018, but had 122 Followers then, so no change.
I decided to include this user, despite apparent inactivity, since I'm pretty sure that classification came due to an inaccuracy in how posts are counted, as described in post #20.
- There were no changes in rank, except for that produced as a result of including DoFoT9.
- Members @eyoungren, @Weaselboy, and @Scepticalscribe all gained 4 Followers. @Applejuiced gained 1.
- @Doctor Q is no longer in 6th position, unlike many other lists he's on. However, he would be in 6th position if I had omitted DoFoT9.
Sidebar
Taking a small sidebar here, the omission of DoFoT9 from the Jan 2018 list of top Followed is what led me to discover
the aforementioned inaccuracy in how posts are counted.
I noticed that DoFoT9 was missing from the Jan 2018 list, but was prominent in the raw list for this round. My first thought was that gaining 122 Followers was an impressive achievement for a member who made no posts in the prior 6 months. My second thought was this might be either Gems of Wisdom or Gaming the System.
Next, I took a look at DoFoT9's profile page, made a scan of recent posts looking for Gems of Wisdom, and found several posts made in May 2018. That led me to question the underlying data I'd captured on 03 July, and the raw post counts from the previous two rounds (Jan 2018 and July 2017). That's where I noticed the same total post-counts, and concluded that the subtraction to calculate the net 6-month post total must be causing the unexpected result.
Then I checked out a few more users, discovered a couple with negative deltas, i.e. fewer total posts in this round than in a previous round, and concluded that Wastelanding or a similar maintenance action was reducing the net total post count, even though a user had made a small number of posts during the most recent 6-month interval.
I'm not sure yet what, if anything, I'll do about this. Clearly, some members who post infrequently are incorrectly being classified as inactive. That inaccuracy should be corrected. On the other hand, the calculation of post counts for a 6-month interval has always been calculated by subtracting the net total post-count sampled on a particular date. If that calculation is changed, then past rankings can no longer be compared to future ones.