I generated a graph of the number of EA Forum posts per year, as well as the number of new user registrations. I extracted the data using the GraphQL API.
The raw JSON data for all posts is here. I had to split the user data into two files due to upload limits. The raw JSON data for all unbanned (but otherwise unfiltered) users is here. The JSON data for all banned users is here.
I divided the users into four categories in order to try to make the numbers more useful. The year entries below list the frequency values in this order.
unbanned users with non-zero posts/comments and non-negative karma.
unbanned users with non-zero posts/comments and negative karma
unbanned users with zero posts/comments
banned users
That said, the database’s indices for number of posts and number of comments don’t seem to reflect reality perfectly. Take a quick look at this table for what I mean.
Note: A previous version of this comment had different values, because I mistakenly was ignoring users with null-valued karma in the database. Now I just treat them as if they had zero karma.
I generated a graph of the number of EA Forum posts per year, as well as the number of new user registrations. I extracted the data using the GraphQL API.
The raw JSON data for all posts is here. I had to split the user data into two files due to upload limits. The raw JSON data for all unbanned (but otherwise unfiltered) users is here. The JSON data for all banned users is here.
Results:
Posts by month; Posts by year
(The post count includes “meta” posts.)
2011: 1
2012: 7
2013: 66
2014: 234
2015: 460
2016: 296
2017: 285
2018: 442
2019 (so far): 433
New user registrations by month; New user registrations by year. If you include banned users, you get this monstrosity.
I divided the users into four categories in order to try to make the numbers more useful. The year entries below list the frequency values in this order.
unbanned users with non-zero posts/comments and non-negative karma.
unbanned users with non-zero posts/comments and negative karma
unbanned users with zero posts/comments
banned users
That said, the database’s indices for number of posts and number of comments don’t seem to reflect reality perfectly. Take a quick look at this table for what I mean.
Note: A previous version of this comment had different values, because I mistakenly was ignoring users with null-valued karma in the database. Now I just treat them as if they had zero karma.
2014: 336; 7; 186; 1
2015: 284; 9; 538; 1
2016: 188; 36; 540; 3
2017: 224; 70; 617; 7
2018: 366; 43; 746; 21
2019 (so far): 382; 22; 652; 1750
Thanks, this is really cool to see. I will follow up next year to add total posts as a metric. I added this idea to FN35.
Thanks. By the way, I updated the comment you replied to.