Qt3 member posting statistics: The Focused and the Varied 3

On June 17 2003 and October 27 2003 I posted The Focused and the Varied versions 1 and 2, and this is an update. The number of different threads a Qt3er has posted in is divided by their total number of posts. For example, a Qt3 who has made 9 posts in a total of 3 different threads would have a Rating of .333, while one who made 9 posts in a total of 6 different threads would have a Rating of .667. The lower the number, the more Focused a poster is (the more often he posts in threads where he’s already posted). Long back and forth discussions in a thread leads to more Focus, starting threads often leads to more Focus, and periods of high posting frequency usually leads to more Focus. I list the Qt3ers by current rank, also included is their name, their Focus Rating, their rank in the October 27 post and their rank in the June 17 post in parentheses, and their posting personality that led to the high focus in brackets. Pol stands for Politics (where many of the back-and-forth discussions occur), Fre stands for Frequency (localized high posting frequency), and Agen stands for Agenda, which means the poster is interested in only a small subset of Qt3 topics (non-political) which focuses their attention there. NQ stands for Not Qualified and NR stands for Not Ranked. Minimum 208 total posts needed to qualify.

[size=5]Most Focused Qt3ers:[/size]

#1: Cleve Blakemore .277 (1, NQ) [Pol, Fre, Agen]
#2: Lizard_King .301 (2, NQ) [Pol, Fre]
#3: bmulligan .316 (3, NQ) [Pol, Fre]
#4: Jason McCullough .316 (6, 4) [Pol, Fre]
#5: Tyjenks .325 (5, 2) [Fre]
#6: Derek Smart [3000AD] .327 (7, 3) [Fre, Agen]
#7: Brad Wardell .328 (4, 1) [Agen]
#8: Machfive .334 (8, NQ) [Fre]
#9: Gordon Cameron .346 (9, 5) [Fre]
#10: Bull .360 (NQ) [Fre]
#11: Tim Elhajj .361 (14, 11) [Pol, Fre]
#12: Philomath .372 (NQ) [Pol, Fre]
#13: DaveC .373 (12, 17) [Agen]
#14: jeff lackey .375 (10, NR) [Pol]
#15: Rywill .376 (17, NR) [Fre]
#16: Bruce Geryk .377 (NQ) [Agen]
#17: Gary Whitta .381 (11, NQ) [Fre, Agen]
#18: steve .391 (16, 7) [Fre]
#19: MrAngryFace .395 (15, 8.) [Fre]
#20: Dave Markell .395 (NR) [Fre]

Dropping from the List: Guestacy, (HaveFun) Bill Huffman, Mark Asher, and Midnight Son

On October 27 it took a .402 or lower rating to make this list, while on June 17 it took a .430 or lower.

7 Qt3ers on this list are inactive, while 3 more are at very low activity.

Tim Elhajj and Rywill caught my attention here, with Elhajj lowering his rating by 0.24 and Rywill by 0.18.

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Highly Varied Qt3ers are the antithesis of the highly focused. These posters (usually) have non-specific interests, don’t get involved with political discussion or back-and-forth debate, and don’t have a substantial number of their posts within periods of high frequency posting.

[size=5]Most Varied Qt3ers:[/size]

#1: Ranulf .881 (NQ)
#2: Slothrop .799 (6, T9)
#3: Kool Moe Dee .787 (4, 7)
#4: Linoleum .775 (1, 3)
#5: Chris .774 (7, 14)
#6: VegasRobb .772 (NQ)
#7: Brandon Clements .764 (5, 1)
#8: Union Carbide .762 (8, 17)
#9: Tom .757 (NQ)
#10: Dean .752 (17, 8.)
#11: wzrd .745 (12, T9)
#12: Jeremy Johnsen .744 (NQ)
#13: Ergo .734 (16, 12)
#14: JD .733 (9, NQ)
#15: curst .732 (11, NQ)
#16: Alan Au .721 (13, 16)
#17: Timemaster Tim .719 (15, NQ)
#18: deanco .718 (NR)
#19: nutsak .718 (NQ)
#20: Drunkagain .716 (10, 2)

Dropping from the List: Bernie_Dy, GregB, King Lupid, Lee Johnson, Paxton, and runesword forger

On October 27 it took a .699 or higher rating to make this list, while on June 17 it took a .705 or higher.

1 Qt3er on this list is inactive, while 9 are at very low activity.

.881 is the highest rating I’ve ever seen. Ranulf’s 244 posts have occurred in 215 different threads (compare the other extreme of Blakemore’s 325 posts occurring in only 90 different threads). The mob knows where they can find their next hit-and-run driver.

nutsak is the only Qt3er in this top 20 with over 2 posts per day (2.53 as of 4/12). Only Alan Au (1.92 ppd at a .721 rating and Supertanker (2.75 ppd at a .687 rating) are comparable.

Slothrop raised his rating by 0.20 while Dean raised his by 0.42.

The Mean Average Focus Rating for all qualifying Qt3ers is .559. The Median is .572.

Take out the bit about QT3 and you’ve got the name of the next Fast and Furious movie!

But then how would we search to find these nuggets of wisdom when they shamefully drop off the first page of EE?

Do posters with High Focus get some sort of superpower. 'Cuz if they do, I’m changing my ways!

Statistics at their most useless.

I am varied, hear me roar.

I’m even more varied than I used to be.

You just don’t get Brian’s genius.

There’s no claim to genius here. Elsewhere, but not here.

I find his statistics interesting to mull over. For instance, I expected the “Most Focused” list to be full of argumentative, trolling types, because that’s the type of person who would be most likely to post 25 times in a lot of the threads they go into. There’s a little of that, especially near the top (correlation between that and just the P & R board in itself makes sense), but the friendly McCullough and Tyjenks and the friendly-but-probably-trolling-too Elhajj go against that idea. Also, Whitta is probably on the list because he starts ongoing topics about things he likes, such as the American Idol thread. One thread that has a lifetime measured in months can probably skew the statistics pretty well.

As for Most Varied? No idea what to think, because at least half the list is either people who don’t post anymore or extreme lurkers I’ve never noticed. I don’t see any of the one-liner brigade there either.

In conclusion, nutsak is more like a wave and Elhajj is more like a particle.

Tim made the first list twice, he’s a cheater.

I think it’s pretty cool… I don’t know what to make of the stats, but I appreciate that BK took the time to keep track, develop the rating system, assign analytical significance to the results, and then ultimately post it for anyone else who might be interested.
I just wonder if there’s a deeper, more cunning machination at work here, bent on the manipulation of events and eventual board domination. After that, the world!
Like the Keepers.

I just want a photo of the pizza guy who comes to Brian’s house and peeks in to see flow charts and diagrams with neatly stenciled titles with all of our names on them, and a dry-erase board with varied theorems like “The McCullough Effect” and “The Crypt Correlative” and such.

Actually, I’d just love to see Brian’s house, period.

When a radioactive collection of words, like ununpentium, have been smashed together in such a formation as this and then inexplicably hold, it is generally considered mere cliche to say that one would like to name their imaginary rock band after them. Be that as it may, my bitching imaginary speed metal quartet - in which I wail on my axe with this awesome Freddy Krueger glove but instead of razors I have a guitar pick on each finger cuz that’s just how much I can totally wail!!! - has now officially been renamed The Crypt Correlative. Formerly Doctor Crypt and the Gods of Terrible Hatred. Metallica! <thumb and forefinger devil horns> METALLICA!

Three things I liked about this thread:

1. Tim is in a neck-and-neck race with his alter-ego to be the most focused.

2. My increasingly laserlike focus not only got me on the list, it attracted Brian’s attention. I feel like I should drop down behind the razor-sharp rocks until Aragorn storms the gates and draws his attention elsewhere.

3. Bruce Geryk has an agenda. What mad agenda could it be?

Cue theme from The Jeffersons.

Interesting. I knew I didn’t post enough to qualify for most lists, but Mr. Koontz found something that I could qualify for. :)

I guess I am twice as focused as the rest of you because I am on the list twice.

Hmm. Yeah. You know, I hate to tell you this, but that name sucks.

-Tom

Noone should read this who has a 15 second attention span, ADD victims should leave now.

Also, noone who has placed me in their killfile should read this, for obvious self-respect reasons. Bye bye.

Also, the Sensitive Souls should take their weak pollutive stomachs elsewhere.

Most everyone else, enjoy…

There are several aspects of the stats series.

One is a simple love of and affinity for statistics.

Another is the understanding that a messageboard is a separate community, what I elsewhere called a “city” in an analogy. Developing a separate identity for this city is important, and the stats series is part of that.

Another is the attempt to produce insight through numerical study, which is largely the reason for ANY numerical study and has driven mathematics historically.

Finally, yes, there is a machination, or at least I recognize one other effect, which this treatise explores…

I’ll look at Brian Rucker, for example. He used to post a lot about games, about role playing in games. He had some decent points. Some interesting posts. Nothing too special though. Then, seemingly out of the blue, perhaps triggered by increasing concern about the Bush administration which initiated political interest, he switches to mainly political posts and almost overnight becomes one of Qt3s best political commentators.

Now, why isn’t anyone worried about Brian Rucker in the way that Doug Erickson and John Many Jars are worried about me or the way I’m worried about DrCrypt and TomChick?

Two reasons: Brian Rucker is limited to politics and Brian Rucker is not introducing new ideas. Brian Rucker, at least at the current time, seems to have no agenda.

The three “worrisome” creatures of Qt3 have none of these restrictions.

Before getting back to the machination and finishing this post, I’ll expound a bit on the Qt3 creatures…

A few things we share in common: high intelligence, considerable knowledge (with focuses in different areas), good ideas, very good taste.

Otherwise, differences abound. I’ll relate some past history…

When I came to the Qt3 messageboard (March 2002?) my plan was to talk about games. I was impressed by my early look at it, although not too surprised since I figured a messageboard derived from readers of Shoot Club would probably be pretty cool (as it turned out many members were there by other paths). My unconventional views were met with unsurprising hostility, although at least it was accompanied by a reasonable intelligence.

Once DrCrypt took an initial assessment of me, he began the attacks. As I’ve said before, those attacks were due to his understanding that I was a competitor to him (it took me quite a while to figure this out), although the optimist in me hopes he also attacked to try to draw me out and engage.

I began on Qt3 with quite a bit of respect for Tom Chick. Regardless of anything else, Shoot Club is a creation worthy of considerable pride (a point I’m sure is not lost on Chick). I don’t remember any developments in my attitude (any developments were likely minor) until the floor fell out with the summer of '03 bannings. I said at the time that I tentatively supported two of them, did not support two others, and thought another two of them were very bad ideas. So I immediately was not happy.

What made matters far worse however, was the Closed Door policy and my suspicions of the motivations for that policy. Qt3 membership was not told any of the reasons for the bannings, besides (para.) “a request was made of them which they declined to agree to”. Speculation was rampant, calls for an Open Door policy occurred which were disdainfully ignored.

A Closed Door policy on bannings is ripe for abuse, as voltaic would later discover firsthand. I guess the empty jail cell was just too appealing, or Chick thought he would be sticking a dagger in me. In any case, moving along…

What makes power desirable in a forum such as this within the forum itself is that it acts as a kind of representative. Your words gain an overshadowing effect… an effect above and beyond the actual words. The problem here is as it is anywhere… truth itself becomes subject to power and is therefore corrupted. It has nothing to do with the degree of morality or resistance to corruption of the person in power… any mistake made by him is magnified.

The interesting thing, on the other hand, is that the granting of power by the community is done to promote a continuation of the process behind the power. Much as payment for work keeps the employee coming back, so payment for work by means of power keeps the powerful man coming back.

In that way, power is subject to truth, or whatever else forum members value.

The usual argument, at least issued by myself, is that what creates power is of value but power itself is a destructive force, since power is no longer subject to what created it. The good man therefore creates what leads the common man to give him power but does not accept the power offered. The irony is that the more a human needs power the more they are granted (within reason), but the more they need it the more suspect are their motivations. Thus do the worst humans in many cases get the most power.

The traditional reason for myself to gain power is to use it to promote my otherwise impossible to promote agendas. Power as an aid to truth, I used to say. More like a crutch to truth. Fuck that. My words should stand on their own. Truth should not be allowed to be derived from power.

DrCrypt has already been related… the spirit of the Last Nobleman and the heart of a Nihilist. He seduces for his own pleasure and to grant the common man meaning.

Tom Chick establishes certain themes he identifies with himself, and rates his “fame” and thus his power with the rise or fall of such themes. In this way the themes are established as children or surrogates of Chick. To Chick, these themes are valuable, likely more valuable than whatever themes they replace despite a lack of public debate over such issues. He knows (or thinks he does), which apparently should be good enough for us!

Leading back into the issue of the machination of the Stats Series…

All group control is a matter of ordering. Tom Chick sees it as thematic guidance, DrCrypt as attention-directing seductive admiration. Those approaches are often subtle, but there are more subtle and more multiplicitous methods at hand.

Humans believe, whether they admit it or not, that what watches them has power over them. Furthermore, what can place them in a context, what can define them, what can make them who they are is also analyzed as having power over them. Numerical analyses, like any other definer or identifier, has an ordering effect.

I’m not worried about myself anymore. The worst that could happen is that I use my power to subject you to my strange ideas. After teaching you about various power transactions on this board (although there are many more I haven’t mentioned) I’m not too worried about the ignorant messageboard sheep being preyed upon. And if you are, then you should hope to make for a succulent meal!

The world? Eventually. But even there, as everywhere, I merely ask that my truths dominate or not, as they deserve. Power is just as hostile to he who wields it as those he wields it upon.

Another is the attempt to produce insight through numerical study, which is largely the reason for ANY numerical study and has driven mathematics historically.

Whoa whoa whoa. Slow down there, Koontz! The escargot-like sludge electrically gelatinating in these primates skulls is struggling to comprehend your Massive Floating Brain’s omniscience. Lemme see if I got this straight: numbers… drive… math? Numerical study… drives… numerical study? Boggle. Giants do walk among us.

When I came to the Qt3 messageboard (March 2002?) my plan was to talk about games. I was impressed by my early look at it, although not too surprised since I figured a messageboard derived from readers of Shoot Club would probably be pretty cool (as it turned out many members were there by other paths). My unconventional views were met with unsurprising hostility, although at least it was accompanied by a reasonable intelligence.

Here’s the first time the Koontz really hit the fan: Brian’s assertion that John Carmack created the MMORPG genre . I love how Koontz sort of flings that “reasonable intelligence” bit in there as the “noblesse oblige” tilt of his jowly royal head cheese to the Down’s Syndrome plebiscite hurling dung at him. Yes, they were good retorts… for less evolved minds. Except that in the case of that Carmack thread, his arguments are just laughable and consistently contradicted by Qt3 users who have been creating massively multiplayer games since just about the beginning - Jessica and Raph Koster.

I have to admit that I am fascinated by Koontz. Just the way he strings sentences together speaks loads as to how he has built up his own mental walls to completely block out criticism and remain insulated as the Philosopher King over the vast sweeps, tumultuous seas and arid climes of his own Autistic Ominiscience. In the Carmack thread, he is soundly thrashed for getting his facts wrong, but he now chalks this up to “unsurprising hostilitiy” to “unconventional views”, as if conquering new intellectual frontiers was all about drowning the stagnating intelligentsia clinging to their “facts” and “proof” with a tireless barrage of pseudophilosophical autistic word flatulence. Koontz, for all of his bravado about trying to ascertain the “facts” of the boards through mathematical quantification, is actually not interested in facts at all. In fact, wokka wokka, it is pretty easy to pummel him if you can get him to ground his debate on that level (check out this 2001 thread where Koontz totally messes up one of the main plot points on 2001 and uncharacteristically vanishes without a peep when called out on it).

What interests Koontz is ideas, not facts, primarily because he has the perverted philosophical world view of a high school senior going to his first Intro to Metaphysics summer course at the local community college. Ideas aren’t just separate from the facts - ideas create the facts. Broadly, this is true, in that ideas are pregenitors to the synthesis of events in the real world that become facts. And, of course, it is reasonable to argue (although not conclusive) that there is a metaphysical backbone of ideas to the universe we live in, primarily in mathematics. Koontz applies this like evey mawkish goth kid I’ve ever sat in an evening philosophy class with, though. He tries to twist entire debates by consistently playing with what he views to be the undercurrent philosophy of them: for example, to argue that forcefully sodomizing an elderly person is not rape or to contradict others about films he hasn’t seen. Since Koontz (despite what he claims) does not appear to feel that ideas are particularly debatable - after all, they are primarily separate from facts and consequently can not be contradicted by them - this just leads to dead-end conversations where Koontz refuses to concede any point that any sensible person without such a ludicrous worldview tries to make. If you can call him out about it, he merely concedes to “clarify” his philosophy on the ideas in question, which no one accepts as a valid means of debate but Koontz considers to be unassailable. It is tiresome to anyone trying to get in a serious discussion with him which is why almost nobody bothers anymore. I know this sounds like thr broad sweeps of the very character analyses Koontz indulges himself in a lot of the time: all I can say is, look at Koontz’s message history. To most people, it is very hard to say that Koontz has ever won any debate ever, because his debating technique is ludicrous, self-contradictory and fruitless… you can’t agree with Koontz unless you accept his philosophy on a particular issue withouit question, since he won’t bother with any cited facts to back it up, or debate those facts with someone arguing against them even if they are brought up. For all of his self-aggrandizing, Koontz obviously doesn’t know much about philosophy, because the weird thing is that even philosophers and metaphysicists take certain worldly facts to be the groundpoint for whatever ideological architecture they constructs. Koontz doesn’t bother: he just starts building his toothpick Tower of Blither on ground zero of vapid mental retardation.Which is why you have so many people on this board who have studied philosophy who can’t even begin to talk with him: he’s on the same philosophical wavelength as the raving guy on the street in the tin foil hat pointing his fingers at everyone and accusing them of being brain-sucking extra-terrestrials.

Once DrCrypt took an initial assessment of me, he began the attacks. As I’ve said before, those attacks were due to his understanding that I was a competitor to him (it took me quite a while to figure this out), although the optimist in me hopes he also attacked to try to draw me out and engage.

Koontz, this isn’t a hands-tied ho-ho eating competition - you’re not my competitor and I don’t view you as such. I am your Qt3-appointed foil, but that isn’t the same thing. I’m not trying to sound smug, nor am I trying to express my superiority over anyone else on this forum, but I’m pretty comfortable saying you aren’t even in my league. I’m smarter and better educated than you. I am more worldly than you. I am a better writer than you. I am better able to express my thoughts than you. I am more charismatic than you. I am more entertaining than you, at least as far as deliberate humor is concerned. You’ve never been anything besides a laughing stock and, buddy, that isn’t due to some overarching Anti-Koontz campaign on my part, but because you’re a self-evident imbecile. There’s nothing to “engage” with - I’m pretty confident these days that your arguments and debating technique is transparently crazy and pointless.

It is funny that Koontz’s main thrust against me lately is that I’m more concerned with “popularity” than I am with the fruitful exchange of world views, which is where Koontz’s main interest supposedly lies. I’m not going to debate that, although I think I’ve had belligerent words with just about everyone on this forum and that course of action doesn’t necessarily ingratiate one’s self to people. However, what is interesting about this insistence by Koontz is that he thinks I view myself as his competitor (or vice versa) because we -both- could attract a following. I’m not sure what sort of Moonies are currently huddling in potato sacks and rhinestones around Koontz’s basement cardboard spaceship that makes him think he could command any sort of ideological loyalty with anyone, but it sort of betrays that Koontz seems to think more about attaining a “following” and consequently popularity than I do.

And, in fact, isn’t that really what these totally vapid statistics thread is all about? That these things are popular, unlike basically anything else Koontz does? People like them because they are ranking lists and consequently quasi-competitive and fun. Despite Koontz’s claims, these are hardly scientific analyses of trends, and a good deal of the analysis involves comes down to judgement calls by Koontz, which history shows makes them highly suspect at best and laughable at worst. Bruce Geryk’s agenda? I assume he means Dominions 2. What the hell is Whitta’s agenda? The prolific ejaculation of every Internet page he happens to visit during the day? I’m not sure if that’s more laughable-at-worst than the OCD compulsion that must drive Koontz to spend what must have been hundreds of hours into compiling this nonsense when Chet or McMaster could probably write a script in five minutes that comes up with the same results, though. If Koontz isn’t some Qt3ers alter ego, what this says about his life is actually quite depressing: that he has the sheer volume of time necessary to output some of his posts, keep track of all these meaningless statistics by hand and his oft-revisted passion for “VSOGs”, his obvious lack of any worldly experience and his refusal to comment on his real life indicate an almost shut-in existence.

I’m afraid, unlike most of my Koontz retorts, this one isn’t very funny. Actually, I’m a bit drained by Koontz lately - his posts have become more and more sadly separate from reality (note his weird comments here about “using his power to subject us all to his strange ideas” and his plans for global domination, as well as his Biblical analogies in past threads to describe himself as either the Messiah or the Anti-Christ) and this has sort of been mirrored by my own feeling that he is probably mentally ill in some capacity and it is just cruel to continue to taunt him. Of course, I’ll probably sally forth somehow.

Man, and I thought Brian’s post was long. I guess I have ADD.