RSS
Twitter
Facebook
YouTube
Last year, someone did a super neat "almost-chart-thingy" (sorry, still working on my coffee) with all the different people arranged by the number of posts and replies. could someone do the same for topics, real or to which threads drifted? The discussion of Foer's book that has come back to farming practices, peak oil, and I'm sure by EOD, streetcars, brought this to mind.
Columbus Underground Messageboard » General Columbus Discussion
Topics of 2009
[36 posts] [12 contributors]
Topic Rating:
(Total Ratings: )
Rate this topic:
Rate this topic:
-
th0m
Beechwold
Login to Send PM
I think you mean this? http://www.columbusunderground.com/forums/topic/cu-post-election-thread-visualizations
What I hear you specifically asking for is a rather interesting thing, which I take to mean an answer to a question like "who participated in a thread, and then what, over time, were the statistically significant words that people used in that thread?" ... or at least that's how I would frame it in a way a computer might be able to answer.... is that close to what you are looking for? Feel free to expound post-caffeine, it took me a little of that stuff too to think about your post better :P
Posted 3 years ago # -
berdawn
near that stretch of N. High Street in the Short North
Login to Send PM
The "cloud image" yes yes yes! I was thinking key words more than participants, but that would be very cool, too. (caffeine doesn't seem to make me much more eloquent than I am first thing in the AM)
Posted 3 years ago # -
th0m
Beechwold
Login to Send PM
Berdawn -- I need to download the full text of all of the threads, and I'm working on that, but I did an initial analysis of just the names of threads from 2009, and the result is this:
here's a pdf: http://bit.ly/4vhxuY
here's a (slightly hand-cleaned) word list: http://bit.ly/4u9B2L
here's a list of urls,titles,viewcount,pagecount: http://bit.ly/8djwmK
here's the python: https://gist.github.com/ccc95caab384e2b41525So that is just based on words in topic names for the year, so probably not too surprising. Now that I have this, I can go back and get the actual threads' content, and start doing some stats. Although someone actually talking about farming, or me here talking about how someone might want to find out about people talking about farming, plus you stating that's what you are looking for, might all appear to be the same thing ... when you break things into just words and do stats on the word occurrence. I may be able to try and do phrasing or something, I'll keep digging and see what I can find.
Posted 3 years ago # -
catnfiddle
Peeghaven
Login to Send PM
Oooo, that's nifty! Could be used as a banner graphic.
Posted 3 years ago # -
th0m
Beechwold
Login to Send PM
a tag cloud was a big thing in mybe 2007 and earlier and a lot of sites still have them, but mostly the problem with them is that over time they don't change much if you base them on just popularity, they can be 'spammed,' they can get weighted in ways that aren't very useful maybe, and some designers just think of them as random word vomits. :P
I am intrigued by berdawn's orginal task, and that gets to more about what the topics were actually about more than just the title, but with the nice new change of meaningful and friendly urls for topics, i have to start with data like this, so it was a fun thing to do real quick and like the last post like it.
for the original questioni'd like to try an fit in a 'sankey' diagram but we'll see what i find. maybe a zooming around video or something heheh but i can't promise what will actually happen, just stating the kinds of things i wish i had more excuses to do :P
Posted 3 years ago # -
Walker
The KLD / Downtown / Gay Street
Login to Send PM
Bear wrote >>
Actually, if you could link from each of those words to a dynamically-generated list of threads whose titles contain it, it could be an attractive and useful CU banner.We do have something similar... a page that contains the most-used tags for messageboard posts:
http://www.columbusunderground.com/forums/tags/
They're in alphabetical order to make them easy to find, and the size of the word displays the frequency in which it is used.
The "Popular Messageboard Topics" list in the right-column between the sidebar banner ads is actually a tag cloud with the size variation disabled, so those just the most used tags. The "more..." link at the end goes to the aforementioned page with loads more tags.Useful? Perhaps. I don't use it much myself.
Posted 3 years ago # -
th0m
Beechwold
Login to Send PM
I messed with this a bunch last night, and apparently I only downloaded the most general of the general discussion section, so I will working on getting the rest. However, just looking at that there are something like 90 threads that eventually mention in one way or another something about farming, which is rather surprising (but then again I hadn't been paying attention to these issues).
Posted 3 years ago # -
rus
Login to Send PM
Manatee wrote >>
rus wrote >>
Manatee wrote >>
Haha! Not surprising. I have a boner for farming ;PI'm trying to figure out my my post count is higher than yours on that issue...
Because you like arguing with me more than I like posting ;P
*snort*
Note to self: Do not read Manatee's posts while drinking coffee...
Posted 3 years ago # -
th0m
Beechwold
Login to Send PM
heh, so here's the "zooming around video" i guess i alluded to earlier. this was supposed to be the first draft, but i'm going with it. you know what they say about the best laid plans, and i wish i had more time to get this right, but here it is. i gave in to a tweet by amy youngs to go with the glitches, rather than try to control technology.
this is a collection of visualizations of all of the threads on here during 2009. i think. the dates on the board these days are ambiguous. it is some 10,450 threads, or maybe less.
the idea is that it starts with the top 20 users, and if core didn't have two usernames (#2 and #8) that'd put Daz at #20 with 1,942 posts.
this was meant to be just my first draft to see roughly how it all shapes up, and unfortunately, the titles of the topics and the data is all just completely off, but whatever. *artistic license* :P i have other things I need to get to. it would've been nice to go back and make sure the treemaps at least line up, but oh well.
so after the top 20 users there are a bunch of treemaps of the users participating in each of the threads. also inter-mingled with this is a subpixel histogram of all users, which probably won't make much sense at anything other than 720p, but the idea is that each user received a red, blue, or green part of the pixel, with neighboring users actually mixing colors inside the lcd pixel (or something like that)... then it ends with the histogram of just walker's posts.
anyway, it is a mess, again, the titles don't line up with the data, and then the audio cuts off the last full minute, but you'll get the idea: people use this board and type a lot of crap in to it. oh and this big ball of mess represents over 200 hours of processing time alone (as every scene was rendered for the whole of the thing)... good times! hopefully the next one with be coherent.
:D enjoy
Get the Video Widget Posted 3 years ago #
You must log in to post.
Launched in August 2010, TheMetropreneur.com is a local online resource devoted to small business development and entrepreneurship. Its aim is to tell the stories of Central Ohio's business community, foster regional economic development and assist entrepreneurs with its resource-heavy focus.