PCKF Post Analytics 2018-2019

[proYorp]

I was feeling curious about the range of posts per day PCKF gets, so I wrote down the total post count every day for the last year and made a graph. :D Because I like graphs.




Graph for posts from July 1 2018 - June 30 2019.


Daily post count is calculated at 18:00 GMT.

The data was derived from the "Total posts" number at the bottom of the PCKF board index, except for some days when it didn't reflect the actual number of new posts visible. Due to anomalies such as this I can't say that this chart is 100% accurate, but it should be at least 95% (based on how uncommon these anomalies are).


Statistical notes:

Longest streak with no new posts occurred during July 13-20 2018 (8 consecutive days)
Longest streak with above 0 posts occurred during December 23 2018 - February 4 2019 (43 consecutive days)
Most posts in a day occurred on March 15 2019 with a whopping 35 posts

Mean average: 3.8712
Most common amount of posts: 1 (with 59 days out of 365)

Total posts this year: 1,413

[Roobar]

That's really interesting. But more fascinating is that you collected all that data every day?

So what I find nteresting: more posts overall this year compared to the last (even though there is not enough data, but it look like the last year was pretty dry). This seems surprising to me considering how less active was the community here before the new keen announcement. What happened on March 15th, the Mortimer day? There were 2 mods released? It didn't seemed too crowded with posts those days, but it's kinda the part of the year to expect that. And another bump in posts count on June, where the new keen was announced. And since then, posts haven't stopped, though are gradually decreasing as that fades out. Though I think when the new keen gets actually relesed, we will see another peak of comments. Flat chart when I released Planet Cloudis IX. It would be interesting to compare to 2009 or so, when keen 9 was released. There were 4-5 pages of posts per day in the release date of the major mods back then... aah. Good times. I consider that period the "golden age" of PCKF community. Everything was looking so promising back then on all fronts: mods, active community, posts, art etc. Or I could call it the "second renaissance" (that began from Keen 7 and ended shortly after keen 9). The first would be the early 2000s where the first levels were introduced along with many fan games. Before the 2000s there was the "dark age": slow internet, few websites and the forum didn't existed. But the very basic foundations of modding were forged by few people.

[proYorp]

That's really interesting. But more fascinating is that you collected all that data every day?

Actually, it's not too much data at all, just the date and the Total Posts number for that day, and the difference from the total of the previous day. Also since I usually read the new posts at that time anyway I count them and make sure it adds up. Can take only 30 seconds to write down on the uncomplicated days.

What happened on March 15th, the Mortimer day? There were 2 mods released?

I think it was mainly that it was in fact Keen Day in a good portion of the world at that time (due to the time the data is gathered at, a lot of the Keen Day activity on here is displayed as March 15).
I believe that most of the effect was from it being Keen Day because in 2017 I decided to count the amount of posts just for Keen Day and it ended up being 30 or so, which I remember thinking seemed like 10 times more than usual. So that leads me to believe that this is a common occurrence for Keen Day.

Flat chart when I released Planet Cloudis IX.

On the contrary, there is a spike in activity the following 24 hours after your release, shortly followed by a period of higher activity before declining to normal. Your release post was very close to the data-collection time, so not much of the related activity is displayed on that specific day.

It would be interesting to compare to 2009 or so, when keen 9 was released.

Indeed so, in fact I have wondered if there would be a way to construct a graph of that time period, however the only way I can see to get the necessary data of all those posts and their dates would be to go through every single post on PCKF and record when they were posted, since the search function does not allow limiting results to a very specific date range. Which would be a vastly larger undertaking than simply writing down a couple numbers a day.

[Fleexy]

This is neat!

go through every single post on PCKF and record when they were posted

I did a quick query on the database: here's a list of the creation time of every (non-deleted) post on this site, as Unix timestamps. There are only 85,920 existing posts; the total posts statistic on the homepage is probably cached and can get out of sync.

[proYorp]

Haha oh wow, wasn't expecting that. Looks like I have a few more graphs to make now.
Thanks Fleex! Now this is neat.

[Keening_Product]

Very nice; great work! With that info already in the database, it should be fairly simple to develop a phpBB plugin which automatically creates post graphs.

That's assuming there isn't one already. There probably is, but unresearched suggestions is what we've come to love the net for... right?