It's been a long while since one of my brainstorms so having, in goodnf'sboredom thread, rather extracted the Michael (that's "take the p**s", for those who would prefer the vernacular) with my suggestion of something to occupy one's mind for a few minutes/hours/days/weeks (delete those not applicable). And on the basis that I'm not one to expect others to do what I'm not prepared to have a go at myself (well okay, long walks off short piers aren't on the agenda - and some others are actually physically impossible anyway) I do hereby present a veritable cornucopia of triviality and pedantism.
The Independent T.W.A.T. Stats. (or T.I.T.S. for short)
Prior, however, to immersing oneself in my collection of quirky facts and figures - a list of unique members, entries and percentages of contribution (is there anything else one would wish to know?) - there are a few notes/anomalies I would like to make mention of.
Those with an experience of calibration work will no doubt be aware of uncertainty errors. The accuracy of the calibration equipment, the misreading of information and incorrect methodology all contribute to the possibility of there being an error contained within the result (most, if not all, accredited calibration laboratories/authorities quote their results with a percentage of uncertainty). How they determine this I have no idea (and have no desire to investigate, so let's no go there), but it does rather suggest that with all data (no matter how "accurately" measured or gathered) there is the possibility (probability in this case) that it contains errors.
Whilst the methodology I adopted for the T.I.T.S. data collection has resulted in a completely accurate total number of contributions, for the 1410 pages "measured", it was a far less precise tool when applied to individuals. I have endeavoured to minimise the error, but unless one is prepared to check for oneself (I've presently not the energy to proof check my research) I cannot be certain that I've not transposed the odd entry or two.
You will note that I make mention of "unique" members. Whilst there are some members known to have more than one account; e.g. Bob Griffiths with his bob Griffiths and Mr Griffiths - not forgetting, of course, his spoof ILOVE BOSE - there are undoubtedly (or so I tend to believe) others that I am not aware of. Consequently, I felt the best thing to do was to treat every account as separate and leave those with multiple accounts (?) to calculate their own true worth.
Having made the decision to follow the above course, I did during my research, however, stumble across a couple of anomalies.
Firstly, the curious case of freddyfreeload/FreddyFreeloader. Whilst ostensibly appearing to be separate accounts, they are in fact not. Somewhat uniquely (I've not come across another example) the account name changes midway through, yet the profile details for both are exactly the same; i.e. it appears to be one account. The mind boggles.
Secondly, and one that actually relates to me, I found one entry with no user name and another with merely an IP address as the name. On checking both profiles I found they actually belong to me, so hey diddly ho I've added them to my total. Please, no accusations of account padding; looking at the totals you'll see it hardly makes a "ha'peth" of difference.
And so on to the stats. As already mentioned, I've covered the first 1410 pages, found 216 unique posters; a fair proportion of which (41.67% actually) being one time only. (It might also be interesting to note that if one then includes all those with less than 10 posts - that's a mere 315 posts in total - that proportion rises to 67.6%). It would seem then that we have quite a lot of regulars . . . with some appearing to be more regular than others - but that's what you get if you eat too many bowls of "All Bran".
But forget all that, I hear you cry. Get to the "important" bit, just who is the number one; the numero uno, the cream of the crop, the king of the hill, the top of the tree, the transcendental T.W.A.T.er? (Okay, a little abstract there, but then there's not many alliterative adjectives that begin with a T). Anyway, a drum roll and fanfare please, for the winner by a country mile - which really only goes to prove that he ought to get out more and walk one once in a while. Please step forward and take a bow . . .
Anthony Anthony Anthony Anthony Anthony Anthony
(Mind you, it could be argued that he's merely inherited the position by default . . . de-fault of (Mr K (MrKlaatu) going on "gardening leave". Up until the time of his disappearance - his last post appearing on page 565 - he was well in the lead, with an average of just under 4.3 posts per page. Continuing at that rate his total would have been in excess of 6000 by now).
As for myself, I'm surprised that less than half my total posts have been spent here, which does rather make me wonder where all the rest have gone - though not enough for me to feel the urge to go and look. And given all the behind the scenes work he does - three cheers for the Big Cheese, sorry, I meant Wrangler Of Remotes . . .
"hip, hip hooray! . . .
hip, hip hooray! . . .
hip, hip hooray!"
- I was also somewhat surprised at the relatively significant contribution made by Daniel (21st place). Indeed, he even once made it to top page poster - 5 on page 1005 (must have been a quiet week for reviews). And for those who enjoy the strange coincidences so beloved of the script writers of LOST, check out the results for oex and dvpa59. They are in joint 46th position with 46 posts each. Spooky!
Enough of my waffle though. Without further ado, procrastination, prevarication, meandering around Mr K's rather large shrubbery - that's off the beaten track and on the road to Mandaly (for those not bored enough to have already given up reading) the full list of results (over several pages alas) are as follows . . .
