Popularity contest

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03-03-2007, 05:43 AM
Dr Unne

Popularity contest

If you're like me, you spend hours worrying about how popular EoFF is compared to other Final Fantasy message boards. I can hardly sleep at night.

vBulletin boards happily display how many users are currently logged in, right on the front page. Last night I wrote a little Ruby script that automatically runs every 15 minutes to record how many visitors are currently online at the top 20 or so (as reported by Google) Final Fantasy message boards. I ignored non-vBulletin boards (all of which are extremely small, from what I can tell) which leaves 17 MBs. Today when I got home from work I had a nice little pile of data waiting for me.

There are some caveats here of course; for example these numbers largely depend on the (I believe configurable) timeout after which vBulletin will consider a member no longer visiting; a longer timeout will inflate the numbers. However let's work under the assumption that all the MBs are using sane and comparable timeouts.

This is a chart of one day of data including lurkers:

http://ffclassic.net/random/counts_with_lurkers.png

Lurkers are probably skewing the results given how many of them are search engine spiders. So I separately plotted only the non-lurkers (i.e. only logged in real human members):

http://ffclassic.net/random/counts_no_lurkers.png

Now we can all rest easy.
03-03-2007, 05:44 AM
nik0tine

This is smurfing hot.
03-03-2007, 05:47 AM
Zeromus_X

That's impressive, Dr. Unne. :p

I had no clue FFNet was even on the top 20 of anything. xD
03-03-2007, 05:47 AM
Roto13

I like how the pretty lines go up and down.
03-03-2007, 05:49 AM
XxSephirothxX

Who knew adventchildren.net was so popular....with the bots. :p Kinda nice to see we come out pretty much at the top of the pack.
03-03-2007, 05:50 AM
Leeza

Our 6:00 a.m. time slot needs improvement. :cat:
03-03-2007, 06:07 AM
SnoopyG

I'm part of that red line:D
03-03-2007, 06:30 AM
Yamaneko

Congrats to all the winners.
03-03-2007, 06:43 AM
Raistlin

This reminds me of the time when I made the thread about how EoFF had just become the #1 FF-related EzBoard. My thread was cooler.
03-03-2007, 06:45 AM
Bahamut2000X

I think it's cause of the best smilie ever. :pinkelephant:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raistlin

This reminds me of the time when I made the thread about how EoFF had just become the #1 FF-related EzBoard. My thread was cooler.

Yours isn't scientific though. With pretty color and numbers.
03-03-2007, 06:52 AM
Raistlin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bahamut2000X

Yours isn't scientific though.

It was by total posts, which is about as scientific as we could get with EzBoards. :p
03-03-2007, 06:54 AM
Bahamut2000X

But...he has charts with pretty colors and wrote programming...PROGRAMMING MAN! Egads that there is as scientific as I can possibly think of.
03-03-2007, 08:15 AM
vorpal blade

Quote:

Originally Posted by SnoopyG

I'm part of that red line:D

What a coincidence, so am I!

I'm also a part of the purple line near the bottom.
03-03-2007, 08:16 AM
Eiko Guy

I like that its very informative. I didnt expect us to be soo high up. I log on quite often so..you're welcome.
03-03-2007, 08:47 AM
Yuriev's ghost

The second graph is pretty much what I expected. EoFF, ACF and FFShrine are the most notorious FF forums, in any case.
03-03-2007, 09:28 AM
Jojee

*head explodes* xD I never even knew half of these forums existed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raistlin

This reminds me of the time when I made the thread about how EoFF had just become the #1 FF-related EzBoard. My thread was cooler.

It beat FF:ID but I don't think it ever beat FF:HW... :p Although HW did move out of EZboard at some point, not sure if it was before EoFF did. xD
03-03-2007, 10:15 AM
Samuraid

Wow, nice code work, and nice stats as well. :)

I guess this board gets around. :mwahaha:
03-03-2007, 11:00 AM
KentaRawr!

"So, which part of that picture shows me that I'm popular?" - I wanted to post that

We are indeed quite an impressive bunch.
03-03-2007, 11:09 AM
Cz

Hang on a second. You mean there are other Final Fantasy message boards!?
03-03-2007, 02:40 PM
Kossage

Impressive. :)
03-03-2007, 02:54 PM
Remon

At least excluding lurkers we are the best :)
03-03-2007, 02:59 PM
Sergeant Hartman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Past passado

At least excluding lurkers we are the best :)

EoFF winz!
03-03-2007, 03:04 PM
Psychotic

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuraid

I guess this board gets around. :mwahaha:

Traitor! We all know you wanted adventchildren.net to win!
03-03-2007, 03:06 PM
Tavrobel

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psychotic

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuraid

I guess this board gets around. :mwahaha:

Traitor! We all know you wanted adventchildren.net to win!

LIES AND PROPAGANADA! You take that back, you heathenous venom-filled pus maggot filled with icky, icky goo!

On a lighter note, I like how often we have compared this board to other boards thus far today.
03-03-2007, 03:07 PM
Polaris

We don't need lurkers :( we're the best without them! :(
03-03-2007, 03:07 PM
Roto13

I guess it's as scientific as you can get based one 24-hour period.
03-03-2007, 03:10 PM
Psychotic

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tavrobel

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psychotic

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuraid

I guess this board gets around. :mwahaha:

Traitor! We all know you wanted adventchildren.net to win!

LIES AND PROPAGANADA! You take that back, you heathenous venom-filled pus maggot filled with icky, icky goo!

The sickening truth of Samuraid's betrayal.
03-03-2007, 03:13 PM
Tavrobel

No, that's not true! That's impossible!

Although, to be completely fair, he has only played FFVII so far.
03-03-2007, 03:45 PM
Bunny

I'm not sure what is going on here, but the pretty colors fascinate me.
03-03-2007, 03:51 PM
Dr Aum

Perform a two-sample T-test on our numbers and AdventChildren's numbers and then I'll be impressed.
03-03-2007, 06:17 PM
Raistlin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jojee

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raistlin

This reminds me of the time when I made the thread about how EoFF had just become the #1 FF-related EzBoard. My thread was cooler.

It beat FF:ID but I don't think it ever beat FF:HW... :p Although HW did move out of EZboard at some point, not sure if it was before EoFF did. xD

Wasn't HW created later? But anyway, EoFF beat out all of the FF-related EzBoards at that time. FF:ID was the largest before that. It only took like 5 months, too.
03-03-2007, 07:42 PM
Samuraid

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psychotic

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tavrobel

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psychotic

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuraid

I guess this board gets around. :mwahaha:

Traitor! We all know you wanted adventchildren.net to win!

LIES AND PROPAGANADA! You take that back, you heathenous venom-filled pus maggot filled with icky, icky goo!

The sickening truth of Samuraid's betrayal.

:eek: *flees*

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tavrobel

No, that's not true! That's impossible!

Although, to be completely fair, he has only played FFVII so far.

Oh it is very true, however, I generally just help them with a few odd code fixes and a little bit of security. I don't care for most of the general forum, especially since they let certain people get away with the most epic level of complaining and whinging there. :monster:
03-03-2007, 07:42 PM
rubah

So how do we funnel these members to our front site?
03-03-2007, 07:53 PM
Owen Macwere

Well, these charts make me proud of being an EOFFer. Now, what's my prize?.
03-03-2007, 07:55 PM
Bahamut2000X

Quote:

Originally Posted by rubah

So how do we funnel these members to our front site?

Trick the peons into going under the pretense of there being cookies and cake.
03-03-2007, 08:13 PM
Dr Unne

Quote:

Originally Posted by rubah

So how do we funnel these members to our front site?

PHP Code:

<?php srand(time()); if(rand() % 99 == 0) { header( 'Location: http://www.eyesonff.com' ) ; } ?>

Probably only 4 people reading this thread will get that joke. :(
03-03-2007, 08:27 PM
Vikeve

I'm so proud of eoff. Yeah, I don't get the joke Unne.
03-03-2007, 08:48 PM
Freya

I feel smarter just looking at those.

We need to step up our game at those early hours. We can't even let them have a mild win over us.
03-03-2007, 09:36 PM
Tavrobel

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Unne

Quote:

Originally Posted by rubah

So how do we funnel these members to our front site?

PHP Code:

<?php srand(time()); if(rand() % 99 == 0) { header( 'Location: http://www.eyesonff.com' ) ; } ?>

Probably only 4 people reading this thread will get that joke. :(

LOL winnared more, please.
03-03-2007, 10:06 PM
Shlup

And here someone-I-will-refrain-from-naming was trying to convince us EoFF needed a spam forum and to be run more like AC if we ever hoped to be as active as them (which we didn't anyway). Funny.
03-03-2007, 10:21 PM
Iceglow

lmao this is pretty cool.

for those who didn't get the joke I am pretty sure Unne posted php source code for the forums which shows the eoff banner....pretty sure my php is as good as my chineese. xD (I learnt Japanese not Chineese watch kill bill for vol 1 and 2 for the opinions on the two)