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Do Social News Sites Deteriorate? (Analysis of 1.8M HN Comments)

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Re: Do Social News Sites Deteriorate? (Analysis of 1.8M HN Comments)

#51

Post by stcredzero »

ChuckFrank wrote: post #11

Certainly we can all argue about the underlying structure of the analysis of the data. However, I think that @tansey has done two great services here: 1.He's proposed a full service taxonomy with by proposing a name for the phenomenon SND. Which is much a much better choice than JTS - Jumping the Shark or otherwise. 2. He's asking how we can evaluate that phenomenon. Proposing one solution. So the question becomes, h…

1. He's proposed a full service taxonomy with by proposing a name for the phenomenon SND. Which is much a much better choice than JTS - Jumping the Shark or otherwise

I think "Evaporative Cooling" is descriptive and very apt.

Re: Do Social News Sites Deteriorate? (Analysis of 1.8M HN Comments)

#52

Post by AJ007 »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #46

Others have done a good job at critiquing the automated analysis, so I will concentrate on the hypothesis. >There is a perceived phenomenon among online social news communities (e.g. Digg, reddit) that as the popularity of the community increases, the average member becomes baser and the overall quality of discourse decreases. I think that's not an accurate portrayal. Having been through the "decline" of Reddit (been…

Here is a metric that should be measured, reading level: http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...

In the 16 or so years I've been online I've watched many communities grow, expand, and vanish. For better or worse a large community never functions the same as a small one. Beyond theories and conjectures, it would be interesting to know why.

Re: Do Social News Sites Deteriorate? (Analysis of 1.8M HN Comments)

#53

Post by djcapelis »

tansey wrote: post #45
pg wrote: post #39

"Thus, if we look at the PG analysis as a measure of his mental state, we can speculate this is due to the prosperity he’s experienced in these last few years." Actually it's because the site has become so large that I have to be more diplomatic. When it was small I could say harsh-sounding things without worrying about being misinterpreted. Now I have to be more of a politician.

That was my other hypothesis, but it didn't really correlate well with the growth in the site's user base. HN has experienced an exponential growth rate, but your comments show a linear decline in negative impact. I went with the "better life" theory because it seems like personal prosperity and happiness would be more likely to show gradual, linear change. This is also supported by the trends I saw in other famous t…

Maybe they decided to become more diplomatic as the community has gotten larger and begun to have real impact on people's reputation. Why do you think that would just be limited to pg?

I would think HN-famous people would especially be prone to become more diplomatic as their comments began to have more impact.

Re: Do Social News Sites Deteriorate? (Analysis of 1.8M HN Comments)

#54

Post by [deleted] »

sfk wrote: post #31
tansey wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And with that, I throw down the gauntlet. Analyze this! Sure. Scored with EffectCheck: Anxiety - Very High Hostility - High Depression - Very High Confidence - Low Compassion - Low Happiness - Very Low I will post a longer explanation detailing how/why it works, since others have had this question as well.

I'm not sure that I understand. You have just demonstrated that the algorithm does not work.

[deleted]

Re: Do Social News Sites Deteriorate? (Analysis of 1.8M HN Comments)

#55

Post by vecter »

tansey wrote: post #25
rryan wrote: post #10

Where are the confidence intervals and error bars? In order to be taken seriously when aggregating 1.8MM comments, you need those. The variability in pg's plots makes me think the data for any individual is going to be just as noisy.

We are looking at a time-based analysis of the monthly means of PG and the HN community. The null hypothesis is that the slope of a regression line should be 0. Since we are dealing with a time-based analysis of the mean, the variance of each bucket is irrelevant. I re-ran the analysis to make sure that my results were statistically significant: Anxiety/Confidence PG: p Hostility/Compassion PG: p Depression/Happiness…

p values only make sense when the residuals are normal and independent. Is that true for this data set?

Re: Do Social News Sites Deteriorate? (Analysis of 1.8M HN Comments)

#56

Post by waterlesscloud »

sfk wrote: post #31
tansey wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And with that, I throw down the gauntlet. Analyze this! Sure. Scored with EffectCheck: Anxiety - Very High Hostility - High Depression - Very High Confidence - Low Compassion - Low Happiness - Very Low I will post a longer explanation detailing how/why it works, since others have had this question as well.

I'm not sure that I understand. You have just demonstrated that the algorithm does not work.

I'd argue that it worked perfectly, actually.

What were the poster's true motivations? Not what they stated, but what they truly meant.

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