SpiderWebMiscreant
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Posted - 2010.01.10 08:21:00 -
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Percentage of Total Posts over Time
This is an alternate view of the previous data. The data was transformed such that each date represents a percentage of the total posts made by an individual. Here we can see that while Akita maintains a fairly uniform 3-4% activity each month, Lord's burst of activity between December 2006 and March 2007 accounted for 35% of his posts to date. Superficially, July 07 and March-June 08 correlate closely, potentially suggesting similar activity levels, which would be expected of a Main-Alt relationship. Interesting, July 07 for Lord appears to be a time-shifted version of Akita's September 07 data. This suggets that there are variations in activity level which may be accounted for by two independent players. Lastly, the inverse relationship seen in December 09 appears even more drastic when in the context of percentage of total posts.
Normalized Posts over Time
Another transormation of the same data, this time normalized against the largest value in each poster's history. The month with the most posts obtains a value of one (1) and the rest are scaled proportionally. Here we see similar trends highlighted in the previous examinations, although the correlations appear much stronger in this view.
Forum Activity
These pie charts show the percentage of posts in particular forums. It seems these two individuals have different posting preferences - Lord tends to post in GD, MD and COAD while Akita posts in GD and a variety of other forums. Few correlations can be discerned from this data, as there may be many confounding factors. Many people use alts to post things they do not want associated with their main; in this respect, Lord might fit as an alt due to the heavy presence in COAD. On the other hand, alts may be used to bolster or argue with a main (as theorized in MD), which this data may or may not support. Lastly, the sheer quantity of posts by Akita may be smoothing over more interesting data, effectively getting lost amongs all the other posts. A more detailed year-by-year analysis may show more interesting trends; however, this was not performed.
A table of complete values/percentages may be found here
Timezone Analysis
A more rigorous analysis involves looking at the actual post times of an individual. This graph shows the percentage of posts each individual makes on a particular hour (in 24-hr format). Here, for the first time, we can see a clear demarcation between Akita and Lord. Akita's data is inherently "smoother" than Lord's due to her incredibly prolific posting history, but the trends are easily seen. While both individuals seem to post at all hours, the peak posting hours appear almost 12 hours phase-shifted. This is the first strong indication that these two posters are in fact two different people.
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