Graph of largest RPG forums

[Yora]

Someone at RPGnet posted this graph (https://public.tableau.com/profile/joshua.kitz#!/vizhome/TreemapoftheRPGcommunity/Dashboard1) of the largest RPG related forums on the internet (sadly, no data on either WotC or Paizo available).

Standard display is for number of registered account, but you can change it to measure by number of posts instead at the top.

[Closet_Skeleton]

The active members thing seems to be broken, most sites only have 1.

Unless GitP's is me and the rest of you are zombies.

[Killer Angel]

Unless GitP's is me and the rest of you are zombies.

Even better. It's only you, the Solipsist. :smallwink:

[golentan]

The active members thing seems to be broken, most sites only have 1.

Unless GitP's is me and the rest of you are zombies.

I'd be willing to believe you're all figments of my imagination...

[Madcrafter]

It seems a little strange to me to include that statistic if there is only data from five of the 40 or so sites examined.

[Heliomance]

It doesn't include Brilliant Gameologists.

[Hiro Protagonest]

This graph is wrong, GitP has TWO active users! Serpentine and Coidzor! They're the Colossi in the Playground. :smalltongue:

[Duck999]

There are more colossi.
Also, I like the posts per thread feature, but it seems like a pointless measure. It's cool how GiTP is pretty big in all of them... except active members.

[Lord Loss]

Cool stuff, I had always wondered how this forum ranked in terms of prominence/activity. I think the mythweavers member count might be a little inflated if it counts the people who just use it to host character sheets, though.

[Duck999]

Also, the number of members, posts, and threads are all slightly off from the stats at the bottom of these forums.

[Lord Loss]

Also, the number of members, posts, and threads are all slightly off from the stats at the bottom of these forums.

Perhaps it adjusts its statistics on an infrequent or delayed basis?

[Duck999]

Perhaps it adjusts its statistics on an infrequent or delayed basis?

Actually, it appears that (when I checked) some numbers were larger (one), and I think 2 others were smaller. Not sure how that worked out.

Cool that we have the second largest posts per thread.

[Bulldog Psion]

Interesting, even if its flaws make me somewhat suspicious of its results.

[Grinner]

Cool that we have the second largest posts per thread.

That's one thing I like about this forum. Other forums I've been on, you're lucky to get maybe five responses.

[huttj509]

That's one thing I like about this forum. Other forums I've been on, you're lucky to get maybe five responses.

How many of those responses are the same 2 people arguing for 5 pages, though?

[Closet_Skeleton]

How many of those responses are the same 2 people arguing for 5 pages, though?

Usually some idiot will jump into that 5 page argument without reading more than the first 2 pages and rehash all the arguments and drag things out even more, so just 2 people arguing is quite rare.

[Mx.Silver]

This graph is wrong, GitP has TWO active users! Serpentine and Coidzor! They're the Colossi in the Playground. :smalltongue:

They're actually the same person, just with two accounts.

[Androgeus]

Also, I like the posts per thread feature, but it seems like a pointless measure.

I wonder how much the 50 page limit affects that number.

[Aedilred]

I wonder how much the 50 page limit affects that number.

Difficult to tell, but I don't think it's likely to have had a huge effect. The post limit is more important than the page limit and GitP has a fairly generous posts/page allowance compared to some other fora, so it caps out at 1,500 per thread. Roleplay Online, which seems to be the only forum with a significantly larger posts/thread (although that seems to include only game threads and thus can be expected to be higher; I think that needs to be recalculated given the margin by which it exceeds others) has a post limit of 1,000/thread. Enworld has no posts/thread limit but only fifty threads on the forum exceed 1,500, and the average post count among them is only about 2,000 (discounting one wild outlier, which has been left running for nine years). TheRPGsite likewise seems to have no posts/thread limit but only a handful of threads exceed 1,500 views (fewer than ten, from what I can see).

[Duck999]

And the pony thread for example is at LXXXVIII, meaning they have hit the limit more times than there are threads on other forums above our limit.

[Aedilred]

Roleplay Online, which seems to be the only forum with a significantly larger posts/thread (although that seems to include only game threads and thus can be expected to be higher; I think that needs to be recalculated given the margin by which it exceeds others) has a post limit of 1,000/thread.

On further investigation of this point, since I didn't have a lot of time yesterday: the RPOL stats seem to be taken from their own figures where it's stated at the bottom of the forum that "We have 7,733 games with 9,605,886 posts." (Obviously RPOL keep that updated, whereas the graph is a snapshot). But it does seem that that refers only to game threads which would explain why the average is quite so high as it is, at 104.8.

The corresponding measure would be taking only the game-related PbP sub-boards from GITP. Taking figures only from Ongoing Games (IC) and Out-of-Character, that gives 3.4 million posts in about 18,000 threads (obviously figures will go on increasing), for an average posts/thread of 186.64. I suspect similar results would show for other fora on there, but RPOL looks so far ahead of the others I think because only the highest-activity area is counted for whatever reason.

[ChristianSt]

I wonder how much the 50 page limit affects that number.Difficult to tell, but I don't think it's likely to have had a huge effect.

While it is difficult to figure out the exact effect, it is imo pretty easy to figure out that the effect must be rather small. I base the following on the stats of the Free Form Roleplaying forum, which has ~1.2k threads ata 50 pages*. The Free Form Roleplaying forum has ~2.2m posts at ~3.3k threads, so having more than 10% of all posts, while having the by far highest posts/thread per subforum (total posts is ~14m, total threads is ~350k).
Lets extrapolate that while being really generous that all other subforums have the same number of posts/thread and thus** an equal amount of threads at 50 pages. In total that would be ~12k threads (even ignoring threads that "died in time").

Removing these 12k threads from the total number of threads (since they would have not lead to a new thread without the 50 page limit) would raise the posts/thread from 39.74 to 41.15, so increasing it by less than 1.5 posts/thread. That doesn't sound like a huge effect to me.

Since I think that my assumption were far too generous I would expect that increase actually be <1 posts/thread (if I would have to guess a concrete number I would pick 0.3, allowing ~2.7k threads at 50 pages)


*Showing all threads from the beginning in the Free Form Roleplaying forum sorting by replies shows 24 pages of threads >=49 pages each.
**It could be that other subforums have a higher proportion of ~50page threads to threads, if they are distributed in a drastic different manner, but with a much lower posts/thread this seems far too unrealistic to me.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Usually some idiot will jump into that 5 page argument without reading more than the first 2 pages and rehash all the arguments and drag things out even more, so just 2 people arguing is quite rare.

I think I've seen a one on one once in my two years here and it made me beat my head against a wall since the argument itself was mostly pointless.