The most discussed webcomics on the forums by number of threads

[137beth]

I decided, mainly for my own curiosity, to find out which comics have generated the most discussion on the Giants in the Playground forums. It is not possible to determine this statistic exactly, because discussions of a particular comic can crop up anywhere, including on threads whose topics are unrelated to comics. A slightly easier quantity to compare is the total number of posts in all threads on this subforum that are devoted to a particular comic. For example, one could in principle estimate the popularity of Gunnerkrigg Court on the forum by adding up the number of posts on all Gunnerkrigg Court threads. However, this number is still infeasible to calculate. The threads on this forum do not have a uniform naming scheme, so someone would have to go through every thread on the board and manually determine which comic is associated with each thread. With more than 2200 threads on this board, this task is not practical.

One somewhat crude estimate for the number of posts on a particular webcomic is the number of threads devoted to that webcomic which are "full"--i.e., at or close to 50 pages. There are numerous shortcomings to this method. For example, a comic for which there are 10 threads, each with 10 pages, would be overlooked in this count. Nonetheless, I think the number of full threads is a decent approximation for how much discussion a comic gets on this forum. It's also much easier to obtain, thanks to the forum software's ability to sort threads by number of replies (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?17-Webcomics&sort=replycount&order=desc).


The following list is my best effort to catalogue the number of threads with at least 45 pages devoted to each comic on this board. I chose 45 as an arbitrary cutoff point for when a thread is "nearly full." There are only nine threads with between 45 and 49 pages, so the exact cutoff point isn't terribly important. Most threads with 45 pages or more have exactly 50 pages. As of March 26 2018, there are exactly 161 threads with 45 pages or more on this board, and there are 20 distinct comics among the 161 threads. I do not claim that the list is free of errors: if you notice that I made a mistake, please point it out to me (see also the "missing information" section for stuff I could use help with).

Each entry in the list is formatted in four lines:
1)The title of the comic
2)The comic's URL
3)The number of threads for the comic with at least 45 pages
4)A link to the most recent thread with at least 45 pages. Note, in many cases this will be the next-to-most-recent thread for a comic. If there are seven threads with 50 pages each, then there is probably an eight thread somewhere.


Okay, enough preliminaries. Onward to the actual list!


The List
Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire
dominic-deegan.com
52
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?278590-Dominic-Deegan-Mk-XLIX-I-Finally-Found-My-Keys!

Girl Genius
girlgeniusonline.com
21
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?529521-Girl-Genius-XXII-Paris-Needs-Pants

Goblins
goblinscomic.com
15
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?401556-Goblins-XV-Klik-Here

Questionable Content
questionablecontent.net
11
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?531481-Questionable-Content-11-It-s-Like-Seeing-a-Unicorn

Erfworld
erfworld.com
9
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?510568-Erfworld-Thread-IX-By-the-Flower-and-Gray-Skull

MS Paint Adventures
mspaintadventures.com
7
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?263975-MS-Paint-Adventures-7-At-the-Price-of-Oblivion

Gunnerkrigg Court
gunnerkrigg.com
6
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?434908-Gunnerkrigg-Court-6-Fire-Away

Schlock Mercenary
schlockmercenary.com
6
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?502918-Schlock-Mercenary-VII-A-T-A-D-Too-Much-Dialogue-These-Days

Keychains of Creation
keychain.patternspider.net
5
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?172378-Keychain-of-Creation-5-Can-t-Hit-6-for-a-Century

Star Power
starpowercomic.com
5
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?445333-Star-Power-V-The-Final-Yawntier

Darths and Droids
darthsanddroids.net
4
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?424164-Darths-and-Droids-V-Thread-IV-Was-Eaten-By-Dogs&p=19454578#post19454578

Dr. McNinja
drmcninja.com
4
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?383550-Dr-McNinja-IV-What-The-Chuck

Menage a 3
menagea3.net
4
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?280720-M%E9nage-%E0-3-IV-It-s-All-Coming-to-a-Head

Bibliography
[No longer online?]
3
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?174865-Bibliography-III

El Goonish Shive
egscomics.com
3
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?411258-El-Goonish-Shive-III-Totally-Adorkable!

Grrl Power
grrlpowercomic.com
2
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?431652-Grrl-Power-Thread-2-The-Most-Common-Super-Power

CTRL+ALT+DELETE
cad-comic.com
1
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?262359-The-end-of-Ctrl-Alt-Del

Drow Tales
drowtales.com
1
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?160365-Drowtales-The-Info-Dump

Unsounded
casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic+index/
1
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?233153-Unsounded-quite-possibly-the-(2nd)-best-webcomic-I-have-seen

Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic
yafgc.net
1
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?103457-Yet-another-fantasy-gamer-comic-discuss



Here is some other information that the above list ignores:
a)You may have noticed that the thread number on the Girl Genius threads suggests that there are 22 threads, not 21 as the list claims. However, the Girl Genius Thread III (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?92541-Girl-Genius-III-Nize-Thread!) did not make it to 45 pages: it was locked at 42 pages.

b)A similar thing happened to Schlock Mercenary. Schlock Mercenary thread 2 does not seem to exist, or if it does it is under 45 pages.

c)Most threads which make it to 45 pages end up with exactly 50 pages. A handful cross over to 51 pages. As of March 16 2018, there are only four thread with more than 51 pages. These are the first three Dominic Deegan threads (which have 301, 77, and 63 pages, respectively), and the first Girl Genius thread (57 pages). If these extra posts are taken into account, then Dominic Deegan and Girl Genius are even further ahead of their competition then the list indicates.

d)Prior to the first Erfworld thread, there was an Erfworld board (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?47-Erfworld). The board had no threads with 45 pages, but all the posts in that board added together would have several full threads worth of posts. I do not see a way to quickly get the total number of posts on the Erfworld board, since it is not visible from its parent forum. Does anyone know how to do this? It would be nice to know exactly how much Erfworld is being under-counted by the list.

e)Of course, there is also a separate board for The Order of the Stick, which has more posts than this entire subforum.


Missing information that I would appreciate your help with
--As noted above, is there a way to see the total post count in the now-locked Erfworld board, without writing a web scraper to go through and get the post count of each thread individually?

--There are three full threads on a webcomic called Bibliography. The most recent thread for the comic is here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?199609-Bibliography-IV). The link given on that thread no longer works. Is the comic still available to read anywhere? If not, can anyone find an archive.org link to the comic from after the last update but before it went offline?

--And finally, if you notice any mistakes in this post, please tell me.

[Narkis]

--There are three full threads on something called "Strip Slays," the most recent of which is here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?108763-Strip-Slays-3-Someone-Is-Going-To-Slay-For-This-Outrage). None of the threads appear to link to an actual comic, though. Most of them seem to be taken up by images posted in the threads, many of which are no longer visible due to Photobucket's change in policy. Can anyone explain what these threads were? Was there an actual comic?

That I can help with. "Strip slays" were a part of the Dominic Deegan hatedom. They were made by taking DD strips and replacing the original dialogue with something else, usually with the intend to mock. There was no separate comic, but some of the slays were quite inspired.

[137beth]

That I can help with. "Strip slays" were a part of the Dominic Deegan hatedom. They were made by taking DD strips and replacing the original dialogue with something else, usually with the intend to mock. There was no separate comic, but some of the slays were quite inspired.

Thank you. In that case, I suppose Strip Slays should be counted towards Dominic Deegan's thread total.

[PhantomFox]

'Popular' may have to be taken with a grain of salt, since the DD threads were pretty much 100% snark.

[halfeye]

'Popular' may have to be taken with a grain of salt, since the DD threads were pretty much 100% snark.

No, popular to comment on counts, even if the comment is criticism.

[Vinyadan]

I'd like to notice that one DD thread actually got over 300 pages :smallbiggrin:

[Rogar Demonblud]

No, popular to comment on counts, even if the comment is criticism.

Yeah, because otherwise you have to throw out all the Erfworld threads, since they're about 80% complaining about the update schedule. Or at least, they were before I quit.

[Vinyadan]

https://s14.postimg.org/4apryhy1d/Captain-_Planet-_Ma-_Ti-_Hitler.jpg

[137beth]

'Popular' may have to be taken with a grain of salt, since the DD threads were pretty much 100% snark.

There's a reason I called this thread "most discussed webcomics" instead of "most popular" :amused:"

[137beth]

Somehow, I missed the fact that Drowtales has a 46 page thread. Also, I overcounted Schlock Mercenary: despite it currently being on thread VII (which is over 45 pages), this only seems to be the sixth full thread. Both of these errors have now been corrected in the OP.