Sup Forums Sup Forums abridged history: this board in pictures, numbers and squiggly lines (tenth installment)

Pic related is the distribution of the relative proportion of posts made with custom flags. The next few charts will contain the following charts.

> number of posts per day, since 2014
> number of posts per day, since 2016
> percentage of posts made with custom flag vs. with geographical flag
> distribution of the relative proportion made with geographic flags
> percentage of posts made with the top 4 geographic flags compared with custom flags and the rest of the world

Two highlights can be taken by the data

> activity is slowing down, going down to the lower level post Election Day
> custom flag novelty is wearing off and its use is declining steadily with the following being the most used: Nazi, followed by Templar, Conferedate, Pirate and Gadsden, Fascist and AnCap.

Any comment or suggestion for new data to be collected? Will post this again next thread.

This is the tenth installment of the "Sup Forums Sup Forums abridged history: the story of this board in pictures, numbers and squiggly lines" (the eigth can be found at , also at the archives at [1]).

[1] archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/130028557/#130028557

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=ixZGWjbY6To
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Thanks a ton, user; good to see some data being collected.

Good graph user

Here you can see the complete story of the activity in this board since 2014. You can roughly divide the site in the following sections:

> creation to gamergate
> gamergate to Sup Forumsharbor
> Sup Forumsharbor to Charlie Hebdo
> Charlie Hebdo to Bataclan
> Bataclan to Brussels attack
> Brussels attack to Orlando Shooting
> Orlando Shooting to Nice attack / Turkey coup
> Turkey coup to Hillary faint at 9/11
> Hillary faint at 9/11 to Election Day
> Election Day to Canada mosque bombing
> Canada mosque bombing to Syria Airfield bombing
> Syria Airfield bombing forward

The quick rundown of how this board went from there to here would be:

> this board was the refuge of AnCap and unironic Nazis.
> gamergate brought the first wave of outsiders, fed up by the fact discussion of the subject was being stiffled everywhere for not being on topic (goto excuse was: "this is politics, hence offtopic for Sup Forums, reddit and all the game forums)
> mods tried to stiffle it here for not being politics but vidya (ironically, considering they were stiffling it at Sup Forums for not being politics)
> a crossover of old/b/, old/v/ and locals trolled the staff into submission
> moot then tried to kill this board with Sup Forumsharbor
> old inhabitants mostly gave up and migrated elsewhere
> old/b/ and old/v/ stuck around, considering there was nowhere else to go
> charlie hebdo brought this whole new crowd here, as discussion about radical islamic terrorism was being stiffled everywhere else
> lots of race related happenings and this place was still the only one allowing for unvetted unmoderated politically incorrect talk and word spread around. Rapid growth
> comes Bataclan and consequences would never be the same
> rapid growth peaks at Brussels attacks
> holding pattern until June 2016, then rapid growth due to numerous happennings between Orlando shooting and the German suicide bomber

The story the data is telling is that islamic terrorism, race related events and the fact this is the one place people can talk freely about it were the main factors in the rapid growth of this board. Trump for sure contributed but not as much as those other two factors.

Trump as a factor is minor, his controversies surely can increase temporarily the activity but it always to back to previous level. Radical Islamic terrorism on the other hand, people come to this place because it is the only that allow unfiltered unmoderated slanderous controversial talk and a sizable part of the newcomers stay for the ride

Pic related is the individual percentages in 2017-06-26 and I'm amazed to find out that there are as many canadians as there are australians in this board

I've noticed that a lot of Germans are using the European Unions flag. Have you monitored the drop in German posters?

This is important data! Get this moving everyone.

>I've noticed that a lot of Germans are using the European Unions flag. Have you monitored the drop in German posters?

Actually yes, but just for a few days. Pic related was made about a week after custom flags came back and it shows the countries that lost the most users as a proportion of their former bases. I'll likely update it with more recent data very soon but that should be a good indication.

It's not the subjects matter that attracts people to this board, that's secondary, it's the interaction.

I disagree. People first find out about this site in occasions when all the rest of the internet and mainstream media clamps down on information and enact an effective "blackout". I remember the whole internet discussing the Orlando Shooting when they still believed it was a white shooter and then, when it was found it was "religion of peace" all of a sudden media and social media blackout except for this little corner.

Pic related is the distribution by national flag, custom flags excluded. Americans still make not only the plurality of the posts but also the majority of them.

Good to see we're the least cowardly nation on this board

bump

People play around in the site and comes from different backgrounds, but it's board culture what makes them stay and spread the site around.

>People play around in the site

In this site, yes. On Sup Forums in particular, it's happennings. Just look at again:

After Bataclan spike the bottom number of posts per day never went below the previous record high number of posts not made on Sup Forumsharbor. People really came for the happenings while I agree they stayed for the board culture (whatever that means in this board)

Pic related is the collage of many of the charts already presented in this thread for easy viewing.

Nice job

Those are the lurkers, those are even worst they are the ones that spread memes in real life.

Seriously, you're work is top notch
It's amazing how much time you invest into these

>Any comment or suggestion for new data to be collected?
Dont ever use white text on a yellow background.

The two countries have comparable populations.

It`s the balance of banter/shitpost.

How did you collect the data?

He wrote scripts to data mine the archives

Thanks.

Thanks for posting that.

>scripts to data mine the archives
This topic fascinates me but I don't know where to begin, could you recommend a resource or technology, user?

Brits confirmed for not caring about shitty new flags, I guess.

learn python

>of chinese/indian immigrants who shitpost

If you ain't using Old Glory, you're worthless either way.

>Those are the lurkers, those are even worst they are the ones that spread memes in real life.
DId you even read the chart I linked? It is the "number of posts per day", lurkers by definition don't post.

>It's amazing how much time you invest into these
At most a few hours a month, mostly to tune the tools and skills I use for my day job.

>Dont ever use white text on a yellow background.
Blame it on Excel, it chose the colours and I didn't change. Canada deserved that tho given their current demeanor in this board and (as it can be seen) I can run the data but I can't design my way out of a paperbag

>How did you collect the data?
Custom script to fetch from 4plebs API, Excel to run the numbers and make the charts

This chart has the series of happenings that responsible for this board to go from 40 000 posts a day to 120 000 posts a day. I really doubt there will ever be a year with so many happenings and so close to each other.

Contrast that with the chart in . People like to blame the influx of new users and outsiders on Trump's campaign but there was almost no growth from January 2016 to June 2017 except for spikes in relevant dates.

Nothing like what I show in pic related, that triple the audience of this site.

bump

>Custom script to fetch from 4plebs API
What language do you use?

Interesting also how Americans and Canadians seem to switch to custom flags and then return to original flags at about the same. (Don't get confused by bigger drop for Americans because there were more to start with.)

In case it's not obvious, the switch back to custom flags was on June 13, sometime between 1 and 11 am PDT.

Thanks

Of course the reasonably high standards here in terms of literacy and bants likely mean that a lot of foreign flags are flown by people either away or closely affiliated to the anglo sphere
That being the case they are likely to be less reticent about ditching their flags than natives of the region.

Good point, a lot of the non-Anglo flags claim to be people on trips.

And a lot of the barely literate abuse is from custom flags.

bumping

>learn python
>What language do you use?

Yeah, that would do but the basics of Unix / Linux bash and tools would do. Will post the script here verbatim, the one used to fetch the post numbers per day. The only dependencies are

> bash (but should work on sh or zsh or your favourite shell as well)
> curl
> grep
> sed

Here is the script

> d=2017-06-15
> while [ "$d" != $(date '+%Y-%m-%d') ]; do
> old=$d
> d=$(date -I -d "$d + 1 day")
> s="archive.4plebs.org/pol/search/start/"$old"/end/"$d"/"
> results=$(curl -s $s | grep "results found" | sed 's/^.*[^0-9]\([0-9]\+\) results.*$/\1/g')
> echo $old" "$results
> sleep 15
> done

Here is the algorithm

> date = some start date
> while the date is not today
>> old date = date
>> date = next date
>> set the 4plebs search url to whatever it needs to be
>> curl to fetch the page
>> grep to find the line with how many results it found
>> sed to leave only the numeric part of the sentence
>> print the date and result separated by a tab
>> wait 15 seconds because they limit it to 5 queries per minute (could be 12 seconds but better safe than sorry)

Very simple script. The one to capture by flag, by tag or other data is equally simple but the combination of them gives me the exact data I need to input on the real tool: Excel

Pic related is one done with older data: threads per day. The ratio between threads and posts is a good indicator of the presence of outsiders not familiarized with the inner workings of this board and, instead of joining a thread already on topic, they make another one because they can't use the catalog. Either that or raids or shilling, happens once in a while as well.

>shell scripting
that's old school cool
very nice

Just my personal anecdote. I stopped visiting Sup Forums a few years ago because I was creeped out by the "are Poles white?"-type posts. Then I came back shortly before the presidential election, saw that this topic and several others had been banned, and have been back ever since.

>New Zealand
>Austria
>Croatia
>Spain

These countries aren't exactly big targets for banter whereas Poland, Israel and Romania would be. This graph hence suggests that custom flags aren't simply an issue of people not wanting to be targeted for their country but rather some other, perhaps arbitrary, reason(s). It's likely that people who complain about custom flags are those who came in 2015 at the earliest meaning that custom flags are new to them and since they don't like "change" they complain about it. Therefore people that use custom flags aren't pussies but rather the people that complain about them are newfags

The flag is a fuckin joke. Look at the hundreds of bar codes around you. That's the flag.

I remember the custom flags and am still unhappy about switching back to them. I don't like being called a lardburger by someone hiding behind a custom flag like a coward. I also miss the charm and /comfy/ness of a more international board.

BTW I'm really getting into Kilbeggan. See what I mean?

Nice thread.
I've always been partial to this image since it clearly shows the dilution in the main userbase due to phoneposters.

More like confirmed for being circlejerking wankers

There is need to be upset, my froggy friend.

Yeah I use geoflags myself since I do think having some cultural context is good. Also yeah back when custom flags were all we had there were calls for Sup Forums to adopt geoflags but I don't think the majority of people complaining about custom flags now were here back then posting about how Sup Forums should have geoflags too. I think they're newfag phoneposters () which is were my issue lies

You are disregarding the data presented before you to reach for some emotional reaction of gut feeling.
See again: This site audience more than double, likely tripled since custom flags existed, it is natural that current use won't match the use back before Sup Forumsharbor. Many people started using the new political flags for old time sake but those are the minority, considering the great majority of today audience likely came to this site in the time period mentioned at I have a theory that even before Sup Forumsharbor the original board users (let's call it /old/pol) got displaced by the first wave of Gamergate refugees, dropped here head first by the actions of the staff and the users of Sup Forums and Sup Forums:

> "politics belong on Sup Forums" turned to
> "poliics is offtopic here, thread locked or pruned, user warned or banned" turned to
> go back to Sup Forums

I could guess a large share of /old/pol moved to 8ch while a large share of today's users aren't from reddit or any other internet boogeyman but just old/b/ and old/v/ shunned here for not conforming with the strict moderation and politically correctness of their boards.

In other words: Sup Forums is just 2006 Sup Forums grown up and politically active, once more for the lulz

Pic related, number of posts by indians, slightly outdated. That was asked many times last time I made this thread. The conclusion is that Indians never posted here much anyway, a single poster (Designated Shitposter OP) when he was active on Trump general last year was responsible for about half the indian posts in this site.

The most recent spiker is just a shitposter that popped up and disappeared. For "rarers" countries a single user can double or even triple their post count in a day

Nice.
youtube.com/watch?v=ixZGWjbY6To

I hope we blockade your island once you leave the EU, this time no Prussia or Russia to save your ass.

>I could guess a large share of /old/pol...

Interesting way to look at it.

>In other words: Sup Forums is just 2006 Sup Forums grown up and politically active, once more for the lulz
no truer words have been spoken

I worked with that idiot.

>no truer words have been spoken
Another proof for that was /mlpol/. It was alike a 06 // reunion, Sup Forumstards shunned for their cartoon hobby meet Sup Forumstards shunned for their political opinion when chanology "internet is unironically serious business" took over that place

>I worked with that idiot.
The bloke who shot up the place?

here's another bump

Final bump, will take questions if any arise otherwise it was a pleasure to share this with you guys.

Stay safe

Have a bump from me user

bump

Kek, this thread can die its natural life now. More installments will come in the future

keep up the good work

Have you also been here since the first day, op?

Data analysis of peace...

Good work, Portugal

What is the program?

I've been here since 2011 and I remember when geoflags first got here. People were pissed. It did change the board culture a fair bit.

I was on Sup Forums in 06
there was about a year of Sup Forums that is unarchived and lost to the world outside of those of us that saved the threads manually ;)

This is some really great stuff, user. Thanks for the work.