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The Forum > General Discussion > Who is the most active member on this forum?

Who is the most active member on this forum?

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Every day I walk past the newsagent and choose not to buy one or more of the publications on offer. Similarly, there are several radio stations that I never listen to. If I’m up and about in the early hours of the morning, turning on the TV never crosses my mind, because I know what the commercial stations have on offer at this time.

This is filtering, in the old-fashioned second-millennium way. I’m not agitating to have the unwanted media messages banned – I’m simply choosing not to expose myself to them. No-one would ever call this censorship, because quite simply, it’s not.

With new media, it’s different. I can filter out emails, but without the assistance of the server owner, I can’t filter out forum postings I don’t want to read. In proposing the introduction of a user filter, I am not suggesting that any people or topics be banned from this forum. I am simply asking for help with the same kind of filtering here that we all apply to more traditional media.

Naturally, this is seen as a threat by some people, because it will limit their opportunities to dump their messages on others. In response to the perceived threat, emotive terms like censorship are used, which in fact don’t apply here.

So let’s get one thing straight – filtering out particular users’ postings is not censorship. It’s enabling individuals to use third-millennium tools to customise their personal use of third-millennium media.

Like I said before, bring it on.
Posted by jpw2040, Wednesday, 21 November 2007 9:35:42 AM
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I just happened to be in the same room as our TV the other day, and the Dr Phil show was on. I am not an avid viewer, but Dr Phil was making the interesting observation that "oftentimes things that are phrased as questions are really statements, and are so phrased because the poser of the question does not want to own the statement".

Angela84 posed a simple question. It was equally simply answerable to anyone familiar with the site tools by resorting to the user profiles, and indeed it appeared she may have already used the user profile tool. Her question did, however, open the gate to responses, some of which seem to have attempted to equate posting activity with offensiveness or a hogging of the discussion.

Inspired by TRTL's gathering of statistics on comment-attraction of topics, I offer the following rough statistics on posting activity of participants in this thread, in afferbeck lauder.

Poster - Total Posts - Joining Date - Posts since mid-October 2007

Angela84 17 9 Aug 2007 <17

Belly 1250 7 Nov 2005 128

BOAZ_David 4478 8 Jan 2005 76

CJMorgan 1068 18 Sep 2006 177

DEMOS 616 13 Jul 2006 110

Forrest Gumpp 305 10 Oct 2006 7

Foxy 173 21 Oct 2007 173

jpw2040 73 18 Apr 2005 <30

Ludwig 1679 6 Nov 2005 106

Romany 189 5 Jun 2006 18

Spritegal 20 8 Sep 2007 <20

TRTL 1122 23 Jun 2006 141

Perhaps what can be derived from this tabulation is that whilst some posters (perhaps most notably B_D)maintain a fairly consistent output of posts over time, others seem to be more prolific during periods like the run-up to an election. The latter being hardly surprising, in a forum of social and political debate.

To my way of thinking, there seems to be no case for introduction of a 'user filter' or 'ignore' function to the Forum on the basis of a user's posting output, unless all of the black sheep of the Forum happen to have flocked together on this one thread.
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Wednesday, 21 November 2007 2:56:44 PM
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Forrest, the data you have provided say nothing about user consistency. You’ll need to graph them over time if you really want to support your conclusion here.

This is my 15th post since 15 October, so your <30 figure is somewhat off the mark. None of my posts have been election-related.

Nor have I made any claims about a relationship between quantity and quality.

Finally, I’m not suggesting "a 'user filter' or 'ignore' function ... on the basis of a user's posting output." I think any individual user should be able to filter out any other user for any reason at all.
Posted by jpw2040, Wednesday, 21 November 2007 5:46:56 PM
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jpw2040,

Further to the subject of a user filter.

On reflection, I agree my use of the term "outright censorship" in relation to your proposal of a user filter, in my last post but one, was less than the best choice of words. I certainly wasn't trying to be emotive. If anything, extreme subtlety would be more the hallmark of what might be a concomitant of such a site feature.

In your last post but one, in relation to your filtering proposal, the key phrase was "... without the assistance of the server owner[, I can’t filter out forum postings I don’t want to read.]" You are precisely correct. The server owner would, with a filter facility such as you have proposed, have the basis for a covert and exclusive analysis, arising out of the use of the filter, of the seeming positive dislikes of particular users for other particular posters, or their seeming 'messages'. Such analysis would be the exclusive property of OLO, and rightly so given that it is OLO's forum, not ours.

Once in possession of such data generated by the use of the filter by users, it would be possible for all manner of subtle editorial influence to come to be exercised. Now I am not suggesting that OLO would advance its own credibility by actually using such data in this way. The real point is, however, that once installed, data from such a feature's use would of necessity automatically be collected somewhere in the OLO computer system. Once collected it could be capable of being used by somebody, not necessarily OLO, for manipulating the Forum. Cracking of sites, not to mention theft or loss of stored data on discs, is not unknown. If never collected, exploits based upon such data cannot occur.

Perhaps I can make my concerns more understandable by reference to an analogous unrecognized collection of data for exclusive analysis by the collector in another arena, that of electoral administration. This will take at least another post, so I hope I do not bore the Forum too much.
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Thursday, 22 November 2007 8:10:05 AM
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(continued)

In process of constructing the 'mark-back roll' after any electoral event, the AEC scans all the unique-to-polling-place certified lists of electors that have had the names in which votes have been claimed marked off during the polling. When all such lists have been scanned with an optical mark reader, a data base will have been constructed from which it is possible to determine all those names against which no claim for a vote has been made. This sub-set of enrolled electors becomes the target of the 'please explain' letters. A completely legitimate use of data.

Perhaps not so well known is the fact that an analysis can be done as to in which polling place any elector cast their vote. It is called 'catchment analysis'. It has been happening since 1987. A good picture now exists as to the degree of habituality with which electors use polling places.

In the wrong hands, such a tool could be used in effecting electoral manipulation. For example, in the case of a polling place with a high degree of habituality of electors voting thereat, and also a pronounced local bias as to the political party characteristically favoured, with this information it would be possible to target particular electors for disfranchisement with a statistical probability that they would have likely otherwise voted for a particular party.

In similar manner the information could be used to mask genuine trends by targetting particular polling places as the places to cast votes claimed against bogus enrolments marked to give opposite effect. If such claims broadly matched the number of local disfranchisements there would be little apparent change in the number of electors voting in that polling place. It would appear as if there had been a change in party support by the genuine habitual voters in that place.

The point is not that the AEC is unlikely to misuse this data. It is that the data has been collected in the first case. Once in electronic form, it is so easily copied, transmitted, hacked, stolen, or lost without anyone necessarily knowing.
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Thursday, 22 November 2007 12:08:56 PM
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jpw2040,

I must thank you for the link supplied in your post of 5 November 2007 to the thread of the topic "What about 4 posts a day as the limit?" (see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1189#21843 ) linking to OpenForum.com.au and the Australian Government Policy Development Blog initiative (http://www.openforum.com.au/Survey ).

All fascinating stuff, and a most interesting site to surf. On a first perusal of some of the pages it becomes clear how relatively advanced some of the OLO features are by comparison. One thing isn't quite clear though: the page you provided the link to states that the survey has already closed, whereas elsewhere on the site it says that comments will be received up until 1 December 2007. Do you know the true position?

With respect to the rough posting statistics in my earlier post, the operative word was 'rough'. I certainly wasn't trying to make it appear as though you had posted more frequently than in fact you had. I had simply taken a stab at random at your posting history as shown in the user profile. The post I opened was dated 30 May 2007. It was obvious that by no stretch of the imagination could you be regarded as a prolific poster, so I just didn't bother to refine the figure. 15 posts since mid-October would have been about my rough guess, too.

Overall, I was just trying to introduce some perspective with respect to other users postings than those of the unofficial winner of an 'award' based upon the greatest number of posts. Incidentally, at an average rate of 130 posts per month, B_D is trailing Foxy who is currently posting at around 170 per month since joining on 21 Oct 2007.

All,

I also belatedly notice that I inadvertently omitted RObert, who had participated in the discussion, from the posting statistics for this thread. He had made a total of 1740 comments since joining on 20 January 2005, with 45 since mid-October 2007. Sorry, RObert.
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Saturday, 24 November 2007 1:31:34 PM
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