NESing by the Numbers

[EQandcivfanatic]

All Statistics are Accurate as of February 13, 2012

Back in 2008, I began an effort to catalogue and display all the NESes we've ever had on the CFC Forums. I started this for a number of reasons, first being the fact that there are a number of fascinating premises that never had an NES do them justice. With an appropriate catalog or library of links, these could be observed and perhaps we can do justice to them some day. Second, there exists in the resulting statistics a number of relevant bits of data, which give us a good idea about the status of NESing now and over the years. Since starting this, I've been gradually working on the project, through various forms of employment and school. I'm pleased to say that after nearly three years of working off and on, I've successfully archived and cataloged all NESes we've ever had on these forums. The key component in this has been the use of Microsoft Access for the purposes of data entry. Only during the past few months after a few seizures I suffered in December, I've had an ample amount of free time to complete this endeavor. I'd like to share with you the statistical results that this project has completed. Attached to this post is the raw compiled data, but for those not willing or able to experiment with it, I've provided brief summaries below of the elements I find relevant. I'll post my own conclusions based on this data at another time and possibly another place.

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, due to the various states of mind I've worked on this project, there will inevitably be some errors, but I believe I've eliminated most of them after my revisions. Furthermore, due to incidents on the forums and moderators' personal preferences, some NESes no longer have their updates or even rulesets remaining. On that note, if anyone recalls information about angelscotboi's, Symphony D's, or stalin006's NESes, let me know, so I can fill in any blank spaces in my database. Regardless of these deficiencies, the numbers are fairly correct, though I'll admit I was fairly charitable in what could be defined as an "update" for some NESes.

The Basic Statistics of NESing

Total Number of NESes: 1,001
Total Number of Updates: 4,961
Total Number of Posts on Main NES Threads: 393,987
Average Number of Updates per NES: 4.96
Average Number of Posts per NES Main Thread: 393.59

The NES "Hump"

Terrence888 recently put into words the idea of the NES "hump," which is the point in an NES that it becomes a stable, thriving thread. We all know this to be fairly accurate, as NESes that get to a certain point are more likely to continue than an NES that hasn't made it to that point. The question is: where is the actual mathematical curve for the success of an NES. Without further ado, here's the numbers:

Percentage of NESes that Die on Arrival: 25.17%
Percentage of NESes that Die before the Second Update: 39.7%
Percentage of NESes that Die before the Fifth Update: 67.7%
Percentage of NESes that Die before the Tenth Update: 85.8%
Percentage of NESes that Die before the Twentieth Update: 95.5%
Percentage of NESes that Die before the Fortieth Update: 99.1%

Now, according to those numbers, if you get past the Fifth Update in your NES, you've already beaten consider odds. However, we must consider that not all NESes are measured in terms of updates. Therefore, we have to take a look at any "hump" that may exist in terms of post count as well.

Percentage of NESes that do not make it past 20 Posts: 6.1%
Percentage of NESes that do not make it past 100 Posts: 33%
Percentage of NESes that do not make it past 250 Posts: 61%
Percentage of NESes taht do not make it past 500 Posts: 79%
Percentage of NESes that do not make it past 1,000 Posts: 92.2%

Now as an additional caveat, these numbers are all statistics from 2002 to present. The hump may have differed from year to year, but I still feel that these numbers are indictative on their own.

Moderator Statistics

Now here comes the part that causes myself to cringe a bit. There have been many, many moderators over the course of a thousand NESes, though some of us have moderated more than others. One side project I am currently working on is providing statistics of repeat moderators such as myself. As a sample, here's my own statistics, and others can/will be provided upon request:

EQandCivfanatic
Starting Date of First NES: May 15, 2002
Ending Date of Last NES: Still Active
Total Number of NESes: 59
Total Number of Posts in All NESes' Main Threads: 35,250
Total Number of Updates in all NESes: 539
Average Number of Posts per NES Main Thread: 597.46
Average Number of Updates per NES: 9.14

NESing Over Time

NESing has certainly changed over the years, and with it has come a number of new types of NESes. Some people have claimed that various periods have been more active or inactive than others and this is definitely true. What is not true though is that there is an "NESing" season. Based on all of my entry, there is no particular time of any year that is more active than others. There have been wildly active periods, which are typically followed by slow periods, but never on any reliable schedule or pattern. We'll begin with the number of statistics by year, though remember, that 2012 has only just begun.

2002
# of NESes Begun: 88
# of Posts Attached to Year's NESes: 19,924
# of Updates For Year's NESes: 465

2003
# of NESes Begun: 176
# of Posts Attached to Year's NESes: 38,084
# of Updates for Year's NESes: 1,099

2004
# of NESes Begun: 115
# of Posts Attached to Year's NESes: 41,102
# of Updates for Year's NESes: 690

2005
# of NESes Begun: 112
# of Posts Attached to Year's NESes: 49,687
# of Updates for Year's NESes: 472

2006
# of NESes Begun: 105
# of Posts Attached to Year's NESes: 67,430
# of Updates for Year's NESes: 457

2007
# of NESes Begun: 72
# of Posts Attached to Year's NESes: 47,779
# of Updates for Year's NESes: 466

2008
# of NESes Begun: 104
# of Posts Attached to Year's NESes: 51,411
# of Updates for Year's NESes: 483

2009
# of NESes Begun: 83
# of Posts Attached to Year's NESes: 34,118
# of Updates for Year's NESes: 341

2010
# of NESes Begun: 78
# of Posts Attached to Year's NESes: 26,224
# of Updates for Year's NESes: 249

2011
# of NESes Begun: 61
# of Posts Attached to Year's NESes: 17,742
# of Updates for Year's NESes: 229

2012
# of NESes Begun: 7
# of Posts Attached to Year's NESes: 486
# of Updates for Year's NESes: 10

[Milarqui]

Heh, that was a lotta hard work, EQ!

And very interesting numbers, indeed .

[Ceoladir]

Indeed. Any project lasting approximately four years shows commitment! This is interesting.

[EQandcivfanatic]

The above numbers are the hard facts, and here's some ratings as things go. Needless to say, while this could be a stepping stone to accumulating player statistics, for the time being, all I can do is measure people based on their performance as moderators. to that end, it must be said, we've had over 100 moderators over the years. Most moderators rarely progress beyond a single NES, which usually dies on arrival or shortly thereafter. Based on a conversation with DarthNader, here is a tiered approach on moderator popularity based on the number of Posts their NESes have received. I'm not trying to insult or deride anyone's efforts with this post, I'm simply showing the volume of chatter on related NESes. This does not mean that any of us are inherently better than anyone else at moderating, as many a NES is more spam than anything else, and therefore, may not actually be better in terms of quality.

Tier One (above 15,000 posts on all combined NESes)

1. EQandCivfanatic (35,250)
2. das (30,337)
3. Jason the King (27,984)
4. Daftpanzer (17,876)

Tier Two (Above 10,000 posts on all combined NESes)

1. Lord Iggy (12,086)
2. North King (11,282)
3. stalin006 (11,035)

Tier Three (Above 5,000 posts on all combined NESes)

1. nuclear kid (9,628)
2. Azale (9,273)
3. Birdjaguar (8,792)
4. Imago (8,510)
5. Sheep (7,801)
6. luckymoose (7,702)
7. Goober (6,728)
8. Amon Savag (6,472)
9. Stormbringer (6,188)
10. Imago (5,681)
11. uknemesis (5,469)
12. Kamilian (5,468)

[nutranurse]

Oh wow! This is pretty intense. I am curious to see/speculate over the reasons the number of NES' has been dropping off as of the last few years.

[EQandcivfanatic]

Your guess to the dropoff is as good as mine. The best I can come up with is that we've been trending more towards quality than quantity.

[nutranurse]

Yeah. I mean, I feel as if we can say stuff about a general decline, but I (and my evidence henceforth is completely anecdotal) joined in the middle of said declined and NESing still seems strong.

But let's not speculate over the numbers drop off too long. Wouldn't want to make this thread become filled with doomsday rhetoric.

What I would like to know is how many of the NES' created in the past 3 years have made it past the 'hump' that Terrence rather accurately pointed out.

[EQandcivfanatic]

Well, let's take a look at the last three years alone then, starting with NESes created January 1, 2009 to the present.

That gives us a total of 229 NESes, and here are the related "hump" statistics:

Percent of NESes that Died on arrival: 21.8%
Percent of NESes that Did not make it past first update: 42.4%
Percent of NESes that did not make it past second update: 58.5%
Percent of NESes taht did not make it past the fifth update: 74.7%
Percent of NESes that did not make it past the tenth update: 92.6%
Percent of NESes that did not make it past the twentieth update: 97.8%
Percent of NESes that did not make it past the fortieth update: 99.6% (A Brave New World Part 2 was the only NES that made it over 40 updates that began after New Year's 2009)

What this shows us is that the rate of failure has actually gone up, though strangely less die on arrival than the average would suggest. Take what you will from that.

[Azale]

Thanks for illustrating our precipitous rise and fall EQ! This should really rake in the recruits

[Perfectionist]

If you subtract out all the dead-on-arrivals, the data are pretty consistent with the simple presumption that a NES has a flat 15% chance of failure after each update. That model predicts the following failure rates:

2 Updates: 27.25%
5 Updates: 55.6%
10 Updates: 80.3%
20 Updates: 96%

Subtracting out the DOAs, the actual numbers are:

2: 19.4%
5: 56.8%
10: 80.6%
20: 93.8%

I can't be bothered to do an actual fit, but just quick back of the envelope doesn't seem to show any real hump after the very beginning of the thread.

Also, good on you for doing this, EQ, however depressing the results.

[EQandcivfanatic]

Yeah, that's a good wya of looking at it, Perfectionist, and based on my readings of each one of these NESes (and dear god did it take years), most of the Dead on Arrival could probably be anticipated at the time. Furthermore, we can give credit to some of this due to pre-NES threads and criticism provided on the alternative history and other threads. This perhaps discourages some of the truly awful NESes which have died on arrival over the years.

[Yui108]

Originally Posted by EQandcivfanatic

Percentage of NESes that Die before the Twentieth Update (which could be considered the starting point of a truly "great" NES): 95.5%

I thank you for doing this EQ, but this bit seems somewhat...questionable.

[EQandcivfanatic]

That's why I said "could." Based on what I've read, the NESes which people most often refer to have been the ones that have broken the 20 update mark. But I've removed it, as to not detract from the purpose of the thread.

[North King]

You could also measure by view count, update word count, story count, etc. Or, for a stat which is bound to put me at the bottom, updates per month.

Cool stuff, though.

[Yui108]

Originally Posted by EQandcivfanatic

That's why I said "could." Based on what I've read, the NESes which people most often refer to have been the ones that have broken the 20 update mark. But I've removed it, as to not detract from the purpose of the thread.

Fair enough. Valuable info here no matter what

[North King]

Oh, on a completely banal note, how would you measure NESes which have multiple moderators?

[nutranurse]

There are NES's with multiple moderators? I would love to see an example of that.

[North King]

Yes and yes. There have been others, but I had the links open.

It works surprisingly well if you get along with the other person.

[Lord_Iggy]

NK and Thlayli pulled it off for a while, but then it came to an early end.

[Tecknojock]

In your statistics, are update 0s and BTs counted as updates?