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[palaste]

This chart shows how much the top 24 posters have posted on the NTFA Forums.
It is interesting to see that the top 22 posters amount to 75% of the posts, the top 9 posters amount to 50% of the posts, and the top 4 posters amount to 25% of the posts.

[predaking]

I was a little surprised to see that my name hasn't dropped on the list, since I haven't been very active lately (spending more time on wine forums nowadays) - which got me thinking: it would be interesting to have half-year or yearly reports of the active posters. It would be fun statistics to check in retrospect. But that would require a separate count for the current year in addition to posts since the restart of the forum, of course.

[palaste]

I was a little surprised to see that my name hasn't dropped on the list, since I haven't been very active lately (spending more time on wine forums nowadays) - which got me thinking: it would be interesting to have half-year or yearly reports of the active posters. It would be fun statistics to check in retrospect. But that would require a separate count for the current year in addition to posts since the restart of the forum, of course.

It should be very much possible to write a program that downloads all the posts of a specific member, strips out their datestamps, and generates a graph about how much this member has posted on each day. I could do it myself if I could find the time and the energy.

[Groundsplitter]

It should be very much possible to write a program that downloads all the posts of a specific member, strips out their datestamps, and generates a graph about how much this member has posted on each day. I could do it myself if I could find the time and the energy.

Apart from the graph you could do it with a simple (well, semi-complex) SQL query, but to use it on the board you'd have to write a query form and a presentation form, add member group permissions and links from the board view and all that. That's the difficult part.

[palaste]

It should be very much possible to write a program that downloads all the posts of a specific member, strips out their datestamps, and generates a graph about how much this member has posted on each day. I could do it myself if I could find the time and the energy.

Apart from the graph you could do it with a simple (well, semi-complex) SQL query, but to use it on the board you'd have to write a query form and a presentation form, add member group permissions and links from the board view and all that. That's the difficult part.

I don't have access to the SQL database, so that's not an option. However, I could do it with a mass of wget requests using the same cookies that I use when manually browsing the board.
However, this would be only able to be done manually on my own computer. It would not be available as an automatic feature to everyone who uses the board. For this, I would need two things: (1) access to the board source code, (2) knowledge about PHP programming. Only (1) is crucial, but at the moment I have neither, and will probably not have them either.

[Groundsplitter]

I don't have access to the SQL database, so that's not an option. However, I could do it with a mass of wget requests using the same cookies that I use when manually browsing the board.

That would use up more bandwidth than necessary though ...

However, this would be only able to be done manually on my own computer. It would not be available as an automatic feature to everyone who uses the board.

It wouldn't be a public feature even if I created it for the board. I would restrict it to admins, maybe even put it in the Admin Control Panel - it would cost too much processing power to make it available to everyone. We (you ) would then still have to compile the graph manually.

[palaste]

I don't have access to the SQL database, so that's not an option. However, I could do it with a mass of wget requests using the same cookies that I use when manually browsing the board.

That would use up more bandwidth than necessary though ...

Not if I programmed it to spend a delay between each wget request. If fully automated, I could leave it to run for several days, with delays of several minutes (if not even more) per request.

However, this would be only able to be done manually on my own computer. It would not be available as an automatic feature to everyone who uses the board.

It wouldn't be a public feature even if I created it for the board. I would restrict it to admins, maybe even put it in the Admin Control Panel - it would cost too much processing power to make it available to everyone. We (you ) would then still have to compile the graph manually.

That would be a good idea - if the raw data would be made accessible in a more machine-friendly format than the fully rendered HTML, it would be easier to make a program that drew charts out of it.

[Groundsplitter]

That would be a good idea - if the raw data would be made accessible in a more machine-friendly format than the fully rendered HTML, it would be easier to make a program that drew charts out of it.

Yeah, I it occurred to me that the feature should output a downloadable list, probably in addition to a display on screen (which makes it even more a feature for the ACP). How would you prefer to have the raw data outputted? (is it "outputted" or "output", by the way?) As XML, as simple tab-separated data, or in another format? (I'm not that used to XML yet).

Hm. See what you made me do. I've started thinking about building that feature!
I'm definitely not making any promises though, even though it would be a useful exercise - it would give me plenty of experience for writing other new board features.

[palaste]

That would be a good idea - if the raw data would be made accessible in a more machine-friendly format than the fully rendered HTML, it would be easier to make a program that drew charts out of it.

Yeah, I it occurred to me that the feature should output a downloadable list, probably in addition to a display on screen (which makes it even more a feature for the ACP). How would you prefer to have the raw data outputted? (is it "outputted" or "output", by the way?)

"Output". Most of the three-letter English verbs ending in "t" have the same form for all three cases. "Put, put, put".

As XML, as simple tab-separated data, or in another format? (I'm not that used to XML yet).

XML would work fine, but if you want to make a rawer (is that a word?) format, then something like one line per poster, with the datestamps separated by spaces or tabs on the line, would work. Can PHP use Unix timestamps (number of seconds since 1 January, 1970)?

Hm. See what you made me do. I've started thinking about building that feature!
I'm definitely not making any promises though, even though it would be a useful exercise - it would give me plenty of experience for writing other new board features.

Great! I'll be waiting for it then...

[Groundsplitter]

(is it "outputted" or "output", by the way?)

"Output". Most of the three-letter English verbs ending in "t" have the same form for all three cases. "Put, put, put".

"Output" is a six-letter verb though, and just because it originally comes from "put" it doesn't mean it still has to behave the same way - it evolved into a word of its own a long time ago. I just looked it up in the American Heritage Dictionary, where it says both forms are acceptable. I don't know how reliable that is as a source though ...

As XML, as simple tab-separated data, or in another format? (I'm not that used to XML yet).

XML would work fine, but if you want to make a rawer (is that a word?) format, then something like one line per poster, with the datestamps separated by spaces or tabs on the line, would work. Can PHP use Unix timestamps (number of seconds since 1 January, 1970)?

Absolutely. PHP uses Unix timestamps for the most part, causing me a headache every time I want to display a date in human-readable form.
But why would you need timestamps? I wasn't thinking of exporting all the posts, just the summary of how many posts each member has produced during a given time period - that's the info we're looking for anyway, so it's easier to let MySQL do the dirty work and just have it give us the results.

[palaste]

(is it "outputted" or "output", by the way?)

"Output". Most of the three-letter English verbs ending in "t" have the same form for all three cases. "Put, put, put".

"Output" is a six-letter verb though, and just because it originally comes from "put" it doesn't mean it still has to behave the same way - it evolved into a word of its own a long time ago. I just looked it up in the American Heritage Dictionary, where it says both forms are acceptable. I don't know how reliable that is as a source though ...

Aha, I didn't take that into account.

As XML, as simple tab-separated data, or in another format? (I'm not that used to XML yet).

XML would work fine, but if you want to make a rawer (is that a word?) format, then something like one line per poster, with the datestamps separated by spaces or tabs on the line, would work. Can PHP use Unix timestamps (number of seconds since 1 January, 1970)?

Absolutely. PHP uses Unix timestamps for the most part, causing me a headache every time I want to display a date in human-readable form.
But why would you need timestamps? I wasn't thinking of exporting all the posts, just the summary of how many posts each member has produced during a given time period - that's the info we're looking for anyway, so it's easier to let MySQL do the dirty work and just have it give us the results.

Then you're already doing some of my work for me. Do I get to choose the granularity, i.e. the length of an individual time period? If it could go down to one day (or even shorter), it'd make for some nice graphs. Then the format could be one line per poster, with the lines containing numbers of posts per time period, separated by spaces or tabs.

[Groundsplitter]

Do I get to choose the granularity, i.e. the length of an individual time period? If it could go down to one day (or even shorter), it'd make for some nice graphs. Then the format could be one line per poster, with the lines containing numbers of posts per time period, separated by spaces or tabs.

If and when I create that feature, yes, that's basically what I have in mind. Probably not down to hours and minutes (that would be excessive, I think), but from/to a date of your own choice.