Report on the recent influx of threads on /hr/

Report on the recent influx of threads on /hr/ in early June 2013

As we may or may not know by now, there is currently a large influx of new celebrity threads being posted in /hr/, likely as a result on /tv/’s ban on waifu threads.  In the past two days, 59 new threads have been started, 43 (73%) of which were focused on celebrities. This influx is unprecedented and has resulted in some similarly unprecedented consequences for the SNSD thread. Though most data cannot be collected until the thread dies, two statistics are available to us now: Number of posts in /hr/ measured from this thread's OP to bump limit, and the percentage of those posts that came from this thread. Both predict large variations from normal board activity.

In the time it took this thread to reach the bump limit, 2282 posts were made in /hr/. This is more than one standard deviation from the mean, meaning it is outside the range we would expect to find most of the time. To compare, the average number of posts made in /hr/ in the same parameter is 784. This bar graph demonstrates how unusual 2282 compared to the past 8 threads: http://i.imgur.com/uTC2gw4.jpg The glaringly tall outlier on the far right represents a number of posts almost three times the average number. If this trend continues, one implication could be that /hr/ experiences three times more activity than we’re used to.

The very nature of the measurement tells us that out of the 2282 posts made in /hr/, 300 came from this thread (because the parameter of measurement is from thread creation to bump limit, which is 300 posts). Simple division yields the percentage of posts in /hr/ that came from the SNSD thread. In this case that percentage was 13%. This is about two standard deviations away from the mean, meaning it is further outside the range we would normally expect. The average percentage is 44%. This bar graph demonstrates how unusual 13% is when compared to the last 8 threads: http://i.imgur.com/uy1eRGO.jpg

In summary, the ongoing large influx of celebrity threads already has a measurable impact on the SNSD thread, the full extent of which will be revealed when this thread dies. As mentioned above, one possibility is that the board experiences a sizable increase in activity, which would affect the SNSD thread in terms of board share and thread life. Threads might die quicker and, if our current rate of posting stays the same, we may not see the 2500+ post threads we’ve become used to recently. Those are more long-term implications. As for this thread, with so many additional threads being created every few hours, and because we are no longer being bumped, we should not be surprised if it lasts more than another couple days.