Ratio between Authors and Non-Authors

[AwkwardMD]

I even got a t shirt printed with that slogan

KeithD is a bully, and everyone should just put him on ignore.

I did! Ask me how!

 

[SimonDoom]

I went to the search feature and did a search for all male member authors with the name Bob. Then I did the same for all male member non-authors.

There are 201 male author members with the name "Bob" in their name.

There are 2100 male non-author members with the name "Bob" in their name.

That's about 10 to 1.

I did as well for authors/non-authors with "A" in their name (as a standalone letter or initial) and got 72:423. Roughly 1 out of 6.

I did this forauthors/non authors named "Mary". Interestingly that was 1 out of 25.

I think we can be pretty confident it's less than 1 out of 6 and more than 1 out 25 after we keep doing this.

If you do this sort of thing enough times you'll come up with a variety of ratios, but eventually you'll get a mean ratio with at least some statistical significance. It may not be worth it to try, but it could be done.

Oggbashon is right that there probably are many, many anonymous commenters who aren't members, but that wasn't what the OP originally asked about.

 

[SimonDoom]

OK, I have to step back my confidence some, because some searches for non-English member names, and also for common nouns used as member names, and this is what I got:

Mohammed: 30 non author to 1 author
Aryan: 415: 11
Priya: 385: 4
Jose: 1424: 45 (this search picked up "Joseph" as well

Sex: Over 10K (the search only yields 10K max): 1223
Mom: 8701: 188
Dad: Over 10K: 464
Slut: Over 10K:585
kink: 6642: 369

You'd have to do a good job selecting the sample of names to have confidence in the result. But you could do this.

I'm guessing that the non-author: author ratio is higher for readers outside English-speaking countries.

Another thing I saw as I went through the author name lists is that the vast, vast majority of authors have 1 story or not much more than that. There are plenty of one-and-dones here.

 

[Bramblethorn]

OK, I have to step back my confidence some, because some searches for non-English member names, and also for common nouns used as member names, and this is what I got:

Mohammed: 30 non author to 1 author
Aryan: 415: 11
Priya: 385: 4
Jose: 1424: 45 (this search picked up "Joseph" as well

Sex: Over 10K (the search only yields 10K max): 1223
Mom: 8701: 188
Dad: Over 10K: 464
Slut: Over 10K:585
kink: 6642: 369

You'd have to do a good job selecting the sample of names to have confidence in the result. But you could do this.

I'm guessing that the non-author: author ratio is higher for readers outside English-speaking countries.

Another thing I saw as I went through the author name lists is that the vast, vast majority of authors have 1 story or not much more than that. There are plenty of one-and-dones here.

And searching on "writer" brings up 832 authors to 2529 non-authors, much higher than the usual ratio. There are a lot of reasons why some terms could produce lower or higher ratios; noting that some people use Lit as a dating site, I'd expect names with locations to have a lower percentage of authors.

To get a more accurate estimate, rather than trying to guess the most representative search terms, the most reliable way would just be to set the gerbils crunching through those 6-million-odd user accounts.

 

[NotWise]

And searching on "writer" brings up 832 authors to 2529 non-authors, much higher than the usual ratio. There are a lot of reasons why some terms could produce lower or higher ratios; noting that some people use Lit as a dating site, I'd expect names with locations to have a lower percentage of authors.

A search on "reader" turned up 43 authors and 2846 non-authors. Those might be the extremes.

I also searched using a space for the author's name (that seems to return all names) for members who'd updated their profiles in the last week. Anything longer than a week hit the 10,000-results limit. I found 260 authors and 3203 non-authors.

Guessing from the ratio of anonymous comments to non-anonymous comments on my most-commented stories, I'd guess that members might be less than half of the site's readers.

 

[SimonDoom]

And searching on "writer" brings up 832 authors to 2529 non-authors, much higher than the usual ratio. There are a lot of reasons why some terms could produce lower or higher ratios; noting that some people use Lit as a dating site, I'd expect names with locations to have a lower percentage of authors.

To get a more accurate estimate, rather than trying to guess the most representative search terms, the most reliable way would just be to set the gerbils crunching through those 6-million-odd user accounts.

True. But I'm low on gerbils.

 

[ElectricBlue]

True. But I'm low on gerbils.

Sheesh. Dish out a challenge them wimp out on a bit of data manipulation?

"I know, right," said Suzie, reaching for a pad and a pencil. "I mean, if Simon, 8letters and Bramble can't do it, it must be like proving the existence of God."

 

[KeithD]

We just go back to it not being a knowable statistic.

 

[NotWise]

We just go back to it not being a knowable statistic.

We're never going to have a solid answer to the question -- if for no other reason, then because the question itself isn't really framed in a way that can be answered meaningfully.

One of the biggest problems is with authorship. If someone posted one story twenty years ago, do you want to count them in the stat?

I think Lit is in the position where (conceptually) 90% of the content is produced by 10% of the authors. The actual numbers could be more extreme than that.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Sheesh. Dish out a challenge them wimp out on a bit of data manipulation?

"I know, right," said Suzie, reaching for a pad and a pencil. "I mean, if Simon, 8letters and Bramble can't do it, it must be like proving the existence of God."

Counting (or at least sampling) accounts is doable, I have some code I could probably adapt for that purpose, but I'm busy and trying not to sign up for new things, so I'm waiting to see if 8letters volunteers first ;-)

 

[NotWise]

What might be the broadest-brush approach:

(average views/story)/(average stories/author) is average views/author. If one view=one viewer, then that's viewers (readers) per author. One viewer will be responsible for more that one view, so the ratio of views/author gives a high estimate of the number of viewers/author, or readers/author.

For my own catalogue that comes out to 894 views/author. Maybe I have a fairly small readership.

I don't know what's important to the OP. The number based on site-wide statistics would probably be personally meaningless. The views/author number will vary wildly depending on category if nothing else. I think it's realistic to say that a site-wide value for readers/author is not very meaningful.

 

[oggbashan]

Counting (or at least sampling) accounts is doable, I have some code I could probably adapt for that purpose, but I'm busy and trying not to sign up for new things, so I'm waiting to see if 8letters volunteers first ;-)

Even if you do that, it would ignore all the people who read Literotica without having a user name. Anonymous is how many?

 

[LexxRuthless]

Well, there are currently 90,350 published authors on Literotica. (According to the top of the page there)

Does anyone know where we could find a similar listing for the number of members? Then it would just be a simple division problem.

Of course most of this is moot anyway. The vast majority of readers are anonymous "guests" who never bother to set up an account here.

 

[8letters]

Counting (or at least sampling) accounts is doable, I have some code I could probably adapt for that purpose, but I'm busy and trying not to sign up for new things, so I'm waiting to see if 8letters volunteers first ;-)

If there was a page that listed every member and whether they published a story or not, it'd be easy to train some gerbils to get that information. But there isn't, and I don't have any brilliant ideas for how to work around that. So count me out.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Go through all possible member pages

https ://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=2&page=submissions -- by replacing '2' with increasing numbers; when I checked, the newest member number was 6194771; JustinGaughee

Count the pages without the error message
This member does not exists

Count pages with the text
This user does not have any submissions yet.

For someone familiar with internet programming (not me) it shouldn't be too hard to make up some script for this.

I heard a pig farmer interviewed once. They asked him why farmers don't milk their pigs.

The farmer explained that pigs will not allow themselves to be milked.They will violently resist any such attempts. Sure, he explained, you could selectively breed pigs over multiple generations until you get a new breed that is docile enough to allow itself to be milked. He estimated it would take 20-30 years.

And at the end, he said, "Now you've got pig milk. What the hell are so supposed to do with it?"

 

[Bramblethorn]

What might be the broadest-brush approach:

(average views/story)/(average stories/author) is average views/author.

You need to multiply those two averages rather than dividing, to get views per author.

But that doesn't get us closer to estimating the overall ratio of readers (member or otherwise) to authors.

Even if you do that, it would ignore all the people who read Literotica without having a user name.

Yes, because that wasn't the question. The original poster was specifically asking about authors vs. non-author members, not about all readers.

 

[Bramblethorn]

90 350 / 2 650 694 * 100% = 3.41%
But some of those who've written stories may no longer be members; should they still be counted as writers, or is 90 350 is a little too high?

So, let's say ~2.4 ± 1 %

Is it possible to have stories up without being a member? I'd thought that when the member profile was deleted, the stories go with it.

 

[LexxRuthless]

Is it possible to have stories up without being a member? I'd thought that when the member profile was deleted, the stories go with it.

You are correct, sir. In order to have a story on the site you must have a member page. Those who delete their account automatically remove their stories when they do.

 

[lovecraft68]

You can request the site to be removed from the forum where "guest" will be under all your posts, but keep your stories like rape advocate and legendary creeper Handsinthedark did, but a few of his stories remain.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Hmm.

Apparently, if you are banned from the forum, you can still be a member; Noirtrash Member page while Noirtrash Loves Spam

But then, authors would be ~ 3.5% of all members, or ~ 1 out of 30 members.

EB scrolled back to his post, #20, feeling pretty smug. Yep, gut feel as a statistical calibrator, or the 3% rule, works every time.

This was an unusual application of something I see over and over in large databases involving human behaviour - it's uncanny how often I see 3% as some kind of noise floor. It's one of my project management rules of thumb, I see it so often.

Thinking about forum bans, I reckon you'd have to remain a member, for a ban to actually work. Old Noir got that cat and mouse down to a fine art, for sure.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

True. But I'm low on gerbils.

Hex uses ants. It's cheaper.

 

[lovecraft68]

At the bottom of the main forum page its says there's 2,650,694 'forum members" part of me wonders if that's everyone with a handle on the site, as you need a handle to post on the boards.

Of course...how many forum members don't read stories (all of the GB for example) how many members have multiple ID's (again GB where there is most likely 40 or so uniquely members all with countless alts) how many have not been here inyears?

For authors...how many authors have multiple pen names? If they do, then that's in actuality one author not three (if they had that many pen names)

I see this as two things

One, an unanswerable question
Two...who the hell cares?

 

[LAHomedog]

At the bottom of the main forum page its says there's 2,650,694 'forum members" part of me wonders if that's everyone with a handle on the site, as you need a handle to post on the boards.

I've wondered this myself. Everybody has a members page -- if you are a member. But to post on a forum, you need to sign in separately with a different password. So do the two equate?

For exmple, I have three three member names. Mine and two in partnership with other authors, but only one forum login. So go fucking figure?!

 

[KeithD]

I've wondered this myself. Everybody has a members page -- if you are a member. But to post on a forum, you need to sign in separately with a different password. So do the two equate?

??? I don't have separate passwords for the story side and the forum side with the account I use in the forum. Same password, both sides.

 

[NotWise]

At the bottom of the main forum page its says there's 2,650,694 'forum members" part of me wonders if that's everyone with a handle on the site, as you need a handle to post on the boards.

I haven't found the 2,650,694 number, but I suspect it hasn't been updated in years.