devtrackers.gg
EDIT3: Before the post, I will say again, the TITLE IS A BAD JOKE, AND I WOULD CHANGE IT IF I COULD. It is NOT the argument that I'm trying to make, just a meme-y attempt at humor (a bad one).
TLDR: Of the 88,000 comments on /r/pathofexile in the week after Harvest, ~%30 of them were made by the top 500 'power users'
Recently, being sick of reading the same shallow and negative feedback on every single post in /r/pathofexile, and seeing the same usernames come up in every thread, I made a comment on the recent Mod Feedback post. This comment was mostly garbage and THIS DATA DOES NOT SUPPORT THE CLAIM THAT /R/POE'S NEGATIVE SENTIMENT IS DUE TO A SMALL AMOUNT OF ACCOUNTS POSTING OFTEN. (edited in caps so people aren't confused)
This comment said something to the effect of "most of the comments on this subreddit are made by the same users, this isn't anywhere near an accurate representation of the community." I also have made assumptions that the vast majority of readers of this subreddit are lurkers, like most of reddit. I claimed that "If you were to ban the 100 most active reddit users on /r/pathofexile, the number of comments on this subreddit would drop by a huge margin."
After I made that comment, /u/fromcj rightfully called out my lack of supporting data for my claim. Of course, being a thoughtful comment asking for sources, this was downvoted (thanks reddit..... /s). My post, with no support to my claims, was upvoted.
In any case, I went and got some data.
I used Python, https://pushshift.io/, and the Reddit API
6/19 to 6/26
| X Accounts | % of Comments |
|---|---|
| 500 | 31.37 |
| 400 | 27.96 |
| 300 | 23.99 |
| 200 | 19.08 |
| 100 | 12.73 |
- 88,500 comments were made.
- The top 500 accounts, sorted by comment count, generated 27313 total comments.
- This means 31.37% of all comments on this subreddit with 361,000 subscribers were made by 500 people.
- This doesn't account for score/upvotes, simply comment count. Many of the power users on the sub will be upvoted regularly, amplifying this effect even further. (I can't prove this claim, see below for why, just anecdotally true).
- This data supports my claim that if you were to ban 100-200 of the most active users on the subreddit, activity would drop significantly.
paste of top 100 users and their total comment count (how many names do you recognize?): paste
Commentary (NOT the data, these are personal opinions)
There's a lot of power given to a small amount of users on this subreddit. With 361k subscribers and who knows how many more lurkers, being a power user on the subreddit means you have a huge amount of sway when it comes to prevailing opinion. I'm not sure if this is even a problem, or how to fix it. In any case, next time you find yourself holding an opinion you saw on reddit, make sure it's yours too, and not just what the echo chamber has decided is correct for the week.
GGG is one of the most active games companies on Reddit, heavily investing in the platform in terms of community manager time. I worry that GGG may, as of late, be making decisions based on community sentiment that isn't entirely accurate. We all know that delirium was buffed into the stratosphere a week into the league and is now easily the most profitable league mechanic to date, completely overshadowing any other content. That was due in large part to sentiment from the community, especially from reddit.
I hope GGG doesn't start shifting the focus of PoE away from the hardcore, obtuse, complex looter that many of us enjoy, simply based on community sentiment. Much of the feedback "harvest too hard/tedious, need pack size now, just give us breach 4.0, why can't i craft this mirror-tier item btw i play 2 hrs a month, reforge-league amirite also idk how to trade crafts" has been pushing us this direction.
Issues/Future Work
In this dataset, you may notice that karma/post score doesn't enter into the equation. I really wanted to weight the final percentage based on post score (since higher score means more views and a greater influence on overall sentiment) but unfortunately, pushshift archives reddit's data almost instantly, which means the snapshot of reddit that it ingests will almost always have comments at 1 karma, even if the comment gets more upvotes down the line.
Also, tying post karma to top comment would be an interesting avenue to explore (top comments from posts > 30 upvotes get more views than comments from posts with 1-5 upvotes).
Furthermore, I wish reddit exposed post views publicly, because tying that data to the comments in the post would give an even more accurate reflection on the impact of sentiment.
EDIT 1:
Many have taken the title of the post at face value. It was mean to be an ironic tongue in cheek jab, not some serious accusation. I thought that was pretty clear.
EDIT 2:
I was conflicted about including the list of posters in the first place, and I did because generally people like to see hard data. I don't make any claims about the posters, nor should you make any conclusions. I will say it again: The more active posters of the subreddit are not linked to being negative or toxic, I was simply trying to prove my single statement "If you were to ban the 100 most active reddit users on /r/pathofexile, the number of comments on this subreddit would drop by a huge margin."
EDIT: I recommend everyone read this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/hk8gkz/is_rpathofexile_a_toxic_echo_chamber_heres_some/fwroikk/
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