Discussion: The usual suspects in 2009

Written By: - Date published: 3:30 pm, January 29th, 2010 - 43 comments
Categories: admin, blogs - Tags:

Sysop

Ok, I promised a review of the comments in 2009. Here are the usual suspects with both the number of comments and the number of bytes in the comments so you can see who talks a lot and how much.

This was a little tricky because I used the e-mails to select the top e-mails, but then found that some people used more than one e-mail (yes – I mean you BLiP). Sometimes there were different pseudonyms used on the same e-mail (BLiP!).

But through the powers of SQL and some sub-selection cunning, I pulled them together. I used the most common pseudonym for each e-mail. Then merged the values for same pseudonyms. This gives something that is pretty close to an accurate result. Of course the required sub-queries were a bit hard on the MySQL, and locked everyone out of the database for a few minutes 😈

But I thank you one and all, and the thousands of others that aren’t mentioned here for helping make this site the dynamic and often pretty raucous place that it is to meet in.

The top 50 suspects are overleaf. But I have one query.

Felix probably has the most cutting comments designed to disrupt the underlying precepts of whomever he remarks on. But does he ever sleep?

Suspect Comments Bytes
1 Felix 2276 495,797
2 lprent 1882 1,105,815
3 Pascal’s bookie 1882 849,429
4 BLiP 1746 538,327
5 Draco T Bastard 1303 414,218
6 Tim Ellis 1249 613,108
7 burt 1240 455,386
8 r0b 1184 559,326
9 RedLogix 983 729,650
10 Lew 854 391,128
11 vto 840 319,635
12 mickysavage 828 352,603
13 Bill 794 467,603
14 gingercrush 772 441,555
15 the sprout 747 140,409
16 Maynard J 745 331,966
17 Ianmac 686 178,248
18 Tigger 674 183,274
19 Quoth the Raven 667 387,360
20 jarbury 650 294,381
21 gobsmacked 632 257,664
22 IrishBill 615 165,138
23 snoozer 601 167,306
24 Daveski 598 262,645
25 Pat 594 200,169
26 outofbed 584 135,897
27 Rex Widerstrom 570 530,471
28 Anita 539 195,115
29 Swampy 530 241,127
30 George D 504 159,215
31 toad 496 229,472
32 So Bored 471 177,605
33 Zaphod Beeblebrox 467 178,552
34 tsmithfield 452 276,097
35 mike 441 98,209
36 prism 436 205,630
37 Eddie 436 125,505
38 Bright red 410 118,447
39 roger nome 396 117,821
40 gitmo 391 88,852
41 Ari 383 139,864
42 Killinginthenameof 382 110,177
43 The Voice of Reason 379 189,373
44 travellerev 372 234,726
45 Tane 371 108,042
46 Redbaiter 362 192,355
47 TightyRighty 359 120,728
48 Daveo 356 124,252
49 Marty G 327 97,487
50 ben 321 193,003

43 comments on “Discussion: The usual suspects in 2009 ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. TightyRighty 1
    29 January 2010 at 3:43 pm

    Dammit, beaten by redbaiter, but then again, if i was a provocative person, i’d require more comments too.

  2. BLiP 2
    29 January 2010 at 3:46 pm

    Guilty. I changed providers and it took me a wee while to learn to use the dot net thingy instead of dot com. Thanks for doing all the work.

  3. mickysavage 3
    29 January 2010 at 3:46 pm

    Gee did I make that many comments?

    If I put that time into billable work …

    • Pat 3.1
      29 January 2010 at 4:10 pm

      I am thinking the same thing. 2010 better be the year of Stop-Fucking-About-On-Blogs.

      • felix 3.1.1
        29 January 2010 at 4:30 pm

        Me too. What method are you considering? Cold turkey?

        • mickysavage 3.1.1.1
          29 January 2010 at 4:39 pm

          There should be a support group.

          I know, someone could start a blog for compulsive bloggers! We could have online support meetings!

          I really do need help …

          • Lew 3.1.1.1.1
            29 January 2010 at 4:45 pm

            Just get some goddamned self-discipline, you wanton libertines. It’s mind over matter. Kids these days.

            L

        • Pat 3.1.1.2
          29 January 2010 at 5:31 pm

          “What method are you considering? Cold turkey?”

          Yep. Although I think I’ll consign myself to just Dimpost as some sort of nicotine patch while I wean myself off all the others.

          That one is the P tab of blogs. He had a genius post on Winston Peters 18 months ago, and I keep going back looking for the same hit.

      • Chris 3.1.2
        31 January 2010 at 12:04 am

        Me too. I’m joining you Pat.

  4. gingercrush 4
    29 January 2010 at 3:46 pm

    I’m guessing bytes is in regard to how much we’ve actually wrote? My bytes seem rather high but then I’ve never been able to write succintly (sp) only waffle.

  5. felix 5
    29 January 2010 at 3:59 pm

    WINRAR!!1

  6. Lew 6
    29 January 2010 at 4:34 pm

    Lynn, I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to chart volume (and byte size) of comments for certain commenters in hour intervals.

    That way we’d also be able to see who comments during work time >:)

    L

  7. ghostwhowalksnz 7
    29 January 2010 at 4:36 pm

    The top poster , is about equal to the last 6 or 7 in the top 50.
    Funny how he still seems invisible ?

  8. IrishBill 8
    29 January 2010 at 4:47 pm

    I quite like the fact there are so many right-wingers in the top fifty. I’m not so sure I like the fact Burt probably writes more words on the standard in a year than I do. I either need to start writing more or start banning Burt more often 😉

    • lprent 8.1
      29 January 2010 at 4:53 pm

      The latter isn’t a sufficient reason. 🙂

      Besides you really don’t have the patience to keep up with burt. Do you remember that post with a couple of hundred huge comments in it largely between burt and r0b out the legal position on retrospective legislation.

      My fingers got worn out on the trackball.

      • IrishBill 8.1.1
        29 January 2010 at 5:02 pm

        It’s not so much keeping up I don’t have patience for as explaining the same thing ten times while he willfully misconstrues every second word.

    • felix 8.2
      29 January 2010 at 6:08 pm

      Burt probably writes more words on the standard in a year than I do

      Mostly just the same handful of words over and over though isn’t it?

  9. RedLogix 9
    29 January 2010 at 6:09 pm

    Seeing as how Pascal’s Bookie and I took out the byte count (not including the bastard sysop playing with trolls)….can we borrow your magic file compressor felix?

    • felix 9.1
      29 January 2010 at 6:21 pm

      Anytime.

      Hey Lynn does your byte-count include the additions and notes you make on other people’s comments? Cos if not, that would put your score through the roof.

  10. George D 10
    29 January 2010 at 8:10 pm

    Oh dear. 504 comments. Top 30.

    I wonder how many of them weren’t criticising Labour.

  11. randal 11
    30 January 2010 at 10:23 am

    lookiss.
    try writing something that is not a putdown of somebdoy else.

  12. Outofbed 12
    30 January 2010 at 6:18 pm

    I make it 17 ish Green voters amongst the top 50

  13. jarbury 13
    30 January 2010 at 10:47 pm

    Wow I’m quite surprised that I’m that high up. I guess I wrote quite a lot earlier in the year. Awesome work putting this list together lprent.

      • jarbury 13.1.1
        30 January 2010 at 11:48 pm

        Ah that’s all gobble-di-gook to me, makes me think of the word “squirrel” for some reason. A pity as I’d be curious who were the most common commenters on my blog.

        I assume there were more comments in 2009 than 2008, just like there were many more posts?

        • lprent 13.1.1.1
          31 January 2010 at 3:03 am

          You’re running WordPress 2.9.1, same as I am. The query will work on that.

          You have to have access to running a SQL query on your system. You should be able to do it if you have a web access to your SQL server. I used Navicat because I happen to like the tool.

          I’ll put the code up if I remember when I open the laptop. The SQL on the comments wasn’t particularly efficient (I was more interested in the results of a one-off query), so expect it to slow or disable your access to the database while it runs.

          As far as I’m aware there were more comments in 2009.

        • lprent 13.1.1.2
          31 January 2010 at 12:54 pm

          Ok – here is the query. Bear in mind this is grossly inefficient because it was a one-time query and I didn’t bother to optimize. On this site with 150k comments it effectively disables the MySQL while running. The problem is in that top subquery if anyone wants to optimize it. It has to pick up all comments in the top 500 commentators.


          SELECT
          (SELECT comment_author FROM wp_comments AS C
          WHERE B.comment_author_email=C.comment_author_email
          GROUP BY comment_author
          ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC LIMIT 1) as Name,
          SUM(B.Number) AS Comments,
          SUM(B.Bytes) AS Bytes
          FROM
          (
          SELECT
          comment_author_email,
          count(*) as number,
          sum(length(comment_content)) as Bytes
          FROM
          wp_comments AS A
          WHERE
          comment_date >= "2009-01-01 00:00:00"
          AND
          comment_date < "2010-01-01 00:00:00" AND comment_approved=1 AND length(comment_author_email) > 0
          AND
          length(comment_type) = 0
          GROUP BY
          comment_author_email
          ORDER BY
          number DESC
          LIMIT 500
          ) AS B
          GROUP BY Name
          ORDER BY Comments DESC
          LIMIT 50

  14. kiwiteen123 14
    10 February 2010 at 10:07 pm

    Would you be able to tell me how many comments I’ve made this year… Please… For your favourite blog reviewer 😛

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.