On August 8, 2012, at 7:24 PM, Fairfax Underground user BAMBAM became the 7000th registered user name on Fairfax Underground.

Let's all celebrate this magnificent achievement, and hope he uses his new name to make a significant and valuable contribution to the Fairfax Underground community.

http://www.fairfaxunderground.com/forum/profile.php?40,7000

welcome Bam Bam!

I think its the unregistered users that make FFU rock.

of the 7000 refistered only 1% or less post why bother to analyze a dead place
Attachments:

This raised an interesting question for me: how many registered users have been active in the last day, 10 days, and 30 days?

Last day: 86
Last 10 days: 151
Last 30 days: 235

Note, this does not mean that they actually posted a message, just that they signed on to Fairfax Underground.

Certain users have disabled the display of their last sign-on date and are excluded from this count. I could fix this if I wrote a scraper that actually parsed all the messages posted on Fairfax Underground, but I've not been motivated to do so.

Generally speaking, the posting data for FFXU users has very long tails. That is, there are a lot of registered users that have never posted a message or posted only once, while there are a few users that post a lot.

Further complicating things is the massive volume of posts from unregistered users, or from registered users that choose not to use their registered names. (I'm in the latter category. I post between 20 and 40 times a day here, but only user my registered name every couple of days.)

70010 is...
http://www.fairfaxunderground.com/forum/profile.php?40,7010

I am The Northman

rofl

7011 is...
http://www.fairfaxunderground.com/forum/profile.php?40,7011

I am TheNorthman

god damn someone is obsessed with thenorthman

my encounters with him have been in the snakes thread so from my perspective he's ok lol

the fuck did that guy do

meh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 70010 is...
> http://www.fairfaxunderground.com/forum/profile.ph
> p?40,7010
>
> I am The Northman
>
> rofl

Impersonation is nothing new on FFXU. In the list of the 131 accounts created on FFXU in July, you'll see a fair number of accounts that were created solely to harass other people, even if they're not even FFXU users.

Of these, 67 have 0 posts, 27 have 1 post only, 25 have between 2 and 9 posts, and 11 have 10 or more posts.

6829 sguile
6830 Lets B Real
6831 Guess Nawt
6832 FFX Underground
6833 cornbread
6834 Cone Kneez Lawyer
6835 E Lye
6836 Karl Garlic
6837 cathyia2012
6838 Big Ho and Dookie
6839 eel eye
6840 despair
6841 nonanymity
6842 2concernd
6843 AZOOOPPY
6844 Hot Rod
6845 Precizion
6846 FatteeMcButterpants
6847 mockingjay
6848 SongBird
6849 Admnistrator
6850 MizErEEze Thawts
6851 Karlic
6852 REPORTED
6853 emt
6854 haydar
6855 George Feeny
6856 justiceserved
6857 monique wells
6858 richard mapp
6859 Marx3
6860 PeterWitrigs
6861 Valerie
6862 CentrevilleNeighbor
6863 fallschurcher
6864 meh
6865 casablancas
6866 WNC Dude
6867 You are awesome
6868 Coyote
6869 Cary Tuttle
6870 Olive Pendergast
6871 Observer of things
6872 Ned Stark
6873 Tallywacker
6874 flashforward5
6875 S-H Crawlik
6876 lcannaday
6877 Max Rebo
6878 Candle Bob
6879 bysu523
6880 mwhite101
6881 DYI
6882 coco
6883 Greg R
6884 CareBare
6885 kaisa
6886 thrownunderthebus
6887 sbeck661
6888 hillcrest00
6889 QueenTen
6890 YetAnotherTechGuy
6891 Handbanana
6892 jlideman1980
6893 Kan
6894 Mothra
6895 GatorsServices
6896 scottyhotty
6897 Pat Kittle
6898 DiscreteWorks
6899 unknown999
6900 David_Ray
6901 Blazinator
6902 josephshedd83
6903 tambeg9
6904 effind
6905 Ronald Opus
6906 Alejandra
6907 juniorcash
6908 throwaway138
6909 Ronald 0pus
6910 RonaId Opus
6911 Candle Man
6912 CandIe Man
6913 dreadON
6914 Macaca
6915 stupid as shit
6916 Nosleep
6917 Rootbeer
6918 hostileprophet
6919 DavidAPeterson
6920 Perspective
6921 TTebow
6922 Ampersand
6923 Enigma
6924 the bbc
6925 bbc
6926 BananaFace
6927 thebbc
6928 dabbc
6929 gail
6930 MJPeterson
6931 que
6932 Scott Lehman
6933 Cookie
6934 cfregelette
6935 mr baseball 7
6936 Klinton Spilsbury
6937 Shecky Gangreen
6938 dex27
6939 dave86
6940 moviesmovie
6941 Jus1mom
6942 foxcroft
6943 lolyer
6944 T Kindle
6945 beau
6946 beautaylor
6947 sharon
6948 Wiggro
6949 Tysons Engineer
6950 Westboro
6951 Brian Haddock
6952 Original Westboro
6953 JP00LE
6954 peekza
6955 RickJamesBitch
6956 crazymonkey91
6957 poofydrop1
6958 Donate

who are all those people


i know some are probably bots

6830 Lets B Real

6835 E Lye



6857 monique wells
6858 richard mapp

6862 CentrevilleNeighbor

6866 WNC Dude

6871 Observer of things

6918 hostileprophet

6924 the bbc
6925 bbc

6927 thebbc
6928 dabbc


6949 Tysons Engineer
6950 Westboro
6951 Brian Haddock


i took these ones just for the fuck of it

hunVc Wrote:
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> 6835 E Lye
> i took these ones just for the fuck of it


Where exactly did you take it so that I can go and find it...

Out of those 7000 3000 names are registered to 1 person.

In all likely hood 4 or 5 people probably make up the majority of that

7000 more like 70 Wrote:
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> Out of those 7000 3000 names are registered to 1
> person.
>
> In all likely hood 4 or 5 people probably make up
> the majority of that

It's actually a little more complicated than that. It's usually a small group of people, between 2 to 5, that's responsible for the majority of the registered account creations. However, the actual membership of this group changes over time.

For example, there was one user a few months back who was responsible for creating a large number of accounts in one month. Now, not all of these were names that she actually used; some were "guard names", or names created to prevent impersonation (via the capital "I" for lowercase "l" substitution method, for example).

Additionally, that user's creation of a large number of accounts inspired other users to follow suit.

Month	Accounts Created
February	211
March	182
April	160
May	111
June	181
July	130

FFXU Analyst. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Additionally, that user's creation of a large
> number of accounts inspired other users to follow
> suit.
>


people have been creating large numbers of accounts for years. i highly doubt that anybody was actually inspired by anyone else on this site. if that were the case then they were all following in eli's footsteps because he was the original person on this site who started creating large numbers of accounts. meh, you were inspired by eli?

meh inspired Wrote:
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> FFXU Analyst. Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> >
> > Additionally, that user's creation of a large
> > number of accounts inspired other users to
> follow
> > suit.
> >
>
>
> people have been creating large numbers of
> accounts for years. i highly doubt that anybody
> was actually inspired by anyone else on this site.
> if that were the case then they were all
> following in eli's footsteps because he was the
> original person on this site who started creating
> large numbers of accounts. meh, you were inspired
> by eli?



who is Eli?

meh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> who is Eli?


he's a drug dealing poker player who comes to this site once every few months to annoy eesh and spread his splurge of evil.

Also FFXU Analyst, how did you aggregate all this data? Just curious, would be a fun project to do. I might try it myself.

meh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Also FFXU Analyst, how did you aggregate all this
> data? Just curious, would be a fun project to do.
> I might try it myself.

I use two Python scripts and the BeautifulSoup Web scraping library (http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/) to collect the data. I also use the MySQLdb Python modules (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/MySQL-python/) to insert the data into a MySQL database.

Ha, I figured it was done in python.

How long does it take for the program to run and did you get data for all 7000 accounts?

meh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ha, I figured it was done in python.
>
> How long does it take for the program to run and
> did you get data for all 7000 accounts?

I insert a delay of 5 seconds after each page load so that my script doesn't look like a DoS attack, because Cary's set up his server so that if you load too many pages too quickly it automatically blocks your IP address, so it takes roughly N * 5 seconds to run.

I have data for all except 133 accounts which have been disabled by Cary and have either never posted a message, or have had all the messages posted from that account removed.

Here's a list of the user ID's I don't have data for right now.

2
52
76
180
196
511
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
528
529
530
531
534
535
536
538
539
540
542
903
905
916
929
1013
1037
1094
1097
1100
1162
1163
1164
1446
1668
1669
1699
1759
1760
1761
1926
1961
1963
1964
1965
1998
2075
2082
2169
2170
2232
2233
2271
2409
2418
2420
2440
2441
2444
2451
2454
2458
2462
2489
2490
2555
2559
2560
2565
2625
2688
2691
2692
2693
2694
2695
2696
2841
3048
3055
3063
3073
3133
3156
3189
3220
3245
3249
3358
3371
3372
3450
3461
3465
3570
3628
3680
3721
3722
3761
3838
3840
4097
4285
4364
4365
4444
4513
4916
4937
5074
5345
5596
5597
5598
5707
5709
5710
5711
5712
5717
5718
5812
5813
6164
6196
6202
6286

FFXU Analyst. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------


>
> I have data for all


What type of data do you have?

What about Cary's account (id=1) lol it was created in 1969. Gotta toss it with the rest of the trash data.

for sale? Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> FFXU Analyst. Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
>
> >
> > I have data for all
>
>
> What type of data do you have?

I have the account number, user name, number of posts, and date/time of account creation for most users. I also have the date/time last active for the majority of users.

The reason Cary's account creation date shows as 12/31/1969 is that the Phorum software uses Unix serial dates to store the account creation dates, which are expressed in seconds since the epoch, which was midnight on January 1, 1970. Cary's changed whatever value was in there to a 0.

are you doing Meth? who the hell does this? get a life.

Chuck, if you could harness that intelligence, dedication, and attention to detail into something productive, you'd be a force to be reckoned with. Meanwhile, I'll just continue to enjoy your posts.

Who is Chuck?
Attachments:

Chuck Hoffmann is our resident FFXU archivist. He usually posts as 'Analyzing Analyer' or 'Theorizing Theoretician' or something like that. You can always tell a Chuck post by it's insight, detail, and saveagely witty candor, especially when skewering eesh. Eesh, for some reason, despises Chuck. Chuck has not had an easy time of it here on FFXU, which is why, in part, he posts 'anonymously'. Anyway, Chuck has more raw intelligence and capability in his pinkie finger than most of the rest of the posters here combined. Which is why I enjoy his posts.

I see. Chuck seems to be a capable programmer and in this area it is easy to get a programming job if you are good.

eesh is just jealous that Chuck's intelligence has provided him with a good job, while eesh cannot find a job that would hire gunslinging dolts, as he is one.

And to whoever "time for a new hobby" is. You're clearly an idiot. This hobby is not only mentally stimulating it's fun to get a different perspective on something seemingly mundane. The only reason you would tell him to get a new hobby is because you are too stupid to understand the simple words Chuck uses in effort to help you understand. I'm sure Chuck could explain off of this in a manner that only he could understand because it is too intellectual.



Also, in my graph a few data points are a little bit off because I did not handle delete users. I made my code in about 30 min so I didn't feel like adding the logistics of estimating which month a delete profile was created in.

Did you do this Chuck? I am assuming so because that would explain our small difference.

>I have data for all except 133 accounts which have been disabled by Cary and have either never posted a message, or have had all the messages posted from that account removed.

But you don't have registration dates for deleted users who have posted?

FFXU Analyst.:

Thanks for the mention of Beautiful Soup. I'd looked for scraping libraries a long time ago, didn't find anything better than what I could write, and I've been using my own stuff.

The name "Beautiful Soup" led to a targeted Google that led to this: http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/

I'll be checking it out tonight.

BTW, with my homebrew stuff, I have a complete capture of a LOT of posts, targeted by thread, and by user. I'm using a custom "Entity" system for data, but what I have is in C#. I'm storing it in a SQL Server Compact database, but the lack of features in the compact edition means I'll probably be moving to full SQL Server.

Anyway, given recent developments, I've gotten more interested in getting back to this project. If you're willing to comparing notes, let me know. I'm targeting things including edits, user interactions, posting time patterns, etc.

Someone posted about an analysis tool elsewhere... it looked interesting, but I'm sure that developing a "dataset" for it is an entirely different matter.

2concerned Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I need attention so I'm going to try to derail this thread too

meh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 2concerned Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I need attention so I'm going to try to derail
> this thread too
Attachments:

meh: "I need attention so I'm going to try to derail this thread too"

No, I don't need to try. My fans will do it for me.

We are talking about the statistical analysis of a website and it's constituents, while you are talking about cyber stalking and preserving user info. Freak.

Actually, I didn't even mention preserving user info. You guys were into that before I got here.

I just said I have it, and the tools to grab it, and more, in a different language.

Yeah, I know, I'm a freak because I won't run from "butt-hurt". Bullies point that out all the time.

Are you threatening to rape me?

Speed kills

ferfux Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Speed kills


lol tell that to 2con, that dude has people he has been friends with for 20 years calling him a drug addict on these forums.

"has been friends with for 20 years" - and hasn't seen in 18.

And no, what meh said wasn't true to begin with. None of them have called me a drug addict, that I know of. Brian told a bunch of people - including my Wife - that I was sitting on a stash of drugs, though.

meh: "Are you threatening to rape me?"

No promises... it depends on how drunk you get me, I suppose. I've been known to show poor taste when I'm drinking.

Ok buddy, calm down lol. No reason to spam posts at this topic. It's not THAT interesting.

Also, get a job. You're worse than eesh, at least he doesn't have a family to take care of.

..



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/20/2012 05:46PM by Scott Lehman.

FFXU stat analyst
if you have some spare time how about doing an analysis comaring what folks living in big old mansions in Great Falls pay in property tax versus what a condo owner in franconia pays

Wonder if the franconia condo owner pays more prpportionally than the Great Falls mega mansion owner

Is Fairfax county cutting rich folks a break in property tax

Does the county cut a break on property taxes for office building owners especially if the building has been sitting empty for awhile?