Numbers
serial_thrilla
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- Mar 25, 2014
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- #1
Hello and welcome all to the end of season summary of the match thread activity for each of the Sweet FA teams for this season.
The usual caveat applies here, where it's stated that this data is purely a measure of quantity...not quality. These numbers are however a good indicator of the health of the league, and may give us an indication of which clubs are in greater need of new posters going forward for the good of the league.
As a reference, here are the previous articles authored by WaynesWorld19, Ant Bear and myself:
I'll start off with some comparative data between the teams, and some trends over the seasons. Then over the next few days I'll do a club-by-club analysis. Now let's dive straight into it.
So straight away we see that the Bombers are a mile ahead of the other teams for match thread posts; with 13,395 posts they generated about 36% more posts than the next most prolific teams. In second and third there are the Warriors and Roys just shy of 10,000, and then there is another step down to the rest. The Dragons and Demons are neck and neck in 4th/5th, the Gumbies and Furies not far behind in 6th/7th, the Bears and Hawks a little way back in 8th/9th, another drop back to the Swamprats in 10th, before the Wonders and Royals bring up the rear.
What is generally considered a better indicator of the health of the league is the number of posters who are active in match threads each week - that is, making at least one post in their team's match thread. What is interesting here is that of the five most prolific teams, four of them average the most active posters per week (Roys, Warriors, Demons and Dragons), but the team with the MOST posts (the Bombers) drops a long way back to 8th with only 14.06 posters per week. Conversely, the Royals had by far the least posts in match threads this season, but they still had a respectable 13.82 active posters per week (9th). None of these numbers are alarming to the point of clubs being at risk of folding, but the Bears would be nervous with their 12.59 posters per week being significantly lower than any of the other teams.
As for the total number of posters to make an appearance this season, all clubs had at least 20 players post in a match thread this season. The Roys (25), Warriors (24) and Demons (23) lined up nicely with their posting activity, but what was surprising was that the Wonders had an equal league high 25 posters this season despite their low overall posting numbers.
The table on the left shows what the average percentage contribution each side has had in Season 31 match threads. This is with all neutral posts disregarded. A percentage of 50 would indicate even discussion between them and their opponents, whilst a higher number would suggest that the team likes the sound of their own voice or are prone to a bit of insular discussion. A range of 45-55% would probably be considered acceptable, so this would indicate that the Bombers and Roys love to chat amongst themselves, whilst the Wonders and Royals are struggling to keep up with the pace of the match threads.
Then we have the contentious "match thread wins" category that doesn't really mean too much and is a relic from earlier seasons. It does line up fairly well with the % of match thread table though. This season the Bombers "won" the most match threads, with the only "loss" being against the Furies in Round 11. Whilst the Wonders and Royals had a much harder time of it - curiously the Wonders had their "wins" at the start of the season before their posting dropped off the cliff, whilst the Royals had theirs at the end of the season when the prospect of finals reinvigorated their list.
The table of the right shows what percentage of a team's match thread posts come from their Top 5 posters (by quantity). The higher the number, the more reliant they are on their five best to keep their numbers up. Of course this is proportional to their output, so the Bombers being so high up their is quite staggering. The Gumbies are the most reliant on their top five posters, whilst the Demons have a much better spread of contribution across their list.
These three green tables expand upon how well balanced a team's list is, and it is interesting to see the rankings change as the contribution criteria changes. A perfectly balanced list would see 20 posters each contributing 5% of their team's match thread posts, so I feel the middle table is the best one to work off - once you see a larger number of posters on the 10+% contributions there is an implied reliance on those posters. Case in point for this is the Demons, who have the most evenly balanced list: they have high numbers for 2+% and 5+% contribution, but the lowest for 10+. Meanwhile the Gumbies and Furies have the most posters with 10+% contribution, but the lowest with 2+% contribution.
I feel that these tables in blue give one of the best indicators of team activity though, and the posting threshold that one would put greater importance on would vary from person to person. There have indeed been requests for 30+ and 50+ categories for this, but I think we'll stick with these three for now. Personally I feel that 10 posts per week indicates good engagement in a match thread, but I can see reasons for 20+ being the better one. The Warriors and Demons were top two in both these categories this season, whilst the Royals were by far the worst.
Back in the day the "weeks with >300 posts" table was considered the pass mark for match thread activity for each team. In fact, there even used to be a "weeks with >100 posts" table! Thankfully the SFA has evolved into a much stronger entity (although the Royals did drop below 100 posts in Round 14 this season!), and the >600 post table is considered the benchmark - whilst the >900 post entries are frowned upon. Last season there were 19 occasions when teams posted more than 900 times in a thread, whilst this season it dropped down to 10. The Dragons, Bombers, Roys and Warriors never dipped below 300 match thread posts this season, whilst the Royals only achieved it twice. Interestingly the Dragons were in the 300-600 post range on all but one occasion this season.
Next up, trends:
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