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Ever since Coral was first announced way back in 2020, the fine folks at RCT had been dreading its arrival. Would it cause people to leave the site? Would internet friendships be ruined? Surely it will hurt comment counts, right?
Before the implementation of Coral I made a spreadsheet of comment counts on the Daily Mauling for the last 2 years. I daydreamed that Vox would be so impressed by my pretty line graphs they would promote me to CEO of the company. Unfortunately, the search function on SBNation is a little rough so I collected what I could. For instance I could only find 15 Daily Mauling articles for June of 2021 and 11 for June of 2020. This turned out to be a problem for my pretty line graphs.
So with imperfect data I am forced to rely on what I remember from my college statistics class in which I got a C. Lets get into the numbers
May
| Date | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Date | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 |
| 5/1/2022 | 111 | 25 | |
| 5/2/2022 | 75 | 79 | |
| 5/3/2022 | 26 | 35 | |
| 5/4/2022 | 80 | 26 | |
| 5/5/2022 | 48 | 80 | 42 |
| 5/6/2022 | 48 | 118 | |
| 5/7/2022 | 2 | 28 | 14 |
| 5/8/2022 | 79 | ||
| 5/9/22 | 32 | ||
| 5/10/2022 | 101 | 22 | 51 |
| 5/11/2022 | 13 | 41 | |
| 5/12/2022 | 18 | 51 | |
| 5/13/2022 | 18 | ||
| 5/14/2022 | 11 | 91 | 14 |
| 5/15/2022 | 8 | 15 | |
| 5/16/2022 | 29 | 22 | |
| 5/17/2022 | 43 | ||
| 5/18/2022 | 25 | 141 | 35 |
| 5/19/2022 | 25 | 86 | |
| 5/20/2022 | 15 | 71 | 20 |
| 5/21/2022 | 15 | 117 | |
| 5/22/2022 | 17 | ||
| 5/23/2022 | 62 | 7 | |
| 5/24/2022 | 45 | ||
| 5/25/2022 | 88 | 24 | 3 |
| 5/26/2022 | 48 | ||
| 5/27/2022 | 30 | ||
| 5/28/22 | 21 | 21 | |
| 5/29/2022 | 15 | 33 | |
| 5/30/2022 | 9 | 4 | |
| 5/31/2022 | 30 | ||
| Mean | 36.81 | 60.53 | 30.41 |
| Median | 29.5 | 51 | 25 |
According to the numbers, the average comments per Daily Mauling is a little all over the place. As we all know, the Daily Mauling is very much not sports based but tends to cover current events and other randomness. So ongoing national events could sway the comment counts. I’m not sure what was happening in May of 2021 that caused the big increase in comments that month.
June
| Date | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Date | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 |
| 6/1/22 | 105 | 4 | |
| 6-2-22 | 25 | 20 | |
| 6-3-22 | 32 | ||
| 6/4/22 | 33 | 75 | |
| 6/5/22 | 14 | 52 | |
| 6-6-22 | 45 | ||
| 6-7-22 | 42 | 81 | |
| 6/8/22 | 23 | 16 | 29 |
| 6/9/22 | 40 | 29 | |
| 6-10-22 | |||
| 6-11-22 | 6 | ||
| 6/12/22 | 14 | ||
| 6/13/22 | |||
| 6-14-22 | 65 | 64 | |
| 6-15-22 | 98 | 58 | |
| 6/16/22 | 44 | 51 | 57 |
| 6/17/22 | 63 | ||
| 6-18-22 | 40 | ||
| 6-19-22 | 33 | 18 | |
| 6/20/22 | 74 | 67 | |
| 6/21/22 | 29 | ||
| 6-22-22 | 14 | 67 | |
| 6-23-22 | 39 | 124 | 20 |
| 6/24/22 | 36 | 45 | |
| 6/25/22 | 1 | 39 | 12 |
| 6-26-22 | 13 | ||
| 6-27-22 | 95 | ||
| 6/28/22 | 54 | 57 | |
| 6/29/22 | 34 | ||
| 6-30-22 | 57 | 99 | |
| Mean | 45.58 | 47.47 | 40.55 |
| Median | 40 | 39 | 45 |
Looking at the numbers for June, we see that same trend of high comments in 2021. This makes me think we had higher comments in general in 2021. When Coral came around we did lose a couple members in Waxtron and Plat, Platy, uh, Platypus Nachos. This would have the effect of fewer comments with those members missing.
Let me know in the comment section if there are any other statistical modeling functions I should try. I’ll continue tracking the comment counts and will have another update later in the year.
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