The people behind a great post...

Just had an interesting trawl through the Potm forum running back to december last. I was looking for the people to whom Potms were addressed (iow: the person who had 'inspired' the Potm nominee to write what they did). The trawl didn't include nominated posts which:- had no post number linked within the nomination
- nominated an OP
- nominated numerous posters or a whole thread
- responded generally as opposed to a specific posters position (if I picked this up at a glance)
- I didn't count the number of nominations for a particular post - just the POTM itselfThe results:Faith 15*
Iano 10*
Randman 9*
Buzsaw 5*
Jar 4
Riverrat 3*
Jaywill 2*
Nwr 2
Phat 2
Golfer 2
Percy 2There were 41 other people-behind-the-potms who were represented 1 time each.* represents those who I understand to be Faith Alone-ers. If I've misunderstood then I apologise and will edit here when notified of the errorGoing by the above data 45% of all "people who inspire Potm writers" are Faith Alone adherents. It is apparent that the "faith-alone-God-believing" position (and views arising from that) is the worldview that by far and away most motivates people to write at their best - at least in the opinion of their peers here at EvCViews as to why this is can no doubt follow along previously laid out party lines but I wonder are there any other..er.. objective statments or objective guesses that might be made about this informationGiven that the potms could largely be expected to be arguing counter to the faith-alone position, I myself think that perhaps the result above arises from an underlying conflict between the absolute-est and exclusive born-again position and the current pluralist, post-modern society view.
**************************************************************************Second survey:I did another mini-survey of Potms past. I picked february last because there was a largish number of potms that month. In briefly scanning I attempted to categorize the post content into one of a number of different categories (again ignoring the kinds of nominations listed as ignorable in the OP) and they rolled out like this:Science philosophy 5
Faith and belief 6
General philosophy/theology 12 (mostly general philosophy)
Direct science 1
Misc 1This would appear to exclude "FA-inability to discuss scientifically" as a valid reason for the situation. The topics nominated belong nigh on all to the realm of philosophy/belief**************************************************************************Third surveyAnnualising 5 months of data collated by Mike the Wiz (Unofficial Poster of the year 2005 thread) results in the followingTotal potms nominations in 2005: 215
Nominations for Faith Alone adherents: 7.2(some posters positions in that survey aren't known to me but unknowns only got 1 or 2 nominations each. It is unlikely that their would influence the figures much)*************************************************************************Positions at the stage of post 61The following are reasons posed by people thus far as to why the Potm nominees write/post nominators nominate - as they do. In categorising them I was asking myself did the position focus on the specific reason for Faith Alone being represented as it is. Those items marked * don't seem to do this particularily.The people by each category should be taken as presenting why they think the situation is as it is. The views aren't necessarily a personal statement as to why this person would themselves write/ nominate a Potm.If anyone feels that I have mis-represented them then I'll remove them/reposition them at their request. Or if they would like to be included in other categories I'll add them there too.Reasons for being inspired to write/nominate a potm (largely against) faith alone adherantsDislike of the FA doctrine: Robin/IanoDislike of the FA person (not necessarily personally but because of what they represent): Robin/Ezscience/ModNon-FA's are more willing to recognize the merits of a good post*: Crash/SchrafObvious error & poor FA argument seen as cannon fodder. Fun to blow out of the water: EZsc/Crevo/Percy/JarPotm-ers have evolved finely honed arguments (against FA presumably) through long repetition*: Schraf/CrevoThis message has been edited by iano, 20-Apr-2006 11:39 AMThis message has been edited by iano, 20-Apr-2006 11:44 AMEdited typos and to exclude the FA=non-science reasoning
Edited to add previously posted survey three and mark out Faith Alone adherants
Edited to say 215 potm nominations in 2005 instead of 215 potms.
Edited to better describe the "Reasons" in results table
This message has been edited by iano, 20-Apr-2006 12:48 PMThis message has been edited by iano, 21-Apr-2006 02:09 AMThis message has been edited by iano, 21-Apr-2006 02:17 AM

Are these related to some particluar topic (faith not science?) as your numbers and posters seem way off... I've just had a quick count back to January and already I can see huge differences to this list.

What I did was click on the nominated post, look up who was being replied to and ticked it off on a sheet. I didn't count multiple nominations for a single post either. Some like Randman only start appearing when you go back a bit for he hasn't posted in a while

Sorry, being dense I understand now...

I agree.(Pause while iano restarts his heart.)The faith-only "side" is very doctrinaire, so they tend to agree with each other.Those of us on the use-your-head "side" tend to agree with some points and disagree with others. (I tend to get stronger criticism from those who agree with me. ) One is less likely to nominate a post that is only "half right".(There is also a bit of a "circle the wagons" mentality among the do-as-I-say-don't-do-as-I-do crowd.)Edit: removed superfluous double-quote. (Left other superfluities in.)This message has been edited by Ringo, 2006-04-19 10:09 AMThis message has been edited by Ringo, 2006-04-19 10:09 AM

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How do you believe that that position is supported by your evidence, since those posters count for significantly less than 1/3 of the total POTMs?Is this an indication of how tenuous your beliefs are, Iano? That you must grasp at literally any straw whatsoever out of a sense of "rah-rah" boosterism about your ridicuous religion?Or is your tongue planted firmly in your cheek, here? After all, your data supports a considerably less charitable position - the

quote:

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"faith-alone-God-believing" position

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is much less likely to nominate their ideological opponents for POTM, even if their post merits the nomination. Evos, on the other hand, appear much more willing to recognize the technical merit of their opponents arguments even as they voice their disagreement with the meaning.

Which would be another way you've loaded your sample in favor of your own biases. Anti-evolution POTM's are less likely to be supported in nomination by a plurality of participants, whereas pro-evolution POTM's typically recieve nominations from several participants at once.Not counting multiple nominations undercuts your argument that this data supports a conclusion of Again, I get it if you're just kidding around; but it's also worth taking this opportunity to see how sampling methodology is developed and defended in science. Seemingly innocuous decisions in methodology can introduce drastic biases into your sample.

I "think" you're misreading what iano was saying. He isn't counting PotMs by particular posters, he is seeing who the PotMs are addressed to. Who is writing posts that bring high quality replies.I'm not sure of why he is doing this...

Hi Crash,Is it possible you've misread the OP? Faith doesn't top the list because she had the most POTM's. She tops the list because she was the person that the most POTM's were replying to.If you already knew that then I guess I just wasn't able to understand the point you were making.--Percy

I guess that hadn't occured to me, but it's not clear from the OP that that's what Iano means. When he said "to whom the POTM was addressed" I presumed that meant how when you, say, nominate Percy for POTM, that POTM message is addressed to him.But you're saying that Iano is looking at who the POTM'ed message itself was meant as a reply to? In that case, an argument I made to CanadianSteve about an hour ago seems apropo here - it's hardly reasonable to give Adolph Hitler credit for there being a Holocaust Museum in New York City, or credit Osama bin Laden with the arrest of Saddam Hussein. If Faith is stimulating a bunch of POTM nominations, it hardly makes sense to laud the way her bad behavior tends to make her opponents look better.And still - POTM responses to Faith, Randman, and others seem to count for less than 1/3 of the total POTM in Iano's dataset, apparently. So his argument still doesn't seem to hold up.

I count 44 posts from people who I reckon would be faith-aloneists: Faith, myself, Buzsaw, Randman, Jaywill, riverRat. If they are, in fact, sweet FA's then that represents 44/97 = 45% of potms included in the trawl. One single world view against the myriad held by the remainder. I thought it was an interesting insight into something. What it is I am not sure. I tripped across the Unofficial poster of the year thread of Mike the Wiz. He had looked up nomination for different posters (presumably he included multiple nominations for the same post unlike me). He only did Jan-May 2005 > 5 months. Annualised out the figures are:218 nominations for the year. Of these just 7.2 nominations were for folk who would be known as faith aloners. There are a few people in there who I don't know but even if they all were faith aloners it wouldn't affect the notion that whilst other-than-faith aloners might be more willing to nominate an opponant, those opponants don't tend to be faith-aloners. In other words: whilst faith aloners will inspire best writing (usually rebuttals), they don't inspire many nominations.Mikes thread:http://EvC Forum: The Unofficial Poster of the Year 2005 by way of vote -->EvC Forum: The Unofficial Poster of the Year 2005 by way of vote

silly boy, your definition is flawed. what about those who depend on faith alone but aren't evangelical christians? or is that not really faith?not to mention the people who say that someone who has faith but commits an 'abomination' (like lobster eating) doesn't have faith.but really. what is the point of recognizing those who are so frustrating that they lead to impecable posts? do we praise a naughty child because his mother is able to do bring him up without him being a serial killer?This message has been edited by brennakimi, 04-19-2006 01:52 PM

Are you bored Ian?

To be honest. I haven't one iota as to what denomination any of my fellow faith aloners is. I hold (as I imagine they do to) that denomination is irrelevant. All that matters is: are you a Christian?Do they believe what is compiled by the doctrine of faith alone s'all. They can bite the heads off chickens in their spare time for all it matters to me. I noted Minnemouseus (IIRC) commenting on a Potm somewhere in my 'research' that "it goes to show that great posts feed of great posts" (okay the addressee for the Potm that time was me - *blushes*).This angle would help support the merit of the Potm-er him/herself: the Potm-er reached a pinnacle due to having being debated there.Your alternative implies the Potm-er was throwing pearls to swine which only tends to diminish the Potm-er.faith alone: the trolls best friend

I'm doing an experiment to see how many discussions on faith alone I can keep in the air at one time.