Conference hydra::dejavu

  OK ... who's going to predict how long it is before this data is used by one
  of the bean-counting b*stards to "prove" how much money is wasted by employee-
  interest confrences ?  Given that the UK CEO stated that "we should all just
  do our jobs" - in the context of not making *work-related* comments outside of
  our own area of expertise ! - I reckon it wont take long for some joker to see
  a "significant [short-term] cost-saving" ...

  Frank

    As some conferences are started from scratch each year, while others
    restart randomly and some like this one have only one edition, I cannot
    see that these figures mean anything.

    Jamie.

True enough, Jamie, but that subtlety would be lost on the folks Frank
referred to. Perhaps we should archive this DEJAVU and persuade Mr
Falek to re-run his little program.

PS: just imagine if his program had identified the top 100 most
prolific authors in Digital.

    >PS: just imagine if his program had identified the top 100 most
    >prolific authors in Digital.
    
    AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH!
    
    Jamie.
    

>PS: just imagine if his program had identified the top 100 most
>prolific authors in Digital.
    
    aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
    
    The last nail in my coffin.  I've probably written a hundred
    thousand notes over the years.  Never suspecting I have to
    'atone' for them.  
    							todd

    Oops, sorry for all that screaming.  I didn't hear Jamie screaming
    when I started that note.  :-)

    You take the left ears and I'll do the right ones.
    
    Jamie.

Nice effect, guys :-). But perhaps in vain. The tools have been around
to do such rankings for years. And they've been used. I don't know that
they've been used company-wide; I've only seen them used by a couple of
mods on their own conferences just for jollies. But to think that
"Digital is too nice a company" for this not to have been done
company-wide would be too trusting.

Like I said, I don't know if this has been done, and I don't know the
probability. But there are people who would want to, and if it had, it
wouldn't surprise me.

    
    A friend of mine ran a search on DEJAVU about 4.5 years ago, and found
    that at that time, I had contributed about 5% of the notes. Fortunately
    he's a *good* friend.
    
    So, it has been done...
    
    Cindy

RE: .2 (Jamie)

>    As some conferences are started from scratch each year, while others
>    restart randomly and some like this one have only one edition, I cannot
>    see that these figures mean anything.

    I think that that is a bit of an overstatement, Jamie.  They mean
    something -- its just that they represent a combination of a number
    of factors -- specifically it is a product of age and activity, the
    latter measured in average notes posted per unit time.  Obviously it
    does *not* mean that this is among the most active conferences, i.e.,
    that it is among those with the most notes posted per day, or whatever,
    anymore than it can be taken to mean that it is among the oldest.  It
    means that is among those with the greatest combination of those two.

    It even has a practical meaning -- anyone starting now and wanting to
    review the whole conference has a very big job with DEJAVU.  Believe
    me, when I think about, for example, redoing the keywords (shudder)
    the total number of notes is a very meaningful quantity.

                                         Topher

RE: measuring most active authors

    Not sure that counting number of notes is really the meaningful figure.
    Lines of text posted is more like it -- but even then not quite right.
    Should my repostings, for example, of the quake reports count the same
    as if I wrote all that stuff myself?

                                        Topher

The details are irrelevant. Regardless how you measure it, just publish
a ranking, and somebody will take it to mean something (and use it
against you). Reminds me of an old Israeli joke:

Candidate 1: "Withdraw from the race, or I'll tell the press your
sister's a whore"

Candidate 2: "I don't have a sister."

Candidate 1: "It doesn't matter. By the time they finish with you,
everyone will know she's a whore."