Could Index Forum be seen as a representative...

Forum Index representative of what interests people?

  • Agree
  • Disagree
  • Somewhat, let me explain…
0 voters

An idea occured to me. Looking at the I Love Philosophy Forum Index along with the numbers (stats) for topics and the views, I wondered whether these numbers could also be a representative of what interests people in general. For instance, the most visited forums are Philosophy and Mundane Babble. The least being Science, Religion, as well as the ‘Experimental Forum’ better known as the Help and Suggestions Forum. I went a little more indepth and noticed some other patterns happening in respect to nifty titles that were used and it appeared to correlate to number of views, but not necessarily the number of posts. What can we learn from this? Well not much, but for those who don’t know they can find out that it is worth while to write catchy titles and write posts that are factual while at the same time controversy stricken to instill an emotion and get a response.
I digress to the matter of importance, how many of you think that the forum index is respresentative of what interests people?

Well, obviously this being a philosophy site, you’d expect a greater number of responses to the topics in the Philosophy forum rather than anywhere else. Then, as for “Mundane Babble”, regardless of which forum you go to, regardless of the nature of discussion there, the “General Chat” section will always be amongst the most used. I don’t know why that is mind… perhaps it indicates an inability prevelant amongst the majority of humanity to hold their concentration long enough to focus on a particular topic for… ah sod it. :smiley:

Seriously though, I wouldn’t read too much into the views/replies tally. Very often a topic survives well beyond what it should because the focus of conversation subtly shifts from the original topic to something quite different as the diatribe progresses. Similarly its usually the most inane topics that get the most responses (though not so much on this board due to its highly “intellectual” nature).

I’ve been visiting internet forums for around 3 years now (mainly music forums) so I’ve seen all the trends by now I’d like to think. What would the stats tell you about the interest in this topic by the way? :wink: