To quantify Godwins Law as a predictor to Forum Activity and its role in Nemetics
Good morning to you all in Australia.
My name is Eamon O’Connell (no relation) and I am doing my 5th year Mathematics Degree at the School of Computing and Mathematics at the University of Ulser.
Together with a team that includes Katie Butler, Liam O’Drisscoll (no relation), Thomas D’Arcy, and Bernadette Healy (relation) we are conducting a research project for our Masters Thesis under Professor Mulvahney.
The title of our project is :-
“To quantify Godwins Law as a predictor to Forum Activity and its role in Nemetics”
In plain speak we are attempting to predict at what point of an Internet Discussion Forum it goes to Shite.
As you may know, Godwins Law is asserting that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches — that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism.”
As the foundation of our these hypothesis we have included that as the part of our reasoning or predictor models would include when “spelling Nazi” or “grammar Nazi” or that a forum thread turned to Shite then would be a trigger for Godwins Law.
As our team are also a fine bunch of Rugby Fans we have focused on Rugby Forums around the world and with kind co-operation from your Administrator here at TWF we have based our data on some of the TWF forums.
We also liked the fact that a fine upcoming player named Kyle Godwin was so commonly discussed on this site and this came up in our Google metadata analysis.
1) So, when does an Internet Forum thread turn to Shite and why would we want to predict this?
Forum administrators and moderators cannot predict when a topic goes to Shite unless monitoring each and every reply. Large newspaper and Facebook forums cannot be constantly monitored and it is the hope of our fine group to come up with an algorithm and predictor model to include in software to enable a warning to be flagged to an Administrator that the thread is turning to Shite and take appropriate steps.
2) And, what makes a forum thread turn to Shite?
Many factors contribute to a thread turning to Shite and with this project an algorithm will be used to predict this point and quantify that model. Based on the extensive data from TWF ( which is one of the most widely viewed and longest running Rugby forums on the internet) we hope to clarify what we will call ttS = Turn to Shite.
To discover the point of ttS we must look at the factors of an Internet Discussion Forum. We have listed as
N = Number of Threads on the forum site.
nN = Number of Members.
B = Banned Members.
P = Posts per thread.
After much data analysis (for which we must thanks Darren for access to the banned posts and deleted threads) there was not a direct correlation of the point of ttS to any recognised algorithm.
For instance, as a Western Force Forum, there is common ground for the higher proportion of the thread as compared to a European Forum where all the members have differing team allegiances and the point of ttS can occur much earlier.
In fact one thread ( TLH Appreciation Thread) , the TWF members are so nice to each other there was a mathematical impossibility (99.998% ) that the thread would ever reach ttS.
Therefore our team has reached the following algorithm
ttS = N*nM/P + Factor 3.16- B /x
We have applied the above algorithm to all the threads in the Metro Rugby section and have come up with a level of confidence that the algorithm is correct at 99.997%
So we therefore thank the Administrators of TWF for their help and will keep you up to date on our thesis.
Just out of interest, the ttS number for the
Metro Rugby Thread is 1.02 (ie after 1 post it turns to Shite)
