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all 15 comments

[–]PluvialisChaos Legion 6 points7 points  (13 children)

I'm sorry I have a question that may be answered in your post, but it was clearly written for thorough explanation of the methods rather than easy reading and I had to skip to the conclusion.

I interpret this as indicating that an update which is posted after a long drought may be a tiny bit (95% CI: 0.9953-0.9963) more likely to elicit some subsequent reviews (perhaps because extremely long delays are associated with posting multiple chapters quickly), but nevertheless, that overall period with long delays is associated with increased reviewer loss.

'The overall period with long delays is associated with reviewer loss' sounds very weak. I could rewrite that as 'later in the fic reviewers are lost but we don't know why'. Have you eliminated alternative hypotheses? Like:

  • Some readers are simply unwilling to read a long fic
  • The fic has changed and some readers who liked the beginning don't like it anymore
  • HPMOR is 'old news', even if it had updated regularly people have moved on after 3 years
  • People moved to alternative versions of the fic, such as the PDF, or HPMOR.com, and stopped leaving reviews

There may be others.

Again, this may be answered in the post you linked to, but I read popular science, not science journals, if you get my drift. If you don't want to field questions from someone who hasn't read the post, I understand!

EDIT: added another hypothesis

[–]gwern[S] 1 point2 points  (12 children)

'The overall period with long delays is associated with reviewer loss' sounds very weak. I could rewrite that as 'later in the fic reviewers are lost but we don't know why'.

No, you're right. Just because there is increased mortality in the later period doesn't mean one can identify the exact cause, since even if you had a good correlations, as we all know correlation != causation (and there's plenty of scope for reader then influencing the writer). As I said:

I think we can consider the original hypothesis supported to some degree: the later chapters, either because of the update schedule or perhaps the change in subject matter or attracting a different audience or some other reason, seem to be more likely to lose its readers.

It's hard to investigate any of those alternatives, so the best I can do is observations:

Some readers are simply unwilling to read a long fic

The chapter count and word count is already posted on FF.net & updated live, and MoR was pretty long even before ch62.

The fic has changed and some readers who liked the beginning don't like it anymore

Yes, this is plausible. It did change in subject matter.

HPMOR is 'old news', even if it had updated regularly people have moved on after 3 years

I don't think this works. If it's 'old news', then we'd expect fewer people showing up period - not increased mortality of the people who do show up and leave reviews.

People moved to alternative versions of the fic, such as the PDF, or HPMOR.com, and stopped leaving reviews

Yes, also possible. I wouldn't expect this to be too big an effect - I always thought of the PDF as for re-reading or printing, and HPMOR.com for getting the author's notes free of FF.net's shackles - but it'd be good to verify this. When exactly did the site or PDF go up?

[–]4t0mChaos Legion 1 point2 points  (11 children)

I always read it on HPMOR.com.

[–]gwern[S] 0 points1 point  (10 children)

Then you'll never be counted in any reviewer set, and so can't influence the mortality curves one way or another.

[–]NoahTheDukeSunshine Regiment 0 points1 point  (9 children)

But if someone like me wrote a review way back but now reads on hpmor.com, our mortality will count as not reading anymore, when we've just changed sites.

[–]gwern[S] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Sure, but your mortality will appear in the earlier period, since that's when your last review was.

[–]NoahTheDukeSunshine Regiment 1 point2 points  (2 children)

What I mean is, wouldn't my lack of reviews now be contributing to the idea that the story keeps less and less readers, when it's more that I've just switched places/don't leave reviews?

[–]gwern[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

No, because you count toward the earlier period. Some Duke user showed up with a review of chapter 10, then 500 days later, he posted his last review on chapter 40, and now he's part of the mortality curve for pre-62 chapters ('a reviewer survived 500 days and then died'). You don't affect how the mortality curve looks for post-62. We're comparing mortality curves precisely to try to take into account some issues like that.

[–]NoahTheDukeSunshine Regiment 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Okay. (Turns out, I don't understand the math you're doing! haha)

[–][deleted]  (4 children)

[deleted]

    [–]BassoonHero 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I wonder if:
    a) /u/UrlfixerBot is coded to ignore its own posts.
    b) Some encoding or escaping trick might yield a quine.

    [–]NoahTheDukeSunshine Regiment 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    You're beautiful.com

    [–]URLfixerBot -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

    beautiful

    if this link is offensive or incorrect, reply with "remove". (Abusers will be banned from removing.)

    [–]HPMOR_fanSunshine Regiment 3 points4 points  (1 child)

    I used to write reviews partly because it was an outlet for myself, and because EY asked for them. After I found this subreddit it became a much more satisfying experience to write on here than writing reviews. Plus I never felt I had anything useful to say in the reviews anyway...

    [–]PluvialisChaos Legion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Yeah, I can well imagine some readers enthusiastically leaving reviews to start with, but getting bored of that later on, despite still reading the fic.

    [–]jaiwithaniSunshine Regiment General 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    I offer the subreddit traffic stats, or what rough approximations we have of them:

    http://imgur.com/dN1aDol