18 KiB
[META] We balance on the edge of a new mille
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Author: u/eaglejarl *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3zmuhq/meta_we_balance_on_the_edge_of_a_new_mille/
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Score: 30
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Created: 2016-01-05T23:24:19
Post:
Not all that long ago we celebrated our 3000th subscriber. My understanding is that it took the sub several years to get to that point; it was a moderate-sized deal at the time.
I've been watching the subscriber numbers for the last week or so, and they been teetering around 3990 +/- 3; as I write this we're at 3991. Quick, someone go out and recruit 9 friends!
In more seriousness, this kind of growth always fascinates me. Network effects, exponential growth, tipping points, meme vectors...cool and very useful stuff if one can understand it.
I'm curious as to what is bringing people in; for anyone who cares to chime in, how did you find out about this sub and what made you subscribe?
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+16] Time flies like an arrow (4 hours later)
As a matter of historical record-keeping, this sub was taken over (from the very charitable /u/centipeed) on 12/3/2013 following this post and this post in /r/HPMOR, the latter of which is where our sidebar rules originated (thanks /u/vivificient), now with some minor refinements. The original mod in the early days was , whose spirit is said to haunt our subreddit to this very day.
As a friendly reminder, the (bi)weekly challenge is now a little over six months old, and is cataloged here if you missed any of them.
u/None [+9] (8 hours later)
I did something historical!
u/DocFuture [+8] (5 hours later)
Whenever I got a noticeable spike in my fiction blog traffic, I'd do a search to see if I could find what caused it. Going back more than a year, there were periodic posts on here and a few other subreddits linking to my stories. I stayed away for a long time, because I wasn't sure about the boundaries for self promotion, and didn't want to offend, but after some nice feedback, I decided to make an account so I could answer questions and thank people. I'd never really thought of my fiction as 'rational fiction' so much as stories where smart people actually acted reasonably intelligently, instead of being driven by the whims of plot and limits of the author.
u/Chronophilia [+5] sci-fi ≠ futurology (a day later)
That's what 'rational fiction' has come to mean. This sub was created as an aggregator for 'fiction that's like Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality', but as the community grew we've figured out what we specifically liked in that and what sort of story appeals to us (and what things we'd created tags for turned out to be superfluous). It's a fascinating process to watch.
I love your story, by the way. It and the weekly discussion threads are what keep me coming back here.
u/DocFuture [+2] (5 days later)
Thanks, glad you've enjoyed it.
u/xamueljones [+2] My arch-enemy is entropy (a day later)
I haven't read your sequels yet, but I know I definitely enjoyed The Fall of Doc Future and I was wondering if you were planning on releasing it in epub, mobi, or pdf form so we can have our own offline copies?
I enjoyed your story so much that I went to the trouble of copying and pasting each chapter into my very own Microsoft file and converted into a pdf for private use.
Thanks so much!
u/DocFuture [+1] (5 days later)
Fall is currently in the hands of someone who is editing it for ebook publication. Eta is still unknown, but months, not years at least 8-)
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (2 days later)
Not a fan of your series's romances (I stopped reading at the appearance of the anthropomorphic AI that just happens to be romantically inclined to their creator), but the first book was good enough.
u/DocFuture [+1] (5 days later)
That's fine, not everyone likes romance, and it is certainly done badly often enough.
I tried to portray DASI as not 'just happening' to care about Doc--it was a natural consequence of the way he set her priorities, thus Stella's "of course" at the time. The unexpected event was full anthropomorphic intelligence before he had adjusted those priorities for it, though perhaps that could have been made a little clearer. Glad you liked Fall.
u/Transfuturist [+1] Carthago delenda est. (5 days later)
Even if you provide a Watsonian explanation, the fact is that you made that choice. Doyle still works behind the scenes, and it was Doyle that I reacted to.
u/None [+24] (2 hours later)
Uh-oh. We're becoming popular.
Soon, not only will sempai notice us, but assholes in unexpected places will be referencing half of everything we post in really embarrassing ways.
Looking at you, Hacker News.
u/ToaKraka [+6] https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png (57 minutes later)
Part 1 (circa 2011; 95% correct?): Found FanFiction.net → browsed stories, mostly for Naruto, Harry Potter, Avatar, and Death Note--but FanFiction.net hadn't yet implemented sorting by number of favorites or reviews, so I could only filter by number of words (>100k or >200k, usually) and sort by date of publishing or date of most recent update. How lucky I was to discover Time Braid in such circumstances!
Part 2 (circa 2012; 80% correct?): Saw that FanFiction.net had implemented sorting by number of reviews and favorites → sorted all Harry Potter stories by number of favorites → discovered Methods of Rationality
Part 3 (circa 2014; 90% correct?): Found TV Tropes → stumbled across Polandball article → browsed r/Polandball → glanced at other subreddits → found r/ParadoxPlaza → made this account to show off the cool maps that I'd made for my own amusement → subscribed to various subreddits, including this one (presumably discovered through the RSS feed of HPMoR updates)
u/alexanderwales [+7] Time flies like an arrow (an hour later)
If anyone is interested, this now several months out of date spreadsheet shows the date of your first
postcomment in this subreddit.
u/Anderkent [+4] (an hour later)
It seems awkward that you can't sort it without breaking all the formulas. WTF, google? Here's a values-only copy that you can sort intuitively.
Also, damn, I've been here since 2013? How the time flies.
u/gbear605 [+2] history’s greatest story (18 hours later)
The values-only copy appears to have not copied the links
u/Anderkent [+2] (20 hours later)
Haha oups. Well, can't be arsed to do that :P It's only really meant to make things sortable.
u/Rhamni [+2] Aspiring author (21 hours later)
Assuming not more than 500 new subscribers since then, it seems less than half the accounts that subscribe have posted or commented. Interesting.
u/Chronophilia [+4] sci-fi ≠ futurology (a day later)
That's fairly typical for Reddit. The admins have talked about the 90/9/1 rule: 90% of Reddit users read but don't interact, 9% only upvote and downvote, and 1% write comments and posts.
u/ancientcampus [+1] juggling kittens (4 days later)
Score! I'm barely more popular than User Simulator. ;P
u/None [+6] (3 hours later)
Ahh, I'm not actually subscribed in this particular throwaway. Here it is, then: 3994! (Edit: exactly 4000 at the time of editing!!! Woot!)
I'm glad this subreddit has grown so well. Kudos to our great mods, picked by /u/eaturbrainz – and man, serious kudos to the dude who picked brains after realizing he needed to quit reddit for a bit … bet he'd be really proud that his baby is lasting nicely. I remember when it was just an empty forum with a vague promise about "cool-headed discussion" or some shit like that … a diamond in the rough. Super thanks to the dude who was really nice by willingly surrendering such prime domainspace in response to a short PM. By the time I even accepted the request to mod it, he'd already unmodded himself. Fun stuff.
Anyway, looking forward to seeing the new thousand.
u/None [+7] (4 hours later)
Are you /u/sapphirebnb, or whatever that username was back in the day?
(Personally, as a mod, I'm just happy that this place is fairly active and runs well without a lot of interference. Getting involved in modding wars is the least-fun, most time-consuming thing to do as a mod, and I'm glad not to do it.)
u/None [+5] (12 hours later)
Yeahhhh /u/seraphnb, guilty as charged – tho I must say, I enjoy /u/sapphirebnb much better. I'd always imagined this sub as a rather laissez faire sorta place, so it makes me happy to see that most mod action is still along the lines of "promoting fun things for the community" as opposed to "approving posts and deleting submissions." You guys have done amazingly through and through, and I look forward to seeing where the future goes.
u/None [+2] (13 hours later)
Some unusual word beginning with S...
And thanks.
But stop chain-deleting accounts.
u/XxChronOblivionxX [+5] (an hour later)
First read HPMOR since it was #1 in Reviews for the Harry Potter section, loved it, and found this sub through /r/HPMOR. There wasn't much that interested me in the beginning but its gotten a lot better over time.
u/gamarad [+6] LessWrong (than usual) (13 hours later)
We reached 3000 218 days ago and we reached 2000 a year and three days ago. It took 58 days longer to go from 3000 to 4000 than it took to go from 2000 to 3000. I suspect growth between 2000 and 3000 may have been inflated because HPMOR ended in that time which gave this sub a boost from people searching for an alternative source of rational/rationalist fiction.
u/None [+3] (14 hours later)
So the growth was linear. Disappointing.
u/Transfuturist [+1] Carthago delenda est. (2 days later)
Oh no, our steadily growing community isn't growing superlinearly...
???
u/eaglejarl [+4] (52 seconds later)
Personally, back when I started writing 2YE someone linked it here and told me they had done so. I stopped by to say thanks and the rest is history.
u/GaBeRockKing [+5] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (2 hours later)
Haha! I unsubscribed so I could make a ninja re-subscribe to be the 4,000th member!
Get on ma lvl.
u/eaglejarl [+4] (2 hours later)
It's been over a week now that we've been teetering on the edge and we haven't come close enough for one more person to matter.
Have fun obsessively reloading the page. :>
u/GaBeRockKing [+3] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (2 hours later)
I was going to re-subscribe because I was getting bored, but now I won't, just to spite you >:(
^^oh, ^^who ^^am ^^I ^^kidding, ^^that's ^^not ^^going ^^to ^^happen.
u/eaglejarl [+4] (3 hours later)
Haha! My cunning plan to keep the counts low so that I can be the 4000th subscriber has succeeded!
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+2] Roll the Dice on Fate (3 hours later)
Good double bluff. Or is it a triple bluff? Dun dun dun.
u/eaglejarl [+6] (3 hours later)
/me taps nose meaningfully.
One level higher than...someone, somewhere. Probably.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+1] Roll the Dice on Fate (17 hours later)
Well now your plan has failed, we are at 4,001
u/GaBeRockKing [+2] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (3 hours later)
Well, I guess you'll be sucessful.
^^^That ^^^is, ^^^until ^^^I ^^^implement ^^^my ^^^glorious ^^^plan ^^^to ^^^double ^^^cross ^^^you ^^^at ^^^the ^^^last ^^^second ^^^with ^^^my ^^^alt ^^^account!
u/Vebeltast [+2] You should have expected the bayesian inquisition! (6 hours later)
The real question: how many different people can have been the 4000th member?
u/narfanator [+4] (2 hours later)
I think, but I'm not certain, that I discovered "Three Worlds Collide" (although I'm not sure how), which led me to Yudkowski, which led to Less Wrong, and at some semi-random point, HPMOR. HPMOR's final exam led me here, in turn.
u/JackStargazer [+3] Primordial Apologist (6 hours later)
I got linked here from HPMOR around when it was ending. Needed my rational story fix, and the community was great, so here I stayed.
And now according to /u/alexanderwales 's spreadsheet I'm apparently in the top 15 for postcount. Honestly did not expect that.
u/xamueljones [+2] My arch-enemy is entropy (a day later)
Me neither for myself as well. I only post when I come across something shiny on the Internet that I think everyone else here would like.
u/Chronophilia [+1] sci-fi ≠ futurology (a day later)
I'm not surprised you're on there, I remember seeing you around a lot. You have a memorable flair.
u/xamueljones [+2] My arch-enemy is entropy (a day later)
Thanks! I was thinking of switching to something about antimemes, but considering that Friendship is Optimal was what got me into /r/rational, I felt that I should stay with it.
u/icingdeath9999 [+3] (a day later)
Normally I don't participate in discussions on this subreddit, because the bar is set to high for me to contribute anything of value. I like how people reason over here and the interaction between community and authors.
A post on HN pointed me to HPMOR after the last chapter was released, I really enjoyed HPMOR. Afterwards I filled my reading time with worm and HPMOR fanfiction and then another post on HN finally pointed me to r/rational
I check regularly for new content and look forward to new chapters of Mother of Learning and Team Anko.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (a day later)
I check regularly for new content and look forward to new chapters of Mother of Learning and Team Anko.
Thank you, that's really flattering. FYI, Team Anko updates every other Sunday, most recently on the 3rd. There isn't a specific time, but I haven't missed an update yet.
u/Rhamni [+2] Aspiring author (an hour later)
I was browsing thepiratebay for audiobooks and found the HPMOR podcast way up the top 100 audiobooks. And I figured, hey, HP fanfiction with a pretentious name that is popular enough to get its own podcast, might as well give it a shot. It cut out just after Hermione's little incident. So you know, that made me kinda motivated to go look for the rest of HPMOR. There wasn't much more written, but it did let me find the subreddit. Which links here all the time. I stayed because there's good content and good people.
Also, the squeaky clean reddit account I use on untrusted hardware is also subscribed, so I'm afraid there is at least one LIE among those 4k. Gasp!
u/TheImmortalLS [+2] (2 hours later)
Found this sub from "lighting up the dark" by velorean., inspiredhby hpmor. He doesn't update often, so I decided to go to reddit to check.
Now I'm writing and it may be a long ways off, but reading here helps.
u/aldonius [+1] (9 hours later)
I discovered HPMoR through a fortuitous google autosuggest, sometime in 2009.
Joined Reddit a couple of years later; subbed to both /r/hpmor and here at about the same time I suppose.
u/noggin-scratcher [+1] I am a happy tree (11 hours later)
Came across LessWrong → read a gratuitious amount of EY → also HPMoR → also Worm (from an author-note on MoR) → /r/hpmor and /r/parahumans and /r/rational (possibly not in that order, I don't remember exactly)
u/Airgineer1 [+1] (21 hours later)
I believe I found this sub after it was mentioned on an HPMOR blog post. After finding Metropolitan Man and Waves Arisen on this sub I had to subscribe.
u/Frommerman [+1] (3 days later)
Someone in an Askreddit thread said "You guys do know that HPMOR is just Harry Potter with Ender's Game's plot, right?" I think he meant it as an insult, but him saying that convinced me to read it.
Best. Attempted. Insult. Ever.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (3 days later)
...that...maybe wasn't an insult?
Or maybe the person is an idiot?
Comparing something to one of the major works of 20th century SF is not a good start to an insult.
u/Frommerman [+1] (3 days later)
It definitely seemed to me like the start of an insult, and Ender's Game has a dedicated hate-base somehow.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (4 days later)
Probably because of Card's wackiness. Mormon, various -isms, and very outspoken about all of it.
u/Frommerman [+1] (4 days later)
Yeah, I don't get that. The wackiness showed up much later. Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead are pretty much totally clear of that. Likely because the Mormon Church started pressuring him more once he became famous.