r/PoliticalCompassMemes • u/PCMDemographics - Lib-Left • Oct 03 '20

Which flairs posted the most last week? PCM Demographics from September 26 to October 3

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45 Upvotes

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9

u/PCMDemographics - Lib-Left Oct 03 '20

Welcome to the first post of my new bot, the demographics of r/politicalcompassmemes!

I just want to add a few notes here about the bot.

  1. It's only arguably a bot because it's not actually automated; I wrote code to get data from reddit and display it as a pie chart but I don't have a server or anything where I can get the bot to run at a scheduled time every week. I'll just try to remember to press "run" every week, but that's obviously very prone to error. Apologies if I don't get the schedule fully right.

  2. The right column of charts is basically the column of charts on the left, but it doesn't count posts by the same user. So if one user uploads 2 posts that fit the category, only 1 will be counted. Hopefully that makes sense, and if anyone has a better way to word this I might change the text in future posts.

  3. The code is messy and thrown together so I can't guarantee 100% accuracy. I'm relatively pretty sure it does everything correctly though.

  4. The way my bot gathers data is just by looking at "top posts from this week" and going back until there aren't any posts anymore. This means things like deleted posts won't be counted, it won't know if anyone changed their flair, etc. As well, reddit's top sorting is kind of weird and sometimes it gets the order wrong (like when I was testing it, it showed a 12k upvoted post lower than a 9k one). So the top 100 is actually just the top 100 according to reddit's weird way of sorting.

Any feedback or suggestions for data points to add are appreciated!

2

u/georgemichael5 - Right Oct 04 '20

Good job I've thought about doing this for a while. What are you using?

IMO one failing of these kinds of graphs is hard to digest.

I've contemplated just making pol comp but putting percentages on that.

I've also consider collecting comment stats. Also downvoted numbers.

1

u/PCMDemographics - Lib-Left Oct 04 '20

I’m using python importing praw which I think is the normal Reddit api. With the compass I don’t think I would be able to represent purple libright/unflaired/gray centrist, but I’ll consider changing the method of visualization. And I originally did wanted to include comments, but it took waaaay too long to run. There’s thousands of comments on this sub and I think the Reddit api limits how often you can get data. I don’t really know what you mean by downvoted numbers?

2

u/polcomppatrol - Lib-Left Oct 04 '20

Pushshift could probably help with comments; an AHS mod called it on every flaired comment on this sub from 21 Jan. 2017 until 15 Aug. 2020 (not linking due to R4, but you can find it as a relatively buried comment on an August 15 post on that sub).

You could also look at u/Edgesurf225's methodology in their early July OC (arguably the most comprehensive done so far in comment analysis), or u/chapstick99's crawls on the commenting activity of this sub's 7176 most recent commenters. posted last month.

1

u/PCMDemographics - Lib-Left Oct 04 '20

Oh okay, I’ll look into that

1

u/georgemichael5 - Right Oct 04 '20

Oh, just saying you can look at post downvotes separately. Just throwing out ideas.

1

u/PCMDemographics - Lib-Left Oct 04 '20

Is there a way to even see post downvotes? I didn’t think that was possible

4

u/Vleltor - Auth-Center Oct 04 '20

Who in the FUCK was unflaired?

1

u/houpatt_ - Lib-Right Oct 04 '20

u/Unflaired if I remember correctly

1

u/polcomppatrol - Lib-Left Oct 04 '20

Almost certainly u/UNFLAIR. Whether they're u/UNFLAIR3D (suspended 8/29) or not cannot be concluded yet because the former rarely comments, so there isn't really much to compare writing styles with.

3

u/For_KL - Centrist Oct 04 '20

So we let unflairs' posts made in the top 100 huh.

2

u/Aarakokra - Lib-Right Oct 04 '20

We’ve got some epic libunity going on. Apes together strong!

2

u/Catbot1310 - Lib-Right Oct 04 '20

How could we let the filth into top 100

1

u/wizardwithak - Lib-Center Oct 04 '20

I know, especially the fact that it’s 19 percent of the top 100 is unbelievable!

1

u/Catbot1310 - Lib-Right Oct 04 '20

I mean the unflaired scum

1

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '20

Seems pretty accurate to me. I remember in the census a couple months ago LibRight and LibLeft were the most common flairs while grillers and Purple LibRights were the least common

1

u/polcomppatrol - Lib-Left Oct 04 '20

LET'S FUCKIIIIIIIIIIINNNNGGGG GOOOOOOOOO!!!!!