Suppose we were wondering about changing the flavor of our pizza. Someone says “Yeah, I’m really glad you’ve got these new flavors on your menu, I used to think the old recipe was boring and didn’t order it much.”
And then it turns out that this person hasn’t ever actually tried any of your new flavors of pizza.
Sort of sets an upper bound on how much the introduction of new flavors has impacted this person’s behavior.
You can judge a lot more about a thread than about a pizza by just looking at it.
Also, if you seriously think that Open Threads can only be evaluated by people with top-level comments in them you probably misunderstand both how most people use the Open Threads and what is required to judge them.
I think you can judge quite a lot about pizza without eating it. That merely wasn’t what I was talking about. Don’t bait and switch conversations please.
Note that he didn’t say “I didn’t post much”, he just said that there existed times when he thought about posting but didn’t because of the age of the thread. That is useful evidence, you can’t just ignore it if it so happens that there are no instances of posting at all.
(In pizza terms, Emile said “I used to think the old recipe was bad and I never ordered it. It’s not that surprising in that case that there are no instances of ordering.)
Though here is more of a case of “once in a blue moon I got o the pizza place … and I’m bored and tired of life … and want to try something crazy for a change … but then I see the same old stuff on the menu, I think man, this world sucks … but now they have the Sushi-Harissa-Livarot pizza, I know next time I’m going to feel better!”
I agree it’s a bit weird that I say that p(post|weekly thread) > p(post| monthly thread) when so far there are no instances of post|weekly thread.
What has that to do with it?
Suppose we were wondering about changing the flavor of our pizza. Someone says “Yeah, I’m really glad you’ve got these new flavors on your menu, I used to think the old recipe was boring and didn’t order it much.”
And then it turns out that this person hasn’t ever actually tried any of your new flavors of pizza.
Sort of sets an upper bound on how much the introduction of new flavors has impacted this person’s behavior.
You can judge a lot more about a thread than about a pizza by just looking at it.
Also, if you seriously think that Open Threads can only be evaluated by people with top-level comments in them you probably misunderstand both how most people use the Open Threads and what is required to judge them.
I think you can judge quite a lot about pizza without eating it. That merely wasn’t what I was talking about. Don’t bait and switch conversations please.
irony.
Note that he didn’t say “I didn’t post much”, he just said that there existed times when he thought about posting but didn’t because of the age of the thread. That is useful evidence, you can’t just ignore it if it so happens that there are no instances of posting at all.
(In pizza terms, Emile said “I used to think the old recipe was bad and I never ordered it. It’s not that surprising in that case that there are no instances of ordering.)
Sure!
Though here is more of a case of “once in a blue moon I got o the pizza place … and I’m bored and tired of life … and want to try something crazy for a change … but then I see the same old stuff on the menu, I think man, this world sucks … but now they have the Sushi-Harissa-Livarot pizza, I know next time I’m going to feel better!”
I agree it’s a bit weird that I say that p(post|weekly thread) > p(post| monthly thread) when so far there are no instances of post|weekly thread.
Well, it’s evidence for “Hmm, I’d like to ask this in an open thread, but the last one is too old, nobody’s looking at it any more.”
Haha but no, Manfred says that he hasn’t ever posted a top-level comment in a weekly open thread.