Digging in the Dirt
Todd recently asked where everyone came from and how they wound up being part of the League.
My first comment is apparently this one. I admit I didn’t remember precisely when I started reading the League, but if the back-end database is accurate, I have 53 comments as “Patrick Cahalan”, and 2,058 as “Pat Cahalan”. Man, my first dozen or so comments sound *really* professorial and snotty. There’s a big gap between 16-Nov-2009 and 13-Jan-2010 where either I didn’t comment at all, or the database crashed or something. I’ll have to look into it further to know for sure, but that jibes with my very fuzzy recollection of finding this blog somehow, reading a few posts, and then going back to reading Schneier’s blog regularly, before coming back here for some other reason and getting sucked in permanently. I think a friend pointed me at the League, but I can’t remember who it was, so I can’t say for sure.
A sure sign you’re too busy: when you can’t really remember something that happened 2 years ago.
If your name isn’t included below, this isn’t meant to be a dig, I just dug up a quick list of the commentariat by digging through a random collection of pages between the 6000-odd pages in the “comments” section of the blog. If you’re curious about your own stats, post in the comments and I’ll dig you out. Searching was done via email address for the most part, so if you have used more than one, your total will be off. This is all front-page count, no subblogs are included. (edited) I’ve rolled in a few more from the comments and put them in comment number order. Not that this is a contest!
Jaybird: 14,275 comments, first comment here (Google apparently isn’t infallible, Jaybird, they got your first comment wrong). 17-Feb-2009 is his birthday as a commenter. Clearly this site… all joking aside… *is* for Jaybird. He rocks all the rest of us down to the ground. (ed. note = keep it up!)
Erik: 5,345 comments, first comment here. Erik’s first comment was a “test” comment on 20-Jan-2009, so that’s got to be close to site launch.
Mike Schilling clocks in with 2,787 comments, first comment here, 26-Sep-2009. This makes Mike the wordiest guy who isn’t a poster.
Mark Thompson has 3,250 comments, first comment here, 21-Jan-2009.
Rufus F clocks in with 2,185 comments under one email address and 1,071 under another, with his first comment here, on 04-Nov-2009.
Mike Farmer has 3,007 comments, first comment here, on 18-Apr-2009.
Michael Drew has 2,967, old timer first post here, on 25-Feb-2009.
Jason Kuznicki has 2,956 comments, first comment here, 05-Jun-2009.
Tom van Dyke clocks in at 2,602 comments, first comment here, on 06-Nov-2010.
Greginak scores a 2,422, first comment here, on 13-Feb-2009.
Tod’s a respectable 2,331 comments, first comment was here, on 23-Feb-2009.
Mike at the Big Stick has 2,252 comments, first comment here, on 12-Feb-2009.
BlaiseP has 2,158 comments (not bad considering his been on a hiatus forever), staking his first one out here, a surprisingly recent 25-Jan-2011.
North has 464 comments (with an obvious fake email address), first comment here, on 25-Mar-2011. (edited to correct) I found another email address for North, with 1,522 comments attached to it, putting him at just under 2,000 comments with those two email addresses. here is his first comment using that address, on 09-Jul-2009, which seems to jibe more with Mr. Thompson’s expectations.
Kimmie has an incredibly high 1,741 comments given that her first one is here, on 12-May-2011.
Will T, aka Trumwill, 1,729 comments, first comment here, on 06-May-2009.
Christopher Carr: 1,346 comments, first comment here, on 11-Jun-2010.
Bob Cheeks: 1,315 comments, first comment here.
Chris has 1,313 comments, first comment here, on 15-May-2010.
James Hanley has 1,309 comments, first comment here, 13-Mar-2010.
Density Duck has 1,264 comments, first comment here, on 09-Nov-2010.
Simon K has 1,161 comments, first comment here, on 05-Mar-2010.
Will (the other Will) has 1,151 comments, with the first one here, on 26-Jan-2009.
Freddie has 658 comments under one email address, and 352 under another, which he appears to use interchangeably. His first comment appears to be here, a content-filled “test test” on 20-Jan-2009.
Ethan Gach has 972 comments, first comment here, on 20-May-2010.
Stillwater has 909 comments, first comment here, on 03-Feb-2011.
Ryan Bonneville has 832 comments, first comment here, on 03-Feb-2009.
Burt Likko has 717 comments, first comment here, on 28-Jan-2009.
Cascadian has 710 comments, first comment here, on 28-Jan-2009.
Katherine has 685 comments, with her first one here, on 08-Feb-2009.
Jesse Ewiak has 673 comments, first comment here, on 14-Feb-2011.
Barry has 603 comments, first one here, on 27-Mar-2009.
Wardsmith has a very respectable 589 comments given his shorter tenure, first comment here, on 28-Apr-2011.
Murali has 538 comments, first comment here, on 18-Oct-2009.
Koz has only 416 comments (unless he’s used more than one email address as a reference), which seems oddly low to me. First comment here, on 17-Feb-2009.
Kohole only has 410, which was another surprise to me, with his first comment here, on 26-Mar-2010.
Kyle Cupp has 375 comments, with his first here, on 02-Apr-2009.
Roque Nuevo has 333 comments, first comment here, on 21-Jan-2009. His last one was on 08-Sep-2011, but there is a big gap between that comment and his previous one on 18-Aug-2009.
Tim Kowal has 333 comments, numero uno here, on 22-Jul-2009.
Plinko has 303 comments, with the first one here, on 05-Oct-2009.
Brandon Berg has 292, his first comment is here, on 17-Jun-2011.
Russell Saunders has 158 comments as, uh, somebody else and 97 under that tag. First comment from mid-2009, not linked here as it’s under a different name. Constructing you took a bit, Doc 🙂
J.L. Wall has 244 comments with his first one here, on 29-Mar-2009… so you’ve been commenting since the beginning.
Sam M has 222 comments, his first is here, on 10-Jun-2010.
David Cheatham has 191 comments, his inaugural was here, on 01-Feb-2011.
Boegiboe has 180 comments, first comment here, 06-May-2010.
Roger, aka “Surf”, has 127 comments, first comment here, on 11-Mar-2010.
Jeff clocks in with 112 comments, his first one here, on 03-Dec-2009.
kenB has 108 comments, with his first here, on 07-Aug-2009. You’ve been around a while, sir. Comment more!
Lisa Kramer has 86 comments, first comment here, on 07-Jun-2010.
bpsycho has 78 comments, with the first one here, on 01-Nov-2010. Happy commentary birthday!
OK, three quick things off the cuff…
1. That you did this is AMAZING. (How the hell DID you do this? I can still barely manage to italicize things.)
2. I commented here in 2009? Huh. I have no memory of having been here back then, and no memory of that comment.
3. Koz’s 416 has got to be wrong, right?Report
Eh, it’s possible. Koz doesn’t tend to get involved in the pure philosophy blogs as much as others do and he tends to only make three or four posts even on blogs where he does get involved. You’re not going to see him much in the multi-nested threads that some of us get overly involved in. 🙂
Plus, he does a lot on responding to stuff on Elia’s subblog so that stuff wouldn’t count according to Patrick.
So, while 416 still seems low considering he started back in ’09, it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility given the standards Patrick has listed.Report
1) All things are possible with access to the Admin interface. Go to the Comments section and use the search box.
2) You have mebbe a dozen comments in 2009? That one was in 23-Feb, but then you have a big dead zone until September.
3) That still seems weird to me, too. I have to ask Erik if I can have a dump of the backend database; since the comments are reference by who they are in response to, I’d love to see if I can tease out who are the commenting pairs who are most likely to engage in back-n-forths…Report
Patrick, I am jealous of the access to the database. Now can you do a select * from blah where foobar=fubar?Does switching modes like this make my post look like a ransom note?
ReportI don’t have SQL access, Ward, just the WordPress front-end search system, which is a bit kludgey.Report
Yeah, that’s a real surprise to me too, I would have thought I have quite a bit more. I don’t do a whole lot on the subblogs, and Elias only started his subblog six months or so ago.Report
Tod this is your comment:
That not you?Report
Oh no, Pirate Erik Who Once Was An Otter, that’s totally me. The amazing amount of typos testify to this. I just have no memory of either writing that, or knowing about you guys back then.Report
I was an otter for a long time. Then I dressed up like a pirate for Halloween. Someday, perhaps, I will be a pirate otter…Report
Tis a glorious thought
To be a pirate ott(er)Report
Hurrah for Pirate Otter, hurrah for the Pirate Otter!Report
Damn.Report
Yeah, man, this was like walking up to a Pac-Man machine back when I was a kid and saying, “I can beat the high score on this one, too” and seeing 3,333,360 with JYB as the top score.
You’re the shizzle.Report
Seriously awesome, Pat.
A few names from the early days (one of whom still pokes her head around from time to time) that may have big numbers would be Katherine and Roque Nuevo.
And I could have sworn that Michael Drew didn’t show up until around May/June of 09 (which would still make him an old-timer)!Report
Also Sam M and Kyle Cupp were around quite a bit for a long while.Report
But most of all….where’s North on this list?!?!?Report
Yes, good question. All three of these commenters for sure. But also Scott Payne must have had a few comments in his day, no?Report
Most certainly.Report
Methinks the data on North is flawed since he’s been with us since almost the beginning (if not the beginning itself).Report
Surely not the beginning. I think it may be because I hypercautiously use a rather obviously false email addy.Report
The other readily usable search string for North (www.thecommonsccd.com) gives 427 results instead of 464. Obviously “North” is going to give skewed results.Report
It’s why your comments are sometimes caught in my span filter.Report
Thanks Russell, I was wondering. Perhaps it’s high time I threw my sacrificial email address into that field.Report
You’ve got two fake email addresses attached to your name (at least). I found another one and updated your total.Report
Oh cool! That puts me more in line with the old timers. My ego is soothed. Great yeoman’s work Patrick, thank you.Report
Damn i thought i was closer to having enough posts to qualify for a free tote bag.Report
The first giveaway is a bowler, of course.Report
Can I also say that of all the first comments, Mike Schilling by far has the one that most dramatically screams “I HAVE ARRIVED, MOTHERFISHERS!”Report
To be honest, at this moment I’m not even sure what it meant.Report
I’m not sure that a bold comment like that needs meaning. I think it stands on it’s own.Report
Awesome list Patrick, really enjoying going through this, thanks!Report
I guess you can tell where you rate on this blog by seeing which update your name gets included in. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for inclusion in the “re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-edited” section.Report
I may have done it wrong, but I think you come it at 126, and your first comment (8/9/09) is here:
https://ordinary-times.com/blog/2009/08/07/youre-good-enough-youre-smart-enough-and-dog-gone-it/#comment-16756Report
I didn’t realize I started when I was still in Afghanistan, I thought it was later than that. (I also can’t remember if I ever used a fake email address in the early).
I do think that I have spent a lot more time trolling^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H conducting constructive discussions on the sub-blogs.Report
My first comment is EXTREMELY ironic considering the conversation that Will Truman, Michael Drew and myself have been having on Elias’s sub-blog. Everything is cyclical it seems.Report
I originally came for the SSM, here, following Freddie deBoer. (717 comments total, since January 28, 2009, not counting this one.)
As I recall, other places kept coming back here, including Sullivan, Will Truman’s blog, and a bunch of other people bemoaning the collapse of Culture11. I lurked for a while, and realized that this had become the place to be. I found writers here linking back to my blogspot blog, got a mutual-link-admiration society going as I kept on coming back, recognizing kindred spirits looking for intelligence, context, analysis, and something better than partisan bickering.
It’s a pleasure to be here still.Report
How did I miss Burt?Report
No worries, dude.Report
No, I mean, it’s just weird that in the 25 or so pages of comments I picked randomly to get names to search for, you didn’t show up once. For somebody with > 700 comments that’s just a bit unusual.Report
Quite well put, Burt. I’ve been going back through the database and thinking about what to say in the comments about this, but I see you’ve said what I wanted to say better than I could have.
I came here from Sullivan as well to share my ideas and absorb the ideas of others, and I found that rare combination of charity and due criticism which I think is most characteristic of the League.Report
I’m nowReport
Ahead ofReport
Bob.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)Report
I figured you wouldn’t be able to resist the effort to get ahead of me. In a way, I take it as a complement. Thank you. Still haven’t read Marx, he hated his children!Report
Slow day at work, Pat? 😉
I’m pleased to see that in my first post I managed to take a shot at both liberals and Woodrow Wilson. In hindsight, that pretty neatly sums up my contributions here (other than my gratuitous but personally amusing trolling of a certain conservative poster).Report
I’m sick. I should be working on NaNoWriMo.Report
Heh, I stayed home sick today, too. Good for my stats. Another sick day and I can pass both Chris and Robert.Report
I should have used a more unique user-name. Finding the posts from “Jeff” while weeding out any posts about a “Jeff” (Bezos, Davis, et al) would not be easy.
I’ve used the same e-mail address, so a “core dump” could count my posts, I reckon (under 50, I’m sure — possibly under 20).Report
Haha, I love my first comment.Report
Trying out a new comment system.Report
Dude, that link–like so many others here–goes to my first post. What is up with that?
Like the new comment system, though it confused the fish out of me when it first popped up. I couldn’t figure out how I kept getting this strange new thing.Report
I have no idea why that goes to your first post, except that perhaps that post is the first post when the URL of the site lost its WWW and got its /blog.Report
let’s try the link a little differently.Report
‘sokay. It’s my little claim to fame.Report
btw, concerned that the new Off the Cuff placement will kill itReport
Okay, moved it back.Report
Good call.
Any chance we could get that feature back where the comments start with an @PersonWereRespondingTo or did that cause problems?Report
Yeah, I’ve been working on that.Report
Huh. I’m supposed to see an “edit” button, but I’m not seeing it.
[EDIT BY BURT LIKKO] I see it, Erik.Report
Burt – do you see the regular [edit] button that takes you to the backend? We should be seeing a front-end edit button.Report
Yes, it’s the same back-end edit that was always there, it goes to the admin page. No editing right here.
Sorry if that was confusing for you; I thought maybe I was able to see it if you could not.Report
There you back enders go lording it over us front enders again.Report
Kewl! Except that the font I type my comment in is about 6 point. A little tough on these old eyeballs.
Here’s trying an img src placement (yes was saving for occupy thread):
Report
Some sites have conversations that go by pretty fast, so once in awhile I’ll search sites I’ve commented on to see if I missed a reply. Google gives 157 results (including this one) for here, but it double-counts mentions in the sidebars.Report
Wow. I totally remember that Atlanta comment, too, I had no idea it came first or that it was so long ago.
I’m in awe, Patrick.Report
@Patrick,
Are Kim, Kimmi, Kimsie and others beginning with K not named Koz all the same person?
There’s another Google trick we could do. When you type in the site:ordinary-gentlemen.com [userid] in the lower left (off frame) there’s a link that says, “more search tools”. When you click on /that/ there’s a choice called “Reading level”. I find it refreshing that most of the ordinary gentleperson’s (even Kimmi!_) show up as intermediate.
Of course I like Kimmi much better after her guest post on mindless diversions.Report
Katherine is an old hand round here and definitly isn’t the same as Kimmi.Report
I’m sort of overwhelmed by this post & thread & combox & whatnot. All I can say is that I think I’d be mortified for people to see the majority of my early comments (not nthat they’re not public record, but I’m doubting anyone will go find them for the heck of it), and that I’m glad my first wasn’t the one I thought it was going to be.
Anyways, this is all awesome and amazing, Pat. Tip O’ The Hat!Report
There’s a reason I don’t use “DensityDuck” as an ID anywhere that I’m required to register with an actual email.Report
You got a nice blog here. I’d hate to see anything happen to it.Report
Ahem! I’ve got 3,255 comments dating back to November, 2009. Apparently, I introduced myself by complaining about Family Guy and its hacky writing.Report
From Family Guy to Plotinus. Well played, sir. Well played.Report
Damn, Rufus. I always thought you were an original.Report
Nice job Patrick,
BTW, can someone please tell me how to change my avatar? I’m sure it must be something simple that I just overlooked.Report
I think you have to register with something or other. I used to have an elegant little fractal pattern. My new monster logo is making me seriously consider registering too.Report
I mean seriously, is that some kind of boa? I am kindof stoked with the three eyes… serious 360 degree vision potential is awsome but a boa? I couldn’t be seen in public with such a thing. Also my legs are in far better shape than those sticks.
… I could probably work the blue tan tho.Report
Roger,
Try here.Report
Problem with Gravatar is that it may conflict with the username you already have, since the League’s WordPress allows us to use whatever but Gravatar requires a unique one. North, for example, probably would need a new username, I do, too.Report
Gravatar, IIRC, links your gravatar to your email address, not to your “username”. You might have to have a different gravatar username than you use here, but the image is pulled based upon the email address you use when you post.
At least, when I post to other blogs that have gravatar plugins enabled, my gravatar shows up no matter what I use as a username at those blogs, as long as I use my gravatar-registered email address to post the comment.Report
Thanks all. This answers both my question and my concern when I went to Gravitar’s site and they rejected all my names. To clarify though… I can sign up for Gravitar, get my desired avitar AND continue to use my real name on this forum?Report
Incidentally, what do BlaiseP’s stats look like? I know he doesn’t post here anymore but I remember him being very active.Report
He’s on the list, you must have missed him. ~2100 comments.Report