FirstLoveMovies

Rich_Visiting wrote:Wow, really impressive! I wonder what conclusions, based on similar trends, can be made from the data? That would be the next step.

Actually, many times we digress into technical or other off-topic discussions which drive up the post count.
https://www.first-loves.com/forums/view ... 210#p85210

IMHO how many likes the best link in a thread got would be a better indication of popularity.
E.g. ghost's release of The Trouble With Being Born got 53 likes (so far).
https://www.first-loves.com/forums/view ... =20#p84168
Despite my lowID issues, I've uploaded 36.66 GB of this file alone. Muidhond with 23 GB uploaded is my second most requested file.

emuler wrote:IMHO how many likes the best link in a thread got would be a better indication of popularity.

I definitely agree about likes being a more reliable indicator than either views or replies. The reason I didn't include them in this data is because it wasn't something I could just scrap from the topic list page like the others — the only way to get the likes was to actually enter the topic and scrap the first post there. So the amount of requests needed would have been far superior (one per topic + one per forum page instead of just one per forum page).

An admin with access to the FLM database and basic knowledge of SQL could probably produce a query that would return the top movies by likes in an instant, as they wouldn't need to do any scrapping like I had to.

ygl wrote:

emuler wrote:IMHO how many likes the best link in a thread got would be a better indication of popularity.

I definitely agree about likes being a more reliable indicator than either views or replies. The reason I didn't include them in this data is because it wasn't something I could just scrap from the topic list page like the others — the only way to get the likes was to actually enter the topic and scrap the first post there. So the amount of requests needed would have been far superior (one per topic + one per forum page instead of just one per forum page).

An admin with access to the FLM database and basic knowledge of SQL could probably produce a query that would return the top movies by likes in an instant, as they wouldn't need to do any scrapping like I had to.

It is even more complicated than that. The best link for a film is usually, but not always, the last link posted in that thread. Many of the older threads have started with a really bad VHSrip and slowly progressed through several iterations (VCD, DVD, HDTV, WebDL, BluRay) to an AI enhanced version. Does one just count the last release, or all the releases put together? After all, people were interested enough in the film to download several versions as and when they became available.

Btw. this discussion is not disparaging your efforts in any way. You did a really good job with what you had access to.

emuler wrote:Actually, many times we digress into technical or other off-topic discussions which drive up the post count.

Somehow, I immediately knew you would link a thread that I had posted in - - I just was not sure which one.

Night457 wrote:

emuler wrote:Actually, many times we digress into technical or other off-topic discussions which drive up the post count.

Somehow, I immediately knew you would link a thread that I had posted in - - I just was not sure which one.

Actually, I'm considering myself as being the guilty party. A LOT of my posts have been off-topic.

emuler wrote:It is even more complicated than that. The best link for a film is usually, but not always, the last link posted in that thread. Many of the older threads have started with a really bad VHSrip and slowly progressed through several iterations (VCD, DVD, HDTV, WebDL, BluRay) to an AI enhanced version. Does one just count the last release, or all the releases put together? After all, people were interested enough in the film to download several versions as and when they became available.

Right, I hadn't even considered that! In that case, I think the best way to go about it would be to sum the likes of all the posts in a topic and divide that number by the total amount of posts in the topic. That would essentially get you the average likes for the topic, which would make it comparable to any other regardless of how many posts (or different released versions of a movie) each of them have. So it would actually take a lot more requests than I had anticipated: one per topic page + one per forum page, although I reckon it would still be a fairly simple query with direct access to the database.

emuler wrote:Btw. this discussion is not disparaging your efforts in any way. You did a really good job with what you had access to.

Thanks! I originally intended to do this for myself to discover the most popular movies posted here (going by views, which is not ideal as they are not unique views and can be easily manipulated by just refreshing the page, yet they're the next best thing to likes and a good enough approximation), but once I had it I immediately thought it might also be useful to the other members so I decided to share it with everyone.

emuler wrote:Actually, I'm considering myself as being the guilty party. A LOT of my posts have been off-topic.

As an FLM Grandpa, it is expected for you to ramble on randomly if you wish. At the very least, I am good at encouraging digressions. A young FLM whippersnapper like me has been afforded quite a bit of tolerance by the oldsters.

I do at least attempt to comment on the film thread topic when I catch myself veering off.

ygl, I appreciate your stats. Thank you!

In the interest of sparking some discussion, here are some hypothesis I had prior to the study, which I wanted to put to the test with its results. They are based on my own intuitions after a few years of watching OT films.

1. The continent with the most amount of movies would be Europe - Confirmed
   Probably because Europeans tend to be more liberal and not as prudish as, say, Americans (although they do have quite a remarkable amount of movies too, which took me a bit by surprise).
2. Within Europe, the country with most movies would definitely be France - Confirmed
   I noticed the French produce quite a lot of OT movies, which is one of the reasons I love French cinema so much.
3. The decade with the most amount of movies would be the 70s or the 80s - Rejected
   For similar reasons as the first one: it is my impression that on these time periods people were more liberal and far less prude and obsenity-phobic than nowadays.

I think the reason the third one was not confirmed is because of how broad the definition of an OT movie is. I bet results would have been vastly different had we restricted this definition only to the more risqué/controversial films featuring any amount of sensitive content such as Lolita, a movie that could never have been released today.

In fact, if you allow me to make the assumption that the most risqué movies are also the most popular (not necessarily true but I'm willing to bet it would not be so far off), I can kind of prove this point I'm making with the results of this study by listing the years which have the most amount of movies, but only taking into account the most popular ones (ten thousand views or more):

Top 3 years with the most popular movies

1. 1978 - 5 movies
2. 1995 - 3 movies
3. 1979 - 3 movies

I also found it interesting seeing France first followed by other European countries when you only consider the most popular movies, instead of the United States at the top when you consider all of them:

Top 3 countries with the most popular movies

1. France - 9 movies
2. Norway - 5 movies
3. Italy - 5 movies

What do you guys think?

ygl wrote:I definitely agree about likes being a more reliable indicator than either views or replies. The reason I didn't include them in this data is because it wasn't something I could just scrap from the topic list page like the others — the only way to get the likes was to actually enter the topic and scrap the first post there. So the amount of requests needed would have been far superior (one per topic + one per forum page instead of just one per forum page).

An admin with access to the FLM database and basic knowledge of SQL could probably produce a query that would return the top movies by likes in an instant, as they wouldn't need to do any scrapping like I had to.

You need to take another factor in consideration of the likes - that feature wasn't available until sometime after August 2011 (I think it was added in 2012). LOTS of films were posted - and downloaded - between then and February 2004 when FLM was created

Can you use the "Liked Topics" or "Recent Likes" sections to pull that data? See the three horizontal lines at the top next to "Forums"? Lots of useful stuff there. You may not have those menu items - they may be admin-only.

Phuzzy4242 wrote:See the three horizontal lines at the top next to "Forums"? Lots of useful stuff there. You may not have those menu items - they may be admin-only.

Well how about that, the hamburger menu I ignore on every site! It does have useful stuff. "Liked Topics" is available to all, even those not logged in. There are even more options once logged in.