The most popular project toplist

[Darknemo2000]

Sometimes one may wonder which are the most popular projects on B-T... Well Haruhi is a doubtless number 1 but some may wonder how other projects do.

The most simple way is to count general views, but as we know not always the actual number of views reflects one or the other projects popularity, since sometimes the older projects may not be so popular but still get more views due to them being online longer. So here i am making a popularity ratio instead, which is counted by an average vies per day the project was launched. At first, here is a full data of B-T projects listed showing the name, dauly views average, the date of starting, the total days of being active and the overall views:

7 Nights - 86.5 (03/12/2008 - 118 Days) - 10,202 times
Baccano - 109.8 (03/22/2008 - 108 Days) - 11,862 times
Clannad - 332.3 (01/22/2007 - 533 Days) - 177,126 times.
Fate/stay night - 138.4 (05/04/2008 -65 Days) - 8,998 times.
Fate/Zero - 266.0 (03/27/2007 - 468 Days) - 124,520 times.
Ghost Hunt - 81.0 (02/10/2008 -149 Days) - 12,073 times.
Iriya no Sora - 17.3 (07/13/2006 - 726 Days) - 12,580 times.
Kara no Kyoukai - 129.4 (07/20/2006 - 719 Days) - 93,029 times.
Kaze no Stigma - 125.4 (05/28/2007 - 406 Days) - 50,891 times.
Kino no Tabi - 64.3 (06/05/2008 - 33 Days) - 2,121 times.
Maria-sama ga Miteru - 195.0 (03/26/2008 - 104 Days) 20,276 times.
Suzumiya Haruhi - 2217.2 (04/15/2006 - 814 Days) 1,804,796 times.
Suzumiya Haruki no Seitenkan - 230.2 (03/12/2008 - 118 Days) - 27,163 times.
Spice & Wolf - 266.6 (02/07/2008 - 152 Days) - 40,513 times.
Tomoyo After - 146.2 (06/04/2008 - 34 Days) - 4,970 times.
Toradora! - 874.8 (04/16/2008 - 83 Days) - 72,606 times.
Umineko no Naku Koro ni - 223.7 (01/20/2008 - 170 Days) 26,847 times.
Zero no Tsukaima - 424.5 (08/08/2006 - 700 Days) - 297,147 times.

Now the first top list based on daily Views average:

01. Suzumiya Haruhi - 2217.2
02. Toradora! - 874.8
03. Zero no Tsukaima - 424.5
04. Clannad - 332.3
05. Spice & Wolf - 266.6
06. Fate/Zero - 266.0
07. Suzumiya Haruki no Seitenkan - 230.2
08. Umineko no Naku Koro ni - 223.7
09. Maria-sama ga Miteru - 195.0
10. Tomoyo After - 146.2
11. Fate/stay night - 138.4
12. Kara no Kyoukai - 129.4
13. Kaze no Stigma - 125.4
14. Baccano - 109.8
15. 7 Nights - 86.5
16. Ghost Hunt - 81.0
17. Kino no Tabi - 64.3
18. Iriya no Sora - 17.3

Some might say that relatively new projects like Toradora has higher advantage as they are new ones and thus naturally (if translations are speedy enough) gain more views. Thus it is not so fair for older projects thus here is the second top list based on views in general:

01. Suzumiya Haruhi - 1,804,796 times.
02. Zero no Tsukaima - 297,147 times.
03. Clannad - 177,126 times.
04. Fate/Zero - 124,520 times.
05. Kara no Kyoukai - 93,029 times.
06. Toradora! - 72,606 times.
07. Kaze no Stigma - 50,891 times.
08. Spice & Wolf - 40,513 times.
09. Suzumiya Haruki no Seitenkan - 27,163 times.
10. Umineko no Naku Koro ni - 26,847 times.
11. Maria-sama ga Miteru - 20,276 times.
12. Iriya no Sora - 12,580 times.
13. Ghost Hunt - 12,073 times.
14. Baccano - 11,862 times
15. 7 Nights - 10,202 times
16. Fate/stay night - 8,998 times.
17. Tomoyo After - 4,970 times.
18. Kino no Tabi - 2,121 times.

Now we are still not clear about general position of some projects in popularity thats why I am putting ratio points here to solve that problem. Each novel gets point for their position so lets say first place gets 18 points, second - 17 and so on. Since there are two top lists the optimal number of points (for two first places) is 36. To get ratio points we divide the points that project received from the optimal number of points to get the ratio points. The max of ratio points is 1.00. So here we go the final top list based on ratio points. If ratio is the same the advantage goes to that novel series which had highest position in either of the toplist. If highest positions were the same then advantage goes to the one that has higher daily views average.

So here is the final toplist, which hopefully answers once and for all which projects are currently the most popular on B-T, based on ratio points:

01. Suzumiya Haruhi - 1.00
02. Zero no Tsukaima - 0.92
03. Clannad - 0.86
04. Toradora! - 0.83
05. Fate/Zero - 0.78
06. Spice & Wolf - 0.70
07. Suzumiya Haruki no Seitenkan - 0,61
08. Kara no Kyoukai - 0.58
09. Umineko no Naku Koro ni - 0.56
10. Kaze no Stigma - 0.50
11. Maria-sama ga Miteru - 0.50
12. Tomoyo After - 0.31
13. Fate/stay night - 0.31
14. Baccano - 0.28
15. Ghost Hunt - 0.25
16. Iriya no Sora - 0.22
17. 7 Nights - 0.22
18. Kino no Tabi - 0.08

Feel free to discuss the method I used or the results, if they are surprising or if they were exactly what you expected.

For me there is no real surprises but the fact that Clannad still has higher ratio than Toradora. But I would say not for long with the way the things are going right now. ZnT may be still a long shot for Toradora now but Clannad should not be able to keep the third place for much longer.

I am bit surprised by the relatively low position of Spice and Wolf, was expecting the project to be at least one position higher.

All others were what I expected, maybe bit surprised with Maria-sama ga Miteru's rather high position.

[TheGiftedMonkey]

I honestly didn't even know we had Kino no Tabi. Other than that, I'm not surprised by everything else. I actually thought the total Haruhi views were going to be higher.

[Dan]

I would say, for the title of this thread, the daily views are the most meaningful. "Popularity" is a function of time at each instant so adjusting for how long we've had it isn't exactly accurate.

[Darknemo2000]

Well one can disagree with you Dan. Why? Basically newer projects potentially can have high average views because they are on the up side as they have many active translators at this moment naturally, thus more people come to check daily expecting an upload, while older projects have many ups and downs due to long term they are on. So once ZnT is up it can easily surpass Toradora in daily views, but once it is down, it is no match for it. So all and all I think a middle from both is the best solution. Mind you I still give dialy views more importance as it is the second decisive factor if the novels have same ratio.

[onizuka-gto]

I honestly didn't even know we had Kino no Tabi. Other than that, I'm not surprised by everything else. I actually thought the total Haruhi views were going to be higher.

you don't know nothing! you monkey! NOTHING!

*throw banana's carelessly around*

[Vaelis]

Personally I would be more interested in the daily views limited to the last 3-4 months.

Using this topic we get more or less:

01. Suzumiya Haruhi - 1575
02. Toradora! - 875
03. Zero no Tsukaima - 750
04. Clannad - 522
05. Fate/Zero - 352
06. Kara no Kyoukai - 275
07. Spice & Wolf - 267
08. Suzumiya Haruki no Seitenkan - 230
09. Umineko no Naku Koro ni - 224
10. Maria-sama ga Miteru - 195

[Darknemo2000]

Well again, it is unfair from the longer projects like Haruhi view (if it matters any) because there are many ups and downs in a project and the last month may be the moment when the project is suffering down (due to lack of translators or like in Harruhi case due to most being translated already).

It is not the list of the project that has been popular these few months but rather overall, thats why i am using this formula to calculate it.

[TheDefend]

wheew... toradora is quite popular hope there will be someone who will sub toradora XD + SH always on the top -.-;

[Darknemo2000]

I would say that very soon Toradora wil be our third popular project surpassing Clannad.

Just look at the average daily views - Spice and Wolf is very close to Clannad and considering that all was translated in Clannad already while Spice and Wolf is picking up the tempo lately I would say that soon Spice and Wolf will take Clanneds place which will make Clannad have 0.83 ratio points, equal to Toradora but since Toradora has second place in daily views ratio it will easily take third place in B-T most popular projects list.

[Const2k]

Hmmm... Strictly speaking, it's incorrect to compare projects using their index pages only. Hence, we're discussing "The most popular project index page toplist" which isn't necessary the same as <topic_name>.
For example, this way "1 visit" of index page is the same when:
- user (leaving Google, spam etc. bots alone) just checked index page and
- (s)he's gone through all the pages of a project from index page below using "Go to next chapter" buttons.

More correct way to compare projects would be using their "average page" rather than their "index page". This way "popularity of a project" would be an average popularity of its pages, or:
arithmetic mean of all ((page views)/(page age) of each page) ratios for a given project,
and I'd have "main", "gallery" and service (e.g. registration) pages excluded since they don't provide translated text.

However, getting this info would, most likely, require writing a wiki crawler and data parser, which doesn't sound too inspiring (for me at least).
Probably, admins have sufficient rights to access this info in easily processible form (if it exists), though.

[Darknemo2000]

I also though this way but it is really tedious work, besides, even if we are counting the index pages a lot of those views are from the users that return to the project to read again. Yes some part of these views are accidental but once a person stops lliking it he never checks even the index page so i think it still reflects the popularity well enough.

[Beware the talking cat]

Also, I would note the SHnY page is my bookmarked page to the site, probably like many others. Even though it's been months since I've read any of it, since I'm constantly on the forums, it still gets several views each day from me. If even a few of the other large-posters are the same way, it could easily make quite a large difference.

[Vaelis]

Also, I would note the SHnY page is my bookmarked page to the site, probably like many others.

Yeah, it was the same for me.
But I've started to use this page.

[Darknemo2000]

Well if you bookmarked it that means it was popular enough for you to bookmark it. It is not like others cannot bookmark other projects as well.

[Const2k]

if we are counting the index pages a lot of those views are from the users that return to the project to read again. Yes some part of these views are accidental but once a person stops lliking it he never checks even the index page so i think it still reflects the popularity well enough.

I doubt that "return views" are counted, since most browsers (maybe even IE now) return cached page when requested.

However, that's not the point. These inaccuracies make derivative tables (especially 2nd and last ones) unreliable because difference between ranks in some cases is lower than acceptable possible errors.
For example, one can't be sure whether Suzumiya Haruki no Seitenkan (27,163) is more popular than Umineko no Naku Koro ni (26,847) due to negligible difference between them (316 visits).
Situation becomes worse when this affects ranking in last table: these 316 visits' weight for last table is equal to 1,507,649 (!) visits' difference in case of SH vs. ZnT.

Shortly speaking, tables show somewhat reliable ranking for first 5-8 places at best (where visits' difference is over ten thousand); we can speak only about groups of projects (instead of individual projects) for the rest of them (6+...9+ ranks).

Having all the needed data on Popular pages and Oldest pages, I might be able to make something about this, if OpenOffice supports Python to needed extent...