I have in the past had some fun using stylometric analysis techniques in forums. I’m convinced that Jeremy Hunt is trolling on one of the medical forums. But anyway, if you have enough text you can analyse the frequency of unusual words and draw reasonably firm conclusions about whether two writers are one and the same. It’ll never be bombproof, but can suggest when it might be useful to check whether two posters are using the same i.p. addresses etc…
This software is free and quite user-friendly:
https://sites.google.com/site/computationalstylistics/stylo
It lets you plot diagrams showing how closely related different works by the same authors are:
The time consuming part is downloading enough posts from each author and stripping third party quotes from their datasets. But of course if you were a forum administrator you could write a script to do this.
If you like stylometrics, may I suggest a simple, fun game for all the family?
On your phone or tablet, which you have used for some time, not a new one, go into a writing place, like here, or a text or whatever, and just repetitively accept the next word offered as predicative text.
What comes out sounds spookily like the owner of the phone, although it doesn’t make sense.
Mine reads:
, but I am sure you have a moment, would you be kind enough to give me a call? I am struggling to understand why a propeller governor problem would result in the engine having to come off the airframe, rather than trying to squeeze out some of the most exquisite towns in the world. No Avgas. Leknes to the right and you will see the Autoflame building on the right, so why was the left turned off?
Honestly that was without any selection or rehearsal, it was just as it came out. I can hear myself typing it!
Fascinating.
This is why multiple identity posters write short posts.
One could also argue that the above posts do not read like a female, but in reality everyone is a point on a spectrum and a real woman who flies a TBM is not likely to have the personality of a cheer leader airhead. OTOH anybody can see that Vanessa did not read “right” for someone with sufficient technical knowledge and aptitude to fly a TBM.
I did your test Timothy and got the following
which is a bit like me (especially the first two words) but really it shows that I do nearly all my writing on a laptop. The S7 gets used only for short messages.
Fun exercise. Mine sounds somewhat repetitive, maybe didn’t use this tablet for long enough yet:
I have to agree that we have to be than the ground stays the PPL examiner for your insights to be required to be required for video the ground safely to the day trip to be than the PPL before our club’s the ground stays below to be required to the labour and fight to the day trip to the labour and find that is relevant for your posts by our club’s primary to be than filthy the PPL before signing the PPL examiner the ground safely and find out first thing in the UK.
Note that apart from EuroGA the other English language site I am mainly posting at is the Guardian website…which may explain why the word “labour” pops up twice. However “PPL” appears 4 times and “ground” thrice…
Fascinating thread I must say I feel completely “blue eyed” and naive to the complexity and strangeness of forum dynamics. I mean, of course I have heard and seen these things (trolls, sockpuppets etc), but I have never really seen it in context like this
Anyway, financing. The Sonex board is financed mostly by Sonex. That is an utterly crappy way of doing it. Again I have to refer to the Vans Airforce board. It is financed in part by ads, but mostly by donations. Without donations, the board would be dead. There is no requirement for donations, but most people posting there give an amount. The self important ones also let it show in their “signature” (or maybe they are not self important, they do it to show they are a contributing member of the community, to remove doubts, and IMO it is a good thing. Can’t remember if I did or not when I used it, LOL. I did donate though, for several years). That could be a way here also. But then again, how is this board financed? If other boards need loads of money, why not this one?
It is relatively common for people to stop posting and later come back under another ID. But normally it isn’t done to create a new character with a new (fake) history and flying experience. A lot of people do it just to change their posting name. Here, we have done that on request a number of times and then all new posts appear under the new name.
how is this board financed? If other boards need loads of money, why not this one?
David is a pilot (PPL/IR) who runs a high-end hosting company and very kindly he hosts EuroGA free of charge. The software was developed by his company for other purposes so EuroGA is a good testing platform. David also has huge expertise in areas like SEO which is why EuroGA discussions tend to come up top in google searches.
I am a pilot too and have always done all I could to promote GA, and I donate my time here free of charge. I pay the (trivial) costs of the domain name. To me, EuroGA is a very worthwhile project to be involved in.
We get a currently trivial amount from the Classified adverts, but this will improve over time.
As I wrote before, the big US sites use their advertising income to pay for full time mods and that costs proper money. In the US, the GA community is much bigger and is much less culturally fragmented (one language, one country, etc). It is under much less regulatory pressure and that and other factors deliver a much greater utility value which, in turn drives more advertising revenue. In Europe, sites often use ostensibly unpaid mods (though I suspect they do get paid a little, since all the sites carry advertising or are tied to a commercial publication) but there is a long history of these mods going out of control, in the same way as obnoxious people tend to rise to the top in volunteer organisations of all types. For example, the owner of the Socata owner group once got a job at Socata (didn’t last long) and during that he appointed four prominent pilots there to mod the site. Things quickly disintegrated…
The European GA community is also quite tribal and this reflects itself on forums. Many people post on say forums X Y Z, posting nicely on X and posting deliberately annoying stuff on Y and Z. Then somebody upsets them on X so they switch and post nicely on Y and post annoying stuff on X and Z
EuroGA was started after a couple of sites disintegrated; one melted down and the other became a pub. The one which melted down is now hosting maybe a dozen fake characters run by the mods, constantly asking questions to start discussions. You don’t need to do stylometric analysis to spot it; it is blindingly obvious.
So I think EuroGA is doing pretty well. The stuff discussed in this thread is very very rare here.
Hello to all.
I’d like to say that this is the only GA aviation forum I decide to register.
The only reason is due to the clarity and democratic way both David and Peter seems to follow.
I’d like to thank you both especially David.
Jacko wrote:
They prosecuted me for hydroplaning, and then paid me for my legal expenses, travel, hotel accommodation, meals and a bottle of Chardonnay. It’s very rare for an English court to make such an award nowadays – a sign that the judge considers that the prosecution has been improperly brought.In this particular case, I think the judge lost interest around the time that the CAA’s expert witness claimed, on oath, that he “couldn’t remember” whether anyone had told him what the rules are for expert witnesses. Or it could have been when the same expert admitted that he’d never flown a Maule, never practised the technique in question, and never attempted to talk to anyone who had.
Now THAT’S worth a good write -up .
Jacko, please tell us ALL ABOUT that !
I want to know which forums there were Peter – I was quite active on the one named after a fruit, and I still frequent one owned by an aviation magazine. The fruit one is almost dead, at least the GA part, but it night have some value if you want to bitch about the conditions in working for Emirates or in China. The magazine one is a little quieter than this, but kind of putters on. I see a lot of the same names as here.
What other forums were there?
