Discussions

With the end of 2016 just a few days away there’s no better time to reflect on the year that was. As has become a tradition on eBrandon over the past eight years I like to use these final days to look back on 12 months of discussion forums and count down the top threads of the year based on how users used the site.  
 
These kinds of lists can be tricky since a lot of people look to the forums for a lot of very different things and may have their own opinions of what discussions resonated the most with them. Based on an internal formula that mainly tries to strike a balance between discussions that were read many times and discussions that saw a higher than normal amount of participation I’ve been able to rank 30 threads that stood out above all others. Starting today and continuing for the next five days I’ll name five of those threads by making a post here.... all the way until New Year’s Eve when I’ll post the top five threads of 2016.  
 
For the second straight year each discussion on the list will be accompanied by a few stats to help put into further context. Those stats are:    
   
Number of days active: the amount of time between when a thread was first started and when it received its last reply. I look for two things in this number. If it’s a very low number like say two or three days, it’s a good indication of just how popular the thread was if it was able to meet the criteria to make this list over such a small amount of time. On the other hand some threads on the list were active for more than 100 days… longevity that speaks for itself in terms of how long the topic was on folks’ minds.    
   
View rank: Takes all of the Top 30 threads and shows you where they ranked against the other Top 30 strictly based on the amount of views that were recorded on them. Is typically an accurate measure of how many local folks have read a discussion topic, but needs to be taken with a slight grain of salt in the odd situation where Google ranks an eBrandon thread particularly high and sends an abnormal amount of Google searches to the site to read that particular thread.    
   
Participation rank: Takes all of the Top 30 threads and shows you where they ranked against the other Top 30 strictly based on how many replies the thread received from eBrandon members who participated in the discussion.    
   
Viral rank:. A thread on eBrandon has the ability to spread within the community in a "viral" way. Its that viral nature that makes the discussion forum section of this site quite unique in the role it plays in the community on important topics. This ranking examines how many of a discussion thread's views were concentrated in a small period of time. The more concentrated, the more viral the thread is considered to have been.    
   
Without further ado…..

[b]2. Gas prices[/b]  
Started by marlene, January 6  
Number of days active: 173  
View rank: 1  
Participation rank: 2  
Viral rank: 19  
Review the discussion at: https://ebrandon.ca/messagethread.aspx?message_id=928972&cat_id=3  
 
[b]1. Wheat Kings, 2016 Playoffs (WHL Champions!!)[/b]  
Started by Adam, March 22  
Number of days active: 54  
View rank: 5  
Participation rank: 3  
Viral rank: 16  
Review the discussion at: https://ebrandon.ca/messagethread.aspx?message_id=937765&cat_id=1  
 
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And that's all she wrote. Thanks to everyone that was a part of the site over the past year, be it on the classified or forum side and whether you've been a regular poster or just someone who likes to check in from time to time. eBrandon is what it is because of the variety of folks that use it, something that this list is living proof of when you consider that the 30 threads listed were started by 27 different members. It's also quite revealing that in 9 years of doing this list I've only been the starter of the top thread twice myself even though I run the site! :) Hoping that everyone has a safe and happy New Year's Eve... we'll see you some time on the other side of midnight!