https://i.imgur.com/OHpx68j.png
created by Joliot on 10/02/2020 at 02:47 UTC
21179 upvotes, 101 top-level comments (showing 25)
Comment by iLikeSourBeer at 10/02/2020 at 02:56 UTC
1147 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Looks good, how did you collect data for this ? And what did you use for visualization?
Comment by Joliot at 10/02/2020 at 02:48 UTC
288 upvotes, 5 direct replies
For the past month I've collected data about how the score (upvotes - downvotes) and karma of individual posts change over time. As[1] you may[2] know, one[3] upvote doesn't[4] necessarily increase your karma by one, the amount of karma you get per upvote decreases as the score of your post increases.
___ #Data collection
I used Python and PRAW[5] to grab the IDs of newly made posts and collected their score and the author's link karma approximately every six minutes. The script dropped posts from its collection if the score increased too slowly (the rate varied by subreddit, on some subs it worked to drop posts scoring less than one upvote a minute, while for r/askreddit the rate was more like one upvote every eight minutes)
3: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/asjpjx/the_rate_of_karma_inflation_oc/
5: https://praw.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
To avoid contamination from other posts, the script also stopped looking at a post if the author had made another post in the last 24 hours.
In some cases the script grabbed posts that had already accumulated some upvotes. When this happened I removed posts where (minimum score)-1 was less than 0.001 x (maximum score); e.g. all posts with a min. score of one were accepted, but a post with a min. score of two needed to end up with at least 1,000 points to be included in the analysis, and so on. I then adjusted the initial karma of these posts by 0.7 x (minimum score - 1) to approximate how much karma these posts would have given their authors before the script saw them.
I also removed posts that gained more karma than upvotes, which I believe was caused by the script returning an incorrect value for the author's initial karma.
I analyzed the data in R and plotted them using ggplot.
The twelve subreddits named in the graph were chosen as either having more than two posts scoring greater than 50k, or more than six posts scoring greater than 10k.
The time taken to reach 10k and the karma gained for 10k points is an approximation based on the two data points for each post with scores closest to 10k. I assumed that the rate of karma and point gain for this interval was approximately linear. Illustration here[6]. ___
6: https://i.imgur.com/HgNykA4.png
For (some) individual posts, the Michaelis–Menten equation used here[7] is a good approximation of the relationship between upvotes and karma. E.g. for the highest scoring post in the data set (from r/gifs) the relationship between score and karma can be modeled as **karma = (8804 x score) / (6848 + score)** ; graph here[8] (nls, df=46,R^(2)=0.998,p<0.001).
8: https://i.imgur.com/UZvkVpS.png
For other subs, or when looking at groups of posts, this model underestimates karma for scores between ~10k and ~50k, and overestimates karma for scores greater than ~50k, see r/pics graph here[9]. As can also be seen in that graph, the rate at which some posts gain karma **increases** at large scores (possibly due to it taking longer for Reddit to update karma than post scores, I would welcome any other explanations).
9: https://i.imgur.com/Ax40Xvy.png
r/memes has the worst karma/score ratio of any of the high scoring subs:
┌──┬────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────┬──┐ │ │ Subreddit │ Average max. karma for posts with > 50k points │ │ ╞══╪════════════════════╪═══════════════════════════════════════════════════╪══╡ │ │ Interestingasfuck │ 8135.150 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──┤ │ │ Todayilearned │ 7991.700 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──┤ │ │ Australia │ 7914 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──┤ │ │ Gifs │ 7864.600 │ │ ├──┼───────────────���────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──┤ │ │ Pics │ 7847.600 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──┤ │ │ Aww │ 7634.780 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──┤ │ │ AskReddit │ 7609.500 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼──��────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──┤ │ │ Rareinsults │ 7591.850 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──┤ │ │ NatureIsFuckingLit │ 7451.500 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──┤ │ │ Funny │ 7404.400 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──┤ │ │ HistoryMemes │ 7368.200 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──┤ │ │ Gaming │ 7350.980 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──┤ │ │ Me_irl │ 7281.250 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────────────���───────────────────────────────┼──┤ │ │ PrequelMemes │ 7125.300 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────┼──┤ │ │ Memes │ 5845 │ │ └──┴────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────┴──┘
A post that reaches 10k points in five hours will give around 250 to 500 more karma than a post that reaches 10k in ten hours. The average amount of karma and the rate of karma decrease depend on what subreddit you post to.
┌──┬────────────────────┬───────────┬───────┬────────────┬──┐ │ │ Subreddit │ Slope^(*) │ R^(2) │ p value │ │ ╞══╪════════════════════╪═══════════╪═══════╪════════════╪══╡ │ │ HistoryMemes │ -32.180 │ 0.110 │ p>0.1 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────┼───────┼────────────┼──┤ │ │ Science │ -28.470 │ 0.130 │ p>0.1 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────┼───────┼────────────┼──┤ │ │ Funny │ -47.710 │ 0.220 │ p<0.001 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────┼───────┼────────────┼──┤ │ │ Gaming │ -87.230 │ 0.240 │ p<0.05 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────┼───────┼────────────┼──┤ │ │ Pcmasterrace │ -89.290 │ 0.260 │ p=0.0601 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────┼───────┼────────────┼──┤ │ │ Aww │ -62.540 │ 0.320 │ p<0.01 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────┼───────┼────────────┼──┤ │ │ Memes │ -51.170 │ 0.370 │ p<0.001 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────┼───────┼────────────┼──┤ │ │ Me_irl │ -107.220 │ 0.390 │ p<0.01 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────┼───────┼────────────┼──┤ │ │ Pics │ -42.110 │ 0.430 │ p<0.001 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────┼───────┼────────────┼──┤ │ │ NatureIsFuckingLit │ -103.090 │ 0.470 │ p<0.01 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────┼───────┼────────────┼──┤ │ │ ShitPostCrusaders │ -74.460 │ 0.520 │ p<0.001 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────┼───────┼────────────┼──┤ │ │ PrequelMemes │ -67.780 │ 0.560 │ p<0.001 │ │ ├──┼────────────────────┼───────────┼───────┼────────────┼──┤ │ │ Interestingasfuck │ -90.790 │ 0.580 │ p<0.001 │ │ └──┴────────────────────┴───────────┴───────┴────────────┴──┘
^^(*) ^(Karma/hour. These values are different depending on what score you're looking at. This table represents the karma gained for posts with 10k points)
___
Things I also looked at that didn't affect karma, at least noticeably:
Here's[10] another way of visualizing the data
The full data set can be downloaded here[11]
10: https://i.imgur.com/hY6LzsJ.png
11: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rzwfN-PogWv1GjW9UslE_Z4KrrUktzUD
Comment by SaucesOfFieri at 10/02/2020 at 04:28 UTC
253 upvotes, 3 direct replies
Reddit's about to Jeffrey Epstein this post
Comment by SuperSonicPeanut at 10/02/2020 at 03:36 UTC
442 upvotes, 4 direct replies
I thought upvotes = karma
Comment by CheckOutUserNamesLad at 10/02/2020 at 03:33 UTC
42 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Answers I always wanted but knew I didn't have the time for.
Comment by Barlowan at 10/02/2020 at 06:59 UTC
44 upvotes, 0 direct replies
r/prequelmemes
r/shitpostcrusaders
Ahh I see you are a man of culture as well.
Comment by Horzzo at 10/02/2020 at 04:42 UTC
17 upvotes, 4 direct replies
This is interesting. I don't know the point of karma. If anyone wanted it they could just post corgi and cat pictures and be karma millionaires. I do enjoy this info though u/Joliot !
Comment by pranabus at 10/02/2020 at 04:38 UTC
43 upvotes, 2 direct replies
You can’t see the number of downvotes or upvotes, just the net of both.
So that’s a bit of a flaw there in your argument. It’s possible your graphs just show the difference between aggregate upvote/downvote ratio across subs.
Comment by ElTuxedoMex at 10/02/2020 at 04:05 UTC
29 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Quickly rising posts get more karma
Huh, I've been sorting by rising since I made this account, that explains so much.
Comment by ags3006 at 10/02/2020 at 06:07 UTC
9 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Did you try a log-log scale on the axes? I'd be curious to see if they appear as straight lines with different slopes.
P. S. Awesome work btw..
Comment by poplglop at 10/02/2020 at 05:28 UTC
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Holy hell he's done it, quick before the admins delete this write it all down...
Comment by [deleted] at 10/02/2020 at 05:38 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
At last the sacred writings.
Comment by autumnflame4 at 10/02/2020 at 05:46 UTC
12 upvotes, 0 direct replies
NOW THIS IS WHAT THIS SUB IS FOR!!!!!!
Damn OP. This is not only a great representation of interesting data, well presented, well explained, clearly show, but it’s ALSO actually beautiful. Wow.
Comment by ThisDadisFoReal at 10/02/2020 at 04:29 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I’m sorry for taking so long to upvote this post! My bad
Comment by [deleted] at 10/02/2020 at 04:42 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
OMG... I actually didn’t know any of that...
Comment by Delbuns at 10/02/2020 at 04:42 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Hope I get in fast enough for some easy karma...
Comment by Rednewt33 at 10/02/2020 at 05:13 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Looks like I should post in science then
Comment by Tom_Ov_Bedlam at 10/02/2020 at 05:22 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Write that down, WRITE THAT DOWN!!!!!!!
Comment by Meme_Pope at 10/02/2020 at 05:49 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I have roughly 42,000 upvotes on posts, but about 39,000 of that is on r/wallstreetbets with one post for 30,000 and another at 9,000. My actual post karma is only 14,000, so I’m lead to believe that Reddit’s algorithm doesn’t like r/wallstreetbets.
I don’t care at all about Karma, but data is interesting.
Comment by Human2138 at 10/02/2020 at 06:26 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Score vs karma might be easier to visualize if you take the log or log2
Comment by Arepusiron at 10/02/2020 at 07:02 UTC
3 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Im blessed to be color blind, i cant differentiate the colors around the bottom
Comment by [deleted] at 10/02/2020 at 07:14 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Is there any correlation between the activity of a sub and it's karma output?
Comment by acm_falstaff at 10/02/2020 at 07:34 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
The fact that the prequel memes have their own category is a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
Comment by _euclase_ at 10/02/2020 at 07:37 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I absolutely love that shitpostcrusaders gets its own line seperated from memes
Comment by solutioneering at 10/02/2020 at 16:22 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Nice work! We've been chatting about your analysis on Reddit Slack this morning.
