The SnakePit in 2009

As you know, we're big fans of statistics here at the 'Pit. Gimme access to baseball-reference.com and I can get lost for weeks. But as an end of year gift from the SB Nation tech gods, they crunched the numbers and came up with the top ten members of the site in various areas for the past two years. Care to guess who has posted the most fanshots, for example, or who has had the most comments? Er, well, you can probably scratch that last one off, if you've been here for more than five minutes in the past couple of years. But who's second on the list?

Answers, analysis and, I've no doubt, more shameless comment whoring, after the jump.

Nice to see a jump of nearly 40% in new members last year, even as the Diamondbacks slumped - the fortunes of this site inevitably rise and fall with those of the team. However, because of the effort put in by  everyone who posts here, it remains an engine-room of Diamondbacks (and baseball) commentary - last year, including everything there were a total of 1,182 pieces posted on the site, which works out to more than three per day. Thanks to all those who contributed to that total.

What I'd be keen to see is how the number of total visitors to the site - including lurkers - changed from year to year. Unfortunately, I don't have that information, but as a guide, in the last month we had about 27,500 visits [largely discounting the massive spike of 6,650 on the day the blockbuster trade was announced!]. That's more than twice has many as we had in January 09, and ties in with the approximate numbers we're seeing per day so far in January - in 2009, it was 430, this year it's been 936. The tie-in with Yahoo! is obviously a major factor here, and it helps we are #14 on Google when you search for the team name, only trailing some pretty hefty news sources.

No great surprise who rules the roost here, with 'Skins responsible for 19% of all comments posted on this site in 2009. He's nothing if not consistent, having been responsible for exactly the same percentage in 2008. If anyones fancies trying to knock him off, be aware that's an average of 59 per day. I'll repeat that: 59 per day. kishi was the runner-up, cracking five figures on the year for the first time, while soco and I swapped places in third and fourth - I blame that pesky education thing for his 25% drop.

snakecharmer rises to #5, with an impressive 73% rtse on 2008, the best increase in th top ten; hotclaws retained sixth spot, but was also up significantly, by 36%. From last year's chart, we lost foulpole, TwinnerA and Azreous, replaced by Wailord, in with a bullet at #7, IHateSouthBend (who only joined on April 22nd this year), and Pyromnc. unnamedDbacksfan rounds out the list, dropping a spot to eighth. Getting into the top ten is certainly a possible goal: you only would need seven comments per day, ot 16 per Gameday Thread, to have made it last year.

I'll not bother with the table for Most Stories, partly since that is only open to editors and writers, and partly because I had seventeen times as many as the next most prolific poster. :-) snakecharmer and azreous were second and third, swapping their positions from the previous year. Instead, let's go on to FanPosts, because that is something open to all members.

A much greater degree of churn present here, with only three of 2008's top Fanposters - myself, soco and Zephon - returning to the charts in 2009. Interesting to note how the God-Emperor of Comments just doesn't "do" the FanPosts thing: 'Skins had only three of them in 2009, leaving him well outside the top ten. Conversely, venomfan surged into second place in only nine months of activity, with eleven Fanposts compared to 589 comments. edbigghead, Rockkstarr12 and njjohn were the other non-writers to make it onto the board, so their efforts are particularly appreciated.

At times it seems that Fanshots are the poor cousin of Fanposts, not getting the attention they deserve. However, in 2009, they proved about 10% more popular than Fanposts, so someone was showing them a bit of love. 'Skins and kishi both significantly upped their production in this area, and sergey606 "serged" out of nowhere to take fifth spot, with fourteen on the year. damdrs1717 and Pyromnc were the other non-editors to make the rankings.

That was 2009, and hopefully gives people something to shoot for in 2010 - I mean, going by these figures, you only need to post five fanshots or fanposts in the next twelve months to make the top ten. Even the most lurky of lurkers should be able to manage that, I'd say. But, thanks again to everyone who contributed even a single comment to the site last year: without you, this site would be... Well, just me making sarcastic remarks about things. Here's to more growth in the season ahead.