MadPointer

I'd say this method is suitable to tell whether MLP is going mainstream or fading into obscurity. Like I said, someone has to do measurement at regular intervals because I can't use the Internet Archive: Wayback Machine to recover historical data in this case. I don't see how my data can be unreliable. Are you accusing me of doctoring data? It reminds me of climate change denial. You might argue that my conclusions are wrong and try to downplay the significance of data but you're just pulling unverifiable numbers(such as with MLP music) and believable explanations without backing it up with any evidence. How many people will participate in BronyCon? http://mlpforums.com/topic/104165-lets-try-to-make-predictions-about-the-two-future-events/ These number can at least be verified. How long have been in the fandom? Where were you before joining MLP Forums in the beginning of this year? Can you make a comparison from your personal experience if you haven't been here back then? I'm well aware that 80% of currently active members here joined the forums recently and they have other interests and priorities. I'm talking about smaller forums, ponychan, /mlp/. They used to be more centered around MLP but they got smaller and people prefer to mingle among themselves. /mlp/ is nowadays full of the same generals every day and various fetishes. They might be fans of the fandom and don't care as much about the show. I never said that the fandom was dying. Fandom can be healthy and live for years even without official content. Even fandoms of SpongeBob, Family Guy, Simpsons still exist. Do fandom ever die? You appear to care more about the fandom, the show may crash and burn and you'll still stay with the fandom. I might be wrong about you but there are people who fit the description. ---------------------------------------------------------------- I guess it's time for me to let it go and move on.

You can calculate how many bronies on social networks using the following method: http://mlpforums.com/topic/88343-how-many-bronies-are-there/#entry2778652 Introverts are less likely to attend conventions. I'm glad for extroverts having fun at conventions but I can't seem to find introverts anywhere online. I infer the decline of introverts from Brony Census and topics which are mostly discussed on fansites. It should be noted that extroverts aren't as much interested in surveys in the first place and get bored before completing surveys. This is why they tend to be underrepresented in surveys. The most telling item was the personality test at the end of the survey. Even more important was the fact that fewer people opted to take a personality test in 2014. After completing the main survey, people were offered to take a personality test. 2013: 18,542 (85.7% of all participants) opted to take the test. 2014: 9,803 (45% of all participants) opted to take the test. It appears that the number of people who appreciate science went down over a year. It comes as no surprise that Twilight Sparkle experienced the most significant drop in popularity according to Brony Census. She lost a third(in absolute numbers) of her fans during 2013. You have to take a look at numerous smaller MLP communities. Also see this thread: http://mlpforums.com/topic/99638-survey-closed-what-type-of-brony-are-you-continued/ They are isolated from the English speaking fandoms. People don't migrate between these communities. It's not like English speaking bronies can join Russian fan sites and likewise few Russians can speak any English so they can't participate in English speaking communities. However, a lot of Russians participated in Brony Census 2014 thanks to the translation.

I didn't make any claims regarding quality because it’s subjective. It could be argued that newer Star Wars and Transformers are vastly better in quality, at least as far special effects go but not all people share the same opinion. I say MLP:FIM doesn't have the same appeal as it used before. It doesn't mean it’s worse, it’s just different. The data suggests that the new appeal caused many people to lose interest in the show and it isn't drawing as many new people. It appears to be the other way around. People got tired of the show but stick with the fandom because they made a lot of friends there. Which places? As I said in post #39, MLP forums is the only place which is mostly made up of people who recently joined the forums. The fandom lost a lot of introverts who are by definition aren't typical convention goers. You're just throwing ideas against the wall to see if anything sticks. Even if it’s not the show’s fault, does it bother you that fandom activity is going down and people on EqD aren't very enthusiastic about the fandom music anymore? http://www.equestriadaily.com/2014/05/poll-results-how-often-do-you-listen-to.html Is something wrong with it or people just got tired of it?

You might be more knowledgeable about statistics and I admit that I don’t have formal training in this area. My data and analysis might benefit from your input. Science invites scrutiny and peer review. However you’re using your alleged expertise as “appeal to authority” fallacy in order to avoid having to explain yourself and contribute to the study. As for granularity. I tried to produce the best data I could. It took a lot of time to produce graphs for forums(each month) and /mlp/(each day) with such precision. I could have opt to do it with fewer points but I don’t cut corners. Posting this link again in case some people are writing their responses without having read the whole thread. http://mlpforums.com/topic/102130-brony-fandom-timeline/ Episode ranking was my invention and it also took some time to carefully input data from every anon(they had to sort the list of all episodes) while checking for consistency. The data becomes stable when at least 60 people take part in it. The sample size of Brony Census is big enough for it to be useful. Survey generally need only 2000 participants to get data with accuracy of 3%.

Can you provide a better data and analysis? Do you you any specific complains regrading my data? If you can't, why are you so quick to dismiss it?

I already stated(post #39) that most people don't care much about the show and they would rather spend time in general discussion, roleplaying. People are using MLP as a way to socialize among fellow bronies and play some forum games albeit MLP themed Popularity of World Cup reinforces my point. Polls with Twilicorn and Equestria Girls got loads of votes because people cared back then but nowadays anything bad can happen and there would be hardly any reaction from the fandom. Do you suggest to lie and doctor data to please the boss? Is it worth in the long run to mislead people for a little comfort? I understand that presentations for investors must be optimistic but the boss can make better decisions only if he has the accurate data because if he's aware of troubles, he can try to take care of it. Outright dismissing existence of problems isn't a smart strategy in my book.

I can't find it. Would you mind posting the link?

Since when is it used as an excuse? If you take a look at hiatus between Season 2 and Season 3, you could see that EqD was doing fine during that period. http://mlpforums.com/topic/104165-lets-try-to-make-predictions-about-the-two-future-events/ Know Your Meme used to have to have over 20,000 pageviews each day(the data is from the MLP page not the one on gallery) in the summer of 2012 and MLP gallery had been always the most watched. Only Botched Ecce Homo Painting was able to top MLP gallery for a few days. Nowadays it's 1,300 pagaviews each day and MLP is behind Super Smash Bros and Pokemon. You can how amount of submission to KYM changed over time there: http://mlpforums.com/topic/101678-is-it-the-same-anymore/page-2#entry2772003 Why? Is it the same reason they don’t want to post in this thread? http://mlpforums.com/topic/104165-lets-try-to-make-predictions-about-the-two-future-events/

Some people in this thread posited that it should increase due to the lag between first exposure to the show and joining the fandom. This is why I showed that it's not the case. Brony Census 2014 was advertised in many places. Additionally, it was available in 8 languages which helped attract more people who was previously unable to take part in the survey due to language barrier. Brony Census 2014 had 9 times more people from my country than Brony Census 2013.

I was able to infer it from Brony Census. See my posts #21 and #28. How many people do you think will take part in Brony Census 2015? You can post your prediction there: http://mlpforums.com/topic/104165-lets-try-to-make-predictions-about-the-two-future-events/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Apparently I haven't covered /mlp/ yet. /mlp/ post count /mlp/ 23.10.2013 106 anons /mlp/ 11.06.2014 83 anons /mlp/ 23.10.2013 vs 11.06.2014

Your personal experience is anecdotal evidence. Many bronies don’t care about the show anymore. There’s a growing number of people who consider themselves bronies yet they don’t watch the show or they stopped watching it because they didn't like it anymore or just can’t be bothered to get around to keep updated on the show. If you take a look at smaller MLP fansites, you’ll see close-knit communities of people who know each other for a long time. However they no longer actively discuss pony related subjects. They rather discuss other topics using pictures of ponies as emoticons. As for MLP:FIM, it’s the biggest forums and it’s the only place which is mostly made up of people who recently joined the forums as opposed to communities of old friends. MLP Forums has about 170 members logged in at some point during a day and at least 930 members visit the forums each day. This thread must be one of the most provoking ones and it has a attention grabbing title. Yet it’s unlikely that it’ll get at least 70 votes while older polls could easily get over a hundred votes. Most members don’t appear to follow this section of the forums anymore. They spend most of the time in general media discussion and roleplaying.

I used the search members feature on forums to find out how many people [joined the forums/last time visited] each month. Members are considered gone when they stop posting/visiting. Members are considered active during the whole period between joining the forums and the last time they post(or log in) a on the forums. I don't have data for latest 3 months because people might still come back after a few months of inactivity. It would go against my integrity to claim that people, who haven't logged in for a week, are gone for good in order to make a dramatic graph.

Brony Census 2013: 6044 participants started watching show during Season 2. Brony Census 2014: 3309 participants started watching show during Season 2. Some people might have started watching the show during Season 2 and not take part in the Brony Census 2013 but there wasn't enough of such people to make up for the people who dropped out. The ratio of joining/leaving the fandom in 2013 was 1:4. if you're positive that the fandom is growing/recovering, you should not be afraid to make an optimistic prediction in this thread. Have you seen this thread? http://mlpforums.com/topic/102130-brony-fandom-timeline/ Did I fail to cover any major MLP community?

But it's the negative ones who are considered among the least favorite reviewers. I don't see positive reviewers getting as much flak from the fandom. That's the point. I agree that it's subjective. This is why I prefer working with numbers. It's not how it's defined See http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JumpingTheShark I compared Brony Census 2013 and Brony Census 2014 extensively while ago. Brony Census 2012: 9,015 participants. Brony Census 2013: 21,637 participants. Brony Census 2014: 16,395 participants. It turned out that bronies are getting younger even though they should have aged over the year. As the number of participant go down, girls and furries(overlap is 21%) were statistically more like to stay in the fandom. Don't get me wrong, I might not like the show anymore but I don't have anything against little girls and furries. I'm just reporting these correlations.

I don't know. I didn't speak of anyone in particular. I'm aware of this thread: http://mlpforums.com/topic/104064-least-favorite-brony-reviewer/ It gave me an impression that there’re a lot of reviewers nowadays and many of have a rather negative outlook on the show. There wasn't that many reviewers back in the day. However some of them notably grew to despite the show. I find it ironic that it happened to Digibrony. It looks like reviewers are respected for as long they stay positive.

I though about this and studied the Welcoming Plaza thread. I noticed that some people started watching show long before joining the forums. I tried to investigate it further by creating this thread and I also poked other pony related communities. Other findings: There were fewer people who were recently exposed to MLP:FIM in Brony Census 2014 than in Brony Census 2013. Based on data from Brony Census, I was able to determine that the number of people who were first exposed to MLP:FIM during earlier seasons doesn't increase in in the next Brony Census due to lag between first exposure to the show and joining the fandom. It appears that the lag doesn't affect the validity of data in a significant way.

If you filter EqD by the "Poll" label, you can see how many people voted in older polls. You can also try to guess how many days it will take for EqD to reach the 600M pageviews milestone. http://mlpforums.com/topic/104165-lets-try-to-make-predictions-about-the-two-future-events/

It took it in account. I had to extrapolate it into the future as the dark green bar. By the time the poll took place, only 237 had joined the fandom in 2014.

Let’s have a closer look at “Poll Results: When did you start watching MLP” at Equestria Daily: http://www.equestriadaily.com/2014/02/poll-results-when-did-you-start.html I sorted items in chronological order for convenience. It should be noted that in 2011 and 2012 More people started watching show in the second half of year than the first half of the corresponding year. The fandom didn’t slow down during hiatuses but it grew even faster fueled by a large amount of fanmade content and enthusiasm. It was widely believed that the fandom was so strong that it would be able to sustainable itself even if MLP:FIM was canceled. The number of fans doubled over 2012 and few people lost interest in MLP:FIM. 2013 year was different. The first half of 2013 brought in significantly fewer new people than before and the second half of 2013 did even worse than the first one. It might explain why people nowadays view hiatues as periods of low activity even though it wasn’t that way before. The fandom shrank by at least 25% over 2013(check out this thread for more graphs and analyses of the fandom) which means that there a lot of more people who joined the fandom before 2013, but they didn’t take part in that survey because they no longer follow MLP:FIM. From this finding follows: the gap between the number of people who joined the fandom in 2012 and 2013 is even more pronounced that it appears in the poll. The poll ended on February 24, 2014 which means about 711 people must have joined the fandom during the first half of 2014. Even lackluster 2013 year was three times more productive in attracting new fans than 2014 year despite generally positive reception of Season 4. It doesn’t look this hiatus is much better than the last one, and people are pinning their hopes on Season 5 bringing more people and excitement. Are these expectations reasonable? MLP:FIM is losing its appeal rather fast and it no longer can get new as many new fans as it used to before. Some dramatic events undoubtedly took its toll on the fandom. However, if MLP:FIM was indeed doing fine, the past events shouldn’t have affected new fans. Yet it appears as if MLPFIM is running out of steam. Did the show go bad as critics say but bronies refuse to face the harsh reality? Is there something wrong with the fandom which drives fans away from it? Is the magic all but gone?

That's some interesting poll. Let's raise the stakes and make bets in the following thread. http://mlpforums.com/topic/104165-lets-try-to-make-predictions-about-the-two-future-events/

Analysis of MLP Forums, Brony Census and KnowYourMeme. http://mlpforums.com/topic/101678-is-it-the-same-anymore/page-2#entry2772003 A method to calculate how many bronies there are. http://mlpforums.com/topic/88343-how-many-bronies-are-there/#entry2778652 Members trying to predict how many days will it take for Eqestria Dailly to reach 600 million pagaviews and how many people will take part in Brony Census 2015. http://mlpforums.com/topic/104165-lets-try-to-make-predictions-about-the-two-future-events/

It's not fair. Would you give me some actual numbers? How else will we be able to determine the winner?

It doesn't matter whether or not you post on YouTube because there is a lot non-bronies who don't post YouTube neither. If becoming a brony doesn't change individual's posting habits on non-pony related videos, this doesn't affect the accuracy of my method.

Let's try to make predictions about the two future events as precise as possible. 1. Equestria Daily reached 500 million pageviews last June(see the table below). It took 267 days to get another 100M pageviews since the previous milestone. How many days will it take to reach 600M pageviews? 2. Brony Census is an annual survey which takes place in the beginning of each year. Here's the data from past surveys: 2012: 9,015 participants. 2013: 21,637 participants. 2014: 16,395 participants. How many people will take part in Brony Census 2015?

MLP:FiM Comic sales The first issue must be very popular among collectors due to all the covers.