The only Bwog comment that has ever been 100% objectively true.

Ah, Bwog comments. The noble conduit between us, the holy Content Creators, and you, the lowly Reader, allowing for instant feedback. Ever since the first Bwog post to have a comment (which was somehow submitted in the year -0001 and which I’m pretty sure is racist, though it’s too unintelligible to be sure) things have only gone downhill. Social Media Editor (and data enthusiast) Zack Abrams recently scraped all 200,000+ comments on the site to see what he could learn from the data, which you can download here. 

213,414 comments. That’s according to WordPress, anyway: my scraped count is slightly different which is probably the fault of my flimsy code, but I learned Python just to write this article so cut me some Slack. That’s also a lot of comments for just 12 years of daily posting, which I believe means we’re doing a great job here! Please don’t tell me otherwise, as an uncomfortable amount of my time is devoted to this site! Let’s just get on with the numbers! Help! I mean, yay!

Tidbit 1: Only around 20% of comments kept their names anonymous

And that’s counting the 100 clever people who put their name as Anonymouse, and not counting the one brave soul who bucked the trend and forged a brave new path:

Tidbit 2: There are nearly 5,000 (4,887) Bwog articles without any comments

Here’s one. Here’s one about herbs. Here’s one that’s one sentence! If you’re feeling giving this holiday season, give these forgotten articles your time and attention and, most importantly, your sweet sweet comments.

Tidbit 3: So far, there have been only 1,131 comments in 2018. That’s .5% of the total.

So, uh, where did you all go? If “CUCK!” has the time to comment, I’m sure you can make time. Give us some feedback, tell us that pimple is definitely as noticeable as we think it is, anything to let us know we’re not shouting into the void, only in its general direction.

Tidbit 4: Only 7,682 of our comments give a fuck

Or, rather, give a “fuck;” only 7,682 comments contain the f-word, not counting its variations. Comparatively, 6,403 give a “shit” and 1,962 give a “damn.” Relatively few dirty mouths, given the massive quantity of comments. Though, as shown by the featured image on this post, sometimes the profanity is more cleverly done.

Tidbit 5: The top articles in terms of comment count are…

The announcement that Obama would speak at Barnard’s commencement, with 885 comments

The mobbing of Minuteman, and Bwog’s defining moment as an organization, with 535 comments

And the December 2010 drug bust of 5 CU students, with 486 comments

Tidbit 6: The most liked comments are…

“That awkward moment when someone who threw a crazy but relatively harmless party got more shit from the administration than rapists.” by “wow” on OJA Reaches Decision On Paint Party with 454 likes

“Why does the engineer write better than the English major?” by “Anonymous” on How the Other Half Lives with 448 likes

And “If Harvard suspended their entire soccer team for saying about a fraction of this and we don’t at the very least do the same for the wrestling team here, we’ve lost any last scrap of integrity I thought we had.” by “Anonymous” on Messages From Wrestling Team GroupMe Reveal Culture Of Intolerance with 422 likes.

Tidbit 6: The most disliked comments are…

“of course they gave one to the queers” by “ugh” on Congrats, You’ve Won! with 325 dislikes

“I literally could not give less of a fuck about what some guys say to each other in their group message. Why would anybody care” by “Fuck Man” on  Messages From Wrestling Team GroupMe Reveal Culture Of Intolerance with 313 dislikes (and 224 likes, for the record)

And a sensitive comment about suicide by “parent” on this article.

Tidbit 7: The most controversial comments

The most controversial comments were found by taking the total reactions and subtracting the difference between likes and dislikes from it. 

“I literally could not give less of a fuck about what some guys say to each other in their group message. Why would anybody care” by “Fuck Man” on Messages From Wrestling Team GroupMe Reveal Culture Of Intolerance with 224 likes and 313 dislikes.

“Oh, so now we’re gonna stalk every fucking football player until they’re afraid to open their mouths in public? Lines are being crossed right now.” by “E!” on Some Football Players: Sorry, We’re Not Sorry with 237 likes and 217 dislikes.

And “While I am not condoning this language in any way, this article is a huge invasion of privacy.” by “Anonymous” on Messages From Wrestling Team GroupMe Reveal Culture Of Intolerance with 212 likes and 202 dislikes.

That about wraps up this retrospective! I will leave you with, again, the link to the dataset for you to peruse yourself. (Warning: the Excel spreadsheet has 200,000+ rows. Open on a good computer.) And, finally, the IBM Watson sentiment analysis of a… choice comment. Values have a min of 0 and max of 1.