Archive for category Melbourne Storm

Most popular NRL related Twitter accounts (November 18)

Posted by Laura on Thursday, 18 November, 2010

I wasn’t intending to run this again until tomorrow.  Things came up.  I’m going away for the weekend and I want to get everyone’s follower information to see if I can’t begin to map that again.  Also, it’s been a month since I last that information.  (It took about five days.  That was back when Shane Warne had only 198,000 followers.)  I like benchmarking that data to see if there are geographic shifts in where people follow are from.  (How did the Monaghan story affect the Raiders fanbase?)  So yeah, I figured I would run the script this morning instead of a week from now.

This particular list only includes NRL related accounts. (And everyone on it appears on the list of most popular for all of Australia.)   I’m hoping all the labels are right.  If anything is incorrect, players switched team, I’m missing people… let me know and I’ll fix it.  And yeah, I’ve ranked this one so you can more easily see who is popular and who is not.  Finding Twitter lists related to the NRL has been rather hard so I’m less certain that this is complete than I am regarding the list for the AFL.

Rank Account League Team Description Followers Statuses Listed Friends
1 LoteTuqiri NRL Wests Tigers player 14852 4517 591 83
2 RealBigDell NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons unofficial 11811 6244 337 212
3 SamBurgess8 NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs player 10703 2199 231 116
4 NRL NRL NRL 10057 5313 323 52
5 jarrydhayne_1 NRL Parramatta Eels player 9943 1670 207 131
6 mat_rogers6 NRL Gold Coast Titans unofficial 7743 2554 323 149
7 robbiefarah NRL Wests Tigers player 5356 795 106 39
8 NathanHiney NRL Parramatta Eels player 4853 86 124 12
9 scottprince7 NRL Gold Coast Titans player 4746 676 96 102
10 markMGgeyer NRL Penrith Panthers former player 4519 917 194 108
11 The_Man_Mundine NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons former player 4470 765 73 60
12 brisbanebroncos NRL Brisbane Broncos official team (male) 4183 1317 162 4
13 BrettHodgson NRL Sydney Roosters player (male) 3667 1706 88 104
14 BENJI_MARSHALL6 NRL Wests Tigers player 3636 123 72 56
15 GCTitans NRL Gold Coast Titans 3578 478 146 24
16 TheFootyShowNRL NRL NRL television show 3325 163 82 87
17 tim_mannah NRL Parramatta Eels player 3194 266 78 65
18 nzwarriors NRL New Zealand Warriors (Auckland Warriors) unofficial 2968 259 92 377
19 bigjstevens NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks former player 2935 743 77 70
20 Wests_Tigers NRL Wests Tigers official 2876 714 109 820
21 MelbStormRLC NRL Melbourne Storm official 2591 793 132 2097
22 SSFCRABBITOHS NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs 2456 1615 130 1035
23 MarioFenech NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs former player (male) 2385 879 69 5
24 TripleM_NRL NRL NRL radio (male) 2182 1893 102 66
25 manlyseaeagles NRL Manly Sea Eagles 2035 1003 107 1973
26 M_Jennings_03 NRL Penrith Panthers player 1993 53 55 9
27 benross23 NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs unofficial 1825 1127 74 68
28 TheParraEels NRL Parramatta Eels fansite (male) 1783 357 53 20
29 NRLNEWS NRL NRL unofficial 1722 4333 49 492
30 iam_chriswalker NRL Gold Coast Titans former player (male) 1721 1746 96 51
31 FOXSPORTSAU_NRL NRL NRL news site 1720 2531 64 6
32 NRL_Dragons NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons official team (male) 1611 733 74 140
33 penrithpanthers NRL Penrith Panthers unofficial 1584 1360 91 88
34 NRL_Bulldogs NRL Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs official team (male) 1366 1230 42 83
35 kevin_gordon1 NRL Gold Coast Titans player 1328 41 38 19
36 EricGrotheJnr NRL Parramatta Eels player 1295 35 28 3
37 therabbitohs NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs official 1285 219 77 10
38 DarrenLockyer NRL Brisbane Broncos player (male) 1209 15 27 12
39 NRLTweet NRL NRL unofficial 1203 7493 65 229
40 gorgeousgrose NRL Manly Sea Eagles unofficial 1179 494 59 75
41 therealsteavis NRL NRL journalist (male) (TripleM) 1158 3253 65 1050
42 RaidersCanberra NRL Canberra Raiders 1123 212 84 6
43 parramatta_eels NRL Parramatta Eels 1105 17 40 1070
44 wolfmanwilliams NRL Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles player 1043 66 27 30
45 lukeodwyer NRL Gold Coast Titans unofficial 1029 795 63 71
46 PirtekParraEels NRL Parramatta Eels unofficial 1014 57 60 7
47 AshHarrison1 NRL Gold Coast Titans unofficial 1004 216 56 25
48 MelbourneStorm_ NRL Melbourne Storm unofficial 1000 14 37 12
49 rabbitohs NRL South Sydney Rabbitohs unofficial 981 1299 46 718
50 Clintontoopi NRL Gold Coast Titans player 952 231 31 27
51 thenzwarriors NRL New Zealand Warriors (Auckland Warriors) 907 200 67 72
52 Cronulla_Sharks NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks official team (male) 864 405 66 55
53 robbieodavis1 NRL Newcastle Knights former player (male) 803 255 59 205
54 DanGinnane_MMM NRL NRL journalist (male) (TripleM) 788 1359 29 148
55 leaguescores NRL NRL fansite (male) 781 11245 48 342
56 TWiLeague NRL NRL show 746 2444 44 1486
57 TripleM_NRLlive NRL NRL radio (male) 720 948 30 1
58 RugbyLeagueFeed NRL NRL fansite 702 7851 37 211
59 Fergo1990 NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks unofficial 561 47 31 15
60 PlanetEels NRL Parramatta Eels unofficial 554 2863 33 605
61 rleaguecom NRL NRL 540 4402 36 3
62 fakebrycegibbs NRL Wests Tigers unofficial 534 457 24 382
63 bigleaguemag NRL NRL 528 437 26 147
64 deadsetlegends NRL NRL journalist (male) (TripleM) 494 247 26 8
65 terrycampese NRL Canberra Raiders player (male) 487 63 37 8
66 broncosbigfan NRL Brisbane Broncos unofficial 473 971 31 511
67 nrlfanclub NRL NRL fansite 456 1931 28 365
68 NewyKnights NRL Newcastle Knights 454 186 19 584
69 mighty_dragons NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons unofficial 393 3 17 7
70 nthqldcowboys NRL North Queensland Cowboys 368 474 28 28
71 wade_graham NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks player (male) 368 6 19 2
72 NRLlivebetting NRL NRL unofficial 364 1959 5 18
73 goldcoasttitans NRL Gold Coast Titans fansite (male) 350 1 6 7
74 Bulldogs_FC NRL Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs fansite 341 314 19 7
75 FootyBoys NRL NRL fansite (male) 337 2034 13 166
76 lone_scout NRL NRL NRL Dream Team (male) 318 202 11 1
77 joe_tomane29 NRL Gold Coast Titans player 281 184 6 33
78 1eyedeel NRL Parramatta Eels unofficial 251 1872 16 635
79 jsaffy NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons unofficial 244 9 23 11
80 GirlsLikeLeague NRL NRL fansite (female) 236 533 15 156
81 bulldogsnews NRL Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs unofficial 226 828 8 122
82 newtownrlfc NSWRL Newtown Jets official team (male) 214 611 19 0
83 tigers1908 NRL Balmain Tigers unofficial 208 75 14 7
84 DragonsRedV NRL St. George Illawarra Dragons fansite 203 0 16 0
85 CCBEARS NSWRL Central Coast Bears official team (male) 191 36 14 63
86 NRLKnights NRL Newcastle Knights 169 132 6 0
87 TitaniumBar NRL Gold Coast Titans 153 392 7 26
88 Aaron_Cannings NRL Gold Coast Titans unofficial 139 1 15 3
89 BennyGalea NRL Wests Tigers former player (now with Hull KR) 130 14 2 34
90 womeninleague NRL NRL 120 50 10 15
91 welovetheshire NRL Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks fansite 103 8 7 362
92 oldie90 NRL Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles player (male) 92 305 6 35
93 RL1908 NRL NRL Rugby league historian/writer 89 94 4 111
94 Eelguts NRL Parramatta Eels radio commentator (male) 87 210 4 187
95 nrlthoughts NRL NRL fansite 59 120 1 217
96 parraeels NRL Parramatta Eels unofficial 44 4 4 0
97 ChaseNRL NRL NRL journalist 41 116 4 65
98 sidelinedNRL NRL NRL fansite 24 64 4 8
99 WWWraidersNETau NRL Canberra Raiders fansite 16 1390 0 1
100 raba NSWRL Central Coast Bears fansite (male) 4 0 1 0
101 blueandgoldarmy NRL Parramatta Eels unofficial 0 0 0 0

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Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy Revisited (incomplete)

Posted by Laura on Monday, 1 November, 2010

This isn’t actually fully revisited. I started writing this about a week ago and then have had extremely limited internet access. Given that, I thought I would post what I have so far and finish the rest later.


Online Activity in the Wake of the  Melbourne Storm Controversy Revisited (incomplete)

On April 22, 2010, the news of salary cap violations on the part of the Melbourne Storm broke online in such publications as the Fox Sports, on television including ABC news and on multiple social networks including Facebook and Twitter. By April 23, the news was available in various print publications including The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald. During the news coverage, NRL fans learned that the team had been fined $1.8 million, stripped of two premiereships and were not eligible to earn points towards 2010’s premiership. (“Melbourne storm stripped,” 2010) The team was being punished for salary cap violations over the past five years, where the total cap violation in that period was $1.7 million with $400,000 of that total cap violation occurring in 2009. (“Melbourne storm stripped,” 2010)

The consensus at the time in the media was that this would hurt the team in terms of maintaining a fan base. In the three-week period after the news broke, this did not appear to be the case: The team maintained or grew its online fan community. In addition, there was more fan interactions in the Melbourne Storm fan community than there had been prior to the controversy. This defied conventional wisdom. The numbers deserve a followup to determine if the Melbourne Storm managed to capture short-term interest and translate it into long-term, season long, interest in the club.

This article will revisit numbers from May to determine how successful the club was. Specifically, interest patterns as expressed on networks like 43things, bebo, Facebook, LiveJournal and its clones, Twitter, Wikia, Wikiedia, Yahoo!Groups and YouTube. The article will prove that as the season progressed, interest in the Melbourne Storm declined relative to other teams in the National Rugby League.


43things

In the May analysis, a goal setting site called 43things was looked at. The site has a small group of Australians on it who have set professional sport related goals.

On April 1, 2010, the site was searched for any goals that connected to the Melbourne Storm. Only one goal related to the Melbourne Storm was found. It is “Go to a Melbourne Storm Game.” (1) Two people, erynne and mmcpharlane, had listed this as a goal they were working towards completing. When checked again on May 10 and October 24, no one had added any additional goals related to the Melbourne Storm. The two individuals who had listed “Go to a Melbourne Storm Game” remained the same.


Mailing lists

During much of the 1990s, mailing lists were one of the most popular tools for fans to use in order to communicate with each other. The creation of mailing lists became much easier when sites like egroups, coollists, topica, Yahoo!Groups and Google groups were created. In some corners of Australian sport fandom, mailing lists have played an important role in helping fans support their interest in clubs.

At one point, there was a semi-active community for the Melbourne Storm community on Yahoo!Groups. (2) When Melbourne Storm Yahoo!Groups were looked at in May, the controversy had no effect on the groups: No new content was posted on these lists. Only one (3) had new content posted between May and October; this new content was a generic newsletter that is sent out to several other NRL related lists and was not published specifically for this list. (4) There is no long tail effect of the club’s fan community on Yahoo!Groups as the community has long since moved on and the controversy didn’t activate a community that has largely been inactive since 2001.

YouTube

YouTube is the largest video site online. It is also the second biggest search engine online. (Hill, 2008) It is a popular site for sport fans; several teams around the world for different sports capitalize on this by having their own official accounts including the Chicago Red Stars (5), Real Madrid (6), and Perth Glory (7). Beyond the presence of official team accounts, fans upload many videos. Fan videos can be music videos, news clips, and video blogs. The frequency of uploads is one way to determine interest in a club.

When the original analysis was completed in May, it did not include YouTube data. Data was only gathered in June and October, several months after the controversy went down. In addition, the total upload data gathered only included a few teams: Brisbane Broncos, Canberra Raiders, Gold Coast Titans, Melbourne Storm, Parramatta Eels, and Wests Tigers. Despite the lack of pre-controversy data, interesting post controversy numbers were discovered.

Table 1
YouTube Video Search Results by Date and Keyword
Team Keyword 16-Jun-10 21-Jun-10 24-Oct-10 Difference: 16-Jun to 24-Oct Difference: 21-Jun to 24-Oct
Brisbane Broncos “Brisbane Broncos” 509

520

525 16 5
Melbourne Storm “Melbourne Storm” 910 925 889 -21 -36

Parramatta Eels

“Parramatta Eels” 479 485 527 48 42
Parramatta Eels “Timana Tahu” 36 36

31

-5 -5
Wests Tigers “Wests Tigers” 390 404 464 74 60
Canberra Raiders

“Canberra Raiders”

274 403 129
Gold Coast Titans “Gold Coast Titans” 260 302 42
Brisbane Broncos “Darren Lockyer” 198 187 187 -11

When compared to all other teams, the Melbourne Storm were the only team where the number of videos mentioning them decreased. The two players looked at both faced losses in the total number of videos that mentioned them. Like the Storm, both of these players were involved in a major controversy during the season.

There are likely three reasons that could be attributed to the decline in videos. The first is that YouTube removed the videos because of copyright issues. This is plausible and if it is the case, it may not be the fault of the Storm as many of the copyright disputes on YouTube involve the background music. Given the lack of discussion in the NRL community about YouTube crackdowns in terms of NRL content or music, this reason just seems unlikely. The second reason is the creators may have deleted their content and their videos. This feels more plausible. Many people delete their online content when they are job hunting, because they are embarrassed by it or because of privacy concerns. The third reason is that the uploader no longer likes the team: They do not want to be associated with them or embarrassed by their previous support of them. This reason seems the most plausible. In the context of the Melbourne Storm, it fits given the patterns with the individual rugby league players who endured major controversies. In actuality, the reduction in videos is probably a combination of the second and third reasons. If true, it suggests that controversies lead to a reduction in user-uploaded content and the deletion of existing material: The YouTube audience for the team contracts.

References

Hill, J. (2008, October 16). YouTube surpasses Yahoo as world’s #2 search engine. TG Daily. Retrieved October 24, 2010, from http://www.tgdaily.com/trendwatch-features/39777-youtube-surpasses-yahoo-as-world%E2%80%99s-2-search-engine

Melbourne storm stripped of two premierships for salary cap breach. (2010, April 22). Fox Sports, Retrieved from http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,8659,27022196-5018866,00.html

Footnotes

1. The page for the goal can be found at http://www.43things.com/things/view/2535563/go-to-a-melbourne-storm-game .
2.Yahoo!Groups is the most popular mailing list host.  Archives are also available for these lists.
The list was http://au.groups.yahoo.com/group/MelbourneStorm .
3.While these e-mails were generic to the National Rugby League and might be considered spam if they were posted on a list with a more active administrator, a few did mention the Melbourne Storm.  A few even referenced the controversy.  Because of the nature of the posts, these few posts were not counted.
4.The Chicago Red Stars official YouTube can be found at https://www.youtube.com/user/ChicagoRedStars .
5.Real Madrid’s official YouTube account can be found at https://www.youtube.com/user/realmadridcf .
6.Perth Glory’s official YouTube account can be found at https://www.youtube.com/user/PerthGloryTV .

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Melbourne Storm followers on Twitter

Posted by Laura on Thursday, 26 August, 2010

Still refining the tool where I can get the location and other data from all the followers for accounts. We can’t quite figure out how to check the verified account fields yet. Some fields appear only in tweets but not on profiles. Line breaks in profile descriptions are occassionally causing issues. My if/then location field isn’t working right. (Apparently fuzzy logic may need to be applied to allow for that as “Melbourne” is not appending as “Melbourne, Victoria, Australia” for me.) I decided to look at the Melbourne Storm today because I thought it might be interesting.

The official account for the Melbourne Storm is MelbStormRLC. They have 1,757 and we got information from all the accounts following it. For the major categories involving numbers, I got the mean, median and mode:

ReTweets Followers Status Count Friends Listed
Mean 0.006254343 182.0159453 782.9430524 332.3933865 7.16543069
Median 0 33 49 114 0
Mode 0 1 0 1 0

The numbers are very, very low when compared to AFL based St. Kilda Saints. The Saints have around 140 people who have 10,000+ followers and 15 people with 100,000+ followers and that’s with only half their followers counted. In contrast, the Melbourne Storm have no one 10,000+ followers. They also have no one who follows that many people. On the opposite end of the ladder, there are 52 (or 2%) people who follow only the Storm or the Storm and one other person.

Overall these stats suggest that people who follow the Melbourne Storm are not particularly active on Twitter: They don’t follow that many people, they aren’t followed by people, they update infrequently and they don’t appear on many lists. What these stats don’t tell is how often these people check Twitter. Some people might check Twitter often but not update and follow many people. (Different people use Twitter differently. It would be really interesting to see a survey that asked people how often they check Twitter and why they check Twitter.)

Beyond that, 1,308 people have their timezone information available in their profiles. (It might actually be more and this could be a problem in our data collection… but let’s pretend that this is representative of the whole group despite evidence to support that.) The following is a count by timezone:

Time Zone Count Percent
Melbourne 583 44.6%
Sydney 254 19.4%
Hawaii 153 11.7%
Brisbane 128 9.8%
London 40 3.1%
Auckland 24 1.8%
Canberra 20 1.5%
Pacific Time (US & Canada) 17 1.3%
Perth 15 1.1%
Wellington 12 0.9%
Hobart 10 0.8%
Adelaide 8 0.6%
Quito 6 0.5%
Central Time (US & Canada) 5 0.4%
Eastern Time (US & Canada) 5 0.4%
Darwin 3 0.2%
Greenland 3 0.2%
Hong Kong 3 0.2%
Alaska 2 0.2%
Paris 2 0.2%
Rome 2 0.2%
Singapore 2 0.2%
Abu Dhabi 1 0.1%
Amsterdam 1 0.1%
Arizona 1 0.1%
Bangkok 1 0.1%
Caracas 1 0.1%
Edinburgh 1 0.1%
Guam 1 0.1%
Jakarta 1 0.1%
Jerusalem 1 0.1%
Lima 1 0.1%
Tehran 1 0.1%

Unsurprisingly, given that the team is based in Melbourne, that timezone is the most popular, accounting for 44% of the team’s followers. Sydney time, the area where NRL is dominant, accounts for 20%. I’m not certain how to explain the popularity of the Melbourne Storm in Hawaiian time. Brisbane makes sense as again, the area is an NRL stronghold.

In profile descriptions, 36 people mention the word Storm and 103 mention Melbourne. That seems like a fairly significant amount of people expressing team loyalty and seems comparable to the Saints.

Four people list a language code of ES and three people list FR. That’s less diversity than St. Kilda in terms of language. Still, the French ones seem more explainable than the ones for St. Kilda because rugby is played in France and players sometimes go there to play for French teams. It can help to develop an audience in Australia for the team.

The Melbourne Storm don’t have as many followers as the more popular AFL teams but they do have more followers than the Canberra Raiders. The controversy early in the season helped to boost their numbers and they’ve been much more interactive of late. … Or at least, they’ve relied less on TwitterFeed for content. That was a huge problem early on in the season. Beyond that, these numbers look realistic: They appear to be getting an audience of Melbourne based and Australian NRL fans following them. Most of the people following them update occassionally and have few enough followers that they will see the content that the Storm update with. That’s probably the ideal that people should be aiming for. Yeah, people with 100,000 followers are awesome, especially if you can get a ReTweet but they’ll never see your tweet and in the case of St. Kilda, a lot of those people with massive follower counts are just not in their ideal demographic.

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Sport allegiances out on the Great Barrier Reef

Posted by Laura on Wednesday, 11 August, 2010

One of my favorite hobbies when out and about is to look at people’s shirts, hats, jackets, backpacks and scarves to see what sport teams are represented. It can be really interesting. (Clothes say a lot about a person at times. And sport related clothing can to. Why people wear things can involve a conscious fashion decision, because they visited the place where the team is based, because they want to be affiliated with the team or a city, in order to have conversations, because their team is winning, etc.) In Canberra, you’re just as likely to see a Hawthown Hawks as you are the Brisbane Broncos or the All Blacks as you are to see the Canberra Raiders or ACT Brumbies. It makes the game of sport clothing watching a bit more fun.

Yesterday, I went out on the Great Barrier Reef. (Went out with Quicksilver based in Port Douglas. They have a trip that does not require snorkeling or scuba diving. Boat holds 440 people. Not a small sample.) The variety was rather interesting with no repeats. The only team represented that seemed out of place was South Africa’s football team and I was wearing that shirt.

That said, the following teams were all represented once:

  • Melbourne Storm
  • Hawthorn Hawks
  • South Sydney Rabbitohs (the guy wearing it immediately hit the bar after getting off the boat)
  • Hong Kong Rugby 7s
  • Cabonne United (Rugby league team from NSW)
  • USC Trojans
  • South African national football team
  • Boston marathon  (Not a team but still a major sporting event)
  • Canberra Raiders
  • Boston Red Sox
  • X-Games (not a team but a sporting event)
  • Chicago Bears

After I got out, I spotted a kid in the marina wearing a North Queensland Cowboys shirt.  I couldn’t tell if he was on the boat or not so on my list of places I have seen jerseys, I put it with the marina rather than the reef.  Anyway, I’m not sure exactly what to make of this list.  I know there were Kiwis and Dutch and Germans and English and Spanish speakers and Koreans aboard.  I could hear their accents and see them reading printed material in the language or some one would ask them where they were from and they would say.  I just didn’t see sport clothing.  I don’t know if the  Western Australians and South Australians weren’t on board or just weren’t wearing sport related stuff for their teams.  I thought the Victorians were supposed to be more sport mad but not really represented here.  The USA was represented with a fair representation of teams and events.

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Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy

Posted by Laura on Thursday, 20 May, 2010

A copy of this can be found in PDF form at : ozziesport.com/storm.pdf .  The pdf version that includes footnotes that explain the methodology used and contain additional links.


Online Activity in the Wake of the Melbourne Storm Controversy

By Laura Hale, University of Canberra

On April 22, 2010, the news of salary cap violations on the part of the Melbourne Storm broke online in such publications as the Fox Sports, on television including ABC news and on multiple social networks including Facebook and Twitter. By April 23, the news was available in various print publications including The Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald. During the news coverage, NRL fans learned that the team had been fined $1.8 million, stripped of two premiereships and were not eligible to earn points towards 2010’s premiership. (“Melbourne storm stripped,” 2010) The team was being punished for salary cap violations over the past five years, where the total cap violation in that period was $1.7 million with $400,000 of that total cap violation occurring in 2009. (“Melbourne storm stripped,” 2010)

Early in the coverage of the Melbourne Storm, several issues were discussed including the impact this would have on the fan base for the team, the subsequent economic fallout for Storm and other clubs in the league, and if the players would try to leave the club or lower their performance level. The consequences that people feared have yet to bear out: The fan base for the Melbourne Storm has grown, attendance has not fallen, membership is up and players have not left the team and the team continues to win.

This article will examine the online response to the Melbourne Storm controversy. Specifically, it will look at the interest patterns on several networks, follow patterns on Twitter and Facebook, and activity levels on 43things, wikis and Yahoo!Groups. It will prove that, on the whole, the controversy has not eroded the online fanbase for the team and has resulted in an increased profile for the team in ways can have a net positive for the team and their sponsors.


Profile Interest

One way to quickly gage online interest for a team is to check the number of people who list them as an interest on social networks that include that option. The level of interest on a network will, in general, increase over time. Including an interest is a rather passive activity that most people do at the time that they signup on a service. They may update their interests once a year when they do an overhaul on their profile. Other factors may result in an update of interests, most notably a desire to associate or disassociate with certain people and organizations. The latter can generally require a certain amount of rage and disillusionment and does not happen that often. For adding interests, it can require a certain degree of wanting to stand in solidarity with some one or thing in the face of perceived oppression. Adding or removing an interest will generally require a large emotional response in people to motivate them to change their interests on social networks where an individual has not been active in the past six months. These conditions mean that numbers for interests are relatively stable or increase. A big shift downward is possible but unlikely.

Did the Melbourne Storm controversy result in people being motivated to update their interests to include or exclude the team? Yes and no, many people added them as an interest on Facebook but the numbers remained level across several other networks.

As of January 9, 2010, 17,020 had listed the Melbourne Storm as an interest on Facebook. By May 9, 2010, this number had increased to 41,240, or 24,220 new people. From January 9 to May 9, 2010, there was also an increase of roughly 120 fans within fifty miles of Hobart adding the team as an interest, going from less than 20 to 140. Canberra saw a similar increase in fans, going from 140 on January 9 to 1,020 by May 9, 2010, an increase of 880 new people listing the team as an interest. For fans within fifty miles of Cranbourne, there was an increase of 5,540 fans going from 7,140 fans on January 9 to 12,580 fans on May 9, 2010. Some of this increase on Facebook can be possibly attributed to a change in Facebook in mid-April, where people were encouraged to add their interests as likes of fanpages and vice versa. (Albanesius, 2010) It cannot entirely explain the shift as the official Melbourne Storm page is a user page, not a fan page so the interest to liking will not be automatically converted. At the same time, the number of people listing the team as an interest is roughly ten times as many who follow the Storm’s official Facebook profile and suggests that interest listing is independent of following the official team presence.

In addition to the Melbourne Storm interest on Facebook, there have been two new interests related to the storm created in the wake of the controversy: “Shame On You Melbourne Storm” with fewer than twenty people listing it as an interest, and “Sucked In Melbourne Storm Haha” with 3,240 people listing it as an interest. The latter definitely connects to a Facebook fanpage with the same name, which has 8,432 people who like it.

While Facebook saw an explosion in growth of people listing the team as an interest, other sites allowing interest listing on profiles remained stagnant or saw limited growth. This includes bebo, where there has been no change as of April 28 and May 9 from 402 people that was originally recorded on March 18, 2010. Blogger saw some growth for the number of people listing the team as an interest. As of January 18, 2010, four people had listed the team. By May 9, 2010, six people had listed them as an interest. As the time frame is wider than that of bebo, it might be possible to account for the increase as a pre-season boost, rather than in response to the controversy. Either way, this was an increase of fifty percent for new people listing the team as an interest.

LiveJournal saw no growth in people listing the team as an interest between January 10 and May 9, 2010. Of the 25 LiveJournal accounts listing the Melbourne Storm as an interest, only five have updated since the controversy broke. LiveJournal’s clones including Dreamwidth, Blurty and DeadJournal also saw no growth as of May 9. This contrasts to the Brisbane Broncos on LiveJournal, where one person removed the team as an interest during a similar period. Dreamwidth had two users listing the team as an interest as of January 9, Blurty had one user as of January 9, and DeadJournal had one user as of December 23, 2009. None of the people on LiveJournal’s clones who list the Storm as an interest have updated their journals since the controversy happened. The most recent updates occurred on Dreamwidth, taking place in early March 2010. The other account last updated in April 2009. The Blurty account last updated in November 2005 and the DeadJournal account last updated in January 2006.

One or two smaller niche networks have limited interest for specific teams or where people only list the NRL as an interest. This includes BlackPlanet, generally targeted at African Americans inside the United States. There was one person who listed the NRL as an interest on the network as of February 15, 2010. This has not changed as of May 9. Care2 is a social networked targeted at people who wish to make the world a better place. As of March 20, 2010, no one had listed the Melbourne Storm as an interest. This changed by May 9, when three people listed the team as an interest. Given the names, limited profiles and join dates, it is possible that these accounts are all tied to one individual. Gaia Online is a small, niche network for role players. As of March 11, 2010, no one had listed the Melbourne Storm as an interest. There is interest in the NRL on the network as people listed the Brisbane Lions, Canberra Raiders, Parramatta Eels and Sydney Roosters as interests. There has not been any change for any of these teams as of May 9. The limited growth and lack of pull back could suggest that larger interest in the NRL has not been diminished on smaller networks as a result of the controversy.


Wiki Activity

Wikis are, at their most basic, web sites where visitors can easily edit the content of the site. Sometimes, there are limits to who can edit put in place by the creator of a wiki. These include requiring users to register or confirm an e-mail before they edit, or to get their account approved by the admin before they can edit. Some wikis have policies when breaking news happen or an article gets trolled to lock down the article so only registered users can edit or wiki admins can edit. The culture of editing on specific wikis thus develops around the who can edit process as locking down wikis to prevent edits can effect the frequency that an article is updated.

For comprehensive wiki articles, the ideal is to have to have editors who approach the topic from different perspectives, where there is inherent conflict in the content and perspective being presented. If this situation does not exist, an article can be highjacked by one or two editors who seek to push their own perspective. The more edits and people involved in contributing to the article, the less likely the article will be biased. This also makes vandalism less problematic as people are incentivized to quickly remove that material.

Wikis can be a good tool for gauging interest in a particular topic over time as most wiki software keeps a record of all edits to a page. For some of the big wikis, like Wikipedia, data also exists for how many views an article has over a certain time period. This can help track more passive community interest in a topic.

Wikipedia’s English language article about the Melbourne Storm is probably the most visited wiki article about the team and appears third in Google’s search results for the team. The article, found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Storm , was created on May 23, 2004. As of May 9, 2010, the article had 1,732 total edits made to it. The controversy involving the Melbourne Storm broke on April 22, 2010. 1,471 of the edits were made prior to that. In the period between the article’s creation and the day before the controversy broke, an average of .681 edits per day were made to the article. In the eighteen-day period since the controversy broke, an average of 14.5 edits per day were made to the article. The vast majority of these edits were made in the first three days, with 90 edits made on April 22, 56 edits made on April 23 and 69 edits made on April 24. On April 24, in response to repeated vandalism, the article was semi-protected; this meant that only registered users who had confirmed their e-mail could edit the article. The protection had the effect of reducing the total number of daily edits to the article. After that, peak editing days included April 26 and May 3 with seven edits, and April 25 and May 5 with six edits. There were zero edits on April 28, May 6, May 7 and May 9. The controversy certainly caused an increase in the number of edits. If the day that the controversy broke and the next two days are excluded, the average number of daily edits is 3.06 edits per day. This is still higher than the period prior to the controversy and the trend will probably continue at least until the end of the season.

The article views per day mirrors the total edits by day. Based on data provided by Henrick (2010, May 1 and May 9), there is a correlation of .904 between the total daily edits and the total daily page views. According to Henrick (2010, May 1) during April 2010, the article was viewed a total of 49,540 times. Of these views, 40,355 views were between April 22, when the story broke, and April 30. The peak day for visits was on April 22, when the article was viewed 14,800 times. The average page views between April 22 and April 30 was 4,482 views per day. If this period is extended out to include data provided by Henrick (2010, May 9) for May 1 to May 8, the average views per day is 2,700. If the three days around when the controversy first broke are excluded, the average edits per day drops to 1,143. This stands in contrast to the period between April 1 and April 21 where the average page views per day was 438. The above average page views trend appears to be continuing. There has not been a decrease in overall interest in the Melbourne Storm on English Wikipedia.

In addition to the English language article about the Melbourne Storm on Wikipedia, there are articles in two other languages: French and Italian. The French language article, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Storm , was created on March 1, 2006. Since the controversy started on April 22 and May 8, there have been 35 total edits to the article. Unlike the English language article, total edits per day peaked on April 24, 2010 with 19 with the second highest editing day occurring on April 23 with 7. The average total edits per day during this period was 2.1. In April, prior to the controversy, the average edits per day was zero. Also unlike the English language article, it was not locked because of vandalism. According to Henrickhe (2010, May 1) peak views per day happened on April 23 and April 24 with 59. The next day with the greatest number of views in the period between April 22 and May 8 is May 8 with 34. The average viewed per day in the April 22 to May 8 period was 17.4 and the average viewed per day in April prior to the controversy was 3.4. The correlation between the total edits per day and views per day in the period between April 1 and May 8 is .7740. The French Wikipedia article saw an increase that was proportionally bigger than the English article but the total views and edits were much smaller on the French article.

The Italian language Wikipedia article, http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Storm , was created on December 21, 2007. The article had two edits in 2008 and one in 2009. Since the controversy broke on April 22 and May 8, there have two edits to the article. These two edits are the only edits made during 2010. According to Henrickhe (2010, May 1) , the total number of article views from April 1 to April 21 was 30. According to Henrickhe (2010, May 8), the total number of page views per day was 58. The day with the most views was April 23, with 14 views. The next day with the most views was May 3, with 8 views. The Italian Wikipedia article saw an increase in the total number of edits and page views as a result of the controversy. It might have been larger but the Italian interest in the team is much smaller to start with than the French or English language communities.

Outside of Wikipedia, there are a few small wikis that focus on the NRL and Rugby League. These wikis generally lack detailed information on the daily total page views but still provide information on the editing history. One such wiki is the NRL Central Wiki that is hosted on Wikia. It has an article about the Melbourne Storm located at http://nrl.wikia.com/wiki/Melbourne_Storm. The article was created on August 13, 2009 and was last updated on October 10, 2009. It has not been updated since the controversy. The wiki the article is hosted has only had three non-bot edits in the past 30 days so the lack of updates is not surprising. A few other wikis have articles that mention the Melbourne Storm. Most of these are institutional wikis where article histories are not available or where content is posted by its creator and never intended to be edited by a wider audience. There does not appear to be a movement by wikis to create additional content in response to or to try to capitalize on interest in response to the controversy.


Twitter

Twitter is a microblogging service. Users can post 140 character messages , called tweets, that are shared with anyone who chooses to follow them. Twitter is one of the most well known and popular social networks in Australia.

There are two main ways to measure Twitter activity. The first is to keep track of the total followers an account has. The second way is to monitor the total number of daily tweets posted about a topic posted across the whole network and by specific accounts.

The Melbourne Storm have an official Twitter account at @MelbStormRLC . There is an unofficial Melbourne Storm Twitter account run by a fansite at @MelbourneStorm_ . As of March 9, 2010, the official account had 458 followers. This contrasts with @MelbourneStorm_ which had 605 followers as of March 8, 2010. By May 10, about nineteen days after the controversy broke, the official account had 1,037 followers and @ MelbourneStorm_ had 720 followers. That was an increase of 579 and 115 followers respectively. The situation has not hurt growth for either account and people are still interested in keeping up with the team and what they are doing.

When compared to the official Twitter accounts for the NRL, Gold Coast Titans, Manly Sea Eagles, North Queensland Cowboys, Parramatta Eels, Canberra Raiders, South Sydney Rabbitohs and New Zealand Warriors, the follower growth for the Melbourne Storm suggests a potential connection to the controversy creating additional interest or a fanbase that has become much more interested in Twitter in a short period of time. (Table 1) The only account with a greater increase in total number of followers is the NRL, which picked up 942 followers. The Melbourne Storm saw a fifty-five percent increase in the new followers. The next closest team of the aforementioned in the same period was the Canberra Raiders who saw a forty-two percent increase. In this context, it reaffirms that additional interest in the team was likely generated by the controversy.

Table 1

Twitter Follower Counts by Official Club Accounts and Date
Team Account
9-Mar-10

10-May-10

Difference

% increase
Gold Coast Titans GCTitans
1,616

1,950

334

17.13%
Manly Sea Eagles manlyseaeagles
888

1,073

185

17.24%
Melbourne Storm MelbStormRLC
458

1,037

579

55.83%
North Queensland Cowboys northqldcowboys
1,403

1,588

185

11.65%
NRL NRL
4,231

5,173

942

18.21%
Parramatta Eels parramatta_eels
618

780

162

20.77%
Canberra Raiders RaidersCanberra
202

349

147

42.12%
South Sydney Rabbitohs SSFCRABBITOHS
761

1,139

378

33.19%
New Zealand Warriors thenzwarriors
434

507

73

14.40%


Detailed statistics regarding the total number of references for the Melbourne Storm by day on Twitter are not available. It makes it harder to determine the total daily volume of conversation involving the team in the days surrounding the news leaking about the salary cap violations. People were interested in the Melbourne Storm as the team was briefly trending on Twitter when the story broke. Manual counting can be done but Twitter search only goes back around one week What can be more easily tracked is the posting volume per day of specific accounts related to the Melbourne Storm to compare their activities before and after the controversy broke. In the case of the @MelbourneStorm_, the account does not update regularly with about twenty tweets made during the past year. Their last tweet was on March 24, 2010; they have not posted since the news broke. @MelbStormRLC has posted several tweets since the controversy and has mentioned it. From April 22 to May 9, eighteen days after the story broke, the Storm have made eleven total tweets. Prior to that, the team had made thirteen tweets. The difference in tweet totals is inconsequential. Neither account made changes to their Twitter posting in response in to the controversy.

Searching through Twitter, it is very clear that people are still tweeting about the team and, as of May 10, are tweeting about them at a comparatively higher rate than other teams in the league. One popular way of indicating a tweet is about a certain topic is to include a hashtag in front of a word. This makes the whole phrase easily searchable on Twitter. For example, a person who is tweeting about the Melbourne Storm may include #melbournestorm to indicate the tweet is about the team. There generally fewer of these tweets as a great many accounts on Twitter come directly from RSS feeds. These feeds were not originally created for Twitter and are absent some of the cultural practices and do not use coding tools to help make finding posts easier. Thus, tweets tagged with a # are fewer and more readily countable in search. This allows for comparisons to be made between teams over a short period. For the period between May 3 and May 8, 2010, #melbournestorm beat out all the other teams that were sampled for most the most discussed NRL team. (Table 2) There were twenty-one references for the team on May 5. This is sixteen more than #manlyseaeagles on the same date and the only other team with five or more tweets with a hashtag on a single day. The controversy can likely be seen as the cause for the increase in the number of tweets when compared to other teams in the league.

Table 2
Hashtagged Marked NRL Team Tweets
Team Keyword
3-May-10

4-May-10

5-May-10

6-May-10

7-May-10

8-May-10
Brisbane Broncos #brisbanebroncos
0

0

0

0

0

1
Canberra Raiders #canberraraiders
0

0

0

0

0

1
Gold Coast Titans #GCtitans
0

0

0

1

0

0
Gold Coast Titans #goldcoasttitans
0

0

0

1

0

0
Manly Sea Eagles #manlyseaeagles
0

0

5

0

0

0
Melbourne Storm #melbournestorm
0

2

21

2

3

1
Newcastle Knights #NewcastleKnights
0

0

0

0

0

0
North Queensland Cowboys #NQCowboys
0

0

0

0

0

0
North Queensland Cowboys #NQldCowboys
0

0

0

0

0

0
North Queensland Cowboys #NorthQldCowboys
0

0

0

0

0

0
North Queensland Cowboys #NorthQueenslandCowboys
0

0

0

0

0

0
Parramatta Eels #ParramattaEels
0

0

0

0

0

0
Penrith Panthers #PenrithPanthers
0

0

0

0

0

0
Sydney Roosters #SydneyRoosters
1

0

0

0

0

0
Wests Tigers #WestsTigers
0

0

0

0

1

0



Facebook

Facebook is one of the largest social networks in Australia and it arguably has the largest population of Melbourne Storm fans online. Outside of interest monitoring, the easiest way to monitor the activities of fans is to examine the fan community’s growth on official pages and groups, and activity levels on these groups.

The Melbourne Storm has an official user profile on Facebook. The profile is for their mascot, Storm Man. It has a limited profile view so only people who have friended the account can view posts and interact with content posted by Storm Man. When the profile was checked on April 6, 2010, the account had 3,203 friends. Checked again on April 28, the account had 4,154. On May 9, the account had 4,401 friends and on May 10, it had 4,494 friends. While the total new friends for their account was fewer than other clubs such as the Brisbane Lions over the same period (Table 3), the team had the largest percentage increase in: 28.7% versus 13.5% for the next closest team, the North Queensland Cowboys. The controversy did not cost the team any friends and resulted in a higher percentage gain when compared to other teams. It has resulted in a net momentum gain that continues almost three weeks after the controversy first broke out.

Table 3
Facebook Fan Counts by Club and Date
Official Facebook account
6-Apr-10

10-May-10

Difference

% increase
Melbourne Storm
3,203

4,494

1,291

28.7%
North Queensland Cowboys
2,428

2,806

378

13.5%
Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles
14,895

17,044

2,149

12.6%
Wests Tigers
14,078

15,911

1,833

11.5%
Gold Coast Titans
18,032

20,204

2,172

10.8%
Sydney Roosters
12,204

13,570

1,366

10.1%
Newcastle Knights
12,766

13,774

1,008

7.3%
Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks
9,502

10,229

727

7.1%
Canberra Raiders
2,583

2,775

192

6.9%
Brisbane Lions
45,327

48,228

2,901

6.0%


Facebook Fan Pages are created by teams and by fans. The person who created the Fan Page can post to the wall, control else who can post to the wall, control the type of content posted to the Fan Page and create a unique landing page. Members of a Fan Page can comment on wall posts and indicate they like the post. There are many Melbourne Storm fans that have created Fan Pages and many more have joined, commented and liked posts made to these Fan Pages. A quick search on Facebook for Fan Pages dedicated to the team using the keywords “Melbourne Storm” results in over 500 pages about the team. By looking at a sample of the individual Fan Pages to check the daily posting volume of wall posts and the number of likes and comments to those posts, an idea of how the controversy effected fan interests can be determined.

For this, three Fan Pages were chosen. These were the top three Fan Pages in search that were not created in response to the controversy. They are Melbourne Storm, Best team in NRL.. Melbourne Storm ! and melbourne storm :) . The total posts per day by the person who runs the Fan Page, and comments and likes per post associated with the post for the day were recorded for the period between April 1 and May 10, 2010. (Table 4) When comparing the total posts in the period between April 1 and April 22, 2010 to the period between April 23 to May 10, two of the three Fan Pages had more posts made by the maintainers before the controversy. (Graph 1) Two of the three groups saw an increase in the total comments made after the controversy. For Melbourne Storm, a Fan Page with over 40,000 members, the increase was massive going from 54 comments to 803 comments. The increase for Best team in NRL.. Melbourne Storm !, a group with 281 members as of May 10, was much smaller. It went from 252 to 257 comments. For all three groups, there was an increase in the number of likes after the controversy took place. While posting levels by Fan Page maintainers may not have increased, the level of engagement and interest in the team for the fan population did. The controversy has created a climate where fans are more engaged with posts.




Mailing lists

During much of the 1990s, mailing lists were one of the most popular tools for fans to use in order to communicate with each other. The creation of mailing lists became much easier when sites like egroups, coollists, topica, Yahoo!Groups and Google groups were created. They largely automated the process of creating mailing lists, provided web based archives and removed barriers of having to understand majordomo syntax in order to join a list.

Australian sports fans actively used these services to participate in their team’s fandom. Some leagues and teams were more popular than other leagues and teams. Amongst the fan communities utilizing mailing lists were Melbourne Storm fans. Most of the lists dedicated to team were on Yahoo!Groups, where there are currently eight lists. These eight lists include melbournestorm2, melbournestormrugbyleague, melbournestormsupportersclub, Storm_Squad, StormSupporters, MSSC-Storm-Mailouts and melbourne_storm_supporters. Many of these lists are no longer active. There are a variety of reasons for this including absent list owners, large volumes of spam content posted on list, people switching to different services in order to express their fondness for the team or fans losing interest in a team. If spam content is not counted in total posting volume by month, the peak posting month was February 2001 with 59 total posts across all eight lists. January 2001 had the next highest posting volume by month with 50 posts. Given the always small and inactive community, it is not surprising that there have been zero posts on these lists since the controversy broke out. These lists have also seen zero growth in membership since their totals were last checked on February 20, 2010. The controversy had no effect on the Storm’s mailing list community.


43things

According to Robot Co-op (2010), 43things “is the world’s largest goal-setting community.” Members of the site set goals for themselves that are published on their profiles and on lists of others who share the same goal. Members are also encouraged to blog about their efforts in trying to complete their goals. Other members are encouraged to cheer people on as they work to complete a goal. When a goal has been completed, people change the goal status to “I did this” and it appears as completed on their profile. This site is relatively popular; according to Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010), the site is ranked the 2,549th most popular website in Australia.

There are a number of people who have set Australia related sports goals on 43thing. This includes playing for certain clubs to attending the finals to seeing the team they barrack for play. On April 1, 2010, the site was searched for any goals that connected to the Melbourne Storm. Only one goal related to the Melbourne Storm was found. It is “Go to a Melbourne Storm Game.” Two people, erynne and mmcpharlane, had listed this as a goal they were working towards completing. When checked again on May 10, no one had added any additional goals related to the Melbourne Storm. No movement had been made towards completing the existing goal: Both individuals still listed themselves as working towards it and neither had updated their blog to indicate they were any closer to accomplishing this goal. The controversy has not had any measurable impact on people’s goal setting and efforts towards accomplishing their goals as they pertain to the Melbourne Storm.


Conclusion

The controversy involving the Melbourne Storm’s salary cap violations and the subsequent punishment of rewarding them zero points for the season has not resulted in a loss of people interested in the team or resulted in a drop in activity level on the part of fans. Across smaller and less popular services and web sites, there has been no behavior change; the controversy has had a null effect in that no one removed content or interests, nor created content and added interests. For larger sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia, there has been a gain in followers, viewers and interactions. Eighteen days out from the initial incident, a long tail increase in views and interactions exists when compared to the period prior to the controversy. While some of the initial burst of activity and interest could be a consequence of negativity publicity, the long tail interest two to three weeks out is much harder to attribute to solely to wanting to watch a controversy for the sake of entertainment. If interest continue to stay elevated, the club should be able to leverage to increase club membership and sponsorship deals, especially as they apply to their online presence, because they have successfully used the controversy to grow their fanbase. The behaviors of fans demonstrate that have been incentized to express their loyalty and solidarity with the team.

References

Albanesius, C. (2010, April 19). Facebook makes ‘connections,’ adds community pages. PC Magazine, Retrieved from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362825,00.asp

Alexa Internet, Inc. (2010, May 10). 43things.com – site info from alexa. Retrieved from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/43things.com

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 1). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 49377 times in 201004 . Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/en/201004/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 1). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 276 times in 201004. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/fr/201004/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 1). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 276 times in 201004. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/it/201004/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 9). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 5561 times in 201005. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/en/201005/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 9). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 91 times in 201005. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/fr/201005/Melbourne_Storm

Henrik, Initials. (2010, May 9). Wikipedia article traffic statistics: Melbourne_Storm has been viewed 19 times in 201005. Retrieved from http://stats.grok.se/it/201005/Melbourne_Storm

Melbourne storm stripped of two premierships for salary cap breach. (2010, April 22). Fox Sports, Retrieved from http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,8659,27022196-5018866,00.html

Robot Co-op. (2010, May 10). List your goals on 43 things. Retrieved from http://www.43things.com/

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Melbourne Storm and Wikipedia

Posted by Laura on Monday, 26 April, 2010

The Melbourne Storm cheating controversy with their salary camp has gotten a fair amount of attention by the Australian Twitter community and in local newspapers.  Given that, I was curious to see how the Wikipedia community had responded in terms of number of edits to the Melbourne Storm article.  I took a look at the article’s history about an hour before I posted this entry.  I then counted the total number of edits by day.  Wikipedia’s history is recorded at UTC.  This is a bit important when looking at time related data…

Melbourne Storm Wikipedia Edits

Date Number of Edits
20-Apr 6
21-Apr 0
22-Apr 90
23-Apr 56
24-Apr 69
25-Apr 6
26-Apr 6

Most of the edits were made on April 22.  This was, based on UTC, the day the story broke.   Total edits spiked again on April 24.  After that, there was a huge drop off.  The story broke quickly, people edited and then after most of the pertinent details were added, they stopped editing.  Some of the drop off can probably be explained by:   (Protected Melbourne Storm: Excessive vandalism ([edit=autoconfirmed] (expires 09:52, 1 May 2010 (UTC)) [move=autoconfirmed] (expires 09:52, 1 May 2010 (UTC)))).

It is an interesting bit of pattern behavior and it would be interesting to go into further depth regarding other historical editing patterns for the article and who edited the article, and if they had ever edited the article prior to this latest controversy.  That’s for another post some time in the future.

Edited to add: There is an Italian language article about the Melbourne Storm.  There have been 15 total edits to the article singe it was created on December 21, 2007.  The article had 2 edits in 2008 and 1 in 2009.  In period of breaking news around this story, there has been 1 new edit made to the article.

More edited to add: There is a French language article about the Melbourne Storm.  It was created on March 1, 2006.  There have been 27 total edits to the article since the controversy started.  There were 59 total edits to the article, including these.

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Melbourne Storm on LiveJournal and its clones

Posted by Laura on Sunday, 10 January, 2010

The Melbourne Storm are a member of the National Rugby League, having joined in 1998.  This post will look at the size and location of Melbourne Storm the community on LiveJournal and its clones.

LiveJournal is the most popular service, easily beating out all the clones with 25 people listing the team as an interest.  (There are no communities dedicated to the team though.)   Dreamwidth is the second most popular service with two users.  Blurty and DeadJournal come in third with one user each.   There are no fans on InsaneJournal, Inksome or JournalFen.  CrazyLife appears to be down so no numbers can be found there.

For this community, the blurty and DeadJournal fans are not active on the service: Neither have updated in the past 200 plus weeks.  On Dreamwidth, one updated in the last week and one last updated 34 weeks ago.  On LiveJournal, seven updated in the past week, seven have updated in the past six months, ten haven’t updated in the past year and a half and one has never updated.

When combined, eleven of the twenty-nine users have listed their year of birth.   The average year of birth was 1984.45, with a median and mode year of birth at 1985.  Twenty-six of the twenty-nine list their country of residence.  Unsurprisingly, all are from Australia. Thirteen are from Victoria, seven are from New South Wales and three are from Queensland.

From LiveJournal and its clones, I’ve collected data on the distribution of fans of the Melbourne Storm,  Brisbane Broncos, Balmain Tigers (defunct), Cronulla Sharks, North Sydney Bears (defunct), and St. George Dragons (defunct) based on listing of the team as an interest.  The following chart shows the comparative distribution of fans of the aforementioned teams on LiveJournal and its clones.  It might be a bit hard to tell from this chart but Queensland has 25 people total, New South Wales has 20, Victoria has 15 and the ACT has 7.

The Storm dominate in their home state of Victoria. They take a majority in New South Wales but are largely absent from the ACT.  This is some what surprising as the Storm are supposed to be the second most popular team in the league and the ACT is a melting pot of people from all the other states.

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