The topics in the History Section are very repetitive. There are only so many reasonable subjects to broach in a boxing history forum, so a lot of repetition is expected. Yet there is also tremendous variety. Most threads would actually fall under the "Everything Else," category.
The first duty is to choose what we think are five or six of the most frequent topics, so we have something to count. Some threads will fall completely outside our list unless we include an "Everything else," category. I will not do that. The categories I selected have large umbrellas. Once in a while it was hard to choose between two categories for a thread's subject. That is what this is: counting the subjects I have listed below across twenty not-quite-randomly selected pages of the history section archives. I jumped all over the place but it was still not random. So the study is not scientific but could still be of interest to the forum. I got completely fooled on two of the categories. And of course twenty pages are not enough for a scientific study either. The confidence level is too low.
I tried to choose subjects I thought were the most common, but in two instances failed miserably
Who beats whom
Old versus new
Who ducked whom
Tributes to boxers
Fighter evaluations
Past fights
The numbers may indicate something. I could see when I was looking at the pages that far more mythical matches are done these days than in former times. I think right now that category would top all others. I was glad to see that Fighter Tributes ranked #1 in this small sample. Who Ducked Whom and Old Versus New have very few threads devoted to them. The subjects get discussed quite a lot, but usually inside a thread in the course of discussion. However, few threads are named for them.
I believe one could fix the results somewhat merely by choosing threads that belong to one era. For instance, our own era favors mythical matches, whereas in some other eras you hardly ever see one. Sometime I would like to do the study over scientifically, but will probably never get around to it.
The first duty is to choose what we think are five or six of the most frequent topics, so we have something to count. Some threads will fall completely outside our list unless we include an "Everything else," category. I will not do that. The categories I selected have large umbrellas. Once in a while it was hard to choose between two categories for a thread's subject. That is what this is: counting the subjects I have listed below across twenty not-quite-randomly selected pages of the history section archives. I jumped all over the place but it was still not random. So the study is not scientific but could still be of interest to the forum. I got completely fooled on two of the categories. And of course twenty pages are not enough for a scientific study either. The confidence level is too low.
I tried to choose subjects I thought were the most common, but in two instances failed miserably
Who beats whom
Old versus new
Who ducked whom
Tributes to boxers
Fighter evaluations
Past fights
| Category | Num. of Threads |
| Who Beats whom | 17 |
| Old Versus new | 4 |
| Who Ducked whom | 3 |
| Fighter tributes | 28 |
| Fighter evaluations | 27 |
| Past Fights | 21 |
The numbers may indicate something. I could see when I was looking at the pages that far more mythical matches are done these days than in former times. I think right now that category would top all others. I was glad to see that Fighter Tributes ranked #1 in this small sample. Who Ducked Whom and Old Versus New have very few threads devoted to them. The subjects get discussed quite a lot, but usually inside a thread in the course of discussion. However, few threads are named for them.
I believe one could fix the results somewhat merely by choosing threads that belong to one era. For instance, our own era favors mythical matches, whereas in some other eras you hardly ever see one. Sometime I would like to do the study over scientifically, but will probably never get around to it.
markusmod
Comment