AO3 Averages meme

[alias_sqbr]

Via sanguinity and muccamukk, an AO3 meme using NUMBERS to find your 'average' works on the ao3.


How to calculate the average(s):
Simple version: Go to your AO3 statistics page. Divide the total wordcount etc by the number of works to get the mean.

More complex version: Install and use this bookmarklet(*) to download a spreadsheet of your statistics and then use spreadsheet tools in Excel or whatever to get the mean, median, etc. I had to go through and manually delete all the repeats caused by crossovers.

How to find the 'average' work: Order your works by wordcount etc, then find the one closest to the relevant average.

(*)Thanks flamebyrd :)



Since about half my works are fanart, I did three analyses: All works, all works with less than 260 words (mostly art), and works with more than 260 words (mostly fic).

	Words	Hits	Kudos	Comments	Bookmarks	Subscriptions
All
Max	114920	16098	830	186	223	248
Mean	4175	1695	59	6	10	9
Median	253	1011	27	2	2	1.5
Fanfic
Mean	8332	1922	82	8	16	13
Median	2412	1071	35	3	4	2
Fanart
Mean	56	1470	36	3.5	3	2
Median	29	1069	22	2	1	1

That is way too many combos to do all of them. But here's some I felt like checking out.

Mean number of words, fic:
The Importance of Giving in to Temptation, 8312 words, Fenris/Female Hawke/Isabela, Dragon Age 2

Median number of words, fic:
Sex and the Citadel, 2412 words (exactly right!), Joker/EDI, Mass Effect 3

Sex and the Citadel feels like a relatively short fic to me, but I guess the longer fics are balanced out by all the drabbles etc.

Median number of words, art: Prospitian Monarch, 28 words, PM, Homestuck.

"PM stands against sand dunes and a magenta sunset, holding her crown with her eyes closed and the symbol of the sun behind her head like a halo" does feel like a fairly typical length for an image description, not including the long descriptions for comics which won't be included because of how I did the numbers.

Looking at engagement numbers, works with very low word counts (eg mostly art) does worse across the board, though some of that will be my very unpopular drabbles dragging everything down.

The difference for number of hits is low enough that I'll just look at the overall averages.

Mean hits:
Welcome to Collins and Collins!, 1661 hits, Lizzie/Charlotte, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries fanart

Median hits:
Memento Vivere (The Plural of Memento Mori is Memento Mori), 1071 hits, ensemble gen, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Both old, kinda niche works done for exchanges. There seems to be a large chunk of fics in the 1000s range.

Mean kudos (fic):
Also Known as Soixante-neuf, 83 kudos, Sam/Tali, Mass Effect 3.

Median kudos (fic):
Bedtime Story, 35 kudos, Morrigan/Leliana, Dragon Age 2.

Both old femslash fics for largeish fandoms. Sam/Tali was kinda niche but it's a fun fluffy fic, Morrigan/Leliana was more popular but it's a weird little story.

Mean kudos (art):
All I ever wanted (for you), 36 kudos, Wen Ning/Wei Wuxian, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation.

A very recent piece for a small pairing in a large fandom, done for an exchange.

Median kudos (art):
Prospitian Monarch 22 kudos, PM, Homestuck.

A very old gen piece for a once middling popular character in a fandom that was then large in general but not very big on the AO3.

...and then I started making GRAPHS and got distracted but I'll go into that in a different post. Even without doing quantitative analysis, the mean results tended to be within the first few pages of results, implying that there's a small number of works at the start with very high numbers dragging the average up, followed by a long tail of works with low numbers.

Comments

[sanguinity]

Yup, my mean/medians behaved like that, too, also suggesting lots of works with low wordcounts/hits/kudos/whatever. There's the occasional breakout hit or phenomenal wordcount, but most of my works are more modest in engagement/length. And the fact that you can't drop into negative numbers for any of these measures means that you're never going to have a balancing tail in the other direction.

[alias_sqbr]

Right! I'm having vague memories of the circumstances that create...ok my brain said "Poisson distributions" but that doesn't look right when I look it up. The one that's like a normal distribution but with a strict lower bound that bunches everything up. Though in my case having that large chunk of zero word works but no works with, like, 3 words, would obviously mess with things when it comes to wordcount.

[sanguinity]

Arguably, you have two separate processes, resulting in two different distributions that you've summed together: the process that creates your 0-word art works, and the process that creates your fic works. The latter might be poisson-like, although depending on your process, I don't think the assumptions of the poisson distribution are truly met (and def not if you've ever participated in exchanges or fic-forms that have minimums or target wordcounts -- drabbles, 221bs, etc.).