Roll Call: Most Active BTB Community Members In 2016

At the beginning of every year here on Blogging The Boys, dating all the way back to 2012, we like to look back at some of our key user stats from the previous year. We do this not to revel in our record page views or the number of new members we attract every month. Instead, this is an effort to recognize those community members who have made significant contributions to making BTB what it is today: the best source of Cowboys coverage you can find anywhere.

BTB is more than just the sum of the front page writers, much more. While many of us may have stumbled on BTB via an article on the front page, we kept coming back and eventually signed up because of the quality of our community here. Different people contribute in different ways to the community. Many add comments, often on an almost daily basis, some of you even write lengthy FanPosts. And each day, each of us adds a little more to the community. So this is where we say thank YOU, you the reader, you the commenter, you the contributor.

Which is why today we break down some BTB stats from 2016 to honor the most prolific BTB members, both in terms of quantity and quality, and recognize them for their contributions. But before we do that, and to borrow the title of a popular post by one of the best writers we've ever had, here is BTB By The Numbers for 2016:

• 2,540 total front page posts. 15 different front page writers worked tirelessly over the year to bring you quality Cowboys coverage. For a football blog that covers only sixteen regular season games, knocking out an average of more than seven articles per day, 365 days per year, is an awesome job. And just like Sum 41, I like to think that effort was "All Killer, No Filler" - most of the time anyway. At the very least, I think we've kept you well entertained.
• 730 FanPosts. 258 BTB members wrote a combined 730 Fanposts, up from 638 last year.
• Half a million comments. If you’ve read every single comment on the front page, the FanPosts, or the Fanshots, you’ve been very busy. The sum of those comments has contributed to keeping this a vibrant and interesting community.

Half a million comments over a year averages out to about 1,400 comments per day. Here are the 60 most prolific commenters of 2016:

In addition to quantity, we can also look at the quality of these comments. Like many other social media sites, BTB also has a way of "liking" posts or comments. In our little corner of the universe, the likes are called "recs", short for "recommendations", and BTB members can rec comments they particularly like. Four recs and your comment turns blue on BTB.

Here are the 30 members who received the most recommendations for their comments last year:

What I really like about the table above is that six of the 30 names in the table are current or former front-page writers. Five of those names should be readily identifiable by most regular readers, the sixth name may only be know to veteran readers who've been around since at least 2009. Compounding matters is that the member in question used to go by the name "GloryDayz88." If you're a BTB veteran and know who it is, don't go blurting it out in the comments section right away, give the newbies a knowing wink and let them figure it out themselves ;-)

Even more intriguing, at least to me, is to wonder whether the table also contains the name of the next front-page writer to emerge from the ranks of the BTB members - which is what all six current and former writers in this table did.

Overall, I feel this table speaks to the fact that our writers remain engaged in the community, even after they stop being featured on the front page, and that BTB is more than just a way station for most of us. But it also speaks to the fact that we have many more BTB members outside of the frontpage writers whose opinions are valued and appreciated by their fellow members.

The table below lists the 15 top contributors in the FanPost section. The tables are sorted by number of FanPosts in 2016, by the number of recommendations (recs), and by the number of comments generated by the FanPost and the ensuing discussion.

FanPosts are a key part of BTB, as they'll give you a much broader range of opinions than you'll get on the front page. But writing a FanPost - and a well-received one at that - is a lot of work, so if you see one you like, give it a rec. And don't be stingy with those recs.

The tables above feature some of the most prolific contributors to the blog last year, but they are not the only voices on BTB, not by a long shot. In total, 2,798 members left at least one comment on the blog last year. If you missed out on the lists above but still want to know where you rank in the grand scheme of BTB things, here's an Excel file with the data for all commenters in 2016:

BTB Roll Call 2016

And if your name's not on any of the lists above, but you want to see your name up in the bright BTB lights at the end of the year, then simply post more stuff, more often!

Until then, thank you all for your great contributions.

And finally, we close with the front page writers and podcasters.

As a team of writers on BTB, we take great pride in what we do here day in and day out to bring you the best Cowboys coverage you can find. Here are our numbers for 2016, how they compare to the previous two years:

Dave Halprin started BTB all by his lonesome in 2005 and moved the blog to SB Nation later that year. Our roster of writers has significantly expanded since, and we now have more BTB writer alumni than we have writers on staff. Some of our alumni still frequent BTB, others have found greener pastures somewhere else; all helped build BTB into what it is today, so a here’s a so here's a Texas-sized hat tip to the BTB Veterans Association. Thanks, guys.

Here's Dave from that post in 2005 explaining what BTB is all about, and what it remains to this day.

For the new reader, you've arrived at a community of loyal, knowledgeable, partially insane Dallas Cowboys fans. We talk about the premiere franchise in all of sports 365 days a year. We invite you to stick around and add to the community. You can make your voice heard or you can just lurk and read all the great Cowboys information on the blog.