BTB Roll Call: Most active community members in 2018

At regular intervals here on Blogging The Boys, dating all the way back to 2011, 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 2018 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 2018:

• 3,407 total front page posts. 12 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 almost 10 articles per day, 365 days per year, is an awesome job. At the very least, I think we’ve kept you well entertained.
• 700 FanPosts. 214 BTB members combined to have an average of two new fanposts pop up each day.
• 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.

Most Prolific Commenters

Half a million comments over a year averages out to about 1,400 comments per day. Here are the 60 most prolific commenters of 2018 that help keep this place special:

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 members who received the most recs for their comments over the last year, with 100 comments needed to qualify for this ranking:

Half a million is a staggering amount of comments, but our moderation team slogged through each and every one of them, so here’s a HUGE thank you for the moderation team for reading all of those comments, even the most absurd, ridiculous, and sometimes downright ignorant ones!

Trust me, without their moderation, BTB wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable as it is.

FanPosts

The table below lists the 16 top contributors in the FanPost section. The tables are sorted by number of FanPosts in 2018, by the number of recommendations, 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 rec’s.

117 different BTB-members made at least one of the tables above, but many, many more contributed to the blog so far this 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 the almost 3,000 commenters in 2018:

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.

Front Page

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 2018:

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 elsewhere; 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.