Citation Networks of Role-Playing Game Blogs

A new network of RPG blogs has just been built by elmcat. In his post, Mapping the Blogosphere, elmcat explains his project involving web scraping, analysis, and the publication of results in the form of a superb interactive visualization.

One format to gather them all

His idea of using RSS to obtain super-clean blog posts (no banners, no JavaScript, etc.) is brilliant!

I had actually tried to build a similar project using ObservableHQ for the dataviz component, combined with a mix of Python scripts, wget, and httrack for the web scraping. However, I eventually stopped because the scraping itself was a colossal task, especially when it came to cleaning the data of all the excess code. I really should try again using this RSS-based method.

And in the darkness, hypotheses to forge

Through Mastodon, I asked elmcat a few questions and hypotheses to test.

Does citing inline (not blog roll) make a blog last longer? Produce more content?

Does citing other blogs by creating links within blog posts (rather than in the sidebar or header, i.e., in a generic way) make a blog last longer or produce more content? This is based on the hypothesis that community connections make blogs more enduring or more productive.

Does new bloggers cite more legacy bloggers compared to the avg bloggers, and to well established bloggers?

Do newcomers to the blogosphere cite more than average bloggers, or than well-established, reputable bloggers? Based on the hypothesis that people cite to connect to a movement or to other individuals, or that blogging may be a response to ideas expressed elsewhere that they wish to continue engaging with.

Is there a curve/pattern of citing over time?

Is there a curve in the number of links to other blogs over the lifespan of a blog? For instance, do people cite more at the beginning, or at the end, etc.

Do citing somebody make you cited by them afterwards?

Does citing a blog post make it more likely that you will be cited back later? Does citing create connection and reciprocity? For example, breaking the fourth wall: I am currently citing elmcat and his project, but I do not know whether I will be mentioned in return.

Prospects

To answer all these questions, one must not only collect and structure the data, but also have statistical analysis methods that I do not yet master. Perhaps elmcat will provide part of these answers.

In the meantime, the first observation suggested by the citation graph of the blogs is the existence of several groups, currents, or trends within the OSR (the Old School Renaissance play style relied heavily on blogs to share gaming experiences and innovations). Although many bloggers identify with this movement, the graph seems to reveal a great diversity of sub-communities rather than a single homogeneous whole.