The Trip Report Forum Hall of Fame
 

Dear readers....

There are so many prolific and well loved trip report writers on this forum and I think that it's about time that we celebrate them!

http://matt.enzy.org/TR/Podium.PNG
The winners podium

I took the top 75 threads posted on the Trip Report forum since 2001 based on views and collated some basic information. With a little bit of work here is my analysis.
This information can help answer the following questions:

• What is the most read report of all time?
• What is the most popular report of all time?
• Which report generated the most posts?
• Which report generated the most views in the shortest period of time?
• Who is the most prolific report writer?
• Who generates the most views per post?

Most Read Reports

This is based on pure views. The top report is currently sitting on over 200,000, rather impressive!

Congratulations to :-: Short hair Francis :-: for having authored the most read report on Flyertalk.
Congratulations to :-: SFO777 :-: for having authored no less than 5 reports in the top 10.

1 - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...-j-others.html – 205,000 views, posted by Short hair Francis in October 2013
2 – http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...-35-000ft.html – 188,000 views, posted by 1993gt40 in November 2004
3 – http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...-bkk-sq-f.html – 172,000 views – posted by macabus in April 2010
4 – http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...80-suites.html – 196,000 views, posted by SFO777 in February 2013
5 - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...rst-class.html - 169,000 views, posted by SFO777 in November 2013
6 - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...d-bangkok.html - 167,000 views, posted by matthandy in Jun 2011
7 - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...st-suites.html - 163,000 views, posted by SFO777 in February 2012
8 – http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...380-first.html - 144,000 views, posted by SFO777 in February 2012
9 - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...th-africa.html -130,000 views, posted by SFO777 in October 2013
10 - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...onghaul-y.html - 126,000 views, posted by Kiwi Flyer in September 2010


Most Prolific Writers

Again, based on views of each report from the top 75 here are the most viewed authors on this forum.

http://matt.enzy.org/TR/Total Views.PNG
Top 10 authors based on total views


1 – SFO777 1,854,000 views from the top 75
2 – Kiwi Flyer 920,000 views from the top 75
3 – matthandy 527,000 views from the top 75
4 – Short hair Francis 368,000 views from the top 75
5 – Seat 2A 305,000 views from the top 75

And the total number of reports posted (from the top 75):

1 – SFO777 20 reports in the top 75 = 27%
2 – Kiwi Flyer 13 reports in the top 75 = 17%
3 – matthandy 6 reports in the top 75 = 8%
4 – Seat 2A 4 reports in the top 75 = 5%
5= – Short hair Francis 3 reports in the top 75 = 4%
5= – Genius1 3 reports in the top 75 = 4%
5= – Moomba 3 reports in the top 75 = 4%
5= – eightblack 3 reports in the top 75 = 4%

Congratulations to :-: SFO777 :-: for generating almost 2 million views of his reports, quite staggering!


Most Popular Reports

So that's the basic stuff out of the way but what if we start to look a little deeper. Sure, a report may have tens of thousands of views but if it was posted 10 years ago then is that surprising? So I decided to look the date on which the report was started, the number of days from today and the total number of views. This then provides a list of the 'hottest' reports on this forum:

1 - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...nge-crawl.html – 52,000 views generated in 57 days (900 a day), posted by iluvdoco in January 2015
2 - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...-j-others.html – 205,000 views generated in 508 days (400 a day), posted by Short hair Francis in October 2013
3 - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...rst-class.html – 169,000 views generated in 480 days (355 a day), posted by SFO777 in November 2013
4 - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...y-pacific.html – 76,000 views generated in 229 days (335 a day), posted by SFO777 in August 2014
5 - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...countries.html – 49,000 views generated in 157 days (315 a day), posted by ironmanjt in October 2014

Congratulations to :-: iluvdoco :-: for posting the 'hottest' report on the trip reports forum by a long way!


Most/Least Commented On Authors

Most trip report authors will say that it's the comments that keep them going. So, let's look at the authors that have the highest number of posts in relation to views, arguably, the most talked about.

http://matt.enzy.org/TR/Views Posts Ratio.PNG
Top 10 lowest views/post ratio – lower is better

1 – billinghamn average of 109 views per post
2 – corporate-wage-slave average of 141 views per post
3 – ironmanjt average of 169 views per post
4 – deepbluesky average of 172 views per post
5 – iluvdoco average of 206 views per post

Congratulations to :-: billinghamn :-: for posting the most 'talked about' trip report on the forum.


Looking at the reverse, here are the authors that generate a lot of views but proportionally not so many comments.


http://matt.enzy.org/TR/Views Posts Ratio High.PNG
Top 10 highest views/post ratio


Congratulations

Congratulations to everyone featured here and to all users out there that take the time to write a trip report!

I hope that you found this post interesting.

matthandy
Co-moderator: Trip Reports

Wow, lots of statistic! I´m not surprised to read the names - we have really some great stuff at FT....

Very cool. Thanks for compiling. Enjoy reading the reports of all those mentioned.

One name missing; DanielW. His reports are legendary in photos, commentary and adventure.

His are not always of the most luxurious travel and perhaps the reason he doesn't get the credit he is due.

I agree with you. These metrics are based purely on stats though. They say nothing of the 'quality' of the reports. DanielW definitely deserves more credit!

+1

I'm just glad all these people, mentioned above or not, take the time to post these reports. They get me dreaming, aspiring, and/or taking notes on what to avoid.

A lot of the posters listed do multi-part reports which naturally attract more views than DanielW's (and a few others') reports which are basically posted almost all at once (so you only click the thread once or a few times to read it).

Thank you for taking the time to put this together matthandy, very nice information.

I agree with those above, let's give DanielW (un)official honorable mention for some of the best photography and unique locations we get to enjoy.

Thankfully I'm not the only one who thinks DanielW should be given some sort of special recognition.

I'm reading a new TR from DanielW right now! His stuff has continually inspired a lot of my own travel lately.

Everyone up on the list definitely deserves their credit too!

I know EightBlack didn't make the top anything but he surely deserves some kind of honorable mention for his hilarious and entertaining TRs (though he hasn't posted one in a while).

All those mentioned are worthy of their HOF stature.

These statistics are very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

I hope to make it to the leaderboard someday. For now, I'm still humbled that my first and only trip report has garnered over 28,000 views so far(*). That's a good incentive to try and do even better in the future. I've got another big trip coming up in three weeks and I'm looking forward to sharing it with the community.

Thanks again for the fun stats. And very hearty thanks for those prolific posters who have given so much to the FlyerTalk community!

*) http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...ts-photos.html

The sheer amount of trip reports actually makes me NOT want to write one myself. The reason be: "someone else must already have written a much better report on the exact trip I am about to take, so why should I write one?".

^
He should get the award for ruining the most number of computer screens as his readers spew coffee etc all over their computer while laughing at his TR.

Such an interesting compilation. Thanks for your hard work making all the tasty pie charts, matthandy!

I am honored to be included in this HoF.:)