Reply 120 of 159, by vvbee
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wrote:Even if popularity was a useful metric, we have no data regarding what was actually sold, just some data regarding what was available. Mining Usenet for mentions is nothing more than a statistical wank session. It's not a representative sample of ownership, just a sample of Usenet users.
Even the data on what was potentially available wasn't much to go by. I was always interested in what people chose to buy though since success in the market tends to accumulate on few things. Forums are one way to find trends in adoption since people love to talk about what they have or consider to have. The dedicated thread on vogons for saying you bought a set of things takes up 1170 or so pages, and you see the same effect on other forums. Associations farmed from these discussions will encode an element of 'what goes together'. There's noise in the data of course, and it depends on your level of enthusiasm how much effort you want to put into reducing it. In the end, as with any approach, you'll note the weaknesses and expect to better on them at some point.