Fur Affinity Ranking

What is Fur Affinity Rank?

This page is a "ranking" of Fur Affinity users by relative popularity calculated solely by analyzing the social network of the website.

It is based on the premise that the more watchers you have, the more popular you are. However, not all watches count the same; the 'value' of a watch depends on the popularity of the person doing the watching, as well as how many others they are watching.

Disclaimer

The numbers displayed on this website are the result of empirical analysis of the social structure of FA. Nothing has been skewed or altered to favor any individual. Still, this site is for entertainment purposes only. If this site still upsets you, just remember that you have the power to change these numbers by changing who you watch on FA.

Also, please be aware that this is only a "snapshot" of the site, and will not be constantly updating. Your watch counts may not be up-to-date; this page can only be updated once every user has been viewed again. There is currently no set schedule when the next update will occur, but keep an eye on the bottom of the main page, as that will tell you when the last update was. Updates occur roughly every 2-3 weeks.

Why can't my username be found?

There are multiple reasons your username could not be found.
Did you spell your name right? If your username contains an _underscore_, it is not required. If your name contains a -hypen-, it IS required. If you're still confused, just go to your user page on FA and look in the URL.
The other reason you may not be listed here is that you either:

• Have no watchers (in which case you should probably go try to make at least one friend), or
• are disconnected from the 'main' cluster of users (e.g. you and your friend watch each other and nobody else.)

What do all the columns mean?

• Rank:
  This is your position among all of the users on FA. Obviously, a smaller number is better. Note: If there is a "T" next to this number, it means that your score is tied with one or more other users. Click this number to see how that user's rank has changed over time.
  
• Percentage:
  The percentage located next to your rank is your percentile. This is the propotion of the userbase that you are currently beating. For example, if this says 70%, that means you are ranked higher than 70% of all other users, but lower than the other 30%.
  
• Change: (NEW!)
  You will see one of four icons, and possibly a number, next to each percentage. They are:
  
  • Green arrow: This user has moved up this many positions since last time.
    
  • Red arrow: This user has moved down this many positions since last time.
    
  • Equals sign: No change in position.
    
  • Blue arrow: This user did not exist previously.
  
  
• User:
  The user in question, and a link directly to their user page.
  
• Rating:
  This number ranges from zero to one million, and is a relative measure of a user's popularity. This means that you cannot say you are 'twice as popular' if your Rating is twice as high as somebody else's, only that you are 'more popular than' said person. As of March 2010, this number is still calculated behind the scenes for ordering purposes, but is no longer displayed to visitors.
• Fans/Fan Of (Formerly Watchers/Watching)
  As you would expect, these are the number of people that have added you to their watch list, and people you have added to your watch list, respectively.
  

How is my Rating score determined?

The score you see listed is derived from an algorithm based on Google's PageRank. It was developed to determine the probability of a web surfer visiting your page by following links randomly. In this case, it considers a surfer following watch links. If you would like to learn more about the PageRank algorithm, click on the link above.

A brief explanation of the algorithm is as follows:
Consider a scenario where each user has a dollar and a set of friends. Every day, each user will divide up their money and give equal portions to their friends. In turn, each user will receive money from other people who consider them friends. At the end of the day, the users may end up with more or less money than they started with, but the next day, this process begins again. This continues until at some point, each user ends the day with exactly as much money as they started with.

You can see from this example that being a friend of a "rich" person will boost you more than a "poor" friend, but as they increase the number of friends they have, each friend receives less.

Why not just rank by watcher count?

For the most part, this is what is happening on the ranking. Occasionally, you will see that user "X" has more watchers than user "Y" but is still ranked below them. This is because 1) Not all users watching others have equal value, and 2) Not all watches count for the same value.

As explained above, being watched by a popular person counts for much more than somebody who is less popular. On the same note, the more friends a user is watching, the less each watch is worth.

Who are the "Up & Coming" users?

Since this data was last calculated, users may have gained or lost watchers. This particular display finds users who have improved their rating the most since last time. The ranking does not sort by change in rating because it is easy for a user with few watchers to move thousands of positions just by gaining a few more. Furthermore, it does not sort by change in raw rating score, because higher-ranked users will easily outperform middle- and lower-ranked users. This list is geared toward promoting the lesser-known artists that may be overshadowed by the "big names".

The exact formula for determining the Up & Coming users is as follows:
LOG ( new rating ) / LOG ( old rating + 2500 )
Note: Users that were not ranked previously are considered to have an old rating of zero.

How can I improve my ranking?

Go out there and get watched by more people! Note that I did not say "go watch other people". Adding people to your watch list will only affect them (for better or worse). In order for your score, people need to be watching you!

About the Author

This page was written by Taren, who has a penchant for analyzing and organizing the most obscure things...