I was just marking a student's paper and he used the phrase "tumbleweed effect". I was pretty sure he meant to write "snowball effect", but I googled the phrase just to make sure I wasn't just ignorant of some new turn of phrase.

It turns out my student likely was trying for "snowball effect", but there is some use of the phrase "tumbleweed effect" out there. The most interesting one I found indicates that, in a discussion forum like this one, a poster's Tumbleweed Effect is the percentage of his last 50 new threads that have gone without even a single reply.

Because this forum is still fairly new, most folks probably haven't tried to start 50 new threads, but you could still calculate your TE on the basis of, say, 10 or 20 threads started. If 1 out of your 10 threads has gone without a single reply post, you'd have a TE of 10%. If half of them, 50%, and so on. Before this one, I've started 6 threads on here so far, and one of them had no replies which gives me a TE of 16.7%. If nobody replies to this thread, my TE will spike up to 28.6%! (Although fewer than ten threads is arguably a pretty volatile sample.) Anyone else here brave enough to click the Posts icon at the bottom of the page and calculate up their Tumbleweed Effect? Anyone here with a jaw-dropping 0%? Anyone with over 50%?

I thought this was the "Tumbleweed Effect"...

Hmm, I wonder does it mean anything when the tumbleweed it blowing right to left vs. left to right? I'm so conditioned to think of left to right as forward, your tumbleweed strikes me as going in reverse. (Hopefully not a further comment on your love life!)

I was thinking of not replying, you sort of left that door wide open!?
\Then Chad replied and ruined all the fun!

I thought it was pretty funny, a great phrase I think.
Myself, before you explained it, I thought it had something to do with being "green" the less green you are, the more likely you create dead desert tumbleweeds because of your wasteful ways.
But like the non-reply saying, quite nice!

GMTom wrote:I was thinking of not replying, you sort of left that door wide open!?
\Then Chad replied and ruined all the fun!

Not for me. He pushed my TE down another 2.4 percent.

Have you tried to calculate yours, Tom? I imagine you've got a much better sample than I do.

not a clue, I seldom start threads
I had assumed that stupid shoe one would be such, damn, some things surprise!

Let's see... threads I've started have had:

• The Pax Obamacana: 2 replies - a close call
• On the Ground (and in the Air) in Libya: 6 pages
• Tribe and Tribalism: 2 pages
• Egypt: News, Perspective, Comments, Etc.: 9 pages
• Climate Change: 23 pages!
• What SHOULD be the gun policy of the USA - Forget the 2nd: 3 pages
• Whither Turkey? Whither Freedom? Whither Islamism?: tumbleweed!!!
• Guns and the Mentally Ill: 4 replies
• Al Jazeera: 4 replies
• Iran and Unserious Consequences: one reply (thank-you, Ricky!)
• How NOT to Convince Folks You're Not Racists: 2 pages
• 2012 Election What-If: 2 pages
• Idiocy and Anti-idiocy - An Analysis via Amazon.com: 12 replies

One out of thirteen = 7.7%

How about the obverse of the Tumbleweed Effect: a measure of overall "interestingness" of topics started (to borrow a concept from Flickr). Easy enough: average replies per thread begun. After all, starting ten threads that get an average of six pages of replies, but with two total duds, is a better record than starting ten that get an average of three replies but no duds. On the other hand, those duds really do stand out in a special way, indicating something akin to a tin ear.

But what we really need is a count of replies that are on-topic and informative or interesting. Out of the hundreds of replies to my initial posts, no more than a dozen or so are all three.

Ha, that's funny. Like Tom, I too did not reply to this topic right away, I wanted to see how long the Tumbleweed effect would last!

I guess I'm perfect. I started 2 topics and both were replied to, so no tumbleweeds for me! :)

Suppose you reply to your own tumbleweed? You could create a perpetual tumbleweed. The tumbleweed that wouldn't die. A tumbleweed zombie, if you will.

I like the word tumbleweed, btw.

So what you're suggesting is a thread that has replies and yet is ignored by everyone but the original poster. I think that would be called a Tumbleweed Loop, or perhaps even a Tumbleweed Paradox. "Loser" would still be the layperson's word for it, though.

Five threads started started since Redscape Resurrection. One Tumbleweed. 20%.

While I've got a high percentage, the sample size is small and don't remember this happening too often on old Redscape. Going back to old Redscape, I think I might have been in the running for the related Weed Killer Effect (WKE). The poster who posts last in a thread is the Weed Killer. If you were to go back and look, considering the number of posts I have, I have a lot of last posts.

Perhaps I was able to answer the deep underlying questions that were being debated? Or maybe I was so off topic, no one could get the train back on the rails.

geojanes wrote:Perhaps I was able to answer the deep underlying questions that were being debated? Or maybe I was so off topic, no one could get the train back on the rails.

I think we'd need to distinguish between your Weed Killing Effect and a Salt Sowing Effect. WKE would mean that your last post effectively removed a nuisance from the community. In contrast, SSE would suggest that your post destroyed a thriving culture of discussion such that no further growth was possible on that site.

Anonymous poster is the tumbleweed master. A quick look at the political forums show:

3 tumbleweeds
1 tumbleweed zombie (or loop)

Data provided by the Tumbleweed Authority.

If a dormant tumbleweed is 'kicked' by a new poster, is it still a tumbleweed? If so, how long must a tumbleweed be dormant?

[Edit] Not very kind of me to specify a fellow Redscaper here. Name removed.

RUFFHAUS 8 wrote:Forgive my potentially silly question, but is this Heck Tate character, Slappy?

I believe he meantioned in one of the political discussion threads that Heck Tate is Slappy