The population model
How 705 community records become a shared explanation, and where communities differ from it.
What the population is
The population is every community that organized for the event in writing: 705 subreddits, kept from the 777 credited with an artwork on the atlas or the canvas because their members wrote about the event while the canvas was open. Their 2,130,302 posts and comments run from the opening of the canvas to a day after it froze. Seventy-eight of them, like r/PlaceNL, have no record in the week before; most were founded for the event.
From codes to forms
Each step is built from the one before. The forms come last: they group the communities by the accepted changes each asked for at the return, weighted two thirds, and by their codes, one third.
The example, part by part
Each part has a page that opens with a short version, then the run's record in detail.
Of the 777 subreddits credited with an artwork on the atlas or the canvas, 705 stayed: their members wrote about the event while the canvas was open.
Short version Who counts as a community
Show this part in the instrument: 1 step
Each of the 705 communities was read by its own community coder, who saw no other community. Their codes and themes are what the aggregator reads.
Short version Layers of coding · When the codes fall
Show this part in the instrument: 6 steps
- 1. The briefing: a brief writer, a separate model conversation, summarizes each community's week before the event. Of the 705 briefs, 626 come from a brief writer, 78 are empty because those communities have no record in that week, and one, r/Dorset's, records no writer (the brief writer's contract).
- 2. Every thread: communities with more than 500 items divided their threads among fleet coders; the rest were coded by their community coder alone (the gate).
- 3. First-order codes: 115,388 first-order codes across the 705 communities. Layers of coding
- 4. Themes: 7,844 second-order themes. Layers of coding
- 5. The case account: each community coder wrote a case account of its community; the site shows one in full, r/PlaceNL's.
- After the coding: the local model (R6): by 29 October, 173 communities had finished their local model; the aggregator did not use them (the local model).
The aggregator read the coders' work, never the record, and composed it into layers of themes and one model of how organizing unfolds.
Short version Eight aggregate dimensions
In detail The coding structure: eight aggregate dimensions · The population model and its account
Show this part in the instrument: 3 steps
- Reading, A1: the aggregator wrote a note on each community before naming any common scheme; r/PlaceNL's note is one.
- Coding, B1 to B4: a scheme of 197 third-order themes, tested by independent readers and frozen. The coding structure · Building and testing the scheme
- Model, C1 to C5: 28 fourth-order themes, eight aggregate dimensions and the model with its account. Eight aggregate dimensions · The population model and its account
The model went back to every community coder, who said where it fails their community. The aggregator ruled on each change and revised the model.
Short version What the return changed · One case: repair and change · The r/place subreddit: three entries, tested by the communities · Two versions of the model
Show this part in the instrument: 1 step
5 Organizational forms, D4 to E2
Communities that asked for similar changes to the model form a group; each group is a candidate organizational form.
Short version The six forms
In detail Six organizational forms · Each form against the model · All communities by changes
Show this part in the instrument: 2 steps
- Forming, D4 to D6: six candidate forms, an account of each, and the model retold with the forms inside it. Six organizational forms · All communities by changes
- Formalizing, E1 and E2: the aggregator audited the run and reviewed how it was handled. The audit · The aggregator's review