Looking through this list of ppl...
thefourthvine is a really good rec lj, I totally check her out all the time. After her I recognize a lot of authors of different slash fic that I've read. um...
maygra has a good "the fast and the furious" series, seperis has amazing smallville and stargate atlantis stuff, rageprufrock does a few fandoms, she's really fun to read, lapetite_kiki has good manipulated art, i love like all cesperanza's stuff...lets see... toomuchplor has some smallville stuff i've read... i recognize a few more names but I don't remember what fandoms they're in. Hope this was helpful!

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No, it's not helpful! ::scowls:: Sorry, didn't mean to take it out on you, but I'm frustratedly trying to figure out how this works. That they are fun journals or interesting people or whatever doesn't matter, or shouldn't. Supposedly they are manufacturing this list using only flists - seeing who is "close" to a friend by looking at my flist and my friends' flists. So why would people be in the high numbers who aren't FOAFs a few times?

If you want to be helpful, try it for yourself and report back - are the people repeat FOAFs, and if not, what seems to be the pattern.

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Ahhhh, I see what your talking about. I guess I assumed that that the program looked at your interests and got people that matched your interests that weren't your friends, which is why so many of them were involved in fanfiction. I did it myself and I got a lot of people I recognized as authors. Umm... yeah, so thats my guess ::shrugs::

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thefourthvine is a good person to friend, because she is a really good writer and her recs are a lot of fun to read even if you don't read any of the actual stories. Also, she writes funny polls.

I will try this for myself and see what I come up with.

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Okay, from reading through the livejournal post that explains it, it looks like it has nothing to do with interests. It has to do with your friends' friendslists, and their friendslists, and so on. It's an algorithm that weights how many friends each friend has (so if you have 250 friends, your friends count "less" than if you had only 10), etc. etc. It's a bit complicated, but it's meant to bring up people with whom you might have something in common but don't know personally.

The thing is, the top two or three names might be your enemies list, because these would be people you've probably come across many times but have decided not to friend.

It's pretty interesting.

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I know that's what it said, but how then do I get someone way up there who has no friends in common with me? That's what I don't get. My second person on the list has no friends in common with me. And when I put her into the engine, I don't show up on her list anywhere! And only one of my friends shows up on her trustflow results. So we clearly aren't in similar friend circles, which is what should trigger this. The only thing I really have in common with her is interests. She's an X-Men fan, too.

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Here's what I was thinking:

mofic--->friend--->friend---->friend who shows up on Trustflow

So it's not necessarily someone on your friends' friendslists; it could be one more friendslist removed.

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oh, and I meant to say, this would account for your having interests in common.

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WEll, yeah. Except I don't even recognize any of her friends and she's up at the top of my Trustflow, over people who are friended by several of my friends. It doesn't make sense to me. I do get that it could be FOAFOAF instead of FOAF and they could add up. But lj is kind of inbread and if someone is a FOAFOAF a few times over I think I'd see their name crop up from time to time, or at least some of their friends' names, yk? But you've given me another activity to engage my obsession in - I can look at all of dutchxfan's friends' user info pages and see if any of their friends look familiar.

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But lj is kind of inbread

LOL! Of course I meant "inbred". Damn that voice input software! (I must be hungry).

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Heh. (Do you really use voice input software?)

But you've given me another activity to engage my obsession in ...

Well, you can probably tell that in general I think obsessive behavior is good (I call it "passionate"--sounds better than "obsessive"). So go for it. Let me know what you find out.

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(Do you really use voice input software?)

I'm really prone to homophonic typos when I type fast. I do "right" for "write", "here" for "hear" etc. So my standard excuse is "Damn voice input software never gets that one right!"

You are welcome to borrow my excuse and my software, as they are equally non-existant.

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ahahahaha!

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Well, you can probably tell that in general I think obsessive behavior is good (I call it "passionate"--sounds better than "obsessive"). So go for it. Let me know what you find out.

I'm quite sure that the last time we had this argument discussion, I was the one arguing in favor of obsession (which I believe I called "focus") and you were arguing against.

Oh well, I did try it, but it didn't work. We had very few users in common even at the FOAFOAF level. Fewer than some other people had in common at the FOAF level, yet they are lower down on the TrustFlow list. I just have to conclude that I was meant to clasp dutchxfan to me and make her my friend. So I have. She probably doesn't even know I did it...

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I'm quite sure that the last time we had this argument discussion, I was the one arguing in favor of obsession (which I believe I called "focus") and you were arguing against.

Ha, true! But then I compiled my list of all the places where I'd seen Elvis Costello and... I guess it's just a matter of degrees.

Weird that the FOAFOAF thing didn't pan out. In that case, I have no idea how the algorithm works. But I do hope things work out for you and dutchxfan. :-)

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Dunno if you noticed, but there's an explanation of the algorithm [here].

I don't recognise anyone on yours except for a couple of good fic authors (cesperanza and shrift).

Mine was kind of interesting; my top three were: a guy I used to hang out with a lot back in my undergrad days but never really got to know, a girl who I have no idea who she is but she's been friended by two of my RL friends who, as far as I know, have no RL connection to each other at all, and my own alterego!

Going down the list I noticed quite a few other people who are RL friends-of-friends but who I don't have enough in common with to have friended their LJs.

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I looked at the explanation, thanks, but it doesn't seem to fit the results in my case. I did figure out the part about having fewer friends makes your friends count more, as described more fully in http://faramir-boromir.livejournal.com/124226.html. That explains how I got wordplay but not how I got dutchxfan with whom I have only common interests, no common friends.

I did you and noticed your alter ego. Of the other people I know who have two ljs, all but one had the other lj show up when you trustflow them.

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Makes sense. We'd be good friends for ourselves!

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Indeed! Another thing I noticed is that people with large flists seem not to have such "close" results from TrustFlow. So, someone with a small flist might get a few friends in the 50-150 range, but with very large flists they might not start until over 500. If you look you'll see that difference between this and your alter ego.

Here's my theory - people with large flists are a little more inbred or incestuous or something. Their friends' friends are often their friends - that's how their lists grew. So you have to go out farther to find people who have friend connection but aren't on your friends list. The exception is the "enemy" thing. I Trustflowed a few people I know with large flists and one name pops up at the top with a low number but all the rest are very high numbers. In that case the one name is either -

- someone I know the person I Trustflowed doesn't like; or
- someone I'm sure used to be on my Trustflowed person's flist (then I figure they must have had a falling out).

I think I'm gettting too obsessed with this! I said elsewhere that I'm a little worried that the folks on my Trustflow list will think I'm stalking them, since I friended people about whom I know nothing. Luckily Doran and I had a mom/son date last night (sushi and V for Vendetta) so I couldn't Trustflow all evening!

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I think I'm gettting too obsessed with this!

Maybe, just maybe. :)

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I think you're laughing at me, Alice.

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With you!

Or, er, laughing lovingly. With love. At you.

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Good save!

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I did it and I recognized a lot of the people at the top as friends of people on my flist, but I don't have a very big flist. :) Also, I recognize some of the people in your results from my flist; in fact, almost my whole flist is in your results. Out of the final 12 in your results, 9 are from my flist. LOL.

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Yeah, I see that. And your list is fairly small, which gives each one on it more weight. Plus, since you and I have only a couple of people in common, there was room to include more.

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