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text:
Scattering Service
At-Need
Kathleen Joyce Choptain
Obituary of Kathleen Joyce Choptain
While admiring a beautiful clear blue prairie sky and surrounded with love, our dear mother, Kathy Choptain (nee Huffman), passed peacefully in her home on November 24, 2022. She is survived by her loving daughters Cheryl (Adrian), Chris, and Tracy; her grandson Ryan; and numerous other extended family members and friends. She was predeceased by her parents, Olive and Ken Huffman; her husband Jack; and her brother Wayne Huffman. Kathleen Joyce Huffman was born October 25, 1937, in Flin Flon, Manitoba, to Olive and Ken Huffman. Thus began her 85-year adventure. Even at a young age, she was strong-minded and strong-willed. She stopped attending school at age 12, and when her father found out, he took her right back to the school, where she promptly walked right out the back door again. Given an ultimatum by her father to get back to school or get a job, she marched out of the house and started working at Freidman's Confectionary in Flin Flon. A family friend and her father eventually convinced her to attend what is now known as the Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in Wilcox, Saskatchewan. Pere Murray and Sister Mary Edith had no idea what they were in for! Kathy always said you were never a true "Hound" until you were kicked out of Notre Dame at least once. Kathy certainly fulfilled that rite of passage. She was kicked out of Notre Dame College several times over the years for partying, smoking or some other "great" adventure, always returning to a school she said was a turning point in her life and that gifted her many lifelong friends. One of Kathy's adventures during one of her "sabbaticals" from Notre Dame included joining the Canadian Air Force. She spent time in Quebec and Ontario training for radar control. Kathy was a proud Notre Dame "Hound". She sponsored/billeted many Notre Dame hockey players when they came to Winnipeg for hockey tournaments and always loudly cheered from the stands and let the referees know exactly what she thought of their calls. She also devoted time and energy to raising funds to help create a scholarship in Father David Bauer's name. Life eventually took Kathy to Brandon and then Thompson, where she met her future husband, Jack. Now back in Winnipeg, Kathy and Jack married in 1962 and welcomed their first daughter, Cheryl. They moved back to Thompson in time for the birth of their daughter Christine. The family eventually moved back to Winnipeg, settling in Transcona, where they made many lifelong friends and memories, and where Tracy came along and joined the family. "Chatty Kathy" really enjoyed people. She always loved a good party and never turned down an invite for a game of cards or a board game. She could be heard laughing and talking across the room and was often engaged in some shenanigans (often alongside her sidekick and good friend June). Mom and Dad's home was always open to friends, family, and neighbours. Over the years, they hosted many family gatherings, pool parties and BBQs. And Kathy really loved her wine! Red only, please. Kathy was a proud Flin Flonner, A town built atop an impenetrable rock outcrop and named after a fictional explorer from a paperback novel. Flin Flon was a source of pride for Kathy and pivotal to her character, and the mining town forged some amazing lifelong friendships. She was part of the original group to organize the monthly Flin Flon lunches in Winnipeg, which brings together young and old ex-pat Flin Flonners. She and her brother Wayne enjoyed reconnecting with many Flin Flonners at the large homecoming reunion in 2000. Kathy loved to travel. She and Jack went to Jamaica many times over the years. After Jack died in 1989, Kathy continued to travel with her close friends June, Sandi and Ruth, including vacations across Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Hawaii, and several Caribbean cruises. Kathy held numerous and diverse jobs over the years, including retail, hospitality/bar server, funeral home worker, real estate broker, house sitter, pet sitter, and resident caregiver. She was most proud of her 20+ year career at Concordia Hospital, working as a ward clerk and then an emergency ward clerk. She was a proud and longstanding union member and was elected President of her local union, CUPE 1973, for many years. Kathy was awarded the Jack Rodie Award for CUPE Member of the Year in 1996, recognizing her important work and celebrating her positive impact within CUPE in Manitoba. After Kathy retired from Concordia Hospital, she moved to Toronto for 3½ years to become the resident caregiver for a family friend, Isabelle. She loved Isabelle like family and was sad when she eventually had to return to Winnipeg. Kathy never wanted to sit idly, and she continued to work, helping people as she loved to do, until she was 74, when some health issues required her to slow down a bit! Kathy loved to garden. She had a large backyard vegetable garden in Transcona, and when she eventually moved into an apartment, she often tended to Cheryl's and Chris's gardens and flowers. In 2001, she joined the Millenium Community Gardens in North Kildonan. There she volunteered, met many wonderful friends, and participated in many fundraising activities, BBQs and potlucks over the years. She always had a big hello and smile for everyone there and was always quick to offer her help or advice (even when not asked!!). We were fortunate to be at the gardens often to witness "Chatty Kathy" at her best! Kathy quietly gave her time and energy to philanthropic work. She helped to create a green space in the inner city, volunteered at Winnipeg Harvest, volunteered as a participant to help develop pilot projects impacting senior health, and signed up as a subject for longitudinal studies related to senior health. She also volunteered at Westview School in Transcona, which allowed her more time with her grandson Ryan. Simple acts of kindness were constant, ensuring vulnerable persons had toques, mittens, and socks to keep them warm during the harsh prairie winters. Kathy always reminded us that regardless of our personal hardships, there was always someone worse off who needed our help. One of her greatest gifts to Manitobans was the final act of donating her body to the University of Manitoba to help educate future medical professionals. This past year, Kathy's health began to fail as she battled lung cancer. She had decided (long ago and before her diagnosis) that she would be using M.A.I.D. (medical assistance in dying) to leave her adventures behind. She lived as she died, determined and in control. As a result, her passing was very peaceful, with all her family by her side with a glass of red wine in our hands, celebrating her life. Kathy wanted her family and friends to know that they brought love, laughter, meaning, and joy (along with a bit of sarcasm!) to all of her life's adventures and the times they spent together. Special thanks to lifetime friends (here and not here) who provided great support and comfort over the years. The family would like to thank everyone for their well wishes and love during this time. They would also like to send their heartfelt thanks to the Palliative Care Team and the Medical Assistance in Dying Team for making her final days as comfortable as possible and her dying dignified. We would especially like to thank all of Kathy's Home Care support workers who provided her with care and kindness over the last few years. No formal service will be held at this time. When spring blooms again, we will celebrate Kathy's life. Family and friends are invited to leave condolences and share memories on Kathy's memorial page at www.alternacremation.ca. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Kathy's memory as per her request to Manitoba Harvest or The Salvation Army. We love you mommy.
2495C Henderson Hwy
East St. Paul
MB R2E 0C2
(Just a few seconds North of the Perimeter on Henderson Hwy)
We understand that there are many questions that arise when a death occurs. We are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to answer questions you may have and provide direction. Please call us if you require immediate assistance.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, MS 6036, P.O. Box 2008, 37831-6036, Oak Ridge, TN, U.S.A.
Sunfish (Lepomis auritus and L. macrochirus) were used to monitor polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contamination in a group of small streams flowing into a larger stream/reservoir system. Mean PCB concentrations in sunfish appeared to reflect exposure conditions at the site of capture. Fish from uncontaminated sites 1 to 2 km distant from PCB-contaminated sites did not exhibit PCB contamination, and PCB concentrations in fish downstream from a discrete source decreased at a rate greater than or equal to downstream dilution of the point source. Mean PCB concentrations in fish near the source exhibited relatively large (-40%) fluctuations between semi-annual sampling periods, suggesting that PCB concentrations in sunfish populations may respond rapidly to changes in exposure. Sunfish were not sensitive enough indicators of contamination to use in assessing whether or not problematic levels of contamination may occur in other species. Although the presence of PCB contamination in sunfish can be used to infer that PCBs are elevated in other species, the absence of PCB contamination in sunfish cannot be used to infer that older, fattier fish higher up the food chain are uncontaminated.


text:
\section{Introduction}

Social networks are in constant flux, with new communities forming and
old communities dying over time.  On websites such as Facebook and
Reddit, users have complete freedom to create communities at their own
discretion.  This has led to a very large number of communities
arising organically from user initiative,
for a variety of reasons.
One reason is to create
divisions that
satisfy
the need to better organize discussions;
in fact, community design theory argues that ``a growing Web community needs subdivisions which might be represented as towns, neighborhoods, topics, categories, conferences, or channels, depending on your metaphor'' \cite{Kim:2000:CBW:518514,Jones:ElectronicMarkets:2010}.
Or, new groups can develop because of religious, political, or other
schisms;
online examples include groups whose very names attempt to connote
superiority to others, e.g., the
subreddits \communitypair{trueatheism}{atheism}.
Other reasons surely exist.
The tremendous reach of modern social
media
provides researchers much greater
data to examine these social processes at scale.

\begin{table}[t]
\centering
\caption{The 10 most common  Reddit group-name affixes\xspace.}
\label{tb:modifications}
\begin{tabular}{llr} \toprule
{\expandafter\makefirstuc\expandafter{\modification}}\xspace & Example & \# Pairs \\ \midrule
\modifier{s} & \communityname{auto}, \communityname{autos} & 63 \\
\modifier{porn} & \communityname{space}, \communityname{spaceporn} & 26  \\
\modifier{circlejerk} & \communityname{hiphop}, \communityname{hiphopcirclejerk} & 23 \\
\modifier{ask} & \communityname{science}, \communityname{askscience} & 21 \\
\modifier{shitty} & \communityname{ideas}, \communityname{shittyideas} & 17 \\
\modifier{music} & \communityname{running}, \communityname{runningmusic} & 17 \\
\modifier{help} & \communityname{tech}, \communityname{techhelp} & 11\\
\modifier{2} & \communityname{dota}, \communityname{dota2} & 9\\
\modifier{true} & \communityname{atheism}, \communityname{trueatheism} & 9 \\
\modifier{learn} & \communityname{math}, \communityname{learnmath} & 9\\

\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

An interesting
and frequently occurring version of the
group creation process
 is that a new concept or
culture may gain in popularity and,
in a meme-like fashion,
 draw users
to create a new community by using that concept as \emph
{an affix\xspace}\footnote{
An affix is either a prefix or a suffix.} of
their community name.
For example, on Facebook, after the creation of the \communityname{OMG
Confessions} group,
anonymous confession pages with names combining a college with the
word \modifier{confession} or \modifier{confessional}
proliferated to the degree
that one can
now find a confession
page for almost every university campus.
(\citeauthor{Birnholtz:2015:WSV:2702123.2702410} \shortcite
{Birnholtz:2015:WSV:2702123.2702410}
examine what kind of questions people
ask
on such pages.)
\tableref{tb:modifications} shows some examples from Reddit: the second
column shows pairs of subcommunities where the name of one is a modified
form of the other (ignore the third column for now).\footnote{
An additional, whimsical example
from Reddit is \modifier{random\_acts\_of\_}, indicating people asking for or sending free things
to others.
Instantiations include \communityname{random\_acts\_of\_pizza}, \communityname{random\_acts\_of\_amazon}, and \communityname{random\_acts\_of\_books}.
\citeauthor{althoff+al:14a} \shortcite{althoff+al:14a} used
\communityname
{random\_acts\_of\_pizza} to study
effective ways to ask for a
favor.
}

In this work, we investigate  highly related communities\xspace that are based on affixes\xspace.
An understanding of these highly related communities\xspace may help community organizers
identify subtopics in a community
and create an appropriate subdivision to cultivate focused discussions,
or monitor subgroups that potentially feel marginalized or underserved, and
decide whether to change community norms or create a dedicated community for that subgroup.

Despite the ubiquity
of such affixes\xspace,
and their appeal as easily-identifiable
(albeit sometimes imperfect)
instances of the important phenomenon of highly related communities\xspace,
little is known about canonical affixes\xspace and the activity in the resultant highly related communities\xspace.
For instance, are neighborhoods, topics, and channels enough to capture all
possible affixes\xspace? Are there classes of affixes\xspace that are
generally applicable?
Perhaps different affixes\xspace behave in different ways.
Moreover, once a highly related community\xspace is created, how does it interact with the existing
community? Will it overtake it? Will the two share the same
user base?
One of our goals is to analyze user behavior in the existing community
\emph{after they participate in the new community.}

\para{Organization and contributions.}
In this paper, we construct a dataset from Reddit and present the first large-scale study on the coexistence of highly related communities\xspace.
Details about the dataset are introduced in ``Dataset Description''.

Our first contribution is to characterize the space of {\em affixes\xspace}.
We build a taxonomy of common affixes\xspace that users adopt to create highly related communities\xspace.
For instance, we identify a category of \categoryname{parody}
affixes\xspace (\modifier{circlejerk}, \modifier{shitty},
\modifier{funny}, \modifier{lol}, \modifier{bad}). This category
generally shares the same
user base with its corresponding {un{\modified}}\xspace
community. On the other hand, we identify a category of
\categoryname{derivative} affixes\xspace (\modifier{meta}, \modifier{anti},
\modifier{srs}, \modifier{post}, \modifier{ex}) that likely attract
different user bases.  Surprisingly, a non-trivial fraction of
{\modification}ed\xspace communities exist before the {un{\modified}}\xspace ones.  Also, an
interesting class of {\em \spinoff} communities arises where
{early participant\xspace}s in the new community
come from the existing community.

Our second contribution is to introduce a framework for analyzing
users who try out \spinoff communities (dubbed ``{explorer\xspace}s'') and
comparing them to ``{nonexplorer\xspace}s'' who never leave the original
subreddit.
We make the surprising observation that in multiple classes of
affixes\xspace, users who explore \spinoff communities are \emph{more
  active in the original communities after exploring\xspace}
when compared to similarly active users who never tried the
alternative.  This resonates with the findings in
\citeauthor{tan2015all} \shortcite{tan2015all} that users who
``wander'' to different (potentially completely unrelated) groups tend
to stay active longer on the site as a whole. Our observations
may
suggest that \spinoff communities generally serve a complementary
rather than competitive role in multi-community settings.

Finally, we summarize related work and offer some concluding
thoughts.

\section{Dataset Description}

Our starting point for understanding highly related communities\xspace, affixes\xspace,
{\spinoff}s, {nonexplorer\xspace}s, and {explorer\xspace}s is an examination of
\emph{topically related communities}.
As such,
we
compile
a dataset from \texttt{reddit.com}, a site
where users are
allowed
to create communities called subreddits at
their discretion. Users can name the subreddits that they create so
that
like-minded people can identify
them effectively.
As a result of unmoderated
creation and limitless naming possibilities, there are a wide variety
of subreddits on Reddit, e.g., \communityname{funny}, \communityname{worldnews}, \communityname{politics}, \communityname{IAmA},
\communityname{todayilearned}, etc. On these subreddits, users submit
link-based {post\xspace}s or text-based {post\xspace}s, comment on
others' {post\xspace}s, and up/down vote {post\xspace}s and comments.
We construct a dataset that includes all
 activities on Reddit from its inception until 2014,
an 8-year period, by combining two data sources:
a post\xspace dataset that was
organized
in
\namecite{tan2015all}, and
all comments data
extracted by Jason Baumgartner.\footnote{Information is available at \url{https://pushshift.io}.
The dataset in \namecite{tan2015all} was also originally extracted by Jason Baumgartner.
}
We focus on communities that are active
and that enjoy a reasonable number of
users.
Specifically, we require all communities to include at least 300
unique users that made {post\xspace}s. This left
us with just under 5.7K
communities.
\tableref{table:dataset_stats} presents basic statistics of this
dataset.\footnote{The statistics reported here include posts and
  comments made by users who deleted their accounts and banned
  accounts.} The metadata for
the
   Reddit conversation trees that we used
here is available for
download.%
\footnote{\url{http://goo.gl/sHUfhC}}

\begin{table}[t]
\centering
\caption{Summary statistics for our Reddit corpus.
  {{\expandafter\makefirstuc\expandafter{\submission}}\xspace}s are from
  %
  \citeauthor{tan2015all} \shortcite{tan2015all} and include all {post\xspace}s on Reddit from its inception in 2006 to February, 2014.
  %
 %
  %
  %
  %
All comments on these posts up until November 2014 were drawn from Jason Baumgartner's comment dataset.
  %
  %
  %
  }
\begin{tabular}{p{2in}r} \toprule
Data type & count \\
\midrule
Subreddits & 5,692 \\
{{\expandafter\makefirstuc\expandafter{\submission}}\xspace}s & 88M\\
Comments & 887.5M\\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\label{table:dataset_stats}
\end{table}

As discussed in the introduction,
user-defined subreddit names are an important indicator of
relationships between highly related communities\xspace (e.g., \communitypair{food}{HealthyFood}).
We first retrieve
all possible pairs of communities where one community name is the
other's suffix or prefix, ignoring case (\communityname{food} is the suffix of
\communityname{HealthyFood}, ignoring case). We refer to the difference between the
names in a pair as the {\em affix\xspace}. For instance, \modifier{healthy} is the
affix\xspace in the pair \communityname{food} vs. \communityname{HealthyFood}.  There are around 4K
such pairs over our dataset.

Using common affixes as a starting point allows us to discuss the
the space of possible highly related communities\xspace. For example, this framing allows
us to make statistical observations about all
pairs with
\modifier{healthy} or
\modifier{true}
as affixes\xspace.
Note that %
we
omit some
interesting highly related communities\xspace pairs by focusing on {\modification}ed\xspace pairs.
One example is
\communityname{TwoXChromosomes}, a very popular ``subreddit ... intended
for women's perspectives,'' and \communityname{TrollXChromosomes},
its satirical counterpart.

\para{Identifying topically related communities.}  Unsurprisingly, not
all pairs of communities identified through affixes\xspace are
actually highly related communities\xspace. An example is ``ru'' and ``rum;'' the first one is a
Russian community while the second one is about the liquor.
In order to quantify subreddit similarity, we compute the content
similarity between pairs of communities. As suggested in
\namecite{Singer:Www14:2014},
subreddits can focus on text {post\xspace}s in addition to link-based
{post\xspace}s.
Therefore, we employ a method that can account
for either link-dominant or text-dominant subreddits. Specifically, we
use Jaccard similarity between the set of links to capture similarity
based on links,\footnote{Jaccard similarity is defined as $\frac{A
    \cap B}{A \cup B}$, where $A$ and $B$ are the set of links from
  two subreddits respectively.} and use Jensen-Shannon divergence
between topic distributions (derived from a topic model trained on
6.6M text {post\xspace}s) to capture similarity based on
text,
following \namecite{hessel2015vegans}.
Since these two metrics are not comparable by raw value,
we compute the full background distribution based on all
1.62M possible pairs of the 5.7K communities in our dataset
and compute the percentile of each affix\xspace pair in each
distribution.

We consider a pair of communities to be topically related if either
link similarity is above
the 90th percentile \emph{or} topical similarity based on text
is above the 90th percentile.  Accounting for our definition of topical
similarity yields just over 1.7K pairs from our original set of 4K.

The last step of our preprocessing is to identify generalizable
affixes\xspace that are commonly used in these highly related communities\xspace.  We count the
frequency of affixes\xspace and keep affixes\xspace that occur at
least three times, so that all affixes\xspace in the final dataset
carry a general
meaning (it is not possible to make general statements about
affixes\xspace that only occur once).  This step brings us to 99
affixes\xspace and 572 pairs of highly related communities
distributed between them.

\begin{table}[t]
\centering
\caption{A taxonomy of affixes\xspace.}
\label{tb:taxonomy}
\begin{tabular}{p{0.8in}p{2.2in}}
\toprule
\multicolumn{2}{c}{Adjective-like}\\
\midrule
``better'' & true, plus\\
``parody'' & circlejerk, shitty, funny, lol, bad\\
``derivative'' & post, ex, meta, anti, srs \\
``genre'' & classic, fantasy, indie, folk, casual, dirty, classic, metal, academic, 90s, free, social\\
``nsfw'' & nsfw\_, nsfw, asian, trees, gonewild, gw, r4r, tree\\
\midrule
\multicolumn{2}{c}{Verb-like}\\
\midrule
``learning, improvement'' & ask, help, learn, advice, hacks, stop\\
``action'' & exchange, randomactsof, trade, trades, classifieds, market, swap, random\_acts\_of\_, requests, invites, builds, making, mining, craft\\
\midrule
\multicolumn{2}{c}{Noun-like}\\
\midrule
``place'' & uk, reddit, chicago, us, dc, steam, canada, american, boston, android, online, web\\
``medium'' & porn, pics, music, memes, videos, vids, comics, apps, games, gaming, game\\
``subject'' & science, news, dev, servers, tech,  tv, guns, recipes, city, u, college, man, girls\\
\midrule
\multicolumn{2}{c}{Minor}\\
\midrule
``equivalent, competition'' & s, al, ing, the, alternative\\
``generation'' & 2, 3, 4, 5 \\
``modifier'' & ism, n, an\\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

\section{Characterizing affixes\xspace}

The goal of this section is to explore the types of canonical
affixes\xspace users on Reddit utilize. To accomplish this
exploration, we first build a taxonomy of common affixes\xspace to
better understand their basic properties and relationships.
Next, we explore the temporal characteristics of the
pairs.
In general, we observe
an accelerating culture of creating highly related communities\xspace, meaning that highly related communities\xspace are being
created at increasing rates.
We also observe that, in most cases, the {\modification}ed\xspace community in a pair
was created after the {un{\modified}}\xspace one, even though there is a
non-trivial fraction that went the other way, e.g.,
\communityname{ukpolitics} and \communityname{uspolitics} both existed
before \communityname{politics}.
We further explore whether the newer community ``overtakes'' the older one
in
popularity.  We then offer
potential rationales
that may help explain
the surprising finding
that a \emph{quarter of the newer communities are more active.}  The
final characteristic that we examine is whether the newer community
actually shares a user base with the older one, at least when the new
one is forming.
Despite the high similarity both in
community name and in content, almost half of newer subreddits in
pairs are not, in fact, born out of their older partners.

\subsection{The space of affixes\xspace}

In order to achieve a basic understanding of what canonical affixes\xspace
users adopt to create new communities,
we first build a taxonomy of the 99
affixes\xspace from the dataset section
in \tableref{tb:taxonomy}.

We start with a coarse structure based on part-of-speech.
Among the adjective-like, the largest category is based on \categoryname{genre}, e.g., \communitypair{rock}{classicrock}.
Some other very interesting classes also arise:
\categoryname{better}, which indicates a certain level of superiority (e.g., \communitypair{atheism}{trueatheism});
communities dedicated to \categoryname{parody} where users are likely aware of the culture in the {un{\modified}}\xspace one (e.g., \communitypair{history}{badhistory});
and \categoryname{derivative}, which  probably attracts
a
 very different audience (e.g., \communitypair{war}{antiwar}).
In fact, \modifier{anti} and \modifier{meta} can be recursive, e.g.,
\communityname{jokes}, \communityname{antijokes} and \communityname{antiantijokes}.

Among the verb-like affixes\xspace, a class of self-improvement or learning
communities exists, e.g.,
\communitypair{programming}{learnprogramming}.
In \categoryname{actions}, there are many exchange related affixes\xspace, including \modifier{trades} (e.g., \communitypair{pokemon}{pokemontrades}) and \modifier{swap} (e.g., \communitypair{scotch}{scotchswap}).
Altruistic behavior signified by \modifier{random\_acts\_of\_} (e.g., \communitypair{pizza}{random\_acts\_of\_pizza}) has been studied specifically in
\namecite{althoff+al:14a}.

The noun-like affixes\xspace closely match the conceived metaphor of splitting space in community design theory \cite{Kim:2000:CBW:518514}.
Indeed, we see a group of affixes\xspace based on \categoryname{place}, such as \modifier{uk} (e.g., \communitypair{politics}{ukpolitics}).
\categoryname{Medium},
named for the
\emph{medium} of the content, e.g., \modifier{pics}, \modifier{vids}, etc.
 is another common
 category, including \modifier{videos} (e.g., \communitypair{cat}{catvideos}).
The last one is based on \categoryname{subject}, such as \modifier{recipes} (e.g., \communitypair{vegan}{veganrecipes}).
Noun-like affixes\xspace are probably used to encourage better discussions. These communities do not necessarily share similar users;
 e.g., people who are interested in \communityname{veganrecipes} may not be vegans; people who are invested in \communityname{ukpolitics} may not care about politics in general.

Surprisingly, there is a class of relatively minor changes that can
cause community pairs to differ significantly.  An example of
\categoryname{modifier} is \modifier{ism}, as in
\communitypair{vegetarian}{vegetarianism}, which
align in topic but likely attract
different
people.
Another interesting class is \categoryname{equivalent}.
One example is \communitypair{wallpaper}{wallpapers}:
these two subreddits have indistinguishable
(to the authors)
content and thousands of
members each, yet the moderator sets are disjoint, and
neither mentions the other in their respective extensive
and overlapping
lists of related
subreddits.
In cases like this, the newer community may be created
without knowing about the older one,
although in other cases there may be known prior interactions; for example,
\communityname{Politic} was created because some users do not
like the rules in \communityname{politics}.

Although some decisions in
our
taxonomy are arbitrary, we consider it
useful and meaningful to get an overall sense of possible
affixes\xspace. All affixes\xspace we consider seem to be
generalizable changes that one can make with some community name to
obtain another community name.

\begin{figure}[t]
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.23\textwidth}
        \addExploreFigure{\textwidth}{top_category_counter.pdf}
        \caption{\#Pairs by category.}
        \label{fig:modification_frequency}
    \end{subfigure}
    \hfill
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.23\textwidth}
        \addExploreFigure{\textwidth}{simi_suffix_fraction_dist.pdf}
        \caption{Histogram of fraction as suffixes for all affixes\xspace.}
        \label{fig:suffix_fraction_dist}
    \end{subfigure}
    \caption{
        (a)
        %
        Medium is the most frequent affix\xspace, while modifier is the least.
        (b) Two distinct types of affixes\xspace exist: suffix-dominant and prefix-dominant.
    \label{fig:modification_space}}
\end{figure}

\para{Frequency of affixes\xspace.}
Next, we examine the frequency of affixes\xspace.
\tableref{tb:modifications} presents the 10 most common
affixes\xspace and \figref{fig:modification_frequency} shows
the frequency by category.
The most common affix\xspace is simply the character
\modifier{s}, which suggests that it is perhaps common for
``redundant''
communities to be created.
The most common category is \categoryname{medium}
with 88 pairs,
while the least one is \categoryname{modifier} with 12 pairs.  There
is
some variation in frequency within each category.  For instance, one
interesting observation is that although \modifier{porn} and
\modifier{pics} both fall in \categoryname{medium} and indicate a
related
picture-driven community, \modifier{porn}
has more than 4
times more highly related communities\xspace (33 vs 7).

\para{Position of affixes\xspace
in community name.}
As shown in \figref{fig:suffix_fraction_dist},
most
but not all
affixes are either
suffix-dominant or prefix-dominant.
Overall, \categoryname{generation}, \categoryname{medium}, and \categoryname{modifier} tend to be used as suffixes, while
\categoryname{genre}, \categoryname{derivative}, and \categoryname{place} are usually used as prefixes.  \categoryname{parody} and \categoryname{nsfw} can be used either way, for example, \modifier{funny} in
\communitypair{videos}{funnyvideos} and \communitypair{Guildwars2}{guildwars2funny}.

\subsection{Temporal Relationships within Pairs}

\begin{figure}[t]
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.23\textwidth}
        \addExploreFigure{\textwidth}{simi_small_year_creation_speed.pdf}
        \caption{Average gap for pairs grouped by the creation year of the older community.}
        \label{fig:gap_year}
    \end{subfigure}
    \hfill
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.23\textwidth}
        \addExploreFigure{\textwidth}{simi_order_fraction_dist.pdf}
        \caption{Histogram of
        %
        %
        fraction where the {\modification}ed\xspace community was created later.}
        \label{fig:order_dist}
    \end{subfigure}
    \caption{
   (a) The newer related community is created with shorter and shorter gap. (b)
   For most affixes\xspace, the {\modification}ed\xspace community was created later, though there
   are many counterexamples.
    \label{fig:temporal}}
\end{figure}

It is always possible to determine which community in a pair was created earlier.
The first characteristic that we examine is the gap between the creation time of two communities in a pair.
The overall average gap is 749 days since 2008,
when users on Reddit were first allowed to create their own
communities.
If we compute the average gap grouped by the creation
year of the older community, in \figref{fig:gap_year} we see a
consistent trend that the newer community is created with a shorter
and shorter gap over time.
This suggests that there may be
an accelerating culture of
creating highly related communities\xspace
over time,
or that as there are more users
on Reddit, {\modification}ed\xspace communities
arise more quickly.

\para{For most affixes\xspace, the community with the affix\xspace
  was newer.} We further examine whether the newer community within a
pair is the {\modification}ed\xspace one.
This is indeed the case in 86\% of our pairs.
However, if we change our focus from pairs to affixes\xspace, we
find that for 33\% of the affixes\xspace, there was at least
one instance where the
{\modification}ed\xspace version was actually \emph{created before} the original (see
\figref{fig:order_dist}).

The four affixes\xspace for which the {\modification}ed\xspace version of the
community more often exists first
are \modifier{ing}, \modifier{al}, \modifier{ism} and \modifier{s}; these are mostly
in the \categoryname{equivalent/competition} class in
\tableref{tb:taxonomy}.
As a result, we observe phenomena like different communities
focusing on exactly the same thing (e.g.,
\communitypair{wallpaper}{wallpapers}) or two communities eventually
deciding to explicitly merge into one (e.g.,
\communitypair{wedding}{weddings}).
Communities with different foci
but similar names might also fall into this category,
such as \communitypair{vegetarian}{vegetarianism}.

These four affixes\xspace do not cover all possible
cases where the {\modification}ed\xspace was created earlier.  For instance,
\communityname{twincitiessocial} was created before
\communityname{twincities}.

\subsection{Does the New Overtake the Old?}

Another important characteristic is how active the newer community is
compared to the older one after its inception.

\para{Newer communities tend to be less active, but in a quarter of
  pairs, the newer one is more active.}  We compute the log ratio in
activity level (the total number of comments plus the total number of
{post\xspace}s)
between the newer community
and the older community with add-one smoothing,
only considering actions \emph{after the newer community was created}
so that we compare pairs during the same time period. According to
this metric, a positive value means more activity in the newer
community and a negative value means less activity in the newer
community.
\figref{fig:activity_dist} demonstrates there is a trend that {\modification}ed\xspace
versions of communities tend to be less
active. The mean log ratio is
-2.0, which suggests that new community is usually 13.5\% as
active as the older one. However, a nontrivial fraction of newer communities (25.7\%) are more active.

\para{A closer look at the more active newer communities.}
It's somewhat surprising that 25.7\% of newer communities overtake their
established counterparts. Why does this occur?
\figref{fig:activity_level} presents examples of possible reasons that
the younger community might surpass its older counterpart.

The first reason is that the affix\xspace
represents something that
naturally appeals to more people.  One example
is \communitypair{writers}{fantasywriters}.  As soon as
\communityname{fantasywriters} was created, its activity level was
more than 7 times as great as that in \communityname{writers}.  Here
are top 3 affixes\xspace that consistently lead to more activity: \modifier{the}
(e.g., \communitypair{stopgirl}{thestopgirl}), \modifier{ex} (e.g.,
\communitypair{mormon}{exmormon}), \modifier{steam} (e.g.,
\communitypair{deals}{steamdeals}).

Second, the newer community may be ``equivalent'' to the older one and
the newer one may win the competition.  For example, in the case of
\communitypair{auto}{Autos}, it took \communityname{Autos} a while to
exceed the activity level in \communityname{auto}, but
\communityname{Autos} is now much more popular (see
\figref{fig:activity_case}).

Third, the newer community may actually be the non-modified
one
(14\% of
pairs have this property, as we earlier observed) and the newer one
might achieve popularity because it is more general. For instance,
\communityname{politics} is more popular than
\communityname{ukpolitics} despite the later's earlier founding. In
this case, as soon as \communityname{politics} was created, its
activity level exceeded \communityname{ukpolitics}.

The fourth and relatively rare reason is that the older one may have a
large competitor, in other words, the newer one may originate from an
even bigger community than the older one.  An example is
\communitypair{hiphop}{makinghiphop}.  \communityname{makinghiphop}
started at a similar size as \communityname{hiphop} but exceeded
\communityname{hiphop} significantly later. Although
\communityname{hiphop} and \communityname{makinghiphop} are both
active, there is a much larger hiphop-related community on Reddit,
\communityname{hiphophead}.  \communityname{makinghiphop} might
actually originate from \communityname{hiphophead} instead of
\communityname{hiphop}.

\begin{figure}[t]
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.23\textwidth}
        \addExploreFigure{\textwidth}{simi_log_activity_dist.pdf}
        \caption{Histogram of log activity level ratio between the newer community and the old one.}
        \label{fig:activity_dist}
    \end{subfigure}
    \hfill
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.23\textwidth}
        \addExploreFigure{\textwidth}{simi_larger_later.pdf}
        \caption{Case study on pairs in which the newer one has more
          activity, where activity is binned on a month-to-month
          basis.}
        \label{fig:activity_case}
    \end{subfigure}
    \caption{
   (a) The older community tend to have a higher level of activity. (b) Examples of different reasons that the newer one can have more activity.
   It shows how the log activity level ratio changes over time since the newer one was created in the first two years.
    \label{fig:activity_level}}
\end{figure}

\begin{figure}[t]
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.23\textwidth}
        \addExploreFigure{\textwidth}{simi_founder_count.pdf}
        \caption{Histogram of the fraction of {early participant\xspace}s in the new community that were from the old community over all pairs.}
        \label{fig:founder_dist}
    \end{subfigure}
    \hfill
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.23\textwidth}
        \addExploreFigure{\textwidth}{top_category_founder_case.pdf}
        \caption{Average fraction of {early participant\xspace}s in the new community that were from the old community sorted by categories.}
        \label{fig:top_founder}
    \end{subfigure}
    \caption{
   (a) Surprisingly, the majority of highly related communities\xspace do not share more than 10\% of {early participant\xspace}s.
   (b) \categoryname{Better} has the highest average early participant\xspace ratio, while \categoryname{modifier} has the lowest.
   %
    \label{fig:founder}}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Where are early participants in the new communities from?}

The last reason in the above discussion leads to a natural question:
where are the participants in the newer community from?  Are they from
the older one in a pair? This question is difficult to answer, as a
subreddit may establish its own identity and unique audience over time,
even if it was born out of an existing community. If we simply look at
the overlap between two communities over all users, we may mistakenly
believe that they have never shared
the user base as a result of a large number of later users.
We thus focus on
the first $n$ participants in the newer community
(the \emph{{early participant\xspace}s}) and compute the fraction of them that were also
members of the older community.
A user is considered a member of the old community if they
took any
action in the old community within the last 30 days prior to
interacting with the new community.
We refer to this metric as
``early participant\xspace fraction''.
While we present results for $n=100$, similar results hold for
different $n$.

\para{Almost half of highly related communities\xspace do not really share {early participant\xspace}s.}  As shown
in \figref{fig:founder_dist}, surprisingly, the majority of newer
subreddits in highly related communities\xspace pairs are not
``founded'' by members of the older
community.
For example,
only 7 of the first 100 participants in
\communityname{makinghiphop}
were members of
\communityname{hiphop}.

\figref{fig:top_founder} presents the
average
early participant\xspace ratio
for all categories in \tableref{tb:taxonomy}.  It shows
that \categoryname{better}, \categoryname{parody},
\categoryname{action} and \categoryname{learning} usually attract
members from the older community.  It also partly demonstrates why we
obtain such a low average early participant\xspace ration.  \categoryname{equivalent}
and \categoryname{modifier}
appear
more than likely to attract completely
different participants, e.g.,
\communitypair{vegetarian}{vegetarianism}.
We also notice significant differences even within
a single category.  One
notable example is \modifier{meta} (65.8\% from the original
community) vs. \modifier{ex} (1\% from the original community).

\subsection{From Highly Related Communities\xspace to {{\expandafter\makefirstuc\expandafter{\spinoff}}\xspace}s}

Thus far, we have explored the complex space of possible
affixes\xspace, and the highly related communities\xspace that are created through them.
We
find
that a non-trivial fraction of the new communities were not
the {\modification}ed\xspace ones, or did not share the same user base of the
older
one.  For these pairs, it is unclear
whether the new community is a
subdivision of the old one, or whether users in the existing community
are affected by the new one's presence. In order to better understand how
users in the existing community may behave \emph{after exploring the
  new community,} we will focus on a subset of highly related communities\xspace called
\emph{{\spinoff}s} in the remainder of this work.

\section{{{\expandafter\makefirstuc\expandafter{\spinoff}}\xspace}s: Substitutions or Complements?}
We now formally define \emph{\spinoff} communities.  First: the newer
of the two pairs in a highly related community\xspace is a \emph{\spinoff} if it
satisfies the following properties: 1) more than 10\% of the first 100
{early participant\xspace}s in the newer community are members of the older community;
and 2) the newer community is the {\modification}ed\xspace one,
so that it is likely to represent a specialization or some other topic
of interest.
We will sometimes refer to a pair of highly related communities\xspace that contain a spinoff as a \emph
{\spinoff pair}.
 %
 %
 %
 %
 %

In this section, we investigate
how a user's behavior within the older subreddit is affected once they
try out the newer \spinoff:
do such users get ``distracted'' by the new
one, or does the new
subcommunity complement the old one? Phrased differently, do users tend to
decrease, increase, or not change their activity levels in the
original community after trying the
\spinoff?

Surprisingly, we find that users who explore\xspace the \spinoff generally
become
\emph{more} active in the \emph{original} community.
Furthermore,
with respect to the taxonomy we developed in \tableref{tb:taxonomy},
the magnitude of this trend \emph{depends on the type of
  affix\xspace}: larger in \categoryname{action}, \categoryname{better},
  and \categoryname{parody}, smaller in \categoryname{medium}, and {\em negative} in \categoryname{nsfw}.
Finally, it seems that this complementary effect is more prominent for
users with lower activity level, although there is less data to
compare users with different activity
levels, and results may vary
depending on specific pairs.

\para{Disclaimer:} {\em we do not make any claims of causality given the
observational nature of our dataset.}

\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=.45\textwidth]{figures/prepost.png}
\caption{
Schematic of the exploration\xspace experiment setup. \communityname{TrueAtheism} is a
  \spinoff of \communityname{Atheism}, and the activity of two users is shown over
  time. Each box represents an interaction.
  %
  %
  %
  %
  With respect to the two subreddits shown, the dark user is an \defector,
  and the light user is a \loyalist.
  %
  Time $t$ is the time of the dark user's first
  interaction with the \spinoff subreddit. Here, the number of
  pre-interactions for both the dark and light users is 5. The dark
  user has 3 post-interactions, whereas the light user only has one.}
\label{fig:prepost}
\end{figure}

\begin{figure*}[t]
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.45\textwidth}
      \centering
        \addSpinoffFigure{\textwidth}{tax-splinters.png}
        \caption{Exploration effect\xspace by category ($n$ is the number of sampled pairs, only $n \geq 4$ is shown)}
        \label{fig:tax}
    \end{subfigure}
    \hfill
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.45\textwidth}
      \centering
        \addSpinoffFigure{\textwidth}{pair-splinters.png}
        \caption{Top/bottom 5 exploration effect\xspace by pair ($n$ is the number of sampled users)}
        \label{fig:pair}
    \end{subfigure}
    \caption{
    %
    Difference between {explorer\xspace}s and {nonexplorer\xspace}s in the fraction of users that become more active in post-interactions
    %
    (in the older community)
    compared to pre-interactions.
    Larger values indicate more activity from {explorer\xspace}s.
      (a)
      %
      categories from our taxonomy
      and (b)
      specific pairs.
      %
      Error bars represent 95\% CIs. }
      \label{fig:splits}
\end{figure*}

\subsection{Experiment setup}

To understand user behavior in the \emph{original} community \emph{after}
participating in the \spinoff community,
we propose an experiment framework
in which we first
pair ``{an \defector}''
and a ``similar'' ``{nonexplorer\xspace}''
in the original community. After identifying this pair of users, we
compare their behavior pattern after the {explorer\xspace} first
participated in the \spinoff community, as illustrated in
\figref{fig:prepost}.

Specifically, for each \spinoff pair (e.g.,
\communitypair{Atheism}{TrueAtheism} in \figref{fig:prepost}),
we define {\em {explorer\xspace}s} as users who were active in the original
community in a time window before their first participation in the \spinoff
community.\footnote{Participation and being active are both defined as
  either posting or commenting.}  The darker user in
\figref{fig:prepost} is an example.  We denote the time of her first
interactions in the \spinoff community as $t$, and refer to her
interaction in the original community from $t-w$ to $t$ as {\em
  pre-interactions} and her interaction in the original community from
$t$ to $t+w$ as {\em post-interactions}.  We consider users with at
least 5 pre-interactions to ensure that they were indeed active in the
original community.

A straightforward metric to compute is simply the ratio between the
number of post-interactions and the number of pre-interactions for
each user. However, this is problematic because we require users to
have at least 5 pre-interactions but have no constraints on
post-interactions.  This causes our sample to be biased towards users
with more pre-interactions than post-interactions.

To address this concern, for each exploring\xspace user
$u_{e}$,
we sample a \emph{similarly active} user $u_{ne}$ in the
original community who \emph{never} interacts with the \spinoff
community. We call this user a ``{\em nonexplorer\xspace}''.  The rough idea is
demonstrated by the light user in \figref{fig:prepost}, who had a
similar number of pre-interactions and made a post in the original
community around $t$ so that we know she was still active.  The
details of this sampling process are given in the appendix.

\para{Metric: exploration effect\xspace.}  After we identify {explorer\xspace}s and
matching {nonexplorer\xspace}s, we compute the fraction of {explorer\xspace}s who
have more post-interactions than pre-interactions
in the older community, and then compute the same fraction for {nonexplorer\xspace}s.
We take the difference between these two fractions and
call it the
``exploration effect\xspace'' (see Equation \ref{eq:diffdefect}, in the appendix).
Higher values of this quantity
indicate that $u_{e}$ was more active in the original
community than the \loyalist
$u_{ne}$.
We use the macro average to aggregate results from different \spinoff pairs
because the number of {explorer\xspace}s varies between pairs.

The only parameter in our framework is $w$.
Since our primary objective of interest in this work is the effect of the interaction with the \spinoff community,
we choose a relatively small window (30 days) to mitigate confounding factors that may affect user behavior over time and the dynamic nature of online communities \cite{danescu2013no,backstrom2006group,ducheneaut2007life,kairam2012life,kumar2010structure}.
Our results are robust to reasonable changes in $w$ (e.g., $w=20$ days
produces very similar results).

\subsection{More active after exploring\xspace the \spinoff community}

We now apply this framework and examine how {explorer\xspace}s behave in
general.  Surprisingly, we find that {explorer\xspace}s are relatively more
active compared to {nonexplorer\xspace}s,
i.e.,
the exploration effect\xspace is generally
positive.  We then further split {explorer\xspace}s based on their activity
level and study how our observation differ depending on activity
level.

\begin{figure*}[ht]
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.24\textwidth}
        \addTwoLineFigure{\textwidth}{8816-AskReddit-TrueAskReddit.png}
        \caption{\communityname{AskReddit} vs \communityname{TrueAskReddit}; (n=8816 user pairs)}
        \label{fig:true}
    \end{subfigure}
    \hfill
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.24\textwidth}
        \addTwoLineFigure{\textwidth}{5516-science-askscience.png}
        \caption{\communityname{Science} vs \communityname{AskScience}; (n=5516 user pairs)}
        \label{fig:ask}
    \end{subfigure}
    \hfill
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.24\textwidth}
        \addTwoLineFigure{\textwidth}{2951-Android-androidapps.png}
        \caption{\communityname{Android} vs \communityname{androidapps}; (n=2951 user pairs)}
        \label{fig:apps}
    \end{subfigure}
    \hfill
    \begin{subfigure}[t]{0.24\textwidth}
        \addTwoLineFigure{\textwidth}{2221-apple-applehelp.png}
        \caption{\communityname{apple} vs \communityname{applehelp}; (n=2221 user pairs)}
        \label{fig:help}
    \end{subfigure}
    \caption{Several examples of \textbf{\textcolor{defectorcolor}{explorer\xspace}}
    and \textbf{\textcolor{loyalcolor}{nonexplorer\xspace}} activity levels (with 95\%
    CIs) split into quartiles by pre-activity. The x-axis is
    pre-interaction quartile, and the y-axis is the proportion of
    users whose post-interactions exceeded their pre-interactions. In
    all cases, {explorer\xspace}s tend to have greater post-interaction
    levels than {nonexplorer\xspace}s, reflective of the results from the previous
    section. These plots are meant to highlight the complex
    relationships between activity level and activity rates. We
    observe many statistically significant differences, but note that
    each \spinoff community pair's behavior in this regard appears to be
    unique.
    In the first three pairs, we do see that {explorer\xspace}s with the highest pre-activity level present a smaller difference from {nonexplorer\xspace}s.
    } \label{fig:two-lines}

\end{figure*}

\para{Comparisons across categories.}
\figref{fig:tax} presents exploration effect\xspace results
for categories in our \tableref{tb:taxonomy} taxonomy.\footnote{Results are
only
reported for categories with more
than 4 \spinoff pairs.
}
Somewhat counterintuitively, we find that for most {\spinoff}s, users
who explore\xspace become \emph{more} active in the original subreddit after
exploring\xspace, compared to similarly active users who never interacted in
the new community (see \figref{fig:tax}).

Interestingly, the magnitude of this result varies based on the
\spinoff pair considered. We observe that \categoryname{action}
{explorer\xspace}s are around 10\% more likely to increase their
activity after exploring\xspace, for example.
\categoryname{place}
{explorer\xspace}s, on the other hand, are roughly 2\% less likely
to increase their activity.

Our
possible explanation for this observation is that users who explore\xspace\xspace
\categoryname{action} communities are often seeking to actively engage
with a topic in a fashion above and beyond simple discussion. For
example, the subreddit \communityname{Bitcoin} (which focuses on high-level discussions of the crypto-currency) and its \spinoff pair
\communityname{BitcoinMining} (which focuses on lower-level issues,
e.g., hardware useful for mining Bitcoins) exhibits a difference in
interaction ratio of roughly 10\%. If a user {explore\xspace}s
\communityname{BitcoinMining} from \communityname{Bitcoin}, this is
likely a strong indication of their interest in digging deeper into
the topic itself. It's possible that viewing \communityname{Bitcoin}
through the perspective of \communityname{BitcoinMining} increases
overall engagement with the topic, at least in the short term.

In contrast, exploring\xspace
\categoryname{place} subreddits does not
result in increased home activity nearly as often. For example,
\communityname{Bitcoin} has another \spinoff pair,
\communityname{BitcoinUK}, that has an exploration effect\xspace
of roughly zero. We have previously seen in \figref{fig:top_founder}
that \categoryname{place} {\spinoff}s share relatively few
{early participant\xspace}s with their parent communities. Taken together, these
observations suggest
that users seeking place-specific
communities are not necessarily interested in engaging more deeply
with the topic, so much as
in  \emph{who} they discuss the topic with or
\emph{how} the topic affects them.

\para{A closer look at the pairs.} \figref{fig:pair} presents the top and bottom 5 pairs in terms of exploration effect\xspace.
It further demonstrates how our results may vary across different pairs.
All
5 bottom pairs present significantly negative exploration effect\xspace, which shows that it is not always the case that {explorer\xspace}s are more active.

Looking at the bottom 5, it partly supported our above discussion
regarding places.  Indeed, in \categoryname{place} related pairs,
\communityname{gtaonline}
pulled
people from \communityname{gta}
and so did \communityname{canadaguns} for \communityname{guns}.  Among
the top 5, there is an even spread among several categories including \categoryname{learning}
(\communitypair{gaybros}{askgaybros}), \categoryname{action} (\communitypair{airsoft}{airsoftmarket}),
and \categoryname{medium} (\communitypair{cringe}{cringepics}).  The surprising
affix\xspace is \modifier{true}.  Although it seems to suggest
superiority and separation, {explorer\xspace}s actually become more active
in the original community in this case, too.

\para{Discussion.}
Our findings resonate with \citeauthor{tan2015all}'s
\shortcite{tan2015all} results that users who continually
explore new communities are, on average, more active than users who
don't.
{However,
no causal relationship can be established that explains this result%
:
exploration\xspace does not necessarily {\em cause} increased activity.
However, in our dataset, exploration\xspace appears to be a strong signal of
interest level.}

\subsection{Variations between {explorer\xspace}s with different activity levels}

We have established that users tend to
be relatively more active
in the ``older'' community
after exploration\xspace, and have
examined the
variation across different categories and pairs.  However, how does
this effect differ for users with different pre-interaction levels?
One could imagine that activity level
prior to exploration\xspace affects whether or not users are more active after
exploring\xspace.  For example, upon discovering an alternative community,
it's possible very active users might remain more
attached
to their home community, whereas relatively inactive users
might not have the same level of commitment.

To address this question, we
split users into pre-interaction quartile levels within their \spinoff
pair, so that the users with the least number of pre-interactions are
put in bin one,
and users with the greatest number of pre-interactions are put in bin
four.
We then compute exploration effect\xspace for users in each
quartile.\footnote{We have previously referred to Equation
  \ref{eq:diffdefect} as exploration effect\xspace, but plot $p_{e}$ and
  $p_{ne}$ separately in these plots under the same
  name.}

Figure \ref{fig:two-lines} presents the fraction of users who had more
post-interactions than pre-interactions for, respectively,  {explorer\xspace}s
and {nonexplorer\xspace}s in several popular subreddit pairs.  In general, the
relative effects of exploration\xspace appear to be different based on how
active users are, but there are complex and varied relationships
between user activity level and how much defection matters; these
relationships differ based on which \spinoff pair is considered.
Since we split users further into quartiles, the amount of data is not
sufficient to reach conclusions for all pairs.

One relatively {\em consistent} pattern across pairs is that
{explorer\xspace}s with the highest pre-activity level usually have a
smaller difference from the {nonexplorer\xspace}s compared to {explorer\xspace}s in
the lowest quartile, as shown in the left three figures in
\figref{fig:two-lines}, although this is not true for
\figref{fig:help}.

The trend of how the fraction or the difference changes with different
pre-activity quartile is even more complex.  Consider the case of
\figref{fig:true}; this figure illustrates that for users with low
activity levels (first/second quartiles) exploring\xspace is much more
indicative of increased future activity than not exploring\xspace,
and the difference is much less apparent for users with high activity levels -- exploring\xspace and not exploring\xspace are associated with more
similar levels of activity for users in the third/fourth quartiles.

Note that other pairs exhibit different patterns. For \communityname{Science}
vs \communityname{AskScience} (\figref{fig:ask})
and \communityname{Android} vs \communityname{androidapps}
(\figref{fig:apps}), the most active users (those in the $4^{th}$
quartile) appear to experience a slight ``dip'' in terms of the exploration effect\xspace.

\section{Related Work}

While there has been considerable interest in the topic
in
the social sciences
(e.g., \namecite{hurtado1997understanding,berry1997immigration}), the study
of situations wherein users engage with \emph{multiple}, distinct
communities represents a relatively new but increasingly relevant
research area for computer scientists. Indeed, Kim
\shortcite{Kim:2000:CBW:518514} argues that a growing Web \emph{needs}
subdivisions, while Jones and Rafaeli
\shortcite{Jones:ElectronicMarkets:2010} also argue that an effective
community splitting strategy is essential for virtual communities and
online discourse to thrive. Furthermore, Birnholtz et al.'s
\shortcite{Birnholtz:2015:WSV:2702123.2702410} study of confession
groups on Facebook could be viewed in the context of ``place'' style
{affix\xspace}es. While our study has a different focus, our findings
mirror those of Tan and Lee \shortcite{tan2015all} who found that
users who tend to remain active on the Reddit platform (as an example of a meta-community)
tend to continue to explore new sub-communities continuous throughout their
``lifetime'' on the site.

A number of studies have examined multi-community platforms in
different contexts. Subcommunity survival
\cite{turner2005picturing,iriberri2009life,kraut2012building} is
sometimes framed in the context of a meta-community. Also, Fisher et
al. \shortcite{fisher2006you} find that different newsgroups exhibit
different conversation patterns, though
tehy
don't examine if the same
users behave differently across platforms (as in
\namecite{vasilescu2013stackoverflow}). Finally,  \namecite{adamic2008knowledge} examine the quality of user
answers across different categories of Yahoo Answers.

Despite exhibiting some undesirable upvoting patterns
\cite{gilbert2013widespread}, Reddit itself has been used as a data
source in various contexts. For instance,
the study of
altruistic requests \cite{althoff+al:14a},
the study of domestic abuse discourse \cite{ray4183analysis}, and
work about post\xspace
titles
\cite{lakkaraju2013s}
demonstrate that useful information can be
learned from Reddit comments and upvotes.

\section{Conclusion}

In this work, we
use
a dataset of all {post\xspace}s and comments
from Reddit over an eight-year period to explore the space of naming
affixes\xspace that lead to highly related communities\xspace on the platform.
After building a taxonomy,
we
examine
the
{early participant\xspace}s and other temporal aspects of the pairs, and
introduce
the idea of a \spinoff community being ``born
out'' of its {un{\modified}}\xspace parent. Finally, we
present
the surprising result that users who explore\xspace in \spinoff
communities generally
become relatively \emph{more} active in their home communities
instead of being
``distracted''.
We also
find that the magnitude of this effect (and sometimes its sign)
depend on the type of
community pair
and how active a user was prior
to exploration\xspace.

There are several directions for possible future work. First, it would
be interesting to examine more closely the \emph{origins} of highly related communities\xspace. If
a community is created because of a disagreement (e.g.,  Zachary's
Karate Club \shortcite{zachary1977information}) one could potentially
identify general characteristics of increasing unrest prior to a
fission. Also, it would be interesting to delve deeper into
differences between discourse on content in highly related communities\xspace pairs; how does
discussion on \communityname{TrueAtheism} differ from discourse on
\communityname{Atheism}, for example.
It would be useful for community organizers if we can detect when a \spinoff community is necessary or beneficial.
Furthermore, it is an important direction to understand the mechanism behind
our observation that users who explore\xspace in \spinoff
communities generally
become relatively \emph{more} active in their home communities.
This could be potentially useful for community organizers to identify complementary communities.

Finally, we note that our consideration has presupposed a pairwise
framing, i.e., we always assumed a \emph{pair} of communities. In some
cases, we noted more complex phenomena underlying community
creation. For example,
a number of \communityname{srs} communities were all created in a short period of time.
Also, the world of \communityname{pokemon} subreddits may consist of multiple affixes\xspace that lead to different subdivisions.
In general, one could generalize pairwise interactions to
explore more complex
relationships between communities.

\para{Acknowledgments.}
We thank
Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil,
David Mimno,
Mor Naaman,
Skyler Seto,
Tianze Shi,
Justine Zhang
and the anonymous reviewers
for helpful comments and discussions.
This work was supported in part by a Facebook fellowship
and a Google Research Grant.

\section{Appendix: Sampling Method for Control Users}

The goal of this section is to describe how we
sample a control
user $u_{ne}$ corresponding to each each exploring\xspace user
$u_{e}$. Ultimately, to compute the exploration effect\xspace, we need
to find someone who never posts in the new subreddit, but
takes a similar number of actions in the same time period. To choose this similarly
active, \loyalist user, we sample $u_{ne}$ as follows:
\begin{enumerate}
\item From the set of all \loyalist users, find the subset who have an
  interaction in the original community within 24 hours of
  $u_{e}$'s exploration\xspace time $t$. Let these interactions
  occur at time $t'$. If a \loyalist user has more than one interaction
  between $t-24$ hours and $t+24$ hours, take the closest to $t$.
\item Find the user $u_{ne}$ in this candidate set that
  minimizes the difference between their own number of
  pre-interactions (re-centered at their $t'$) and
  $u_{e}$'s. Specifically, if we let $p(u, t_a, t_b)$ be the number of
  interactions of user $u$ in the original subreddit between $t_a$ and
  $t_b$ we find the loyal user
  %
  $$ \operatornamewithlimits{argmin}_{u_{ne}} | p(u_{e}, t-w, t) - p(u_{ne}, t'-w, t') | \, .$$
\item If this difference is less than 5\% of $u_{e}$'s pre-interactions,
  a similarly active user $u_{ne}$ has been successfully sampled.
\end{enumerate}
Figure \ref{fig:prepost} demonstrates a pair of users that could be
plausibly sampled in this manner. Both the light and dark users have
the requisite 5 pre-interactions, and the light user makes a post
within 24 hours of the dark user's first exploration\xspace.

After sampling $k$ such user pairs $\{\langle u_{i,ne},
u_{i,e} \rangle\}|_{i=1}^k$ for a given pair of subreddits%
\footnote{We discard the pair of communities if $k < 100$.}, we first compute the
proportion of exploring\xspace/\loyalist users whose activity increased,
i.e., have more post-interactions than pre-interactions.  For
instance, this fraction for exploring\xspace users is computed as
\begin{equation}
p_{e} := \frac{1}{k}\sum_{i=1}^k
\mathbb{1}
\left[post(u_{i,e}) > pre(u_{i,e})  \right] \, .
\label{eq:aveprop}
\end{equation}
Finally, for each \spinoff pair of communities, the quantity we are
interested in is
\begin{equation}
p_{e} - p_{ne} \, .
\label{eq:diffdefect}
\end{equation}
We generally call
the quantity given in Equation \ref{eq:diffdefect} the ``exploration effect\xspace''.
A larger
exploration effect\xspace indicate that an \defector is more active in the
\emph{original} subreddit after posting to the splinter subreddit,
when compared to a similarly active nonexplorer\xspace. In \figref{fig:two-lines},
we plot $p_{e}$ and $p_{ne}$ separately, whereas
in \figref{fig:splits} we plot $p_{e} - p_{ne}$.

\small
\bibliographystyle{aaai}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
Category: Foreign Films
Review: Tsotsi (2005)
Written and directed by Gavin Hood, Tsotsi, set in Johannesburg, South Africa, explores six days in the life of a young gangster. Presley Chweneyagae stars as Tsotsi, the ruthless leader of a township gang.
One evening, Tsotsi attacks a gang member who taunts him and suggests avoiding violence acts. To release his aggression, Tsotsi ventures into the suburbs and he attacks a woman entering her home. He steals her car, only to discover her infant sleeping in the back seat.
What results is a poignant tale of redemption. He takes responsibility for the baby with the help of a local widow (Terry Pheto). Through this child, Tsotsi's soul is awakened as he confronts his past and sees a future he never thought existed. Tsotsi learns to value love and human life.
Tsotsi is a riveting and emotional experience, although sometimes difficult to watch. It offers an honest look at crime, revival, and hope for the future. Above all, it is a thrilling and touching journey into the soul of a lost individual.
Author JoannaPosted on April 16, 2006 October 12, 2010 Categories Foreign Films, ReviewsTags Foreign Films, Reviews2 Comments on Review: Tsotsi (2005)
Reviews: Four Movies I've Seen Recently
I'll be away for the next 4 days so I'm leaving 4 mini-reviews of some movies you should (not) check out over the weekend.
This Czech film opens as two low lifes discover an abadoned child and consequenly sell it on the black market which leads to a series of unique events. Director Jan Hrebejk overlaps three plotlines of a childless couple, an emigre who returns to Prague to confront family issues, and the two criminals to tell this comic, satirical, and tragic tale of loss, family, love, and acceptance. Memorable scenes and humorous characters combine to create an above-average film.
Head-On (2004)
Sibel (Sibel Kikilli) and Cahit (Birol Unel) are Turkish immigrants living in Germany who are both trapped by their lives. Sibel is surrounded by her overbearing and traditional family and Cahit is a bum with no hope for the future. Upon meeting at a hospital, Sibel asks Cahit to marry her so she can escape her family. What happens next is a touching, passionate, profound, and exhilirating love story. A lovely film and a magnificent cultural experience. Ultimately worth the trip.
Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung) is a writer who has created a science fiction masterpiece about a train, 2046, that goes nowhere and after boarding you can never exit. This story, with its vivid imagery, becomes the subplot for another.
Set in 1960's Hong Kong, the writer lives a party lifestyle and his relationships with three girls, including one played byZiyi Zhang, is the center of movie . 2046 is a story of memories, love, and the future and it is one that should not be missed.
Off the Map (2003)
A coming-of-age story set in the remote New Mexico desert. 11-year old Bo's life is nothing short of unique. Her family lives "off the map", on an isolated farm that has no electricity or running water. They survive on less than $20,000 per year. One summer she watches as her father battles unexplainable depression. It is during this summer that a stranger (Jim True-Frost) emerges and through him Bo learns about love and lost. Joan Allen is beyond excellent as Bo's mother, a part Hopi-Indian with Earth Mother tendencies. Each scene is filled with humor, originality, and beaut y. A lovely, little-known wonder of a movie that leaves you wanting more.
Author JoannaPosted on March 30, 2006 October 10, 2010 Categories Foreign Films, ReviewsTags Foreign Films, Reviews2 Comments on Reviews: Four Movies I've Seen Recently
Review: The Best of Youth (2003)
When I told my friends that my weekend plans consisted of watching a six-hour Italian movie, they thought I was insane. But let me tell you, it was well worth it.
The Best of Youth, directed by Marco Tullio Giordana, follows two brothers Nicola (Luigi Lo Cascio) and Matteo (Alessio Boni) from 1966 to the present. The film opens as the brother's are about to set out on a road trip. However, they take a detour that will forever change their lives. After this moment, they go their separate ways; Nicola becomes a successful psychiatrist and Matteo enters the police force.
This is a movie of epic proportions that tells the story of family, friendship, and love. For such an extensive and long movie, it never misses the fine points of characterization. The film will draw you in and at the end I guarantee that you will say, "Wait a second, there should be three more hours."
The Best of Youth is film making at its best, with amazing performances, stunning images of the Italian landscape, and a certain intimacy that made me take in a second viewing.
Author JoannaPosted on March 23, 2006 October 10, 2010 Categories Foreign Films, ReviewsTags ReviewsLeave a comment on Review: The Best of Youth (2003)
Reviews: Six Movies I've Seen Recently
East of Eden (1955) – James Dean stars in the screen adaptation of John Steinbeck's modernization of the story Cain and Abel. With this film, a new era in film and an American screen icon were born. Elia Kazan directs the legendary story of two brothers, both seeking their father's affection. But it is Dean who pulls you in through his captivating performance as Cal.
Since Otar Left (2003)- The story of three generations of women living in Georgia. There is Eka (85 year old Esther Gorintin), Marina (Nina Khomasuridze) and young Ada (Dinara Drukarova). Life has been hard for the women since the fall of the Soviet Union, but letter's from Otar, Eka's adored son, bring joy to family. A beautifully touching film about different generations, culture, grief, and above all, the strength of family.
Grizzly Man (2005) – The maestro of non-fiction films, Werner Herzog, brings to screen the story of Timothy Treadwell, better known as the "Grizzly Man". Treadwell lived with the grizzlies for 13 summers in isolated Alaska and he came to believe that only he could protect the animals. Treadwell fought against poachers, anti-environment advocates, and his own demons until one day in 2003 when one of his beloved Grizzlies killed him and his girlfriend. Herzog skillfully edits Treadwell's own footage and interviews with those for and against his actions, to create perhaps the best documentary of 2005, in a year where true life stories reigned.
Murderball (2005) – Another excellent documentary from 2005, about the American Paralympic Rugby team. These men wish to be seen as athletes, not as quadriplegics, as they battle it out in full-contact rugby. Overcoming unimaginable pasts, each player has a different story and the rivalry between the Canadian and US teams is frickin' awesome.
The Beat that My Heart Skipped (2004) – A Hitchcock-esque thriller from France. Thomas (Romain Duris) has reached a critical point in his life. He debates following in his father's footsteps as a greedy landlord or rediscovering his passion for concert piano. But his thuggish past is never too far behind him. It won eight César Awards including best film and director
The Producers (1968) – What would the world be like without Mel Brooks? A lot less funnier, that's for sure. Before the hit Broadway musical and the current movie, there was this gem of comedy. Two producers (Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder) scheme to create the biggest flop in Broadway history, all to make mucho dinero. Their muse is Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. A hysterical film and a must-see before you watch the rehashing.
Author JoannaPosted on January 14, 2006 March 9, 2011 Categories Foreign Films, ReviewsTags East of Eden, The Beat that My Heart Skipped, The Producers1 Comment on Reviews: Six Movies I've Seen Recently
Review: Turtles Can Fly (2004)
Turtles Can Fly is the third feature from acclaimed Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi. As the first film shot in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the film takes a dark and heart-wrenching look at affect war has, especially on children.
The action occurs in a Kurdish refugee camp somewhere between the Turkish and Iraqi border on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq. There lives 13-year-old "Satellite" (Soran Ebrahim), who has earned his nickname through his ability to install satellite dishes and translate news of the pending invasion to the camp's elders. He also organizes his fellow orphans into land mine-collection teams so they can earn money.
Satellite develops a crush on the quiet and beautiful Agrin (Avaz Latif), who arrives at the camp with her brother Hyenkov (Hirsh Feyssal). Her brother is only known as "The Boy With No Arms" to the other orphans and he skillfully disarms the land mines using his teeth. There is a child with them, Risa, who we are led to believe is their brother, but we later learn that this child is the cause of Agrin's obvious pain.
The children are at first excited for the US invasion; no one wishes to see Saddam Hussein captured more than these children. However, the movies events only lead for the children to see the true grievances that war causes. In the last scene of the film, Satellite and his friend are watching the American troops march into Iraq. Satellite is upset from what he has seen and his friend asks him "Didn't you want to the Americans come?"
This is not a political film. It is just a story about children attempting to survive in an endless war zone and the final product is unforgettable and extraordinarily moving.
Updated October 7, 2010
Author JoannaPosted on December 5, 2005 October 7, 2010 Categories Foreign Films, ReviewsTags Reviews6 Comments on Review: Turtles Can Fly (2004)
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The Elvis Files: Loving You (1957)


text:
Garry Neill Kennedy: The last king of NSCAD
The man who made NSCAD, Garry Neill Kennedy, moves on to a new frontier.
By Julie Sobowale
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"name": "Air - Inline Content - Upper",
"name": "Air - Inline Content - Middle",
"name": "Air - Inline Content - Lower",
"insertPoint": "100",
courtesy Anna Leonowens
Lib Connor, secretary of the NSCAD board, president Garry Neill Kennedy and board chair Darrell Mills signing the lease for the downtown campus in 1976.
Is it easy to surprise Garry Neill Kennedy? Probably not. The self-described "78-and-a-half"-year-old has seen it all, from his days as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design president through his long years as university professor and artist. But students from Printed Matter at the University of British Columbia, a course he taught with his wife Cathy Busby, got the upper hand when they threw a surprise party last April.
"It felt really good," says Kennedy. "The first term was over and over half of our students threw us a party. I was really touched. It was the first surprise party I ever had."
It's no shock to hear about Kennedy's students showing their appreciation---he is Halifax's artistic superstar, who turned NSCAD into a top international art school while maintaining a successful career.
Now it's time for the Halifax community to say goodbye. After more than 45 years in the city, Kennedy will move to Vancouver in August to teach at UBC. Two years after Kennedy's 2011 departure from NSCAD as part-time professor, UBC invited Kennedy and Busby to teach, eventually offering full-time employment. Kennedy has no plans to return. "UBC has asked us to be there and there's a draw to stay there," says Kennedy. "We feel good out there."
What's interesting about Kennedy is his humility. He's an artist who started out as a jock. A stellar athlete, he competed in rowing, track and field, basketball and football in St. Catharines, Ontario. "If you're from St. Catharines, you row in high school," Kennedy says. "It was almost a rite of passage."
He played halfback for the Toronto Balmy Beach Beachers and the Niagara Falls Thunderbirds, two early teams in the Canadian Football League, in the late 1950s. After studying at the Ontario College of Art and Design, he arrived at the University of Buffalo in 1961 with a football scholarship and had his bachelor's degree in fine art two years later. He completed his MFA at Ohio University in 1965. "I was inspired to become an artist because, really, that's all I could do," says Kennedy. "I was too small to continue in the world of professional sports so I continued in the world of art."
Kennedy began teaching at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin and became the head of the art department. In 1967, 32-year-old Kennedy took the job as president of NSCAD, which had a $60,000 administrative budget. It would be a life-changing decision.
Kennedy's influence on NSCAD can't be overstated. His innovative ideas and energy propelled the school to international acclaim. His hard work, along with the work of faculty, students and artists, was recently detailed in the 2012 book The Last Art College: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1968-1978.
The first major change came quickly. Kennedy immediately accredited NSCAD programs and the school began issuing bachelor's degrees in 1969, becoming the first Canadian art school to do so. By 1975, NSCAD was issuing master's degrees in fine art. Nicholas Houghton, one of Kennedy's best friends, was part of the inaugural graduating class of only three students.
"Garry told me the school was like a medical school," says Houghton, now a faculty member at the University for the Creative Arts. "Med schools have a duty to the people they're teaching and to help the medical community stay on the leading edge of the discipline. He said NSCAD was the same way, that they had a duty to the discipline. He saw the two going together. He wanted to make the art school leading edge."
NSCAD evolved at a rapid pace---it got its name in 1969, the same year the Lithography Workshop was created, a precursor to the Dawson Print Shop. He supported the faculty's idea to move NSCAD to the Historic Properties on Granville Street, a move which took eight years and was completed in 1978. He brought in an array of visiting professors and artists, who could publish thought-provoking writing through the newly created NSCAD Press.
"He liked to give artists space to try things with their equipment," says Houghton. "It was a safe place to do that. Though Garry was connected to the art world, he wasn't into commercial art. So it was an alternative art world. It wasn't a moneymaker. We take it all for granted that universities give a platform to artists."
Throughout his years as NSCAD president, Kennedy continued teaching. Houghton first met Kennedy in his Art Now class as a British foreign exchange student in 1973. "He gave you unconditional regard," says Houghton. "That's very empowering. He was quite quiet and encouraging to others. For example, on the first day of a class, he used to tell everyone, 'You all got 100 percent. Now that's out of the way. Let's start learning together.'"
After 23 years of serving as president, Kennedy stepped down in 1990. He believed school administration became too bureaucratic. "All the MBAs went to work at colleges and universities," says Kennedy. "Having a president teach doesn't happen anymore because there's so much crap to do. You become separated from what the place is about. I would've stayed on longer but I was burned out."
And what's Kennedy's response to NSCAD's tenuous financial situation? "It's very simple to run a school," Kennedy says. "Never spend more than you have."
Stepping away from administrative work allowed him more time to focus on his art. Kennedy is one of Canada's best-known conceptual artists. He's won numerous awards including the Governor General's Awards in 2004 and was the recipient of the Order of Canada in 2003. In our phone calls, one thing is made clear. He doesn't like any labels for his art. "I don't like that term conceptual art," says Kennedy. "All artists make conceptual art. There's no difference. All art stresses ideas. Contemporary art is a weird term too."
Kennedy is known for his political art. He uses signs, colour and text to push boundaries about societal issues and question the status quo. His recent work "THE BIG FIVE," showing at the Emerson Gallery in Berlin, takes aim at the Canadian financial industry. Giant logos of Canada's five largest banks stretch from floor-to-ceiling in a wall painting.
"There's a thread of consistency that runs though my artwork " says Kennedy. "It's about what's going on here in our world. What's this about? That can be as silly as looking at how dark the lead is of a 0.6 pencil to a 2H pencil. Or it can be why are we letting the banks rob us? Why are people getting rich and getting poor?"
As Houghton puts it, Kennedy still has a fire in his belly. This soft-spoken legend is moving forward in his art and his career. His passion will now take him to Vancouver where he'll continue to inspire a new generation of artists.
"I'm hopeful that things will change and my students are hopeful too," says Kennedy. "My political stuff is hopeful and we hope it's right. We're in opposition but hopeful opposition that things will get better."
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text:
Tests are implemented using roundup.
To install roundup on OSX, run `brew install roundup`. Other systems are
supported as well, [compare roundup's documentation](https://github.com/bmizerany/roundup/blob/master/INSTALLING#files)
for details.

To run the tests just chdir into the project directory and run `make test`

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub