Christ, I don't know :) Eidheann had an idea below about just looking at the stats for one fest over several years, and that could be interesting, but it still mostly limits you to people familiar with LJ. And also it would mean me having to go a read a bunch more fics that I hadn't planned to :)
Ultimately, unless there is a magical way to create a database of every HD fic ever written by anyone on any platform, there's always going to be some inherent bias in any given subset. We just have to do the best we can with what we have.
I readily admit that the data I presented is not the definitive word on the subject, and in fact there could well be a few errors in my database. Indeed I already suspect that some of my judgment calls as to which fics are one-on-bottom and which are switching could be debatable, but I think that would only be for a small handful of fics and not really affect the big picture in the end.
And it's ALSO possible that I have some of the dates wrong. I spent A LOT of time going through and trying to find the first instance of a fic, but I might not have always gotten it right. For example, if a fic was posted to AO3 in 2013, say, but was really posted originally to some other blog/archive in like 2010, it's possible I didn't find that and so still have it (incorrectly) listed as 2013. I did my very best, but I'm only human. Whenever I find an error I go back and fix it, so my database is always a work in progress.
This makes me think it will be fun to revisit this question again in like 6 months or a year, when I will have read even more fics, and probably fixed more errors, and we can see if anything has changed :)
no subject
Christ, I don't know :) Eidheann had an idea below about just looking at the stats for one fest over several years, and that could be interesting, but it still mostly limits you to people familiar with LJ. And also it would mean me having to go a read a bunch more fics that I hadn't planned to :)
Ultimately, unless there is a magical way to create a database of every HD fic ever written by anyone on any platform, there's always going to be some inherent bias in any given subset. We just have to do the best we can with what we have.
I readily admit that the data I presented is not the definitive word on the subject, and in fact there could well be a few errors in my database. Indeed I already suspect that some of my judgment calls as to which fics are one-on-bottom and which are switching could be debatable, but I think that would only be for a small handful of fics and not really affect the big picture in the end.
And it's ALSO possible that I have some of the dates wrong. I spent A LOT of time going through and trying to find the first instance of a fic, but I might not have always gotten it right. For example, if a fic was posted to AO3 in 2013, say, but was really posted originally to some other blog/archive in like 2010, it's possible I didn't find that and so still have it (incorrectly) listed as 2013. I did my very best, but I'm only human. Whenever I find an error I go back and fix it, so my database is always a work in progress.
This makes me think it will be fun to revisit this question again in like 6 months or a year, when I will have read even more fics, and probably fixed more errors, and we can see if anything has changed :)