Forum Trolling from the TNZ: Abandom all hope, ye who enters here

I worked on an ethnography with Sarah Gray. We had a choice between two forums, The Neutral Zone from a Star Trek message board, or the general board from TexAgs. After choosing The Neutral Zone (TNZ), we decided on what kinds of data to collect. We chose the top 5 non-tagged threads, and we took data on the number of posts, the number of off-topic posts, the type of thread, the political leanings of the original post, and the first off topic post in that thread. We did two checkpoints. We had some assumptions going into the study, and it turns out 2 out of 3 were incorrect:

1. The majority of the political threads were neutral in nature, at least the original post was. Of the 7 political threads we saw, only 2 had a liberal leaning OP. (incorrect original assumption)
   
2. Once a thread got off topic, we found that the discussion usually went back on topic. We believe this is because of users reading the original post and replying to that instead of reading the entire thread. (incorrect original assumption)
3. Original posts with a more partisan feel will get more off topic posts and these off topic posts will appear ealier. Of the 2 liberal threads we saw, both were quite accusatory in nature, and the third post in each of those threads went off topic.

I believe that as a team, we negated individual weaknesses. I am an insider to the forums, and I understand the "psyche" of the posters. I also have access to the board in the first place. However, I tend to become too involved in the threads and will let many posts go as on topic, if there is a judgement call. Sarah, on the other hand, does not even know about this forum until I mentioned it to her. She was an outsider providing an objective view of the forum and the posts. I defered to her judgement on the borderline posts, since she had a more definitive definition for off topic.