Analyzing netizens’ view and reply behaviors on the forum

Quantitative understanding of human behaviors provides elementary comprehension of the complexity of social system. In this paper, the netizens’ behaviors on the Bulletin Board System (BBS) are investigated by the statistical analysis of views and replies on some forums. The statistical results show that the number of views and replies obeys the power-law distribution with different power exponents. In addition, when the distribution of both views and replies follows power-law distribution, they are found to have a nonlinear relationship. This relationship also obeys the power function, when transformed to the log–log plot, its fit curve appears as a straight line. Based on the estimation of slopes and intercepts of the lines, we can characterize the view and reply behaviors quantitatively. The results reveal that the Chinese and western netizens have different preferences when replying and viewing the threads. At last, the time series of reply behaviors are analyzed. All series show us with a high burstiness and low memory.