popularity of fandoms

[kaizoku]

3_ships is having a poll of what the "biggest fandoms on LJ" are and I got curious about actual numbers. I tried using LJ fight but I don't know how they get their results, so I'm not sure how reliable it is. Then I just looked up interests on LJ. There's so much this doesn't account for, but it's sure interesting.

(The format is Title: LJ fight result; # of LJ comms that list as interest + # of LJ users that list as interest = total interest #. I tried variations and abbreviations and used whatever the highest count was. Note: this is their list of popular fandoms.)

Angel: 33,018; 386+469=859
Popslash: 391; 62+362=424
X Files: 1,369; 390+464=854
Firefly: 20,023; 409+498=907
Lord of the Rings: 124,116; 399+468=867
House: 15,080; 398+457=855
Pirates of the Carribean: 10,696; 386+461=847
LoTrips: 919; 147+455=602
Buffy: 36,502; 405+469=874
Stargate SG-1: 7,027; 407+482=889
Harry Potter: 210,696; 405+476=881
Stargate Atlantis: 4,252; 442+495=937
Supernatural: 10,041; 398+450=848
Battlestar Galactica: 5,250; 453+497=950
Dr. Who: 1,225; 88+459=457

According to LJ fight, the top three are Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Buffy. According to livejournal's interest search, it's Battlestar Galactica, Stargate Atlantis and Firefly. (I can't even believe that SG-1 beat out Buffy!)

I think the results may be somewhat skewed because of nomenclature - e.g. some list "btvs" and some list "buffy" and some list "buffy the vampire slayer." Without doing a lot more work than I'm up for, I had no way of knowing which ones would be redundant and which ones should count, so I just used the highest one.