Dream Counter system Tutorial

[pj]

A Dream Counter system has been implemented here at Mortal Mist.  This system is designed to collect and report statistics on our community's dreaming and lucid dreaming activity.  Statistics are maintained for individuals and for the entire community.

To use the system, simply fill in the appropriate boxes when you journal a dream.  You will only need to change the date if you are modifying prior entries or entering older dreams.  All of these entry fields are found directly underneath the post editor when posting to a dream journal area.

Your personal statistics are reported in your avatar box in all posts.  Cumulative totals are at the top right of the forum pages.  D: is Dreams, L: is Lucids, and F: is Fragments.

In order to be consistent, please use only one count per dream; either Dream, Lucid or Fragment.  Everybody needs to be doing this the same way in order for the counts to really be meaningful.  (In other words, please do not enter a lucid dream as both a Dream and a Lucid.)

This is a very new implementation of a pretty radical idea which, to our knowledge, has never been done anywhere else.  Please be patient as the system evolves, and please consider going back in your journals and entering the stats for old entries.  (Please do not just count everything up and enter it, as this will skew the date spreads.  Enter only the DLF info for one journal entry at a time.)

If you have problems or ideas, post 'em here.  Don't be too hard on the layout - one thing at a time.  Ideas are welcome!

[DuB]

I'm glad to see this implemented. One question, though: is there going to be a way to view the community dream statistics over time? It would be cool to see the trends in lucidity and recall and how they are affected by season and etc.

[pj]

The statistics are there, or will be.  I would like to see an entire statistics presentation page something like our current statistics page, with graphs over time and whatnot.  Parsing them is limited only by our vision and creativity.

Right now we seem to be having some ongoing weirdness with data though.  I've watched us go from 1 to 0 lucids recorded today... and in spite of bringing my entire journal up to date only saw a couple small changes in the totals - so I'm not entirely convinced that we're quite up and running yet with the data gathering.

We need to make sure we are consistent with how to record the stats too.  I am saying that a dream is only one of the three things - a Dream, a Lucid or a Fragment.  But what about a lucid fragment?  Are Lucids being counted as dreams automatically or do we need to enter a lucid dream as one dream and one lucid?

We need some agreement there in order for our stats to have the full value.

[DuB]

I've watched us go from 1 to 0 lucids recorded today

I believe that would be my fault. When I initially coded my entire journal late last night, I noticed that there were no options in the "year" box. Since it wasn't possible to accurately record the dates of my dreams, I just left the dates on the default date and updated the counters. When I woke up this morning I saw that all but one of those entries had been removed due to bugs, and that the one which remained was set to today's date. When I updated my journal again this morning, I changed that entry to it's proper date (which was a long time ago), which lowered today's lucid count from 1 to 0.

No explanations for the second issue you mentioned, though .

or do we need to enter a lucid dream as one dream and one lucid?

This is the way that I did it in my journal. I got the impression from the PM you sent out earlier that this was the way you intended for us to do it. I think doing it this way makes the most sense, since the "dreams" and "fragments" counters do not specify being lucid or not. If they were labeled "non-lucid dreams," on the other hand, then it would obviously make more sense to make it so that a dream was either one or the other.

Actually, in order to avoid ambiguity and possible confusion in the future, it may be useful to have separate counters for lucid and non-lucid dreams, rather than a counter for dreams in general. In that case, it might be best to have 4 counters: lucid dreams, lucid fragments, non-lucid dreams, non-lucid fragments. Another question this brings up is whether it is useful to distinguish "full" dreams from fragments.

Anyway, I've just been sort of thinking out loud - what are some other people's thoughts?

[pj]

I probably just wasn't paying attention to the numbers incrementing then.  I KNEW there was one lucid there that went away though - thanks for explaining that one.

[Raklet]

I had originally intended that dreams be non-lucid dreams.  It is just too much writing to display "Non Lucid Dreams" or "NLD" or whatever.  It doesn't make sense to count a lucid as D1 and L1.  That screws up the stats when trying to differentiate between lucid and non lucid.  If you want total dreams of lucid and non, then it is simple to tell the database to add A + B and get a total.

[Lucidbulbs]

The statistics are there, or will be.  I would like to see an entire statistics presentation page something like our current statistics page, with graphs over time and whatnot.  Parsing them is limited only by our vision and creativity.

Well, if we could make a line graph, that'd be cool. To see three different lines change over time, but the issue would be then... What date would you start from? (Just throwing out random ideas out here. I'm also assuming each x increment would stand as an individual day... you could make other graphs too if you wanted, x- Week of N or x-Month of N, etc.)

[Josh]

I had originally intended that dreams be non-lucid dreams.  It is just too much writing to display "Non Lucid Dreams" or "NLD" or whatever.  It doesn't make sense to count a lucid as D1 and L1.  That screws up the stats when trying to differentiate between lucid and non lucid.  If you want total dreams of lucid and non, then it is simple to tell the database to add A + B and get a total.

This is how I entered mine last night. I assumed that was the intended method, glad to see I got it right.

I'm loving this system so far, and it has a LOT of potential. It seems to have been implemented well, I like having a dream counter under my avatar like that, gives me more inspiration to have more lucids!

Edit: Except I seem to have lost a lucid or two somewhere... *goes to figure out what's up with that*

[pj]

There was a database problem early on - some of the first entries to the system were lost.  (dig dig dig...)

Here:

Some unfound bugs have surfaced in the Dream Stats mod that caused entry of junk data into the database.  I had to remove 55 dream count entries that had an incorrect date associated with them.  The following members were affected.  The number to the left of your name shows how many entries were removed.  If you were affected by this, please go back and enter your numbers again.  I am sorry for the inconvenience.


| Adam            |                            3 |
| DuB              |                           30 |
| Emerald Wolf  |                            6 |
| Hazel            |                            1 |
| iadr              |                            5 |
| Man of Steel  |                            6 |
| Moonbeam     |                            1 |
| Pancaka        |                            1 |
| pj                 |                            1 |
| Sara             |                            1 |

[Josh]

Oh, okay. No worries. Several of my posts I put dreams from multiple nights in one post, how should I handle this? Last night I just set the date to the last one recorded in the post, but if that's going to mess up the stats I can go through and separate each night into different posts. I probably should have done that to begin with. 

[pj]

It would be better to have separate entries for each date.  Doing that by using 'modify' in your DJ entries is the way to go, I think.

[Josh]

Done, and updated it while I was at it.

[Lucidbulbs]

O.o I still feel bad, Raklet dealt with my two mishaps earlier today (from me adding my dreams and such onto the counter late last night). When it comes to adding the old entries, diligence is a must >.>

[iadr]

In order to be consistent, please use only one count per dream; either Dream, Lucid or Fragment.  Everybody needs to be doing this the same way in order for the counts to really be meaningful.  (In other words, please do not enter a lucid dream as both a Dream and a Lucid.)

Sounds good, count a dream one time as either a dream, fragment, or a lucid. 
In experiementing with this yesterday before I somehow lost all of my entries, I noticed that this accumulates counts for the entire year.
Something that might be nice to also have someday is a count for the current month.
Great job on adding this feature Raklet.

[pj]

The counts are recorded with dates, so we can break them out and parse them any way we wish.  This is why it is important to bring our dream journals up to date by modifying and entering one DJ entry at a time rather than just enter a cumulative total, which will skew the date spread.