Right, but how would you compare 100 posts from 2 posters to 100 posts from 80 posters? You could only do it by counting posts and assigning them to particular posters? That would be way too involved. But in the second case, the impact on what gamers are thinking/talking about would be far more significant.
You have to begin with a method. The simple way is to discount multiple posts by the same person (or have some formula if you think a large volume of multiple posts are significant). But this is an issue you will face no matter what you are looking for. Even your search of posts on storygames.com is going to suffer from the multiple poster issue.
You can also refrain from drawing any conclusion and just put the numbers out there: "I did a google search for this game and a million hits came up, make of that what you will."
It doesn't work for finding what's happening in 2010-2011 - rpg.net's copyright notice at the bottom of each page causes a google hit for every year it's been open
Not really, remember, Google doesn't find stuff by year (at least not in terms of hits)..
Online searches are very imperfect tools. This is one of the issues you run into anytime you try to do this. Have you tried including the date in the search "game name" and "2010" and "2011"?
That's why I only used topic headings rather than looking at (say) individual posts on ENWorld and trying to decide if someone would consider it a story-gamer post or not.
I think looking at individual posts and combing for content is probably better when limited to smaller samples and done to dig into what is actually going on online (i.e. in a survey of 30 EN world threads, 20 people appeared to be advocating "gamism" in D&D, but 100 people seemed confused by the concept----totally made up example ).
I agree there's a spectrum, but that's all right. You can still define what pop music is even if it shades into rock or electronic or jazz at various points on the spectrum. Remember, my definition is far less harsh in terms of where lines are drawn than the widely-used-and-wrong definition. Your objection actually applies to the widely-used definition more than to mine.
But you have to be very careful with spectrums. There is a lot of baroque styling in heavy metal music from the 80s, but it wouldn't be correct to classify Bach as a heavy metal composer.
If you broaden the definition too much it ends up being meaningless (and it also doesn't address the underlying things people are talking about when they argue over story games, immersion, etc----it sidesteps it). Again, I am not claiming to have a handle on the actual definition. I am not that into whether something falls into story game or not. But if I am going to have a conversation with people about "story games" or "old school games" or "rules heavy games" I am going to try to work with the definition most people use. Because if I come in with a new definition of those things, then I am really talking about something other than what everyone else is.
Keep in mind, I am not neccessarily disputing your definition, because I don't know what it is. I was just responding to your point that you are employing a new definition that isn't widely accepted. So when it comes to specifics, it is entirely possible I agree with you.
