Or was that too obvious?

For a more historical perspective allow me to suggest m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D9UMedd03JCA&v=9UMedd03JCA&gl=US

THE STAR TREK

ACT III – SCENE IV

ALICE
You’ve betrayed us all, Uncle Bob!

(BOB moves toward mantle when an intense beam of light shines down in front of him and as it fades, a young man in a Starfleet uniform appears, grabs the gun and begins speaking into a cheezy-looking flip-phone)

PAVEL CHEKHOV
Dah, Captain, I have secured da area. It ish safe to send da rest of da away team. No, no nuclear wessels here, chust a projectile-expelling dewise.

(as I continue thinking about this, there may be more; you have been warned)

There’s definitely a sort of reflexive “control-F” urge that kicks in with the infodump, but there’re also some really interesting facts about the way users interact with this site that are revealed. In recent years this sort of study has become a professional responsibility, and I’ve used MetaFilter and its userbase as models of good community building and engagement repeatedly. The existence of the InfoDump and other resources like this are part and parcel of the success of the site.

And so another user compared favoriting behavior to the user contacts data and established that in fact folks are far more likely to favorite content by people who they have listed as a contact on the site, by a factor of thirteen or so.

Valid? Not valid? I don’t know a lot about the metrics and relationships for any other users, but certainly in my own account, this theory seems pretty solid.