Something strange happened between Christmas and New Years. For well over a week, barring blatant trolls and spam, there were almost no HRs (Hide Rates). I have this diary waiting to be published on the day when no HRs occur, declaring the coming of the End Times, or some such. Last year, the holiday season was rife with pie fights, and I was reliably informed, I thought, that it always happened that way. So, this year I was paying attention...
As I write this section, on January 10th, that pleasant respite has disappeared over the horizon, (the Hiddens are awash, and out of 45,696 comments so far this month, 151 have been HR'd. That's .33%, or a bit higher than the usual average. But I don't know if I believe that any more. 95 comments show up on the Hidden Comments list for that period, but only 70 comments show up as Hidden in Search. That's a mucking huge discrepancy for a 10 day period, and I don't see any strong pattern in terms of which comments do and don't show up in Search, although much of the spam commenting is not represented.) and we are
knee deep in
pie about Gods, or the lack thereof. I'm having fun playing in the meta's supreme meta field, and that's almost always a bad sign.
January 11 - it's probably worthwhile to note that one of the potentially positive results in the
wake of the
terrorism at
Charlie Hebdo, in
France, is that the concept of freedom of speech is getting some
serious attention from more angles than I had ever dreamed were possible. It's a meta feast - I just wish there had been a less deadly way of preparing the table.
January 24 -
SOTU has
come and
gone, Charlie Hebdo is down to low mutterings about who's sueing who, and the Republican candidates for 2016 are pulling most of the Beltway coverage. It's going to be a long year and a half. $arah Palin wants to run? Oooohhh...
popcorn.
January 31 - I'm not sure which is getting more coverage: John Boehner inviting Netanyahu to speak to Congress, or the Superbowl. They both strike me as overhyped theater, but the ads on Sunday will almost certainly outshine the media's reporting on Bibi. And ah, yes, the
anti-vaccination trolls have decided this is their week to play
here.
A note on the HOS (Hide on Sight) designation
I am all for a call of HOS once a user has taken the site rules, wadded them up into a ball, and tossed them in the trash.
BUT - while this should be a reason to check their comments and hide any real garbage that's been spewed, that gentler users have let pass because it's hard to be the first person to Hide Rate a comment under most circumstances, it shouldn't be a license to hide any and all comments. We're still bound by the "Rate the individual comment" rule, and we should be. Even the worst of trolls can still write innocuous comments, and these should be the time to remember to drop a note, in Private, at the Help Desk, to make sure Admin knows about the problem, rather than drop an unnecessary and perhaps inappropriate HR. A good Troll Hunt needs clarity of vision, not hyper-enthusiasm, no matter how much more fun the second is. (Subnote: This is my personal preference for handling HOS, and should not be taken as being backed by either the Trolls group or anyone in Administration.)
Statistics
To: Bob Swern
Re: massive supposed dropoff in new users/participation since UID 350,000
(Note: this UID corresponds with approximately May 2012)
12/24/14-1/24/15
9,240 users commented. Of those, approximately 36% joined after May 2012
1,286 of them wrote diaries. Approximately 39% joined after May 2012
There is no massive dropoff.
Total users commenting since the beginning: 8/23/14 117,887; 1/23/15 122,723 - in the past 5 months, 4,836 new commenters and diarists out of 120,066 signups
January Stats
Quantcast Monthly Uniques: 11,628,754, up 92% from 6,039,736 a year ago.
Pageviews: 43,751,860, up 28% from 34,071,504 a year ago.
There were
224,903 comments by
9,577 users, and
4,340 diaries by
1,318 users in the period between 1/1/15 and 1/31/15. 183 of those users were banned during the period
From the Hidden Comments pages: 417 comments hidden, or .18%, including 48 spam diaries and 87 spam comments, leaving 282 non-spam hidden comments.
From Comment Search:
660 comments got 1 or more HRs. - .30%
199 got only 1 HR, leaving 461 with 2 or more HRs. - .21%
109 of those comments were not hidden because of uprates, leaving 352 comments hidden - .16%
I have no idea where the 52 comments shown in the Hiddens and not in Search went, and for the moment I have no intention of trying to find out. Although each one may have been a moment of intense agony for someone, they constitute two hundredths of a percent of total comments for the month.