It's hard to decide whether the pie concentration actually gets higher going toward Christmas, or whether it just stands out more because of the dissonance with what we hope the season will bring. What I'm hoping for is the DK5 Beta - now,
that would be a nifty present to work on.
This has been a rather scattered month, in the wake of the Midterm Elections, and with the rise of what seems to be a pretty strong movement against police arrogance and complacency.
The question of the day in the wake of the latest budget crisis/vote, and garnerer of whatever pie and meta isn't being saved for Christmas, seems to be whether there actually is a Democratic Party any more, and if not, what to do about it.
But enough about December. This is the eleventh month that I've been following site statistics on moderation and associated errata. Time to take a look back over the year and see if I can make sense of it. These diaries started when I got irrevocably pissed at a number of people who were blaming community moderation for everything that was wrong with the site that they couldn't blame directly on kos. (Well, and I may have been bored the first time....)
I don't know whether I've changed any minds, but at least there's more sorted data out there than there was before, more useful for reference than perhaps it might have been otherwise. The following standouts occurred: (as of 12/16)
Most recommended (via Tip Jar):
http://www.dailykos.com/... by Hesiod - 1,069 recommends
http://www.dailykos.com/... by databob - 1,074 recommends
http://www.dailykos.com/... by Joan McCarter - 1,001 recommends
Most Commented: 26 diaries with over 1,000 comments
Highest recs from diaries over 1,500 comments:
http://www.dailykos.com/... by Denise Oliver Velez - 1,864 comments with 707 recommends
http://www.dailykos.com/... by Leslie Salzillo - 1,587 comments with 504 recommends
http://www.dailykos.com/... by praenomen - 1,909 comments with 440 recommends
Most Hide Rated:
Ah, hell. I started to break these out and then stopped. Why bring up shit when you don't have to? 20 diaries this year (out of a sample of 49,944) got more than 30 Hide Rates. Another couple hundred got more than 5. Most of them, imho, deserved it. All things considered, that's not a bad record either for diarists or for community moderation.
Comments:
There were 28,753 users who commented during the year, 7,063 who wrote one or more diaries, and 2,126 BOJO'd, Among them, they wrote 59,793 diaries and 3,056,076 comments.
Thursday, December 18th was Impeach the President day. Then everything went to hell (or the nearest computer equivalent) for a couple of hours. See
here,
here,
here,
here, and
here. And then, of course, the site went offline for six hours except along the west coast - perhaps a positive thing, since the flames were dancing a bit high around the pie fights.
December Statistics and Errata
Here is a short summary table that shows the fairly steady decline in diaries and comments over the last seven years, along with the steady rise in site traffic.
There are all kinds of scenarios that could cause this, and I'm neutral. One positive exemplar, weatherdude, is now publishing at Gawker since May. This year, he published 24 diaries, mostly in the beginning of the year - last year, 77. Credit DK with giving him a running start.
We've lost a fair number of early posters, from simple attrition to banishment. And for some, I suspect, to the fact that it's not as exciting trying to support a sitting President as it is having a hand in trying to dethrone the opposition. Additionally, it can be a lot more fun trying to post on a site that you know is winging it a lot of the time than on one that's been forced by sheer numbers to try to get its act together. The simplest translation of "competent" is "stodgy", sometimes. Trying to deal with that transition is one of the major stumbling points for all sorts of organizations, and it looks as though DK may have survived it.
There were
211,005 comments by
9,300 users, and
4,559 diaries by
1,489 users in the period between 11/24 and 12/24.
228 of those users were banned during the period, which is about par for the course.
773 comments got 1 or more HRs. - .37%
196 got only 1 HR, leaving 577 with 2 or more HRs. - .27%
133 comments were pure spam, mostly by "julia", leaving 444 with 2 or more HRs - .21%
116 of those comments were not hidden because of uprates, leaving 328 non-spam comments hidden - .16%
Happy holidays, and a grand and glorious new year to all.
Addendum: I'm reminded that I forgot two of the more fabulous contributions to the December meta (it's meta if I say it's meta, dammit!) - bastrop's incredible parody of our most illustrious spammers, and Gwynnedd's pet rock crushers, which have enlivened not a few spam diaries.