Shots Across The Bow

A Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives

Conservatives create a product and sell it to the consumer. The product thrives or fails based on the value it delivers to the consumer. If consumers want the product, then retailers stock it. If not, it gets removed from the shelf for something the consumer does want.

This free market model isn't good enough for some liberals. Whether because they fear there is no real market for their products, or that their product cannot compete on a level playing field, they seek to not only create the product, but also to control the marketplace.

Case in point: the upcoming liberal talk radio fiasco.

Last time I checked, Rush doesn't have to buy a radio station to get his stuff on the air. Neither does Ollie North, G. Gordon Liddy, Hugh Hewitt, or other conservative talk radio hosts. They created a show and sold it to radio stations around the country.

Liberals on the other hand, are having to buy radio stations to get their stuff on the air.

A Democratic investment group planning to start a liberal radio network to counterbalance conservative radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh says it is close to buying radio stations in five major cities.

The acquisitions would represent a major move toward making the network real. After its conception was announced in February, many radio analysts and even some Democratic activists predicted that the network would face too many challenges to get off the ground, including finding stations to run its programming and bucking a historical record replete with failed liberal radio attempts.

It seems that the market for liberal ideas is so slim that the only way for them to get on the air is to buy the frikkin' stations! Talk about your vanity press!

You know, I've caught flack from "pros" for being an unpaid writer; how much worse would it be if I actually had to pay somebody to read my stuff?

But it gets even worse, and in this case, hits closer to home. RTB member Barry Bozeman (Rushlimbaughtomy and 6 or 7 other blogs) has had all but one blog suspended by NZ Bear for gaming the Ecosphere system through gratuitous linking and multiple hit counters. Barry claims that the multiple counters do not increase his total hits. He's wrong.

Let's take his home site, rush limbaughtomy, as an example, which had 5 sitemeters on it, one up top in plain view, and four others corresponding to accounts for other pages tucked in at the bottom. Now, any visit to the main page will be counted as a visit to all 5 pages, even if the visitor does not go to any of the other pages. Barry claims that this doesn't increase the hits on his main page, because if a visitor to the main page does go to one of the other pages, there will be a page view recorded, but no more hits generated.

But, if a visitor goes to one of the other pages, and that page is equipped with multiple counters, as all of Barry's were, that visit gets recorded on the main page as well, again, regardless of whether the visitor ever visits Barry's main page or not. The highest total generated is not, as Barry claims, an accurate count of the visits to his most popular page, but a total of all unique visits to all of his pages, including the League of Liberals, which carried it's own meter at the top, as well as another sitemeter for rush limbaughtomy, again, tucked away at the bottom of the page. This will very definitely inflate his hits, and is why NZ Bear suspended him.

On another page, Barry tries to claim that going to one site counter actually increased his total hits. This is simply not true, and reveals either a gross misunderstanding of how the hitcounter works, or a bald faced lie.

These are the rankings of the 4 pages with multiple meters yesterday

37) Rush Limbaughtomy 2311 visits/day (50)
41) Treason Online 2170 visits/day (521)
42) Savage Cruel Bigots 2170 visits/day (648)
57) Hell on Halliburton 1645 visits/day (448)

These are the rankings of the 4 pages with a single meter today

35) Rush Limbaughtomy 2390 visits/day (49)
36) Treason Online 2390 visits/day (509)
37) Savage Cruel Bigots 2390 visits/day (581)
38) Hell on Halliburton 2390 visits/day (458)

The net result is a gain of 1246 visits

So my strategy was "gaming the system" to LOWER the total of visits.

No matter what is done with sitemeters they will never exceed the largest total of visits to the single most visited page.

Taking the last point first, as I showed above, the largest number is not the most visited site, but the sum of all visits to all sites. Accordingly, there is not a gain of 1246, but a gain of 79. the mistake is adding all the pages together when the shared hit counters have already done that for you.

So, why did he do this? He says it himself, to hype liberal sites and get them more exposure. Left unsaid is the rather embarrassing admission that he believes liberal blogs cannot succeed on their own merits, but must be helped in order to compete with other blogs. Fortunately for the left, that kind of thinking is not more prevalent.

Hat tip to Say Uncle

UPDATE: It turns out I was too generous in my assessment of Mr. Bozeman. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, assuming he wasn't aware of the inflationary aspect of having multiple, duplicate counters on multiple sites. However, based on the letter quoted in this post, it is clear that he knew exactly what he was doing:

Another observation on sitemeters for your consideration. I have been experimenting with sitemeters. Currently you will see that League of Liberals records a large number of visits Most of that is because I have placed an L o L site meter on Rush Limbaughtomy and Mahablog has placed one there as well. Our visits accumulate to L o L.

He states specifically that his actions will cause hits to accumulate to unvisited blogs. But wait, there's more:

I am mildly concerned about the "ethics" involved in this BUT I have come down on the side of using it because my desire to counter the overwhelming advantage of Conservative Right Wing Bloggers who have larger numbers and a greater pool of priviledged 'time on their hands computers at their command' people to draw from.

It doesn't get any clearer than that, folks. Barry knew what he was doing was not kosher, but decided to go ahead anyway. All of his current protestations of innocence, including his attacks on NZ Bear are just an attempt to hide the truth.

Lest I be accused of bashing all liberals based on the actions of a few, I want to point out that this appears to be an isolated incident, and many in the League of Liberals, although not all, have come out against Barry's actions.

Posted by Rich at December 1, 2003 1:52 PM | TrackBack