Slashdot, a user-generated news, analysis, peer question and professional insight community. Tech professionals moderate the site which averages more than 5,300 comments daily and 3.7 million unique visitors each month.
As I said before, we don't have a really good idea on the number of unique IPIDs visiting the site, but we do have solid numbers for our daily comment counts. Here's the graph as generated by slashcode for a biweekly period:
(due to a quirk in slashcode, the graphs don't update until 48 hours later; our comment count for 04/01 was 712 comments total).
Taking in account averages, we're roughly getting a little less than 10% of Slashdot's comment counts, with a considerably smaller user base. As I said, the OkCupid story made me take notice. Here's the comment counts at various scores between the two sites
| SoylentNews | Slashdot.org | --------------------------------------- Score -1 | 130 | 1017 | Score 0 | 130 | 1005 | Score 1 | 109 | 696 | Score 2 | 74 | 586 | Score 3 | 12 | 96 | Score 4 | 4 | 64 | Score 5 | 1 | 46 | ---------------------------------------Furthermore, I took a look at UIDs on the other site, the vast majority of comments came from 6/7 digit UID posters. Looking at CmdrTaco's Retirement Post as well as posts detailing the history of the other site most of the low UIDs are still around, and are simply in perma-lurk mode.
(Score: 1) by drussell on Friday April 04 2014, @06:02AM
Hmmm... That is an interesting idea.
Perhaps when a logged in user selected the "[ ] Post Anonymously" checkbox it could show up as something like Hidden or Redacted or some other humorous handle instead of Anonymous Coward and perhaps start at the +1/+2 depending on the user's karma instead of 0. (Actually, I don't know if it already starts above 0 for a logged in anonymous post since I've never used that "feature" before :) )
I suspect something like that would be possible to implement fairly easily.
(Score: 1) by Rich26189 on Friday April 04 2014, @12:13PM
To be sure what I'm suggesting would add work for the editors. They would have to review the comment and make a determination regarding the sensitivity of the information. If, in the editor's opinion, it's worthy then the comment starts at something higher than the typical AC comment. If not, then the editor is free to delete the comment without a second thought.
After all, if the AC claimed to have inside info but in fact it's just a load of bunk, then the comment does not deserve to be seen by anyone. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, the proof being in the mind of the editor which at this point I'm willing to trust.
Rich