SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 17 submissions in the queue.
SoylentNews
So, right now, I'm currently sitting with mrcoolbp and martyb in meatspace working out the finer points of incorporation, and the future needs of SoylentNews. One thing that has come up is we really don't have a great idea of our actual usage numbers are. Slashcode has decent internal numbers which give us some rough numbers, but they're only really valid for logged-in users (which bypass the varnish cache), and we're not 100% sure they're accurate anyway. According to slash, we're averaging approximately 50-60k page views per day (I've included the statistics email below), but it doesn't help us in knowing what AC usage look like. According to varnish, we average roughly 400-500k connections per day, but that number is inflated since we're not using keep-alive or HTTP pipelining as of yet.
Furthermore, since we don't log IP addresses in access.log, and IP's run through Slash are turned into IPIDs, its hard to get an idea of where our userbase is (the general feeling is the vast majority of us are based in the United States, but even then, that's more because our peak hours of traffic are between 4 and 10 PM EST). We've wanted to get a better idea of what our traffic and userbase are, so we're asking permission from the community to install piWik, and embed its javascript tag in the footer of each page, which will give us a wide berth of solid information to work from.Our plan is to setup piwik on a separate server, and have it available at stats.soylentnews.org, which can easily be killed via a hostfile. Furthermore, piwik honors the Do-Not-Tracker header for all web browsers except IE10, allowing easy opt-out. I can understand that a lot of users have concerns about any tracking, but we're trying to be upfront and honest about this, so no one gets hugely surprised. While we might post general information (i.e., usage from countries, user agents, etc) that piwik generates, we will purge IP addresses out of the piwik database as soon we're able, to limit the amount of personal information we're keeping about any user. While we're running piwik, we'll have a persistent notification in the "Site News" slashbox that collection is ongoing which will link to this post.
I'd like to get this setup over the weekend, and start collecting information by Sunday at the latest, then run collection for a few weeks. After that, we'll remove the tracking code, publish the results, and purge the piWik database of all personal information. We'll likely periodically re-enable stat tracking to get an idea of how we're doing, with a similiar notification post going up before we do so to give people the chance to opt-out before collection. Obviously, if the community feels dead-set against this, we'll abandon this plan, and simply work with what little information we have available.
Furthermore, since we don't log IP addresses in access.log, and IP's run through Slash are turned into IPIDs, its hard to get an idea of where our userbase is (the general feeling is the vast majority of us are based in the United States, but even then, that's more because our peak hours of traffic are between 4 and 10 PM EST). We've wanted to get a better idea of what our traffic and userbase are, so we're asking permission from the community to install piWik, and embed its javascript tag in the footer of each page, which will give us a wide berth of solid information to work from.Our plan is to setup piwik on a separate server, and have it available at stats.soylentnews.org, which can easily be killed via a hostfile. Furthermore, piwik honors the Do-Not-Tracker header for all web browsers except IE10, allowing easy opt-out. I can understand that a lot of users have concerns about any tracking, but we're trying to be upfront and honest about this, so no one gets hugely surprised. While we might post general information (i.e., usage from countries, user agents, etc) that piwik generates, we will purge IP addresses out of the piwik database as soon we're able, to limit the amount of personal information we're keeping about any user. While we're running piwik, we'll have a persistent notification in the "Site News" slashbox that collection is ongoing which will link to this post.
I'd like to get this setup over the weekend, and start collecting information by Sunday at the latest, then run collection for a few weeks. After that, we'll remove the tracking code, publish the results, and purge the piWik database of all personal information. We'll likely periodically re-enable stat tracking to get an idea of how we're doing, with a similiar notification post going up before we do so to give people the chance to opt-out before collection. Obviously, if the community feels dead-set against this, we'll abandon this plan, and simply work with what little information we have available.
SoylentNews Stats for 2014-06-05
UIDs IPIDs Pages
total: - - 57452 (1341.1 MB)
static total: - - 3822
gstatic total: - - 5972
grand total: 892 4549 59666 (1561.6 MB)
secure total: - - 0
sbscrbr total: - - 0
posts: 153 219
comments: 437 1546 19402 (330.4 MB)
index: 726 2319 9107
articles: 683 2860 9889 (373.1 MB)
search: 11 92 209 (5.7 MB)
journals: 43 98 229 (6.2 MB)
users: 109 161 593 (15.9 MB)
rss: 46 362 2214 (220.6 MB)
other: 217 700 18023 (173.3 MB)
formkeys: 487 rows total
comments: 573 posted yesterday
submissions: 16 submissions
sub/comments: 31.2% of the submissions came from comment posters from this day
not found: 4769 pages sent with status 404 (not found)
total hits: 140856136
------------------------
Yesterday | 2 days ago | 3 days ago
Avg Hits Per Article: 706.4| 690.1| 629.9
Avg Comments Per Article: 30.4| 32.1| 18.4
Pages From RSS By Section
------------------------------------------------
Section Pages UIDS IPIDS
Main Page 2508 87 539
For Main Page
Pages IPs Bandwidth Users
total: 57452 4353 1341.1 MB 885
index: 9107 2319 436.5 MB 726
comments: 19402 1546 330.4 MB 437
articles: 9889 2860 373.1 MB 683
search: 209 92 5.7 MB 11
rss: 2214 362 220.6 MB 46
other: 18023 700 173.3 MB 885
-----------------------
Top stories viewed by article.pl:
883 14/06/05/0025257 n1 First-Person Shooter Engine in
789 14/06/04/2126226 n1 Apple CEO Says Users Buy an An
708 14/06/05/0132243 n1 Seattle Approves $15 Minimum W
617 14/06/05/0121251 n1 Tesla S Road Trip Report
578 14/06/04/2131208 n1 Intel Wants Your Next PC to Ha
468 14/06/05/1256249 Woods Dwarf Fortress Update Coming N
453 14/06/04/1343246 janrinok ISPs Urged to Quarantine Infec
332 14/06/05/1418207 martyb Computer Programs Are People,
328 14/06/05/133219 Woods FBI Offers $10,000 Reward For
261 14/06/04/1329216 janrinok Underwater Sound Examined for
259 14/06/05/1419254 janrinok How to Spend $750 for One Minu
252 14/06/05/133201 LaminatorX Apple to Allow Virtual Currenc
230 14/06/04/1310212 janrinok Pixar Releasing its 3D Renderi
225 14/06/04/1337244 janrinok Vincent van Gogh's Severed Ear
217 14/06/05/1315234 LaminatorX High Brain Integration and Cre
194 14/06/04/1212207 martyb Google Trying Out End-to-End E
178 14/06/04/111243 LaminatorX Domestic Terror Task Force is
155 14/06/04/1315250 janrinok Ambulance Drones Might Appear
141 14/06/03/211257 n1 What's Lost as Handwriting Fad
139 14/06/04/1059208 LaminatorX Learning to Eat Vegetables in
125 14/06/03/2048227 n1 Battlestar Galactica Reboot
122 14/06/04/0527240 LaminatorX Windows Start Menu Won't Retur
118 14/06/05/149215 janrinok British Recording Industry Thi
-----------------------
Top referers:
84 http://www.netvibes.com
67 http://feedly.com
61 http://www.google.co.uk
42 http://google.com
38 http://barrapunto.com
30 https://www.google.com
29 http://7rmath4ro2of2a42.onion
29 http://maps.google.com
27 http://www.newsblur.com
22 http://www.inoreader.com
19 http://www.protopage.com
15 http://t.co
14 http://li694-22.members.linode.com
14 http://sylnt.us
14 http://theoldreader.com
10 http://www.google.com
9 http://www.jaruzel.com
7 http://hager.pipedot.org
7 http://pi.local
6 http://www.igoogleportal.com
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Asking Permission: Running piWik To Get An Idea About Our Usage
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 83 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover's Lane holding his own hand.
-- Fred Allen
(Score: 1) by bzipitidoo on Saturday June 07 2014, @06:08PM
This seems a question about 2 related things. Statistics is only the surface. It's really about how to fund a news web site, and how to keep it honest, keep it from degenerating into a propaganda organ. How to do that I don't know.
It is amazing and scary just how badly compromised much of our news reporting is these days. An example of this is the treatment of Noam Chomsky. Mostly, he is simply ignored. His writings appear only in fringy sorts of Internet sites. At first read, he seems like he could be a lunatic. That seems a more likely proposition than that all of mainstream media is so badly corrupted that they could and would slant coverage of major events like the current mess in the Ukraine. The mainstream media take on the Ukraine is that Russia has reverted to form, the evil empire is back and eager to expand. And Putin has irrationally decided he just plain doesn't like the West anymore, if he ever did to start with. He doesn't have any good reason for this, it's all about greed and glory. This narrative doesn't pass the smell test. It's also very dangerous. What if Putin decides he can't shake this image, can't get a fair hearing in the western media? If he's painted as a bastard no matter what, why even try to be nice? What isn't reported is that the US engineered the coup in the Ukraine, putting in power these ultranationalists who are so extreme even many Nazis didn't want to associate with them. It is these extremists and their attempt to purge the Ukraine of all Russian people that pushed matters to the point that large sections of the country went into open rebellion. That story makes a lot more sense than the mainstream media line of basically "stuff happens", and that the fighting broke out just because, and then Russia seized on it as an opportunity and made things worse. It happened because it's man's nature to fight, or some such implication.
Our media has meekly gone along with other propaganda campaigns, like the smearing of the leftist government of Venezuela as economic incompetents, crazy business bashing thieves of the rich, and so on. Why? Follow the money.
As to funding, the trouble I've had with ads, and why I always end up just blocking everything, is that they always push too far. I don't mind a few ads, I really don't. I do mind when a significant % of my bandwidth is being used for extremely annoying, loud video advertisements, or ads that cover what I'm trying to read, or distract me with constant flashing of bright colors and motion. Marketing bosses haven't figured out that getting in people's faces is suicide. Or they just don't care, so long as they can count an ad blocked the same as an ad read, and have their bogus numbers accepted by clients.
Even ones that pledge not to do disruptive advertising don't take that far enough when they look away from less scrupulous operators. CAN-SPAM is a case in point. It's an acknowledgement that spam emailers go too far. But the first version actually winked at the problem. It seemed more like a power play by bigger, more established advertisers to squeeze out competition.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday June 09 2014, @02:16PM
For any ads thing, we're going to poll the community for recommendations on ad networks, as well as give anyone "first dibs" to buy adspace on us which we can fully manage. Subscribers will be able to turn off ads (since they'll be helping to fund the site), and perhaps high-karma users as well, for their contributions. Unfortunately, Google seems to have really taken over this area, and while there are still a few other ad companies, none of them seem to great towards user's privacy and such. I'd love to be proven wrong.
Still always moving