A question for an MVP

On 01 Nov 2015, ~BD~ wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

I also wonder why '...winston' - an MVP - didn't respond. Maybe
you'd like to ask him why he avoided my question

I doubt that anyone else wonders. Seems quite obvious to me.

On Sun, 1 Nov 2015 09:17:39 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote:

| I'm a little surprised, though, that Stan doesn't appear to know who
| visits his sites. I had imagined there would be some kind of visitors
| 'log' on his server.
|
| I don't have one on mine, and see no reason why Stan should have one
| on his. There used to be "guestbooks" for web sites but they died
| because of spam, I think.
|

All servers have logs. You may not have access
if you have a cheapo host. Also, if you use a company
like Wix or Squarespace you've got a kiddie site that's
hosted remotely by them. I wouldn't be surprised if they
don't provide logs. Their customers are mainly small
business people who don't understand the Web, have
no idea how it works, and don't really believe a website
is useful to their business. So they go to Wix and get
a free site through simple drag/drop and multiple choice
options.

Your site looks like it's on a standard webhost server.
If you have access to upload files to your own server
via ftp you should find your server logs somewhere in
the file system you're allowed to access. If not, then if
you want to you can add a snippet of Google Analytics
script. In exchange for letting them spy on your
visitors they'll give you access to the data they
collect.

Ok, I was speaking loosely. The only time I'd have any interest in the
logs would be if something was going wrong.

SNIP

In addition to getting a sense of who's visiting your
site, reading logs also helps to discover broken links
or problem pages. And it gives you a sense of how
people use your site, in real time. Anyone who doesn't
read their logs would likely be surprised to learn what
people visit and what they don't. To a great extent it
really depends on 1) incoming links that are popular and
2) what Google thinks is worthwhile. I have pages that
routinely show up #1 in Google search and other pages
that are almost never found. Frequency of page update
seems to have a lot to do with it (in addition to relevance
of content, of course). That's really a dumb thing to value
highly in most cases, but it's how Google works.

It makes sense in a way -- if you've read it, you've read it. But if
the page changes then there'd be new stuff you hadn't read, so you
might go back to read it again.

| On the other hand, I don't like it much when people post messages on
| Usenet consisting of nothing but a URL.

I usually just ignore those posts. There are
also a lot of people who just don't bother to
explain themselves. I think it's a matter of
both common consideration of others and
literacy both going downhill. Perhaps those are
linked. People who are spoiled as children don't
really need to communicate well in order to get
what they want.

Also, posting unsupported URLs is often done to lead people to malware
or some sort. I suppose bored and idly curious people might follow
such links, but I just find them annoying. I suppose that is because I
originally read newsgroups that were gated to the Fidonet BBS network,
and so in order to follow the link I would have to copy the URL and
paste it into my web browser, or even in some cases write it down on a
piece of paper. If the description made it sound interesting I might
do that, but without a description I would just ignore it.



--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

---
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| Frequency of page update
| seems to have a lot to do with it (in addition to relevance
| of content, of course). That's really a dumb thing to value
| highly in most cases, but it's how Google works.
|
| It makes sense in a way -- if you've read it, you've read it. But if
| the page changes then there'd be new stuff you hadn't read, so you
| might go back to read it again.
|

That makes sense for news sites, but for many
sites it doesn't. I find that Google's priorities have
gradually put a few big companies on top while
small sites disappear. They put a lot of value on
incoming links and frequency of updates. That could
be very relevant when comparing major news outlets,
but if you want to know about anything factual it's
not so relevant. The small, non-commercial sites just
disappear from the rankings. Whether you want a
peach pie recipe or advice on the value of your antique,
bigger/newer is not necessarily going to be better.

I read recently that Google has a bright new idea
for rating relevance higher. Dawn breaks on Marblehead.
On the other hand, that could result in a kind of "soft
censorship". Who's going to decide what's relevant?
Surely the people who think cars should drive themselves
are not going to bring real humans into the page ranking
system, so they'd have to come up with some sort
of dubious formula to programmatically assess meaning
in text.

On 31/10/2015 20:17, Stan Brown wrote:
On Sat, 31 Oct 2015 18:58:27 +0000, ~BD~ wrote:

On 31/10/2015 17:58, OG38 wrote:
On 10/31/2015 12:55 PM, Nil wrote:
I'd rather eat slugs than help support your off-topic delusional
vendetta.

You are part of a rapidly growing crowd. g

It has been like this for YEARS, OG38.

Perhaps so, but your fouling of this particular nest is relatively
new.

Can YOU read the messages shown here?

https://www.dropbox.com/

The question is not "can we" but "will we"? All your actions are
having the effect of making that less likely.

How to make a good post.

Here's a reference:
http://web.archive.org/web/200702282...g/goodpost.htm

Nowadays the URL takes one somewhere completely different!

http://www.dts-l.org/

The Internet is a truly wonderful place to explore! :-)