Comments on: Comments on 1365

Post number 1365

baylink — Mon, 17 Apr 2000 16:42:34 -0800

Unclear on the concept... You thought Mahir was bad? I just wonder is this one is a put-on or not... [ from Hey, URL! ]

By: brig

brig — Mon, 17 Apr 2000 16:48:00 -0800

um. how can i describe that. repulsive come's to mind. i hope it's meant to be a joke.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Mon, 17 Apr 2000 17:39:51 -0800

Speaking of Mahir, the "Whazzup!" and Mahir memes combine on this commercial parody (RealVideo)

By: chaz

chaz — Mon, 17 Apr 2000 18:04:16 -0800

on an side note, why do you bother to 'greenspunize' your metafilter links? Not trying to come off harshly, I'm genuinely curious.

By: ericost

ericost — Mon, 17 Apr 2000 18:19:02 -0800

I have to admit that I don't click on those wacky 'greenspunized' links. I think its creepy knowing that Mr. baylink would know if I followed a link he posted. I considered tracking outbound link usage at my blog (glish.com) but I decided not to. I am glad I didn't.

By: PWA_BadBoy

PWA_BadBoy — Mon, 17 Apr 2000 19:29:00 -0800

Well, just thought I'd burst the bubble in the lie that is the page that was posted. The guy in the web page is actually a well known chinese actor, and he gets a lot of the umm... "ugly guy" roles. I'm sure there's a better way to describe his niche in the chinese entertainment industry, but I can't think of the word. Off I go to find links of web pages of that guy to legitimize <sp?> my claim. (damn, I've got to find better things to do)

By: bluishorange

bluishorange — Mon, 17 Apr 2000 19:57:36 -0800

i don't click on the greenspunized links either, though it is interesting how they're labeled (FROM-META, META-ASIAN, etc.). not sure WHY that's interesting, but it is to me anyway.

By: baylink

baylink — Mon, 17 Apr 2000 21:28:39 -0800

Everyone makes their own choices in this world. I track the links I post here because I'm curious to see what people find interesting. All I get out of it is a number; Phil's code doesn't keep track of who did the clicking. On my own website, I figure that's my business, but not here. As for the tags, I slug everything, rather than using a 'from URL' because most of the links I post are on my own log, and the source page would always be the same. I tag the Metafilter stuff that way so it all sorts together. I've discussed this on my log several times; inasmuch as all I'm getting from here is a counter, it didn't seem worth the trouble. And of course, anyone who knows how to use "Copy Link Location", "Paste", and their backspace key can go directly to such linked sites, anyway. So far BTW, belieing the 5 comments that this posting got, 174 people clicked through the link to the page, and 23 clicked through to Hey URL, the original source. For the Amazon-explodes piece I posted the other day, it was 179 people to the GIF, 199 to Girlhacker, and 153 to useit.com (a number which pulled up a *lot* late in the game, interestingly enough). I consider those numbers interesting, but if you don't, and you don't want to be part of them, it's certainly easy enough to opt out. In addition, I use Classic Clipboard, a clipboard enhancer, to deal with HTML source in web forms, and I've already got a link template all set up for that; it's easier. Sorry; I wasn't *trying* to creep anyone out. As noted, ericost, I *don't* know that *you* clicked the link, just that someone did. For the original "Full Disclosure" on the topic, check here... note that I de-Philled that link for the squeamish. :-) Note also that I've switched to SiteMeter, that gives me 30 hits, but only the first 3 octets of the referrer IP and the base domain name of the reverse lookup. I also tried my damnedest to downsize that paragraph, but I don't think font *take*.

By: baylink

baylink — Mon, 17 Apr 2000 21:51:03 -0800

Well, I *tried* to de-Phil it. Try this instead.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Mon, 17 Apr 2000 22:23:12 -0800

hmm... I've toyed with the idea of link tracking, and possibly sorting a day's links by most popular (as an option), the aversion to strangely coded links just told me what I need to know on whether people would like it or not. I won't be doing it, and you can keep doing it if you want baylink, but I bet those numbers are slightly lower than actual clickthroughs. If anyone cares, the current stats show four to five thousand page views a day here, with slightly more heading to detail pages than loading the front main page (which is a good sign people are following conversations), and there are 1200-1500 unique IP addresses hitting the site each day.

By: chaz

chaz — Tue, 18 Apr 2000 00:58:23 -0800

Matt-- I find the general stats for MetaFilter to be quite interesting. Even though this is an always has been your creation, it (unlike pretty much just about every other open collabo site out there) really does feel like everyone on here from the regulars to the lurkers to the one-timers have a piece in it beyond just posting links. Providing a stats page (nothing beyond what you can see, no additional coding needed) would be of interest to me, not sure if I'm only one or not.

By: ericost

ericost — Tue, 18 Apr 2000 07:41:22 -0800

Matt, I have been wishing that I could sort Metafilter links not by click through rate, but by number and recentness of comment posts. As it is, conversations a day old die out when I think they might continue if new posts where brought to people's attention... I know you can scroll and all, but a list of the most recent conversation posts would surely pull more people into conversations of older links. Baylink, thanks for your detailed explanation. I find that sort of statistical info VERY interesting, but without having done some research, or without you detailing it for me, I would have NO way of knowing what was and wasn't being tracked by your greenspun links. And even now, knowing that my click through is merely counted, I gotta say I am still reticent to click through. I don't mind people knowing I followed links to THEIR server serving THEIR content. Or even, if Matt wanted to do click through tracking on his site, and he provided some sort of privacy policy stating what he was and wasn't tracking, I wouldn't mind that (I think it could improve Metafilter for Matt to have that info). But to know that some third party is tracking click throughs just fills me a little bit with the Big Brother creeps.

By: baylink

baylink — Tue, 18 Apr 2000 08:46:19 -0800

Those counts are now up to 270 for the page, and 39 referrals, so apparently, *some* people don't mind it very much...

By: daveadams

daveadams — Tue, 18 Apr 2000 10:54:06 -0800

If you really wanted to track clickthroughs and didn't want anyone to avoid the link because of it, you should put a mouseover handler in your <a> tag. Like this: <a href=mangledURL onmouseover="window.status=realURL"> Then you'd get your stats and no one would have to know. Shhhhhh!

By: baylink

baylink — Tue, 18 Apr 2000 11:03:01 -0800

That's horribly devious, Dave. You're my hero. Can you write me a bookmarklet to pop a three-field dialog and write the link into the field for me? :-)

By: daveadams

daveadams — Tue, 18 Apr 2000 13:02:51 -0800

Your wish is my command. Try this '+T+'');}}}">this amazing bookmarklet. Note I've only tested it with IE5 and Netscape 6 on Windows.

By: fil!

fil! — Tue, 18 Apr 2000 13:25:55 -0800

Testing ... that should count as three hits, no?

By: fil!

fil! — Tue, 18 Apr 2000 13:26:21 -0800

Or, cause a JavaScript error .. sorry about that. Matt, can you remove it?

By: baylink

baylink — Wed, 19 Apr 2000 06:29:52 -0800

I dunno; it's not blowing up *my* browser; maybe you should upgrade to Netscape. :-) 10, 10 and 9 hits, respectively (it tracks by target URL, and each one was different). So, tell me, "fil!" (hey; aren't you the guy in those Sears HomeCentral radio commercials?), do you get many searh engine hits from that splash page?