And now for something completely different. A few days ago I noticed that there was a sudden burst in the number of people registering so they could leave comments. At great personal effort, I have been able to quantify this:
On December 28, the average number of people registering on the blog suddenly spiked from its usual 5 per day to 35 per day. This would be great news if it was because my blog had suddenly gotten seven times more popular thanks to my sparkling and incisive analysis of current events, but it hasn't. My audience has remained at its rock steady level of about 15,000 readers per day.
Being the suspicious person that I am, then, this makes me suspicious. What's going on? Is it bots? Did someone suggest signing up for my site so that they could flood it with comments when the time was right? Is it some weird technical artifact? Inquiring minds want to know.
Y2K? Boredom? Lost passwords? Maybe you've made the troll hit parade? Or your family thinks extra viewers [clicks] will bring in more money? Happy New Year!
Perhaps it's the cats? Yeah, they look so innocent.
I blame Charlie...
Bird Law is not governed by reason in this country, but that's not his fault.
Dang.... Registered just to do "first" and extend the registration trend, but by the time I set my password I was second.
Heh. I’m a longtime reader and finally registered for the new site to comment on the nostalgia post last night.
All the anti vaxxers are registering here.
the internet version of BBB??? (BLOG BOT BOMBERS)
I was a moderator of a blog once. The owner was an American living in Tokyo and I provided his "down time" moderating. It was interesting then it turned very tedious. The blog eventually went away.
I'm surprised you haven't had any problems like other blogs do ..........
That kinda jump with no other obvious reason definitely makes me think bots/trolls. You've been posting a lot of covid stuff lately so maybe some the blog got flagged by right wing indexing spider and triggered some enrollments. It has def seemed like the existing trolls have gotten more prolific in the last week or so.
Does WordPress offer any broad metrics on signups to see if this is their problem or yours?
My microchip made me do it. Curse you, Bill Gates!
“My audience has remained at its rock steady level of about 15,000 readers per day.“
I’ve often wondered what that number is.
I’ve been visiting daily for at least 13+ years.
Looks suspiciously like a graph of the Covid numbers...?
I signed up just to dump on Phil Klein in the comments on the one post of his you called out several days ago.
Let's hope the bots won't be as obnoxious as the one bigoted troll already doing his worst here
Hopefully, it's not Hugh Everett from disqus comments over at Washington Monthly looking to extend his troll army's range.
Long as we're talking about tech issues, why does the dropdown menu next to my login name only show SOME of my recent comments? I have been unable to figure out any rhyme or reason to the ones WP puts there and the ones they don't