MAGIC NUMBERS

Goliath crows - lays egg!

VERY early this morning Goliath of the GAW News published a post where he crowed that the CCC's thread regarding the Mayoral debate had garnered only 96 views, while his Colisseum (sic) forum boasted 888 views from "interested Clark County voters."  Young Matt Chinn cheered this good news in a comment.

However, within just a few hours the CCC thread had over 1,000 views.  Did that many "interested Clark County voters" come out in droves in the early, early hours of the morning just to view that particular thread?

Not likely.  In fact, I think I know how it was accomplished.

Let me explain:

Last year a certain forum owner bragged repeatedly about her astronomical numbers of views.  Curious, I decided to check my own stats here on the Crazy Neighbor Lady blog.  I checked the stats, then went back to viewing my blog.  I decided to check the stats again, looking more closely at the rise and fall in views as they related to certain posts.  Imagine my surprise when I saw that my own view was now counted.  Just to be sure, I went back to the blog and refreshed the page a few times.  When I returned to the stats screen, sure enough, those views had been counted.  At last I had solved the mystery of the, quite frankly, unbelievable numbers that certain forum owner was claiming.  

As I watched the mounting view numbers on the CCC post this morning, I realized that someone, maybe several someones, knew the secret, as well. Also, it seemed that the same tactic could have been employed to give the impression that hordes of "interested Clark County voters," were swarming the Giant Goliath's Colisseum (sic) forum, as well.

Now, I'm willing to give the big guy the benefit of the doubt and believe that he didn't understand how easily view counts could be manipulated in that way...but Young Matt Chinn?  I couldn't help but believe he was aware of such practices, with his knowledge of all that internet stuff and junk.  I'm not saying Young Matt was manipulating the view counts, just that I think he probably knows that kind of thing happens and that view count numbers can't really be completely trusted...because sometimes numbers DO lie.

UPDATE:  I had originally titled this post Magic Tricks because I didn't see the post on the GAW News site when I returned there the last time this morning...but it's back now.  Perhaps I missed it somehow or some kind of editing process was going on at the time that made it seem like it had disappeared.  Just trying to be honest and fair, in case anyone saw this post in its original form before I amended it. 

Also - I wanted to say that I called Goliath "mule-headed" in my last post because he made a comment himself that (paraphrasing) perhaps he's a little mule-headed sometimes.  Since he'd made that observation himself, I didn't think I was being insulting by using it in a title of a post about him.  It was meant to be humorous, not hateful.