Netscape Userbase Woes (Insert Debbie Downer Noise)

I've been gathering user signup data on Netscape ever since it began. This is a very easy thing to do with the use of their handy Tracker. My goal was to show a trend, either positive or negative. I do believe that this is what would be considered a negative one:

Obviously, I do not think the main goal of Netscape is to get more users, but rather to have more participation. However, I would consider this information an indicator of waning interest. It is fairly difficult to compare this to Digg at the moment since there has not been any public statement of their userbase in a while. My guess is that it is fast approaching the magical 1 Million mark. Anyways, take this information for what its worth.

Edit: Muhammad gives some good positive analysis on the topic here.

Any other stats people are interested in seeing?

The Digg Soundboard

Everybody enjoys reading comments, so why not have a real-time* view of the comments posted to digg.com? The Unofficial Digg Soundboard promises just such a service. Basically it combines the look of a tag cloud with comments instead of tags. This is actually a fairly old service, but I don't know how I missed out on it until now.

Sense of humor required.

*not actually real-time

I'm Tired of Inaccuracy!

I don't understand why people don't want information that is not full of crap. Granted, this problem outlined below lies in the story submission stage where users conveniently forget to convey what an article actually says to get maximum diggs. Truthfully, I'm really fed up with it and you should be too.

Here are a couple good examples of what I mean:

1. "Religious right leaders knew #1 evangelical, Ted Haggard, was gay"

Problem: No one reads past the headline. Many people are so quick to comment about how terrible Christian's are, they fail to read the story at all. I did read the story and the links it quoted, but somehow I only see that Haggard's being gay was speculated. Far from proof if you ask me.

2. "**Republican Fires Employee For Confirming that He Violated Ethics Rules"

Problem: Again, the sheep, I mean readers don't read the article. The comments section was filled up with comments saying that Republicans are *all* corrupt. Anyways, I decided to read the article and found that at no point did the article state that anyone was fired.

Please don't take either of these example and say that I condone the actions at the heart of the news stories. I don't. Hypocrisy and unethical behavior are not good. I simply want people to be a little less stupid. Is that too much to ask?

+1000 and Reverse Psychology

This weekend was a pretty busy one here at Inside Social News. People seemed to be fairly interested in what their fellow diggers had been commenting about. Saturday ended with somewhere around 60,000 page views, which may not be very many, but when your previous high was 1500, it is. Good thing I don't use adsense.

People also seem to enjoy doing the opposite of what you ask for in a comment. Requests for positive diggs are buried, requests for buries are dugg. Case in point:

I believe choicetoes now has the most dugg comment in digg history. I didn't update my posts because I am too lazy and about ready for bed.

The Most Buried Comments in Digg History

Finding the most buried comments took a bit more work than finding the most dugg ones, but here is my best effort at finding them. Personally, I was disappointed at the amount of poor comments on the Steve Irwin post. Again, I tried my best to find them all, but there is no real way to do this other than clicking through a ton of stories. Please forgive any errors.

Also, the amount of diggs on these comments are accurate at the time of this post. Please check out this digg comments page, its hilarious. - thanks MightyGiant

Top ~11:

1. -713 - on THE Crocodile Man, Steve Irwin, is dead.

"nice, it's about time." by yevkasem

2. -577 - on Alternate iTunes 7 UI? - thanks Flawless

"Congratulations. You have discovered what everyone who has installed iTunes 7 already knows about.

Have a cookie." - by Cander

3. -547 - on THE Crocodile Man, Steve Irwin, is dead.

"Yeah, a sort of invincible like Mario that took a star!" by TapaGeur

4. -526 - on Apple' Letter to Pirate bay... and the reply - thanks hammydude

"Agreed. His replies are not at all clever and not entertaining in the least. The Pirate Bay violates copyright of many corporations and businesses and should be immediately shut down." by i440

5. -482 - on Apple' Letter to Pirate bay... and the reply - thanks hammydude

"You didnt need to digg it." - by KillaBrew

6. -455 - on Very funny picture

"What the hell kind of lazy-ass submission is this? What is this, Fark? Just say what the goddamn picture is, if it is funny people will laugh when they see it. For god's sake!" by devindotcom

7. -453 - on Netscape.com HACKED!

"http://digg.com/tech_news/NETSCAPE_HACKED" by melmyfinger

8. -417 - on THE Crocodile Man, Steve Irwin, is dead.

"rofl...as horrible as it may seem, for some reason i find this funny.. and i don't know why ?" by oldskewlboy

9. -363 - on Apple' Letter to Pirate bay... and the reply - thanks hammydude

"Here is the whole letter...." by junkmail02

blah blah blah I'm not listing it all out here

10. -327 - on Senator Ted Stevens Downloads the Entire Internet and Complains It's Slow

"...

You can't DOWNLOAD the entire internet." by xXShadowstormXx

11. -301 - on New Digg v3 Launched

"my opera was auto-refreshing every second .. i bet i was the first here :D" by RBotros

The Most Dugg Comments in Digg History....

....that I could find. I decided to look into this after someone who stumbled onto this site looking for the most dugg comments ever. While I sifted through many stories, I do not claim this list is perfect. If I am missing any please leave them in a comment.

Updated -Top 17:

1. +712 - on THE Crocodile Man, Steve Irwin, is dead.

"I'm shocked. He's tempted death many, many times on TV. I thought he was immune." by tslack

2. +665 - on New Digg v3 Launched

"I have a complaint/annoyance. How hard would it be to structure the page so that it uses up the browser window. Right now, the page is coded for a very specific browser window size. Anything bigger, you get big empty side bars, anything less, you have to use the horizontal scroll bar. Slashdot (for example, not trolling) always fills up the browser window. I'm only browsing with a 19" LCD, I'm sure its even more of a problem/waste for folks with the newer widescreen LCDs." by mwales

3. +651 - on Vote Stephen Colbert, Not Chuck Norris, For Bridge in Hungary! -thanks norbiu

"So which one are you trying to endorse? Your title says "vote stephen not chuck" but then you say "don't let stephen win" - by hagnar

After analyzing the results I come to the conclusion that you're fucking retarded."

4. +638 - on Microsoft sends congratulation cake to Mozilla

"even their cake probably has bugs in it" by jiminoc

5. +571 - on Its confirmed. Google Buys youtube for $1.6 billion

"LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEROOOOOOOOOOOOY JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNSSSSSSSS" by ifonly

6. +532 - on eBay building bombed: exclusive im's from worker inside building - thanks ICSU

"A Transformer, eh? I wonder what Megatron and his ilk have against eBay. They must be auctioning energon at amazingly low prices." - by KyleRayner

7. +517 - on Microsoft sends congratulation cake to Mozilla

"It was a nice gesture from the IE7 team. I guess developers don't take these "browser wars" as seriously as the users do." by latova

8. +510 - on Giant bugs in Germany! - thanks spaztech

"I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords." -Signalis

9. +432 - on 25 of the best extensions for Firefox - Have It Your Way! - thanks SamKellett

"Microsoft is paying an infinite number of monkeys to mod down an infinite number of firefox comments." - by crilen007

10. +417 - on AOL busted for spamming DIGG

"this is a comment on digg about a digg submission which links to a digg blog with an article about comments left on digg...

you guys are way too into this whole digg thing" by khag7

11. +415 - on It's Done! One Red Paperclip Guy has got his house.

"How about 'One Read Post'?
Here's my post, now anyone care to Digg me up?" by sanman

12. +413 - on Vote Stephen Colbert, not Chuck Norris, for Bridge in Hungary! - thanks norbiu

"Anyone who doesn't vote for Colbert is a terrorist." - by zeldafan

13. +409 - on 15 year old tries to out drive police at 150MPH! - thanks AWboy666

"For the record, this guy actually GOT AWAY. This was a big issue a few years ago because FOX edited it to make it look like they didn't get away. They actually arrested him a few days later at his home. Note how the "breakdown" footage at 3:42 is exactly the same as when he tries to stop at 2:09?

The BMW got away. BMW FTMFW." - by AWboy666

14. +405 - on eBay Bans Sellers from Using Google Checkout

"So is this the "can't beat them, so ban them!" solution?" by xose

15. +390 - on No, I can't fix your computer! - thanks gwill11

"I can fix it....But I don't want to and I'm sick of people asking me!........That felt better." - by gwill11

16. +368 - on TWIT in on the way out?

"Do Patrick and John even realize that the only reason anyone knows about dl.tv or cranky geeks is because of TWiT? How many podcasts would be in the dumper if not for the free publicity that TWiT gave them. This even goes for digg. I found out about digg from TWiT as did many others." by FishyJoe

17. +367 - on THE Crocodile Man, Steve Irwin, is dead.

"go fuck yourself and die." by ButtholeSurfer

The First Digg Story Ever Submitted

I was sifting through digg.com today when I decided to attempt to find what the first story ever submitted to Digg.com was. Come to find out it was CherryOS delayed till Q1 of 2005 which was submitted by 'anonymous'.



I felt a little stupid after looking in the source to find the story id when after I found it, a user commented an easy way to find it. Simply: http://services.digg.com/story/1