As people's rights and freedoms gradually erode there's growing interest in the response to that

Summary: Our relevance as a site is greater than ever before; we also receive more contributions/pointers and guest posts

LATELY (as in the past week or so) we haven't been bothering much with memes. They have had their entertainment value for a while, but maybe because of August (summertime, holidays) we find more time to produce longer and in-depth articles. Last week our article about Red Hat layoffs was read about 150,000 times (perhaps making us new 'enemies') and this week we're still averaging at over 100MB in Apache logs per day. We don't keep logs for longer than 4 weeks (they get shredded) and we rarely look into statistics because it's generally considered a waste of valuable time that could instead be invested in work on further articles.

"Last week our article about Red Hat layoffs was read about 150,000 times..."This morning I decided to look at the past 6 days' log, sorting requests by target page and frequency (or hits).

Top requests these past 6 days (omitting everything that is not a new blog post and not counting indirect impressions like RSS feeds, front page, wiki pages, category pages etc.):

• 13) 12702 /2020/08/10/rick-allen-jones-anomaly/ (the number 13 means it's the 13^th most requested page, preceded by requests for RSS feeds and other objects; the number 12702 is the number of requests in the past 6 days)
• 25) 4793 /2020/08/09/aws-fedoraproject/
• 27) 3738 /2020/08/09/userlibre-book-closing/
• 28) 3692 /2020/08/08/rebuilding-communities/
• 30) 3594 /2020/08/08/fud-not-a-microsoft-thing/
• 31) 3509 /2020/08/09/different-circumstances/
• 32) 3484 /2020/08/09/gnu-bsd/
• 33) 3478 /2020/08/08/the-computer-anybody-can-edit/
• 34) 3477 /2020/08/08/crime-the-new-normal/
• 37) 3388 /2020/08/08/for-the-want-of-a-pixel/
• 38) 3365 /2020/08/08/blackmailed-by-microsoft-some-tweets-on-mary-jo-foley/
• 39) 3317 /2020/08/08/fsf-github/
• 40) 3242 /2020/08/08/irc-log-070820/
• 43) 3222 /2020/08/08/not-against-microsoft/
• 46) 3155 /2020/08/09/irc-log-080820/
• 52) 3096 /2020/08/09/interview-with-richard-stallman/
• 54) 3068 /2020/08/08/ibm-severance-package/
• 55) 3061 /2020/08/09/silencing-founders/
• 56) 3056 /2020/08/09/education-and-free-software/
• 57) 3008 /2020/08/10/irc-log-090820/
• 58) 2972 /2020/08/09/features-harmful/
• 59) 2962 /2020/08/10/mx-linux-rc/
• 61) 2900 /2020/08/08/the-thrive-guidelines/
• 62) 2821 /2020/08/13/endless-os-3-8-5/
• 63) 2807 /2020/08/08/ibm-white-power/
• 64) 2787 /2020/08/09/freger-abc-news-faa/
• 65) 2779 /2020/08/09/demise-of-news-sites/
• 66) 2759 /2020/08/07/serving-the-rival/
• 67) 2755 /2020/08/11/real-story-of-microsoft/
• 68) 2735 /2020/08/13/canonical-is-boosting-microsofts-proprietary-software-with-extensive-surveillance/
• 69) 2713 /2020/08/13/harfbuzz-microsoft/
• 70) 2694 /2020/08/10/finnix-121/
• 71) 2632 /2020/08/11/mit-emails/
• 72) 2623 /2020/08/11/epo-swimming-with-sharks/
• 73) 2599 /2020/08/11/the-crazy-card/
• 74) 2599 /2020/08/11/infographic-by-marcia-wilbur/
• 75) 2587 /2020/08/11/gxml-0-20/
• 76) 2547 /2020/08/09/new-slow-and-broken-pc/
• 77) 2543 /2020/08/11/history-cycles/
• 78) 2531 /2020/08/11/europe-deserves-better-than-epo/
• 79) 2523 /2020/08/11/ibm-antitrust-resources/
• 80) 2521 /2020/08/12/twitter-jumped-the-shark/
• 81) 2484 /2020/08/11/linked-in-to-pedophilia/
• 82) 2482 /2020/08/11/gates-mit-letter/
• 83) 2482 /2020/08/08/mageia-8-hits-beta/
• 84) 2466 /2020/08/13/days-of-iis-likely-numbered/
• 85) 2446 /2020/08/13/control-of-everything/
• 86) 2436 /2020/08/13/rick-allen-jones-arrest/
• 87) 2422 /2020/08/13/red-hat-on-red-hat/
• 88) 2403 /2020/08/13/ncmec-db/
• 89) 2400 /2020/08/14/distracting-back-doors/
• 91) 2352 /2020/08/14/distrotube-gnu/
• 92) 2338 /2020/04/20/rick-allen-jones-finer-details/
• 93) 2289 /2020/08/13/stonewalling-suppression-big-stories/
• 94) 2287 /2020/08/11/whistleblower-aid-gates-mit-epstein/
• 95) 2275 /2020/08/02/red-hat-layoffs/

So among the 57 top requests all exceed 3,000 unique requests, which is more than we got in the more distant past. The reason we don't receive many comments is that we have an IRC channel (or four), most comments are posted in social control media (unfortunately), and one needs to go through a registration process to leave a comment. We don't think comments are so important anyway and many news sites removed commenting altogether because they considered these unwanted (for various different reasons). ⬆