Metastorm #1: If you'd asked me this time last year how I thought Daily Kos (or any media, actually) would react to a measles outbreak, even one with its epicenter at DisneyLand, I would have described a low-key matter-of-fact couple of articles that noted the situation and recommended making sure people's vaccinations were up to date.
Instead we had the messiest pie fight I've seen since the Roger killings in Isla Vista in May of 2014, with a similar influx of both long term lurkers and outside trolls, and almost as many people complaining that they were out of Hide Rates for a couple of days in a row. A quick Search on the word "vaccine" from 1/28 to 2/17 (usual caveats about Search inaccuracies) showed 249 diaries with over 17,000 comments. Who woulda thunk it?
Metastorm #2 began in January, just after the SOTU, when John Boehner invited Bibi Netanyahu to speak to Congress, but held back a bit until the vaccination fight began to slow down. Yes, there were a number of well written diaries in the first couple of weeks, but we've now seen a resurgence of the I/P (Israel/Palestine) fights, due both to that and the seeming resurgence of anti-Jewish/Israeli actions in and around Europe.
Every once in a while I'm tempted to start naming the various pie fights, in hurricane tradition. Then I think of the potential fights over which particular pie fight a comment falls into, and I back away from that possibility, not at all reluctantly.
February 24 - and now for something completely different: The Meta/Pie categories aren't just eroding, they're being squashed together and used to build meta-castles on the beach (in February? ehhhhh...). Did you ever imagine what it would look like if Israel/Palestine and roxxor/suxxor got together for a shindig? Or if there were duelling diaries over whether a situation was more racist, or more sexist? Alternate title: Purple Hair vs. Dreadlocks - the Battle of the Titans (better that than the Battle of the Titians, I guess).
In one corner, John Boehner and Bibi Netanyahu. Across from them, Barack Obama, and possibly Charlie Hebdo.... In the center, looking confused, a whole lot of regular battlers whose "sides" have gotten slightly messy lately. I'm getting almost used to seeing comments that start off "I never agree with this user, but..."
And while I'm on the subject of mixed pie (strawberry/rhubarb, anybody?) I should mention that, having found that one can't blame anti-vaxxers on the Right, or the Left, an attempt is being made to justify them with a Libertarian argument. I think. Maybe. And a diary on the intersectionality between the skin color of religious icons and racism has been productive of much of the same confusion. It's the Month of the Chimera. "It's good, though." (See the lyrics to Moose Turd Pie for that particular duck and cover phrase...)
February statistics and odd ruminations:
Another caveat to add about Search: Just under 5% of my comments in the last six months simply don't show up when I do a full Search vs. counting from my Comments page. I'm still going to make the assumption that the overall figures I get are at least fairly representative from month to month, though any percentages probably are slightly off.
Quantcast Monthly Uniques: 9,783,594, up 62% from 6,046,426 a year ago.
Pageviews: 44,095,940, up 25% from 35,187,108 a year ago.
There were 221,068 comments by 9,657 users, and 4,169 diaries by 1,326 users in the period between 2/1/15 and 2/28/15. 202 of those users were banned during the period.
Over the last year, 28,798 users commented at least once. Last August, the equivalent number was 28,339 (see http://www.dailykos.com/...). Internally, it looks as like real, steady, but not spectacular growth for the site.
From the Hidden Comments pages: 449 comments hidden, or .20%, including 60 spam diaries and 15 spam comments, leaving 389 non-spam hidden comments. From a fast look, a majority of the hidden comments, or close to it, were from anti-vaxxers. (Sorry, but I didn't count 'em - you'll have to either take my guess or count them yourself.)
From Comment Search:
629 comments got 1 or more HRs. - .28%
64 got only 1 HR, leaving 565 with 2 or more HRs. - .26%
Oops - make that 164 - sorry about that , leaving 465 with 2 or more HRs - .21%.
107 of those comments were not hidden because of uprates, leaving 358 comments hidden - .16%
*February Shivers https://www.youtube.com/...