There is no controversy regarding the Daily Kos visit count. Patrick Ruffini is misunderstanding the difference between what SiteMeter shows you on a summary page, and what is counted as a visit or a hit. SiteMeter is not inflating DKos’ site stats. In all probability, SiteMeter is undercounting DKos traffic, as it does with everyone. Let’s take Ruffini’s primary “gotcha” moment:

Then it hit me: SiteMeter only accounts for the last 100 visitors individually. On a site like Daily Kos, the 100th most recent visitor could have been 15 seconds ago. If you are the 101st most recent visitor and you click on a new page, you are counted as a new unique visitor in SiteMeter’s all important count. On a normal site, this wouldn’t matter, since it’s highly unlikely you’ll stick around long enough to have 100 others show up after you. On a site with hundreds of thousands of page views a day, it’s extremely likely you will.

Um, no. That’s not how it works.:

When you are browsing a site, every time you follow a link, it is treated as a single “page view”. Site Meter defines a “visit” as a series of page views by one person with no more than 30 minutes in between page views.

You are counted by IP address, not by virtue of being on the SiteMeter “last 100 visits” page. If I go to DKos and read a post, click on the message thread, spend the next 40 minutes reading the messages, and then click on the main page again, that counts as a single visit. Ruffini wrongly thinks that a second click is counted as another unique visit. It is not. SiteMeter counts a second click as another page view, but page views are entirely different statistics from visits.

Another error in his thinking is that SiteMeter “only” counts the last 100 visitors. No, it counts them all. (Well, except for the ones it misses, which is another complaint about SiteMeter.) It only shows the last 100 visitors, and only in the default free view. When you become visitor 101, you are still tracked as if you were visitor number 15 on that block of visitors that Patrick saw on his screen. But you are no longer seen on the “Last 100 Visitors” screen. And you are just as active on SiteMeter’s radar as you were when you could see your IP address in the Visitor 15 Slot.

On Patrick’s second point, that the clickthrough rate isn’t as high as Andrew Sullivan’s, well, that’s due to a number of factors, and it’s a common problem even with high-traffic sites. I know that I have a high clickthrough rate, even though my blog isn’t a very high traffic blog, because my readers tend to be longstanding readers with similar tastes in reading materials. They also trust my opinions. Linkfests used to be a staple of this blog, and still are, in respect to Haveil Havalim.

People don’t go to DKos for linkage. They go to DKos to read what’s there. Glenn Reynolds entire site is about clickthrough. People read Instapundit because they want to find other bloggers or information that Glenn provides. High traffic doesn’t guarantee high clickthrough rates. I’m not surprised that most people did not click through to Patrick’s blog. The DKos readers do not like conservatives. They do not like Republicans. Of course they’re not going to click through.

The content of the link also makes a difference. My highest-traffic links from Glenn all had to do with sex. The Comic Book Superhero Dating Ratings? Through the roof. I think I got nearly 10k hits from Glenn, whereas an ordinary Instalink generated about half that number. If Patrick wants to see DKos clickthroughs in high numbers, he needs to post that he’s given up being a conservative Republican and has joined the ObamaWagon, or some such thing. Or maybe something to do with sex and Democrats.

Lastly, Patrick tries to extrapolate DKos traffic via some arcane formula he invents regarding page views and stats of similar blogs. Ah, no. Bad move. That’s like trying to calculate the traffic on the NJ Turnpike based on the traffic on I-95 in northern VA and the Long Island Expressway. Now he’s just reaching, and looking really silly while he does it.

In short, there are many reasons to criticize Daily Kos. But blaming SiteMeter for inflating DKos visits and pageviews? No. That’s just a case of Patrick not really understanding SiteMeter and server logs. I don’t have the best grasp of them either—it’s been a long time since I read the raw server logs and decoded them for my boss at Lucent—but I do know enough to know that Patrick is way off base on this one.

Jay has made some changes that should fix the comments problem. As a result, I’ve reinstated the quicktag plugin that allows you to format your comments, as well as the comments preview. Please let me know if you have problems, and mention which browser you use as well.

For a change, he isn’t yelling at Jews.

Former President Carter got in a shouting match Wednesday with Sudanese security officials who blocked him from a town in Darfur where he was trying to meet representatives of ethnic African refugees from the ongoing conflict.

The 83-year-old Carter walked into this highly volatile pro-Sudanese government town to meet refugees too frightened to attend a scheduled meeting at a nearby compound.

Carter was able to make it to a school where he met with one tribal representative and was preparing to go further into the town when Sudanese security services interrupted.

“You can’t go. It’s not on the program!” the local security chief, who only gave his first name as Omar, yelled at Carter, who is in Darfur as part of a delegation of respected international figures known as “The Elders.”

“We’re going to anyway!” an angry Carter retorted, telling security officers they didn’t have the authority to stop him.

Give credit where it’s due. It’s a good thing he bulldozed over the Sudanese. Finally, he’s found a country where he’s on the right side of the issue. He did, however, resort to useless tattling.

As a growing crowd gathered around the former president, Carter’s U.S. security detail and his African Union escort tried to ease tensions. Carter later agreed to a compromise in which tribal representatives would be brought to him at another location later in the day.

“I’ll tell President Bashir about this,” Carter said, referring to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

Yeah, that would be the same man who has stonewalled all attempts by the UN to stop the massacres. Good move there, Jimmy.

The visit by “The Elders,” which is headed by Carter and Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu, is largely a symbolic move by a host of respected figures to push all sides to make peace.

While Tutu led a group to the Otash refugee camp in south Darfur, the U.N. mission in Sudan deemed it too dangerous for Carter to visit a refugee camp.

The former U.S. president instead flew to a World Food Program compound in Kabkabiya, where he was supposed to meet with local community members including some ethnic African refugees, many of whom were chased from their homes by pro-government janjaweed and Sudanese government forces.

It isn’t the refugees they’re worried about. It would be the janjaweed, which the government pretends it can’t control. The populace is completely under their control.

Some ethnic Africans were among those in the crowd that gathered around Carter during the shouting match, but they were too afraid to speak out. Billionaire businessman Richard Branson, who was traveling with Carter, said several had slipped written notes into his pocket to express their feelings to Carter.

The UN Human Rights Council spends most of its time condemning Israel, and ignoring Sudan. But then, the world just ignored a massacre of immense proportions in Burma/Myanmar. It simply boggles my mind that they are unable to muster outrage for thousands of murdered Buddhist monks and nuns, and hundreds of thousands of murdered Sudanese, but the world will united to condemn Israel over a handful of civilian deaths due to a response to terror strikes.

If only the world would get as angry about true atrocities, things like Sudan and Myanmar wouldn’t happen.

darfur, myanmar, israel

Jackie Mason has jumped on the “Candidate X Girl” YouTube bandwagon.

He says: Vote Republican, or he’ll take off all his clothes.

It’s hilarious. Spit-monitor warning, and oh yeah, not safe for work. (They’ll think you’re nuts for watching it.)

Via Hot Air.

Hey, the open terrorists are talking to the ones pretending not to be terrorists. What a great deal for Israel!

Fatah and Hamas have agreed in principle to launch a secret dialogue in Cairo, the London-based Arabic-language newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat reported Wednesday.

According to the report, a Palestinian source told the newspaper that Egypt’s efforts to mediate between the two movements have succeeded and have yielded an agreement in principle to hold secret talks in Cairo.

And as always, the Palestinians say one thing to the West, and another to the Arab/Muslim world:

Last weekend, Abbas said in an interview with Newsweek that he was against Hamas and now identifies with the American stance. He also said that he would not reunite in a government with Hamas under any circumstances “because it was a very bad experience.”

Asked about his conditions for talks with Hamas, Abbas replied that the two groups would talk only after the situation in the Gaza Strip returns to its original state.

According to the Palestinian source who spoke to al-Sharq al-Awsat, however, Abbas informed Egyptian Intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who is in charge of the mediation efforts, of his agreement in principle to launch a secret dialogue with Hamas representatives.

The source added that Azzam al-Ahmad, head of the Fatah faction in the Palestinian parliament, will head the movement’s delegation to the talks, although a date for the start of the dialogue has yet to be set.

So, is this because Hamas suddenly realized that Fatah is about to get major concessions from Israel in the latest peace agreement, and they want in on the peace?

Of course not. They want another Trojan camel to hide inside while they plot the destruction of Israel. We’re about to get another version of “We will never recognize Israel” from Hamas, followed by assurances from Fatah that Hamas will, indeed, come around, followed by declarations from the world that the Palestinians want peace, and Israel should give them everything they want, including the return of the refugees and the 1949 Armistice Lines pre-1967 borders.

It’s a lose-lose proposition for Israel. Our only hope is that Hamas and Fatah still can’t get along, what with Hamas wanting a Taliban-like state and Fatah wanting to enjoy their sex and drugs and rock’n'roll.

According to the reports, Abbas’ former national security advisor Jibril Rajoub met with Muhammad Nazzal, a member of Hamas’ political bureau in a bid to solve the crisis, but the meeting failed to bring the movements closer.

The report said the two officials disagreed over the question which side should make the first move in order to make the dialogue succeed and express the sincerity of its intentions.

Ah. The sacred concept of honor in the Arab world. Sometimes, it works for us, not against us.