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You may have already seen the Quick News link or noticed the change on the top navigation bar. I consolidated the working links on index.php (front page), the Toolbox, and the previous version of major.php (Indices). There were some bad links that were not ported over, but will be added if/when they are functional again. If anyone knows of a missing link (other than the Wackos), or notices a bad one, please let me know.
Over the last few years, the Blogshares index has grown, to proportions we wouldn't have expected those few years ago, back when we were at under a million, and C's goal was 5 million blogs. Here's what our growth looks like over the last two years (click for larger version):
In a few places, one of them very recently, more blogs were removed than added, from a combination of a short time where we purposefully didn't add new blogs, and a cleaning of the index to remove the splog filth. You'll notice a stronger rise over the last year, we can attribute this to the rise of MSN Spaces more than any other service.
A Believable Index
I cannot but help take issue at times with sites that make bold claims about tracking 30,000,000+ blogs. There's two problems I see to this. One, that I'm sure a large proportion of those blogs haven't posted in months, abandoned like my own personal blog becomes at times, and two, that the count is skewed by splogs. Big numbers sure look cool though, dont they!
Our own index is much smaller by comparison to some sites out there, a mere 8 million. Why, you ask? One reason I'll humbly admit is we aren't actively adding LiveJournal blogs to the system. Why not!? Because the last time we tried, the flood was so huge we couldn't keep up, and until we get a new DB box, we still can't keep up. Hopefully this will soon change, the future is looking better, and at this rate, without any VC funding, we'll be a lot bigger and better. Y'know that RSS parsing and stuff some blog tracking sites can do? We can do it too, it's just turned off until we have better hardware.
Theres a better reason our index isn't as big as other sites, and thats splogs and dogs.. uhh, dead blogs. Over two years ago we set up a blacklist to stop spam blogs (and sites whos owners did not wish them in the game) being re-added. Over the months new features were added, to classify entries, regexes, the works. It currently contains over 1,500,000 entries, and 70% of new blogs are rejected as a result. We purposefully remove blogs that haven't posted in several months from the index, we aim to be up-to-date, not all-encompassing. True, just because they've stopped posting doesn't mean they dont still contain valuable information, but we still have that list. :)
So, thats a little bit about our index. I should finish up by noting that while those 'other sites' counts may be skewed by splogs, that doesn't mean they arent also fighting them too, and good luck to them 'keeping the crap out'.
Forum Changes:
A significant change is taking place in forum rules and moderation. Please be sure to read all the details here.
Player Roles:
As some of you may already know, Mad Trollie is stepping down after a long tenure on the BSEC to concentrate on his role as Forum Moderator. It seemed only fitting that the resume Trollie has amassed over the years here be rewarded with a place among the BlogShares Elite. Only five players hold this title, and there is little doubt that Trollie has surpassed any requirements for being included. Congratulations, and many, many thanks Mad Trollie!
To replace him on the BSEC, an old friend and player who has worn many hats has returned to fill the vacancy. Just James formerly served on the BSEC, and brings years of experience and fair justice to his post. Thank you James!
Nick has recently been elected to the Chairman's role on the GIC, and with the group members, including the newest GICer AdamF, has been diving headlong into the new Idea Math proposal. We look forward to many great things to come from Nick, Adam, and the GIC volunteers. On the Index Management front, stranger has joined the ranks of the IM, and is already well into her index work. Congratulations Nick, Adam, and stranger!
Raffle!
Yes, finally, another raffle. This time, we're giving away one premium block of pixels (valued at $30) and eight smaller blocks (each valued at $10). You can buy tickets here for the raffle which will be drawn on July 1, 2006. Speaking of Pixels, be sure to check out this Mission from RUSerious!
As part of an ongoing effort to improve the way that the game is governed, we have made a significant change to the game's rule structure. As of today the forums are no longer under the oversight of the BSEC. This was done to allow the BSEC to concentrate solely on game issues, their original intended purpose, and to keep the forums more seperate from the game itself, much like the IRC chat room. There is a new ruleset for the forums, which will be enforced by forum moderators. These moderators will have oversight over nearly all of the "community" boards, including the BSEC Gallery, which will be moved out of the BSEC section. However, the Index Managers and BSEC Members will still moderate their own specific sections. We hope this will improve the quality of the forums for all users, and the new rules should clear up previous confusion over what is, and is not, acceptable in the forums.
Tomorrow, Saturday the 17th, the webserver will go down for an indefinate period of time to perform major software upgrades for security and server efficiency issues. The exact time of the maintenance is not yet known, as is the length of time it will take. Please come to IRC (irc.wyldryde.org / #blogshares) during the day for updates as they are available. We will endevor to have the site back as quickly as possible, but as you may know, major upgrades and updates can take some time to complete. Thanks for your patience.
I added code today to check for a delistable status code before actually performing a delist. Currently, IMs and Admin can set or unset the protection status. We may open this ability up to other groups in the near future as well. All claimed blogs were set to 'Protected' just a bit ago, so they shouldn't get caught accidently in spam sweeps or a 'revenge' error report. MrPilot set the current Top100 blogs to protected, and IMs have been encouraged to protect blogs that they come across that are active.
Late last night, finally, we were able to complete the changes to the MSN Spaces URL structure. When you have to modify 8.8 million rows (one row in the blogs table, and another in a special lookup table), it takes a long time - three days to be exact. But thanks to heroic efforts by Rob and Dave, we were able to get it finished. There will most likely be some changes to the spider code soon so that links to the old style URLs will be counted, thus we won't have to add 4.4 million new entries to the alternative URL table to cover them. Thanks to everyone for all your patience during this time, hopefully we won't have to do it again!