BarrySmith Suppressed angst (3/8/02 1:11:42 pm) Reply Community Supporter Re: Ethical dilemma -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Let me break it down for you guys. Gaspritz is full of gasshitz when he says he's the most popular cartoon site out there. All the evidence you need is in his eXTReme tracker on his page. Aside from getting search hits on 'funny' and 'pictures' he also has kewords like 'sex' in his metatags. But that is not the big deal. Did anyone go to look at who his top referrers are? Referrers 3 through 9 (and they make up about 20% of his numbers) are all http://64.4.??.250/cgi-bin/linkrd (the ?? are alternating numbers). Well clicking on any of those gets you a page that says, "There was an error displaying this link." Well then, lets check out what http://64.4.18.250/ (the top mystery referrer)is, shall we? Oh look, the Hotmail homepage. So it must be a hotmail account. Well hell, SOMEone must just love this site. Let's just see how much, shall we? The counter has been tracking since January 28 2002, and today is March 8 2002. About 40 days. Mr. http://64.4.18.250/ has hit the site 58,030 times since January 28th. That equals out to about 1450 times he has visited a day. From day one no less. Wow, now THAT is what I call a dedicated fan. And that is just ONE "dedicated fan". Gasprits has no less that 16 of these "dedicated fans" listed on the FIRST referrer page, making up 26% of his total hits. And what is this? A couple of http://us.f???.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter that give me the same kind of message as the "dedicated fan" links. Not to mention oh so many spider visits and search engine hits. Curiouser and curiouser. And there's more, but I'll leave that to you junior detectives. =) [edit]I don't doubt that the site gets a decent amount of traffic. 'Dead baby' and 'molesting priest' jokes are popular "check this @#%$ out!" word of mouth links. But not to the extent he protrays it. This is the biggest form of web whoring I have ever seen. All he needs to add are some 10x camera adds and 'hot nasty teen' webcams.[\edit] ------------------------- "Too much coffee makes my 'pickle water' smell funny." Barry T. Smith Cartoonist Angst Technology Edited by: BarrySmith at: 3/8/02 1:18:08 pm