A TOD Community Update
Posted by Prof. Goose on September 4, 2007 - 9:33pm
I wanted to give you an update on TOD and the community this evening.
Some time in the next couple of days, The Oil Drum will surpass 6.5 million unique visits and 16.3 million page views since our inception a little less than two and a half years ago.
But the big occasion that prompts this update (Yes, I actually skipped the last couple of milestones...) is that the TOD Mothership just had its first month with 1 million page views; we also had our best month ever unique visit-wise (around 430k unique visits). (Those stats can be found here and here.) We also averaged 3200 feed downloads from our RSS link each day (those don't count in our traffic stats). That's a lot of traffic, and we are humbled by its magnitude.
And it's not the same people coming every day either. According to Google analytics, we had around 129,000 unique IP addresses just over that month. (That's better than some really really crappy cable channels, if I am not mistaken--but it should be noted that with NAT/firewalls, etc., it's hard to tell what that number really means.) The average visit to TOD is around six minutes (which might be a reason that The Economist bought an ad with us, eh? *laugh*).
Even more importantly, TOD:Europe and TOD:Canada are growing at even higher rates than the mothership. (Those folks deserve some serious applause, they've been doing amazing work building their sites and putting together content in the TOD tradition; well done!)
Many other thank yous are in order. First, a big thank you to energybulletin.net, peakoil.com, and many of the other sites that link to our contributors' hard work.
At the end of the day, this site is the many people who make this amazing group of people function; that includes you, the reader and participant.
More assorted facts and thoughts about the future under the fold.
Some other facts:
On technorati, we are ranked around 1800, which is well ahead of our goal for reaching #2000 by the end of the summer. (We need more sites to link to us, damn it!).
The Mothership's 3 month Alexa (www.alexa.com if you want the browser add-on; however, while your getting it might help us in their rankings, keep in mind that it does track your traffic!) ranking is under 75000 for the first time; that's the highest it's ever been. (In that ranking, remember that we're competing with ALL websites, not just blogs, so it is a very volatile measure. That puts us against Drudge, corporate sites, porn sites, etc., etc.)
Some things we are thinking about:
1. As we have already talked about, we are planning to transition TOD:NYC into TOD:Local. Glenn will remain in the editorship, but we've decided that we needed more positive stories including more green ideas and coverage, so we will be encouraging localized submissions and stories on that site.
2. We are thinking about putting together an Australia/New Zealand section of The Oil Drum in the same format as that of TOD:E, TOD:C, and TOD:L.
3. The final lesson from all of this is that we are growing like a weed. There are going to be growing pains, and we will do all that we can to manage those pains. That being said, you all have worked very hard to get to this point, and it is very humbling to see where we have come as a community.
And now I'll post some of the same sentiments I posted after our 4 million benchmark. They mean just as much now as they did then.
The Oil Drum is a team that works to bring you a good product every day, to raise the bar on the discourse on the myriad topics that we cover here; and we will not lie, it is a difficult enterprise. These people might make it look easy, but it is a difficult and time-consuming endeavor doing what we do, but we do it because we all passionately know that it is important: we all must strive to promote more informed discourse about, and understanding of, the future of our energy supply.
The Oil Drum is a wonderful place, filled with passion, ideas and tensions (and theories and data); those ideas and tensions all get sorted out, and they always will--but sometimes it takes a while, sometimes it requires taking a breath and saying to yourself, "am I actually contributing by typing this response?" (Don't forget our new reader guidelines that can be found here.)
That being said, I think we all have witnessed the change in the level of discourse that has occurred since steps were taken. It is important to remember, however, that in a community like this, it is truly up to ALL of us in this community to maintain that level of discourse, to be civil to each other, and to otherwise enjoy the experience of learning from each other, even when we disagree fundamentally.
As we continue to grow there will be more challenges and even more rewarding conversations.
The people who work and write here deserve much more laud than they receive, and I have to say it is a beautiful thing watching these people accomplish what they accomplish--all with no payment other than the currency of doing what they believe is important.
We all learn from, and give to, this site every day, and it is my hope that we continue to improve while maintaining the high standards of discourse and evidence that TOD is known for.
So, thank you dear readers for being here, and thank you for being a part of what we do here: improving on the silence.
So, thank you TOD community, you make this worth doing. Thank you for helping us facilitate the conversations that need to occur on these important topics of our day.
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
A standing Ovation, Hats Off to Prof.Goose and all the great contributers that post here.
Special Tip of the Hat to Leanan for the daily Drumbeat. And to Stoneleigh for the TODCanada's Drumbeat.
The Highest Quality on the whole on the entire subject of Peak Oil and Resource Depletion.
Thank you Posters for self-monitoring the dialogue and while keeping the content fresh.
Thanks, but hey, I just herd the cats and post every once in a while.
The other people on this team's roster deserve a lot more kudos than I do.
Three cheers to The Oil Drum! Like many people I was "turned on" by www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net in 2005, but it took only a few days to digest all of it, and a week or so to digest all its links.
At the time, there was no place to go for a daily fix of reality. The runningonempty2 group on groups.yahoo.com was more chummy, with tighter consensus re: crash in our lifetimes. More of a permaculture/anticonsumerist bent. Still a great place to go.
www.energybulletin.net is more technical - too technical for me to keep coming back.
Once LATOC got forums, I tried to hang out there, but it felt like a sausagefest of gun-hoarding doomer goldbugs. I can take it in small doses, but I can't visit every day.
After two years, only www.theoildrum.com is broad enough to attract all the people I agree with, and many of those I don't, without alienating big chunks of people along the way.
Special thanks to Leanan for not deleting all my posts, Prof. Goose for discretion, and westexas for calmly reminding us of net exports.
Bryan
Thanks!
Although I don't think the term "sausagefest" is accurate at least in comparion to other PO sites. We've got a pretty good ratio of men to women, with 2 female mods and several female members who post quite a bit.
JurisDoctorOfDoom,
You are right, and you are too gracious. Before www.theoildrum.com, the evil was there waiting. www.dieoff.org told the story, but only www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net sold it.
When Roscoe Bartlett gave presentations to Congress about peak oil, he linked to www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net first. Whenever I tell anyone about it, I send a link to www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net first.
Nobody else sells the problem hard enough to get it past the immune system.
Three cheers to www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net !
Not meaning to steal TOD's thunder but LATOC's Breaking News page along with the Drumbeat offer news coverage you can't get elsewhere.
Daily reading for me.
Thanks all.
Spaceman,
Agree. LATOC does great job of capturing pertinent articles. Have sent many to Matt's thorough and well presented primer on peak oil.
Oil Drum and LAOTC: all the news you need, when you need it.
It truly is a great forum. Ideas have merit. Judgement is scientifically based with physics and peered resolve and thus avoiding fabrication of dimwit economized outlooks whenever possible, and thus should be deemed positively incognizant under the script of fiat petrol-$oillarium....Not that that is entirely possible.
One needs to understand the concept of thee greatest ludic fallacy which prescribes thee unquestioned "do gooders" in this world with a unwritten clause of blank fiat check writing abilities---and, thus, are working unto/under/beneath the FedCentral majik with such lax artificial fiat effort supporting that greatness with nothing but that faith based greenly dipicted dead presiDante'ase of debtly induced pixels of fakery printed on every escaped note of delusioned guidelines.... whewy....To which I say... shit, or get off the pot.... or atleast read something worthwhile in the excremental process.
People have a hard time defining progress. People have a difficult time defining economics and money and currency.
People have an even harder time of making a connection with said placed currency and the energy to withstain it.
Oil or gold are not about sustainment... OIl is about cheap energy and unprecedented growth built because of it. Au was once about backing of that same un-fiat energy with a stored reality--- In all probabilities, a simple hoe would be a better example in the longer run of 451 burning paper....BUT, BUT, BUT, the cheap easy oil equation of the last 100 years flowed rather freely and only displaced thee medium of backed money with itself in that short time frame. Oh c'mon it cant be so, after all we pay for everything with great somethings that have worth. The final vestiages of the Au standard of currency was displaced in the same year that oil extraction peaked in the USA. Real money and bullshit progress without a real energy global stanglehold in a time of thee latest wardumbery closure.....lololol, very ironic.
Debt instigates a non accountable frame of collective societal mindless brainwashing....Watch it being played out today. Why? What is behind it? Who says so? Reality is going to get more real when our currency is overtly rendered more fake unto time. (time = money or monetarized in reverse)
Some will say no. We can always just push the fiat blame elsewhere, it is a globalized casino of sumthin' fer nuthin' now........
Ah, lest we continue to wander down the advocates road of desguise in this world of depleted resources, (which is of course the real money) then I would very warmly suggest that we should begin to disregard the fakery of infinite fiat deliverence chasing infintely more useless digi-fabricated E-bytes until that great wonder solves this tiny upcoming energy mishap.
I do not have a doomer bone in my body. This nation is increasingly ingrained and taken over with governmental handouts and thus the programmed fiat easy come/go excuses. This nation is blinded by fiat and expects that same "fiat" to think past problems for them. Hey, wake up... fiat is the problem... our unconstitutional illegal private money laundering institute is surely fighting that nasty inflation on our dear behalf...and surely it can more than make up for any upcoming crisis ahead. More elixer, more crack to the addict.
There is no such thing as a collective society without cheap easy unbacked currency willing the complacency of the dumbed down minds to accept it. A real likeminded collectiveness is made up of individual minds under a sound currency of stored value.
Great promoters against this truth usually are doing something with the inflated worth of what they are paid in...What are they paid with again? And who benefits from that agenda?
The vortex keeps sucking until all are happily subsidized with/under governmental FIAT godlike reliance, or, we somehow wake from the distopiated slumber and administer a very large well placed boot in said politcal piehole. (fat chance when the teat looms so dearly near) Collectively speaking, they are still playing us like a well trained muted fiddle.
Me thinks there is going to be many career politico's out of a job in the next 5 years. Mr. Obvious has a brutal way of handling premeditated lies once the fiat pocketbook rings up overdrawn with no easy fiat credit to erase the nothingness of more easy fiat credit.
Ok, am done with ruffled rant :o)
Great website. I have been a visitor for a bit over a year now and I recommend TOD and Robert Rapiers blog to all energy minded people. I am located in Melbourne, Australia and would be delighted to see a local TOD.
One minor observation. There used to be a button on the right column that gave link to the latest oil prices. I think there was a graph or something as well. This seems to have vanished. Can we bring back some sort of energy prices info source?
The Yahoo charts we used to use froze up on us...we'll be bringing them back in due course.
In fact, they're still stuck on August 10th!
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=CLV07.NYM
We have already emailed yahoo and they said they're fixing it, but we would be willing to discuss other alternatives (though chart size is an important factor--most of them are too big for our right sidebar.)
Could you get the chart from 321energy? It's more of a daily chart than weekly, but it looks nice.
too big, and it shrinks badly. :(
Yahoo seems to be upgrading its entire Finance section. Strange how long the Futures site has been down though.
There are articles here on the regular but its the Drum Beat that draws me in ... congrats on the standings ... and the Economist ad. But isn't that backwards? The Economist should be hiring TOD for fact checking services or something.
In addition to purchasing ad-space, The Economist recently made a major concession to The Oil Drum.
On page 27 of their recent report, Heading for the Rocks they write:
They have completely given up on $10 oil, and now are even ruling out $20 oil. They're coming around!
;-)
http://a330.g.akamai.net/7/330/25828/20070831144222/graphics.eiu.com/upl...
Firstly
- Congrats to TOD, keep up the good work (!), Both your key-posts and those never-ending drumbeats - are fuel for brains ..
Secondly
- Asebius :-) ... :-)
Let me add my sincere thanks to everyone at theoildrum.com for their respective contributions to this community and to the forum participants for making their voices heard as well. Congratulations and keep up the good work!
Cheers,
Paul
and i also, must add my sincere thanks to all of you. I am new to the oil drum and peak oil, but now read the posts here every day. The most impressive thing to me is that there is much debate, sometimes heated, but in the end, all posters have acomplished their goal; the spread of information about peak oil and energy.
I have the solution to this entire problem:
"Stop driving" ;-))
best regards to all,
Phillip down in Austin Texas ("Hippie town")
I'm from up in Lago Vista, and thought about starting up an Austin or Texas Oil Drum, but since I'm going to school in Pasadena, CA, I don't really have as much time or exposure to do it a good service. I think that's where TOD:Local would probably be a better idea. Although, I wonder how many Central Texans frequent this site...
The president of ASPO-USA lives in Austin. Check out the Energy Bulletin website, but come to the ASPO conference October 17-20th in Houston Bob Ebersole
I'm in San Antonio, where the words "Peak Oil" are never spoken, at least in the MSM...
In two weeks I'll celebrate my 2 year anniversary as a member of the TOD community. It is truly amazing what this place (yes, it's more than just a "site") has done to raise the bar in the dialogue about our shared energy future. There are few web sites I check everyday, but this is one of them. Honestly, I think I get as much comfort from simply seeing that the conversation continues anew with the dawn of each day as I do from the high quality of the posts that shed light on our approaching energy bottleneck.
My sincerest thanks to the entire TOD team and all you fellow members for helping the world wide web reach its potential as a democratic and valuable tool for sharing information to better understand this world and act accordingly. May the peak bring the "creative destruction" this socio-ecological system needs and serve as a threshold for the next phase of the human enterprise!
Persevere!
Day doesn't go by I don't check The Oil Drum.
Always the latest information, always cutting edge education, always engaging commentary, always the best damn site on internet.
Persistently consistent. Huzzahs all.
The Oil Drum is building a new community. This is real hope for the reasonable people of the world who believe that energy is good, but moderation and restraint and logic must be employed in its production and use.
Those who believe that Jesus will come and the Apocalypse will cleanse the world without any effort on the part of the people who live here can never be part of any real effort to build something meaningful -- they just exist in a fantasy world that must be ignored if possible, but countered where it intersects with the world of sensible people. We must at least stop the plan to bomb Iran.
Congratulations are in order for all the TOD developers. Human intelligence may well be good for something other than justifying irrational belief.
Professor G et al,
Congrats and thank you! I've been in and around the oil and gas business all my life, yet I learn something new every time I come here.There is an unbelievable network of people on TOD, thanks to all.
I want to particularly thank Leanan. She edits Drumbeat 7 days a week, and I'd guess that thats full time days, of at least 8 hours in a very thorough and thoughtful manner without pay.
The readership statistics show we have a lot of visitors from India and East Asia. In the US we don't get enough news of other parts of the world. I wish some of you would feel confident enough to ask questions and tell us of attitudes amoung other countries in the world. I already subscribe to the Economist magazine, not because I agree with them even most of the time but becauseI want to know how other countries and cultures view us, and the Economist has a European worldview, even if its just the mainstream Englis capitalist world. The only way we will ever learn about each other is if we communicate. So please, share some. Bob Ebersole
I have been visiting TOD for at least two years now. I am in my mid-twenties; half way through grad school. I know things look pretty desperate for my generation, but because TOD has the guts, persistence, and caliber to look the future in the face people my age can become informed. Everyone of my fellow Earth Science grad-students are peak aware. Some of us frequent this site and a few of us are planning careers in energy and sustainability specifically to do what we can to mitigate the horrors of what will come to be my generation's (and subsequent ones for that matter) calling. Thank you for providing this resource.
Youngblood,
First, being in your mid-20s and half-way thru grad school, I envy your opportunity for front-row seats to the future. I recommend a broad survey of energy; this site and others. My guess, is that things are not as rosey as they might be as represented on Wall Street. For what's it worth, homework is required.
If that was really the case, you'd have signed up for a job with KBR or Blackwater or Triple Canopy or whoever and have gone off to Iraq or Nigeria by now.
Or, if you're a bit more of a humanitarian, maybe you'd be working in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans or one of the gang infested hell holes in the Los Angeles or Detroit areas. Maybe you'd be down working with the South Central farmers who got evicted from their urban farm.
Point being the present and future are actually horror shows. If you really want a front row seat to what is happening, it means you're not paying attention.
Of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps you're posting from one of these places or somewhere similar. But I sort of doubt it. . .
Actually, Matt, you are wrong. But rant away anyhow. From what I've read or seen of you, you seem like a fun, intelligent guy. Sorry to see you whiffing about here.
I stand by my comments upthread. If you'd like to take this further, simply respond, and we can go at it.
I'm always up for a bit of intellectual caged combat.
But like I said in the post "I could be wrong." In most cases, not all, people who say they want front row seats to the horror show only say that till they realize what the horror show really comprises of.
So, it is not only the present and future that are or will be a so-called horror show, it was also always the past.
Human suffering, misery, and cruel death is, was, and will likely be always a part of life. I'd like that seemingly self-evident fact to be different. Call me crazy. Therefore, I've invested my time, money and future career direction to get people off FFs. Who knows, maybe someone in thier 20s or still in school will take the baton, as I did from others.
You want to argue your perceived horror show is like nothing seen before. Get a grip. Meet the new horror, same as the old horror. But slog away.
BTW, an intelligent discourse after ranting about my unknowable-to-you charitable efforts is higly unlikely.
As horrible as things were on the way up from 1.5 billon to 6.5 billion, I suspect they will be a whole lot worse on the way down.
As an example: life in Iraq really sucked under Saddam during the 1980s and 1990s. But it sucks even more now that the Peak Oil wars have started.
The old horror show didn't include the unleashing of massive amounts of toxic waste, the plasticization of the oceans, genetically modified crops, or 20,000 nuclear weapons.
If you want a front seat, maybe you should consider a preview of coming attractions:
Channel 4 Documentary on Death Squads in Iraq: (Your tax dollars at work)
http://tinyurl.com/2tsuky
BBC Documentary on Life after Nuclear War:
http://tinyurl.com/2ll6q2
If you truly envy a front row seat to this sort of stuff, more power to you. I hope to avoid having to experience these horrors first hand.
"I hope to avoid having to experience these horrors first hand"
Great. How ya gonna do that? Will something you do change future events - the horror to be? I know you won't simply close your eyes, so what then?
Will watch documentaries later tonight.
Cult in the woods.
Ah yes the Cults 'R Us Jim Jones David Koresh thing. Where I come from that usually means let's drop it.
I'm okay with that. As I said, you have appeared to be a fun, intelligent guy. I could have also added that LATOC has done much good. But hell I wasn't feeling very generous.
When you do get to the Kool Aid part, just give a brief nod to the schmucks like me. We'll be thinking of ya.
Now back to the party. See ya on the radio.
Hi Chimp,
Since this is a "celebration" thread, just my 2 cents. My take on John's comment is, at least in part, there's something about youth and having theoretically more time on the planet that is always the envy of people who have lived longer. This is despite anything else, really. That's all.
Or, "Youth is the only real good. But people don't know it." Or, as an director once said about young actors: "Life is one long goodbye - but they don't know it yet."
Someone can experience this longing - (for more time, or for more physical strength, or any aspect of youth and all its blessings) - and, at the same time, still have some ability to apprehend the horrors "the numbers" (and, yes, the past) indicate about the future. And try to warn, try to help...
Oh boy, this is where I need to shutstutterup even before I get started, but because it is freespeech celebration night on TOD, thus I will persist in trying to achieve the elusive asshat label.
Youth is built on the environment they find themselves in. (macro) Micro is the family unit.
Youth is untrained, and overexposed to video technology without understanding of the energy driving it. Rush forward my youth...chase that ideal of programmed placecarded marketeered information we taught you to worship. It seems to me in this collossal energy displacement of diminishing views and ideals that some reference of experienced age should matter (I am not old BTW)
All of "youth" are not borne into the same era of circumstances. My parent's youth was endowed with actual unlimited growing energy. My youth appeared that way even though we were already sliding downward. My sons youth is very much apparent in this reduced endowment of energy.
The greatest issuance unto youth is tireless energy, can we not lie to them and thus direct some of that boundless energy into their critical future...or is it just another tapdance on starsearched boob vision protocols?
Quite honestly, I see the youth needing a challenge beyond their easy upbringings of digitized overtalked spoiledness. They seem to be rather directionless. Perhaps they sense the ramifications of the future? I dunno.
They are the spark, and we are responsible for giving them hope. This is going to be a multi-generational effort just like it always should be. But, this time around the stakes are much more serious with a diminishing timescale. How can that be spun as a positive in todays easy world?
Big test looking forward and, it is up to us to not lie to them unless of course we pretend positives to be for our own worded sakes.
Yes, Aniya, the long goodbye. That's it. Thanks.
Thank God there are a few young people out there who do not have their heads buried in the Lindsay Lohan Celebrity Channel.
Most of the young people I run into are PO-blind, PO-deaf and they're all enrolling in law school because the CS degree they got is not panning out.
(The Market will provide. Long live The Market. The Market is great. Praised be The Market. If thou believist in The Market, yea shall prosper all the days of thy life. Amen.)
My kids have been both PO and GW aware for quite a while, so I don't do much in the way of educating them anymore. I think they started learning about it when Jason Bradford first started showing "End of Suburbia" here about 3 years ago.
I was blown away yesterday when my oldest(31) started telling me about phantom OPEC reserves. Damn kids still think they know more than the old man.
I hope they do.
Thanks to all for the Drum.
Rat
Thanks to everyone who posts here! This is a great community, and has restored my faith in the effectiveness of online discourse. It is definitely my "daily fix of reality" (wonderful phrase, that) and inspiration to keep analyzing and keep my head out of the sand.
The Oil Drum - "better than a really really crappy cable channel"
Yay!
No seriously - congrats to Prof. Goose, Leanan, and the contributors who make this a fantastic place to debate a very important topic.
Cuchulainn
BTW - you know you're getting serious credibility when The Economist wants your readers..............
Congratulations to all of you.
I really think this is the way the internet was meant to be, connecting people for their thoughts, light speed. Easy to see, easy to interact, easy to follow. Brilliant blog.
Hats to all.
LAOTC introduced me to PO after being directed to it by a friend. Now after reading TOD almost daily for over a year I'm well versed on PO and terrified at the same time. Thanks to all of the contributors here, I'm looking forward to learning a lot more.
Best of luck to all of you in the hyperinflation!
To keep TOD going and maybe ease off the growing pains, I would like to make a modest donation.
If that is welcome please contact me through my spam-protected e-mail.
LATOC is also a daily must read for me, but hey, I've supported this site by my purchases.
What drew me to TOD way back, besides its intelligent discussions, was its civility. It was a breath of fresh air to see disagreements dealt with in an adult manner without ad. homs. or $@@#$ words. Some of the newer posters need to keep this in mind.
What a great site!
Todd
Congratulations, and thanks for all the hard work and high-level analysis.
In the year and a half I've been visiting, I've been consistently impressed by the site's ability to maintain its focus and quality while at the same time figuring out how to accommodate its readers' diverse range of interests.
But of course that's why you're seeing these kinds of results in your traffic.
I've been promoting TOD through MySpace for several months. Has TOD received any MySpace traffic?
____________________
MySpace
This site is a fine collection of very different people with very different views eg nuclear power.
But its really refreshing to have honest answers to a lot of difficult questions.
Would it be possible to have a TOD:UK ? I think there are lots of people from the UK on here can anyone offer babysit that?
Love and respect to everyone here, there is a passion of life and love coming off many people here. Special thanks to the editors and all the people that do everything they do.
Good to see a healthy sense of humour still, we are dealing with enough peaks to have to cope with peak humour too!
We used to have a TOD:UK. It became TOD:Europe.
As everybody _in Europe_ knows, the UK is part of Europe... ;-)
A fair number of British would disagree !
Alan
Well, congratulations for the Oil Drum are definitely in order! Me too, I had heard about Peak Oil before, but had instantly been put off by the we're-all-gonna-die crowds that dominate the other sites. Here I found not only balance, but most importantly, hard facts and a closely knit community that is not afraid to face them.
I was a bit surprised, however, to hear that the Oil Drum's traffic is only in the range of a million page views per month. The site often feels very sluggish, and I assumed it was under strain from much heavier traffic. It has been my experience that a properly configured CMS + database backend can easily handle +500 page views per minute (and that's without caching). Even on a low-end shared host, you should still be able to pull on the order of a few hundred page views per minute. That's an order of magnitude higher than those million pages/month indicate (one million/month equals about 23/minute). What software are you using on the backend? And what are the specs/environment of the host running the site? If you want to continue growing, this is a problem you will have to tackle sooner or later.
At last, a small technical nitpick: the article mentions that "but it should be noted that with DHCP, it's hard to tell what that number really means"; now, DHCP is a protocol that allows hosts to retrieve their IP address and other information from the network. This is not what is camouflaging the real number of unique IP addresses. That culprit is NAT, because it allows a host (typically a firewall) to masquerade the IP's of the other hosts behind the wall.
It's Drupal that we're using. Prior to that we were using Scoop--it too was unfriendly. I think part of the problem is the many databases we have going that didn't integrate all that well in the various site iterations, but that's coming from someone with not enough knowledge to make that judgment.
SuperG has put out calls for help that have largely been unrequited. Believe me, he could use some help--if you are interested in helping, email him at the support address.
You are, of course correct on NAT/DHCP. I will give myself a "duh" on that one and change it.
Please help SuperG if you can. The database issues here are maddening. Not just the slowness, but the lack of caching, the fact that replying to a thread wipes out all the "new" tags, etc.
And I agree that this is going to be a major issue when it comes to future growth.
DHCP can camouflage the number of unique visitors because when you renew your IP license from the DHCP server you may end up with a different IP (especially if the machine has been turned off through the expiration period of its license).
NAT also causes these issues but DHCP is a contributor as well. For example, are two addresses, such as a.b.c.d and a.b.c.e unique visitors or not? To determine that you would also have to match session ids to IP addresses and then user ids to session ids. Further, this doesn't work at all for users who don't have TOD user ids but instead just browse and read.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
Top five "peak-everything" websites I visit at least once a day (not necessarily in order):
1. The Oil Drum
2. Energy Bulletin
3. Life After The Oil Crash
4. Peak Oil Dot Com
5. Bill Totten's Weblog
For those not familiar with Bill Totten's Weblog I highly recommend it, he posts new content every day, most of it other peoples work, but all of it thoughtful and well written.
Thanks to all for the many hours of work getting the word out. Well done!
Cheers,
Jerry
Should we presume Economist readers now have a 6 minute attention span before they halt comprehension and revert to the growth engine that is the global economy?
Kudos on the milestones Goose, et al, and the TOD community -
the wife & kids wish my average visit was 6 mins
Three Cheers for TOD! Hip Hip Hooray
IMHO it’s the best location on the internet for keeping one’s finger on the pulse of USA
(wait a minute, I don’t feel a pulse, oh nooooooooo she’s flat lining) and the rest of the world.
I came to TOD from the alternative energy angle, EVworld.com had a link, back when I still believed it was just a matter of developing the right tech.
This was after 18 years in industrial design so give me a break ok! Last project was human powered propulsion for water craft. Outboard motor lobby won that battle.
I believe in the future will see some wild a$$ human power contraptions, all essentially one offs. I have a few in mind.
Quick word on WT’s ELP;
Best advice I have consented to hear in a long time.
Downsized house, one car (6 bikes, tandem, trailers), huge garden, small business producing real goods, ZERO debt, and best of all I have more time to spend with my family. Seems like we have more money all the time also but it is still early in the process.
Thanks again to all, (I still am in favor of a tip jar.
Anyway a round of sarconal shooters on me. Cheers!
My entry into TOD was a bit different. I have been aware that oil would peak "one day" for several decades,
I have been considering the problem and possible solutions for a long time as well.
I decided to move from transit (where I developed some excellent contacts and info) into Peak Oil almost two years ago. I surveyed the various Peak Oil sites, decided that I had time for only one site, and chose The Oil Drum as the one.
It had the level of expertise and the "tone" that would give it growing influence (diffuse and indirect, but still influence) and be a great spot to help create a meme.
One man alone cannot do little, but a group, even a small group, CAN do something worthwhile !
I truly enjoy TOD and find it a very useful whetstone for my ideas, and it is a useful means of improving my writing as well.
There have been two recent developments that I hope to share soon that are significant steps forward :-)) TOD was central to one, and important in the other.
TOD will, I hope, prove to be an invaluable resource and will "make a difference" in the path that we follow. So far, so good ! :-)
Best Hopes,
Alan