To Ramfree17:
From distrowatch 2003-03-13:
Some people find it hard to accept that Yoper has climbed to the top spot in page hit statistics, so let me go on record and say this: Yoper Limited has never requested, and never paid any money, to influence the page hit ranking statistics. All Yoper did was buy advertising space at normal rates and in line with normal advertising practices stated on this page. Give Yoper credit for recognising the opportunity that few others have been able to spot.
Having said that, Yoper's page hit ranking did call for investigation of log files to look for any unfair play. I did not find anything unusual - the page hits came from varied IP addresses and I did not spot any unusual activity or repeated and unwarranted page reloads. All indications are that Yoper's climb to the top position was the result of genuine visitor curiosity and nothing else.
Ironically, while pouring through log files, we did come across some suspicious activity regarding Gentoo page hits. Upon investigation, it has become clear that an individual from a well-known cartoon domain name has been mickeymousing with the Gentoo counter - repeatedly reloading the counter from various machines on their network at exactly the same mm:ss every hour, 24 hours a day. This generated 240 extra Gentoo hits per day (or around one third of total hits on the Gentoo page).
Now come on, folks! It's just a page hit ranking, it simply monitors how many times a distribution page gets viewed, nothing more! It's not meant to be taken seriously, which I've stated many times - to no avail.
So perhaps it's time to lay down some ground rules:
1. Repeated page and counter reloads in short or regular intervals are not allowed. If you are inclined to set up cron jobs to repeatedly wget your favourite distro's page counter, then please do yourself a favour and go to see a psychologist. You need help.
2. All suspicious page hit counts will be investigated and any regularly reloaded counts will be deducted from the total count (Gentoo's count will be adjusted as soon as we go through the log files to see how far back this has been going on).
3. The offender's entire C-class IP range will be permanently blocked from accessing the counter.
4. In future, the offender's IP address and domain name will be published.
5. The repeat offender's IP address will be banned from accessing all areas of DistroWatch, including mirrors, for a period of 30 days.
Any questions or comments? Please discuss here.