A reminder and clarification about The Ubuntu Counter Project

Fri Jul 28 19:42:51 UTC 2006

Am Fri, 28. July 2006 17:55 schrieb Melissa Draper:
> email.listen at googlemail.com wrote:
> > Am Fri, 28. July 2006 13:30 schrieb Melissa Draper:
> >> <snip>
> >
> > I would suggest to place this link more visible, e.g. in bold-italic or
> > by having a couter.li.org button. I recognised it only after a closer
> > look beeing a link.
>
> Personally, I identify underlined text amidst non-underlined text as a link
> fairly quickly. Using underlining for non-links is generally frowned upon
> since most people draw this conclusion. Using bold for links is generally
> frowned upon, and for this reason I am not going to do that. Please see
> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040510.html 
You may be right for bold but not for italic. 
BTW. if this would be followed in books and other printings we have to domp 
most all of them.

So lets have a look (...mycomments...):

Use different colors for visited and unvisited links.
(That is one reason why I don't notice it at the first look)

* The color for unvisited links should be more vivid, bright, and saturated
  than the color for visited links, which should look "used" (dull and washed
   out).
* The two colors should be variants or shades of the same color, so that
  they're clearly related. Using drastically different colors (say, orange and
  green) makes it hard for users to understand the relationship between the
  two types of links and to identify which color is the "used" version of the
  other.
* Shades of blue provide the strongest signal for links, but other colors work
  almost as well.
* As always, when using color to signal information, you should provide
  redundant cues for color-blind users. Making unvisited links brighter and
  more luminous than visited links will usually accomplish this goal. 
(And here's the other one)

I have this problem with your site and also with the ubuntu site. It is hard 
to read for colour blind and visually handicapped people.
If you have a look at http://www.kubuntu.org/ you may have an idea of what I'm 
talking about. It's much easier for me to read the kubuntu site than the 
ubuntu ones.

> Changing formatting mid-sentance breaks readability for lots of readers, it
> is a pity there is no 100% solution here.

Why not asking the visitors of your private counter to register at 
counter.li.or too? At least this my be a workaround until you will find a way 
to feed your data to counter.li.org. (After they may be willing to have this, 
But thats another story. I would say that there will be a way to make them 
accept this. And I think how to achieve this will be much more worth beeing 
discussed than this thread. :-)

> If you would take a look at the awstats (
> http://counter.li.org/awstats/awstats.pl?config=gimel.counter.li.org&output
>=refererpages ) on the linuxcounter site, you would see that the site is
> driving people to the "linux counter", not taking from there.
I'm not talking about taking away but about missing a chance to summ users and 
machines in a usefull way. And I think a private counting of ubuntu-users 
only _just_for_fun_ is a mistake and contraproductive in the long run.
counter.li.org also started 'just for fun' but over the years they reached 
quite a mature state. I saw a lot of enthusiastic counter projects like yours 
where people spend a lot of work and reccources and which passed away. But 
it's still impossible to number linux users. So that's what makes me sad 
whenever I see a new site like yours comming up.

Statistics for: counter.li.org	
Last Update: 	28 Jul 2006 - 18:00

rank   URL					 Pages	Percent	Hits	Percent
12     http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php 7439	1.6 %	7439	1.6 %
20     http://forum.ubuntu.pl/viewtopic.php	 3794	0.8 %	3794	0.8 %
47     http://ubuntucounter.geekosophical.net	 1161	0.2 %	1161	0.2 %

What I can see is that geekosophical.net brings less than a third hits than 
ubuntu.pl and less than 15% of kubuntuforums.net. 

Ok, so lets have a look in a week or two if we will see geekosophical.net 
making it up from place no. 47 at least to place no. 20.

> > <snip>
> > There is no verification of new users as it is done by counter.li.org. So
> > in the end the numbers acquired by your survey may be seen very weak.
>
> The site is primarily intended as fun for Ubuntu users.
Counting ubuntu-users _just for fun_ is close to useless IMHO.

> > <snip>
> >
> > (I deleted this registration, but you may find it in the logfiles.)
>
> *sigh*
>
> Some things in life depend on user responsibility. BOTH these stats
> pages are examples of such things.
So what is it good for in the end?
If it is only for your private fun you should have a big note at the top *This 
is just for my and maybe your private fun. I never had the intention to have 
this for any usefull need.*

>
> --
> Sincerely
> Melissa Draper
>
> http://www.meldraweb.com
>
> Phone: 0404 595 395
>
> P.O Box 1412
> Lavington
> <http://www.google.de/search?q=P.O+Box+1412%0ALavington%2C+2641&start=0&ie=
>utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial>, 2641
Melissa I know how to use google, believe it or not.
I only wanted to give you a ironic hint how you may make it bit more 
comfortable for data miners and spamers a to interprete your data.
*grin like a Cheshire cat*

regards,
thomas