Talk:RationalWiki

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(The Dreaded 13)
(The Dreaded 13)
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Wait a moment?  Wasn't [[2012 apocalypse|20<b>12</b>]] the year that should scare us?  We'll ''never'' avoid all the things [[superstition|superstitious]] folk warn against. [[User:Proxima Centauri|Proxima Centauri]] ([[User talk:Proxima Centauri|talk]]) 09:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 
Wait a moment?  Wasn't [[2012 apocalypse|20<b>12</b>]] the year that should scare us?  We'll ''never'' avoid all the things [[superstition|superstitious]] folk warn against. [[User:Proxima Centauri|Proxima Centauri]] ([[User talk:Proxima Centauri|talk]]) 09:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 
:Seeing as no-one here goes about 13 except you, I don't see what you're on about. Come to think of it, I don't know ''anybody'' who's scared of 13. [[User:Sophie Wilder|<span style="color:#008080">'''Sophie'''</span>]][[User_talk:Sophie Wilder|<span style="color#FF9933"><sup>''Wilder''</sup></span>]] 10:57, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 
:Seeing as no-one here goes about 13 except you, I don't see what you're on about. Come to think of it, I don't know ''anybody'' who's scared of 13. [[User:Sophie Wilder|<span style="color:#008080">'''Sophie'''</span>]][[User_talk:Sophie Wilder|<span style="color#FF9933"><sup>''Wilder''</sup></span>]] 10:57, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 +
::You mean you don't know anyone who ''admits'' to being scared of 13.  Anyway I've decided to round Alexa's report of RationalWiki's world ranking to the nearest multiple of 5,000 as changing too often is confusing.  Since RationalWiki's USA ranking is below 15,000 rounding to multiples of 5,000 is too imprecise, therefore I'll round to the nearest even number.  I made an exception at 13,000 as I hoped writing about [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Triskaidekaphobia.html Triskaidekaphobia] would be amusing and interesting.  If our WORLD ranking gets down to <b>13</b>000, especially before the end of 20<b>13</b> expect more from me. [[User:Proxima Centauri|Proxima Centauri]] ([[User talk:Proxima Centauri|talk]]) 12:53, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Revision as of 12:53, 28 November 2012

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This RationalWiki related article has been awarded BRONZE status for quality. It's getting there, but could be with improvement.

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Archives for this talk page: <1>, <2>, <3>, <4>, <5>, <6>

I sent an invite to the young whippersnapper who wandled himself here.--PalMD-yada yada 21:34, 21 June 2007 (CDT)

Good for you. His IP block ought to over by now. humanbe in 21:35, 21 June 2007 (CDT)
I can't believe i said "young whippersnapper".--PalMD-yada yada 21:38, 21 June 2007 (CDT)
I can't believe I let you get away with it. Let's block each other! humanbe in 21:46, 21 June 2007 (CDT)
I, um, well, er, I'm not a, er, sysop. I can't block my own toilet.--PalMD-yada yada 21:47, 21 June 2007 (CDT)
  • I am now a vandal. Bohdan 21:48, 21 June 2007 (CDT)
Baal, Vishnu and Jeezus! How could you???--PalMD-yada yada 21:50, 21 June 2007 (CDT)
  • The worst part is, he likes being blocked! humanbe in 21:56, 21 June 2007 (CDT)

Contents

RW symbol

Suggest it be known as 'Bracket Brain' (unless octopedal representation).

Is it out of its skull? — Unsigned, by: 82.44.143.26 / talk / contribs

The founder/organiser of the RW conspiracy (a combination of [[Mornington Crescent]] and [[Lord Voldemart]]). — Unsigned, by: 212.85.6.26 / talk / contribs

Alexa

I haven't looked at Alexa or Quantcast for well over a year... but what the bollock happened in November? It's like everything went of the charts for a couple of weeks. Scarlet A.pngtheist 01:50, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Their random number generator went haywire? Peter Monomorium antarcticum 01:54, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

58,706, Global Rank 25,912 US Rank for 9th March 2012. Proxima Centauri (talk) 08:26, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

35,000 on Alexa's top 100,000 websites and 13,000 in the US. Ranking for 22nd November 2012. Statistics for rationalwiki.org That's quite an improvement over about 6 months. Either Alexa is flattering us or something special is happening. I suspect we're in yet another traffic spike just now so things might go down a bit when the spike is over. Proxima Centauri (talk) 18:05, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I suspect Alexa may be onto something about the popularity of websites. Why? I don't know when traffic spikes happen directly, I don't have access to RW servers. Still times when RW's Alexa ranking suddenly goes down seem to correlate with times when we have server overload. Now the servers have been upgraded we won't be able to check this any more. I guess we have a traffic spike just now. Proxima Centauri (talk) 18:00, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Alexa is a shit tool that can, at best, show an increase in back links over a long time. To focus on the hills and valleys of the rankings is fools gold. I took the actual Alexa ranking over the last week and correlated it with actual measured traffic. The correlation was 0.19 over those 7 days, I then did a whole month but since determining the actual Alexa rank over the month looked like a real PITA I just did slope sign inversions between Alexa and measured traffic. Correlation was 0.18. These are not significant, not even close, random chance fully explains any correlation. I am not going to bother doing larger time diffs.
As far as "spikes" go you have to differentiate between base traffic increases and spike traffic. RW is actually seeing significant base traffic increase but not much increase in spike traffic. In other words are average "spike" as about 15k-20k more visits in a day 6 months ago, and our average "spike" this month is 15k-20k above baseline. The difference is that 6 months ago our base traffic was 15k unique visitors a day, while Novembers is about 32k. Tmtoulouse (talk) 18:45, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Why not be an encyclopedia, _also_?

Hi, fairly new to RationalWiki here.

I like the general concept. And while I enjoy arguing politics as well as the next person, I personally would have probably tackled pseudoscience and politics in seperate fora. But there we are.

I also like the idea of including original research. I have always felt that Wikipedia policies in this regard were far too rigid. After all, in some cases they have people writing articles who literally -wrote the book- on certain subjects; barring them from including original research seems pretty, well, dumb.

Given all that, why not think of RationalWiki as a nascent encyclopedia of skepticism and skeptical commentary on pseudoscience? As it moves up in the Google search tree, that is how people are going to start using it. — Unsigned, by: Dr H / talk / contribs

I think RW is an encyclopedia of skepticism and commentary. The "not an encyclopedia" bit is just so that the scope is narrowed down. Basically, there's no point in competing with Wikipedia on the front of trying to get all knowledge into one place, that generally doesn't work very well. I have preferred the description that's been used in the past that RW is a series of collective essays on related subjects more than "articles" though. Scarlet A.pngsshole 20:37, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
Furthermore, some Russian web-sites refer to ru-rw as to "encyclopedia of scientific criticism".--Mr. B 15:19, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

How is RussianalWiki anything like lurkmore.ru?

I mean, lurkmore.ru is Russian ED--"Shut up, Brx." 18:17, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, lurmore.ru is rather similar to RationalWiki (en) with their specific humor and slang, that is often difficult for translating into English and that contains a lot of obscene language. Though, the language of ru.rationalwiki is more "scientific". It is better to compare it with evolutionwiki.--Mr. B 21:30, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
The best description of lurkmore.ru is: the hybrid of Encyclopaedia Dramatica and RationalWiki with skeptical (also, irreligious) and scientific POV.--Mr. B 21:44, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
Thank you, Bertran--"Shut up, Brx." 22:30, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Intellectual and popular

RationalWiki can be intellectual and popular. As of the 27th October 2012 The Guardian newspaper's Alexa ranking is 184 (Global Rank) and 16 in the UK. Statistics Summary for guardian.co.uk. We don't have to sacrifice popularity to be intellectual but I feel we should aim to please a wide range of types. We should write articles to interest readers ranging from brighter and older secondary school students through to college and university students and graduates. Proxima Centauri (talk) 18:04, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Do you want us to be both intellectual and popular? Stop doing stuff like this to the wiki. Theory of Practice Still tryin' to figure it all out. 18:14, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
Goodpost.gif Osaka Sun (talk) 18:35, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
The edit TOP and OS dislike may or may not have been misguided. None of that invalidates my point about being intellectual and popular, see Fallacy fallacy. Proxima Centauri (talk) 17:54, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

The Dreaded 13

So at last our Alexa ranking is well below 13000. We don't need to be scared as we're below 13000 before the start of the dreaded year 2013. So we're safely in the comfort zone of 12000 by the end of the comfortable year 2012.

Wait a moment? Wasn't 2012 the year that should scare us? We'll never avoid all the things superstitious folk warn against. Proxima Centauri (talk) 09:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Seeing as no-one here goes about 13 except you, I don't see what you're on about. Come to think of it, I don't know anybody who's scared of 13. SophieWilder 10:57, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
You mean you don't know anyone who admits to being scared of 13. Anyway I've decided to round Alexa's report of RationalWiki's world ranking to the nearest multiple of 5,000 as changing too often is confusing. Since RationalWiki's USA ranking is below 15,000 rounding to multiples of 5,000 is too imprecise, therefore I'll round to the nearest even number. I made an exception at 13,000 as I hoped writing about Triskaidekaphobia would be amusing and interesting. If our WORLD ranking gets down to 13000, especially before the end of 2013 expect more from me. Proxima Centauri (talk) 12:53, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
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