There are few things I’ve seen recently that concern me.
- Views are way down.
- Virily is an ad-driven site. So if you see an ad blocker message, that is additional ad space being added by Virily.
- The comment limit is real and sadly, it was implemented because of abuse.
- The post limit is also real and sadly is also abuse related.
Last year around the holidays (starting around Dember 20 and heading to January 14) I did a short movers project where I gathered data. From 2018/2019 to this year, 2019/2020 views are down about 30%. That is a concern for all of us! Please take a moment if you do, share posts on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. Somehow we have to get views back up.
Since Virily is ad-driven, the admin team is always looking for new places to put ads. Based on that, you will see the ad blocker on the bottom or top of your browser window. If you see that every single day, check your settings for the Virily site. The problem with blocking the ads is that the AdSense application from Google, notes that ads were blocked and Virily doesn’t get credit. As an ad-driven site, ads must get through.
The comment limit concerns me, in part because this is the second comment abuse change the site has made. If you got back and look at 3-year-old posts you will a lot of comments are Nice, Good, for a time you then also see the first 20 character limit comments where people used Good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As a way around the new rule. The new comment limit has to do with users continuing to game the system. It is an unfortunate situation. Remember, the behavior of the few always impacts the rest of us!
The post limit is similar, in that it is a way for the admins to control the number of spam posts.
I am trying two experiments over the next week.
- I will not comment on posts that people don’t comment on my posts. I am very anti-that rule but I have noticed a radical decline in comments. One week only, if you comment on my posts, I will comment on yours. If you don’t, I won’t comment on yours. Again this is just for a week. I want to see if this is part of the problem (the if you don’t comment on my post I won’t comment on your post rule)
- I will not for the next week open or consider any post that is edited. There have been many edited photos and I truly understand the position. If your posts have errors, you should feel free to edit them. If, however, the post ahs a lot of views (more than 100) or a combination of views (greater than 100) and comments (greater than 25), it remains a false positive. You go right on the lists (comment and trending).
- Edited posts on the most commented and trending lists gain about 10% more views and comment total.
- A non-edited post on the most commented and trending list gain 40% more views and comments.
- This is why I am not reading them for a week to see if, in fact, the data I’ve collected to date is true. I am not in any way condemning or saying do not edit posts. I am just concerned right now that based on views we have a problem. Please don’t defend editing posts in the comments. I am not against editing posts, I want to understand the impact that is having on the site.
My goal is the long term health of Virily! I am not condemning or suggesting anything right now. I am simply removing variables from the data I am collecting.
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Question of
I promise I am not anti-edited posts, ok?
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Yes
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No
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Question of
promise you will not justify editing posts in the comments, ok?
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Yes
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No
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Question of
I check the most commented list of posts every day?
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Yes
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No
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Question of
I check the trending list of posts every day>?
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Yes
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No
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Question of
I know why comments are down from last year? (share in the comments please)
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Yes
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No
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Question of
I have no clue why comments are down
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Yes
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No
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Question of
i have no clue why views are down.
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Yes
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No
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So far, I have not edited my posts, but would have liked to correct a spelling mistake that I made afterwards.
my only caution would be check the number of comments first if it is 10 or so, go ahead and edit them!!!
I usually comment on other peoples posts when they comment on mine, although I don’t always visit Virily but try to be able to when I can.
I look at whatever post I can see and comment on those as well
we do what we can do, you’ve been contributing for a long time!!!
The number of active members could be one of the factors that affect the amount of view. I saw only a small amount of people who regularly active (based on the post, comments, and vote that I received).
I have the same thought as Alibb’s point about a visit to visit. I notice some people only visit/comment on the post of people that they “know”.
i do truly think you are on to something i just don’t know how to test it yet!
But the active user issue is one that is a little concerning. I will check tomorrow on this one and add it to my list!!!
Do you have a very long list?
as far as I can tell we have dropped from roughly 300 active users three years ago to less than 140 now. But that is an estimate and I need more data!
according to the site, there are more than 2000 registered users.
Q: I PROMISE I AM NOT ANTI-EDITED POSTS, OK?
Yes (12 votes) – 92%
No (1 votes) – 8%
Q: PROMISE YOU WILL NOT JUSTIFY EDITING POSTS IN THE COMMENTS, OK?
Yes (9 votes) – 82%
No (2 votes) – 18%
Q: I CHECK THE MOST COMMENTED LIST OF POSTS EVERY DAY?
Yes (7 votes) – 47%
No (8 votes) – 53%
Q: I CHECK THE TRENDING LIST OF POSTS EVERY DAY>?
Yes (6 votes) – 40%
No (9 votes) – 60%
Q: I KNOW WHY COMMENTS ARE DOWN FROM LAST YEAR? (SHARE IN THE COMMENTS PLEASE)
Yes (4 votes) – 25%
No (12 votes) – 75%
Q: I HAVE NO CLUE WHY COMMENTS ARE DOWN
Yes (11 votes) – 79%
No (3 votes) – 21%
Q: I HAVE NO CLUE WHY VIEWS ARE DOWN.
Yes (13 votes) – 93%
No (1 votes) – 7%
|I’ll be very interested to hear the results of your observations. John Indexer makes a good point.
i am not sure all of John’s points were as relevant as you think.
views overall were up since April (when the last guest view change was implemented). While financially impactful to me (i share a lot) it hasn’t impacted the sites use overall.
The system I use for poll questions was designed by the Standford Binet team. You ask questions in a variety of ways (go back to my site improvement series in July, you will see the same questions asked 3, 4 and more ways). The goal is to get a broad picture of the community’s thinking!
It is always important that closed questions are not ambiguous and that one can have confidence that they have been understood by the vast majority of respondents. If this is not so, statistics based on the results have little meaning.
first off, the assumption is you are gathering a single set. I am not. I gather at least 3 sets of data.
The first time is on purpose vague. The yes no is a stabilising point for people. The Standford Binet model has been used for many years and while more intensive than most models, does produce reliable results.
Hmm… I’ve no idea why both comments and views are down.
But I do see a sharp decline and I think visit-for-visit might be one of a reason
I don’t really care as much about most commented list and visit-no-visit/comment-no-comment as I’ve just so little time here …
I go to friend’s posts no matter they replied to mine or not …
and then posts that attracted me.
But it could seems like visit-for-visit/comment-for-comment because I’m sticking to friend’s posts.
now you have raised a couple of interesting points. The reality of friends posts is one that I have no way to measure, but I do wonder as well if that isn’t an impact!
Thanks for giving me something to think about!
Hmmmm. Fair for fair, I suppose. It is likely that non-payment of guest views is one of the factors for the decline.
But that has been gone for 8 months and the views haven’t declined until December. There is always a holiday dip but this is a holiday plunge.
Very interesting. Thanks for writing this
Thanks, Halcombe! the kind words are welcomed!
That ad blocker message creeps the hell out of me because Virily is the only site I see it on.
i am pretty sure that is a site bug.
I hope so because as many issues we have here, I would hate to see the page get shut down.
we are going to reduce the negativity and get views back!!!
It does say “may” that is the most important part. Since I noticed the “may” I have stopped worrying – I can see the advertisements just fine.
may is always a tough word. My kids always say “maybe?” that just means no.
my methodology is, I brute force my notifications list
does brute force work? I have been trying to come up with models to fix my notifications. I have failed so far.
it does, if I have enough time to clear it out. usually do
my system with the new notifications is first pass I clean out all upvotes.
THen I return all comments.
so far that has slowly reduced the time I’ve been spending.
the reason I brute force is so I can delete a page at a time
i still struggle with the new notification model. It is wholly my problem. I know. but it is something I just haven’t figured a fast way through!
there may not be a fast way to do so much work
i have tried 3 systems.
the first is to remove all the upvotes and then go through the comments.
the second was to answer all the comments on the page and then mark all read.
the one I use now is to mark each comment read.
all three still take too long.
yeah, too many moving parts. rarely do I use a brute force approach, but it really works here…
i may have to come to the dark side then…
generally speaking, people use brute force because they can’t come up with a better solution, but in this case it really seems to be the optimal one
plus, there’s cookies!
i am going to keep playing around with this. Most days it is roughly 40 or fewer things to build around. I can figure this out!
I am not sure that you will get useful feedback when you pose questions (your final two) that include a negative and then offer a Yes/No alternative. Not everyone understands that a double negative is a positive, so you really can’t tell what the answers mean.
Why are comments down? Could it be that the posts in question do not inspire people to make meaningful comments? If the posts that do so are swamped by dozens that are nothing more than a pretty picture, the comment-inspiring ones will soon disappear a long way down the list and not be seen. We need better quality posts, plus ones that are controversial and will get people arguing with each other! (not angrily, of course, but is the spirit of give-and-take)
Why are views down? If Admin were to restore the awarding of Virils for guest views, they would see whether this increased the number of views due to members being inspired to share on social media. A short-term experiment would soon answer that question.
First of all, my degree is in Ed Psych. I understand the reality of questions. I don’t ask questions 1 time. I have a process.
each question will be asked over the next week in at least 3 different ways to capture the information I am looking for. I understand the reality of simple choice polls. The yes-no option is a familiarity option and is more likely to produce responses.
I would argue based on facts that since April when guest views were completely removed the site has had steady increases in views and that continued until the latest round of changes at the end of October. So the numbers don’t match your assertion about lacking guest views.
I didn’t do statistics about users when the original guest views were available so I have no basis to argue the other side, which is that the original way to rewarding guest views was producing more views.
The site overall (june 2019 versus June 2018 is up about 40% in terms of views. So overall the site has continued to increase.
The rate to 100 views on a post was stable at around 24 hours for a number of users. That number is now closer to 48.
The better quality posts issue is subjective. While there are limits and guidelines within the English Language for what is or isn’t good, those are not currently applied at Virily. I do understand because you have brought it up many times, that your standard for content is higher than many of the authors. At this time there is no standard. I am not sure that quality is an issue today. In 2018 there were no limits on the overall number of posts by anyone. By a subjective view, the number of lower quality posts was higher than, than now. Now there are limits.
Thanks for the guidance, Watch for the other vartions of the questions.
I can see that these matters are open to debate and there are unlikely to be easy answers.
As for which posts are likely to generate most comments, the answer is clear enough – it is posts that question what is going wrong with Virily!
Luckily there are other posts that also get a lot of comments. Sadly, edited posts carry their comments forward so it modifies the list.
I am working on rewriting the questions today to further refine the information There are some really good ideas in the information shared in the comments!
I do not block ads on this site and I see the ad blocker message at the bottom. I am not sure what to do because, I went make through my settings Viritly is the only site where I do not use the ad blocker.
I believe views and comments are down because of the limits that the sites has put on.
I thought about your statement a while ago, it is possible. It is also possible that the negativity on the site moved authors away.
Either way, we are way down. The ad blocker issue is a Virily one, I suspect they are working to ad new ads to the bottom of the screen.
Alright, thank-you.
Do you really think that there has been a lot of negativity going on about the site? I know, about all of the problems. But, no site is perfect. Writers who have been writing for any about of time must understand these types of problems. After Virily isn’t the first writing site.
i think the negativity has been on the site rather than about the site.
but your point is well taken!!!
OK, this is the first time on here I see way down the page that an adblocker has been detected but I have no idea what to do about that. Next up, I find that on quite few posts that I read and make a comment I am the only one commenting but it could be holiday-related.
we are down from the oast two holiday views. sadly, i agree with you, and Dawn and Ellie that in fact, it was holiday-related, but we are down from the holidays last year.
I think I am missing the limits on the posts. How many posts can we make in a day?
i believe the limit is now either 6 or 8 posts per day. But there does appear to apply only to some people.
I don’t have an ad blocker and I still get the message.
As for comments, I have tried too, but then the views are even more down.
i know. I am only going to do this for a week. Views are already down, I want to see what the impact of these things are!
I am a little worried.
the adblocker one shouldn’t be happening. The ads mostly are embedded and ad blockers tend more to block pop ups.
Maybe it’s a bug since we still see the ads as well as the notice.
i think what it is honestly is a new bottom of the page ad, that wasn’t implemented properly.
a bug is a great way to put it!
I have an Adblock notification at the bottom of the screen (can’t remove it). I found out a while ago that they lowered the number of comments and the views dropped a lot. I’m not looking at trends or the most commented post.
i think it might actually be on the server itself (like they were adding a new bottom of the screen ad) we shall see if it goes away.
Something is wrong with the ad blocker here. It does not depend on whether we turn it off or on, the warning on the bottom is here all the time. It cannot be our fault if many people see it. Anyone has not it here? I am OK with edited posts, I always open if I see I have not voted it still. And yes, I noticed the number of views is down, and if we cannot view ads here, it is very very bad…
yes the views are down and that worries me overall. Comments are also down, and that worries me. the ad blocker issue is annoying.
i am not against edited posts. I am just deeply concerned that they are creating a problem for other posts.
that is what I am going to test this week!
I admit to Doc that I didn’t understand your text very well.
Especially about editing a post.
I think there are big variations in the number of views,
I can’t remove Ad Blocator whether or not I’ve turned it on.
It’s always at the bottom.
I’ll check for other ads in my articles.
I post on FB and Twitter but have few followers.
I have no reviews from those sites,
It seems to me that people currently publish a lot more articles than before.
It is as if they are aware that only in this way can they produce a better result.
They admit that I didn’t understand some things, don’t judge me for that.
P.S.
Because of my weak eyes and my free time, I don’t comment much, but I do scrutinize a lot of articles and give everyone a vote up, just so they know I looked and read.
You have always commented on my posts! I wasn’t doing the comment for comment thing as a punitive punishment. I am worried and looking to remove variables to see what I can figure out.
I didn’t look at myself in the context of your text.
Let me tell you, I see commercials in my posts.
I just said that I didn’t quite understand some of the things you wrote about and that was fair on my part. To admit something you didn’t understand.
And it is in my interest to make this site better, and even though many say they are not here for the money, I would still like to be paid.
i would like for you to be paid as well! I would like to be paid. I want to do whatever has to be done to keep this site alive!
I will share what I find out next week!
Of course you are an honest man and thank you.
i thank you for the kind words! I hope your day was wonderful!
I wish I knew answers, we are all in the dark. Until we hear something from admin about what they are doing, things will always be vague around here. Many still do not understand the new rules.
i got some data from the admins yesterday. 1. that they are working on a couple of issues that are bothering the site. and that 2. they have also noticed views are down.
I honestly have no clue why the views are down. I would like to think it is due to the holidays.
Honestly, you mentioned that before, I went and pulled my mover’s stuff that was done last year in December and January. we are down about 30% from last year same time. I published this because you had asked that question and i found it to be extremely interesting and valid!
Kudos to you, I wish you luck. This will be interesting information.
we shall see, we shall see. I am only going to do this for a week!
Ill miss you bro… kidding.
thanks! you are always quick with a joke (are you a billy joel fan, remember that song?) and I always love your sense of humor!
Or to light up your smoke. Nope, dont know it. 🙂
Thanks Doc, even with the dad jokes, I like yours as well. 😉
thanks! by all means, sing us a song!
His stranger LP (actual LP) was my anthem Junior year in High School!!!
I don’t know what is going on, but it’s true that the number of reputations is diminishing …. my vision is that sometimes I can’t even open all the posts daily so that I can comment on them … all the comments … sometimes i miss one day but they are too easy to delete … i only comment from now on those posts that comment on me … if i would comment on others then i would run out of comments for you .. ..I have a blocker at the bottom of the screen … I can’t remove it in any way … I’ve tried a few but it’s not working
personally i wonder – you are a great commenter- I look forward to every comment you have time to share!
there are too many variables and way too much :disinformation: about the site published. I want to get some real numbers!
You will probably find it very difficult to get real numbers …. well I don’t know what’s going on with these comments …. why don’t they tell you exactly how and what?
the real numbers are pretty easy within reason. There are always variables which is why I am changing my behavior for a week.
I will open posts so that I can track their progress. I keep a sheet with the URLs of the posts I am tracking.
I would say in fairness my numbers are off plus or minus 8%
These are very good results … I know you will write exactly what you found out
i hope the results are good.