from the closing-the-books dept

Yearly, a bit after New Years, I attempt to do a publish wanting on the earlier years outcomes on Techdirt, what folks have been serious about, what commenters have been rated extremely and whatnot. I at all times wait till after New Years (not like another websites!) to ensure I’ve the total 12 months’s information. This 12 months, it took a little longer than common as I’ve been fairly busy with another stuff. Additionally, I needed to do a bit extra piecing of issues collectively. As you could recall, final 12 months, we lastly switched from our outdated, home-built platform to WordPress. We’re nonetheless figuring out among the bugs and quirks from the transfer, however slowly getting round to including new options. However one of many points is that we didn’t have a full, constant analytics setup for the whole 12 months, so I’m piecing issues collectively from two separate analytics methods. As you’ll recall, two years in the past we dumped Google Analytics in our ongoing quest to rely much less on the most important tech firms for providers.

Should you’d prefer to see the small print from earlier years, right here you go: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010.

The very first thing we cowl is the place our guests got here from… and the highest of the checklist isn’t very shocking and has stayed fairly regular. 72% of our visits have been from the US, with 6% from the UK and 5% from Canada. That’s within the vary the place we often see it. Australia and India comply with at 2% of our site visitors. The following 5 are Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Brazil. I’ll observe that one of many different analytics packages we’re testing (for which I solely have a couple of months of information in the direction of the tip of the 12 months) reveals Brazil really having the second most site visitors, however I’m undecided that’s correct.

I typically have enjoyable wanting by means of the underside of the checklist, however truthfully, that’s in all probability only a waste of time. The information on gadgets and browsers used to entry Techdirt is a little bit of a multitude, although we must always have significantly better information subsequent 12 months. Nevertheless, it does appear to be the pattern in the direction of viewing through cellular gadgets continues to speed up.

Some new stats that we didn’t have (simple) entry to in earlier years: in 2022, we printed 2,056 posts and acquired nearly 62,000 feedback. Not unhealthy! These 2,056 posts totaled about 1.6 million phrases. That’s 774 phrases per publish. Trying again at previous information… that’s the longest common publish we’ve had because the starting of Techdirt. The information really reveals that our posts have tended to get longer every 12 months with only some exceptions. I truthfully had no concept. I additionally don’t put a lot stake in general site visitors numbers, however our site visitors elevated a ton in the direction of the tip of final 12 months. Mainly from September onward, we have been breaking site visitors data.

The previous couple of years I’ve given a useful pie chart for the place our site visitors comes from. I can’t fairly do this this 12 months (hopefully I can convey it again subsequent 12 months). As soon as once more, we pleasure ourselves on having greater than half of our site visitors come direct (you loyal guests coming proper again, fairly than counting on us popping up someplace), and that also holds true. After that, search drove loads of site visitors, with (in fact) Google driving most of that, adopted by Bing and DuckDuckGo. Different site visitors drivers have been Twitter, SmartNews, Reddit, Google Information, Fb, and Hacker Information. Sure, Fb has at all times been a low site visitors driver for us. We by no means spent a lot time cultivating site visitors there like each different information website, and thus… we don’t a lot care how they deal with information when each few months the corporate adjustments its thoughts.

And with that, let’s get to the stuff everybody appears to be like ahead to. The lists.

High Ten Tales, by distinctive pageviews, on Techdirt for 2022:

  1. Hey Elon: Let Me Help You Speed Run The Content Moderation Learning Curve
  2. It Took Just Four Days From Elon Gleefully Admitting He’d Unplugged A Server Rack For Twitter To Have A Major Outage
  3. Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Twitter And Hunter Biden’s Laptop
  4. Subreddit Discriminates Against Anyone Who Doesn’t Call Texas Governor Greg Abbott ‘A Little Piss Baby’ To Highlight Absurdity Of Content Moderation Law
  5. North Carolina Republicans Push Bill Forcing Towns To Destroy Electric Car Chargers
  6. Does Twitter Have Any Employees Left Who Remember That The Company Is Under A Strict Consent Decree With The FTC?
  7. Kids Use Discord Chat To Track Predator Teacher’s Actions; Under California’s Kids Code, They’d Be Blocked
  8. Ridiculous: Gov’t Contractor Copies Open Source 3D Printing Concept… And Patents It
  9. It’s Still Stupidly, Ridiculously Difficult To Buy A ‘Dumb’ TV
  10. Ye’s ‘Buyout’ Of Parler Looks Very Much Like A Failed Company Taking Advantage Of Troubled Rich Guy

This checklist is a bit completely different than previously, in that a lot of it’s kinda dominated by one story (and the following few posts down the checklist in site visitors are associated to that very same story as nicely). That at all times makes me a bit nervous, as I desire it when Techdirt is getting a fairly broad base of curiosity, fairly than simply specializing in a single factor. Nonetheless, the tales that did appear to catch on and go viral principally tended to have our distinctive… Techdirtian spin on issues. Which is one thing helpful to consider for this 12 months.

2022’s High Ten Tales, by remark quantity:

  1. No One Has Any Clue How Texas’ Social Media Law Can Actually Work (Because It Can’t Work) (790 Feedback)
  2. 5th Circuit Rewrites A Century Of 1st Amendment Law To Argue Internet Companies Have No Right To Moderate (625 Feedback)
  3. Stop Trying To Make State Action Doctrine Happen (467 Feedback)
  4. This Is Really, Really Dumb: Ohio Court Says Google May Be A Common Carrier (461 Feedback)
  5. The Problem With The Otherwise Very Good And Very Important Eleventh Circuit Decision On The Florida Social Media Law (452 Feedback)
  6. Twitter’s Legal Team Has Been An Aggressive Defender Of Free Speech; Will That Continue Under Musk? (420 Feedback — Musk would discover this humorous)
  7. No, The FBI Is NOT ‘Paying Twitter To Censor’ (409 Feedback)
  8. If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole) (393 Feedback)
  9. Danish Court Confirms Insane ‘Little Mermaid’ Copyright Ruling Against Newspaper Over Cartoon (387 Feedback)
  10. Musk, Twitter, Why The First Amendment Can’t Resolve Content Moderation (Part I) (351 Feedback)

I’m sensing a sample right here. Individuals have sturdy opinions concerning the varied legal guidelines making an attempt to power web sites to host content material. After which some sturdy opinions about Twitter. I used to be considerably shocked by the Little Mermaid story making the highest 10 remark checklist, however then I regarded and noticed that our resident “very confused about copyright legislation” commenter went a bit nuts on that one.

Additionally, regardless of the overlap in matters between these two prime 10 lists, observe that (as soon as once more) the highest tales in site visitors aren’t the identical as the highest tales in feedback. Feedback don’t equal site visitors. Typically they simply equal flame wars between a small group of individuals.

And now to the actually essential lists. The remark leaderboards:

2022 High Commenters, by remark quantity:

  1. Stephen T. Stone 3943 feedback
  2. That One Guy 2055 feedback
  3. LostInLoDOS 1985 feedback
  4. Toom1275 1923 feedback
  5. PaulT 1720 feedback
  6. That Anonymous Coward 1555 feedback
  7. Chozen 1385 feedback
  8. bhull242 1198 feedback
  9. Samuel Abram 951 feedback
  10. terop 914 feedback

Undoubtedly some carry-overs from the earlier 12 months, although PaulT, who has been someplace on the leaderboard since we began this and was again in 1st place final 12 months after a couple of years down the checklist, dropped again all the way down to fifth place.

High 10 Most Insightful Commenters, primarily based on what number of instances they bought the lightbulb icon:
Parentheses reveals what share of their feedback bought the icon

  1. Stephen T. Stone 668 feedback (17%)
  2. That One Guy 584 feedback (28%)
  3. PaulT 309 feedback (18%)
  4. That Anonymous Coward 180 feedback (12%)
  5. Toom1275 176 feedback (9%)
  6. Mike Masnick 147 feedback (29%)
  7. Thad 85 feedback (21%)
  8. James Burkhardt 70 feedback (24%)
  9. nasch 68 feedback (8%)
  10. Samuel Abram 67 feedback (7%)

The identical prime three (although in a unique order) as we’ve had for years. It’s maybe not shocking Stephen T. Stone took first place this 12 months, after his clean sweep of the most insightful comments of the year. Thanks guys for being actually key to offering actual perception and worth within the feedback.

High 10 Funniest Commenters, primarily based on what number of instances they bought the LOL icon:
Parentheses reveals what share of their feedback bought the icon

  1. That One Guy 87 feedback (4.2%)
  2. Stephen T. Stone 86 feedback (2.2%)
  3. Thad 40 feedback (9.8%)
  4. That Anonymous Coward 39 feedback (2.5%)
  5. Toom1275 36 feedback (1.9%)
  6. Cat_Daddy 26 feedback (13.3%)
  7. Samuel Abram 13 feedback (1.4%)
  8. PaulT 12 feedback (0.7%)
  9. Flakbait 11 feedback (25.6%)
  10. nasch 8 feedback (1.0%)

As soon as once more, it’s far more tough to be constantly humorous. Kudos to Thad who has stayed on this checklist for years with a constantly increased share than many others (and this 12 months, a lot increased than regular). Additionally noteworthy are the 2 new entrants who each had an extremely excessive share of their feedback ranked as humorous: Cat Daddy and (particularly) Flakbait. Certainly, it’s a must to return to 2017 to seek out anybody with as excessive a share as these two (and, really, Thad as nicely). Good going guys! Hold the humorous coming.

And, with that (a bit later than common) the 2022 books are closed and we’re off to the 2023 races. And a few of you might be already working exhausting on making subsequent 12 months’s lists…

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