• (cs)

    I wasn't privileged with the knowledge of thedaily's existence when this survey took place, but I figured I'd toss in my two cents on it anyway. I'm viewing the analysis of this survey from the perspective of traffic retention and increase, basically keeping the users you have and getting them to view the site more often.

    It's interesting to note that the largest percentage of users who took this survey (and answered question 1) said they visited "once a day" (52.12%), while those who stated they visited "several" (19.03%) and "a few" (23.10%) times a day, made up nearly 10% less of respondents in comparison. That could either suggest the junkies who visit the site all the time just don't participate in the activities as much, or that your only providing enough content and entertainment for people to come around once a day.

    Since I'm looking at this from a traffic perspective, I grouped the users into their types based on the 9124 that answered question 1, the types are below.

    1. every now and then -- 136 -- 1.49%
    2. every few weeks -- 97 -- 1.06%
    3. once a week -- 292 -- 3.20%
    4. few times a day -- 2108 -- 23.10%
    5. once a day -- 4755 -- 52.12%
    6. several times a day -- 1736 -- 19.03%

    Digging deeper. In nearly all cases, every user type primarily voted in the same direction as everyone grouped together. For example if as a whole, the largest percent of users voted "Yes" for a theoretical question, then each user group separated primarily voted "Yes" as well. Which of course would make sense. However, this wasn't always the case.

    For question 2. "Opinions on Feature Articles", the group as a whole voted primarily for "Love 'em". However, user types 1 and 2 ("every now and then" and "every few weeks respectively") leaned more towards the Feature Articles being on par with everything else with 42.65% and 42.27% of those user types voting for that option. So it would seem that the users who visit this site least often, are not particularly swayed by the feature articles. This happened on two other questions as well.

    For question 6. "Tales from the interview", the group as a whole voted for "Pretty good, wouldn't mind more." However, user type 6 (those who visit several times a day) actually swayed more towards "Must have more!" with 51.32% of those user types voting in that manner.

    And again for question 7. "off-topic Friday", the average user suggested they were fairly indifferent to these articles with 41.45% of them voting as such. But yet again, the user group 6 (several times a day) actually had the majority of its users voting this a step higher at "Keep 'em up".

    These last two would both suggest that even though the largest subset of users you have visit once a day, those that visit several times a day are drawn in by the Tales from the Interview and Off-Topic Fridays more than the average user.

    Now then, on the not so pleasant side we have some more presumably irrelevant tidbits. The users who visit every few weeks participated the least in this survey with only 97 of them (or 1.06%) answering question 1. And of course remember that these users voted on par with all other groups with the exception of the Feature Articles where they rank it a step below the rest. Although on a brighter note, the "Feature Article" Feature ranked only 2nd to Tales from the interview as the most positively voted on feature of the site which suggests that those users who only visit every few weeks just don't fit the profile of the average user.

    Back to the negative realm. When users voted down a particular feature they generally swayed towards a "Don't really care for it" or "skip it" mind set which means it's not really bothering them, but they wouldn't mind seeing it gone. The one exception to this is the "Erro'd" feature in which the largest percentage of negative comments suggest it doesn't belong on WTF. The largest user group backing this vote was the "Every Few Weeks" crowd at 24.74% of those users voting this way. With every user group across the bored primarily voting this feature as a "mostly indifferent" and well over 60% of all voting for indifferent or dislike, this feature could probably be axed.

    By far, the most negatively ranked question was the "Vote for a new season of MFD" one. All groups voted primarily as "Could care less", however some 34% voted for "Vote of island", "please kill it", or "I'll kill myself". The largest subset of users backing this type of negative vote was "Every Few Weeks" user with nearly 37% percent. Individually, the largest single negative question vote for the "Vote for a new season of MFD" question was by the "Few times a day" crowd, who had a percentage of 17.55% vote for "I vote it off the island."

    Taking all this into consideration, I would say it's pretty easy to see that "Feature Articles", "Code SOD" and "Tales from the Interview" are easily your most liked features of the site. Even the users who rarely come around voted them highly which means they're your meal ticket to more traffic.

    No one is raving about "Error'd" and everyone but your Several Times a Day visitors don't really care about "Off Topic Fridays".

    And of course, while oddly enough most people say they thought MFD was on par with the rest of the site, they basically all stood up to boycott having another season.

  • mjwhitt (unregistered)

    It would be interesting to have gender included on the survey some day.

  • Jim (unregistered)

    Here's a multiple regression analysis. See images below for the data. Hopefully html works.

    • R-square value for all sets was pretty low. Regression only explains about 5% of the relation

    Aggregate data:

    • In general, there the people that wanted more MFD also liked: featured, errord, interview, and offtopic.
    • In general, those that didn't like MFD, instead liked codesod, and read TDWTF more often.

    [image]

    United states:

    • Read frequency had practically no effect on mdf vote.
    • codesod and feature were individually insignificant as well.

    [image]

    GB:

    • Much higher inate dislike of MFD, as shown in the const of 4, compared to the average of 2.4
    • Read frequency and offtopic variables were the only individually significant variables.
    • Read frequency has a negative correlation. The more often you read, the more you like MFD.

    [image]

    Canada:

    • Very similar to US and aggregate data
    • Only individually significant variable is offtopic likeness, much more explanatory power than the aggregate. Every 1 increase in offtopic = .4 increase in mfd vote.

    [image]

  • John Fouhy (unregistered)

    Do you have access to your website logs? You could match IP addresses of browsers to their location (there are sites around that will help you do this -- it's pretty accurate to the country level, AFAIK). Then compare with survey data. Find out which countries are best (or worst) at taking surveys :-)

  • (cs)

    Thanks to both the time and the country being present in the data, with a bit of timezone conversion we can estimate what the local time was when each survey was filled out. It's not perfectly accurate due to multiple timezones in the US and other big countries, but it's not bad.

    For example, if we correlate the time of day with the percentage of people who say they will kill themselves:

    [image]
  • Kasper (unregistered) in reply to gutch

    12% are ready to kill themselves when they have to VPN in to work to finish something off? Thank god I am using ssh myself and not VPN.

  • (cs) in reply to chrismcb
    chrismcb:
    shadowman:
    No. There was a good reason to do that in the first place, and I'm sure it hasn't changed.

    To force us to have fun? Sorry I don't buy the "there was a good reason" argument. snip

    Clearly, you have missed the point of Mandatory Fun Day.

  • (cs) in reply to chimaera
    chimaera:
    Fascinating how words change isn't it - I remember when 'mongol', 'spastic', 'nigger', 'cripple', 'goto' were entirely without perjorative connotations; the charity now known as 'Scope' was called 'The Spastics Society'. But no newspaper would print the word 'fuck'. That's progress, eh? (And 'Bog-paddies'? Didn't that used to be 'bog-trotters'?)
    I am not familiar with "bog-paddies" and "bog-trotters". Those terms carry absolutely no "perjorative"(sic) connotations for me. I am quite familiar with "nigger" in all its connotations. The term is a colloquial derivative of "negro" which is Spanish for "black", which as accurately describes skin color as do the terms "white", "brown", "yellow" and "red". In that sense, it carries no pejoration. It is only when the term is used with derision, and that derision is communicated to and understood by the hearer, that the term begins to carry pejoration.

    There should be nothing wrong with "nigger". It should be as much a colloquialism as is "cajun" in Louisiana. But history prevents that.

  • Cope with IT (unregistered) in reply to Anon

    Character sequence separated files should use &%€"\墣/# as the separating character sequence.

  • Zock (unregistered) in reply to gutch
    gutch:
    For example, if we correlate the time of day with the percentage of people who say they will kill themselves:

    Very interesting statistics, me likes a lot!

    But could someone please correlate the numbers of people threatening to kill themselves with international suicide statistics (e.g. http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-statistics.html)? I think such a study could provide useful for locating work force who tend to do what they promise and actually achieve something. I personally am too lazy to do that.

  • orie (unregistered)

    No Russia in statistics... sad.

    Although, probably, those folks read Russian translation and didn't take the survey.

  • (cs) in reply to FredSaw
    FredSaw:
    The term is a colloquial derivative of "negro" which is Spanish for "black", which as accurately describes skin color as do the terms "white", "brown", "yellow" and "red". In that sense, it carries no pejoration [....] There should be nothing wrong with "nigger". It should be as much a colloquialism as is "cajun" in Louisiana. But history prevents that.

    Yes, exactly, that is as it was understood here (ie England) some years ago, as a value-free description of skin colour. I'm old enough to remember the late 50's early 60's and certainly there were plenty of innate racist attitudes then, of the 'unquestioned superiority of the white races' type; but without much actual rancour. But equally, non-white people were so rare then as to be perceived as exotic rather than anything else. For certain they could sit anywhere on the bus; and I'm sure the 'N-word' didn't carry the charge that it does today.

    (Thanks for correcting my spelling of 'pejorative' - must admit, it wasn't a typo - I'd always spelt it that way!)

  • (cs) in reply to FredSaw
    FredSaw:
    real_aardvark:
    This was actually an unconsidered comment on the prevalence of low-IQ Americans (and the implied irrelevance of judgements on how large a country is, how many grains of sand it contains, etc), and it was based on what I seem to remember were -- distinctly offensive -- categories for those judged to have an IQ below 80.
    So I gathered. I'm not sure what implication you're reading into my comment about size, but my point was nothing more than that it's reasonable to expect a large number of responses from a large and largely populated area. How that exposes me as having an IQ below 80 is a curiosity indeed.
    Errr ... how did I imply that? A casual, ill-though-out, offensive, and stupid comment it might have been, but for the life of me I can't see how it's personally directed.

    Not much of a curiosity there, then.

    BTW, I believe the answer to your musings on nigger vs cajun is quite simply that the first was originally used, universally, as a term of opprobrium by the boss class, whereas the second is pretty much a home-grown self-description by folks who are proud to be Acadians. As you say, this persists into modern usage. You don't have to have experienced either to recognise that cajun food and cajun music are "hooray" terms, whereas nigger food and nigger music are "boo" terms.

    Now that "nigger" has been re-appropriated by the erstwhile insulted, much as happened to the word "gay," things are a little more opaque. That's the joy of language, I suppose.

    Mind you, even though I can envisage such a thing as "Red-neck Pride Day" (and forty years on, I'd suggest that April 4th would be an excellent choice), I don't ever expect to see "Nigger Pride Day." There are probably good reasons for this...

    Addendum (2008-04-12 12:38): On a completely different note, I think the evidence is clear that TDWTF would be hugely more popular with a "Mandatory Excel Spreadsheet Day" in place of a "Mandatory Fun Day." The basic principle's the same; the graphics are equivalently limited; and people could have just as much fun changing the axes and the labels. Plus, there's nothing like that out there, and all the ones above are huge fun. I'd buy that for a dollar.

  • Jan (unregistered)

    I thought it would be fun to divide the number of surveys by the population in milions per country. Not surprisingly some very small countries made top the list, but it seems that tdwtf is quite popular in scandinavia and down under. You may have to add Vegimite to your diet of Salmiakki Alex.

    Iceland 36.1406 Gibraltar 35.7117 Finland 32.7947 Monaco 30.4915 Liechtenstein 28.9872 Estonia 26.7665 New Zealand 25.6382 Norway 25.4066 Sweden 24.9851 Australia 22.2321 Denmark 20.6027 Netherlands 20.1859

  • Cope with IT (unregistered) in reply to Tommy American
    Tommy American:
    I don't understand where some of these results are from. I mean, CA = California, IN = Indiana, DE = Delaware etc, but where the heck is GB and MK?
    CA=Canada, IN=India, DE=Germany (Deutschland), GB=Gabun, MK=Makedonia...
  • Jan (unregistered)

    Some country code confusion can arise from the fact that a lot of data is presented with FIPS codes and other with ISO codes. http://www.armcode.com/country-fips-iso-codes.htm

  • (cs) in reply to SomeGuy.
    SomeGuy.:
    Just checking server time. Ignore this post
    NEVER!
  • (cs) in reply to mjwhitt
    mjwhitt:
    It would be interesting to have gender included on the survey some day.

    plz send me teh co-edz !

  • (cs) in reply to Anne Elk
    Anne Elk:
    [CZ] Abraham:

    On personal note I just wanted to add that this analysis is mine and belongs to me.

    And of course it's very thin on one end, much MUCH thicker in the middle, and then thin again at the far end.

    Well, er, this theory of yours appears to have hit the nail on the head. (Sorry, I cheated and dug out the original script!)

  • Fraggle My Rock (unregistered) in reply to lolwtf
    lolwtf:
    SomeGuy.:
    Just checking server time. Ignore this post
    NEVER!

    One of the more intelligent rebuttals/comments in this thread I've seen yet.

  • Survey Taker #2884 (unregistered)

    Are these statistics adjusted for all the crap people entered for the sole purpose of screwing these statistics?

  • Ilya Ehrenburg (unregistered) in reply to mjwhitt
    mjwhitt:
    It would be interesting to have gender included on the survey some day.
    I can't imagine how that would be relevant. Granted, many comments would profit from the commenters exposed to some grammar, but I don't think discussing the gender of "CodeSOD" (neutrum, I'd say) or "Error'd" (?) would help there.
  • Talis (unregistered) in reply to Fraggle My Rock
    Fraggle My Rock:
    One of the more intelligent rebuttals/comments in this thread I've seen yet.

    To counter clbuttic mistakes, the correct word is: reassals! ;-)

  • AC (unregistered) in reply to Survey Taker #2884
    Survey Taker #2884:
    Are these statistics adjusted for all the crap people entered for the sole purpose of screwing these statistics?

    Yes.

  • (cs) in reply to ChrisH
    ChrisH:
    "...and no matter how much you're told, you *won't* get it."

    I couldn't agree more, keep up the good work Alex :) Maybe you shouldn't let your mom (AKA #2883) post on TDWDF.

    It's probably his Granny and not his Mom.

  • (cs) in reply to FredSaw
    FredSaw:
    real_aardvark:
    This was actually an unconsidered comment on the prevalence of low-IQ Americans (and the implied irrelevance of judgements on how large a country is, how many grains of sand it contains, etc), and it was based on what I seem to remember were -- distinctly offensive -- categories for those judged to have an IQ below 80.
    So I gathered. I'm not sure what implication you're reading into my comment about size, but my point was nothing more than that it's reasonable to expect a large number of responses from a large and largely populated area. How that exposes me as having an IQ below 80 is a curiosity indeed.
    real_aardvark:
    The use of "mongol" to describe somebody who has an IQ of, let's say, between 60 and 75, was originally descriptive and (I believe) referred to a typically sallow skin, deriving, I would assume, from an associated genetic characteristic.
    It may be "mongol" over there; I always heard it as "mongoloid", and the label derives from the distinctive slanted eye shape and round face of people with Down Syndrome. The insult in it is not toward the people of Mongolia, but toward people with Down Syndrome, that they should be used as a standard of comparison for stupidity.
    real_aardvark:
    You are what you grew up in to being. I grew up with kids calling each other (and me) "mongs." Fortunately, although I might slip into that mode every now and again, this is no longer common. Nowadays, we just call each other cunts, wankers, or gippos (hugely popular in drinking establishments around here). "Kikes" appears to be on the way out, although I recently caught an Irishman referring to "hill-billies" when his intended object of derision would far prefer (for both historical and geographical reasons) to be called "bog-paddies."
    In my part of the country (southern USA) it's "rednecks", which literally describes the appearance of those in the rural south who spend all day out in the sun, whether driving a tractor, working on an oil rig, or whatever.

    So these "rednecks" don't know about wearing hats, using sunblock and such ... ? Maybe they are mongols, then ?

    On the Mongolian thing: There is the distinct possibility that the number of mongolian citizens living in the US is only slightly lower than the number of mongolian citizens living in Mongolia itself the reason being that from my knowledge Mongolia all-in-all is not a very nice place.

  • huh? (unregistered)

    Well, my analysis show clearly that there is a strong correlation between reading TDWTF and answering the survey.

    [image]
  • Fraggle My Rock (unregistered)

    And the Lord spake, saying, draw a graph and make it 1 cubit by 1 cubit and ensure that thou hath calculated the mean, median, mode and standard deviation based on the sample.

    JOHN 3:16

  • jethrotull (unregistered)

    Too bad there were no questions in the survey regarding the polish edition. Today there are exactly two weeks with absolutely nothing going on there. So, hereby, I would like to submit pl.thedailywtf.com as a WTF to The Daily WTF.

  • Aloisius (unregistered)

    I wanted to comment on one statistic matter that concerns me particularly. That is on the number of readers from my country: Luxembourg. I thought I was the only one, but no, there's FOUR of us. That's me plus 3 more people. C'mon Luxemburgers, show yourselves!!

    I also made a chart to show this in a more direct and graphic manner:

    [image]
  • Stewie (unregistered) in reply to Tommy American
    Tommy American:
    I don't understand where some of these results are from. I mean, CA = California, IN = Indiana, DE = Delaware etc, but where the heck is GB and MK?

    Wow. Just Wow!

  • (cs) in reply to Tommy American
    Tommy American:
    I don't understand where some of these results are from. I mean, CA = California, IN = Indiana, DE = Delaware etc, but where the heck is GB and MK?

    GB = Gnu yorB MK = Morth daKota

    -dZ.
  • (cs) in reply to Tommy American
    Tommy American:
    No...you are being a bit parochial. Remember, there is a world outside the United States

    GB = Great Britain (aka England, aka United Kingdom)

    Historical note: Great Britain was formerly part of the United States until they were kicked out in the late 1700s.

    Oh right, like I'm going to learn History AND Geography. Hello! I'm American!!! I really don't care about this 'Great Britain' or any other country that doesn't speak English.

    But they speak English in 'Great Britain' -- they have their own dialect, which is based on the English they learned when they tried to become the 51st State in the 1960's.

    -dZ.

  • Spav (unregistered) in reply to Fraggle My Rock
    Fraggle My Rock:
    lolwtf:
    SomeGuy.:
    Just checking server time. Ignore this post
    NEVER!

    One of the more intelligent rebuttals/comments in this thread I've seen yet.

    Yeah, it's not bad for a mongtard.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Aloisius
    Aloisius:
    C'mon Luxemburgers, show yourselves!!

    Yummy, Luxem Burgers.

  • Why the domain change fixation? (unregistered)

    Seriously.

    You have a reasonably successful website. Now having found your domain name, and having acquired an audience, why are you so fixated on changing your domain name?

    TheDailyWTF.com says it pretty nicely. No, you'll never compete with Ted Turner with this as your root domain name. So what? Enjoy the audience you have, and give us what we want. We'll reward you with our eyes and indirect advertising dollars.

    Why is that so hard to understand? I found TheDailyWTF. I bookmarked TheDailyWTF. I come to TheDailyWTF. It's short, concise, and clear. I don't give a rat's ass about WorseThanFailure.com. And TheDailyWTH.com doesn't really mean anything, except a weak, watered down substitute for TheDailyWTF.

    Oh, and your cartoons are teh gay. It would be nice if they were mildly funny, but they aren't.

    The footbullets, do they run the show around here?

  • Jockey (unregistered) in reply to DZ-Jay
    DZ-Jay:
    Tommy American:
    No...you are being a bit parochial. Remember, there is a world outside the United States

    GB = Great Britain (aka England, aka United Kingdom)

    Historical note: Great Britain was formerly part of the United States until they were kicked out in the late 1700s.

    Oh right, like I'm going to learn History AND Geography. Hello! I'm American!!! I really don't care about this 'Great Britain' or any other country that doesn't speak English.

    But they speak English in 'Great Britain' -- they have their own dialect, which is based on the English they learned when they tried to become the 51st State in the 1960's.

    -dZ.

    That's the one thing I hate about these comments, I can never tell if people are serious or not.

  • Smash (unregistered) in reply to Blaksheep
    Blaksheep:
    *snip*
    1. every now and then -- 136 -- 1.49%
    2. every few weeks -- 97 -- 1.06%
    3. once a week -- 292 -- 3.20%
    4. few times a day -- 2108 -- 23.10%
    5. once a day -- 4755 -- 52.12%
    6. several times a day -- 1736 -- 19.03%

    snip

    Except that option #4 was named "few times a week", your analysis is right and cool

  • vaginamonster (unregistered) in reply to shadowman
    shadowman:
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    I have to admit, while as I recall I voted "MFD sux" in the survey, it kinda grew on me. I would not mind seeing a new season, but please don't *force* us to post images as comments. Allow/encourage them, but don't make it (haha) Mandatory.

    No. There was a good reason to do that in the first place, and I'm sure it hasn't changed.

    That makes my vagina flutter like a butterfly

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