Tuesday, 22 May 2007
A sadder economics
Iain's done it again. The urge took him and out came another fundamentally flawed post. Ignoring yet another "I am not your researcher" outburst, Dale decides to base his argument attacking the New Deal on unsubstantiated figures from a third party. After all, not only is he not your researcher, he doesn't even appear to be his researcher.
Over at the Ministry of Truth, Unity has taken Dale to task on the matter, pointing out that Frank Field required a 29 page report with which to make a flawed attack on the New Deal, making Dale's measly 43 words on the subject appear extremely inadequate.
Iain Dale, not your researcher, not his researcher; in fact not prone to doing much research at all.
Labels: economics, iain dale the expert, propaganda, research
Posted by Clive @ | Permalink | | Links to this post
Wednesday, 2 May 2007
"He will now use this comment to write another poisonous post."
Ugh! He got me!Vision fading... flesh... chilling... find myself... unable to blog...
[reset]
Iain was taken to task about the censorship of his stat-porn and this redirection stunt yesterday.
Without me having to do anything about it, several people (including Unity) flagged his partial and infuriatingly misleading response as proof that the man has nothing to offer but clumsy misdirection.
The relevant exchange is repeated below. (Do treat that hyperlink with care.)
I could add
Scott Matthewman said...
So one referrer manages to reach no. 8 in your list, even though all clicks come from a single source (as Laurence's comment suggests).
And yet Bloggerheads, which was at no. 6 in your similar chart a month ago, has disappeared completely.
You're not being honest at all, are you?
And does it have anything to do with the fact that you're (badly) attempting to ruin the user experience of visitors to your site if they've come from a site you don't happen to agree with -- regardless of whether or not they would agree with the opinions voiced on that site?
If you want to portray yourself as a professional blogger, I would have thought a degree of professionalism would be in order. Acts such as wilfully distorting your chart figures and preventing people from linking to specific blog entries are highly unbecoming.
May 01, 2007 3:52 PM
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Laurence Boyce said...
Interesting. I’m very much inclined to think that Iain is a good egg, but there does undeniably appear to be some “dodgy code” at the start of his template. But you’d have to say that it’s not exactly very well hidden, which would be easy to do. And it’s probably not his handiwork either. Still, no need to let that stand in the way of a good story.
Iain Dale in dodgy template shocker!!!
May 01, 2007 6:14 PM
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Iain Dale said...
Scott, I have made no secret of the fact that since the March figures I have banned Tim Ireland from my site. That includes links to him. Simple as that. If you have followed what he has said about me you wouldn't be at all surprised. I make no apology for it. I'm simply not having him polluting this blog with his poison. He has plenty of his own sites to do that on.
It's nothing to do with not agreeing with him. It's about abuse. Watch him. He will now use this comment to write another poisonous post. See if I'm not right.
May 01, 2007 6:28 PM
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Scott Matthewman said...
Scott, I have made no secret of the fact that since the March figures I have banned Tim Ireland from my site. That includes links to him. Simple as that.
But you could reference where he comes in your chart without linking to him. That would be the honest thing to do, even if you don't want to link to him.
As it is, you've omitted figures and covered up that you've done so. If a Labour politician did that, you'd quite rightly be all over them. Should you not hold yourself up to a higher standard?
If you have followed what he has said about me you wouldn't be at all surprised. I make no apology for it.
You're right, I'm not at all surprised that you're not completely consistent. I've followed what he's said about you, which basically consists of pointing out things you've said, and how at times, you're not completely honest.
I'm simply not having him polluting this blog with his poison.
I've been reading this blog for a while. If any of the posts Tim has made could possibly be construed as poisonous, then there are far more noxious fumes coming from some of your regular -- and tolerated -- commenters.
It's nothing to do with not agreeing with him. It's about abuse. Watch him. He will now use this comment to write another poisonous post. See if I'm not right.
I do believe he's criticised distortion of that sort in the past. Good to know you're being consistent with your misdirection, if nothing else.
Now, can you answer this -- if Laurence's blog is private and used only by him, how can it have referred "at least 100 people"?
May 01, 2007 6:54 PM
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Iain Dale said...
Scott, I haven't the faintest idea. If it is only him clicking on it, it should be a maximum of 31. Seeing as you obviously think I have lied I would be happy to email you a screenshot from my statcounter if you let me have your email address.
May 01, 2007 7:06 PM
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Scott Matthewman said...
Fine - my email's scott [at] matthewman [dot] net.
FWIW, I suspect that whatever stats package you're using would be reporting the number of visits -- possibly even clicks -- coming from each referrer. Either of those are very different from 'visitor', which implies discrete individuals.
Don't sweat it -- I have to explain these concepts at work all the time, so I know they're often tricky for people to get their heads round. But accuracy wherever possible can, I'm sure you agree, prevent honest mistake becoming indistinguishable from dishonest distortion :)
May 01, 2007 7:54 PM
UPDATE - The following has just been added to the exchange. I await Iain's reply with interest.
Barney said...
"I have banned Tim Ireland from my site. That includes links to him."
But this isn't about links to him, is it? It's links from him. You're just trying to make it difficult for anyone to look at your blog, if they're coming from something Tim Ireland has said.
You're being really childish. It's the kind of behaviour you'd expect from a teenager who's just discovered the Internet. From a 44 year old who still seems to harbour ambitions in political journalism, it's incredible.
May 02, 2007 1:20 PM
Labels: iain dale the expert, propaganda
Posted by Tim @ | Permalink | | Links to this post
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
Not that he has anything to hide...
Iain Dale must have got a bit of a shock when he last looked at his referral statistics... perhaps this is why he though this measure necessary:
Bloggerheads - This is a first... 'bloggers' objecting to deeplinks
This is not how bloggers behave... even a wannabe expert should know that.
Labels: iain dale the expert
Posted by Tim @ | Permalink | | Links to this post
Sunday, 15 April 2007
Doctor Dale's Facebook
I'm beginning to wonder whether or not Iain Dale is a bit of a size queen when it comes to blogging. The exceptionally long blogroll (better measured in number of screens rather than links) and the belief that comment volume is indicative of both popularity and quality are two obvious indications of this near obsession. Now we can add another, the number of Facebook friends.
In this post Iain gloats about the number of friends he has on Facebook.
Hazel sadly has fewer friends on Facebook than I do - a mere 272. With your help we can show that she has so many more friends in the Conservative Party than she does in her own. Oh yes. We all want her to win, don't we?The first point to note is that a Facebook friend isn't necessarily a proper friend in the Real World meaning of the word. A better term would be loose aquaintance, though that doesn't sound as cool. If Iain is using number of Facebook friends as a measure of his popularity, then the only conclusion that can be drawn is that Iain and his chums could do with getting out more.
What this really reveals is Iain's fascination with volume over quality. And that misses a crucial point regarding blogging; that the quality of inbound links is just as important (if not moreso) than the volume. If you want to improve the pagerank of your blog, don't simply follow Iain's lead and push for a large volume of inbound links (and don't spam other bloggers as part of this effort), but instead aim for quality inbound links from blogs and sites with a good pagerank. A few thousand links from site with an average pagerank between 6 and 7 is preferable to ten thousand links or more from sites with an average pagerank of 3 or 4.
In blogging quality counts just as highly as quantity, a lesson you probably wouldn't learn from the Iain Dale School of Blogging.
Labels: blogging, iain dale the expert, iain dale the spammer, links
Posted by Clive @ | Permalink | | Links to this post
Friday, 13 April 2007
Comment permalinks: spelling it out for Iain Dale the blogging 'expert'
"Now if you tell me how to add these Comment permalink things that you keep referring to I will happily do so." - Iain Dale
Whoops! Did you see what I did there? Here, let me show you again.
Now why does this link work and not this one?
Well, it all comes down to a single missing letter in a single line of code, which becomes obvious when you see the two URLs side-by-side.
Here I have to admit to being just a little bit mean to Iain; his actual ignorance of blogging really gets up my nose, as does his feigning of ignorance when he's put on the spot... so I've been feigning ignorance to highlight his genuine ignorance.
Clear so far? Good.
Twice now, in direct emails to Iain (on 14 February and 1 April) I've waved correct versions of the relevant code under his nose and suggested that he consult his designer (who "should understand what this all means").
Iain didn't pick up on the obvious difference between this code and what was in his design template, and neither did his designer (assuming, of course, that his designer was consulted).
Of course, the manual workaround used above could have been used at any stage, but that would have made it far too easy for everyone's favourite blogging 'expert'.
However, an important upcoming post is going to rely heavily on the extended use of comment permalinks, so the time has finally come to spell it out for Iain Dale and deliver the fix in a hand-holding gesture that I'm sure will be appreciated...
Iain has this as the guts of his comment permalink code:
But what he needs is this:
All that's missing is the letter 'c' after the '#' and before the comment number (which is also the Awfully Big Secret of the manual workaround should anyone wish to use comment permalinks between now and when Iain finally gets around to fixing this).
Job done. Over to you, Iain.
(PS - Where should I send the invoice?)
Labels: iain dale the expert
Posted by Tim @ | Permalink | | Links to this post
