This is kind’of’a fun post, so do bear with its length. I posted, recently, about the non-inclusion of LRC (and the Mises Institute) in the Top 100 Political Websites as put together by Right Wing News, a site I had never heard of before the list was passed around. I thought it was fun that, after they made the list public, they made mention of the fact that LRC and the Mises Institute had been left out (maybe they never heard of either, so ok) of their original listing. They did this in an informal blog post on their site, after the appropriate sitemasters had apparently emailed RWN about it.

Well, Lew Rockwell knows fully well that I have always been a huge “Alexa Skeptic” or better yet, an Alexa Disbeliever. I’ve argued against its promotion, spoiling everyone’s fun! But, having formerly tutored statistics and knowing some things about this, when I mucked through the Alexa statistical approach many months ago, and I even called Alexa people and questioned some things I wasn’t quite comfortable with, I decided I was totally dissatisfied with the weak methodology used. Pshaw!, I said. Boo, hiss! I know Alexa is kinda fun (admitted), and I’ve even gotten around to paying attention to it, but it’s deeply flawed IMHO.

Well, karendecoster.com was not on that list (though I would have been in the 40s somewhere.) Then someone sent me a Top 100 Blog list that RWN had done as well. KarenDecoster.com wasn’t included [whine, snivel, hurt], even though I would have been at #7 or #8, or thereabouts. So I sent a friendly little FYI to RWN saying that maybe I should be in there? The webmaster/site guru sent me back an email saying he wasn’t trying to be rude, but, he was basically asking how could little-old-me.com possibly have such high rankings?

I dunno, and don’t really care. But here’s the part that tells a million tales at high volume. I wonder if he went around my site, trying out URLs to find my WebTrends Report. It’s not hard to find it, and I have always left it un-password protected (not as of yesterday I don’t), because some folks that understand web stuff have asked to be able to look through it, etc. So heck, I never cared.

He must have thought that his inwardly-located statistical program (his judgment) was even better than Alexa’s flawed methodology, because he questioned how could I possibly be ranked so high (19,000-something). He said he was “curious,” as if, What was I doing to make it so? Should that bother me? You bet. I told him it must be those weekly “payments” I make to those fine, easily-bought, traffic-rating folks over at Amazon/Alexa. Or, maybe, Alexa is just, well, “skewed” somehow, but just where karendecoster.com is concerned. Then I admitted I was hacking into Alexa’s database to skew those stats. It’s a goshdarn bad habit of mine!

OK, seriously, considering my stats, my page evidently does “do a whole lot of traffic.” That speaks for itself. I guess RWN (and they are Republicans; surprise!) was led to belive that no way, no how, can a little ole, unstaffed, one person, me.com, chick libertarian website rank so high (gasp!), and maybe the guy was so “curious” that he thought he’d look to see if he could get into my web reports, I dunno. Maybe he didn’t do that, but then, why else would anyone think they had enough info to judge my traffic numbers?

Absolutely mindblowing. That’s pretty darn odd if ya ask me. ‘Tis like having someone going through your underwear drawer when you’re not home, you know? My site obviously does #19,000 worth of traffic, apparently. So does LewRockwell.com do alot of traffic. And the Mises Institute. All were excluded from the RWN lists. But, quite possibly, RWN never heard of any of us, so give ‘em a break. It’s got to be a difficult task to put together such a list and not exclude a lot of top sites.

But what’s important is his statement that I can’t possibly get enough traffic to have such a high rating, and no way, no where, does he have the info to judge that.

But what should I have expected? Since I am a part of the libertarian crowd, and worse yet, the vehemently antiwar libertarian crowd (the “fringe” element), as opposed to the warmly antiwar libertarian crowd, something must be wrong in their minds. You won’t see me in these hilarious little “linking circles” because I don’t blog my day away talking about “Instapundit said this,” “Brink Lindsay did this,” and “Andrew Sullivan said that,” like much of the rest of the libertarian blogging crowd. Plus, sometimes I don’t blog for days at a time. I don’t join the informal “you-link-me-and-I’ll-link-you” circles because it bores me to stitches, and, because I am way out on the fringe according to all of them. I am also not interested in what they have to say, and vice versa.

The Neocon Libertarians won’t link to me, and neither will the Beltway libertarians. But they all link to the warmongering pseudo-libertarians and neocons. That’s the way it’s played, and I’m not interested in any of it. I’m a lone blogger baby! And I refuse to stroke the hind ends of others for “better stats.” The whole “link mentality” reminds me of the cliques back in high school. Didn’t do cliques then and I won’t do ‘em now. By the way, not many are linking to the LRC blog yet, and they won’t. Same goes for Bumper Hornberger’s great blog. But hey, we’re not like the rest of them, and we like it that way. That’s life darlin’.

Oh, you can note that the RWN list does include warmongering, pro-State “libertarian” blogs. Oh well. I haven’t heard back from RWN, but I’ll give them a shot at ’splaining what they meant by all of this. I’m sure they’re well-meaning folks that just can’t fathom us non-Blog Circle-type, Lone Vegabonds having some success. But that’s why I wanted to post this story. To let people know what we deal with each and every day.

But stay outta my damn underwear drawer!

The end.