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Has anybody noticed that the TTLB Ecosystem is busted?

Been dead for at least a month. Some of the buttons work sometimes, kind of. Some of the data will display. But the headlines in the Hot Topics section are from late December, and nobody’s blog is moving. It’s like the automated bits are chugging along, but slowly falling to pieces without human supervision.

My WordPress site barely made it into Wiggly Worm territory, so it’s hardly a bragging rights thing for me, but I did find the charts handy. And I liked to check out my neighbor Worms.

What I find creepy about this, though, is the silence. Google and Technorati only yielded a couple of brief mentions on small blogs. I would’ve expected the collapse of the Ecosystem to make a big splash in Blogonia.

Comments


Comment from iamfelix
Time: February 20, 2007, 11:33 am

I hadn’t noticed – My blog never made it out of amoebic (dysentery) level, so I kind of quit checking. Blogonia? Isn’t that where the evil princes that always wreak havoc on soap operas come from ? They’re always named Ruprecht or something …


Comment from iamfelix
Time: February 20, 2007, 12:13 pm

PS I like your “Weasel played the banjo” graphic, although I miss the “special age-enhanc[ed]” photo of Donina Beale on your other site – I laughed every time I saw that.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 20, 2007, 12:42 pm

Yeah, I’ve really put my tail in a cleft stick with that one. I haven’t done Wednesday yet. Or the rest of the week, for that matter. I’m hoping to stay one day ahead of it until I hit seven.

Do you get those flyers in the mail, with the ‘age enhanced’ missing kids? Boy, that software is crap.


Comment from Enas Yorl
Time: February 20, 2007, 12:55 pm

Yesterday’s weasel looked so sad! I would have come to his war but my invitation must have got blown up in the mail.

I seem to recall some sort of kerflufle about the TTLB last year. Something about the way people could manipulate thier stats and get higher ratings than they should.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 20, 2007, 1:47 pm

I know, I know. Monday’s weasel made me sad, too. Every time I looked over at it, I thought, “cheer up, little weasel! There’ll be another war some day.”

In case you’re too young to remember, that was an old anti-war poster of the Vietnam era: What if they gave a war and nobody came?


Comment from Enas Yorl
Time: February 20, 2007, 2:19 pm

Yah, I’m too young for Vietnam stuff, but they used to say it a lot on M*A*S*H too, so I got the reference on a boomerang angle.


Comment from Sissy Willis
Time: February 20, 2007, 2:27 pm

NZ Bear’s has been busy launching The Victory Caucus.

He’s looking for a White Flag Republicans logo.

Hmmm . . . Can White Flag Repulicans run ’round and ’round on a toilet seat, chasing a non-binding resolution? Yes. Yes, they can.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 20, 2007, 3:41 pm

Huh. I wonder if he even knows it’s busted.

You know, I could kick myself for not getting video of the kitten chasing flushes around the toilet. He’s too big to manage it now. These days, he’s more into faucets, anyhow.


Comment from iamfelix
Time: February 20, 2007, 4:18 pm

Unfortunately, I’m old enough to remember that poster in its original incarnation. That, and “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” Terrorism, apparently, is okay.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 20, 2007, 4:45 pm

Ugh. I remember that, Felix. If I’m not mistaken, that’s the work of Sister Corita Kent. Hm. Her Wikipedia page doesn’t mention it, so maybe not — but she did a lot of that stupid hippie crap back in the day.

She also designed a famous landmark south of Boston — a natural gas tank painted as though a giant brush had been slapped across it a few times. That’s actually pretty cool. It’s the largest copyrighted work of art in the world.

Oh, and it’s Blogonia as in, “ewwww…you got some blogonia!”


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 21, 2007, 8:19 am

Oh, dang. Now my hitcounter is busted. I’ve re-pasted the code several times this morning, but it won’t display. I think it may be a problem having two counters with very similar specs (I left the old one up at WordPress), but they’re two separate accounts.

Don’t these people know I’m a data junkie?! I need my numbers, man. I need them bad.


Comment from Gary LaPointe
Time: February 21, 2007, 11:07 am

I’ve moved up lately. I’m just not sure if it’s in the last few weeks/months (or maybe 3 or 4 months).

I’ve recently become a Large Mammal but I can’t say when
http://truthlaidbear.com/showdetails.php?host=http://garysaid.com
I’m thinking I was a flippery fish not that long ago…


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 21, 2007, 12:28 pm

It looks like it fell over late December/early January. The hot topics were last updated December 30. If you click the “details” tab for any blog, there is no past history chart for hits now, and the past history chart for links shows January 2 as the last datapoint on the graph.

As of a few days ago, I get a messy PHP error message when I try to log in.

It’s gefukt.


Comment from nbpundit
Time: February 21, 2007, 1:35 pm

It looks as though TLB may be dealing with death by
natural causes. TLB is dealing with his newest endeavor, and
Digg may be one of the causes.


Comment from Enas Yorl
Time: February 21, 2007, 1:44 pm

I’m cornfused – Wednesday’s Weasel is a pirate? Whoa, I totally didn’t see that one coming.


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: February 21, 2007, 2:40 pm

Yeah it’s busted, has been for a while. I think Nbpundit may be right: it’s just not worth the work any more. I don’t care for Digg for a lot of reasons, such as it strikes me as a corporate effort rather than a personal fun project like TTLB, it is too slick and too easy to control by spamming.

It’s too bad, too, I liked the feel of the bear’s work and the website.


Comment from Gary LaPointe
Time: March 5, 2007, 6:03 pm

Yeah, I’ve been noticing that more too since I saw this post a ways back.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 5, 2007, 6:43 pm

Actually, Gary, your post was the first one I found talking about it.

A few bits have come back. People’s relative positions have changed based on hits, but it isn’t counting links yet. Which is a pity, as links are the main basis of the ecosystem. I also get database errors trying to log in.


Comment from Gary LaPointe
Time: April 30, 2007, 5:23 pm

While I’ve been static since my last comment (Feb. 2007) I see I’ve moved (down, unfortunately) so they are working on it. I’m confident they’re working on it since I see a note dated today that says:

“Notice 4/30/07: Yes, some major work is going on around the Ecosystem, and the rankings have gone wonky at the moment. Please bear with me, as this is a sign of good things to come — lots of improvements coming!”


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: April 30, 2007, 6:22 pm

I saw that! The links tracking came back about a week ago, and then hits stopped tracking. My rank has been all over the place since (for one brief, shining moment, I was a flappy bird); I think it’s just plain busted at the moment.

Now that they’ve acknowledged that it’s screwed up, though, I’m sure it’s on its way to being fixed.

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