Plea to support DCPs blog

[Marcus]

I had recently noticed that I’ve been receiving ten or fifteen comments a day — invariably a sentence or less in length, and invariably personally insulting and sometimes even obscene — from people who undoubtedly realize that they’ve already long been “shadow banned” and that, accordingly, their comments cannot be publicly seen and can in no way influence conversations here. I thought that they were merely impotently spiteful. But now I realize that they’re posting such comments in order to enable themselves to vote the ranking of my blog down.

It’s effectively an effort to silence me.

… If, however, they really do somehow take perverse pleasure in showing up here every day to post insulting private comments and to vote me down, I certainly can’t stop them.

If Peterson can shadow-ban these posters, why can’t he just fully ban them? Wouldn’t that eliminate these fake ratings?

[Doctor Scratch]

LOL. It looks like he spent about an hour or so last night going through his old entries and posting 5-star reviews for the ones that didn't have any rating yet. In other words: "astroturfing."

The whole thing is reminiscent of "The World Table" debacle, where he and the other Mopologists were engaged in yet another petty ratings war.

[drumdude]

There is so much pent up demand for DCP's thoughts, the only hurdle has been the low star rankings.

That floodgate has been lifted, the google silencing mob has been thwarted.

The world is ready to meet Daniel C Peterson! "Cameraman, I'm ready for my closeup!"

[malkie]

I had recently noticed that I’ve been receiving ten or fifteen comments a day — invariably a sentence or less in length, and invariably personally insulting and sometimes even obscene — from people who undoubtedly realize that they’ve already long been “shadow banned” and that, accordingly, their comments cannot be publicly seen and can in no way influence conversations here. I thought that they were merely impotently spiteful. But now I realize that they’re posting such comments in order to enable themselves to vote the ranking of my blog down.

It’s effectively an effort to silence me.

… If, however, they really do somehow take perverse pleasure in showing up here every day to post insulting private comments and to vote me down, I certainly can’t stop them.

If Peterson can shadow-ban these posters, why can’t he just fully ban them? Wouldn’t that eliminate these fake ratings?

I remember reading that there are penalties for banning commenters, but can't immediately find the information to confirm that

[Doctor Scratch]

There is so much pent up demand for DCP's thoughts, the only hurdle has been the low star rankings.

The world is ready to meet Daniel C Peterson! "Cameraman, I'm ready for my closeup!"

What sort of readership does he imagine is going to be repelled by a low-star rating, I wonder? More TBMs and Mopologetic bootlicks? More critics? More folks like gemli? The reality is that he has never really wanted serious critics to engage with his comments. Virtually every critics--from Dr. Moore to Dr. Shades--has been kicked off of SeN. And, of course, he had the chance to engage with Phillip Jenkins, and he cowered on the sidelines for that one. He's trying to cultivate a brain-dead echo chamber over there, and his concerns about this echo chamber's "reputation" are simultaneously hilarious and pathetic.

[Kishkumen]

I went over to give him a few five-star ratings. Just doing my part to keep him at the top of browser searches or whatnot.

[Analytics]

I'm surprised at the assertion that star ratings affect web search results. I did my own search about that, and according to Search Engine Journal, "Google does not factor star ratings or customer reviews into web search rankings." https://www.searchenginejournal.com/goo ... de/416951/

I'd give Peterson 5 stars, but it wouldn't help him with his blog. What will help him is links from other sites. That makes his site seem important and relevant. So to do my part and actually help him, all I can say is go check out his blog! It has all sorts of neat stuff on it. Here's a link!

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/

The irony is that people talking about his blog here and providing links does far more good than giving five-star reviews over there does. If critics all ignored him that would hurt his rankings, not help them.

[Dr Exiled]

I bet it has something to do with Patheos itself. DCP admitted some time ago that Patheos wanted longer posts and told him so. Maybe they saw his ratings and were concerned about an unpopular blogger bringing them down?

[Doctor Scratch]

If linking to his blog is the thing that does the trick, then he really owes us. I doubt there is another site anywhere on the Internet that has linked to "Sic et Non" more often than DiscussMormonism.com.

[Gadianton]

If linking to his blog is the thing that does the trick, then he really owes us. I doubt there is another site anywhere on the Internet that has linked to "Sic et Non" more often than DiscussMormonism.com.

this is true. it probably doesn't help that much given our own ranking, but it certainly helps more than all his yes-men posting on his blog help him. And as a bonus, since he doesn't allow links here, the support form us is at full strength. lol.

Everyone points to Google, Google points to nobody.

That's where he needs to get.

Kind of like this, when from time to time someone asks me to endorse them on linked-in or someone endorses me, I always say, I'm fine with it either way, but my only rule is if you endorse me I don't endorse you, and if I endorse you, then don't endorse me.