Stuart Campbell of the previously pro-independence website Wings Over Scotland (these had been the times, eh?) has stayed off the topic of opinion polling for a short time, therefore there hasn’t been any want for a latest Wings-Watch replace to appropriate his common factual inaccuracies. Nonetheless, I believe the time has now come for just a little round-up of a few of his different…properly, let’s euphemistically name them “excesses”.
Firstly, I used to be astounded to see him approvingly retweeting two tweets that fairly unambiguously name for prisoners in America to be put to demise.
Yeah, let’s be sure that “techniques” do not stop the state from killing folks, proper? Heaven forbid that the killing course of needs to be impeded by “delays”.
As you already know, there’s a diploma of overlap between Campbell’s views on the gender identification difficulty and my very own, however he is develop into so completely consumed by the difficulty that I am unsure he even notices anymore when it leads him to indicate his true colors on different topics. It will not be solely a coincidence that he ended a blogpost yesterday by saying he needs the previous chief of the Scottish Labour Social gathering, Kezia Dugdale (who coincidentally defeated him in courtroom on a defamation case and who he is had an unhinged private vendetta towards ever since) to “f*** off and die down a properly”. It isn’t clear whether or not or not this may even be a type of capital punishment. And there could also be a little bit of a recurring theme right here, as a result of just a few months in the past he used a blogpost to explain a person as “mercifully deceased”.
Might I simply say one thing at this level to members of my very own social gathering, together with senior members. I do know a lot of you’re admirers of Campbell – I discover that inexplicable given his disgraceful behaviour lately, however I do not doubt your sincerity. Nonetheless, I would gently recommend that there must be a little bit of thought concerning the unqualified public adulation that goes on, as a result of if Alba begins to appear like a de facto Wings Social gathering (and talking personally I’d by no means have joined in 1,000,000 years if I had thought that was the doubtless vacation spot), there might be a heavy value to pay. The popularity of the social gathering might be severely broken by affiliation. Even for a small social gathering that’s nonetheless making an attempt to construct its profile and thus does not run away from controversy in the best way a bigger social gathering would possibly, I am unsure that is a value price paying.
Yesterday was the day that Campbell appears to dwell for, as a result of it was the day every month when his most favorite wildly inaccurate “visitors comparability website” updates its figures. I used to be a bit puzzled that we did not see the seventy-ninth look of his customary excited blogpost declaring his personal website to be the one pro-indy website within the universe that anybody ever reads. It normally seems inside actually minutes of the SimilarWeb replace. Nonetheless, I swiftly solved the thriller – it seems that Campbell did his month-to-month gloat on Twitter as a substitute.
I really burst out laughing yesterday after I noticed SimilarWeb’s figures for Scot Goes Pop, which appear to be changing into increasingly divorced from actuality with every passing month. Right here from the Blogger platform is a graph of the actual pattern of visitors to this weblog throughout 2022. As you may see, visitors was greater in November and December than at any earlier time within the yr, leaving apart a few transient spikes brought on by particular person posts going viral. (The graph relies on web page views, which is a little bit of a crude measure, however nonetheless it provides an honest information to the pattern.) That is precisely what you’d count on, as a result of I used to be posting every day throughout most of November and December, and I used to be protecting a variety of dramatic polls.
And but if you happen to believed SimilarWeb, you’d suppose visitors has been dropping like a stone over latest months, and is now roughly half of what it was in July and August – months after I was barely posting, partly because of being on vacation. SimilarWeb’s newest fictitious model of Scot Goes Pop’s visitors for December is the bottom I’ve seen up to now, and means that Scot Goes Pop now has roughly one-fiftieth of Wings Over Scotland’s visitors. Frankly, if you happen to consider that, you will consider something. Nonetheless, many Wings readers will certainly consider something Campbell tells them, so let me simply pose a few awkward little questions. You see, SimilarWeb does not simply declare to estimate an internet site’s visitors – it additionally estimates the location’s variety of staff and income ranges. Listed here are its present estimates for Wings Over Scotland…
So who’re these eleven to fifty reclusive “staff of Wings Over Scotland”? I imply, we all know past a shadow of a doubt that they have to positively exist, as a result of Campbell assures us that SimilarWeb’s estimates are 100% correct and dependable. Does anybody know their names? What their job titles and duties are? What’s their wage stage? Have they ever been interviewed?
And annual revenues of between two million and 5 million US {dollars}. Gosh, is not Stu doing properly for himself today? Virtually a little bit of a thriller {that a} millionaire like him would nonetheless must fundraise, however I dare say there should be some kind of logical clarification.
Oh, and he appears to be based mostly in Glasgow, versus someplace like, as an instance, Bathtub. That should be fully true as properly, as a result of SimilarWeb are in fact proper about every little thing. Unusual that Campbell has saved up the Bathtub fib all these years, however ours to not motive why and all that.
Again in the actual world, why are SimilarWeb getting it so hopelessly incorrect? They seem to depend on a panel system, which in all probability works properly sufficient for very giant websites just like the BBC and the Day by day Mail, however for smaller websites like Wings Over Scotland and Scot Goes Pop it is certain to result in huge inaccuracies, as a result of one or two panellists randomly visiting or not visiting in any given month could possibly be extrapolated to rely as actually hundreds of individuals. The estimates are additionally for visits versus guests, which slants the outcomes for a website reminiscent of Wings that features like a chat discussion board, with the identical folks always going again to test if there have been extra feedback posted. And as for why SimilarWeb are so totally satisfied that Campbell is a multi-millionaire with as much as a number of dozen paid minions, properly, solutions on a postcard, people.
