[Gllug] Linux users - sign petition to say you use BBC web site!

[John Winters]

Dan Kolb wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 02, 2007 at 01:38:29PM +0000, Alain Williams wrote:
>> Please sign, it takes a minute.
> 
> Yeees......so, head of technology looks into web logs, pulls out the recorded
> statistics to give numbers of people accessing the website: "We have 17.1
> million users of bbc.co.uk in the UK, and, as far as our server logs can make
> out, 5 per cent of those [use Macs] and around 400 to 600 are Linux users". I
> can see why he clearly doesn't know what he's talking about....
> 
> Folks, if you want to show the BBC that more people use Linux than they record
> in their logs, then browse the site using a browser on Linux! Don't sign some
> petition, but do something *useful* about it.

But just visiting the site isn't doing anything useful.  The BBC's 
spokesman is quoting figures which are clearly totally false.  Visiting 
www.bbc.co.uk again won't give them any incentive to stop doing this. 
The figures already exist in their server logs and they're lying about 
them.  Visiting www.bbc.co.uk won't do diddly-squat to prove that 
they're lying.  Standing up to be counted on the other hand *will* do 
something.

Your advice is precisely back to front.  Continue visiting www.bbc.co.uk 
by all means, but don't delude yourself that this will do anything to 
stop the BBC spokesman from lying.  The only way to achieve that is for 
all those who access the site to stand up and be counted.  A petition is 
perhaps not quite the right name for the process - it's actually one of 
producing external statistics to *prove* that the BBC's figures are false.

John
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