Questioning DBC's hit counter... an illusion?

My thoughts about my recent blog on fake award badges (of which Fookem & Bug finally removed their questionable "Top Blog" award badge) turned me to thinking about the Deaf Bilingual Coalition's website. I couldn't help but noticed DBC's visitor hit counter prominently shown near the top of their website. The number I saw just a few minutes ago had a hit count of 2,495,575 hits. That got me thinking. That number literally does not add up since I know that DBC website first went up in late spring or summer of 2008 using the Archive.org site to ascertain the initial date of that website going public. And with my curiousity piqued I did a little investigation.

I used Google's search engine to use its cache feature to see what was the visitor count according to Google's last "snapshot" of that website. The Google cache captured the DBC website on August 31, 2010 showed a hit counter at 2,489,421. That's 6 days apart from Google cache record to today's count with a difference of 6,154 hits. Assuming this counter is true in over 6 days worth that's about 1,000 hits a day. Even this number might be questionable as well when compared to my website where I normally get anywhere from 400 to 800 hits a day.

Using the Alexa traffic rank website my website has a traffic rank of 3,894,629 (as of September 2010) while the DBC website has a traffic rank of 14,204,188. My blogsite is almost 7 years old with over 800,000 hits. But DBC is about 2 years old with supposedly 2,495,575 hits yet it ranks much lower than mine? With 2,495,575 hits in 2 years that's the equivalent of 104,000 hits a month yet in six days it racked up about 6,000 hits (assuming this is even true) which would leave about 30,000 hits in a month. Supposing the "2,495,575 hits" is true then certainly Alexa's website would've easily shown that.

This analysis of mine has nothing to do with who has the bigger number of hits. That's besides point here. It's about the obvious discrepancies I am seeing with DBC's own visitor counter number. And frankly, my conclusion is that whoever put that counter up with the high hits isn't being honest.

Deaf Bilingual Coalition's Unprofessionalism

DBC, a pro-ASL advocacy organization, attempted to deride, smear and call names a deaf/hh private individual solely because of an opinion piece in a personal blog. DBC went so far as to advertise this unprofessional move using their blog section. This smear piece existed only for about an hour before it was conveniently deleted (note the URL address) for unknown reasons. This DBC blog piece was an objection over a blog piece that was done this morning by a deaf/hh individual. The link to this site was also recorded in the DeafRead extra section as well.

Here's the screen capture of DBC's blog piece.

A very unprofessional action by that organization allowing someone to use its blog section to personally try and go after individuals for having an opinion. If DBC wants to promote a positive image of their advocacy organization, the personal attacking needs to stop and focus on the pro-ASL advocacy only.

I have explained numerous times in the past, and as recently as this morning in my blog, I have no problems for parents making an *informed* decision regarding communication and/or educational options for their children with hearing loss. No one gets to decide except the parents. That is their parental right and duty. The where, who, and how this information are obtained is not the issue here as long as parents are well informed to make an informed decision based on circumstances, available resources and amount of hearing loss in question. ASL is no doubt an important part of the communication option yet it is the parents who make the final decision on how they will move forward.

This blog piece will remain available to the public so they can be well informed about this attempt which raises questions the professionalism of this organization. This should not have happened in the first place.

I will await DBC to make a formal apology to me and to the public for their gross oversight. And the person in question will need to agree to stop posting comments in my blogs as well and any references to me in any blogs from now on.

ADDENDUM: Please visit my recent blog of my video of my 1 year old hearing daughter who signs on her birthday. A video example on how to promote the positive value of ASL without the need to personally attack individuals or organizations for having different viewpoints or philosophies. Focus on the positive and you will go far.