Upon reading the letter from SDP Assistant Secretary-General to the Editor of Chinese newspaper Lianhe ZaoBao, I couldn't control myself but to laugh out loudly. In the letter, SDP claims that it provides "balanced, moderate, mature arguments".
NOT MY SDP shall now debunk all the untruths enclosed in the letter.
"There is certainly an effort to try to paint the Singapore Democrats as extremists. The SDP makes no apology for challenging the present political system and, more importantly, working to reform it.Our objective is to ensure that the PAP Government respects democratic principles as enshrined in our Constitution. These principles include the freedoms of speech, association and assembly."
Liberal Democracy includes the notion of the Rule of Law, the principle that no one is above the law. SDP seems to appreciate Democracy at face value by going against the law of Singapore. One good example will be the protest conducted outside Parliament House.
"The actions of the SDP and other pro-democracy activists, which included the use of civil disobedience, have led to the opening up of Speakers' Corner for demonstrations, albeit in a very limited way. The Government has, belatedly, acknowledged the necessity of protests."
How could SDP be said to provide mature argument when SDP assumes that the liberalisation of the Speakers' Corner was due to the people who used civil disobedience? It puts SDP to shame for claiming credit for every forms of liberalisation of the politics in the country.
Another assumption was made that the "Government acknowledged the necessity of protests". Mature?
"On the point about the SDP website losing readers, we'll let the statistics speak for themselves:
... We don't think these figures point to the SDP 'rapidly losing its readers,' do you?
If anything, they support the view that "most web users will still want to hear balanced, moderate, mature arguments." And that's what the SDP intends to continue doing on our website."
First of all, the statistics provided show only one face of the truth. According to Alexa, only 45.6% of the visitors to the SDP website are Singaporeans, with 41.8% from China. PAP, on the other hand, has 77% of its visitors who are Singaporeans.
The underlying assumption, or the path that SDP wants to mislead us into, is that the greater the number of readers of a website, the better is the quality of that website. Anyone who has Internet access would know this is not true! Pornographic sites are equally populated with readers, for instance.
The underlying assumption, or the path that SDP wants to mislead us into, is that the greater the number of readers of a website, the better is the quality of that website. Anyone who has Internet access would know this is not true! Pornographic sites are equally populated with readers, for instance.
The heavy traffic to the SDP site is predominantly due to the sensationalised reporting of issues.
Since SDP is telling us Internet Statistics...
- Among PAP, WP, SPP, NSP and SDP, SDP is the only website that lacks a Singapore domain. Instead of a ".org.sg", SDP has a ".org". Even before yoursdp.org is bought as a domain by SDP, the original singaporedemocrat.org also lacks a Singapore domain. ".org.sg" domain "is for organisations which are either registered or are about to be registered with the Registry of Societies (ROS) including other miscellaneous organisation."^ What does this tell of the SDP?
- Since SDP wants to base their statistics from Alexa, we'll do the same. According to Alexa, only 45.6% of the visitors to the SDP website (yoursdp.org) are Singaporeans, with 41.8% from China. Another SDP domain "singaporedemocrat.org" is even worse, with only 33.7% Singaporean readers. PAP, on the other hand, has 77% of its visitors who are Singaporeans.
Verify it yourself! View the Alexa ranking for SDP website at http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/yoursdp.org
OR
Go to www.alexa.com, enter "yoursdp.org" into the search field and select Site Ranking. Then click on Go. At the search results page, scroll to the bottom of the page to find out the truth.
P.S. Alexa data provided is dated on 25 September 2008.
Source:
http://yoursdp.org/news/singapore/1138-this-website-losing-readers-look-again
^ SGNIC - http://www.sgnic.sg/sub_about/sg_domains.html
"But technically, the word "hits" actually refers to the total number of files that are requested from the server. Therefore the number of hits to a site is always going to be significantly higher than the actual number of visits to the site."
ReplyDelete"Because every site is different, comparing your site's performance to another's is not very useful. Some sites are designed to attract daily readers. Some are simply used to support other marketing materials. Therefore, comparing overall traffic volume is not a useful effort. Rather than worrying about how many sessions your site receives compared to other sites, it's better to understand how your site adjustments and marketing efforts impact your site's overall traffic patterns."
http://www.newfangled.com/website_hits_versus_website_sessions
"Having started a session, do your users stick around and look at lots of information, or do they leave after hitting the home page?"
http://www.newfangled.com/average_website_traffic_statistics
"How many times a web page is viewed. A page may be viewed more than once by a single visitor. For example, someone visiting a web site first sees the home page, then may view another page within the site, may then go back to the home page, and then on to a different page. The "inside" pages get viewed once, but the home page-as a link to these pages-is viewed twice."
http://calafia.com/classroom/stats.htm