Reality Enquirer

I have closed my poll on whether web sites should solicit funds for things other than keeping their site running. This poll was prompted by a request by KeithX.com to donate to help his sick mother.

The results to the question "Should reality websites solicit donations for causes other than keeping their site running?" are:

73.74% say NO
26.26% say YES

Total votes: 297

Well first it was claimed on some boards that BB4BBQ was fixing the poll results. Now with Morty's TV going from a handful of votes to over 2000 in a matter of a day, people are crying foul once again.

So what's up with Morty's TV, a site I had never heard of before, becoming #1 in this poll?

Well Morty put a link up on his BB page that goes here:

http://www.mortystv.com/cgi-bin/frameit/directframe.cgi?4=http://realityenquirer.blogspot.com/

Yeah it is our site framed on his page. Still doesn't explain the sudden increase in votes though.

Looking at my site stats the only thing I see that is even close to being suspicious is a few more AOL users coming to the site from Morty's.

I just don't see anything that says Morty is stacking the deck except for some well placed advertising. The site's Alexa's stats show it is a popular site, which means he is probably getting 10,000 or more people visiting per day - so the numbers are there, though his click through rate is higher than most other sites. So unless someone sends me some proof of wrongdoing, the numbers stand.

A couple of more sites wrote wanting a place on the poll.

Big Brother 4 2003 is first up - a site hosted on Tripod.

Big Brother Mafia wrote and made me an offer I couldn't refuse, so here is the mention of The Giovinco Family I promised.

Well guys I would like to put you on the poll, but first you gotta get a few more write in votes.

(Hope I don't find a horse head in bed with me in the morning)

Well the poll has found another BB site I knew nothing about - Hamster time at http://pub145.ezboard.com/bbb3livefeeds.

As their director of public relations related to me in an e-mail - the site was created as a spinoff of Television Without Pity and has BB4 live feeds with a bit of a flair.

They must have some strong supporters because they have moved up fast in the poll - and made me work to change them from write-ins to their own entry!

And if anyone is wondering - I moved one more Morty's TV write-in to the Morty's TV answers.

I was cruising Reality News Live - looking at their thread urging people to vote in our Best BB Site poll when I found a critique of the voting system, and the Alexa stats.

The poster felt this poll was fair, since you can only vote once (and they have been trying to find ways to vote multiple times), but thought the Alexa stats were unfair and had been proved by a webmaster.

Well the proof was that the Alexa stats of a site could be manipulated by having one person download the Alexas toolbar and view their site. I am not sure if the study was that scientific - the premise was that all the changes in the stats for the site were due to him and not to others viewing the site which may have been questionable.

Even so I stated early on the statistics could be gamed by asking people to download the Alexa toolbar and having them visit your site, which I think has probably happened with some sites. But if enough people play this game, it still comes down to who can get the most people to download Alexa and visit their site consistently, which is still a good measure of the popularity of a site. This gaming also works a bit broader - a person who downloads the toolbar and visits multiple sites (like most people do) will boost all the sites they visit, thus once again making the stats a nice measure.

Is it perfect? No, but it is just as fair as any of the other forms of traffic statistics out there, plus it is run by a reputable company so there is no question of rigging of the stats by the gatherer.

So I will keep posting them and referring to them as the "Official Reality TV Site Rankings"!

I have updated the poll to include Morty's TV (since the site had 18 write-in votes) and Reality News Online.

As you can see BB4BBQ is a runaway leader so far. But have all the sites posted the voting link yet?

I will leave the poll up for a week at least - so get your votes in!

I was reading on bbchatter.com about our poll and one of the comments was that Keith had a link to the Top 52 site, which presumably the poster thought was much better.

The problem with the Top 52 site is that you can vote for more than one site, and I believe you can vote more than one time for a site (probably daily).

Well this poll forces you to make a choice - which site do you think is best? And the poll does everything it can to make sure you only vote once - ever (though I am sure enterprising souls such as our readers can figure out how to get around that).

So cast your vote and make it count. And no - it isn't rigged and this site is not affiliated with BB4BBQ.com.

Well I have made a few changes to the Alexa Reality Rankings. I have added a bunch of Survivor sites since the new season has started. Plus I have added Morty's TV - a site I didn't know existed till the Best of BB poll started showing votes for it - and it is a high ranked site!

So once again if you have a reality site you wish listed, please e-mail me and I will add it to the rankings list.

And send me some gossip!

I think now is the time for everyone to decide what site they liked the most for Big Brother 4. I know a lot of you, like me, visit multiple sites (we should get a life) - but there has to be that one certain site that you would take with you if you were a castaway on Survivor.

So the poll is up - and it even has a place for sites that I didn't get into the list.

One vote per IP, so only try voting once. And make sure all the members of the site you like the best know about the poll!

Well I saw this website a while ago and figured out the hoax, but I thought it had shut down so I didn't pursue it.

Take a look at www.alisonirwin.net - a site purported to be Alison of BB4 writing to a secret blog using a hidden wireless (how corny). The problem is the owner of the site has people believing this.

Well take a look at the whois at Tucows and guess what you find:

Whois info for, alisonirwin.net:

Registrant:
The StoryBookGroup
PO Box 8602
Gulfport, MS 39506
US

Domain name: ALISONIRWIN.NET

Administrative Contact:
Berna, Donna storybookgroup@earthlink.net
PO Box 8602
Gulfport, MS 39506
US
2282092719

Yes it seems the same person who owns reality411.com, realitytrash.com, creditdiva.com and who knows what else is running a hoax and pretending to be Alison Irwin. And people are writing to her believing she is Alison, or somehow connected to Alison.

Do I find this surprising? No, not considering some of the other things we have reported here.

Do we find it disturbing? Yes.

Maybe we need a new poll.

OK I have gotten a few e-mails about this - some pro and some con. Keith X - owner of bbchatter.com is soliciting money to help pay for his mom's medical costs - http://www.keithx.com/pna/.

Some people think this is way over the top and inappropriate. Some are ready to contribute.

So what do you think? Vote in our poll to the right!

From what we can tell, the Alexa stats just doesn't like BB4BBQ.com. It looks like it keeps switching the stats back and forth from banishjosh.com and BB4BBQ. Which means you really can't tell where they stand in our rankings.

Well maybe one day it will straighten out. Or BB4 will end, though it doesn't seem like it will.

I took a look at their Alexa statistics - well actually Bomis's statistics.

Bomis is showing a weekly average of 550 hits per million users per day, and TVClubhouse is accounting for ~19% of those hits.

So they are around 104.5 on our Alexa chart on the left - which is pretty high up and gives them the current distinction of being one of the best reality sites around. Congratulations!

From TVCH moderator:

TVCH came back on line right around 10pm BB Time. From what I understand
they backed-up and restored the TVCH data to a new server.

Since the data was physically moved to another system - at least a couple of
people were not able to reach the site when it came back on around 10pm BB
time. One such person solved this by clearing his cache, resetting his
Cable Modem, and re-booting.

A reader alerted us to TVClubhouse being down again.

On www.enbcom.com we found this note:

The TVCH Server is down once again. It seems the same problem from the weekend has cropped up and they will be taking steps to permanently correct the problem. In the mean time, the board will be down. Currently we are told to expect the board will be back online sometime tomorrow but that may change. Please keep checking here for updates as we receive them.

Sorry again for the inconvenience.

--------------

Hope this doesn't become a habit!

The TVClubhouse is back up and running.

'nuff said.

From ILoveReality.com:

9/07/03 Ahh - the fun of the net. The other site I help run tvclubhouse.com went down yesterday - and still isn't up as of this writing. More details in the bb4 area. It WILL be back up - but maybe not until tommorow. I have updated the goings on in the BB house in my bb4 area. Sorry I don't have a discussion board here - but you are welcome to look in the links area if you can't wait until the TVCH is back up. Specific details can be found on this page: http://www.enbcom.com/tvclubhouse (the TVCH 'mirror' page).

I have received several e-mails asking the status of tvclubhouse - yes - I am a moderator/administrator over there - but no - the sites are not directly related. Here is a site that will most likely have more updates than mine http://www.enbcom.com/tvclubhouse/ this is the site owner's page.

As for the tvch live feeds - another member has been collecting and coordinating live feeds since the outtage. I have been told we have a pretty good running live covereage since tvch went down but it never hurts to have more info!! As soon as the site is back up and running we will update all the missing time with the live feeds mailed in by the faithful members :) If you happen to be someone who does live feeds on the site - or just want to contribute even if you never have before - please sent them to me if you have no one else to send them too :) I will then post them in the correct order in the TVCH live feeds as soon as I am able AND give you the credit of course. Be sure to include your TVCH member name in the e-mail. Once again the address is tvchlivefeeds@ilovereality.com to send in any live feeds. Thanks again!! :)

----------------

The mirror site essentially says they are down and are trying to get the servers back up.

They also link to http://ilovereality.com/tvch where live feed updates are occuring.

It looks like TV Clubhouse is not working right now. From what we have heard it is server problems, but haven't had any "official" word yet.

As soon as we find something out we will let you know, and perhaps a link to a mirror site.

Well they finally have the stats working again, so I will begin updating them.

Still some problems I am not sure about - for instance BB Chatter and KeithX are the same now, as well as We Love Big Brother and Big Brother Nation; and BB4BBQ is still has lost some of its historical data.

But things look like they will line out here within the week.

It looks like the Alexa stats are stuck on August 29, 2003. Not sure if this is a year 2003 bug or what, but it is definitely annoying. And no word from the Alexa customer support yet.

Take a look at www.welovebigbrother.com for a little surprise. It has now become screencapcentral.com, a site devoted to screencaps and pictures of television shows.

Well I am going to wish them luck, though I don't understand why they would take a good site and transform it like that.

I am also puzzled by their claim of being the number 2 Big Brother website - the way I look at it the best they can be is #3 behind Jokers Updates and BB4 BBQ, if you don't count other more generic sites such as Television Without Pity, Fans of Reality TV, and Media Fiends.

WLBB was also a member of the recently deceased Reality TV Extra.

Reality TV Extra has closed its doors and is now kaput. Try to reach the site and you will get the "site not found" message, meaning the domain is no longer parked on a server.

The demise of the site has been confirmed.

It was an ambitous project - 5 sites banded together to share information on Big Brother to maximize their collective appeal. But with the withdrawal of bb4-online due to health reasons, and the withdrawal on grounds of conspiracy by Reality 411/Reality Trash, there wasn't much left but BB4 BBQ to run the site. Might as well take that energy and devote it to the single site than worry about updating a defunct idea.

Rest In Peace

OK the Alexas stats are really screwed up. Take a look below and you can see what I mean. Taking a look at some of the individual sites it looks like they have lost the data prior to this week.

I have contacted them about it and will wait to see what they say - otherwise I will not be updating the stats till one week when I figure the weekly average will be good again.

• 85  TV Tome


• 64  BB4 BBQ


• 32  Big Brother Updates


• 31  Reality TV Chat


• 19  SirLinksALot.net


• 13.5  Television Without Pity


• 10  Reality News Online


• 8  Fans Of Reality TV


• 5.5  BB Chatter


• 5.5  Keith X


• 5.5  Big Brother Link


• 4.5  Reality TV Planet


• 4.5  Media Fiends


• 4.5  Jokers Updates


• 4.5  Reality Stars


• 3.5  We Love Big Brother


• 3.5  Reality News Live


• 3.5  TV Rules


• 3.5  Big Brother Nation


• 2  Reality TV Links


• 2  Reality Reel


• 2  Foxes On Idol


• 1  Elites TV


• 1  Reality Blurred


• N/A  I Love Reality


• N/A  Reality 411


• N/A  Realiiity


• N/A  Orwell Project


• N/A  Reality TV Extra


• N/A  Reality TV Fans Refugees


• N/A  Reality Fan Forum


• N/A  Reality TV Hall of Shame