I checked the site statistics just now. With one day still left in the month, we’ve almost equaled the most busy period in the site’s history (January 2010). Traffic this heavy has led to some site instability. To deal with the increased load on the server, I have disabled what I believe are the two most compute intensive options: Comment Rating and the Avatars.
Welcome
Obama Conspiracy Theories since 2008 has been your destination for conspiracy theories and fringe views about Barack Obama. Having an argument with your buddies at the office? You're in the right place. Use the Search box below or check out our featured articles. If you don't agree with what you see, feel free to add your thoughts to the over 250,000 comments others have left. To leave a comment visit the Open Thread.
Also check out The debunker's guide to Obama conspiracy theoriesConspiracies
Recent Comments
View the site's Comment feed.Donate
Recommended books
- 935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America's Moral Integrity
- A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America
- Arpaio De Facto Lawman
- Barack Obama: The Story
- Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World
- Bullspotting: Finding Facts in the Age of Misinformation
- Chasing Phantoms: Reality, Imagination, and Homeland Security Since 9/11
- Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America
- Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture
- Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more
- Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free
- Is Barack Obama's Birth Certificate a Fraud?
- One Electorate Under God?: A Dialogue on Religion and American Politics (Pew Forum Dialogues on Religion & Public Life)
- Our Friend Barry: Classmates' Recollections of Barack Obama and Punahou School
- Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement
- The Authoritarians
- The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths
- The Citizenship Debates: A Reader
- The Development of American Citizenship, 1608-1870
- The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right
- The Paranoid Style in American Politics
- The Scapegoat
- The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory
- Them: Adventures with Extremists
Quick Reference
- Birther aggregator
- Congressional Research Service report on presidential eligibility
- Donald, You're FIred! – FactCheck.org
- Hawaii Department of Health Obama FAQ
- Hawaii verification of birth certificate
- Jack Ryan document collection on Scribd
- Made in the U.S.A. – FactCheck.org
- Nordyke twins birth certificate
- Obama Certificate of Live Birth – Gurhrie Photo
- Obama Certificate of Live Birth – Press
- Obama Certificate of Live Birth – White House
- Obama Certification of Live Birth
- Obama presidential library
- Obama White House archive site
- Politifact Birth Certificate articles
- Recent court rulings on presidential eligibility
- The debunker's guide to Obama conspiracy theories
- The Great Mother of all Natural Born Citizenship Quotation Pages
Archives
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- Mastodon
Quick Reference
- Birther aggregator
- Congressional Research Service report on presidential eligibility
- Donald, You're FIred! – FactCheck.org
- Hawaii Department of Health Obama FAQ
- Hawaii verification of birth certificate
- Jack Ryan document collection on Scribd
- Made in the U.S.A. – FactCheck.org
- Nordyke twins birth certificate
- Obama Certificate of Live Birth – Gurhrie Photo
- Obama Certificate of Live Birth – Press
- Obama Certificate of Live Birth – White House
- Obama Certification of Live Birth
- Obama presidential library
- Obama White House archive site
- Politifact Birth Certificate articles
- Recent court rulings on presidential eligibility
- The debunker's guide to Obama conspiracy theories
- The Great Mother of all Natural Born Citizenship Quotation Pages
I’m sure you won’t post this, but stop bragging about your traffic… Your Alexa ratings are dismal compared to others;
Let us compare yours with mine, via Alexa;
Site Information for obamaconspiracy.org:
Alexa Traffic Rank: 545,113 – Traffic Rank in US: 131,386
___________________________
Site Information for obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com
Alexa Traffic Rank: 312,098 – Traffic Rank in US: 39,252
Just yesterday alone my site had over 27,000 unique visitors… How many did you have?
You’re wrong right off the bat. You said I wouldn’t post this. But indeed, this blog is not generally moderated, so what appears here is not a matter of what I choose to post. I understand your mistake because birther blogs are almost always heavily censored. However, I obviously didn’t delete it.
The second point is that you completely either misinterpreted or misrepresented my article. I am not bragging, but explaining why I turned off some site features due to heavy traffic.
The statistics I get don’t tell me unique visitors by day, but I am sure that it is nowhere near 27,000. But then I suspect that MTV has a lot more viewers than C-SPAN too.
Would you care to explain the evidence you use to say on your site:
What evidence do you have to back up the claim about “paid obots?” Look around the articles here. All the claims here are backed up.
I suggest you stop bragging about your site’s quantity, and start cleaning up it’s quality. I couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I had a web site as full of unsupported rumors masquerading as facts as yours.
And just for the record, I’ve published comparison statistics between this site and some of the birthers on several occasions before including this one from earlier this month.
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2010/05/more-site-demographics/
However, I do not trust Alexa results. It only reports from people who have installed the Alexa tool bar. I would hope folks who visit here in the main are not the kind of folks who install browser add-ins like that. And how the heck do you have over 400,000 sites linking to you? You’re not doing one of those web promotion gimmicks are you? Google doesn’t like that.
“I’m sure you won’t post this”
.
why do you say this?
.
do you ban opinions and viewpoints you don’t agree with, so you assume others are like you? 27,000 yes men make you proud?
Being curious, I visited that silly site. Not a shred of anything resembling facts anywhere on that site. All it has is “hate Obama” and false rumors plus tauting the bigoted anti-Semite Andt Martin. Do your children know you are proud of supporting such bigots?
obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com
Scamaroo!
Surprise, surprise, like all hate Obama sites, it has a “paypal” button, Another scam, hey why do you advertise for Goldline Gold Coins, would fit right in.
I had never heard of the obamarelease etc site either. I came to this site through google, by the way. So the Alexa ratings may not be that determinant.
In any event, I looked at the front page and it’s basically meretricious and discredited garbage.
I understand opposition to Obama — candidly, I’m not crazy about a number of his policies either — but instead of mounting a proper and justified campaign against his administration, why do you have to resort to a bunch of crap?
In many ways, you’re actually HELPING Obama because anyone on the fence will take a single look at your site and dismiss it as a bunch of nutters or white supremacist crap.
About half of the people here in France do not like President Sarkozy (figures go up and down between 40% and 60%), including some really virulent opponents on the far right and far left, and (like with Clinton) there’s been internet traffic about his alleged affairs, etc. but AFAIK there’s not a single French site making up bullshit like yours.
This is also true of Spain and Germany, from what I know.
I just fail to see what peddling transparent lies easily debunked gets you, and even if I were an opponent I would rather support legitimate. reality-based efforts to defeat Obama in 2012 rather than waste my time with a bunch of lunatics.
@Dr.C; Wrong I was! Well, I do agree with you regarding Alexa. I figured I would use Alexa since you cited Alexa in a previous blog of yours where you were bragging about your Alexa ratings compared to another “birther” blog. As for the number of sites linking in, I’m not sure why that number is so high. I’m also not sure what you mean by “doing one of those web promotion gimmicks”… I don’t run ads nor do I have any promotion gimmicks, whatever that is. You would have to ask Alexa that question regarding links in.
As for the paid Obots, the post you cite clearly links to a McClatchy news article as just one example, but that is besides the point and has nothing to do with the comment at hand. Just another diversion that is typical with Obama supporters. By the way, some of your post are based on opinion with no facts backing your claims up, some do but some don’t. I will say this; thank God we live in a Country where we’re still free to speak our minds and openly debate.
@the other comments, if you were to go through my comments at my site you would see that I approve comments from both sides. As for the PayPal… Many blogs, left and right, place PayPal buttons on their sites. Nowhere on my page do I beg or ask people to donate money.
As for facts; 99% of my posts are full of out-links that back up my posts with facts from many different sources. I can’t help it if you don’t want to believe certain facts that go against the Usurper.
Go through this post that is backed up with facts, that even Dr. C confirmed not so long ago. Also read some of the comments from an Obama supporter that made numerous death threats that would make Hitler proud, which by the way he/she along with the IP he/she uses was reported to the FBI. http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2010/05/obama-guilty-of-at-least-one-felony.html
That is the kind of kind of statement — which is indeed characteristic of your site — that makes you sound like a complete nutter, just as much as those who genuinely believe that UFOs come from Venus or the US government has a secret pact with little grey aliens or those who deny the Moon landing ever took place
That you don’t realize the extent of your delusion is sad.
A lot of people outside the US have come to the conclusion that half of your political system (ie: the Republicans; the other half being the Democrats) is being increasingly driven by its own half, a subset which is basically racist and stupid — and your blog is a perfect representation of that.
There’s actually a good article on Slate that makes the same point in more sophisticated terms:
http://slate.com/id/2255433
There is room for a rational conservative opposition to Obama, something between say Coolidge and Goldwater; it is a great loss to your country that it is not being represented, and indeed is being drowned out by lunatic screed.
The real question for ObamaReleaseYour Records is what are you doing trolling an open site like this?
I know, your a paid PalinBot doing your pathetic thing for them with high on noise and low on fact.
As for dose ole records and da Prez, hows your sides lawsuits going…?
The same reason Dr. C “trolls” my open site….
Nice diversion!
“Also read some of the comments from an Obama supporter that made numerous death threats that would make Hitler proud, which by the way he/she along with the IP he/she uses was reported to the FBI”
Bully for you. Really- if anyone- an Obama supporter or an Obama hater is making death threats repor them.
But I won’t read your blog. I know nothing about it, never heard of it before you came here trying to bust Doc’s chops- and made unsupported assertions. Why would I go to the blog of someone who when challenged about the paid “obots’ thing can’t support his claim?
If you want to come here and attempt to make some legitimate arguments with links to facts go right ahead. Doc loves people who cite their sources. Most of us do.
Fwiw, I love the site, but I can’t imagine that small avatars and to an even less degree, one click ratings are constituting all that much of a bandwidth draw.
You’re not even embedding videos much.
Either the server you’re on is just very poor or expensive, or there’s something else taking your bandwidth.
A mostly textual server should have no problem keeping up.
Perhaps consider another host? Dreamhost is very inexpensive and has huge bandwidth allowances with good uptime history.
Fwiw, removal of avatars doesn’t concern me all that much, but I may consider participating or visiting less with no feedback ratings.
There has to be some degree of knowing what I or anyone else says is being met with approval or disdain.
That is, it removes the incentive for some of us.
Just my 2 cents.
It doesn’t have anything to do with bandwidth; it’s the processing load on the server. The avatars require an external call to another site (gravatar.com) for each comment, and likewise comment rating requires a hit on the database to look up each comment rating. When the number of visitor requests increases the memory usage goes up and if it goes up too high the process gets canceled, meaning that the visitor gets some kind of an error (500, 404, etc.)
I use every kind of caching I know to reduce the number of pages that the server has to dynamically generate, but still my web host tells me I am running out of memory and processes are getting canceled.
I think you took the wrong meaning for troll. Fishing is the wrong metaphor. An Internet troll is one who goes around stirring up trouble. I’ve not been posting on your site.
They are called “link exchanges.” You agree to put thousands of hyperlinks to other sites on your site and other sites do the same. But my guess is that your incoming links are so high because it’s counting links from everything coming into blogspot.com, not just your site.
I shall have to come over and post on your site, since it’s open. There’s nothing so frustrating is writing a long, thoughtful, hyperlinked-filled comment and finding it disappear into a black hole. For that reason (and because it’s so busy here) I don’t attempt to post much elsewhere any more.
Well you certainly packed lots of facts in there. I congratulate you on the depth of the investigation in your article. However, there is this giant leap where you go from facts (Obama uses a Social Security number from the Connecticut geographic series) to speculation (“illegal”).
Back in grad school we called a leap like this in a mathematical proof “magic happens” and the paper was returned with no credit.
I hope the comment I left on your article is approved.
Best put down ever. Doc, I nominate you for King of the Intertubes.
I don’t know Alexa traffic rankings from Shinola but I took at peek at the ORYR site and judging from the comments on the articles and the activity on the message board it doesn’t seem to be nearly as active as this blog. On the front page only one article had more than 3 comments and that was the story on Lakin. Of the 33 comments on that story more than half of them were from “Anonymous” cutting and pasting a long article from Mario’s blog in many parts to meet the character limit. The message board is almost dead with only 10 topics from 4 people. Of the 10 topics only 2 had a replies.
The content is completely lacking in documentation as has been mentioned. I notice that the articles are full of unfounded assertions with question marks, ala World Net Daily, e.g., “U.S. Selective Service in Obama cover-up?”
Finally, yes, there is the PayPal button that seems to be displayed prominently on every birther site.
“As for facts; 99% of my posts are full of out-links that back up my posts with facts from many different sources. I can’t help it if you don’t want to believe certain facts that go against the Usurper.”
Not a single fact is shown, talk about delusions, wow. Hating Obama causes brain damage, your site is proof!
Wow! Obama is a poltician. He plays politics. Yawn……
You keep failing to add this.when you state your opinion….Not a shred of anything resembling facts anywhere on that site – IN MY OPINION.
Until Obama releases information to back up your assertion, common sense tells us that your statement is merely an OPINION. And I’m nether supporting or decrying that site – just stating the obvious.
POT, KETTLE, BLACK
(which is NOT meant as a racial slur – just thought I would get a jump on the quick flying accusations around here).
Don’t you mean King of the Democracy Threatening Intertubes?
Once again for old times’ sake: “We do not live in a democracy. Our form of government is a republic”.
“..common sense tells us that your statement is merely an OPINION.”
.
from someone that has a lack of common sense and sports a wortless opinion driven by hate for Obama not reality.
.
browse tru Doc’s facts, will you. (sidebar on the right)
.
if this was a democracy threating site, you woould have been banned
if this was a site that banned ignorance, you woould have been banned
scott brown: “Don’t you mean King of the Democracy Threatening Intertubes?”
scott, explain please, how is this site a threat?
will we hear crickets?
you must be one of those phony patriots, all we ever get from you is garbage or crickets
scott, you keep throwing out the “democracy threatening” label but have never once defined it. either in a general sense or how it specifically relates to this site. you’ve been asked to explain multiple times but have opted not to. in fact, as of late, you seem to have decided not to respond to anything yet continue to post consistently. that’s not debate, that’s mental masturbation.
being supplied the facts, for subjective revue, is a vital part of maintaining any strong democracy. anyone intentionally and knowingly perpetuating a lie is a threat to that democracy.
So your “facts” are valid when you post they come from other sources??!!!?!? So your post from Mario are correct because you didn’t write them? So based on your logic Mario is correct, but yet his case was rejected. Did you have someone verify Mario stance with U.S caselaw?
Your site is nothing, but I didn’t write so it must be true.
What’s the URL of your “open site?” My comment’s been sitting in moderation since yesterday at the site you listed here. 🙄
You throw that accusation around a lot [redacted].
And to answer the question, even knowing you weren’t honestly asking: No, I didn’t mean that, because I’m not an idiot.
Doc, you may well end up deleting a portion of this, so please accept my apology in advance. [No problem]
I think the quid pro quo that Obama’s administration offered was stupid. But as far as I know it isn’t illegal and not particularly unique to his Administration or the Democratic party.
To recap- I disagree with what they did, but am not shocked nor am I losing any sleep over it.
Hey doc, all my posts seem to be held pending moderation since yesterday- something going on?
Those who have paypal buttons are usually on sites where someone actually pays for the hosting. As your site is nothing more than a blogspot blog what exact expenses do you incur that would warrant a donation?
SFJeff: Hey doc, all my posts seem to be held pending moderation since yesterday- something going on?
Your last one hit the word “stupid” in the moderation filter. I don’t know about the others. Nothing personal.
In my Real Analysis course as an undergrad (the first rigorous math course I took), we had our homework graded on a scale of -5 to 10. If you proved a theorem, you got full credit and if you didn’t do the assignment you got a zero, but since we were supposed to know whether or not a claim was proven (hence the term ‘proof’ ;-)) if you asserted that you had proven something when you had not you received negative points. We quickly learned to cover any gaps in our proofs by saying ‘and then a miracle occurs’ or some such indicating that we were aware of the gap and avoiding negative points. The leap of logic in the article to which you refer is definitely grounds for negative points.
They have become accustom to using labels as an insult to such a degree that they really do not know what the term means any more. When they find somebody they do not like or disagree with, they automatically call them “liberal, communist, Marxist, socialist, RINO, democracy threatening, America hater, islamofacist, etc.” The words themselves have lost any meaning and do not point to anything. They consider them nothing but insults.
For the same reason, I have some issues with the other side doing the same (repugs, reich wing, conservative, racist, homophobe, etc.).
I need to correct a mistake I made in reply to ObamaReleaseYourRecords. I do have available statistics on the number of visitors per day. It runs something on the order 1,300. These statistics come from the web server, and not from some external estimates (like Alexa).
Sigh.
Well, first of all, it was me who posted the comment about Alexa ratings in a previous post. Not Doc. As is evident at a glance, so I’m surprised that someone as devoted to facts as you was unable to get that right.
I was motivated to look it up because I noticed several posts lately sailing past 100 comments. This is not a situation that makes me happy, because it makes conversation difficult, but then, it’s not my blog. But it did make me wonder how it compares to birther blogs, and I picked out Taitz’s, she being the “queen of the birthers,” thinking that might be a highly visited example. I expected to find that Taitz’s blog had much higher traffic, and was surprised to find otherwise.
It is odd that your site, which is so frequently visited, has so few comments. Any insight as to why?
I am not seeing the crime nor much of a cover up.
I just wanted to point out that, since Mr. Release asserted that his blog was open, I went and posted a comment several days ago. It never found its way out of moderation. So his statement that his blog is open is BS, which will surprise nobody.
There is an open birther blog, “I Took the Red Pill.” Only one I know.
The following article is a good example of Obama derangement syndrome….Meaning things that were OK under previous presidents that all of a sudden are not OK under Obama…..
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_05/024030.php#more
* Teleprompters: This trend of characterizing routine developments as controversial started very early in the Obama presidency. Every modern president has used teleprompters, but Republicans and the media thought it was hilarious and wildly important when Obama did the same thing.
* Talking to school kids: Presidents Reagan and H.W. Bush spoke to school children in national addresses, even taking a little time to push their political agendas. When Obama delivered a speech encouraging kids to do well in school, Republicans freaked out; Fox News compared the president to Saddam Hussein; and the New York Times literally ran a front-page story about it.
* Czars: For a half-century, presidents have relied on so-called “czars” for various policy areas. By one count, George W. Bush had 36 czar positions filled by 46 people during his two terms. No one cared. Obama’s use of czars became the subject of months of media scrutiny, and even congressional hearings in response to Republican apoplexy.
* Oval Office attire: Several modern presidents have been seen in the Oval Office without wearing a suit jacket. When Obama did it, Republicans ran to the press to complain, and the media actually published pieces on the subject.
* Industry bailouts: Government bailouts of struggling American industries and major companies have been common for decades. When Obama rescued GM, it was used as an example of his purported desire to a communist dictator.
* Memorial Day: Many presidents have not appeared at Arlington on Memorial Day. When Obama does it, there’s a “controversy.”
Most of these rules are the result of a wingnut right that’s so filled with inchoherent rage that they’re grasping onto the most ridiculous of items — items that will actually come back to haunt them when a Republican president is elected. For instance have the right noted the number of times President George H.W. Bush, a wealthy oil man, visited Prince William Sound during and after the Exxon Valdez disaster: ZERO. None. Interesting.
More Obama derangement, from the Post and Fail. It seems like they had nothing to say so it was “let’s make some stuff up day” by Rondeau….The desperation over there is getting quite amusing…
http://www.thepostemail.com/2010/05/31/obamas-speech-in-illinois-canceled-due-to-thunderstorm/#comments
“After landing, Obama reportedly spoke about soldiers giving their lives for “love of country,” but Obama himself has shown little affection for the country which he purports to lead.
He says he traveled to Indonesia and Pakistan in the early ’80s, but the State Department refuses to reveal his passport information. Americans therefore do not know if he traveled on an American passport or a passport from another country. There are numerous reports that Obama was born outside of the country, in Kenya or Indonesia.
And what about the question of Obama’s eligibility? Is our military willing to follow the commands of a usurper? Is there only one man who will question the lack of evidence that Obama is a natural born Citizen? Is the rest of the military sold out?”
So according to the Post and Fail, the thunderstorm was a message from above, Obama may now have been born in Indonesia, traveled on another country’s passport, doesn’t love his country the US and may not be the legitimate leader. I wonder if I missed any other smear in the article. Amazing. And to top it off the Post and Fail mixes in a little sedition just for good measure. Like a poster her keeps reminding us, hating Obama does lead to mental problems…
More derangement…
http://www.thepostemail.com/2010/05/30/obama-pals-around-in-neighborhood-of-louis-farrakhan-and-his-fruit-of-islam/
“Obama’s relationships with several questionable people in Hyde Park surfaced during the 2008 campaign, but mainstream news media downplayed the depth and breadth of those relationships which are arguably now more apparent.
The Washington Post has reported that Hyde Park is a home for radicals. Louis Farrakhan has been the leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI) since 1978. In 2007, Farrakhan was given an award by the staff of a magazine published in the name of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ to which Obama had belonged for 20 years. The award stated that Farrakhan “truly epitomized greatness.” Of Obama, the author asked, “Where is his sense of outrage?”
Jeremiah Wright had traveled with Farrakhan in 1984 to Libya to meet with its leader, Moammar Gadhafi. Gadhafi has been the dictator of Libya since 1969 after staging a coup against the king. He has reportedly “turned Libya into a haven for anti-Western radicals” and has called Obama “my son.”
Great guilt by association smear job in this article…But the best had to be the comments….
impeachtheboob says:
Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 1:12 PM
Where’s a Sickle Cell when you need it.
The Post and Fail…Classy as usual….
I got interested in the Alexa rankings and found quite a bit of info on the inaccuracy of Alexa rankings especially for sites ranked over 100,000. This is from Alexa’s own Help Page:
Sites with relatively low measured traffic will not be accurately ranked by Alexa. Our data comes from many various sources, including our Alexa users; however, we do not receive enough data from these sources to make rankings beyond 100,000 statistically meaningful. (However, on the flip side of that, the closer a site gets to #1, the more reliable its rank.) This means that, for example, the difference in traffic between a site ranked 1,000,000 and a site ranked 2,000,000 has low statistical significance. Sites ranked 100,000+ may be subject to large ranking swings due to the scarcity of data for those sites.
For low ranked web sites (sorry Doc but you ain’t Google!) there is also something called “the Phenomenon of the Long Tail” that is discussed here http://blog.alexa.com/2010/02/whats-going-on-with-my-alexa-rank.html
Finally, Alexa rankings are not from a random sample but are primarily based on users who have installed the Alexa toolbar.
Therefore, the commenting activity at both sites for me is a better gauge for popularity in my book. Also, as we have said there is something to be said for quality.