Lies, damn lies, you know the drill

[afuna]

Someone pointed out http://www.livejournal.com/stats.bml on IRC, which has a strange outlier for age 29.

Strange outlier wasn't there a year ago! http://web.archive.org/web/20080312210339/http://www.livejournal.com/stats.bml

What's going on?

(I suspect someone targeted the year 1980 as a nice round number that's above 18. But... but. Now my curiosity is itching.)

Comments

[foxfirefey]

Do you think it's the age the bots put in when registering?

[afuna]

It probably is! That's over a million new accounts with the same birth year. I can't think of what else could generate that many accounts in that short a timeframe.

I suppose it could also be a lot of minors with old journals/no init_birthdates changing their birthdates so they'd show up as over-18, but the timing is *off* (should have been apparent more than a year ago, if that), and the numbers are too high.

[foxfirefey]

Not to mention there's no reason they ALL would pick 1980.

[aveleh]

*nods* I was thinking bots too.

I kind of like the idea of a short-term solution that makes it harder for people who are born in 1980 to register.

How hilarious would that be?

[alsatia.livejournal.com]

As someone actually born in 1980, this would be very irritating. (And if it were some other year, I'd feel sorry for the people born in that year.)

[aveleh]

To clarify, I didn't mean "I like" as in "I think it's a good idea" but "it makes me imagine".

Obviously, or at least obviously to me, the best protection is actual protection, not easy to workaround blocks.

[foxfirefey]

It would be hilarious for about 5 seconds before the person running the script running bots put in a new birth year.

[aveleh]

I should remember I'm not always talking to mind-reading fu :D

I didn't actually mean that as a good idea.

[aveleh]

Actually, they probably all have the exact same birthdate, month/day too.

[afuna]

I checked a couple of the bots I found through the recent entries stream (by which I mean, I checked exactly two), and they had different days and months, and didn't display years D:

[coffeechica.livejournal.com]

I checked a handful of recent reports and got no matches, and none in 1980 either. :-/ But then, I only checked about a dozen and with a million accounts out there...

I like this line of thinking. It could help!

[iruka11.livejournal.com]

wow... O_o

[pauamma]

Sounds like my initial idea (people who got a LJ when they were in college 10 years ago) isn't borne by facts. (There would be a peak at 28 in last year's data otherwise.)

[chocobojules.livejournal.com]

Because everyone stops counting their age after 29. :P