WildSnow Top Blog Posts of 2016

Got a few hours (smile)? We curated last year’s 300 or so posts, whew… For the complete listing check this link or use options in nav menu above.

You’re in Greece!

Ready for the approach with the use of a few straps.

5 Responses to “WildSnow Top Blog Posts of 2016”

1. kevin December 30th, 2016 6:14 pm

   I am a little confused. Are the posts listed by most views? Would be cool to see them listed by highest view count. It would be hard to believe that your salomon review, that just came out, would compete with some of the older pages.

2. Lou Dawson 2 December 31st, 2016 6:57 am

   Hi Kevin, unlike some of the super commercialized websites out there, we don’t live by metrics, instead we go with our gut. Thus, for this post we looked at every post of 2016 and combined our overall impression of the post, as well as the type and yes sometimes the number of comments, to come up with our “top” post. I included some of the more recent posts simply because I had the feeling readers found them interesting, and in the case of Salomon my feeling was that the issue of re-branded gear came up and it’s important for people planning their shopping over the next year.

   In reality, some of our News Roundups got a lot of reading and a lot of comments as well, but most of those didn’t do it for me as “Top Posts” so I left most out during the curation.

   We actually don’t put much energy into developing metrics on what our most viewed posts are. Instead, again, we go with our gut feelings on what to publish, for better or worse.

   This is a very different philosophy than that of many internet publishers, who spend literally thousands of hours obsessing on their numbers, and let the numbers lead them.

   What originally got me off the metrics kick (yes, for a while I sat here drooling over Google Analytics, thinking it was the key to the universe) was when I realized that nearly all website metrics are skewed by what has become an unbelievable amount of random criminal bot traffic and targeted attacks (said by some to be something around 50% of all internet bandwidth!), much of which is said to be very sophisticated in that it’s designed to emulate humans who are web browsing. (And yes, much of this traffic comes from Russian and Ukranian IP numbers, but U.S. IP numbers are at the top of the list as well… Indeed, we get attacked by “Russia” all the time, though I doubt any of it comes from Vladimir Putin, but instead it comes from what has become a huge virtually unregulated money generating hacking industry in those countries, and in other Eastern Block countries as well.)

   Just an FYI on the above, over the past few years I refined our methods of website defense and we’ve filtered our traffic to a much more realistic flow of “real” people. It was a tough journey and I learned a lot of stuff, and our methods are working for now. We’re actually saving some money by not needing as much server bandwidth as we used to, because we’re doing better blocking of the attacks. We’re also giving our advertisers a better deal because they pay for “clean” traffic rather than numbers inflated by the criminal traffic. Though it’s all an imperfect science and there is no way of knowing what new exploit or attack method the criminals are going to try next.

   Funny thing is, the old tried and true attack methods still work best. Witness recent events, and watch out for what you do with your emails (smile).

   Oh, and as for the order of the posts, they’re simply chronological with newest first. Not in the order of “most viewed” or anything like that.

   Lou

3. Joe John December 31st, 2016 9:14 am

   Thank you for all the outstanding reviews! Wildsnow is my back country Consumer Reports review source! Happy New Year and all the best to you all in 2017.

4. Evgeny January 1st, 2017 11:14 pm

   Lou, Not all traffic from Russia is criminal! I read your site for 2 years and find a huge amount of useful information. But sometimes its really hard to get it, because of “criminal traffic filters” (smile).

   I wish you good luck and a lot of snow in 2017

   Evgeny,
   Moscow, Russia.

5. Lou Dawson 2 January 2nd, 2017 8:34 am

   Evgeny, thanks for visiting and tolerating our security measures. Of course, I know that not all Russian web traffic is criminal. In fact, IP numbers in the United States are up there at the top of the list as well, simply because we have so many computers and IP numbers that can be compromised.

   Difference in how we treat countries in terms of security issues is a matter of ratio. Most of our North American and Western Europe traffic is legit. Most coming from Russia, Ukraine, Romania and so on is not, likewise, most of our traffic from Brazil is not legit, nor that from China, and so on.

   Thus, to reduce server load I tend to do more aggressive blocking of traffic from those areas. Regarding Russia, I removed overall country blocking of Russia some time ago, but a huge amount of your IP numbers are used by criminals, resulting in those IP numbers getting included in the blocking systems used by our various security software solutions.

   Thus, if you browse from Russia and still encounter an IP block, that’s because you are using an IP that has been compromised at one time or another and is still on a block list. Solution is to either change your browser IP if possible (using a VPN or a reset if your ISP provided dynamic IP number) or in the case of WildSnow you can always request bypass access by contacting us using Facebook.

   Apologies for any inconvenience from above, but we don’t have the budget or risk tolerance to simply open up our server to all traffic.

   P.S., I know a little bit about hacking and computer security. After much study of reports such as that linked below, from Wordfence (our amazing primary site defense tool), as well as observing our own security issues, I do not believe it was your government that hacked our Democratic political party. I do appreciate the BIG HACK of 2016 drawing attention to how easily all of us can be attacked, and would hope that instead of our president doing this hand slapping routine based on unproven source allegations of amateur hour (yet successful) hacking, both our existing president as well as our president elect would direct their attentions to helping us little guys deal with the burden created by the worldwide criminal hacking enterprise culture.

   https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2017/01/election-hack-faq/

   http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/12/micros_pos_attack_expands/

   Lou