It's a visualization of different data though, counting the number of users making a change each day.
I see what you are saying about being more interested in a visualization that tried to account for some regional variances (and it's a fair point about Mercator distorting things), but I guess the thing people are taking issue with is the statement that it would be better, when it would probably be different enough to not even invite comparison.
(What I mean with that last bit is that "here's the nodes" maps simply and directly back to the database, whereas any normalization is going to involve picking some basis for the normalization and figuring out how to apply that basis and so on.)
I see what you are saying about being more interested in a visualization that tried to account for some regional variances (and it's a fair point about Mercator distorting things), but I guess the thing people are taking issue with is the statement that it would be better, when it would probably be different enough to not even invite comparison.
(What I mean with that last bit is that "here's the nodes" maps simply and directly back to the database, whereas any normalization is going to involve picking some basis for the normalization and figuring out how to apply that basis and so on.)