In the new format, I can track the traffic to each post. I was growing discouraged, as posts that have been up for a month are showing only 10 visitors, on average. As I often come back to a post for corrections, and my wife reads them, and my two oldest sons (presumably), and my commenters, that would be...like, all ten. The sort of numbers that make one ask "What do I think I am actually accomplishing here?"
I'm glad I clicked through to "stats," which says I had had 243 pageviews yesterday. More than ten, for sure. I couldn't figure the discrepancy, until it dawned on me that the lower number is the clicks through to the comments. It's the number of people who have visited the post as a stand-alone.
You might want to read the commenters more. Some pretty smart people come through here.
Further oddities: my most-visited posts this week include several from 2, 3, 5 years ago. Goethe's Three Questions; Did Steven Pinker Lie; Linear Vs Circular Time. I can't imagine what the circumstances were that led people to those.
Somebody I read regularly (I don't in fact know, and absent a request, I'm not going to try finding it--have you ever looked up a word in a paper dictionary*?) mentioned Pinker the other day, maybe somebody besides me Binged to see what has happened or to look up book titles.
ReplyDelete*Has anybody thought (as I just did) about the huge hit to learning the lack of paper records is? I'll bet 2/3rds of what I know I learned while looking up something else in a dictionary or encyclopedia.
Larry, I find that I'm a little more inclined to look up something I'm trying to write or comment about now that I can Bing it so easily. In my youth, I probably would mostly have let it go by and guessed. I learn a lot of things that way now.
ReplyDeleteAVI, I find myself on obscure old posts or comments sections all the time, when I'm hunting for information with a word search.
I don't know how many people read each of your posts, but I wish more would comment, and I sure hope you won't quit writing them. This is one my favorite stops. When I'm away for a few days, as I was this week (actual! paying! work!), I have a lot to catch up with.
Since I was a little kid and continuing to this very day I have read stuff way over my head, or on subjects about which I know nothing.
ReplyDeleteSo there are dictionaries everywhere.
(I'll bet there are thirty English language dictionaries (not counting the paired kind, English-Spanish, English-Greek, English-Hebrew, and such.)
But what has been lost with the electric dictionaries is the word caught out of the corner of my eye that catches my attention and which leads to looking up a word in that definition, rinselatherrepeat.
From self-observation only, I would say that I discover just as much Other Stuff as I did before - I will mention looking at titles on spines in the library while searching for something else as an additional previous source of this - but it is entirely different Other Stuff on the internet. Hyperlinks take me to amazing places.
ReplyDeleteDid you think that you *were* trying to accomplish something? So it is not blog for blog's sake?
ReplyDeleteYou are correct--I reported a {possible) loss of A source of knowledge, not all sources.
ReplyDeleteBut I will cling to my dictionaries (as many as I can hold) until they are prized from my cold, stiff fingers.
About spines in libraries: I was visiting my daughter at college, and in the library, near eye-level and within a foot of the end of the stack, I saw "Bulwer-Lytton" and his book started "It was a dark and stormy night."
ReplyDeleteLarry - we have a goodly collection of reference books here as well. Many are now likely useless. But we keep them.
ReplyDeleteMy children grew up believing that the only possible answer to any form of the question "What does ______ mean? is "It means that you have something you need to look up." Hence dictionaries all of the house.
ReplyDeleteDubbahdee - it's the fame, actually.
ReplyDeleteNot the power and vast wealth, eh? ;-)
ReplyDelete