My wife is one of those statistical people who analyzes data for a local college, and she spends much more time poking around figuring out website traffic than I do. I just kind of wing it and follow my urges, she casts a calculating eye on the whole thing. So the other day, she tells me I ought to bring back that old Sex in the MRI article; it will be hot, she says, it’ll draw in a lot of new traffic. So specifically at her urging, I did.
I’m getting about 20,000 visits per hour right now.
It feels a bit eery, being married to a prophetess…although I suppose anyone could tell you that sex is always a draw. I just found it striking that I obey her this once on the weblog thing, and boom, she’s dramatically correct. Fortunately, I’m not doing this for the big traffic numbers, or I’d have to be her slave forevermore.
If any big time corporate types are looking to hire a skilled web prognosticator and analyzer and statistician, she’ll settle for nothing less than $100K/year, and she must be able to work from home (OK, that last bit is my requirement; she might be willing to negotiate that).
Maybe you should change that to “She’s a pygmy and I’m a dwarf.”
Wow, just think how much traffic you’ll be able to generate when you repeat those studies with cephalopods.
Sorry to burst your bubble, PZ, but it doesn’t take a genius to know that DWARVES + PYGMIES doesn’t gather a crowd like “boobs and panties”.
I think I saw you on the DIGG.COM main page… that’s probably why. It’s Slashdot for Web2.0
I’m getting about 20,000 visits per hour right now.
How does that compare to, say, 6 months or 1 year ago?
If you want to boost the number of visits here, maybe try some car chases? Seems to help TV show ratings.
it would have been nice of you (maybe even more ethical of you) to add a note to the beginning of the entry saying “this is an older post, but i thought i’d repost it…” or something… it’s a little sketchy to just up and repost things without saying so.
It does. Take a look at the icon in the top right corner of the post; put your cursor over it and it’ll tell you when the original post was made. Click on it, and it takes you to the original. I’ve moved to a brand new server and URL, and I’ve been slowly moving over the more popular articles from the old site on a regular basis.
I’m not clear on what is unethical about reposting something even without the notification. I wrote it in the first place. I’m the author and the ‘publisher’. And, although apparently it is too subtle, I do have a convention for flagging reposted material.
At least you listen. I’ve been urging Scientific American to do a swim suit issue for years. No luck.
I dunno…your gentle lady wife sounds brilliant…couldn’t be that horrible to be her slave forever. And. You know. She’s rigt.
“I’m not clear on what is unethical about reposting something even without the notification.”
I don’t think it has anything to do with ethical, just with keeping the rest of us from looking like idiots (which, of course, we’re rightfully much more concerned about than you are). For instance, I’d be very likely to go find a colleague at work and say “Did you hear about the new MRI study?” and then find out they heard about it last year, and then I look stupid. You don’t want to do that to us, do you??
Of course, you could also look at the citation at the bottom of the article that tells you it was published in the BMJ in 1999.
Congratulations! How about a follow-up on the challenges of artificially inseminating squids? Think of the possibilities!
It’s comforting to hear that your wife has a job closer to home. Perhaps I have not been paying attention, but over a year ago when I was drawn into your web, I recall her having to commute so far that she stayed away during the work week and was in essence, a weekend mom.
That seemed tough.
Oh, sure, make me personally responsible for my own learning. What a professor-type thing to say. Sheesh.
Good example of archetypal blog structure here, although it doesn’t really address post popularity:
http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2006/04/07/4991
The blog post made it into the del.icio.us Most Popular list.