Posts Tagged ‘blogstats’
Blogstats
I suppose that means I must be doing something right. Which, for a retired boomer who seems to annoy the bejesus out of some people, is a comfort.
In the month of January the number of views grew by 40% – and the blog had its best day ever at 647 views.
Welcome all you lovely people who come here to read. And also thank you to the vast majority of supportive commenters. Yes, we do have a couple of trolls now but that is just par for the course for any on line discussion group. They are not going to take over the debate. If that means a return to comment moderation, I trust that you will understand. Please, do not feed the trolls.
Raul asked me how I find interesting things to write about. The problem I face is that there is so much out there, it is more about selection from a growing plethora than finding things. And anyway, if I told you how it was done, you might go off and do it for yourselves. I do, by the way, check on the pingbacks and referrers, and if you do have a blog I usually try to have a look around which often leads me to leave a comment too. So I hope that it all becomes mutually supportive – which does not mean we have to agree. Except on being polite.
Once again, thank you for your attention.
Year End Review
The image above shows how this blog has grown over the year. Because WordPress uses GMT I have delayed copying as late as I can – so there may be one or two more views today. In fact the blog did break 9,000 views this month – but it doesn’t really matter. The growth has been pretty steady in recent months with a noticeable – and perfectly reasonable – dip over the holidays. I am glad that so many of you had better things to do – and no doubt will also have tonight. I have been trying to set up a meeting for tomorrow and nearly everywhere seems to be closed on New Year’s Day, so I suppose everyone is expected to be nursing wicked hangovers.
One or two subjects really seem to have hit a nerve. My championing of the Evergreen Line, for example, seems to be very controversial in the TriCities and has attracted over 2000 views. The other regular top of the list posts have been about the new high speed train services into St Pancras – there ‘s more than one post in that series and they all got more than a thousand views each.
Overall this blog has had 54,000 views since it started. And I want to say thank you once again to everyone, but especially the regulars and those who take the time to comment – which includes people who come here for an argument.
What I have noticed is that people who profess to have no interest in these issues are only too happy to talk about them. And a common theme that comes up again and again – especially with people who have lived here a while – is how we used to have a really good, rail based transit system with local trams and long distance interurbans. It was a shame, most people say, that we ripped them all out just before we realised we would need them again. But we still have many of the tracks in place. Our officials seem incapable of recognizing the opportunity they represent. We seem to keep on repeating the mistakes of the past.
So the New Year seems like a good time to wish that we will come to our senses, and stop repeating the same mistakes, and start some much needed renewal of our transit system. It is long overdue.
Stephen Rees's blog 