Kiwipolitico readers and commenters will know that this blog has quickly established itself as a platform for considered debate about issues of concern to informed kiwis. This is what it’s all about, and it has been very gratifying for those of us posting to see the generally very positive response and constructive tone of discussion.
For a more precise picture, we have some stats. The wordpress blog stats tell us that we had 23,502 views in January. It took jafapete’s weblog months to reach that level of traffic, when it got into the Tumeke top 20.
We didn’t have a proper stat counter operating until 16 January, and can report that over the period 16—31 January unique visits averaged 293. According to the wordpress stat counter, the number of views in the second half of January was about the same as the second half, so the figure is close to what we would have seen for the month as a whole.
Calculating Tumeke’s score most probably places us in the top 20 for January!
290 + 19 + 14.5 + 80 = 403.5
Average daily unique visits = 290
Technorati “Authority” = 19
Average posts per week: 58 ÷ 4 = 14.5
Average comments of top 4 commented posts (96 + 84 + 75 + 66) = 80
What a great start! Fantastic to have you guys in Blogland too :-)
You are clearly doing all the right things – long may you continue to do so.
Yes, always thoughtful, and a credit to its writers. I’ve always thought the number of comments were probably the best indicator of how ‘good’ a blog is (subjective, yes) – there are a few higher-ranked blogs out there that post a lot, but don’t generally generate much chatter. Keep it up!
Although I just noticed that Roger Nome is writing now (guest post?). Would’ve thought he’d be more at home at the ‘attack blog’ The Standard, but there you go.
This is going to sound cruel, and petty……..but it bugs me.
Why did you give Rogernome posting rights? He detracts from what is otherwise indeed a blog of ‘considered debate’ with personal attacks and petty rubbish.
I disagree with a lot of what Anita, Jafapete, Pablo etc say. But I do respect you guys. Rogernome…..not so much.
I couldn’t agree more. I think someone should keep a tally of his posts for the next 12 months and add one point every time he mentions Farrar or the “kiwiblog right”. It ought to be illuminating to say the least.
Congratulations, JP. Of course, you were already in Tumeke’s top 20, but the addition of Anita and Pablo have certainly given the blog a much wider appeal and a more varied stance.
And, despite the detractors above, Roger is a colourful addition.
;-)
My congratulations also. It’s hard to consistently write considered and informed posts that promote discussion and respect differences, I think you all do it well. It’s great that post the election, the rampant partisanship has abated and blogs have adopted a more moderate approach.
I am less interested in the stats than I am in contributing to the NZ political debate. I also believe, contrary to the opinion of some, that the best way to do that is to respectfully disagree, and to be polite and respectful in any event. For me that means no personal attacks, no epithets, no nonsense. Regardless of who posts and what we post elsewhere, that is the standard I signed up for when Jafapete and Anita invited me in. I expect that standard will be upheld by additional contributors and guest posters, otherwise we shall be heading down the slippery slope towards political flame wars. We all have seen what that does to the tone of the debate, so I do not have any desire to participate in such a forum.
Anyway, that having been noted–so far, so good!
StephenR, Greg & Dean,
1) Roger Nome was in from the beginning (many months ago), and I’d like to thank him and Jafapete for inviting me in.
2) I honestly don’t have any problem with any of his posts, I’ve found them all well considered and thought provoking. Are you talking about his posts here or comments elsewhere?
3) If you want to point fingers at people for starting shouting matches in threads you’ll need to point at me (or at least the people who turn up in the comments on my posts.
4) The only reason I haven’t mentioned Kiwiblog is that I haven’t (yet) posted anything relevant. Like RN I will use the posts there as evidence of what National is saying, and the kinds of comments as the evidence of the kinds of views National attracts and fosters.
Really just thinking of stuff posted elsewhere…though the title of his latest is noticeably different in tone from anything else i’ve seen here lately, i’ll say that. Ah well, wadaya gonna do.
StephenR
Yeah, I guess the title of RN’s post should have been, “More Child Obesity the Inevitable Result of Nats’ Actions.”
i thought “Nats back obesity in schools” was snappy, to the point and humorous. Don’t really see how it could be interpreted as offensive. It could have been framed more accurately at the expense of being less “catchy” and “attention grabbing”. But that’s the point of the text, not the title in my opinion.
Oh and Greg – i do my cooking in the kitchen. kiwipolitico is a “kitchen” – what i do in another part of the house/another blog that doesn’t even pretend to “kitchenhood”, is an entirely different matter.
I’m just delighted to see a blog from the left (please excuse labeling/generalisation, etc) that manages to do a good job of putting its views forward without slurs and abuse.
Now we just need to work on some of the commenters… please feel encouraged to moderate out the trolls and abusers.
You need to get out more! There’s not much of that here at ALL, IMHO.
It is nice having a site around on the left that is quieter than ours. Certainly you get a better class of commentator.
I’ve been meaning to write some posts linking to yours with an alternate viewpoint and/or pointing out the flaws (IMHO). Unfortunately there hasn’t been a lot of room in the debate left after a post here. Good to see those figures go up.
StephenR:
Not really. If you look at the comments in this this Nov 2007 post for instance, you’d rapidly come to the conclusion that the number of comments is not a good measure. Personal vendattas do not make for the best reading. That wasn’t the worst one. There was another in that November that almost every comment was less than 5 lines and primarily vitriol. That is why I started moderating a month or two later.
It is the quality of the chatter that is the best indicator. Mostly you get that by looking at the repetition rate of concepts. An ability of commentators to agree to disagree seems to be required….
Yes, I didn’t really take ‘flame wars’ into account did I? I think Whale Oil’s ‘popular’ site which has a lot of posts, but little discussion was probably colouring my thinking a bit. Not that I really go there very often. Quality is certainly difficult to measure though too.
Quality’s also a matter of what people expect from a site. What the regular posters at WOBH, No Minister and to an extent The Standard and Kiwiblog and others want (and what their respective proprietors want) is quite different to what KP is about.
L
I expect relentless partisan attacks from the first three (‘Key not that bad – so far’ posts from The Standard non-withstanding). Not really sure what I expect from Kiwiblog – centre-right-ness and the results of a one-man RSS search engine!?
StephenR: You don’t expect partisan attacks from DPF or his resident commentariat?
L
Well okay, yes, but his are so much less screeching than others, and are relatively rare, so I wouldn’t necessarily characterise it as a common feature of his site. The ‘WWF’ to Whale Oil’s/No Minister’s ‘Sea Shepherd’, perhaps?