"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Tuesday, 22 November 2011

A Simple Question

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Who Says So?":

A Yes or No Question to end your long day. Chris
Watts seems to know how many people check in daily
who just use him for information or amusement, Can
you figure out what percentage actually provide you
with any feedback ?

****
NO!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chris Watts does not know the true number... He speculates.

christopher watts said...

There is no speculation. What I know I gather from a well known, and trusted tool: Google Analytics.

There is much that can be determined about visitors, more than a rolling ticker.
What I like is the breakdown of sources, the locations from where people are comming from. It is also useful to differentiate unique visitors from a mass tally. The difference is night and day, for sake of comparison the Aurora Jazz+/- festival produced some numbers before council, but none of them had any meaning. 6,000 visitors does not tell us what percentage were unique. We know that weekend passes were sold so what number of the 6,000 were repeat visitors?
The same failing in attendance reporting seems to be common from the Aurora Cultural off-Centre.

In stark contrast I very much like the metrics the Aurora Public Library provided in their 2011 budget report because it defined the % of use, cost per transaction, cost per resident, # of items used.

What this anonymous poster has asked is for a % of posters that provide feedback on Clr. Buck's blog.
Google Analytics will of course determine this for you, but I don't think it is a particularly valuable piece of information, and from Clr. Buck's comments I believe she agrees.

For myself it is the substance of feedback, and the ones that spawn debate and more posts are what is valuabale, not the %

Clr. Buck's blog seems to be very succesfull in both regards.

If this poster, or others are still curious I would direct them to investigate
Will Hill's research (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html)
which speaks to the % of user participation as more or less following a 90-9-1 rule:

* 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don't contribute).
* 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
* 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions.

I commented on it over in my blog here:
http://christopherwatts.posterous.com/i-dont-believe-in-that-no-comment-business-i

I would expect that holds true for all the local Aurora blogs, if not all of the blogs I frequent.

Anonymous said...

McCallion now sued under Municipal Conflict of Interest Act.

See yesterday's Toronto Star.

Anonymous said...

Hazel has been charged with breaching the
Municipal Act. You can clearly see Parrish in the fine
print but that does not make the charge any less
valid. Wonder where they go that bright idea ? They have an early court date which might be because the
suit was filed in St. Catherines.

Anonymous said...

We are about to see what happens when a name
acquires a negative image, how quickly history gets
re-written.

Anonymous said...

I hope the court action against Hazel does not
make our former Mayor believe she is in the same class
as Hazel. A one trick pony versus a marathon runner.

Anonymous said...

Is Google Analytics as accurate as WikiPedia is not?

Anonymous said...

to Anon @ 4:46 - what are you talking about? Read the link below.

http://www.silicon.com/technology/networks/2005/12/16/wikipedia-vs-encyclopaedia-britannica-39155109/