This is a summary of site statistics in October to date. To give a sense of proportion, I also tabulated these numbers for The Forvm, another site geared towards bipartisan debate. The Forvm gets ~5x more traffic but about the same number of posts/comments; their structure is a bit different, in that there are no editors, instead diaries can be voted to the front page. Lemme know if I can answer any specific questions. Note that SC's traffic has declined in October after rising for the past 8 months.
| Front Page |
Posts |
Comments |
Comments/Posts |
| SC Editors |
15 |
386 |
26 |
| SC Promoted |
7 |
239 |
34 |
| Forvm |
10 |
517 |
52 |
| Open Threads |
Posts |
Comments |
Comments/Posts |
| Swords |
24 |
1917 |
80 |
| Forvm |
5 |
384 |
77 |
| Diaries |
Posts |
Comments |
Comments/Posts |
| Swords |
24 |
344 |
14 |
| Forvm |
48 |
2096 |
44 |
| Totals |
Posts |
Comments |
Comments/Posts |
| Swords |
70 |
2886 |
41 |
| Forvm |
63 |
2997 |
48 |
| Traffic |
Views |
Visits |
Views/Comments |
Visits/Comments |
| Swords |
16359 |
3969 |
5.7 |
1.4 |
| Forvm |
72065 |
24679 |
24.0 |
8.2 |
Commentary: most of the discussion here takes place in the open threads. There's nothing wrong with that, obviously, but I'd encourage people to make diaries for topics that start to take off in the open threads -- it will be easier to find that discussion later, and you can summarize contributions to date in the diary. Another thing that jumps out is that we have a relatively small group of extremely active posters. We should try to attract more readers/lurkers, who will gradually become commenters, to grow the site. And of course more active posters are always welcome too -- feel free to invite people from other sites you think might enjoy the format here.
Comments :
Here's the
sitecounter stats
per month (obviously October isn't done yet).
Also, the site stats
has more data (with somewhat different content categorizations).
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Thanks Brendan, As one who
Thanks Brendan,
As one who found discourse on RedState extremely frustrating and mostly worthless, I want to say that in my short time so far on SC I have found far superior discourse, both in terms of intellectual quality and in terms of willingness to engage in real, rational discusion/debate rather than just hurling rhetoric and talking points, so I'm grateful to those who started this site and to those whom I've encountered so far. Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind and call you guys a bunch of jerks at whatever point I choose in the future ; )
While it may be that ideologically-oriented or partisan sites like RedState (and, I imagine, dKos, although I don't have any experience there) are filled primarily with people who are looking to hang out with like-minded people and to just repeat many of the same "truths" to one another and reinforce the self-righteousness of the group, I think there is probably some significant portion of each consisting of people who are looking for real discussion/debate with folks across a broader range of perspectives, and I think those people are one good target segment for SC. I've already emailed a couple of RedStaters who I know have also been frustrated there, encouraging them to join SC, and I suggest that as one easy & free promotional tactic (so to speak).
Glad to hear it,
and we're very happy to have you here, and thanks for the outreach. I guarantee there will be times you find discourse here to be extremely frustrating and mostly worthless, but hopefully they won't arise too frequently =)
We actually do have a handful of dKos posters who fall outside the mainstream of that community. I think you're quite right about trying to target those groups, although unfortunately I don't really follow dKos closely enough myself to identify likely candidates.
I was also thinking we could try to get posters from college political groups, but that's just an idea at this point.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Thanks. Your idea sounds
Thanks. Your idea sounds good. There are also political organizations and web sites that are centrist or moderately to the right or left whose members/visistors may be more inclined to participate on SC than on more narrow, hard-core ideological/partisan sites. I haven't thought it through at all, nor promotional tactics in general, but it's just another thought.
Number of new accounts?
Do you have the number of new user accounts created in the last month?
From the promotions within Second Life, I am aware of four occasional lurkers (Blue, Korobas, Barra, Audrey *waves*) and two accounts (BackHome and Cheech). There may be a few other lurkers I am not aware of. We probably got a few drive-bys as well.
I guess some just like to read and fewer like to comment. It's been harder than I thought it would be to get politically-minded folks to contribute. Blogs take time, and sometimes people just don't have it. Certainly we don't scare them off?
SC took a beating over at PFF. Mainly due to a couple of sour grapes. But as their group seems to mainly lean fairly far left, they probably would go crazy here.
Glad to see I'm still bringing up the rear on the comment stats, despite my post-SL dropoff. I am trying to be more active. But SL is damned addictive ;}
I think
10 legitimate new users in the last 3 weeks; 15 new if you go back 5 weeks. Not 100% positive of those numbers, Ender can double check, but I believe I'm not counting any spam accounts in that tally. Most appear to be lurking -- B Rational is the most active of the new accounts.
Thanks for the SL recruiting, purpleface.
Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
Cool! Whaddoo I get? I'm
Cool! Whaddoo I get? I'm hoping for Rookie of the Week Award, at least for the "Other" Division.
You get many valuable prizes!
A free year's subscription to SwordsCrossed!
A 6 months' supply of Comment Coloring Decals (Choose: Purple, Green, Blue, Red, Black or Yellow (Coming soon... PAISLEY!))
And of course, a copy of SwordsCrossed, The Home Edition!
:-)
LOL. Actually, that gives me
LOL. Actually, that gives me another promotional idea: SwordsCrossed.org T-shirts, with some witty, descriptive, attractive slogan. The Economist magazine has a good one: It features a beer bottle cap with the words "Think Responsibly."
My suggestion
Might have to change the first word to Politics or something ;} but it might work.
OK, enough humor.
Should we have some sort of "welcome new users" post occasionally? Everybody likes hearing their name.