Meanwhile, Back On The Far Side of the Solar System...
Here we are at the end of another year's worth of World Languages columns, and it's been another successful, instructive orbit. As I did last year, I'm dedicating this space to some of the lessons, sociolinguistic and otherwise, that editing this site has offered in the past twelve months.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics
The best news for Contributing Editors this year was the return of site-use statistics. In fact, after a long spell with no access to anything but article ratings, the Suite ponied up a greatly expanded stats function that keeps track not only of how many readers visit the World Languages site, but also how many read specific articles over a given time period. This is a significant advantage; not only does it permit me to track the overall popularity of specific columns, it also helps me to spot articles to which other sites have linked. Following a sharp spike in hits, I swing by Link Popularity, plug the URL into their link-finder, and discover new sites that may be useful for future columns.
At the moment, World Languages' hit stats are recovering from their habitual summer slump, but overall they show a steady increase. Daily numbers average in the high 100s, spiking up to the mid-300s and down to the 40s and 50s. Links at other sites and search engine listings have a dramatic impact on total hits. The Rhaeto-Romance column handily outperforms all others, for the single reason that it somehow broke into Yahoo. Second is the Romani piece, which now enjoys links on at least two other Rom sites.
How do you rate?
Because there is no way to know what readers base their ratings on, it's hard to draw a conclusions from the ratings function. Take the Basque article. The first reader rated it low. Did he find it poorly written? Inaccurate? Did he simply disagree with my politics? The next gave it a full five. Did she find it instructive? A pleasure to read? Or does she support any site that promotes Basque awareness? Of course, some readers habitually rate things high, others shoot low.
That said, I've noticed two constants in my ratings:
1. All of my ratings, averaged together, consistently render 4 and change.
2. The more ratings a given article gets, the closer its mean rating approaches 3.
Latest Articles