The Year That Was: World Languages rounds Year 3

It's been another year, World Languages' third, and it has been rich in the usual lessons and discoveries.

For the column itself, the biggest news was the shift in February from a biweekly to a monthly schedule. The change didn't have much impact on hits to the site, and generated little reader reaction. At any rate, biweekly columns were probably as inconvenient to readers as they were to the author. The new schedule also allows for investigation of topics that require deeper digging, and therefore vary a bit more from those treated on other sites.

Web survivors

This was a dicey year for Net businesses. Case in point: last year I commented on the differences between Themestream and Suite 101. Now they're even more profound, since Themestream folded last February. Yet the Suite marches on, apparently immune to the Internet Bust. What's more, it's added a host of features, formed alliances with brick-and-mortar businesses, and shows no signs of slowing down. I don't know what Suite 101 does differently from the many online services that have disappeared, but it's clearly working. Here's wishing the Suite continued health and prosperity in 2002.

On a similar note, in a March article on the Shadow Net I complained about loss of Usenet access. Well, it took awhile, but Google has kept its word. The Usenet has gradually recovered and is now 100% functional. Better still, it has a vastly improved Google-style interface.

Credulous sceptics

Early this year, hits to World Languages column Mother Tongue suddenly spiked. Such a rise usually signals a new ink on another site, but this time, the secondary data were oddly anomalous. Specifically, while ratings incidents rose sharply, the ratings themselves were decidely low. This is in direct violation of the Law of Readership, and a phenomenon that I haven't encountered before. A quick sweep of the Internet produced a link at the Fortean Times, which, it turns out, is one of those "sceptic" e-zines.

The discovery made me laugh out loud, since the article in question actually contains a line about scientists (and wannabes) obeying their emotions rather than logic. This is a beautiful example of that quirk in action. Although monogenetic theory is a flawlessly logical challenge to existing paradigms, the column is clearly written from the author's own unconvinced perspective. Fortean Times readers were evidently offended by the sole fact that someone wrote on a hypothesis that contradicts received wisdom. They clicked on the link, slapped a low rating on a piece they obviously had not read, and surfed on.