Comments on: Crooked Timber’s Greatest Hits

By: Adam Kotsko

Adam Kotsko — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 00:53:26 +0000

Re: “jholbo”—Does anyone know what causes the redundant trackback thing? Is it really that the person just edits their post? Personally, I never have that problem, because I’m fortunate enough to use HaloScan’s super-advanced trackback, which never sends a trackback ping unless you explicitly go through a 14-step process with three separate browser windows open.

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Tue, 22 Jun 2004 04:20:55 +0000

how did you know which posts to attribute the visitors to? We know which posts get lots of hits (and what day they were posted) and we know which days gets lots of hits (and what posts were up on that day). Although it’s certainly possible, it turns out that in practice there’s basically never any ambigiuity about which posts get the credit, as it doesn’t seem to happen that two posts get a big wave of attention at once—this seems to be a consequence of people’s habits when it comes to linking to other blogs.

By: Glen

Glen — Tue, 22 Jun 2004 02:34:00 +0000

I couldn’t read the whole post because the graphs were sitting on top of the text. But here’s my question: given that there are multiple posts on most days, how did you know which posts to attribute the visitors to?

By: Backword Dave

Backword Dave — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 23:37:22 +0000

Maria once sent me a book (still not finished, but found after declared lost) after I was the first person to comment on a post. If I’d have known you were going to play an evil game like this, I’d have loaded that page every minute for days, and bandwidth be damned!

By: Chris Marcil

Chris Marcil — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 22:58:05 +0000

When are the Neptunes going to remix some of these hits?

By: fyreflye

fyreflye — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 22:13:43 +0000

I’ve never visited and have no intention of doing so. Please remove me from your chart if I’m on it.

By: Nabakov

Nabakov — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 18:15:18 +0000

I vsisited once. Are you sure you counted it? I have the documenation.

By: Richard Bellamy

Richard Bellamy — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 15:49:56 +0000

I regularly log in every weekday from about 8900 unique computers. That leaves a couple dozen other readers, tops. But I get renewed enjoyed and and enlightenment with each of those unique readings, so from a utilitarian point of view, you shouldn’t really care that I’m one of your only readers.

By: Richard Bellamy

Richard Bellamy — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 15:49:27 +0000

By: Ted Barlow

Ted Barlow — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 15:45:37 +0000

I thought Daniel had a PhD. in economics, but wasn’t an academic. (And I’ll bet that John Holbo is right about his claim to fame.) Huge thanks for all of this, Kieran.

By: Claire

Claire — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 15:12:52 +0000

Stating the obvious here, that’s a lot of visitors. Do you know how many are repeats?

By: Factory

Factory — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 13:04:40 +0000

Erm I’m no expert, but shouldn’t the remainder be scaled by the trend? (to eliminate the advantage that posts made during busy periods would have)

By: jholbo

jholbo — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 12:54:51 +0000

I want a special category for most influential post measured by largest number of redundant, duplicate track-backs. This would show which posts caused people who linked to the post to think TWICE, three or even four times, editing their posts accordingly. I believe I quietly excel in this category. Take a look at my ‘academic lit blogging’ post, for example. Thanks for fixing all the stuff, Kieran. Very heroic of you. And for compiling the fun greatest hits stats.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 11:08:26 +0000

Is my computer kaput or is that graph sitting on top of the text? And if Daniel isn’t a literate academic etc., what is he apart from being “a fat young man without a good word for anybody”?