April 1, 2007 State of the City Blog
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March 2007 was our eighteenth operational month, and we earned about 15,600 visitors! All you visitors and participants are awesome. We now have 488 articles, which have generated 4,622 comments.
We dipped a bit on article quantity last month, but probably because I forgot to tell everyone that I moved the “REGISTER” and “LOGIN” links from the top of page to top of left column, right under that “Published Writers” heading. Hopefully more writers find those links and write some more this month. The more voices, the more diverse the discussions.
Here is a screenshot of our monthly visitor counts for the last 12 month rolling period, showing our growth chart. November appeared to dip because our Sitemeter service lost a week of data. I estimate November’s visitor count was a hair below October’s.
Here is a screenshot of our March daily visitor counts. The cyclical dips are the weekends, typical for most websites.
I ask everyone to please help out by with continued participation through chat, votes, comments, and especially writing your own articles. Sharing IdahoFallz.com with your friends, family and co-workers, and setting IFz as your browser homepage would also be awesome.
Thanks for all of your visits, stories, comments, and participation. You are what makes this site what it is. We look forward to an even bigger and better April.
The most-commented-on (new) articles in March include:
- Joe Vandal’s Do Not Knock List Needed in Idaho Falls (51 Comments)
- Joe Vandal’s River City Weekly, the New Idaho Falls Newspaper (50 Comments)
- Joe Vandal’s Slums and Slum Lords of Idaho Falls (48 Comments)
- Joe Vandal’s Legislators Reveal Their Hypocrisy in Family Values (45 Comments)
- JeremyPlo’s Straightedge: What Every Parent (and everyone else) Should Know (34 Comments)
- Joe Vandal’s Into the Woods of Anonymous Speech (28 Comments)
- JeremyPlo’s Reason vs. Fear: Combating the Second-Hand Smoke Debate (25 Comments)
- Joe Vandal’s YOUR Unsecured Wireless Internet is the Dangerous Weak Link (15 Comments)
- Ronin Rich’s Local Youth Sports, Great for Kids, OR damaging to them? (10 Comments)
- Joe Vandal’s Is Low Pay Creating a Local Law Enforcement Crisis? (8 Comments)
- Please stay polite and on topic.
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- No profanity or euphemisms for profanity.
- No personal attacks, name-calls, put-downs, or baiting other guests, races, genders, or religions.
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- No commercial links (unless absolutely relevant to the discussion) and no religious proselytizing.
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- Use the "I" word as much as possible to demonstrate responsibility.
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Comments
Vote:
0 
0 About the only other way to highlight popular old articles is through the Most Popular Articles listing (link found in upper left column).
That actually displays based on a formula including comments, visits/pageviews, etc. rather than just most comments.
Other than that, a great way to highlight older articles is to check those ‘Anniversary’ articles out, and leave a comment in one. You know then a ‘new comment’ appears in the middle column and that’s where many more people will have their attention called to it.
Thanks for the kudos, I was pretty stoked to see them rise also.
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Vote:
Way to go Joe!
I had a glance at those numbers a few days ago and thought the counters must not be working right. This is awesome growth!!!!!
I remember when 2-4,000 visits/month seemed almost like a dream (would it ever happen - that many visits in one month). And now - 15K+ - that s wonderful!
One question I’ve been thinking about for the last couple of months, is each month you highlight the new articles and how many responses are posted after those articles. I think that is great, but I also think other articles have a continuing role.
Given some recent issues that have generated discussion on estalished subjects, is there a mechanism in place to count the articles which were published before the last month, but re-visited the most (so-to-speak) in a paricular month recently?
What I mean is when you bring back articles from a 1,3 or 12 months ago and some of us look at them again, they may seem more relevant now than then. Thus some “old” articles are getting a lot of new comments. For many, it may be their first time seeing the article. For others, we may have new ideas or experiences to post.
What purpose would it serve to count the most viited “old articles?” I don’t know for sure, except to perhaps show trends or interests of current readers.
I’m often surprised when I re-read something from 12 or 3 months ago how I feel about a subject now. That may be due to more information, having talked to others here or other factors.
Nonetheless, I think the site can serve another role by making sure good discussions are highlighted again periodically.
And this isn’t an April Fool’s Day comment.