your hit counter is lying

[zing_och]

Since I'm a lurking lurker who lurks most of the time, I don't really feel qualified to say this, but whatever.

Ok. You want to know who's making you sad by giving you a bad hit-count / comment ratio?

It's me.



I open the story in a new tab. 1 This new tab is now the right-most tab in a row of a-lot-more-than-I-will-read-right-now tabs. I surf on for a while, then I have to go to bed / work / shopping / whatever. I close my browser.

Next time I'm on the computer my browser restores my tabs. 2 I surf the web, starting with my circle, opening yet more tabs, then moving on to all those other tabs.

These steps might be repeated a lot (sometimes I'm dragging around open tabs for weeks). But we'll say -

Ok. I'm getting to the story tab now! It's on an LJ with a layout I can't (or don't want to) read. I click my handy Readability applet. It reloads the page. 3

I read the story. I love it! I want to leave a comment! But Readability doesn't give me a comment link, so I have to reload the original page. 4 I post a comment!

And finally I bookmark your story on delicious because I love it so much. Because I'm an obsessive re-reader (is that a word?) you'll get lots more hits from me if I love the story - but probably no more comments.

So if I liked your story and left a comment, but don't come back to it, the ratio is still not all that great. With every re-read it gets worse. Plus I tend to open links from recs without really checking if I already know the story. Even more hits!

Lots of hits / not many comments doesn't have to mean "people read the story but don't like it".

(Of course that doesn't get into all the comments I don't leave because [list deleted; this is a topic for another post - which I probably won't make. This one's easier! *g*])

Comments

[torachan]

Yeah, some hit counters are smart and don't count repeats, but a lot of them just count every single time, regardless of whether it's the same IP or not.

[zing_och]

True. And since my IP is dynamic, the counter'd probably still log every time I re-open the browser the next day even if it disregards the re-loads.

[caiusmajor]

...you know, I hadn't thought about that before, but my browser's probably doing the same thing to people. Huh.

[zing_och]

*nods* I suspect there's a lot of people for whom this is true.

[rodo]

I finished a story yesterday that had been in my tabs since December or November. I don't want to know how many hits that generated. I also didn't leave a comment because while the story was okay, I could only have gone on and on about the things that kept the story from being awesome.

[zing_och]

Heh! That happens to me a lot, too. And talking about the good in the story and not mentioning the bad or working in some concrit (after carefully checking the author is ok with that) in a way that's not insulting the writer ist just 1. too much work, 2. above my skill level both wrt language and social skills.

It really amuses me that I mess up the hit count of stories I love (and where I commented!), too.

[rodo]

I'm just much better at noticing what could be better than I am at picking out what works really well.

2. above my skill level both wrt language and social skills.

Agreed. I really think polite criticism should be taught in school, because it's a skill that is very useful in later life for most people.

[zing_och]

That's a great idea - usually I don't know how to frame criticism at all if I want it to be actually constructive.

[baronjanus]

Never really looked at hit counter for journals. Huh.

[zing_och]

Most people don't, I believe. But on the AO3 the hit counter is pretty prominent at the top of the page, and during the latest round of the feedback discussion people have been saying that their story gets lots of hits, but hardly any / no comments. I just wanted to point out that "hits" doesn't actually equal "people who read the story".

[ratcreature]

LJ has introduced that statistics thingy a while back though. It tells me useful things like that apparently 701 people across livejournal viewed my thrilling most recent entry about how my rats ate my eraser in some form, while 11 went to the entry page itself, and two commented.

[zing_och]

Heh! So... I'm guessing lots of people have you on your flist?

[ratcreature]

231 people have me friended on LJ. But I set my LJ to be indexed by google and such, so there may be plenty landing on my LJ page for some reason or another because they searched for something, clicked and then saw the most recent entries page that contained the talk about eraser eating rats. I mean, my most google indexed entry which is the one talking about Wizards tutorials for drawing women back from 2006 still gets about 20000-25000 page visits every month since that statistic started.

[kickair8p]

You mean a hundred and thirty-some unique and special people didn't read (and fail to comment on) my super-secret double-dead-fandom crossover fic? I'm crushed, I tell you -- absolutely crushed!

[/snark]

Probably a good point to bring up, though.

~

[zing_och]

It's 175 now! And umm, one by me, because of course I had to see what it was! And now it lives in my tabs, and someday I might read it (even if I only remember Forever Knight really vaguely and have never seen West Wing), but chances are I'll forget why I have it open and close the tab in a few days.

Er. Sorry?

[kickair8p]

S'okay -- like I said, double-dead-fandom (although fans of both could dispute me on the "dead" label). If you get Bravo, they're showing West Wing on weekday mornings. And there's always wikipedia, but this site's got more info and pictures: http://westwing.bewarne.com/leo.html

~

[majoline]

I sorta feel bad because if I liked a fic and commented (which I usually do actually at least a "thanks for sharing") and fav'd it...

it means I am going to read it til the cows come home.

There are certain fics that I've reread monthly for years. Especially some of the older Harry Potter fics? Yeah, I'm guessing that even on some of the big name fics, I'm the majority of the hits just because I LOVE THEM SO VERY MUCH.

I am not actually in the mood to squee over something that I was actually meh over. And I might read something 3 or 4 times before I commented and if it's a WIP? I will probably reread it every time I get a notice of update.

It's just that I love reading and I love the quality of the work on the Internet.

And honestly? Depending on where your hosting your stuff, it might just be spambots running up your hits.

[majoline]

and I'm here via metafandom! Not a crazy spambot/stalker. *facepalm*

[zing_och]

no need to facempalm! I've never encountered such an eloquent spambot, so I wasn't worried. *g*

[zing_och]

Heh. I'm glad I'm not the only one who does that! *g*

And now that you remind me, there are some HP novels I haven't reread in a while...

[dancing_serpent]

While I usually don't leave tabs open I'm an obsessive re-reader, too. Also, I have dynamic IPs both at home and at work (where I read fanfic, too), so I guess I'm producing lots of hits.

I got a funny comment on one of my fics a while ago. The commenter said "I love your story so much, I bet half your hit count is because of me." I thought that was cute. *g*

[zing_och]

Aww. I suspect there might be fics where I'm the main "contributor" of hits, too... but at least I'm not alone! *g*

[summerstorm]

I'm so glad someone said this! I had two stories open in tabs recently for maybe three/four weeks, involving between one and three reloads per day. At some point I closed one of them and didn't even get around to reading it properly — or commenting — even though it wasn't bad at all. I just lost interest. The other one I left a comment on three or four days after I finally got around to reading it. I don't even want to know what that did to those stories' hit counts.

[zing_och]

I think I've left fandoms behind faster than I closed some tabs! At least it seems this way, because there are definitely times I glance at a tab and can't remember why I have it open because it's something that's just not that interesting to me.

(I click on lots and lots of links on my circle, too, even if it's fandoms I don't know - and in most cases, I close them days later because, guess what, I don't even know the fandom. *g*)

[cadenzamuse]

(here via metafandom)

Yeah, and you don't even count the number of times I go back if you posted a story recently and I have commenting on my to-do list, or I want to check out other people's comments/see how many people have commented/keep up with some kind of discussion in comments. My friend started a new blog recently, and within one day, I had given approximately 20/28 hits. He was very confused as to where all this random extra traffic had come from, but it was all me!

[zing_och]

Yes, very true. Sometimes I suspect that the "most popular" tags on our company intranet are all because of me. *g*

If you don't mind me asking: how does this to-do-list work?

[cadenzamuse]

Umm...I use multiple inboxes in Gmail, so that I can attempt to do Inbox Zero (in a nutshell: deal with all my incoming mail immediately) while still keeping stuff that I need to deal with later visible. So, when I open Gmail, I see my main inbox, and then to the right: grad school things to do later, lab things to do later, other things to do later, and reference (for things I don't need to really deal with but want to keep around for later--a knitting pattern I want to eventually knit, for example, or a particularly insightful comment that I want to be able to quote in appropriate discussions).

So when a comment notification that I want to reply to comes in, I either reply to it immediately or move it to "other things to do later" or "reference." And every time I go through those inbox categories, I'll probably read it, go reread the post, think about commenting, and either leave it some more, comment and delete the notification, or delete the notification without commenting.

Hmm. Or. Rereading what I originally wrote: my Dreamwidth is about 50/50 personal journal and recs journal, so I bookmark things I may want to rec with "Read It Later" Firefox add-on I also keep a mental list of "fantastic things I've read that I want to comment on eventually." If I decide to comment, I can look up the page on Read It Later and do so. If it falls off my mental list, it wasn't awesome enough to deserve the effort, or I'll rediscover it when I look through the Read It Later list for things to rec.

...and that was waaaaaaaaaaaay more than you wanted to know, sorry.

[zing_och]

Definitely not more than I wanted to know! I'd really like for my fannish life to be a bit more organised, and this sounds like a good way to get there. Thank you very much!

[(Anonymous)]

You know, one thing here that amazes me: you don't *save* the fic you like to your harddrive (and, if you're obsessive like me and had a HD crash in your background, back these all up on DVD?)

Because, while I leave story tabs open in my browser until I get to them sometimes, I save everything I liked even a bit to my HD. Which means that it'll still be there 15 years in the future, when the hosting site may long since been forgotten.

(and yeah, I've been saving fanfic for 15 years. *g*)

[zing_och]

Ha! I do that, too, but unfortunately I have a tendency to break hard drives and lose DVDs / CDs / floppy disks. *g* (Now that I think about it, I started doing this 10 years ago. Hmmm, I wonder what I could still dig up?)

So I took the "logical" next step: I made a gmail account just for fic and email all my favorites to it.

*hangs head in shame*

[ratcreature]

One of my main reasons to comment on fic on journals is actually that with a paid account I'll get copy of my comment with also the entry mailed to me, and have commented to the author and a copy for myself in one easy step. This works very conveniently for single part stories.

[zing_och]

Yes, I love this, too! This is actually the only time I miss my paid LJ account. But I do get them on DW, and I can still cp a fic in an email to myself. *g*

[emeraldsword]

my browser is totally doing that. oops.

[zing_och]

Don't worry - as you can see, there's a lot of us. *g*

[lokifan]

*nodnod* This is SO TRUE. And my IP changes pretty regularly, too, so even clever hit counters think I'm a new person.

[zing_och]

On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog return visitor! *g*