h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

ok well thats talked through, so now lets move on to the important bit, HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL tea anyone

Within the last year, someone gave a figure on usage (don;t remember whether it was page views or hits), but on an annualized basis it came to almost 6,000,000. We've been running this site for a little over three months (correct me if I'm wrong), so 1.8 million is pretty close, on an anjualized basis, to that earlier figure.

But I might be comparing apples with oranges, since I don't know which thing the BBC was counting. Still, the fact is that people are still able to find us via Google and other search engines (Bing, MSN, etc.) now that we are no longer affiliated with the BBC. I think that's good news.

My feeling about why our Entries are succeeding in the search engines is that we have * very good content* ie it says what it does on the tin.

h2g2 is a very good place to read about everything. but we do need to continue to add to the Guide, please, if you have a bit of time, try and write something.

I'm trying, Lanza. But I keep getting distracted by fascinating factoids...

Lanzababy

How many entries make a healthy Peer Review situation? There seem to be 51 in that status at present.

Hi Casseroleon, there is no optimum number to be honest, that I could swear to, but we are intending to start publishing more than the three Entries per week than we do at the moment. So, if we go for six Entries per week, Edited, this means that we need at least six new ones per week being submitted. I say, at least six, because if one or two of these meet difficulties along the way, then we're going to be without enough Entries at some point to select from.

Lanzababy

Well I ask because after some discussion I only submitted part 1 of ten parts of the latest thing I have written a few weeks ago.

But if there is an appetite for more choice perhaps I should look over some of the other things that I have posted on My Space over the last few years and never submitted. Or even better perhaps some of the things that I have never posted at all. Things about the ideas of William Cobbett or D.H. Lawrence.

Perhaps there are some smaller ones... I am usually accused of overloading threads or being just "too heavy"- and perhaps too controversial.

Creative writing projects are what I focus my best energy on these days. I've been thknking about a new story idea for a couple days now. You'd be amazed how long it can take to turn an idea into an actual short story. I can't claim to be in Annie Proulx's league, but she says that it took her six months to write the story "Brokeback Mountain." Even painting can be slow work. Vermeer is said to have spent six months on a single painting.

I want to do quality work.

Take your time, paulh, it's usually worth it

- - -

Congrats to one and all, 2011 was a year well done

Those numbers are very encouraging!

I have written more than 50 entries for the Edited Guide over the years but my writing has tailed off significantly in the last few years. There are several reasons for that but the feeling that nobody reads them once they're in the EG was part of it. It's very nice to hear that I was wrong.

Happy New Year, everyone!

We don't normally do this because we'd never stop doing it, but... I shall do this this once...

Elentari, in the last month alone, your entry on Lentil and Bacon soup has had 155 unique readers, 38 of them this last week. Since we got the site in mid-October it's had 276.

People read the Guide.

Wow!

Thanks Pastey! That's far more than I would have guessed.

I wonder... would it be possible to set up a thingy where people can see the stats for their own Entries? That'd be cool.

It would be

Wouldn't it also encourage people to promote their own entries to friends and family on facebook / twitter/ etc, and bring more victims, Ahem, researchers.

We have discussed the idea in some of the meetings we've had, and it is something we're currently looking into for a future release of the site.

Is a view counter possible on every page?
It would have to be part of the basic page layout.
And since there are so many million pages, many dormant,
it would have to install itself when a page was opened.


~jwf~

It's not really practical on every page I'm afraid. Storing the hits is actually quite easy, fire of a command to the database. It's getting them back that takes up a lot of processing both on the database and the webserver.

That lentil and bacon soup entry sounds yummy. I think I'll go take a look at it.

Haha, cheers paulh!

However, I might change the bacon to ham, and add a little bit of rice. But even without making any changes, the recipe is probably superb.