I was crunching some numbers on historic cvillenews.com comment rates today, so I figured I’d stick ’em on a graph and share them, on the off chance that anybody cares. This first one has two Y axes, plotting both the number of blog entries each month and the number of comments each month, spanning from the site’s 2001 beginning through July. It’s on a log-lin scale, with both Y axes logarithmic. You can click on it for an enlarged version.
This second graph, likewise log-lin, plots the X:1 ratio of blog entries to comments, again aggregated by month. A 1:1 ratio would mean that blog entries that month had, on average, one comment. A 75:1 ratio would mean that blog entries averaged 75 comments.
It’s interesting that, as time goes on, the fluctuation of comments more accurately trends the fluctuation in blog entries — that’s me learning what people like to talk about and focusing on posting those sorts of stories. Stepping through some of those comment peaks, generally they reflect some sort of big event going on — the coal tower killings, the 2002 City Council elections, the group of CHS students attacking UVa students, etc.
This comment is made solely to throw off future statistics. <evil-grin>
Heheh. OK, everybody into the comment pool!
BTW, Waldo, when I read this headline, I thought the news would be that some recent story had had a record-high number of comments… not trying to be the grammar police, but I think you mean “historical”, not “historic.”
I’m glad you mentioned that. I was confused by my own headline when I read it this morning — it was lost on me that the simple addition of “-al” would solve the problem.
But not as “out of it as the Progress reporter who wrote about an “exterior basement” a few days ago.
Hey, I have one of those. It’s ten acres. I store all kinds of stuff in it. Trees, turtles, deer and birds, mostly.