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Hits & Kudos & things have been my guide about whether or not stories I posted were OK or rubbish or not so bad.
What I can never understand is that we might only have only 30 members on line at any one time yet number of hits in a day can reach 600 or 700 and sometimes peaked at almost 1000. There are writers with a much bigger following than me.
Then again if I'm on form I might get 60 Kudos for 1500 hits.
If I get 1500 hits over 3 days that's 500 hits per day. [24 hrs of USA time] so lets say 20 hits per hour. So lets say I get 50 kudos from the first 1000 hits and 10 from the last 500.
Have I lost you yet?
So in 2 days I get 50 kudos or 25 per day or 1 per hour.
To get 500 hits in a day needs 500 members since 1 kudos per member [am I wrong]so with an average of 30 on line at any one time that means 720 possible hits each day or I get visited by 70% of the daily turnover of hitters.
So if I try to convert this to a popularity index what is my PI No and how does this compare with the average or moreso with the best? Should I worry or just enjoy it?
I expect some people visit some of us more than once per story. How do I adjust the PI if this occurs.
Should we just sign off and read the newspaper if this starts to bug us?
Comments
I've wondered the same things
I'm unsure if hits is an accurate measure. I suspect some browsers refresh periodically and that counts as multiple hits. I watch the trend lines from other stories to get an idea of whether my story was better or worse than the ones that preceded it, but most of them are well within a standard deviation, so it's hard to separate quality from the number of people online at any time. Hits and kudos are counted, so use Poisson statistics for error - which is to say the error is equal to the square root of the value.
While your PI helps, are there other good ways of getting feedback? I appreciate the positive comments on this board, but I'm also trying to improve. Anyone have good suggestions how to solicit more critical commentary?
Thanks,
Titania
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
Well it's not just me then
So I'm very happy to see your comments even though I learned to ignore the feedback.
I guess I decide that the best part about posting a story is that it's ours. We are always in control.
But having said that there is nothing like a hit or a kudos for giving confidence. I could live on such complements without bothering to eat or drink. Except I do like the odd glass of wine and a nibble.
Hugs
Popularity Index
If you're really curious you could ask other questions:
1. How many members log on daily.
2. How many guests log on daily.
3. How many readers save stories offline to read later, then log on to give kudos some time later.
4. How many readers have short term memory issues.
5. How many readers have short term memory issues.
6. Is popularity really important, or the story.
7. Should you let statistics shackle your muse, or ignore them and set it free.
At the end of the day it's your choice, but surely it's best to let Time decide the ins and outs while we all enjoy another story.
Ash
Wise words
It's great to hear comments from someone who joined this site around the same time as me.
So it's not just me then who feels its my choice and just to enjoy the experience.
It really was my bit of fun to spark reaction and I'm so happy to see a few new members speak ot.
Really happy.
Hugs
I don't think there's any easy way
of quantifying things. I work on a very illogical system of dividing kudos into hits, if the factor is much higher than ten then I suspect it wasn't one of my more popular efforts. I consider myself fortunate to have a reasonably regular following so my kudos level is very encouraging and I probably have a few more than some of the more recent authors or those who post less frequently. Having said that some of earlier episodes of Bike although having a couple of thousand hits only have a handful of kudos because the system in those days was different.
Remember too that there is a much larger number of casual visitors who can't comment or vote but who send the hit numbers up somewhat.
Angharad
I can't match your success rate
I used to aim so high and then I felt a failure. I think you are unique and not many can achieve this high standard.
That doesn't mean we should give up. We should all try to reach your level but if we don't it's still success as long as we get full satisfaction.
I will always aim to improve but enjoy being part of the whole thing.
I had fun writing the blog and to get your response means I did OK. In fact OK very much.
Hugs
About Hits!
New Hits will happen when ever the page is refreshed for some reason.
For example:
- Open a story & Bookmark it(with site bookmarks or browser)the go else where and come back later to read it, this set of visits from one person will give 2 Hits.
- Or:
BigCloset goes off line while you are reading a story so you come back later, walla another extra hit.
-Or:
You reboot your browser because of lag and then restore the last session to find the page you were on, boom another hit. (I am not sure if a refreshed browser after waking up a sleeping computer may also do the same thing, I think it does)
What hits shows is how many times someone arrived a the page.
It will also show a hit if someone goes to the page looks at the tags and then decides it in not a story they are interested in and leave with out reading it.
And, Big AND, every time a commenter goes back to read others comments it adds a hit too.
So basically hits is visits to the page not reads.
Hits, Kudos, Reads, Comments
It's probably my nature, but I'm not concerned about how I "match up" to other writers in terms of Hits and Kudos. I don't get into it because there are so many factors (page refreshes, popping to another website and back to BCTS, etc.) that don't relate to a story actually being read, so I don't compute them.
I also know that I didn't receive as many when I first began posting on BCTS as I do now; but don't find that it's necessarily indicative of a lesser quality of those stories--only that my writing was not known when I started posting.
What I do follow closely are the daily comments and PMs (just realized how those three letters could read!) that I receive. I truly want to be a better writer, as do most of the authors here, I believe. When I first started posting, there was a wariness to the comments, as well as the occasional squabble between commenters. Readers know my "style" now, I suppose, so the squabbles have died down, and they are not second-guessing me; I hope I've earned their trust through familiarity with my posted stories.
The variety of comments and PMs I've received over the course of my stories have, hopefully, improved my writing. I truly value the longer, more thoughtful PMs I receive and I respond accordingly. They mean more to me than Kudos (which are lovely, though!).
Which leads me to my final point: I must confess that with longer, multi-part stories (such as I write), I visit the page only once. If I see "Julie D Cole" or "Nancy Cole", for instance (what is it with the Coles?), I know it will be a good read (or if the author is unknown but the first part seems intriguing). So I will copy the page and paste it into Word, section by section, over the weeks (or months!) as the story progresses. Only when the conclusion is posted do I read the story. If I like it, the time for daily comments is long past; I send a PM to the author. So how would that be counted?
Karin
False Equivilence
None of the methods of "keeping score" have any direct relationship to how popular a story actually is. Not hits, as pointed out, those only track the number of times a page has been opened for any reason. Not comments, as many readers might be reading on devices that hinder a convenient reply. Not kudos, many leave kudos instead of a comment while others leave both and still others forget it's there. So just shelve all that. If the story made you feel good about posting it, then it's a good story. Everything else is subjective.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Pop index?
At one point in time I had 30 some odd un-posted stories in just one folder on my backup drive. Some may never see the light of day, while from time to time go back and re-read and and try different endings and so on. My point is the stories I have posted here were stories that I like and hope the reader could follow and likewise enjoy. If popularity ever figured into the mix I would suddenly have lots of space of my backup drive since the stories would be deleted. Personally any story I see you name attached too, I will at least give a look and see. So rather that popularity, consider "Name" recognition.
Thanks BC....hope I got it right this time...lol