As of 7am EST today Overcoming Bias had 200,000 distinct visits and 423,000 page views, of about 400 posts and 5400 comments. Our first 100,000 visits, 229 posts and 3189 comments, took 116 days. This second set took 88 days. So we have gained readers, but have lost posts and especially comments. This could be the result of our increased quality control, or it could be that our novelty is wearing off. The last few weeks we seem to also be losing students going to summer break.
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Douglas Knight:
"Can trusts achieve the observed risk-free rate over the long..."
- Proper Dave:
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Jess Riedel:
"To join Doug S. and add another counter-example: Do you..."
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Vadim:
"The rule against perpetuities has little to do moral repugnance..."
- JenniferRM:
- John:
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Doug S.:
"Are you really indifferent between the world coming to an..."
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Doug S.:
"Some interesting trivia: At his richest, John D. Rockefeller had..."
- Karl Smith:
- colin:
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RickRussellTX:
"First time visitor, came over from Karl Smith's _Modeled Behavior_......"
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Dre:
"As a non-economist, this seems like a reducto ad absurdum..."
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Joe Mommamia:
"Well this whole thing would have seemed unfathomable to me..."
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anon:
"Very good pont. An ancestor can influence the future as..."
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Vladimir M.:
"Phil:
As a separate issue, I wonder what would have happened
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Vladimir M.:
"Robin Hanson:
A fascinating alternate history might start from a year
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Steven Schreiber:
"I think the other commenters are right: deferring to the..."
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CraigM:
"Let's look at this simplistically. The issue seems to be..."
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TGGP:
"I don't think your "pressure" argument really works here. I..."
- Stephen R. Diamond:
- cournot:
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Adam Ozimek:
"It seems to me that the common sense presumption should..."
- Phil:
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Paul Hewitt:
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"as usually estimated, the benefits of deferring greatly to distant
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Robin Hanson:
"Phil, the dead will trade-off the mistakes from overly specific..."
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Douglas Knight:
4 Comments
Does your visit count include RSS subscriptions in any way, or are they separate? I started reading the blog via RSS probably right around 100,000 mark (around 3 months ago), but I’ve noticed that I don’t think to comment as much when I’m reading a blog via RSS. (obviously, I can make exceptions. *grin*)
Even if the count does not include subscriptions, it still could be a factor. I’ll try to remember to post occasionally, however…I very much enjoy the blog!
If you normalize posts per day and comments per post, then things haven’t really dropped off significantly.
You had 1.97 posts per day for the first 100,000 views with 13.9 comments per post. Over the second 100,000, you had 1.94 posts per day with 13 comments per post.
Getting more readers doesn’t seem to imply that there should be more posts, although normally it does mean more comments per post.
That said, I find regular comment threads in the triple digits to often be the result of a commentariat that doesn’t pay attention to what’s already been said, offering essentially the same comment threads multiple times with a different set of voices. Much noise, low signal. I’ve rarely seen anything even approaching that here.
Long comment sections generally come from posters who rarely read other comments and are often repetitive, redundant and duplicative of what has already been said.
The prior post was, of course, a joke, an echoing play on the second comment , with which I agree.
If my example is illustrative, some people visit regularly and read for education and interest, but don’t believe their opinions would be a useful additive to comment threads. Because I enjoy reading comments, I am sensitive to how lame, anecdotal posts can clutter and make the reading less enjoyable. We’ve all been a class with a student who just has to hear himself talk at every opportunity, but adds nothing and instead is a speed bump impeding progress.