Land mark 1000th blog!

This is the Phytophactor's 1000th blog! The Phytophactor began blogging in the botanical doldrums, the dead of winter, February 12, 2008, for his general amusement during the non-gardening, non-field season in an obscurity so magnificently total that Google could not find my blog. That was 1354 days ago, and to figure that out a new undocumented Excel function was discovered, DATEDIF. My 7th blog, Artichoke - fruit or vegetable? with all its longevity has generated 10 times as many page views (5000+) as the next most read page. Who knew so many people cared? Unfortunately my stats don't go back beyond June 2009 by which time the Phytophactor was getting about 2000 page views/month. By early 2011 readership had more than doubled to over 5000 page views/month. Rather than a steady trend, increases have come rather quickly, followed by a plateau. Not bad for a totally stand alone blog. The Phytophactor joined the Nature Blogs Network quite early on and now ranks 136th in traffic out of the 1748 nature blogs they track placing this blog in the top 8%. Joining the Field of Science blog collective two months ago provided another boost to readership pushing monthly page views to over 12,000, more than doubling the average of the prior 6 months. Around 85% of the blogs are botanical in one way or another, with the rest divided between blowing off steam about academic life, politics, and other aggravations in life. By its fourth anniversary the Phytophactor will have easily passed the 100,000 page view, in fact it may have already passed uncounted not knowing how many pages were read in 16 data less months. So far this is a vastly amusing enterprise. It has flummoxed my colleagues, which is always a good thing, because they have no idea how to evaluate their most widely read colleague's out reach efforts; it is one of our duties you know. My chair said who knows what blogging is worth, and the Phactor suggested he compare my readership to that of his last publication. And he said he would if he were sure of the Phytophactor's true identity, after all, maybe Shakespeare didn't write all those plays either. Touche. So to all you readers, both regular, and irregular, in which case you probably need more fiber, so some will be provided, the Phytophactor says, "Thanks". Like Lone Waite, the Phactor shall endeavor to persevere.

Most popular post and what to save

Real data on this blog only go back a bit over two years ago, but nonetheless, they show an interesting picture of readership. Blog posts that have actual content can build up a considerable readership with time, although it remains a bit of a puzzle that the most popular Phytophactor blog of all time, read more than 7 times more than the 2nd most popular post, was a brief discussion of whether an artichoke is a fruit or a vegetable. Apparently a lot of people lost sleep over this question before Phactor helped settle the matter. Now this does bring up an interesting housekeeping issue, and that is what blogs to prune from the archives? Clearly those with real content of a botanical nature must be keepers. But then some rants, although spurred by current events, remain recurring themes in that after periods of quiescence they will suddenly attract considerable attention for a few days, for example, a riff about measuring learning, which suggests that this issue keeps recurring, erupting on campuses here and there like an administrative cold sore on the lip of higher education. Even a few oldies, a couple of posts with some wry observations that were ignored at the time have small eruptions of activity, for example the very epitome of campus fashion. So for now, the litter will remain until such time as hard decisions must be made. And until then this blog remains the undisputed king of artichokes.

Small Time Blogging Milestones

So hard to keep track of events and their dates; the Phactor isn't like Aunt Nan who remembers the when and where of everything. But the Phactor was reminded just now by a reader's inquiry that the Phytophactor blog just passed its third birthday a month ago on Darwin Day (Feb. 12, 2011), and a few days ago passed the 600th blog post. On average that's only one blog every two days, but my frequency has increased over time to about one and a half a day. That's most readily apparent because the 500th post came just 2 months ago. Readership has increased steadily from about one visitor a month to over one visitor a day! OK, visits to this blog actually average about 150/day about three times the average a year ago. Today marks the addition of the 50th Phactor Phollower, and like age, that seems like a nice round numbered milestone. How flattering that 50 people are so disturbed and desperate. My 1st Phollower is a relative who took pity upon the emptiness of it all, and it took a long time to reach 30, but since then new Phollowers have been adding themselves at the rate of about 1 every 10-12 days. That trend isn't expected to continue because the Phactor is running out of relatives. And of course all of this is rather small time, the basic fate of the independent blogger. The sell-outs get way more traffic, and one or two have enough content to justify it.
Sorry about the number of political/social/academic rants of late; one of the reasons to blog is to blow off steam rather than letting it morph into pent up anger, or higher blood pressure, or violence, although only a beating of a verbal sort is in my otherwise gentle nature, and quite a bit of what's been happening lately has been steaming me up. So thanks for sticking with me. And you should know, for better or for worse, that the Phactor is one of those kind of people with whom you can have an honest disagreement without him thinking you are an awful person; misguided maybe, but not awful. But gardening season approaches and that always improves my mood, as does daylight savings time.