". . .a good man complaining about the number of hits he got on a single day. Well, punch me in the gut and call me cry-baby, but I'd love getting as many hits as he did on any day! Only he deserved them, because he wrote about something that people need to get informed about.

I was going to send him an email back, but thought, what the hell - why not blogroll it? So here's my response:

Charly,

Thanks for all the good things you said, but I feel compelled to explain. All I did was write the phrase "Iragi Information minister." This was cribbed from a CNN story (and attributed) and I then got 18 zillion hits from search engines looking for the Iraqi, etc. The number of hits doesn't seem to be much of a guage of anything other than itself. Witness the thousands of self-referential hits to filchyboy #1 & #2. I wrote something a couple of times that Scott Rosenberg linked to and that got me a shitload of hits that I was excited about because people wanted to read what I wrote. That feels legit to me and I'm glad for it. The other thing feels like hitting on the nickel slots. Don't get me wrong, it's still cool and I'm glad for it. But it has nothing to do with any creativity on my part.

You, Charly Z, question, create new contexts for ideas, foster discussion - things which contribute in a meaningful way. Sometimes I write things that do the same. Sometimes I write things I'm damned proud to have written. And sometimes I write crap. And the crap makes me question what I'm doing. As Raven mentioned, sometimes a person questions the rationale for what he or she does. That's something I question frequently. Some days I don't like the answer; some days I do.

My point to all of this is that with the existence of search engines, hits are not a reflection of popularity or creativity or anything else. And keeping a running total, as opposed to a daily total, may discourage new and worthy writers who don't have a 15-thousand hit headstart.But thanks for your comments. I respect them. And I'll try to keep the whining to a minimum.

Dave
3:41:00 PM    Comments?()