Can you guess what these five numbers mean?
Give up?
2,000 — In late November This, That, and the Other surpassed 2,000 posts. As of today, it’s 2,024.
200,000 — TT&O is currently 63 views short of 200,000 views.
31,100 — My blog is four visits shy of 31,100 visitors.
707 — The highest number of views TT&O received in a single day.
1,503 — The number of followers of TT&O.
Okay, I know this sounds very self-serving, but I am stoked.
What can I say? I love numbers.
There is a blogger, The Eclectic Contarian, who started a tag that he calls “The Talkative Tag.”
This tag, he said, is to offer a little “thanks” to those who have been very talkative and involved with his blog and to show his appreciation.
Eventually this tag found its way to Sadje, of Keep It Alive. And then Sadje tagged me, among others who have commented on her posts. She wrote, “What can I say about Fandango! He is a great writer. He is also the inventor of The Fandango One Word Challenge. We all look up to him and wait for his prompts. You also should check out his new series of questions; FPQ!”
So it seems what you’re supposed to do is bring up the screen from you WordPress stats where you can see who has been commenting on your blog, take a screenshot, write your own Talkative Tag post, include that screenshot, and mention the people who have commented on your posts the most.
And here’s that screenshot:
Now I’m not sure what period this covers, but I also saw in my stats that so far in 2018 my posts have received around 22,000 comments, so I find it a little strange that these number of comments were so low. But, you know, whatever.
As to my top six list in the screenshot, Marleen, who tops the list, doesn’t have her own blog, but she does comment a lot on my posts and her comments are generally well thought out and insightful. And Sight, number three on the list, just announced that he’s taking an indefinite hiatus from blogging. So I suppose I can’t pass this “Talkative Tag” to either of them. And I can’t tag Sadje because she tagged me.
So I am going to tag the next three on the list. First there is Leigha Robbins, who consistently responds to my daily One-Word Challenge with great poetry and prose, and who comments on pretty much ever one of my posts.
And then there’s Teresa Grabs, aka, The Haunted Wordsmith, a prolific and creative flash fiction writer who also offers many of her own writing prompts to inspire us.
And finally, Marilyn Armstrong, a blogger who has been sharing her life with the WordPress community for a number of years and whose posts are personal, insightful, and inspiring, and who is a terrific photographer.
So Leigha, Teresa, and Marilyn, feel free to do your own Talkative Tag post. Or not. Your call.
My page views yesterday were down by nearly 50% from what they were just four days ago. After a cursory review of possible causes, I came to the conclusion that my duties as a tour guide for my out-of-town guests resulted in my writing fewer posts yesterday, posting fewer responses to comments people made on those posts, and reading and commenting on fewer posts by other bloggers.
In fact, I was so busy entertaining our guests that I even forgot to write a post in response to my own one-word prompt, “cursory.”
But far be it from me to allow my precipitous drop in page views yesterday cause me to feel woebegone. Oh no, I’m going to make that feeling of woe be gone. I’m going to plant my feet squarely on the ground, and take my guests on the best tour of San Francisco today that one can imagine.
I’ll be like that ant in the fairy tale that my Great Aunt Sally used to read to me. The one about the little ant carrying a huge load many times its size and storing up food for the long, cold winter while the grasshopper sings and fiddles away the summer, leaving it having to beg the ant for help.
(I realize that this Aesop fable, “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” seems to be a bit out of context here, but I had to figure out a way to use the words “great aunt” and “ant” in order to complete Teresa’s Three Things Challenge.)
Written for today’s Word of the Day Challenge, “woebegone,” for Teresa’s Three Things Challenge, where the three things are great aunt, ant, and plant, and for yesterday’s Fandango’s One-Word Challenge, “cursory.”
Suze who blogs at “Suziland Too or Obsolete Childhood”
Yesterday I wrote a post in which I bemoaned how my blog stats were recently in a nosedive. I admit that I was being a bit whiny, and that’s when Suze put me in my place. She commented, “It is better to speak profoundly to just one than to blather at a world of idiots…yes, you can quote me.”
To which, knowing that today, Wednesday, is Linda G. Hill’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt, I replied, “I just may do that. Stay tuned!”
I thought that Suze’s highly inspirational and motivational one-liner perfectly fit the bill for this prompt. I believe that Suze was telling me that
In any event, I thought Suze’s comment was, in and of itself, profound. Unfortunately, she has now set the bar quite high for me because I feel as though it’s incumbent upon me to come up with something profound to post about.
Omigod, where is Jack Handey when I need him?
It’s not that I pay all that much attention to my blog’s stats or anything. I mean, they are what they are, you know what I’m saying? And like every other blogger out there, I don’t blog for the stats. Or so we all claim. (Wink wink, nudge nudge.)
Still, when I see a precipitous drop off in the number of daily views over a four day span, it is a bit disconcerting to me. Have I lost my touch? Too many uncaught typos? Is my sense of humor failing? Are my opinions too extreme? Am I being too political? Or not political enough?
Are my posts too short? Too long? Too serious? Not serious enough? Do I need more pictures? Fewer pictures? Am I using too many curse words? Am I being too risqué?
Oh wait. I just checked my stats again.
Never mind.
