Saturday 8 December 2007

Birthday Blog!

AVPS is one year old today - hooray! And what better way to celebrate this happy occasion than plastering the blog with porn ... stat porn that is! Here is the graph for page views, individual visits and returning visitors from December 8th, 2006, to December 7th, 2007.




As you can see, after a flying start visitor numbers dwindled as real life took a bite out of my blogging time and robbed me of my inclination to post. But now AVPS is back to normal service, averages are creeping up again. The average number of daily visits for 8th December - 7th April were 57; 8th April - 7th August was 28; and finally 8th August - 7th December is 47. The overall average for the year is 44, though cheating a bit, from October, when regular posting was resumed gives us an average daily hit rate of 65. These are by no means massive numbers, but from a tiny acorn mighty trees grow, etc. etc.


Not enough smut for you? Allow me to raise the temperature with some more explicit figures. 4th February saw the heaviest traffic, with 240 page views and 180 visits. And rock bottom was hit on 18th July with a massive nine page views and six visitors! It comforts me to know the IBT website can only aspire to such lofty numbers.

Each post receives on average 5.2 comments (the .2 comes from Brother S's attempts at commenting, which usually fall foul of his inability to handle the interface). The most highly commented-upon post by far was Conspiracy Watch: 9-11, not least because I chose to give a particularly annoying racist troll a jolly good fisking in its comment box. In contrast, 12 posts have received no comments. Perhaps I should post more about the SWP, anti-imperialism, political Islam, and Israel/Palestine.

In true Stalin fashion, readership targets have been set for next year, to get all three groups of figures into three digits. Can it be done? There are no fortresses blogging bolsheviks cannot storm!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I left this comment on another thread the other day, but not sure if you'd seen it. Sorry for reposting in this one.

[Any idea if the SP and Respect Renewal are talking? I just wondered as now there is no SWP control freakery or block voting, there could be some progression.

I know there is the issue of Galloway and the workers wage, but could this not be debated in a more constructive way now?

If the SP is unlikely to join Respect Renewal is there anything to prevent their individual members from doing so?/]

Imposs1904 said...

happy birthday

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on a year of blogging, Phil.

Seán said...

"The most highly commented-upon post by far was Conspiracy Watch: 9-11, not least because I chose to give a particularly annoying racist troll a jolly good fisking in its comment box."

Watch he doesn't come back from the dead and give you a anniversary to remember!

I enjoyed those exchanges and I enjoy his blog too. Well done!

Phil said...

Bluenose, as far as I know there aren't any talks taking place. If there were, I'd imagine knowledge of them would have broke on the internet by now.

Re: the workers wage, I don't think this is as much of an issue as other comrades might think it is. If a new party was forming and had attracted left Labour MPs, the SP wouldn't make them adopting a worker's wage the condition of our participation. The party would certainly argue that representatives should take the average wage, and it would insist any of our comrades who were elected do so - just as Militant did (AFAIK) inside the Labour party.

Anonymous said...

Phil bc

I guess you're right, most things tend to break on the net pretty quickly these days. It would be disappointing - and a bit strange - if no talks had taken place.

On the issue of individual SP members joining are there rules preventing this? I'm sure there are many political reasons for people not wishing to, but also there are many reasons why people may want to join a local branch for instance

Phil said...

There aren't any hard and fast rules, though joining another political organisation is quite different from signing up to a union or an NGO. Like all political organisations, it's not unreasonable to expect members to owe their primary political allegiance to that party. If a SP comrade wants to work closely with RR, no problem, but as for joining they should definitely talk it over with their branch secretary or regional organiser first.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for that. I was just wondering as I am a RR member who works closely with SP members. I have always found them comradely and non-sectarian in their approach. Although I have a few disagreements politically, I think most of what they say makes sense.

As a revolutionary without a revolutionary party, I was kind of hoping that some progress would be made in talks to join forces. I understand the difficulties that membership of both poses, although feel that it could also be mutually beneficial if the relationship was ina way different to that of the SWP's approach

Initiatives such as the NSSN and CNWP could be enhanced and grow with RR involvement and I would hope that some consideration of this is happening.

Phil said...

Well I imagine talks will be immanent at some point in the new year to map out areas of electoral cooperation and non-aggression. In the mean time, like the comrades in your locality, the SP will work with RR (as indeed, anyone) in areas of mutual interest.

Btw, if you were to approach the local branch sec about joining, I'm sure you wouldn't be asked to leave your RR membership at the door.