Giving the numbers a word of thought

When I launched this portal several weeks ago, I hoped that it would serve as the center of the conversation and criticism of this paper prior to its submission for the Davidson Fellowship. My hope was that I could vastly expand the paper's reach and the potential input than one-off contacts.

I never harbored the illusion that a passive approach would secure the level of readership and criticism that I desired - indeed, I've written six education blogs thus far - most with readerships in the low hundreds. The thinking goes that if featured on only one blog, there'd be a sufficient number of bloggers apart of that readership to propel the criticism around the paper to a sustainable level. After all, Wikipedia started 2002 with 19,000 English-language articles; by January of this year the site boasted more than 1.56 million. If placed in book form, the encyclopedia would encompass 65 volumes.

The statistics:
Google Analytics first began recording visitors on 3 December. Since then, Kansas has gotten 37 visits from 24 visitors - predominantly from the United States, but a visit each from the UK and Germany. Within the U.S., Maryland has the most visits (thanks to my skewing them), followed by Alaska, and D.C. (see graphic). The paper's gotten upwards of 90 pageviews - 37.78% the home page, followed by History Is Not Kind to Idlers with 12.22%, and The cast of characters.


Giving the numbers a word of thought
When I had the opportunity to talk to an economist about a development proposal earlier this year, I handed him the paper I had written. He refused to read it, until I could give him a 30-second and 1-minute synopsis. It is the most important thing I learned this year. The statistics thus far have caused for a good deal of questioning about how to present the paper - how do you present an 80-page paper in the online equivalent of a 30-second and 1-minute synopsis?

I'm being forced to learn and apply a great deal about the dynamics of the internet fairly swiftly: The internet is a sideways one, only 20% of the Washington Post's traffic originates at the home page. That, of course, was the reason behind writing bloggers - and posting an article from the paper on Digg. Thus far: 29% of the traffic is direct, 54% from referring sites, and 16% from search engines. But what more can I do?

On the passive approach, I've added the e-mail option to the bottom of each post; the day before, I added a Technorati button. Should I add del.icio.us too? The aggressive approach thus far has been limited to writing the blogs - from which the response has been modest to nonexistent. A look at my tags column shows some fifty descriptors, but a great majority link to only one article. Perhaps the descriptions should be intensified.

Blogs, for better or for worse, are a medium that enjoys extensive analysis of minute soundbites. With an 80-page paper, was it a mistake to not have a soundbite page for bloggers to refer to when I write them? (I had planned to add a criticisms and praise page as soon as I had received a sufficient number.)

Doug Noon's response to my introduction on InPractice is all too telling:

Kyle,
I took a look at your site, and I’m going to need a while longer to work through even a small portion of what you have there. I’m interested on a number of levels - what you have to say, what prompted you to tackle this project, how it got so large, and how your point of view as a student contributes to your research - off the top of my head. To begin with I wonder how an interest in “business, economics, and finance” prompted you to look so closely at Education. I’ve been called an overachiever by some. I wrote a 200 page masters project paper on communication in the mathematics classroom, proving all those people were right, much to my own embarrassment. I know how it feels to dump so much energy into something that few people will ever notice.

Not quite a blog
I wouldn't consider this site a blog in any traditional sense - its simply the easiest means to allow a community to collaborate. This paper's style - length and all - differentiates it from most traditional posts. Is the failure to update the site - regardless of its impossibility for this type of work - the reason why it has been slow to take off thus far? Is this the critical fallacy?

Regardless, there's more to come in the next few weeks: I'm finishing an essay on choice, accountability, and autonomy as well as a more extensive justification of this paper's proposals to better synthesize the policy paper. As I begin to prepare for submission to the Davidson Fellowship, I'll comment on the process as well as post the required submission essays.

I love quotations. My favorite is from Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: "But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep."

Only the best.