I suddenly realized I hadn’t done a year-end wrap-up post here at Skeptools. I’m always talking about how skeptics need to measure what we are doing, so I should practice what I preach.
So below you will find the top viewed content in my various channels this past year and other year-end stats. As always there’s something to be learned here.
For instance, it is often said that controversy is a good way to court online hits. The biggest controversy I jumped into during 2013 was reviewing the infamous “block bot” – and yes, that did get some hits for both this blog and Virtual Skeptics. But the top post on this blog in 2013 – leading by a factor of four – was not that post, it was a how-to right in the core of this blog’s mission of helping skeptic activists online.
There are definitely other interesting surprises, so be sure to scroll down to the end. For instance, by far the most-viewed online item of mine in 2013 was a long-available news video I merely tweaked & captioned and put in my YouTube channel. And I learned that joining Storify in 2013 was a good idea, as one story I created there got more views than most of my blog posts do.
Blogging
I wasn’t super consistent this year in my blogging – other projects and real life intervened, as they tend to do. I only had 18 posts for the year. But when I did blog consistently (as in August) I was rewarded with traffic. Interestingly, my most controversial post (the one about the Block Bot) was not the top post! While it did quite well (ranking #2 for the year) the post about Do Not Link on social media got nearly four times the traffic, and continues to draw readers every day. (They day after it posted was the top traffic day for the year on this blog).
August 13: Do Not Link allows you to ethically criticize bad content
August 1: The Block Bot is unsuitable for general use in its present form
December 11: Quantum variations in Wikipedia rules – Deepak Chopra and conflict of interest
August 25: WiFi and Internet tips for Dragon*Con 2013
August 19: Reverse image search as a skeptic tool – with a twist
October 12: The right way and the wrong way to file skeptic complaints
Several other older posts made it into the top of traffic for the year:
April 10, 2012: How many skeptic podcasts are there? Please help me find them all
March 3, 2011: How to filter persistent trolls (and spammers) on Twitter
August 27, 2012: WiFi and Internet tips for Dragon*Con 2012
August 17, 2011: Case Study: How a notorious spammer was brought down via Twitter
May 21, 2012: Robots don’t get sarcasm – don’t link directly to bad content on social media!
November 20, 2012: Mabus Redux: Operation Archangel Gets Dennis Markuze Arrested
Apparently many people have not found Skeptunes yet and are still consulting the list in my old podcast census post because it contains a list. The rest of the top article list is understandably dominated by “David Mabus” related posts (4, 8 and 10) which still get attention as his case winds through the courts.
Twitter
Here are the top dozen social media posts of mine for 2013, all had over 20 retweets and are ranked here by the total of retweets and favorites:
The @OpenRightsGroup wants to build a tool to monitor UK blocking of web sites. They need your help: bit.ly/1cN3d9o—
Tim Farley (@krelnik) December 24, 2013
Another absolutely brilliant #skeptic infographic from @Crispian_Jago, this one is on conspiracy theories. bit.ly/11aFJqj—
Tim Farley (@krelnik) April 20, 2013
Skeptic History: Happy 85th birthday to James Randi, founder of @JREF, born August 7, 1928.—
Tim Farley (@krelnik) August 07, 2013
Hey @TEDx, why is @TEDxMaksimir allowing a pseudoscientist to speak, and kicking out a #skeptic? bit.ly/16gJPy4 via @JonathanAbrams—
Tim Farley (@krelnik) September 19, 2013
#askdeepak Why was your employee editing your biography on #Wikipedia in clear violation of conflict-of-interest rules? @DeepakChopra—
Tim Farley (@krelnik) December 11, 2013
Look! #Burzynski is on the FRONT PAGE of USA Today all across the US. #snakeoil http://t.co/UjVNgsbO3w—
Tim Farley (@krelnik) November 15, 2013
Standing ovation as Randi reveals that he recently married his 27 year partner. #tam2013 http://t.co/IOWl4BWBuY
—
Tim Farley (@krelnik) July 12, 2013
Scientiific study shows that "do not feed the troll" is a good strategy – it conserves your mental resources. bit.ly/YI0Kr7—
Tim Farley (@krelnik) February 22, 2013
What's the harm in acupuncture? 26 cases of cardiac tamponade including 14 deaths. Risk vs. benefit. bit.ly/11yQjG0 by @EdzardErnst—
Tim Farley (@krelnik) June 14, 2013
Actual cancer doc David Gorski (@gorskon) is speaking about pretend cancer doc Stanislaw #Burzynski at #TAM2013 http://t.co/vzCbYunBdN—
Tim Farley (@krelnik) July 13, 2013
What's the harm in treating diabetes with prayer? 12 year old child dead; parents charged with manslaughter. bit.ly/19f6wpS—
Tim Farley (@krelnik) September 03, 2013
Skeptic History: On Feb. 2, 2010 The Lancet retracted the infamous 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield that started the MMR scare.—
Tim Farley (@krelnik) February 02, 2013
YouTube
As one might predict, the infamous “block bot” episode of Virtual Skeptics is by far the top viewed episode of that live webcast of all time. Other than that episode, the panel format of the show means people are tuning in for different things each week, so often it’s one of the other panelists who are the big draw that week. But for completeness here are the top five episodes of 2013 with my topics:
#51 (August 7) My topic: The Block Bot
#28 (February 27) My topic: Wikipedia “Did You Know” and Guerrilla Skeptics
#25 (February 6) My topic: Tracking government action & legislation using online tools
#21 (January 2) My topic: Was 2012 the “year of the skeptool”?
#45 (June 26) My topic: #TAM2013 Tips
But the biggest number of views for me on YouTube was something I did as a lark late in 2012. I’ll tell the whole story in an upcoming post, but I found a copy of a familiar video that was Creative Commons licensed and used the YouTube remix feature to create a captioned and annotated version. As a result it is now the #1 result for many searches for this video and has amassed an incredible (for me) 482,682 views in 2013. It now has over 525K total views, and is the #1 or #2 search result for the topic on several search engines. It was the video linked here:
Skeptic History: 10 yrs ago today (Sept. 9, 2002) Buzz Aldrin threw a historic punch. Watch: youtu.be/wptn5RE2I-k—
Tim Farley (@krelnik) September 09, 2012
Storify
And what was the topic of that Storify I mentioned that did so well? The JREF Million Dollar Challenge at TAM 2013 – it got over 53,000 views! You can see all my Storify content here.
Lanyrd
A big research project I’ve been working on for over a year is the history of skeptic conferences, workshops and symposia. I’ve been trying to post what I can about it online for public use. That mostly takes the form of the Skepticism guide at Lanyrd which you can also see in the right sidebar here on the blog.
Unfortunately Lanyrd doesn’t have a detailed edit history as does Wikipedia but using my own posts and the Internet Archive one can see that near the beginning of the year the guide contained 92 events (24 upcoming, 68 past) and near the end of the year it contained 250 events (27 upcoming, 223 past). As I write this it currently contains 268 events (25 upcoming, 243 past). Some of that was mere curation, but the vast majority of the info on those past events was entered by me, in order to populate the speakers guide on Lanyrd which could be a valuable tool going forward.
Other Stuff
I don’t have metrics for the viewership on many of the other things I produced this year, but here’s a simple rundown:
Skepticality: 16 Skepticism Past and Future segments
Randi.org blog: 8 posts throughout the year
Skeptical Inquirer: 4 Skeptical Anniversaries rundowns on the The Last Laugh page
Skeptic History: Posted every single day on Twitter and Facebook. Added 185 items to my database, it has 1617 items now. (I have a large number of other items queued up in Evernote to be added)
Wikipedia: 96 edits. No new articles written.
Web of Trust: 18 site ratings.
RBUTR: 9 rebuttals added.
Conferences: I presented in 10 sessions at 4 different events.
Phew, that’s a bunch. Did I forget anything?
I still can see some room for improvement. Clearly I need to get back in the habit of using Web of Trust and RBUTR regularly! Let’s make that our resolution for 2014 – see Susan Gerbic’s Skeptic Action project.
How was your skeptical 2013?
