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You are here: Home > Forum > A Place of Safety > Literary Merit > Reading beneath the surface
Reading beneath the surface  [message #73785] Fri, 29 December 2017 19:23 Go to next message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13739



I have taken some snapshots of pages viewed on the site in real time. I thought you might be interested in the variety. They are taken today aroind a dozen hours after the story announcement this morning, and several minutes apart:

http://forum.iomfats.org/?t=getfile&id=4009&private=0

http://forum.iomfats.org/?t=getfile&id=4010&private=0

http://forum.iomfats.org/?t=getfile&id=4011&private=0

http://forum.iomfats.org/?t=getfile&id=4012&private=0

http://forum.iomfats.org/?t=getfile&id=4013&private=0

The interesting thing is the lack of continuity

[Updated on: Fri, 29 December 2017 21:14]




Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
Re: Reading beneath the surface  [message #73786 is a reply to message #73785] Sat, 30 December 2017 04:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Cynus is currently offline  Cynus

Getting started
Location: Salt Lake City
Registered: September 2017
Messages: 20



I'm not certain I fully understand these numbers... I'm somewhat technologically illiterate, so is there any additional hints you can give me as to what exactly I'm looking at?



"Be or be not, there is no why." - Cynus
Re: Reading beneath the surface  [message #73787 is a reply to message #73786] Sat, 30 December 2017 07:44 Go to previous messageGo to next message
William King is currently offline  William King

Toe is in the water

Registered: October 2016
Messages: 98



You're only interested in Page Title.
The snaps shots are a few minutes apart, time to get the info, screenshot.
They show how many people were looking at what books
Take Time Enough For Love as an example: the reader finished chapter 2 and started chapter 3, But put the book down, left.
It is more or less the same for all the books, looked at then dropped.
Conclusion- the lack of continuity - nobody stayed reading a book.
With some exceptions - perhaps - someone picked up The Navigator and we don't know if they were still reading after the snapshots ended.
I'm not sure what it shows other than the books people opened!
Re: Reading beneath the surface  [message #73789 is a reply to message #73787] Sat, 30 December 2017 08:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13739



"William King wrote on Sat, 30 December 2017 07:44"
You're only interested in Page Title.
The snaps shots are a few minutes apart, time to get the info, screenshot.
They show how many people were looking at what books
Take Time Enough For Love as an example: the reader finished chapter 2 and started chapter 3, But put the book down, left.
It is more or less the same for all the books, looked at then dropped.
Conclusion- the lack of continuity - nobody stayed reading a book.
With some exceptions - perhaps - someone picked up The Navigator and we don't know if they were still reading after the snapshots ended.
I'm not sure what it shows other than the books people opened!

--

We also have to allow for the fickle nature of any analytics package. However, all we can conclude is that a reader was on that page for a time the analytics pack chose to report on, and at the time that snapsot was taken.

Why did they leave? So many reasons, not least of which is 'being discovered reading gay material online'. Or they found the story not to be to their taste, or they will continue at another session, or they arrived via a search engine and were not looking for gay fiction, or they ran out of time, or so many reasons that no conclusion is possible.

The individual screens show a timeslice through the site, but they are also far enough apart not to track interim actions. They are here for amusement. They show with reasonable accuracy those who are on the site with an open browser window at the moment the snapshot was taken, and the page that was open.

We cannot conclude that the person who read chapter 1 was the same reader who read chapter 2, either. As human beings we assume they were, but were they?

Page title and page address are equally interesting, depending upon the ease with which you interpret path names.

[Updated on: Sat, 30 December 2017 09:33]




Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
Re: Reading beneath the surface  [message #73790 is a reply to message #73789] Sat, 30 December 2017 10:25 Go to previous message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13739



I tried to look deep inside the analytics package. I thought I was getting somewhere. I started here for the past week.

http://forum.iomfats.org/?t=getfile&id=4015&private=0

I decided to home in on me, partly because I don't want to set up competition, and partly because I am low on the list:

http://forum.iomfats.org/?t=getfile&id=4016&private=0

That looked as if it might lead to a progression between chapters, so I homed in on number 2:

http://forum.iomfats.org/?t=getfile&id=4017&private=0

Great as far as it went, and that was as far as it went. Since the chapters are linked together I had expected to see other chapters after chapter 1. Not so. The analytics package is unhelpful at this step.

What it does show that is interesting is that in the last week really old stories of mine have been read.

With that thought in my mind I dived into Andrew Foote. Can one say that in polite society?

http://forum.iomfats.org/?t=getfile&id=4018&private=0

You can see that Andrew's stories have not been promoted at all recently, not since his last chapter was puyblished, but that their shelf life is considerable. I chose him because his tales have been here for ages, and thus a certain following may have been built up. They are also well indexed by search engines whereas newer tales will not yet have been. You can also see that a huge number of folk go right back to the site's home page after they drop in on Andrew, thus ignoring his stories.

Then I decided to juxtapose that against Tony A, a brand new author here whose work elsewhere was last posted a couple of years ago, and whom I have been chasing to find out what is to happen to his tale:

http://forum.iomfats.org/?t=getfile&id=4019&private=0

The more I have delved into this the less I find I understand. I know folk make a living in "Web Traffic Analysis" and whole departments investigate it in large companies. To me it looks as if they would be just as successful if they held a scéance!

We can see some things, but we get clever with all of this at our peril.

I use the stats to get a very basic interpretation of whether we are doing well or not so well, and even that is hard to judge!

[Updated on: Sat, 30 December 2017 10:31]




Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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