JSH: Measuring post impact

Years ago I was naive about how information travels around the world so
I thought that if you put it out there people would find it. As I
posted for years on newsgroups I imagined thousands of people worldwide
were getting information I was certain they needed to know, and then I
found ways to measure, and found, nope, they were not.

They weren't paying attention. I WAS mostly just known to a small
community on the sci.math newsgroup. Ugh. How depressing.

Every means of measuring showed a limited number of readers and not the
thousands that I'd envisioned.

So I shifted. That's why I mostly lost interest in worrying about
particular posters--unless they showed up measurably as having an
impact.

Yup, I do the equivalent of checking the polls to see what works. When
something doesn't work, I shift. That shifting is continual.

I won't go into a lot of detail, of course, about how I can tell how
well any of you do in negative replies against my research, but I will
talk about what I've talked about before--Google search results, as
well as other search engines, but mostly I use Google.

I can tell which posters have any impact at all from them, and the
answer is, most of you have negligible impact in terms of which posts
get picked up based on search engine results, and the people who do
seem to have some, are usually people I don't remember, or never
noticed their original postings.

The world is a fascinating place. It's not how you think.

Today my posts do probably get read by thousands of people
worldwide--primarily through Google.

They do searches on prime numbers or other math topics and postings of
mine come up in the search results and that is probably how the bulk of
my postings get read by newbies, and then Google links to archives
where people can go through more of them, and that's how a lot of
others probably get picked up.

So I know who among you gets listened to, and who among you comes up
with angles that resonate with others in the world, and who of you
don't.

Do the searches yourselves. Short answer is, most of you have
negligble impact.

And, oh yeah, when I'm really bored, I'll watch search results shift
from day-to-day to give you people some idea about how many people are
steadily tuning in, as you get an audience that may be bigger than you
think.

I wonder how many people worldwide does it take to shift search results
on a day to day basis? How many people clicking through and triggering
algorithms to change what they pull up are necessary for that kind of
impact?

So yeah, I measure much of what I do through search engines.

Do some searches on primes and probability now, and learn.


James Harris

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Relevant Pages

  • Re: JSH: Measuring post impact
    ... posted for years on newsgroups I imagined thousands of people worldwide ... but mostly I use Google. ... noticed their original postings. ... I measure much of what I do through search engines. ...
    (sci.math)
  • Re: JSH: Measuring post impact
    ... posted for years on newsgroups I imagined thousands of people worldwide ... but mostly I use Google. ... noticed their original postings. ... I measure much of what I do through search engines. ...
    (sci.math)
  • Re: JSH: Measuring post impact
    ... posted for years on newsgroups I imagined thousands of people worldwide ... but mostly I use Google. ... noticed their original postings. ... I measure much of what I do through search engines. ...
    (sci.math)