Heck Of A Guy

This is the third and final segment of an consideration of the Heck Of A Guy 10 Most Viewed Posts list.¹

Take Away The Pseudo-Porn, The Graphics Linked To Google Image Search, The Leonard Cohen and Anjani Performances, And The Mizzou Fight Song, and What Do You Have?²

Those compiling a list of humbling activities are herewith advised to add to undertakings such as parenting, investing, and dating once past age 45,  all of which, if executed conscientiously, carefully, and with self-awareness, are wonderfully effective means of demonstrating just how little influence one has on the course of events, the endeavor of blogging.

Armed with more than two years of experience in the blogosphere, a degree of shrewdness about marketing, a competitiveness honed in medical school,³ and even, I would argue, a modicum of writing talent, I was able to create, of the currently listed 10 most viewed posts on this site, exactly two entries that, as far as I can determine, have achieved that ranking predominantly because of  original  textual content I produced: The 2008 Leonard Cohen Field Guide (#6 at the time of this writing) and Mother Of The Bride Wedding Toast (currently #7).

And even in these two cases, the attribution of their ascension to the ranks of the most popular must be hedged with qualifiers such as “as far as I can determine” and “predominantly because of.”

Consider …

The Cohen Bump

First, I want to make it clear that I am pleased with The 2008 Leonard Cohen Field Guide, which is the first chapter of A Leonard Cohen Primer, a simple, easy to understand introduction to Leonard Cohen for anyone who has recently tuned in to his music and for fans who may have listened to the songs for some time and now  want to learn something about the singer-songwriter who produced them.

The Not Too Big, Not Too Little Pyritic Book Of Leonard Cohen

The referenced post  introduces many of the individuals and locations that figure prominently in the contemporary life of Leonard Cohen.

“The Cohen Bump” is the designation I’ve bestowed on the automatic increase in readership that results when Heck Of A Guy publishes a post post in which Leonard Cohen plays a significant role.

I suspect, in fact,  that a list of false data about Mr Cohen published under a title that made it clear that the content had nothing to do with Leonard Cohen beyond  these fictions being attributed to him would also be Cohen-Bumped.

I suspect that because my post, 10 Unbelievable Secrets About Leonard Cohen met with precisely that fate. Heck, I published a well-received entry that featured the transient befuddlement of Leonard Cohen (and other stars) trying to find the well-hidden path from waiting room to the stage of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.

Leonard Cohen has been very, very good to my blog.

I Knew The Mother Of The Bride When She Used To Rock & Roll

Lady Lawanda, Mother Of The Bride

That leaves Mother Of The Bride Wedding Toast, which is the toast I wrote on the occasion of the wedding of Lady Lawanda’s daughter in hopes of contributing a bit of the Heck Of A Guy essence to the nuptials⁴  with the addition of an explanatory introduction. An excerpt follows.

Yesterday’s Morning News featured an advice column that included recommendations for wedding toasts (e.g., “First I’d like to toast my favorite relatives: Uncles Jim, Jack, and Jamie-san, and how about a little shout-out [look at mom] for someone’s favorite El Capitan-o Jose Cuervo”). As is typically the case, there is little offered that can be used by the Mother Of The Bride to salute her daughter’s marriage. I, however, have some experience in this field and may be able to help.

The woman in my life was concerned about the toasts at her daughter’s impending marriage festivities. Naturally, my sense of gallantry compelled me to compose a thoughtful, celebratory Mother of the Bride Wedding Toast studded with significance and fraught with feeling. Although the bride and her mother seemed happy enough with my suggestion, the toast was, inexplicably and lamentably, never used. That wedding’s loss can now be your gain. I am now releasing the toast to the public domain. If it fits your situation, raise a glass and let ‘er rip.

As Mother of the Bride, I want to remind my daughter and her husband that, although today’s celebration is the culmination of much effort, prayer, and hope on your part and on the part of your friends and families, a wedding is a beginning, not a conclusion. On the occasion of your marriage, you may well wonder what your lives will look like twenty or thirty or forty years from now.

Let me read you what a wise man once wrote:

You can marry, pursue a career, and raise a family – and after your children are grown with families of their own, your life can be even more spectacular. When you’re mature, love can be more intense, romance can be more fulfilling, and, yes, sex can be incredibly better than when you’re a newlywed.

I know that this idea may sound too good to be true, but I’m here to tell you that it can indeed happen just that way. After all, I got married, I pursued a career, and I have kids who are now grown and starting families of their own – and sure enough, today I find love more intense, romance more fulfilling, and sex is not just better but altogether fabulous compared to my newlywed days. I’ve never been happier.

Now, I certainly can’t speak for your father about how he feels. But, who knows? If it’s been this incredibly wonderful since our divorce for my lover and me, then it’s at least possible that he and his girlfriend are more contented as well.

Another Day, Another Time
A future entry will address the implications of the specific posts that made the Most View Posts list and pathways that led to their ranking.

Footnotes

1. The preceding posts in this sequence were The 10 Most Viewed Posts & How They Got There and 10 Most Viewed Posts Countdown Continues↩
2. These are fairly accurate descriptions of the forces driving viewers to the eight posts of the 10 Most Viewed Posts list that were the focus of  The 10 Most Viewed Posts & How They Got There and 10 Most Viewed Posts Countdown Continues, which may be somewhat discouraging to those of us who would prefer that the highest popularity rankings and their implicit approbation go to ones own literary efforts. On the other hand, taking the glass half full approach, one realizes the epitome of post popularity, bases on these facts, would feature the graphics of Leonard Cohen and Anjani performing a spectacularly lewd sexual act while while singing the University of Missouri Tigers fight song.↩
3. Q:How many medical students does it take to install a light bulb? A: 3 - one to screw in the light bulb and two to stab him in the back↩
4. Yes, I also bought a real wedding gift↩

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This is the continuation of The 10 Most Viewed Posts & How They Got There, a look at how these specific ten posts became the Heck Of A Guy entries with the most viewings and the implications these findings hold in the larger contexts of web statistics, political polling, and the presentation of statistical findings in the popular press.

That’s Entertainment - Blog As Venue

Two of the posts on the list, Rare Leonard Cohen Chelsea Hotel #1 Video and The Best Leonard Cohen - Anjani Duet You Have (Probably) Never Heard, are primarily recorded performances. These are not only high quality, interesting songs but they are also enough out of the mainstream that they were not well known or easily  available.

While videos of Whither Thou Goest, the song referenced in The Best Leonard Cohen - Anjani Duet, can now be found on YouTube and other places, at the time the Heck Of A Guy post was published and for many weeks afterward, that entry was the only routinely accessible US source of the recording. That Cohen and Anjani fans were alerted to the availality of the song at this site by some of the Cohen-dedicated sites such as LeonardCohenFiles.com, also played a role in popularizing the post,

Rare Leonard Cohen Chelsea Hotel #1 Video was a fortuitous find. I ran across a YouTube video of this early version of the much better known “Chelsea Hotel #2″ when it had been viewed only 124 times.

Consequently, both posts have attracted lots of viewers and listeners since they went online.

It seems legitimate for the author of those sorts of entertainment  posts (that would be me) to be accorded a portion of the credit for the number of views it attracts, but that portion is comparable to the credit due the club owner or stadium management group for mounting a Springsteen-Prince-Cohen concert in a clean, safe venue. If the stars don’t  show up, even the best venues aren’t going to draw big crowd of patrons paying $240 each to be in the audience.

Heck, I neither created the Chelsea Hotel #1 Video nor uploaded it to YouTube. The only claim I can advance is that I found it before it was went universal. At least the Leonard Cohen-Anjani duet was recorded by my Polish blog brother, Apolinary. The hits are, in part, my reward for having good friends.

Leonard Cohen - Chelsea Hotel #1

Anjani and Leonard Cohen - Whither Thou Goest (from the Warsaw concert)

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News About Leonard Cohen

I suspect most of the views of Leonard Cohen Got His Picture On The Cover Of Rolling Stone derive from Cohen fans who are excited about the prospect of more honors being awarded the singer-songwriter.

Leonard Cohen on cover of German Rolling Stone

I was alerted to the story of Leonard Cohen being chosen for the cover soon after it happened and published the story almost immediately. Further, since the Rolling Stone in question was the German edition of the magazine, many blogs and web sites devoted to music that might have carried a less esoteric Leonard Cohen story opted to forgo this one, decreasing the number of Heck Of A Guy competitors for Cohen news-craving fans.

A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words; 3 Pictures Are Worth 1000 Views Each

Take The Pills Granny - If You Want To See Precious Alive Again is a clever enough take-off on the use of “pill pets” to help the elderly remember to taken their medications on time, but most of its views come from three of the graphics in the piece.

Tamagotchi

National Lampoon: If you don't buy this magazine, we'll kill this dog

Ransom note

That’s right. The views are generated by a picture of a Tamagotchi, a fad that went into eclipse some time ago, an antique National Lampoon cover, and a fake ransom note generated for the post.

Higher Education Finally Pays Off For Me

Hooray, Hurrah, Mizzou, Mizzou celebrates the fabulous reign of the University of Missouri Tigers as #1 in college football (according to  one of the two major polls) throughout the entire penultimate week of the 2007 regular season schedule. The big attraction in this post appears to be the Tigers fight song described in this excerpt:

The Victory Song Celebration

Most schools have one or two fight songs. When I was enrolled in The University of Missouri Marcus Welby Tech back in the 1970s, Mizzou seemed to have dozens of fight songs. The count may be in the three figures by now.

Regardless, this quaintly ferocious refrain is The Mizzou Fight Song. Prepare to be moved.

Fight Tigers

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Hit it, Hooray, Hurrah,
Mizzou, Mizzou,
Hooray, Hurrah,
Mizzou, Mizzou,
Hooray, Hurrah,
And a “Bully” for Ol’ Mizzou,
Rah, Rah, Rah, Rah,
Mizzou-rah, Mizzou-rah, Mizzou-rah,
Tigers!

Fight Tigers Factoid #1: This is only nominally a song. It is actually a cadence spliced between “Every True Son” and “Fight Tigers,” two of the many songs officially listed as the Mizzou Fight Song.

Fight Tigers Factoid #2: 97.7% of those who join in signing/chanting “Fight Tigers,” know the words to only the first five lines. Beginning with the words, “And a ‘Bully’ for Ol’ Mizzou,” those folks substitute random nonsense syllables for the actual lyrics. Mizzou tradition holds that this is an acceptable alternative to the version as originally written as long as those nonsense syllables are vocalized at maximum volume.

Audience Participation

OK, play “Fight Tigers” once more and sing along this time. Making it through those first 5 lines after imbibing 3 shots of any liquor costing less than $1.65 per gallon, one or more pitchers of beer, or, at least in the 70s, a six pack of fruit coolers, not only qualifies you as an honorary Missouri Football Tigers fan but also as a medical practitioner licensed to perform surgery and psychotherapy throughout the state of Kansas.

Still to Come

The final two posts on the Most Viewed list, Mother Of The Bride Wedding Toast and The 2008 Leonard Cohen Field Guide, have been saved for the next and final post in this sequence because they share a quality absent in the other 8 items on the list: the textual content original to those posts appears to have played some role in garnering the attention and interest of viewers. So much for pride of authorship.


Credit Due Department: That excellent, seemingly casual shot of the short pencil is the work of Broken Arts.


Footnotes

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The 10/100/1000 Most Popular X (click image to enlarge)

Popularity Lessons From Lists Of “The Most Popular”¹

High on the list of The Most Popular Content To Publish On The Internet is “Lists of The Most Popular Something Or Other.”

While popularity contests have always been - well, popular, modern technology has made the tabulation of indicators of popularity easier and faster. Computers invisibly and automatically tabulate sales of products, TV programs watched, and the addresses of registered sex offenders, producing rankings on demand. And, my friend, once you’ve got a ranking of such choices, you’ve got yourself a “Most Popular X List” where “X” equals just about any preference for any idea, presentation, concept, material commodity, location, etc. by any individual or group of individuals during any time period.

The American Kennel Club, for example, offers the past year’s ten most popular dog breeds with preferences broken down by state, TorrentFreak ranks the ten most popular files downloaded from BitTorrent sites in 2007 (AKA “Top 10 Most Pirated Movies and TV Shows of 2007″), and the Social Security Administration budget apparently has a line to fund a web site that lists the most popular baby names by time period and by state. One can find the Most Popular Fruit Wines, the 10 most popular newspaper typefaces, the 10 Most Popular Types Of Massage Therapy, … .

The structure of the internet² lends itself not only to publishing Most Popular lists but also formulating them. That and the easy availability of inexpensive or free software (often automatically integrated with web site hosting packages and blogging systems) has empowered every web site owner, Facebook page owner, and blogger with the capacity to publish popularity rankings of the elements of his or her site itself. The only requirements for a Most Popular Post list are (1) a means by which to count the times a post is linked, read, viewed, preferred, etc.³ and (2) at least two distinguishable posts or post components (e.g., graphics) to rank.

That the population of obsessive, geekish, introspective, individuals pandering to the public in a desperate plea for attention (i.e., people like me) is overrepresented on the internet has resulted in web sites devoted to “most popular” lists popping up with some regularity. At the time of this writing, the current post at one such example, The List Universe, is Top 10 Things That Are Surprisingly Good For You. Recent offerings at that site have included Top 10 Best Fake American Accents, Top 10 Amazing Holes In The Earth, and Top 10 Failed Apocalyptic Predictions.

And, if there are a batch of lists, there must be, of course, meta-lists. The Most Popular Top 10 Lists of 2006 from AlterNet.org is a fine, albeit somewhat obvious, instance of this phenomenon.

Residing one level deeper in the more esoterically meta than thou sequence is What is the most popular “top (number)” list on Digg?, which calculated the most frequently occurring story on the front page of Digg with a headline that included “Top” followed by a number (e.g., “Top 5,” “Top 10,” “Top 100″).⁴

The Most Popular Use Of Most Popular On The Internet

One heading in An Overview Of “Most Viewed Posts” was “Most Viewed Vs Most Popular Vs Most Important Vs …,” which was, in part, my effort to signal the conflation of these and similar terms, especially as they are use in online rankings.⁵ In that post, I pointed out the variety of methods used to determine something as simple as a blog’s “most popular” post. My concern at this point, however, is the potential shift in the meaning of the word, “popular,” in general.

The thin line between “determine which post is most popular by counting viewings” and “most viewings and most popular are equivalent terms” has, it seems, dissipated completely. At Heck Of A Guy, I’ve used the more technical and literal “Most Viewed Posts” as a title for this list rather than “Most Popular Posts” because I think those are different descriptions that may or may not refer to the same posts.  In the next post in this series, I’ll present examples from the entries on the Heck Of A Guy Most Viewed Posts list which will, I believe, support that contention.

For today, I will only  point out the semantic differences.  Definitions of “popular” have in common the notion that anyone or anything that is popular is well-liked or is embraced by the entire group (population) of indivudals being considered.  The definition from the Answers.com is representative:

popular

1. Widely liked or appreciated: a popular resort.
2. Liked by acquaintances; sought after for company: “Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved” (Margaret Fuller).
3. Of, representing, or carried on by the people at large: the popular vote.
4. Fit for, adapted to, or reflecting the taste of the people at large: popular entertainment; popular science.
5. Accepted by or prevalent among the people in general: a popular misunderstanding of the issue.
6. Suited to or within the means of ordinary people: popular prices.
7. Originating among the people: popular legend.

That Post A attracts more viewings than competing Posts X, Y, and Z  is not, I maintain, identical to Post A meeting with more approbation than Posts X, Y, and Z or Post A being more enthusiastically or widely embraced by the population.  Viewings, in fact, are tallied before the viewer has even read the post in order to make an assessment of its value.

A legitimate question at this point is “If such a melding of terminology is indeed taking place, is it important?”

Well, maybe. Definitions and word usage change continuously. On the other hand, some changes, unless they are recognized, can lead to dangerous assumptions and misunderstandings. There is, for example, not only a thin line between “Most Clicked Link” and “Most Popular Post;” there is also a thin line between “Most Popular” and “Best.” When all those thin lines disappear, the result is “Most Clicked” equals “Best.”misperceptions

I believe I can concoct an strong argument that such a shift could lead to misconceptions and mistaken judgments.

As to whether this shift is taking place, consider this heading that introduced a collection of recent posts at one of my favorite sites, Lifehacker.com, which I’ve found  to be not only useful but also carefully and competently written.

Most Popular Posts = Best Posts (click image to enlarge)

Note that the headline⁶ describes the posts that follow as the “most popular posts” and in the next line⁷ refers to those same posts as the “best posts.” (The underlining in the graphic was added by me.)

I am unaware of the mechanism Lifehacker uses to generate their Most Popular Posts links, but the blogging software used is WordPress so one of the plugins described in  An Overview Of “Most Viewed Posts” may be responsible.  In any case, I doubt that the admirable folks at Lifehacker literally mean that the “most popular posts,” whatever the formula used for determining that ranking, are necessarily the “best posts.”

In the next entry in this series, tentatively titled, What’s A Post Like You Doing In A Most Viewed List Like This? The Heck Of A Guy 10 Most Viewed Posts & How They Got There,  I’ll demonstrate that at least at Heck Of A Guy blog, the list of Most Viewed Posts certainly does not correlate  highly with Best Posts.

Footnotes

1. In An Overview Of “Most Viewed Posts,” I indicated that the sequel to that post would be a pragmatic guide to interpreting statistical reports, including polls and “most ______ of” lists. I am, however, deferring that topic in order to survey The internet’s Most Popular lists in general and the Heck Of A Guy Blog’s Ten Most Viewed Posts in particular as examples of the unintended consequences of the mechanisms chosen to accomplish the ranking, timing, and other independent variables. This will be, I believe, a useful prelude to the interpretive guide.↩
2. That a browser must land on a web page to be read makes the counting of potential readers much easier than, for example, readers of books since books can be borrowed, sold outside normal retail markets, lent and resold casually, transactions it would be pragmatically impossible to monitor. This structure also enables the functionality of search engines, which are, in this perspective, popularity rankers - albeit those rankings are determined by a complex, weighted formula.↩
3. There are many possible indicators of post popularity that can be used singly or in combination, e.g., how long a browser stays on a single URL, how much money is spent or how many ads are clicked during the visit, how many visitors are first-timers, …↩
4. According to the article, “From our analysis we found that the “top 10″ list format has reached the homepage more times than all other “top (number)” lists combined.”↩
5. The internet is not the only area in which this commingling of terms takes place but the others are a topic for another post on another day.↩
6. ”August 2008’s Most Popular Posts”↩
7. ”Before you dive headfirst into September tomorrow, make sure you didn’t miss the best posts in August”↩

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"Most Viewed" Means "Most Viewed" - Mostly

One of the features recently added to the Heck Of A Guy Blog, the “10 Most Viewed Posts” list,¹ has drawn a number of email queries about the means by which  the ranking is  calculated. These inquiries, in turn, led to my plan to  publish a brief and simple explanation of how the listing is generated and what it does and does not mean.

Well, that was the plan. To paraphrase Tina Turner, only there’s just one thing, I never write anything brief and simple. I always write it long and complex.

In this case, it turns out that the  issues that can cause confusion about this simple list of most viewed posts are also pertinent to interpreting election polls, medical research, and reported statistics in general.

Consequently, today’s post will focus on an overview of the mechanics of this small area of web statistics and the lessons it may hold for understanding references to research and polls in the popular press, daily conversation, and the professional literature. A follow-up entry will look at the actual posts on the most viewed list and how they got there.

Counting Views With WP-PostViews

The referenced list on Heck Of A Guy is automatically generated by a WordPress Plugin called WP-PostViews, which, in the words of its author, “enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed.” In the support section, he explains, “Technically WP-PostViews will count every time a hit on any posts/pages even if it is just a refresh as it does not log any data.”

I admire the simplicity - count the hits, show the number of hits for each post, display the posts in rank order, and that, as they say, is that.

Except, it’s not exactly that simple. First of all, the user can choose to prevent one or more specific posts from appearing on the list. I hasten to add that this is a legitimate option if used appropriately. One blogger wished, for example, to omit the page with the most hits on his site because it contained only contact information. It seems within the spirit of the “Most Viewed” list to eliminate from contention those posts and pages that include only housekeeping data. In another context, if one were interested in the presentations at a medical conference that were best attended, one might choose not to list a meeting that was attended by everyone but was concerned exclusively with registration, schedules, credentials and the like if the other sessions dealt with new medications, clinical studies, morbidity and morality data, etc.

The blogger also has the choice of counting only registered users, only guests (aka normal surfers), or both.

Again, both of these options are legit functions, but even when used benignly, they clearly change the results.

More confounding still are parameters of happenstance. For example, I installed this plugin within the past month or two, after Heck Of A Guy had been running for more than two years. The rankings are established by comparing the cumulative hits of each post, Consequently, in this intra-blog competition for most hits, older posts receive no credit for hits that took place before the plugin was implemented. Less obviously, it puts older posts at an additional disadvantages. There is a group of readers who view every Heck Of A Guy Post within a day or two of publication.