Three years ago today, Eric wrote the first post here on YAR. We’ve been through all sorts of interesting things in the past 3 years. I think we’re old enough now that we can start doing some looking back. In celebration of those 3 years, I’d like to invite YAR authors to curate their own top 6 lists of past blog posts. For example, what are your top 6 funniest YAR posts or most discussed. Or most provocative. Or most outrageous. Be imaginative.
Here’s an example for you. It’s a modified list of the most often viewed posts on YAR over the last little while. You’ll notice in reading this list that some of those with the most views are ones that happened to connect with popular Google search terms. I also only included one blog post per author, so we can spread around the love. Two other notes: I’ve adjusted for length of time that the post has been up and the recording of page views started on June 8, 2008.
Top 6 most viewed blog posts on YAR in the last 15 months
This one paragraph post by Luke owes its top spot on this list to its high positioning in the Google results when one searches for Pink Menno. At one point it came in second to the main Pink Menno site. It received a couple hundred of hits after Pink Menno made the Associated Press at the Columbus convention. It’s also had its share of drive by comments by ticked off Mennonites. Luke’s longer high page view piece was his review of Love is an Orientation.
#2 This is not a riot: an effective, nonviolent response to attacks by riot police
I was inspired to write this post after watching the videos of the April 1st protests in London this spring. It reflects my spur of the moment, internet based research style. After I interviewed a friend of mine who was at the protest he sent it on to a network of his friends and the piece was linked to from a number of blogs. The vast majority of views came in the week after it was first posted.
#3 Rain City Hymnal: Available for Free on Noise Trade
This post by folknotions benefited from a high Google search ranking on “Rain City Hymnal” as well as being linked to from people’s email readers, perhaps readers of TMail (where YAR summaries appear) drawn unerringly to the mention of possibility of getting something for free. The post also inspired an intense discussion in the comments about Mark Driscoll, the pastor of the church the released the album.
This heartfelt request by for advice ST is probably the piece that has inspired the most comments from different YAR regulars (and a few irregulars) in the past few months. It appears that its page views are mainly due to YAR readers and TMail readers who thought the post sounded interesting and came by to take a look. There are clearly lots of people out there who have dealt with a loved one who is a smoker.
This post by Joe is the oldest post on this list, dating from April of 2007. It also has a funny story to go with it. For quite a while the image in the post, a cartoon by Andy Singer, became the number one result for Google image searches for “illegal immigrants” (its currently at number 2). And so we had a steady stream of visitors coming by to check out the cartoon. These days our version of of the cartoon has dropped out of favor with Google image search. And so it goes…
SteveK wrote this piece in response to the search for a new Mennonite Church executive director. As with Love and Smoke, I can’t see a whole lot of reason for its popularity aside from people being interested in reading it. Once again, we had a lively discussion in the comments. I think the strong correspondence with high comments and high page views is because casual YAR readers are more likely to click the “read more” link if they see that a lot of comments have been left. Its an interesting self-reinforcing cycle as more comments lead to more views lead to more comments.
That’s all I have for now. I hope you found it interesting reading. I’ll look forward to reading your own annotated top 6 lists soon1!
P.S. If you’re interested in seeing the page view and visitors statistics yourselves, drop me an email or leave a comment.
All my posts are the funniests.