Six+ months later

I started this blog at the end of December, 2006. I posted a review after two weeks, and another at two months. This is the planned six months-ish evaluation, since we were out of town at precisely the half-year mark. As I noted in the first introspective,

“One of the things that bugs me most about Portland’s city government is how seldom anyone stops to look at how projects are going, or reports on what went right, what could have been done better. After twenty-five years in nursing, it’s pretty much reflex action to me, to include assessment, evaluation, and updating the plan of care, in every day’s work. Yet even when projects are completed successfully, the City rarely dedicates staff time on individual projects to reporting back to citizens on where their tax money was spent, whether the intended results were achieved, and how to repeat successes and avoid mistakes in the future.”

The content of this site is prepared with my volunteer labor. Whenever and wherever I volunteer, my time is still valuable to me, and I intend for it to be well spent for the benefit of whomever and whatever I’m dedicating it to. I don’t like showing up for a project, hanging around for ages waiting for latecomers to arrive, then being assigned tasks that don’t really need doing or aren’t being managed efficiently. I expect to work hard and have results to show for it, whether I’m earning money nursing at OHSU, cleaning the bathroom at home, or volunteering in the community. And sharing results is important, whether in government, business, or community service. On this blog, the site statistics can help answer the question probably more than one reader has wondered… “Are there just half a dozen other readers, apart from me? Why does she do this?”

Those are the reasons I’m preparing and posting this review. Those, and my belief that in all paid and unpaid jobs, it’s important to do what you say you’re going to do, or report why you weren’t able to do it and ask for help to make sure the job gets done. I said I’d do a six-month review, and here it is.

This is the 693rd item I’ve prepared for the site – including Steve’s wonderful photographs, which I know from feedback many of you are still enjoying. The blog’s drawn over 100,000 visits, and nearly a million hits. In June, readers came here from almost 6,000 different sites. Average daily visits rose each month, from 438 in January to 766 in May. I was perversely happy to see readership drop slightly when I was away in England and on our recent National Parks trip – it’s good to know the current affairs information I find compelling draws others, too. Next Up at City Council often brings over 200 visitors specifically for that post, in addition to those who bookmark the site and scroll through them all. Sure, it’s a fraction of our city’s 550,000 residents…. but the series may be read by perhaps 190 more people than previously checked the Council Agenda for themselves every week. That makes doing it worthwhile, to me.

But lest we all get complacent about our civic engagement…. the most sought-after post so far this month? The Western fence lizard, with 866 specific hits, and as many Google search requests as “Amanda Fritz” in the first few days of the month. Surprised? I wasn’t, so much. By far the most popular search landing here in May and June was for “Senior Pranks”, confirming what I’ve known for a while — that hanging out around high school students has a way of keeping a person humble. Being one-upped by a blue-bellied lizard takes the whole “knowing your place in the universe” thing to a whole new level, but it’s A Good Thing.

As the site gets more traffic, it attracts more would-be spammers. The awesome safety features designed by Fairy Blogmother par excellence Lynn Siprelle catch most of it, and readers have been helpful in alerting me to comments needing deletion on the rare occasions some slip through. It takes a chunk of the site’s sifting and reporting capacity, though. Robots are relatively easy to spot and delete as new users (a dozen or so of the 215 new site subscribers since December), but their auto-generators just sign up again. Thank you for your patience, and more especially for real comments submitted to contribute thoughtful information to supplement or counter mine.

While I’m on the topic of subscribers, I’ll mention again a key feature of the site: “Recent Posts”, in the left sidebar. If you sign up as a registered user, clicking on “recent posts” will tell you which comments you haven’t yet read, each time you visit. I won’t share your contact information, or use it for anything not related to this site.

I’m not going to take the time to categorize and count the topics for posts, as I did in the two week and two month reviews. I was very satisfied (and more than a little surprised) to see high reader interest in all the very-geeky policy analysis regarding the Charter change ballot measures we voted on in May. I figure if folks came here and/or stuck with me for that, pretty much any issue can be of interest to others if it is to me. So I plan to continue in the same style/pattern/range of issues.

Perhaps the most important part of this assessment is subjective rather than objective. I think I’d still be doing the blog even if readership statistics weren’t showing such a healthy trend. I like researching issues, sharing findings and thoughts, and being able to publicize causes that otherwise might not get any attention. I enjoy hearing back from folks on and off the blog, on points you agree or disagree with, and especially with further information. I’m greatly enjoying the capacity to host Guest Posts, too, to share opinions from folks who have important things to say and don’t have their own blog. This site is interesting and fun for me. That others are finding it useful too, as evidenced by daily visit logs, is most pleasing to me because I’m glad to know people care about the same stuff.

I’ll post the next review in December, then annually after that …. unless circumstance or evidence calls for a change of plan in the interim.