NEWC response to the NSW Government’s discussion paper on a NSW cultural policy now on-line.

Some time ago, I referred to the response from the New England Writers’ Centre to the NSW Government’s discussion paper on the development of a cultural policy for NSW. I promised Evan who wanted to read it that I would place it on-line and then let him know. I have now posted it to Scribd.

Top posts on Personal Reflections

Sadly but probably inevitably, there has been a noticeable drop on traffic on this blog since the start of the Olympics! Looking at the stats made me notice the huge difference in page views between the top and bottom posts on this blog.

Just for the hell of it, out of the last three hundred posts, here are the ones that exceeded 300 page views:

• 16 July 2012 What did you think of The Shire? 722
• 7 September 2011, Pacific Island Forum, China & Australia's future migration 681
• 4 November 2011 Speedo acts to protect brand 648
• 5 July 2012 Four Corners, the Armidale Express and Father F 521
• 8 May 2012 Jessica Irvine's memory loss 464
• 25 November 2011 Slippers, feather dusters & the mining tax 439
• 3 July 2012 If you want loyalty, hire a dog 413
• 21 October 2011 Kate Bolick on the decline of marriage - and men 398
• 10 August 2011 Threads in Belshaw thought 360
• 29 November 2011 Dreams past: Collective Wisdom, education & the NBN 356
• 9 December 2011 Malcolm Naden & New England's fugitive country 302
• 9 November 2011 Carbon tax, the Sydney/Gunnedah/Bowen Basin & coal seam gas 300

Not sure what I make of all that. Some were clearly topical, others less so.

Personal Reflections blog performance February 2012

 

Note to readers: I managed to muck up the links in this post, but have now corrected them. My apologies.

End month stocktake again.

The attached graphic from sitemeter shows visits (yellow) and page views (yellow plus red) on this blog over the last twelve months.

There is a growing discrepancy between the sitemeter and google stats. More on that anon.

In some end month round-ups I have given the most popular posts over the last month. This time, I though that I would give you the seven most popular posts out of the last two hundred. This covers the period from 2 August 2011. They were:

• Speedo acts to protect brand 634 page views
• Pacific Island Forum, China & Australia's future migration 632 page views
• Fiscal imbalance & the tax forum 351 page views 
• Threads in Belshaw thought 332 page views
• Kate Bolick on the decline of marriage - and men 300 page views
• Slippers, feather dusters & the mining tax 290 page views
• Carbon tax, the Sydney/Gunnedah/Bowen Basin & coal seam gas 251 page views

Do have a quick flick through them. A couple are quite good.

I said that there was  a growing discrepancy between the google and sitemeter stats. This graphic shows page views according to google.

The upward trend is far more pronounced, the number of page views higher. 

End month stats - a few interesting past posts

Sometimes I'm just not sure what to write about. I may have no ideas. More often, I have several things running around in my mind. That's actually worse! Then I tend to ramble.

It's end month time. The chart shows the visit stats to end January (yellow) plus page views (yellow plus red). Pretty stable, but up a bit.

There is a growing discrepancy between the site metre and google stats. Google shows a steady rise, but I think that this reflects a rising number of spam visits.

Some of the referrals I find on Google are quite odd. I don't understand, for example, why a Russian sex site should be sending me traffic!

Usually I list the most popular posts in the month. But that actually includes a lot of posts there just because of the title that really aren't worth a visit. Instead, here are three popular posts in the last month that may be worth a visit:

• Culture, locality & prejudice in Sydney. If you know Sydney ,you will laugh.
• Persia, Greece & the Delian League. Just a bit of travel and history.
• Saturday Morning Musings - economic turmoil, education, New Zealand & the Armidale Express. As the title says.

Personal Reflections reader interests August 11

End month stats time. The graphic shows visits (yellow) and page views (yellow plus red) to this blog to end August 2011. 

The most popular posts on this blog in August were:

• Introducing Delos 167 page views
• Report of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, year ended 30 June 1940 140 page views
• Sunday Snippets - NZ earthquakes, Tomorrow when the War began, wild weather 79 page views
• George Negus, watermelons & the meaning of words 78 page views
• A few of my favourite blogs 68 page views
• The importance of cultural activities 68 page views
• Sunday Snippets - cultural differences between Indonesia and Australia, the wonders of Sydney tribalism 53 page views
• Threads in Belshaw thought 46 page views

Pleasing to see on of the Greek trip posts appear so strongly in the stats. I have about another half dozen posts to go to finish the series, then I can do a single post listing them all in date so that people can follow the whole trip and associated musings. 

Postscript

I have now finished the monthly review of reader interests across three blogs.

A gripe, first. The blogger writing/editing facility sure is clunky. I use Livewriter for most of my posts. If I need to edit using blogger, I seem to lose my formatting and have to reformat. Worse, the changes that have been made to blogger seem to have had a negative impact on the formatting of at least some previous posts. With over 4,000 posts now across blogs, re-editing is an almost impossible nightmare.

While I focus on the most popular posts in the monthly stats, I have also been looking back at posts from the dim and distant past to see what posts still get traffic, what posts don't, what old posts might be worth re-promoting. As you might expect, as you go back in time traffic falls away. In most cases, the posts are not worth re-promoting, although some do contain ideas worthy of development.

Interestingly given the current Australian emphasis on productivity, the first short post I did on productivity - On productivity: a short note - was back on 14 July 2006. There I said in part:

Corporatisation and privatisation of Australia's electricty industry saw large productivity gains. However, some of those gains were due to unsustainable cost cutting on the staff side.

In 2004 I chaired a seminar trying to attract trades people to consider employment opportunities in regional NSW. One of the speakers was from the electricity industry. He said in part that cut backs across the industry in the recruitment and training of linemen had created a major shortage. The industry was now struggling to catch up.

Link this to the productivity question. The initial cuts led to substantial apparent productivity increases. But the industry then had to pay lot more to try to attract immediately available linemen and to train new one. So productivity turned negative.

The point? Beware of apparent trends unless you understand what had happened before.

Now that's a point that's still relevant!

In the more popular posts area, the posts I wrote on Judith Wright's poetry and especially The Poetry of Judith Wright - South of My Days are featuring again because it is that time again in the school year. Many of those posts were linked in some way with posts by my long standing blogging colleague Neil Whitfield.

I went prowling across some of Neil's past blogs looking at those posts. I think that it would be worthwhile for either Neil or I to do a consolidation of the collected posts for they are clearly of continuing interest.

On the history blog in particular, posts linked in some way to Aboriginal history continue to score very well. On this blog, Report of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, year ended 30 June 1940 is the second most popular post since Google started to provide stats by a margin of 1,800 page views over number three. The most popular post is Sunday Essay - the importance of quiet time in a crowded world.

I am conscious that some of the Aboriginal posts that people are searching on badly need updating. Still, I fear that that will have to be for another day!

Blog performance July 11

In am earlier post I commented on an apparent unexplained decline in blog traffic. The graphic shows visits (yellow) and page views (yellow plus red) to this blog to end July.

All three of my heaviest traffic blogs display a broadly similar pattern. Just as I couldn't explain the biggish increase increase in the middle of the period, so now I can't explain the decline. It's clearly related to changes in search engine traffic.

In terms of apparent reader interests, the most popular posts in July were:

• Saturday morning musings - climate change thread 237 page views
• Report of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, year ended 30 June 1940 124 page views
• The importance of cultural activities 83 page views
• Things to watch as the Australian carbon tax debate unfolds 57 page views
• UNE passings - death of Alan Treloar 53 page views
• Carbon pricing & Mr Abbott's end game 50 page views
• The importance of the Commonwealth 47 page views
• George Negus, watermelons & the meaning of words 46 page views
• TAS 2011 Rugby Union Games 42 page views
• Introducing Delos 36 page views

I said that I couldn't explain the rise and decline.

Looking back over past post stats, part of the explanation links to topicality. As Neil found with his Australia's Got Talent posts (Yea, the End approacheth–of July that is, and of who knows what else in the USA…), topical posts do grab attention. An equivalent on this blog would be the post I wrote on the Toowoomba floods. However, part of the explanation links to the sudden disappearance of a single post from the stats - Sunday Essay - the importance of quiet time in a crowded world.

This post consistently ranked number one or two each month for a very long period, scoring 3,750 page views since August 2009. Now its gone. This change is clearly search engine related. Part of the reasons for the post's popularity lay in the fact that you found it if you searched on Chinese Gardens.

Enough of monthly entrails gazing beyond noting that the stats now show the presence of the latest technology in terms of browsers and operating systems including mobile. It's small, but it's there. 

Blog performance June 2011

The chart shows visits (yellow) and page views (yellow plus red) to this blog to end June. You can see how page views in June were just down, visits more so.

The most popular posts in July were:

• Facebook's decline?  186 page views
• Report of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, year ended 30 June 1940 183 page views
• Culture, locality & prejudice in Sydney 79 page views
• Saturday Morning Musings - kids, jobs & education  75 page views
• TAS 2011 Rugby Union Games 69 page views
• Australian history and the migrant experience 68 page views
• The Importance of Family History 64 page views
• Saturday Morning Musings - education, technology & new delivery modes 58 page views
• Sunday Snippets - NZ earthquakes, Tomorrow when the War began, wild weather 47 page views 

I do wonder with visitors to multiple barrel posts whether I would be better off from a later visitor perspective doing several shorter posts. I suspect that I am making things difficult for those coming via search engines. Still, I don't intend to change!

Blog performance & a blogging meander

Just a meander this morning, starting with the monthly stats. 

The attached graphic shows visits (yellow) plus page views (yellow plus red) to this blog over the thirteen months to end March.

The previous upward trend has peaked, although the increase April on April is quite good. I suspect that I am getting a bit too boring for my regular visitors!

About 20% of my traffic - the number bounces around - comes from repeat visits.

The top ten page views in April were:

• Sunday Essay - the importance of quiet time in a crowded world 472 page views
• Report of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, year ended 30 June 1940 112 page views
• ANZAC Day, national identity & the power of images 226 page views
• Sunday essay - dust storms, environmental change and the romance of agriculture 103 page views
• Sunday Essay - Bolt, Aboriginal culture & the nature of Aboriginality 70 page views
• The importance of cultural activities 78 page views
• The Importance of Family History 77 page views
• The birth of Cleo 67 page views
• Monarchy, republics & the royal wedding 62 page views
• Generation One, Andrew Forrest and Aboriginal jobs... 64 page views

The top two are constantly in the top two places. The next eight vary from month to month.

Having disposed of the monthly statistical entrails watching, a few comments on posts of interest on other blogs.

On Club Troppo, Nicholas Gruen's “It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others” puts an argument on for monarchy based on the very apparent illogicality of the concept.

Staying with Club Troppo, Ken Parish's Rooting out Cognitive Bias 101seeks advice - a wisdom of crowds thing - on some seminars in jurisprudence seeking to correct perceptual bias. This led skepticlawyer to write a companion piece, Crowdsourcing bleg – getting lawyers to think creatively.

Now this must seem pretty dry stuff, and in some ways it is. However, bear with me for a moment.

One of the issues that I have been trying to think through is the reason why lawyers so often fail to address the real needs of their clients. This is directly related to cognitive bias installed during legal training, as well as the dynamics of the profession.

I decided to write a companion post, but found it almost impossible. Both Ken and SL address the issue from a macro level whereas my concern is very micro, professional failure in the handling of individual matters. I do want to write something on this, for I actually spend a lot of time on this blog trying to address cognitive bias, the way in which our mental frameworks affect our perceptions and judgements. However, it will have to wait.

In Kartini's Day and Indonesian women, Tikno looked at the role of women in Indonesia. Tikno notes that Kartini's Day is taken from the name Raden Ajeng Kartini, a heroine for the emancipation of Indonesian women during Dutch colonial. Not unexpectedly, I had never heard of Raden Kartini, so I found it interesting.

By coincidence, at the time I was trying to find out about a little known episode in Australian and New England history that linked Australia, the Netherlands and the Indonesian struggle for independence. This led me to write Victory Camp & the Casino Boys as a preliminary introduction. Have a look. I bet that you have not heard of it either!

This photo shows a 2006 Canadian women's raincoat. The hat could have come from the recent royal wedding! The photo is from Barbara Martin's My Town Monday - Going In Style.

Climate forms fashion. Looking at Barbara's reproductions, I can see visual similarities with women's clothing in Australia at the same time, but Canada's climate requires different physical solutions.

Staying with Canada, Christopher Moore's History News has been exploring past elections. In case you don't know it, the current Canadian federal election campaign is coming to an end.

I had intended to write something on it, but other events have intervened.

Why bother? Well, Canada is part of the Commonwealth and broadly has the same constitutional tradition as Australia and many other Commonwealth countries. So what happens in Canada actually has an influence elsewhere. More importantly, Canada has regional divides based on history, geography and ethnicity that make those in Australia look like a pussy cat.

The very survival of Canada as a political entity is remarkable. It's not all that long ago that the betting was that Canada could not survive, yet somehow it has muddled through. I also find considerable enjoyment in the confusion that Canada creates in the US. Like many Australians with New Zealand, many US people including the commentariat look down on Canada. The sneers are quite remarkable!

But if we look at the immediate past, the US has given us the Tea Party, Canada a resurgent NDP. Actually, history means that Australians can understand Canada in a way that many US people cannot. Blame the Empire!

Turning to India, Ramana's Musings continues to entertain me. I know that I mention Ramana a lot, but he really is worth reading for his Indian insights. I don't read him every day, but I do read all his posts on at least a weekly basis.

Finally, finishing with a plug for my Armidale Express columns.

The last column brought on line (the Express sadly does not put the columns on-line because, or so Christian Knight as editor argues, they do not want to reduce the attraction of the columns for those buying the paper) was Belshaw's World - coming up thistles in government wasteland.

   Writing for the paper is a different discipline to blog posting. Obviously the standard of the column varies, but I actually think that there is some good stuff there.  You can see all the columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011.   

PR blog performance March 2011

Just back from Armidale. more on that in a later post, and I realised the month had ended.

The attached graphic shows visits (yellow) plus page views (yellow plus red) to this blog over the twelve months to end March. The upward trend has continued; I'm not dill not quite sure why!

The top ten page views in November were:

• Sunday Essay - the importance of quiet time in a crowded world 369 page views
• Report of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, year ended 30 June 1940 142 page views
• The Importance of Family History 95 page views
• Nicholas Cowdery on crime and punishment 74 page views
• Toowoomba flash flood  65 page views
• Belshaw's Animal Meme 61 page views
• Persia, Greece & the Delian League 56 page views
• Australian history and the migrant experience 55 page views
• NSW election wrap-up 54 page views
• Sunday Essay - the strange case of Australia and New Zealand 53 page Views

The top individual referring sites during the month excluding search engine traffic were:

• http://wintonbates.blogspot.com/ 26 visits 
• newenglandaustralia.blogspot.com 23 visits
• http://las.new-england.net.au 18 visits
• http://marcellous.wordpress.com/ 9 visits
• http://twitter.com/  6 visits

PR blog performance February 2011

  Another month ends. The attached graphic shows visits (yellow) plus page views (yellow plus red) to this blog over the twelve months to end February. The upward trend has continued'; I'm not quite sure why.

The top ten page views in February were:

• Sunday Essay - the importance of quiet time in a crowded world 429 page views
• Christchurch earthquake 385 page views
• Report of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, year ended 30 June 1940 152 page views
• The Importance of Family History 126 page views
• Persia, Greece & the Delian League 124 page views
• The importance of cultural activities 111 page views
• ANZ, IBM & freedom of speech 104 page views
• Australian history and the migrant experience 96 page views
• Toowoomba flash flood  89 page views
• The need for change in blogging 65 page views

The top individual referring sites during the month excluding search engine traffic were:

• http://clubtroppo.com.au/ 28 visits
• http://wintonbates.blogspot.com/ 26 visits 
• http://larvatusprodeo.net/ 21 visits
• http://marcellous.wordpress.com/ 17 visits
• http://las.new-england.net.au/ 8 visits
• http://skepticlawyer.com.au/ 6 page views

PR blog performance January 2011

Another month ends. The attached graphic shows visits (yellow) plus page views (yellow plus red) to this blog over the twelve months to end January. You can see the upward trend. 

The top ten page views in November were:

• Toowoomba flash flood  559 page views
• Sunday Essay - the importance of quiet time in a crowded world 367 page views
• Report of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, year ended 30 June 1940 256 page views
• Issues with Immigration Nation 144 page views
• The Importance of Family History 89 page views
• Why micro-environments are important 83 page views
• Memories of Jimmy Sharman's Boxing Stadium 76 page views
• Queensland floods and the Australian character 69 page views
• Droughts and flooding rains 61 page views
• Problems with Australia's best blog posts 47 page views

The top individual referring sites during the month excluding search engine traffic were:

• http://twitter.com/ 14 visitors 
• http://neil2decade.wordpress.com/ 11 visitors

The top search words were dominated by chinese gardens and floods.

Blog performance, August 2010

Stats time again. The chart shows visits (yellow) and page views (yellow plus red) to this blog over the last month. After a decline over June and July, numbers in August were up again. Mind you, there were 31 days in August.

The ten most popular posts over the month were:

•  Sunday Essay - the importance of quiet time in a crowded world 269 page views
• Report of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, year ended 30 June 1940 208 page views
• Belshaw's Animal Meme 112 page views
• Interview with Tony Abbott 1979 92 page views
• Australian history and the migrant experience 72 page views
• Three Amigos and the future Australian Government 60 page views
• Cub Gunston? 56 page views
• Northern Daily Leader: Second-term support a must 54 page views
• End of the Nats? 49 page views
• Reflections on the end of the Housing NSW/AHO Aboriginal mentoring program 48 page views.

So, in all, a mixture of past posts and current events; the top two seem to remain relatively constant.

Postscript

As part of my monthly review, I also looked as the stats for my other blogs. I was surprised  at the spike in traffic in August on New England Australia (Blog visits take off) and New England's History (Blog Performance August 2010).

In fact, in August on the New England Australia blog, the number of followers, visits and page views all passed this blog for the first time! While I am obviously pleased at the increases on the other blogs, I found myself with mixed feelings. My overall personal interests attracted less interest than my more specific interests!

I have felt for a little while that this blog is becoming a little stale. I need to do something about this.    

Blog performance, reader interests July 2010

I didn't post yesterday. In the morning was the graduation for the Housing NSW/Aboriginal Housing Office mentor program. I took some photos and will write a story in due course, but coming home after the session I found myself with the shivers, so actually took to my bed. Not bad today, but still not feeling especially well, and I also have to go into the city this afternoon.

The graphic shows monthly visits to the blog (yellow) plus page views (yellow plus red)for the year ending July 10. I was conscious that the July numbers were down; so I have two months of falling stats.

Excluding visits to the front page (I do not have this number), the most visited posts over July were:

• Sunday Essay - the importance of quiet time in a crowded world  (283 page views)
• Report of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, year ended 30 June 1940 (170 page views)
• Belshaw's Animal Meme ( 113 page views)
• Australian history and the migrant experience (49 page views)
• The Importance of Family History (48 page views)
• Generation One, Andrew Forrest and Aboriginal jobs (41 page views)
• Saturday Morning Musings - a melange (37 page views)
• Threads - death of Jon Cleary, higher education, the Gruen Nation, Will Owen (37 page views)
• Saturday Morning Musings - confidentiality, confusion and Australia's election (36 page views)
• Death of Australian painter and writer James Gleeson (32 page views).

What people read

Google has just introduced its own stats package for blogs. It seems to have come into effect from the start of June. I have stats packages already, but the Google package provides certain additional information.

I find that by far the most popular post during the period since with 220 page views was Sunday Essay - the importance of quiet time in a crowded world. I knew that this one was popular, but the next post on 126 views was a surprise: Report of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, year ended 30 June 1940. Then on 65 page views came  Masterchef meets the CWA.

Last night was the last episode of this year's Australian Masterchef, and we all watched it after the leader's election debate. By the way, I was struck by the behaviour of the worm during the debate, because of the way it highlighted different audience reactions between men and women to the two leaders. We knew this from the public opinion polls, but it was interesting to watch.

I was not surprised that Masterchef meets the CWA scored so well. The popular success of Masterchef has been quite astonishing. 

After the Masterchef post came The Importance of Family History on 59 page views. Again, this one was not a surprise. Then on 40 page views came Sunday Essay - Facebook, freedom of speech and the rights of others. This was a post I wrote as a companion to one of Tikno's posts. I see from Tikno's most recent post, Someone has stolen my article - plagiarism, that he has suffered a straight post pinch without attribution. I really sympathise.

The next five posts were:

• Generation One, Andrew Forrest and Aboriginal jobs (34 page views)
• Howard and the ICC (33 page views)
• Belshaw's Animal Meme (33 page views)
• Return to country (29 page views)
• Blogs of interest - Australian politics with a dash of history (28 page views).

Beyond my own personal curiosity, I suspect that the new stats will give me some helpful hints in time to guide my writing.