Don't Back Down

I don't often troll Technorati to see who is linking to me, but perhaps I should, as it can turn up some interesting results. For instance, the other day I found my way to Global Vue, a site which is apparently run as part of a class project of some sort by Andria Krewson, a 25-year veteran of newspapers, and apparent current employee of the Charlotte Observer. That last part isn't really relevant, I just thought I'd let you know so that you're aware of the details.

In any case, the link that garnered my attention was The five best and worst sites, part IV, in which she featured none other than yours truly. In case you're still wondering, I won the worst title, not the best, which is but one of the reasons I'm writing today. The subject of part four of this ongoing series was sustainability, defined as capable of being sustained. Since we aren't supposed to use the word in the definition, sustained means continuous. In other words, for our purposes, the definition shall be capable of being continuous. It doesn't flow off the tongue, but you should be able to get what I mean. Let's take a look, shall we?

First off, Don't Back Down went live on June 26 of 2003 with an entry titled And So it Begins. Continuous means that you'd have continual writing, which really isn't practical, or else you would have text flowing off your screen, but something just over four years seems fairly sustainable to me. Let's compare. The blog I was up against, Cognitive Daily, meanwhile, wrote its first entry on January 20, 2005, titled Music and memory.

Now I'm not slighting Cognitive Daily in the least - after all, Science Blogs (or more specifically, Seed Media Group, the operator of Science Blogs), is a customer of mine. But it would seem that if the point of the article is to cite sustainability, then the winner would actually be more sustainable than the loser. So if the loser has been around longer, wouldn't that seem upside-down to you?

Maybe Ms. Krewson doesn't get the concept. Let's look at her own blogs. The oldest, a community blog, she has been using since June of 2006. Not going to work. She also writes at Innovate This and has done so since March of 2007. How about Global Vue? No dice there either. It's only been live for two months. Heck, combine the three blogs and she is still well short in this regard. Let's move on.

The crux of Ms. Krewson's article - as in how much time she spends - seems to be on the design. Specifically using the words design is sad. Well, I'm sorry, but it's not my design. I did actually tweak it a bit, and I did choose the photo, but take it up with the designer. The link is right there in the footer. And just so you know, it's not a Blogger template. It's actually a Wordpress template that I adapted to Movable Type. I mentioned that a little while back. I'd have expected a bit of research, and I'd also have thought that someone with at least two Blogger accounts to have known which templates were available for the platform. But again, let's move on. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all of that.

Next up is lots of wasted space on either side of the template. In the current design the width is set to 750px. That's a size that I'm comfortable with, though I have toyed with a larger width. Frankly, I just switched to this template not long ago, so I probably won't change soon. But let's compare it to Ms. Krewson's. Out of three blogs, she has widths of 770px (Global Vue) and 660px (on both of the other blogs). So that extra 20px gives lots of space, yet 90px somehow doesn't? Odd. We're moving again.

Now, for the last real point - the ads. Apparently it's okay to have a high-quality Dow ad on my competitor, but the Google Ads here are not. It's likely to see a visitor click quickly away - and if they don't, they'll make pennies a day. Very interesting summary. First, there is an advertising page here on the site. I'm happy to accept other advertising. As long as it doesn't come in, I'll run Google. Second, there are plenty of folks - including myself - who make more than pennies a day, but it is none of her business, thankyouverymuch.

And finally, another post by Ms. Krewson points out that Tags generate traffic, apparently illustrating that her traffic spiked from 10-20 hits per day to as many as 380, then quickly settled down again. Those visitors I have that "click quickly away" are much higher than even the highest of those numbers. Not as high as Science Blogs or any number of other sites, but I'm generally happy with the results.

So - does that make this the least sustainable site on the Internet? I don't think so. Not by a long shot. Please note that I'm not saying there aren't a billion sites out there better than mine in either content or presentation, including hers. I'm just saying that if you're going to lay the groundwork, Andria, get your facts straight. It's in your Code of Ethics, after all: Distinguish between advocacy, commentary and factual information. Even advocacy writing and commentary should not misrepresent fact or context. It will be interesting to see if she follows up on another item in there: Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.