On Article Viewing Statistics

Beside each article, right beside the number of comments date of publication, is a count of the number of unique IP page views for each article.

I publicly reveal this to give you an idea of how well read an article is.

As with all measures of web traffic, it is limited in its utility.

In this case, it’s main limitation is that it doesn’t capture pageviews from multiple computers using the same IP address.

This means 100 unique computers with the City of Hamilton and the Hamilton Public Library are counted as “1” view as they both use the same IP address.

I thought about removing the feature when I was working with the theme framework, but decided against it.

I don’t use web metrics to dictate newsworthiness, I’m not trying to sell advertising, and I like the bit of transparency the numbers can provide.

I hope you do too.