On Wed, 24 Jun 1998, Douglas Clark wrote:
> You wont get a consistent readership if you dont supply the
> goods and continually update it. People arent daft.
Please. Can we get away from the headcount=quality indicator approach,
much as our post-thatcher-new-blairite market society seems to argue for
it all the time. Apart from the possibility already raised that webhits
don't relate to readership, can't we say quite simply that quantity does
NOT equal quality, that the fact that these undaft people buy more lottery
than, say, Shakespeare does NOT mean that the first is in any way superior
to the second (or the other way round). Over 100 people download pages
from the britpo archives every day: if I exclude (a) those who are passing
them straight to lawyers for possible legal action (b) maniacs who
download anything on the oh-I-might-look-at-it-later principle and (c)
listmembers who've inadvertantly zapped their inboxes and want to remind
themselves of the fun we had three months ago, the possibility remains
that a couple of innocents are getting a couple of useful facts, which is
great: but the VALUE of the list remains in those messages, and would have
to be proved in other ways, not in the whacky statistic, which proves
nothing. "People aren't daft" indeed - don't you believe it!
RC
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