It’s Meta Sunday. You know what that means.

Every so often, I like to see what posts are getting the most attention. I’ve done it before in one of these Sunday posts. Time for an update!

Rather than list specific articles, I will just note the general topics and themes that seem to do best around here (in terms of people reading them).

What’s most popular?

  * History
  * Discussion of sexism and gender issues
  * Politics
  * Financial topics

That’s cool. I can work with those.

What’s least popular?

  * Discussion of ISIS
  * Discussion of sex work
  * Link roundups
  * International affairs

There are basically two patterns here. One is that posts about international issues tend to go ignored. Well, that’s fair enough. I suppose those aren’t really my strong suit. In addition, the link roundup posts tend to see very little traffic. I could blame that on search engine placement, since they are primarily collections of links (and I think Google frowns on things like that), but even when they are clicked, the outbound links rarely are, which defeats the purpose. I am therefore tempted to stop doing the link roundups at all. They don’t take much time compared to a regular post, but they do take some, and maybe this is a good place to prioritize. I am not sure what I’d do instead on Saturdays. I may just take the day off. For that matter, I have been considering dropping the Sunday posts, as well, since I can’t imagine anyone likes reading this sort of how-the-sausage-is-made material. A good compromise might be to only make such a post when I have something substantial to write about, rather than doing it because I’m obligated. It’s not as if there’s significant news about this blog on a weekly basis–it’s simply not big or popular enough! I also don’t like changing things willy-nilly. I like to have a reason.

Knowing what topics seem to resonate with the people who read this gives me a better idea of what I might focus on in the future. I’m still going to write about what appeals to me, because it’s my blog, but when unsure of what topic to choose for a given day, I will more likely lean toward one of the more popular subjects. It also tells me what areas may benefit from post series, rather than daily one-offs. At some point, I may develop a daily schedule. Something like this:

  * Sunday -- Meta discussion.
  * Monday -- Social justice issues.
  * Tuesday -- Series installments, assuming I go forward with a series. I picked Tuesday because, for whatever reason, it gets the most traffic.
  * Wednesday -- Economics and finance.
  * Thursday -- Global events and issues.
  * Friday -- American politics.
  * Saturday -- Link roundup.

The series installments could be about anything. The idea is that, instead of one-off posts, each Tuesday post would be part of an ongoing series on a particular topic. The series could go on for a number of weeks, until I believe it is “complete” in some meaningful way. (Insert lengthy diatribe about how no topic can ever be completely covered.)

In any case, I am not committing to the above schedule just yet, but I will be thinking about it. I may give it a trial in the coming weeks to see how well it works for me, and how people respond to it.

Thanks again for reading!