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The Most Popular Ricochet Posts of 2016
Ricochet has been rolling out the year’s top posts as chosen by our members. We also decided to rummage through the site’s analytics to find the most popular posts as measured by traffic. Here are the Top Ten most popular posts of 2016, in order:
- “An Open Letter to the Conservative Media Explaining Why I Have Left the Movement” by John Kluge
- “BuzzFeed Targets HGTV Hosts for Attending Christian Church” by Gabriel Malor
- “My Experience of San Francisco, Post-Election” by Retail Lawyer
- “The Election Was Not Hacked” by Jon Gabriel
- “John Oliver Destroys Underprivileged Students” by Jon Gabriel
- “Time for the RNC to Cut Trump Loose” by Jon Gabriel
- “How I Might Be Wrong” by Paul Rahe
- “What You Need to Know Before Your Concealed Carry Class” by Kevin Creighton
- “Media Slowly Recognizing How Dumb They Sound on Guns” by Kevin Creighton
- “Shun the Crowd, Embrace the Remnant” by Jon Gabriel
I never realized Jon had that big of a family.
I love #6. A great example of how wrong one can be while being so certain of one’s “rightness”. It could be re-titled…”The Dirge of a Pundit”. It’s alright Jon, none of us can be correct all the time. The only way to always avoid error is to never try.
Fascinating. A lot of commenters on #6 are “Inactive”.
So this is the sampler Ricochet puts out to attract new members?
Okay.
John Kluge’s post rocks. He nails it.
Holy cow, I have two posts in the top ten?
How’d that happen?!
And where’s the Pit in this lineup?
I counted about 8 people inactive, several with multiple comments. We miss some of those guys.
Probably way at the top counting numbers of comments, and very low with inactive commenters. But doesn’t get as wide participation. It’s not about a subject that a lot of people feel is of high importance. But it does have the aspect of generating a lot of engaging side posts dealing with culture.
Clearly, the threat of gunfire works.
Kevin’s two posts are wonderful, so is John Kluge’s and Jon Gabriel’s on the non-hacked election. But for most of the rest, the ones placed by our official commentators, wow, what a disappointment. They make Ricochet read as tone deaf as the WAPO.
One asks, were these rankings termined by traffic or was there a vote by the membership?
I’m guessing internal analytics, probably page views. I know the article I wrote on concealed carry got linked to from a number of gun-related sites that can drive a lot traffic, which is why it’s probably up on the list.
It says in the OP:
So, these are not the “best” posts according to any human judgment, whether individual or collective, merely the “most popular posts as measured by traffic”.
A different mix of posts was re-published and tagged with “Best of 2016”.
No, these are the 10 posts with the most web hits for the year.
Yet they are on the main feed , served up as the most trafficked posts on ricochet, still a sampler.
Hey, market as you wish. No worries about how new folks will react to the selection then.
I’m having loads of fun reading the comments on #6
Wow! My post is #3! I know why – it was pointed to in Instapundit’s first post of the following day. I was worried that internet stardom would reveal my identity and make my work life very tough, but none of my fellow lawyers read Instapundit or Richochet – so I am safe because the tribes have non-overlaping news sources.
Post-election San Francisco is evolving a bit better than I would have thought. I may do an update post sometime around the inauguration.
Please do.
The user-generated “Best Posts” shows what those inside R> believe to be the best posts on the site. The most-viewed posts on the site show what those on the outside think are the best posts on the site.
Well, the most attention-getting, which might be the only proxy we have. But it’s normal for folks to distinguish between what gets their attention for some reason and what’s good.
Obviously, it’s important to know what got attention. But readers distinguish between attention-getting and good, and so do prospective writers.
Since becoming a Mod, I’ve shied away from topics I have reason to believe would upset a lot of members here. My sarcastic rant of a review against a book apparently in vogue in conservative, pro-motherhood circles, a book purporting to prove that “mommy brain” does not exist, I’ve kept to myself – even milder sarcasm about topics related to motherhood really upsets people, apparently. My parodies of bad breakup songs chronicling the Trump divide, written out of frustration at the misery the divide has appeared to cause on this site, those I’ve kept to myself, too. As it happens, I’m not bad at parodying lyrical verse, but it’s not like a parody has to be brilliant to by sheer dumb luck push the right buttons at the right time. But since I wanted less acrimony, not more, why take even the infinitesimal chance that I’d push people’s buttons like that?
Had I published any of those things, of course the most likely outcome is that they’d all be ignored. But if one had attracted attention, I could totally picture folks hate-sharing the hell out of it. That doesn’t mean they would have thought it was good.
Or if someone’s rant were promoted to the Main Feed, and it turned out to have been effectively the suicide note for a particularly messy and public suicide, I’m sure that would attract lots of views once the two were connected. Like rubberneckers on the highway. It wouldn’t necessarily mean outsiders found the post better than other posts on our Main Feed.
I disagree with your list. The most popular posts are those that attracted the most comments. The most traffic may be simply because of a provocative title, but the meat of the post and comments were not interesting enough to encourage participation. A post with fewer than 50 or even 75 comments can hardly be categorized as popular when compared to those where there were 200 or more.
How about a contest for “2016 Best Comment On A Post”?