The administrators can see how many reads a post gets, sometimes there are very few comments or none at all yet the post has been read nearly 200 times. I wonder if we can make that information available to the registered users as well. I think that would be a way to know you are reaching people.

The positive post problem makes me nuts. We want a positive constructive environment, but when we write constructive pieces or offer constructive comments we lose public response. Here is the thing. People who like to fight are more likely to post off-hand and keep posting than constructive people. It takes constructive readers time to get comfortable enough to post. They are also afraid of getting attacked. Who enjoys that!? I do not know how to encourage constructive readers to post comments other than by having a website with a great vibe, a website that encourages positive engagement rather than negative engagement. Serious disagreement and debate is a good thing. By negative engagement mean the nasty flaming and off-hand comments that we all recognize as fighting and not debating. Any ideas?????

I think everyone here wants this to be a constructive plays to hang out, think, and talk.

Salams, Laury 

When it says “two registered and 60 guests” are those guests real people, or search engine spider bots? I am very curious to know this.

Perhaps it could break down the numbers further to distinguish spider bots from real guests.

The guests represent distinct users or distinct ISPs. It is deceiving because AOL is one ISP per region. So we could have 70 users on through AOL but it would only show up as 1 guest. Assume the actual number of guests is higher than what you see here. It is time delayed by about 20 minutes.

I do not know if search engine bots show up as guests or not. When I look at the log to see ISPs to get a sense of where people are coming from, Search Engine bots are clearly identified as opposed to regional users. There are only a few bots a day. Whereas the ISPs for regional users reflect the the guest numbers you see accurately. So I do not think that would amount to much on the site.

The number of reads on a post is not individual users but each time a person, any person, clicks the “read more” button. So it could be one user clicking a story 5 times in order to keep commenting. When you get 150 to 200 or so readers on a post, you have a good chunk of individuals reading it.

The main thing we need to do is to get thoughtful people with good energy to register and start commenting. They are usually the last to do so, unfortunately. Maybe we need a formal welcome for them.

As for judging the popularity of the site, I am wary of sites like technorati because they judge a blog by cross posts to other blogs and trackbacks for the most part. One has to get out there and trade in blogroll links, trade in other blog citations, etc… It is the PR end in the business and doesn’t necessarily pull in the readers you really want. We need to get out there and engage the sites we do respect and want to have relationships with, not the ones we don’t but who could provide us with lots of traffic.

I would prefer that we build a reputation as a thoughtful source and place of positive engagement. That takes time and word of mouth on the web and in real life.

Search Engines? To what extent are the search engines indexing your blogs here? I will do my famous search engine test right here and now, with the magic word ekantavadaellada , a word I made up by joining the Jain religious term Anekantavada (many-pointedness, no one single point of view) with the Greek word for Greece, Ellada (pronounced Ellatha). I place that word into a post, and wait to see how long it takes to get into the search engines, or if it fails to get into the search engines.

I have noticed that ask.com will pick up pages which google seems to censor. Google seems to be sensoring pages which might be controversial or offensive (though it seems to index the porn pages just fine).

I meant the number of times the site logs a bot scanning of the site which is then cached and available to searchers through Google or Yahoo or whatever. These bot scans do not happen more than a few times a day. Some blog scanners only update once a week or once a month.

OmarG: "yet my hopefully constructive entry about some aspects on how to make a mosque a welcoming place to all ethnicities got hardly a peep"

Omar, I happened to like that entry … but often I read a piece on pi.org and like what I read, but I don't want to clutter up with posts from Beavis saying "cool! cool!". To rate entries would provide a way to say I like it without posting a virtually content-free comment.

Laury: "I would prefer that we build a reputation as a thoughtful source and place of positive engagement. That takes time and word of mouth on the web and inreal life."

Right on. It's worth the wait, to accumulate a dynamic set of voices.

Sitaram: Anekantavada (many-pointedness, no one single point of view).

I like that. See what I mean? I'm usually content to read what attracts me here, and enjoy it, and feel that while I'm learning I have nothing new or original or unique to add.

hakim

Good to go, Hakim, and thanks.

- A Salafi in worship, a Sufi in society, a Secularist in government.