50,000 hits

Today, this blog reached a milestone; 50,000 "hits".

50,000 times, some one went looking for something on the
internet, and ended up at Diogenes' six.

50,000 seems like a large number. It isn't. There are blogs
who got that many hits their first month. Some get that many
hits in a single day.

It took me three years; my first post on this blog was written
Tuesday, August 15, 2006, link and has been followed by
3,197 other posts, and counting.

The 50,000th hit came from Berlin, Germany, and was looking
for "diogenes 6" in particular. I have no idea why anyone in
Germany would care about, or would have even heard about
my blog. But I appreciate the interest never the less.

No one who doesn't write a blog, can understand what it is
like to watch a site counter, watching it crawl past days with
no hits, to days with a few, to days with a hundred.

A full three quarters apparently arrive accidentally and stay
for less than five seconds. Somewhere around 10% of visitors
stay for between 5 seconds and 5 minutes, 5% from 5 minutes
to an hour, and a little less than 10% stay for more than an hour.

All of this can be comforting or not, depending on whether or
not you are a glass half full, or a glass half empty kind of a guy.

Speaking for most bloggers, we appreciate the attention of our
readers, and welcome comments. The comments are one of
the things that separate blogs from dead tree news;
blogs are interactive.

There are some people who would continue to write even if they
knew that no one was paying any attention. I am not one of those.

Diogenes' six is a call to action blog. The whole effort is a waste
if after having visited, the reader is no closer to standing up to
take back control over power and resources that belong to us,
and not to the public servants who spend them in our stead.

The terms of public service are the prerogative of the public
and not the public servant. Among those terms; honest
accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and
competence, for at least those few hours every day that we
are compelled to trust them with control over our power and
our resources.

I am grateful in particular, to the regular readers of D6, about
15% of total visitors.

Thank you, and please spread the word.