Top 5 is now closed

[yourlibrarian]

Our 2011 session has now ended and there's some information to share about our LJ site as well as our new Dreamwidth mirror.

Access to Top 5 now exists on Dreamwidth as well. This mirror will provide the following:

1) The security of a second online access point for permanent use.
2) A searchable community (use the search box in the top left side).
3) The ability to open all cut-tags on a page with one click for easier browsing (check the arrows under the search box).
4) Tag searching using combined terms. Copy/paste the following into the search box, only substitute the terms you want for "Tag 1" and "Tag 2" (remember to keep the comma between them).
http://buffyverstop5.dreamwidth.org/tag/Tag1,Tag2?mode=and
5) Potential additional contributions from the Dreamwidth side.

Thanks to our mod with the mostest, petzipellepingo, Top 5 on LJ is currently a paid account, which provides access to something Dreamwidth does not -- statistics! So I thought I'd share a few things gleaned from looking over the numbers.

1) In 2010, we had 2406 visitors to our annual January session, which is always our most active period. Nearly twice as many users either arrived from outside of LJ or were not logged in while visiting Top 5. Top 5 entries received over 53,000 hits that month, giving us an average of 22 page loads per person.

2) In 2011, we had a curious anagram number of 2640 visitors in January, with slightly more LJ users among them but only around 39,000 hits resulting in an average of 15 page views per person.

3) This session we have had 870 visitors so far (the month's not over yet), with 564 LJ users and around 12,200 hits, so around 14 hits per person.

4) My guess though is that the majority of visitors this January will be LJ users. One of the strangest things coming out of the statistics is that starting on July 15, 2011 the number of external users to Top 5 dropped significantly, since until that point they had constituted 30 to 50% of all visitors in any given month. For example, on July 15 we had 39 users, 7 from LJ. Starting the next day nearly every one of the visitors was from LJ until we hit this January's session.

5) What's really interesting though is to see how many visitors continue to find Top 5 throughout the year when we are closed to new posts. For example, in September 2010, the lowest month for visitors that year we still had 429 people using the archive. September appears to be our slowest month as in 2011, we also had the lowest number of visitors for the year, 159. Since this year has just begun it'll be interesting to see if September repeats as a low month.

However, these users are clearly looking at numerous posts, because those 159 people in September 2011 looked at an average of 21 posts per person. So it's always a good idea to remember there will be people searching your posts to find things throughout the year.

We'll be opening again on April 1 for our Worlds Without Shrimp session for all non-Buffyverse Whedon fandoms. Thanks to everyone who contributed posts this session, as well as to everyone chiming in. See you again later this year!

Comments

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for doing this every year. Even though I totally suck at being organized enough to post my top five anythings, I follow it religiously and always find new things to read.

[yourlibrarian]

As long as people show up, we'll be here! I'm glad to hear you always find something new :)

[annegables.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for running this again this year!

[yourlibrarian]

Thanks for visiting!

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

Boo! My procrastination got me AGAIN! Why do I always think there's more hours?

Anyway, thanks oodles for doing this. It's been great (even if I didn't get all my lists together).

[yourlibrarian]

Well you did get some in this round! Plus, you've got a headstart on Classic Recs now :)

[talulahk.livejournal.com]

Oh dear god, I thought for a tiny second you were shutting the LJ site down.

As a user, I keep a link on my desktop at work so I can peruse when I want a great buffy fix. As a late Buffy adopter (>.< 2011 >.<), this is a wonderful archive and springboard to the best of it all.

Thanks again!

[yourlibrarian]

Sorry for the scare! Nope, not shutting down, in fact adding new features :) That's great to know you're one of our year-round users.

[velvetwhip.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for all your hard work and dedication!


Gabrielle

[yourlibrarian]

Thanks for your years of support!

[lusciousxander.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for the hard work you're putting every year. This website is so precious for me. I really love appreciating the fan work done each new year, and to discover fan works I missed. I've been following this LJ and posting my Top Fives since 2006, and I still look forward to it. Actually, when I read a wonderful fic, I'd add the link to my favorites and name it "for Buffyverstop5" so that I won't forget reccing it.

[yourlibrarian]

Thank you for that wonderful comment. I also feel a rush of affection for the fandom every year when I see all the great stuff still being posted and appreciated and all the communities still chugging along.

And yay for your list methods! It is indeed hard to remember at year's end the many things one liked unless something was done along the way.

[shapinglight]

Thanks so much to you and Petzi for all your hard work, which is much appreciated.

Have to say, the statistics, though not unexpected, are a little depressing. Is it possible to correlate the drop off with the increasing interest in Tumblr?

[yourlibrarian]

Well, sort of. I think what they show is that activity on LJ as a whole is decreasing. I'm sure that activity on Tumblr accounts for part of it, but only part. I'd be willing to bet that Buffyverse sites everywhere see less traffic than they used to, regardless of their format or focus. I'm sure that this accounts, in part, for that drop in external visits here. (My other suspicion is that the sudden drop may have been caused by LJ's anti-spam efforts).

I think, for example, that Buffyverse fans not on LJ have a harder time coming across Top 5 or other fandom communities here than they would if they were standalone sites somewhere, thus LJ users account for such a high proportion of visitors (not to mention contributors). However looking at our RSS feed statistics, there are a steady number of people viewing us from elsewhere every year.

[shapinglight]

Well, that's something.

I don't know if it's a contributing factor either, but I have the impression (possibly false) that some of the newer people in the fandom, post-Comics, are very down on fan produced content and would dismiss it as rubbish without even looking at it.

[yourlibrarian]

I suppose that's possible, though certainly there are newer fans around these parts who enjoy it all. My guess would be that it's not really much different now than it was in the fandom's early days -- it's just that back then the numbers for all parts of the fandom, both transformational and affirmational, were so big that there were plenty of people to drown out naysayers no matter which direction the argument was going in.

[shapinglight]

You're probably right. The fandom (at least on LJ) is a very shrunken pool these days, and I suppose fic readers don't have to come here now there is AO3.

[yourlibrarian]

Some of the older fandoms are getting more contributions on AO3 as time goes by but there is still way more Buffyverse stuff on Fanfic.net. What's sad is that many of the smaller archives are vanishing too.