[FM Discuss] Stats for downloads
adam hyde
adam at flossmanuals.net
Tue Sep 29 11:55:48 PDT 2009
hey
just to say ...good conversation :) ...ok, some comments to your
points..
>
> I don't want to prioritise which books get made. I am interested in
> prioritising resources within the CiviCRM project. Having stats on
> how many people read the manual and what parts of it they read would
> be very useful for us to prioritise our resources. We could say
> things like "wow, 10 times more people are reading our chapter on
> 'event management' compared to the chapter on 'membership
> administration' - lets ask our volunteer with one day to spend on the
> project to concentrate on that chapter".
>
> I disagree with you that if flossmanuals collected stats they would
> 'become the rule', but I don't think I would be successful in
> convincing you of my point of view on that subject!
>
>
hehe :) no, you will not be successful. However, I take your point, and
Lobos. I can see you need to collect info to feed to funders. The thing
is, and heres an open question...I do not want FM to be guided by stats,
and yet I can see its usefulness to projects like CiviCRM. So...is there
a way that we could make some info available on a per-book basis but not
available to 'anyone'?
Although its an open question, I will take a stab at answering it
myself, and bring in another related issue...yes, we could make stats
available on a per-book basis, and only viewable my the maintainer for
that book. However, we wont do it now since we are focusing on doing the
dev for booki (the new platform). All dev on FM is on hold. So if we did
do it, it would not be quick. So, that might sound like a 'yes - in the
medium term'. Well...sort of... booki is a free software, so if someone
wants to do the dev on a stats package, then all power to you. If you
did do this, then i would really like to be involved in the design of it
to address the issues I have. However, at the moment, its not on the
booki dev milestones since we have enough to do already (hence it would
need to be a 'third party' dev if you want it quicker than 2011). But my
'yes we could' answer still has a issue that I do not know how to solve
- It sounds simple to keep stats only in the domain of the maintainers.
However, the maintainers are often the most active participants and are
the ones that say the most (and consequently 'have the most say') on how
FM is run. How do we stop stats from creeping from the domain of the
'for your eyes only' maintainer, to influencing FM bizzo on a meta
level? Any ideas?
It may seem to many that I am being over cautious and over estimate the
role of stats and its influence. I can only say, that through many years
working in the media I have learned that the easiest way to make really
boring content and to kill anything interesting, is to look at the
stats. Thats the way I see it, you won't be able to convince me
otherwise since this experience is deeply ingrained.
> if [a funding application] needs backing up, get
> testimonials...any thoughts on this?
>
> Yes. Testimonials are great and we have collected a few already. But
> they are take a fair amount of effort to collect and are anecdotal and
> can't claim to be representative. Pageviews, in comparision, are
> incredibly easy to collect and they give us very reliable information
> who is reading what.
but page views are really meaningless...sorry to say, they mean
nothing..how many are spiders? crawlers gathering content, spammers,
bots etc etc etc
>
> I take your point that creators should take more responsibility for
> their books - it would be a good solution for a project like ours
> which is interested in stats. Can anyone give me an idea of how much
> time it would take to re-create http://www.sesawe.org/-Manuals-.html
> for CiviCRM?
i can put you in touch with Laurent off list...lemme know and i will do
it
>
> If we were to go down that route would you be up for 'discouraging'
> people from browsing the CiviCRM on flossmanuals.net in order that we
> get a better picture of our stats? What do you think about a redirect
> from http://en.flossmanuals.net/civicrm to http://book.civicrm.org? or
> something a little less blunt like 'are you sure you want to read this
> manual here? We'd prefer it if you read it at
> http://book.civicrm.org.
the point is not to discourage anyone from viewing any content about
CiviCRM - that would be self defeating. The point is to accept the
consequences of open content. The content can roam...get behind it and
make it roam. Use the Book Shop API, use the embed API, use Objavi
(which will soon also be outputting epub)...we spent a lot of time
building these tools to assist the dist of your manual, but there are
not enough people (maintainers) using them.
FM will continue to be a good place for people to find the content. You
gain a lot from having casual visitors who came to see the Audacity
manual on FM and discover your manual. or who woke up one afternoon
logged in to FM and thought they would voluntarily copy edit your
material, or translate it, or...
So, I would not suggest you discourage use of such a useful tool for
you. But I would encourage you to seed your manual on torrent, produce a
free newspaper using objavi and distribute through cafes, encourage all
your members to host the book store on their site, embed the manual
using the embed api on your own domain etc etc etc
adam
>
> Michael
>
>
> 2009/9/29 adam hyde <adam at flossmanuals.net>
> On Tue, 2009-09-29 at 07:56 -0500, Anne Gentle wrote:
> >
>
> >
> >
> > We are not your distribution agent.
> >
> > Ok, that last line speaks volumes. It explains why reader
> experience
> > hasn't changed much. I can agree with that now that I
> understand
> > that's your stance.
>
>
> So, reader experience aside. I think its really up to each
> group to push
> the manual they are working on as hard as they can.
>
> >
> > For the torrent, is it the PDF output only? What are some
> other
> > examples of HTML distribution? I know the XO laptop is one
> example,
> > and at one point NGO in a box was using FM content, though I
> don't
> > know if they still are. I'd like to explore this idea
> further.
> >
>
>
> Sesawe use the embed API to host the Circumvention Manual
> http://www.sesawe.org/-Manuals-.html
>
> NGO in a box use it also but i dont know URLs
>
> There are a few people, but not enough, using the Book Store
> API.
>
> adam
>
>
>
>
> > Thanks,
> > Anne
>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> >
> http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net
> --
> Adam Hyde
> Founder FLOSS Manuals
> German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
> Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
> irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals
>
> "Free manuals for free software"
> http://www.flossmanuals.net/about
>
>
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--
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals
"Free manuals for free software"
http://www.flossmanuals.net/about
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