Woodstock CT Café

Today (Mar 30th) as the Café approaches the end of the first Quarter of 2009 – despite the anomaly of the 3rd quarter of 2008 – Café readership continues to grow. A total of 1273 articles and 12,780 comments have been posted since October 2005.

The data indicates that the frequency of visitation and the number of page turns fluctuates in parallel with the rate of articles published. The number of articles published each month can be viewed on the lower part of the left sidebar.

The Café estimates that there may be as many a 600-1000 people visiting frequently or infrequently by assessing the number of different Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that are recorded by our StatCounter, and hits on our BrightEgg server.

The graph below shows visitation by unique visitors for 13 three-month intervals going back to the beginning (Oct. 2005). The 1st quarter of 2008 was lost when the statcounter malfunctioned. The data (unique visitors) shows that the number of visits mushroomed in the 3rd quarter (June 21 to September 20) following publication of articles at an increased rate in June, July, and August. Visitation dropped in September with the drop in number of articles published.

Visitation by unique visitors jumped 18.3% this last quarter versus the 4th quarter of 2008. We should point out that there are visitors that our stat counter does not detect like Mindie who left a recent comment. BrightEgg says the we had a million hits on server from Feb 1 2008 to Jan 31 2009 – but our statcounter only detected about 250,000 page turns.

Quarter by quarter growth in Unique Visits and Page turns. The lower graph plots the unique visits by quarter.

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I’m sure some people do consider it a game, but only in the sense that the two older brothers were playing a game on “Trading Places”. I’m sure many remember the 1983 movie where two wealthy brothers placed a $1.00 bet on the outcome of doing an experiment with people’s lives. For them it may have been a game, but for the people actually impacted, not so much. So yes, some people may consider this a game. But I don’t think it is a game for parents looking at the prospect of lesser educational opportunity for their children (they didn’t seem to enjoy “playing” at the meeting in the beginning of March), for the children themselves who will have their futures harmed, or for the employees of the school system who stood to lose their jobs. Some people may consider this a game where their personal tax stakes are pretty low but for the people who have to suffer the impact of this “game”, it is no game.

On a lighter subject, yes with the bailout, an opportunity was lost to really show how harmful Prop 46 has been to our education system here in Woodstock. Trust me, we don’t have a problem with the system being too lean. Having said that, due to all the reasons I listed above I’m glad we were able to dodge the bullet. For those same reasons I’m also glad this didn’t become an opportunity to teach children to live within their means or any other such concept. That’s something the parents should be doing at home with $20 and a savings account, not with people’s jobs and our children’s educations. Once again, to the people impacted, this isn’t a game.

Thanks,

Kevin

This post represents my personal opinions and in no way should be considered an official act of the BOE or that I am speaking on behalf of the BOE in any way.