2012 in Retrospect

By
Christopher
– Posted on January 1, 2013Posted in: people

For some reason WordPress stats for a self hosted blog like this one don’t seem to match up with my StatCounter stats, and I’ve managed to break JetPack several times this year and somehow ended up reporting traffic to two different “Border Wars” variants in my WordPress login (some days neither one sees any traffic at all), but the year end report is kind of fun, so I’ll play along.

BorderWars StatCounter stats 2011-2012

BorderWars StatCounter stats 2011-2012

StatCounter says that there were 41,565 return visits, 315,247 unique visits, and a whopping 569,730 page loads for the blog in 2012 bringing my total up to over 940,000.  All traffic measures doubled over 2011 levels.

According to WordPress, this blog was viewed about 260,000 times in 2012 [up from 53,000 in 2011].  In 2012, there were 56 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 397 posts.  The busiest day of the year was February 14th with 11,942 views (StatCounter claims 24,235 page loads and 12,961 visits). The most popular post that day was Westminster Rewards Cruelty.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2012:

The most popular posts in 2011 were:

One thing that I’m actually proud to have achieved in 2012 is to drive traffic to the two blogs which have inspired me most along the way, CynoAnarchist and Retrieverman. Surprisingly this blog ranks among the top referrers to both of those great endeavors.

Top referrers to BorderWars in 2012:

  1. facebook.com
  2. retrieverman.wordpress.com
  3. reddit.com
  4. 36ohk6dgmcd1n-c.c.yom.mail.yahoo.net
  5. Google Reader

Slightly different from last year:

Popular search terms this year: self pollination, inbred, australian shepherd, heterozygoats, and inbred people.

Which is better than last year due to “vore” dropping off the list: border wars, self pollination,inbred, australian shepherd, and vore.

There are 4,751 comments on the blog and these were the 5 most active commenters in 2012:

  • 1  Kathy Bittorf 368 COMMENTS
  • 2  LO 223 COMMENTS
  • 3  Retrieverman 175 COMMENTS
  • 4  Jess 123 COMMENTS
  • 5  Sam Eykamp 119 COMMENTS

Compared to 2011:

All in all there’s been a rather remarkable amount of growth over the last two years from near obscurity to vigorous comments and views on some posts which I think have brought attention to issues that are under appreciated and which have significant ethical implications to the human-dog bond and hobby breeding.

More than anything I’d hope that dog culture would change and make most of the issues I’ve written about obsolete and moot.  Unethical breeding schemes to maximize Merle, Harlequin, Bobtail, etc. aren’t so important to any breed that any of the most objectionable breeding practices ever need be done again.  There’s no excuse and very little downside, but tradition and ignorance and callous disregard for the dogs themselves make these posts necessary.

So thanks for coming along for the ride this last year and I hope for many fine returns in 2013.

 

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About Christopher

Christopher Landauer is a fifth generation Colorado native and second generation Border Collie enthusiast. Border Collies have been the Landauer family dogs since the 1960s and Christopher got his first one as a toddler. He began his own modest breeding program with the purchase of Dublin and Celeste in 2006 and currently shares his home with their children Mercury and Gemma as well. His interest in genetics began in AP Chemistry and AP Biology and was honed at Stanford University.