This really is a great site and it's encouraging to hear a Mod's view on the traffic increase. I love being able to see how many Guests are around and have recently noticed quite an uptick in the number whenever I pop in.
After the first surge, when people came here from our old home, growth lagged; it was there, but nearly imperceptible from, say, February-August 2008. This kind of concerned me, because an election year is "supposed" to bring in traffic. But nonetheless, conservativecave was growing.
There was contraction, beginning about the time decent and civilized people knew that Bo was going to win the presidency, and even more contraction after the actual election; one can call that "dismorale" or something. But traffic wasn't nearly as "down" as I had thought it would be.
This year, 2009, started off a little sluggish, with some peaks that could be attributed to certain events, such as January 20, but the trend was inexorably upward.
But the last two months, July and August, growth has been phenomenal. Not so much in new members--that's increasing, too--but more so in "participation" by members. Members reading and posting more than they used to.
And for the DUmpster specifically, it appears that at long last, we're known among the primitives of Skins's island. Moderators of course can see the origins of "guests," and I'm guessing that more than half the visitors to conservativecave come over here from Skins's island.
Earlier this year, as an experiment, I began posting short stories, and then cross-posting them to freerepublic, just to see what would happen, and it far exceeded all expectations. The intent is
not to rob traffic from freerepublic--of course not; no way--but to encourage more interaction between members of these two sites. I was really surprised to see how that went, and even more surprised that goat glands, at this point, proved to be the biggest traffic-bringer here, from that source.
I was gratified last year when Wretched Excess, so as to accomodate me, raised the "character limit" of posts from 10,000 to 20,000, and then this past summer, when Thor graciously created a special forum for me, not visible to regular members, where I could write as I pleased, at the speed I pleased, and then after something was all done, I could launch the whole thing into a public forum, instead of using all of this
to be continued stuff.
But 99.99% of what's making conservativecave such a witty, illuminating, place is that regular members are reading more, and posting more, and for that I personally thank each and every one of you.
With the cool days of autumn, and the dark nights of winter, coming on, it's reasonable to expect yet another good increase, as people generally spend more time indoors those seasons.
