Another month, another set of statistics. Onward...
Reviewing Statistics
As you may know, January 2010 was YWS' biggest reviewing month ever no matter how you sliced and diced it. Of course, matching that would have been 'nigh impossible, especially in a month with three fewer days. So how did February 2010 fare? Well, lets look.
Total Literary Works: 1,039
A total of 1,039 literary works were published on YWS during the month of February 2010. That amounts to a little more than 37 new works every day, which believe it or not is a little below normal.
Total Literary Comments: 4,435
In all, there were 4,435 comments to literary works this past month. However, this number counts comments by authors so it's somewhat inflated.
Total Literary Comments Minus Comments by Author: 3,640
This number counts all literary comments minus those made by the author. It does not discriminate between "This issss gerat!" reviews and thoughtful reviews.
Total Reviews: 2,951
Of the 3,640 literary comments not made by the author, 2,951 were long enough to count as reviews. That's somewhat of a steep drop and not at all what I was expecting. Still, it does mean that 81% of all comments were reviews, which is historically high. Yet that percentage was 89% in January 2010, and I don't really see a reason for it to go down. My guess is that the lower percentage is due to many of our biggest reviewers participating in the Writing Olympics.
Reviews+: 2,004
These are reviews that are at least 500 characters in length.
Overall
Review wise, February 2010 was not a great month. It wasn't bad either; it was just... average. I think this is mainly due to two factors:
1. The craziness of January. As soon as January was over, there was a steep drop in reviews for about a week. I think people just got burned out.
2. The Writing Olympics. With so many of our most active members doing the Writing Olympics, it's hardly surprising that reviews took a hit.
So, what to do next? I think for March, everyone wants a YWS break! As befitting the largest stretch of the year with no holidays, there will be no special YWS events this month.
Now with that said, how did everything else fare?
Overall Site Statistics
Now for the good news. February 2010 was in some respects the busiest month ever. The Writing Olympics drove a lot of traffic to do the site, and kept people around YWS. One number that astonished me is that of page-views, which were 645,000+ for the month. The makes February 2010 bigger than all but 3 months in YWS' history (December 2008, January 2009, and January 2010). That's incredible when you keep in mind that February has three fewer days than those three other months.
In any case, here are the numbers:
Visits: 42,410
Pageviews: 645,551
Avg. Time Spent on YWS per visit: 14 minutes, 45 seconds
All posts including topics: 13,222
All posts excluding topics: 11,876
Top 10 Countries
1. USA
2. United Kingdom
3. Canada
4. Australia
5. New Zealand
6. Phillipines
7. India
8. Portugal
9. Ireland
10. Czech Republic
Top 10 Cities
1. London
2. Sydney
3. Chicago
4. Bristol, UK
5. Wellington, New Zealand
6. Manchester, UK
7. Auckland, New Zealand
8. Kennewick, Washington
9. Denver, Colorado
10. New York City
Out of the top 7 cities, all but one are outside the United States. That's really quite odd, and I don't think it's ever happened before.
