by Web Minister, November 1, 2001

October traffic statistics concerned MIM greatly this month because of the war in Afghanistan. Again we went back one year ago to see how ordinary October traffic stood up to this year's October web traffic.

One of the first things that I will report this year is our by-country traffic outside the United $tates from October 2000, since we never reported it before. Students and others from .edu domains were less than 8% of MIM traffic. In comparison, over 7% of our traffic also came from users from German computer domains! Thanks to the events of September 11th, we might expect heavy international readership of MIM since MIM is based within U.$. borders, but these statistics from 2000 show what a more normal month is like. Perhaps most surprising is our strong Finnish readership. In September 2000 in fact, Finland and Sweden led the way in our international readership!

Countries getting at least 100 pages from the MIM web site in October, 2000

Summary statistics comparing October 2000 and October 2001

As the above indirectly shows, MIM started distributing .zip files of its web site and had 155 requests for such files, thus contributing to the increase in Gbytes transferred.

October 2001 Percentage Change from Previous Year in Top 6 October, 2000 Departments

Web page department	October 2000 hits	October 2001 hits	% change
Home page	2422	4617	+90.6%
Western Mass RAIL	3370	119	-96.5%
MIM Notes	2894	3018	+4.3%
Movies	1068	457	-57.2%
Black Panthers	842	2297	172.8%
Classic Quotes	775	751	-3%

Number of people sent to Amazon Books by MIM
October 1 to 30th 2000 vs. 2001 and % change

56

94

+58%

Note that the figures are lower than the number of people reading the reviews in the bookstore, because they are only for people who actually go to Amazon from our bookstore, presumably to consider making a purchase.

The most popular Afghanistan-related story in October 2001 was "Just how close are Osama bin Laden/CIA ties?" with 147 hits. It's not by a MIM author. Next in popularity on the Afghanistan special page was MIM's statement of mourning in Chinese, with 116 requests for that translation. Next in popularity was "Amerikan response to September 11 misses the boat," with 95 requests and 88 requests for our article on the definition of terrorism.

At this time I'd also like to remind readers that as in past months these statistics include my own reading of the web page. Hence, I'd discount home page readings by 300 hits for the hits just by people developing it and I'd also discount the World Trade Center story hits at 3 hits per story, because those hits are just those of the developers, and not the public.

The single highest readership of any MIM Notes articles was 61 requests for "Live Nude Girls" in MIM Notes 243. In 3rd place was the article about cheerleading in the same issue. As in the last Web Minister report, this fact may surprise readers who might not realize that gender-related readership of MIM Notes is in fact strong. Last month, "Pseudo-feminists beat tambourines for war" was the single most popular text article pulled up.

Spotlight MIM Notes

Web page department	Number of visits
Home page	4617
MIM Notes	3018
World Trade Center collection text files only (no .html)	2482 (up from 1990 previous month)
Black Panther collection	2297
Art	1516
Whatsnew	806
What is MIM?	765
Classic quotes and controversies	751
Movies	457
Myths of Mao	437
Misplaced Attica article	318
FAQ	299
World Trade Center .pdf flyer	294
"What is MIM"	291
One radio show (usprogressintheme.ra)	282
RAIL home page	270
"Three Points" from the "What is MIM?" section	240
Radio-related text documents	226 + 218 .html
Links	206
Search	186

We also had 211 hits on the Spanish article "Panama y los Yanquis" and 169 hits on the general "Notas Rojas" page. We had 147 requests from our French page, 108 for Russian and 85 for German.

Top five theory articles by number of times requested

Theory article	# times requested
Myths of Mao	437
What is MIM? (article)	291
Three points	240
DC murder	181
FBI's war on southern California BPP	162