Six Years of Necessary Facts

[syrakusos]

I launched "Necessary Facts" on January 2, 2011. Since then, I wrote 458 articles. The site has had 178,00 page views. With the new year, I wrote three summaries of the work. 

• "Most Popular Page Views" 
• "Ten Most Popular Page Views" 
• "A Partial index of Ideas Within This Blog"

The blog was named after the book, Necessary Factual Truths by Gregory M. Browne, an Objectivist professor of philosophy whom I met while in college in 2009.  

 

Among the surprises for me is the fact that there are two mirror sites, that I did not create, one in Norway, the other in Japan. Occasionally readers from Russia, India, or China outnumber those from America. Most quizzical is the fact the all time most popular article is "What (if anything) did Dorothy Learn?" about the penultimate scene in the 1939 movie version of The Wizard of Oz.

 

My motivation stems from the fact that as a technical writer and even as a freelance magazine writer, I work for other people.  With "Necessary Facts" I write for myself. I never sought out a lot of visibility. I never invested time in "search engine optimization." I have all of seven followers. Still, the 179,000 page views and the tendrils of global readership are interesting.