Category Archives: Uncategorized

February to April 2016 in review

Last quarter, I switched my review frequency to quarterly, in the hope of being able to provide more substantive updates in each review. Here I am, with my second quarterly review, this time covering the months of February to April 2016.

Things continue to be busy on the job front, but they are also more stable. In addition, I attended to some personal bureaucracy, including submitting my tax return and getting my passport reissued. With most of these items out of the way, I have started focusing more on various long-term projects, and hope to have a lot to report next quarter.

Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia

I created 8 pages in February (the somewhat increased page creation count is because I took a total of four weekdays off that month, in addition to weekends). I created 2 pages in March and 2 pages in April. In total, I created 12 pages in the quarter.

As I mentioned in my previous quarterly review, the pages I am creating right now are not as optimized for pageviews as pages in the past have been. Rather, they are pages in domains where I want to acquire a deeper understanding and believe the research process involved in creating the page will help me. As was the case last time, my focus remains on issues surrounding migration. In fact, of the 12 pages I created in the quarter, only one, namely the page on Amazon Underground, was unrelated to migration.

In addition to creating pages, I also significantly edited and expanded some existing pages, most of them in the domain of migration. Some of the pages I significantly edited in this quarter were: F visa, I-20 (form), H-2A Visa, and Optional Practical Training.

In total, pages I created over my lifetime got 574,352 pageviews over the quarter. You can see the data for all of 2016 (including January, not included in the quarter) here. This is between the 50th percentile estimate (495,000 views) and 75th percentile estimate (640,000 views) that I made in my previous quarterly review. The main reason they were higher than my median estimate was that one page (Park Yeon-mi) got a lot of traffic in March due to related news coverage.

Forecast for future impact: I expect the pageview counts to be roughly similar to the previous quarter: a baseline of around 165,000 pageviews per month, plus a possibility of minor spikes because of some pages being topical. I have reduced the variation in my distribution since I am now more confident of the stability of pageview counts. The distribution is skewed to the right because of potentially huge traffic as a result of some events being highly topical.

  • 2.5th percentile: 350,000 views.
  • 10th percentile: 400,000 views.
  • 25th percentile: 460,000 views.
  • 50th percentile: 520,000 views.
  • 75th percentile: 645,000 views.
  • 90th percentile: 720,000 views.
  • 97.5th percentile: 800,000 views.

Sponsored Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about sponsored Wikipedia editing

Through the quarter, I sponsored Wikipedia page creation by three people:

  • Alex K. Chen (updated page list here): Alex has worked on a large number of pages, including technology company timelines, as well as angel investors and venture capitalists and their funds. In addition to the pages I pay him to create, he also creates a number of other pages.
  • Issa Rice (updated page list here): After completing some pages on taxes and migration, Issa has shifted focus to global health and poverty.
  • Ethan Bashkansky (updated page list here): Ethan has continued to do sporadic work on tax forms.

In April, I announced on the Effective Altruism Forum that I was looking for people interested in Wikipedia editing. As a result of this announcement, I got two new people who have contributed significantly and expect to continue contributing for the next few months:

  • Jesse Clifton (updated page list here) is primarily working on topics related to animal welfare and rights. His first article was a timeline of animal welfare and rights. He has subsequently been working on articles on animal welfare and rights by country. I hope to share more exciting details of his work in my next quarterly review.
  • Sebastian Sanchez (updated page list here) is currently working on topics related to global health. I hope to share exciting details about his progress next quarter.

There are also other editors who are getting started with editing, and I expect to see some of them (and/or other recruits) make further progress during the quarter.

Subject wikis

For background information, see my site page about the subject wikis

I did active work on the subject wikis for a few segments of a few hours, but not in any systematic way that would affect the overall level of content or change the experience of typical visitors. The subject wikis have been doing well traffic-wise, but this is not due to any additional effort on my part.

Groupprops got a total of 261,975 pageviews this quarter compared to 244,136 for the corresponding quarter last year. The seasonal pattern in traffic was very similar between quarters, so much so that it is visually striking when you look at the graphs in Google Analytics. Market declined (47,781 compared to 65,367) and Calculus stayed stable (60,241 versus 58,499).

WikiHow

For background information, see my site page about WikiHow

I wrote one new WikiHow article: How to Avoid Crowds in Mass Transit. The article has received 491 views so far. I estimate that about 200 of those views were driven by my Facebook share of the article, and another 50 were a result of initial publication, plus my own views. The remaining views are probably organic.

Two of the WikiHow articles I have created over my lifetime now have over 1,000 views: How to Use Git Effectively (at 1,467 views) and How to Ride BART from the East Bay to San Francisco (At 1,362 views).

Other written content

I finally got around to publishing the blog post How did we get here? Chinese Exclusion Act buildup (1848-1872). The post summarized my understanding of the historical backdrop that built the momentum for the Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States.

I also worked on a few other drafts. I expect to publish some of these drafts this quarter, as well as start on (and possibly finish) some new posts.

I also posted to the Effective Altruism Forum to recruit Wikipedia editors.

Entertainment

I finished watching a few Korean dramas on Viki as they wrapped up: Madame Antoine, Descendants of the Sun, and Marriage Contract. In addition, I watched one older Korean drama: City Hunter.

I expect to be spending less time watching Korean dramas going forward, as I start picking up the pace on some more long-term projects during the weekends, now that some of the bureaucratic activities are completed.

November 2015 to January 2016 in review

After October 2015, I decided to switch away from monthly reviews to quarterly reviews. Depending on whether I feel I have clearer, more substantive updates at a quarterly level, and whether my readers agree, I will maintain this review frequency. This post reviews the past quarter (November 2015 to January 2016) while also offering a preview into the current quarter (February to April 2016).

Things have been busy on the job front in a variety of ways, but are now getting more stable (our company hired a bit more). I expect to not get a lot of time for the other activities but I do expect that the time I get for these will come in a more steady stream than it has in the past few months.

Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia

I made one page in November, two pages in December, and four pages in January. You can see the lists of pages I created by month using the tags in Wikipedia Views. In particular, you can get the data at these respective links for the three months: November, December, and January.

I intend to create somewhere between 3 and 10 pages a month for each of the months of February, March, and April. So far in February, I have already created 5 pages, and have some more drafts ready to be pushed out.

The pages I am creating right now are not as optimized for pageviews as pages in the past have been. Rather, they are pages in domains where I want to acquire a deeper understanding and believe the research process involved in creating the page will help me. At present, my focus is on key aspects of migration laws, migration forms, and migration procedures in the United States. I intend to branch out more to other countries and to return to migration history (that I worked on in October and November) after finishing up a few more articles on migration procedures.

I do still hope to facilitate the creation of pages that are generically popular and underprovisioned. In recent months, I have successfully done so through sponsored Wikipedia editing. The people I have been paying include:

  • Alex K. Chen (updated page list here): Alex worked on timeline pages in January and has been working on pages about investors starting February.
  • Issa Rice (updated page list here): Issa created many great pages on important forms related to taxation in the United States, and is now transitioning to work on migration forms. See for instance the pageview counts in January for pages Issa created in January.
  • Ethan Bashkansky (updated page list here): Ethan is starting out with tax forms.

Measurement changes: With some help from Issa, I switched my data source for Wikipedia Views from stats.grok.se (which had stopped updating) to the Wikimedia API, which is probably a better and more stable option going forward. One consequence of this change is that it is now possible to exclude obvious bots and spiders from the view counts, and data from January 2016 onward excludes those numbers. Hence, there is an artificial drop from December 2015 to January 2016 arising directly as a result of that exclusion. The drop mostly affects the “long tail” pages that get very few monthly views.

Impact: Here are the pageview counts for pages I have created over my lifetime in the three months of the quarter: 180,352 in November, 196,227 in December, and 172,159 in January. The total across the three months was 548,738. New content I created has gotten under 1000 views per month. The drop from December to January is explained by the data source change. The low pageview count of newly created pages is explained by the focus on maximizing my learning rather than creating pages with a huge amount of interest.

Forecast for future impact: I expect the pageview counts in the next quarter to come out a little lower than the previous quarter, primarily due to the data source change. My estimate range for pages I created is as follows:

  • 2.5th percentile: 275,000 views.
  • 10th percentile: 340,000 views.
  • 25th percentile: 410,000 views.
  • 50th percentile: 495,000 views.
  • 75th percentile: 640,000 views.
  • 90th percentile: 725,000 views.
  • 97.5th percentile: 880,000 views.

The estimates are a little lower than the past because of the bot-filtering, as well as the shorter length of the forthcoming quarter: 89 days as opposed to 91-92 days for most quarters.

The dispersion of the estimates is similar to that for a month. This is because the greater centrality arising from summing up over more data points is balanced out by the greater uncertainty arising from looking farther out into the future.

Subject wikis

For background information, see my site page about the subject wikis

I did active work on the subject wikis for a few segments of a few hours, but not in any systematic way that would affect the overall level of content or change the experience of typical visitors. The subject wikis have been doing well traffic-wise, but this is not due to any additional effort on my part.

Groupprops got a total of 254,100 pageviews this quarter compared to 232,786 for the corresponding quarter last year. The seasonal pattern in traffic was very similar between quarters, so much so that it is visually striking when you look at the graphs in Google Analytics. Market declined (47,429 compared to 58,823) and Calculus stayed stable (56,258 versus 54,466).

WikiHow

For background information, see my site page about WikiHow

I wrote two new WikiHow articles: How to Use Amazon Route 53 and How to Use Git Effectively. The latter of these articles appears to be the fastest of my WikiHow articles in acquiring pageviews, though it’s still early days to know just how far it will rise.

EA Forum blog post making forecasts about GiveWell money moved

In December 2015, I published a blog post in the Effective Altruism Forum with an analysis of the amounts of money moved to GiveWell top charities and forecasts about money moved for 2015, based on the information available at the time. I also published a follow-up blog post and some comments on my own posts. The actual money moved turned out to be at around the 90th percentile of my estimate, as I noted in a later update at the bottom of the post.

Entertainment

I have continued to watch the Korean TV series Remember: War of the Son on Viki, which is finishing up in February. Other Korean TV series I have been watching include Madame Antoine. Thanks to these TV series, I have picked up many words and phrases in Korean, and can generally understand a decent fraction (excluding some nuances) without subtitles if I am also watching the video alongside (so I can see people’s facial expressions and other contextual cues).

I also watched the Bollywood movie Jazbaa, which I later discovered was a remake of a Korean film Seven Days (something that is not quite surprising, given that some of the themes seemed distinctly reminiscent of the Korean TV series I had watched).

I also found a blog, E Drama Clouds by Evelyn Lee, that offers high-quality commentary on Korean TV series.

On the music front, I bought a few MP3 songs and listened to some more. My recent purchases include Hello, Wake Me Up, and Dark Horse.

2015 in review

This is my first annual review blog post. I previously did month-in-review posts that you can see here. I now intend to switch to quarterly reviews plus an annual review.

Some overall background

2015 was my first year of full-time work. My current job is at a startup in San Francisco, and work levels were quite high this year. Consequently, I had less time for the other things I customarily do. With that said, I believe I made reasonable use of the time I did have. I expect to have even less time in 2016, but to make correspondingly better use of it.

2015 was also the first year that I experimented with paying people on a large scale to do things I might otherwise have done in my spare time, such as sponsored Wikipedia editing. This is discussed more later in the page.

Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia

In 2015, the pages I created were largely in a few domains:

The above isn’t a comprehensive list of pages I created, but it should give a flavor of the key themes.

Starting April 2015, I started sponsored Wikipedia editing by Alex K. Chen. Some of the pages I had been considering creating myself I therefore paid him to create. Some examples of these pages include timeline of Uber, timeline of Reddit, timeline of Square, Inside Philanthropy, and The Humane League. You can see his entire contribution history here; note that not all the pages he created, even after I started paying him, were created at my behest.

Impact in 2015: 2015 was a slow year for Wikipedia editing for me, compared to the peak of 2014, but it was still higher than 2013 and significantly above previous years. Pages I created in 2015 got 283,445 views in 2015, with a monthly run rate of about 37,000 (note that the annual total is less than that obtained by extrapolating from the monthly run rate, since many pages were created after the beginning of the year).

Pages I created over my lifetime got a total of 1,983,596 views, up from 1,118,970 last year. Most of the increase is attributable to pages created in 2014 (that now had a full year rather than only the partial year they got in 2014) and 2015 (that didn’t even exist in 2014). The monthly pageview count is currently in the 175,000-200,000 range.

Content plans for 2016: I intend to only create pages related to taxes and migration, though it’s possible I’ll create a few other pages on the side while investigating specific issues. In 2015, pages I created related to migration got about 70,000 views, and I had created only a couple of pages on taxes. This will change significantly in 2016. I expect the pages about taxes to get a large number of views, and the pages about migration to get a decent but not a large number of views. My reason for focusing on these is independent interest in understanding the topics, and the difficulty of outsourcing this work given its complexity (with that said, I am experimenting with paying others to create some pages in these domains).

Forecast for 2016: Extrapolating from the monthly pageview count of 175,000-200,000 at the end of 2015, I expect between 2.1 million and 2.4 million views for pages I have already created. I expect pages I create in 2016 to get between 0 and 300,000 views over the year, so that the expected total is between 2.1 million and 2.7 million.

Subject wikis

General background information: My site page about the subject wikis

The subject wikis saw near-zero maintenance effort from me (other than looking at error reports and making fixes accordingly). Overall usage increased somewhat.

Here are pageview counts for the most important subject wikis:

  • Groupprops: 881,735 pageviews, compared to 740,227 in 2014.
  • Market: 209,792 pageviews, compared to 224,132 in 2014.
  • Calculus: 210,826 pageviews, compared to 182,937 in 2014.

Content plans for 2016: None.

Forecast for 2016: I expect the year-over-year increase to taper off in 2016. Specifically, I expect the increase from 2015 to 2016 to be under 10%.

WikiHow

For background information, see my site page about WikiHow

I started editing WikiHow in May 2015. In 2015, I significantly edited one existing WikiHow article and created a few new articles.

Blogging

I blogged in three locations in 2015:

  • I wrote 17 blog posts for Open Borders: The Case. You can see all my blog posts for the site here. I had originally founded the site back in 2012; you can read more about my interest in the subject here. Most of this blogging was in the first three months (January to March) and in July and August, with a couple of posts in between. I haven’t blogged since August 4, when my last post was published.
  • I wrote three blog posts (plus one post submitted on behalf of somebody else who didn’t have an account at the time) on the Effective Altruism Forum. You can see all my posts here and read more about my connection with the subject here.
  • I wrote one blog post on Less Wrong: The great decline in Wikipedia pageviews (condensed version). I published the longer version on my site here.

Content plans for 2016: I intend to return to blogging for Open Borders: The Case, probably after finishing up more of my migration-related Wikipedia pages. I’d like to return to blogging after I have a more solid understanding of many of the topics that I’ll be touching on in future blog posts. I might also do one or more blog posts for the other two sites, but don’t have definite plans on those fronts.

Entertainment

I bought about 20 MP3 songs, ranging from standard pop music to Bollywood movie songs (total annual cost $22.78). I still maintained my Pandora subscription, but shifted more of my non-purchased-song consumption to YouTube.

Similarly, I maintained my Eros Now subscription, but didn’t use it much. I did start subscribing to Viki (a site that specializes in Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese dramas and has high-quality translated subtitles plus in-video comments by other watchers) for a variety of reasons, but primarily so that I could watch Remember.

Plan for 2016: Pretty similar to 2015. I expect to re-evaluate my Pandora and Eros subscriptions closer to renewal, and re-evaluate my Viki subscription after Remember finishes airing.

Switching review frequency to quarterly, plus special annual update

My month-in-review blog posts have been great for helping me keep track of what I’m doing, but the frequency has been a little too high for each update to add significant marginal value. Based on the response (or lack thereof) to the updates so far, I believe it would make sense to do quarterly reviews instead. Since my last monthly review was finished in October, the first quarter for which I’ll do a review will be November 2015 to January 2016, and the review will be published in February 2016.

In addition, I’ll aim to do a special annual update by the end of January 2016 summarizing what I’ve done in 2015. The annual review won’t be synced with the quarters, which I consider a plus because it means there will be no month when I need to prepare two reviews.

The reduction in time spent preparing monthly updates will help me do more stuff that I can then include in those updates!

UPDATE: The annual review will probably be delayed by a few weeks as I straighten out some of my other affairs.

October 2015 in review

This is the thirteenth of my month-in-review posts. I started month-in-review posts in October 2014. You can see my first post here and my previous month-in-review post here.

Some overall background

This month was quite busy for me work-wise, so my non-work output was very limited.

Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia

I created the following Wikipedia pages this month:

  • Neil Barsky: Barsky is a filmmaker and journalist, best known for making the documentary Koch and for co-founding The Marshall Project (disclosure: I created that Wikipedia article).
  • Chae Chan Ping v. United States, better known as the Chinese Exclusion Case. The creation of the page was an outgrowth of my efforts to better understand the events surrounding the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States.
  • Angell Treaty of 1880, also known as the Treaty Regulating Immigration from China. Like the previous page, this was part of my exploration into the Chinese Exclusion Act.

I also made a bunch of edits to timeline pages, including the timeline of Uber, timeline of Snapchat, timeline of Facebook, timeline of Twitter, timeline of Pinterest.

Content plans for November: I intend to make a few more pages on topics related to the Chinese Exclusion Act, and also finish my page on consular nonreviewability. I might also make pages on some court cases or BIA decisions related to migration, particularly those that have bearing on the idea of consular nonreviewability or particular social group. I don’t have clear expectations regarding how many pages I will create. I am also interested in editing existing pages, and also in creating new pages, on content related to charities and charity evaluation, in preparation for the end-of-year giving season.

Pageview counts and impact: The numbers below are for pageviews in October 2015, and are based on data collated by stats.grok.se and further summarized at Wikipedia Views. As with all numbers from stats.grok.se, note that these numbers exclude mobile pageviews but include bots. One day was missing; adjusting for the missing day would make all counts go up by an extra 1/30 (or 3.33%).

Comparison with forecast: The number of pageviews (201,317) was a little above the 90th percentile in probability distribution for the number of pageviews. Adjusting for the missing day continues to keep it above the 90th percentile but still well below the 97.5th percentile estimate of 225,000.

November forecast: After poorly centered forecasts for two consecutive months, with one of them having the actual value outside the 95% range, it’s time to rethink my methodology. It seems that there are a few pages where the number of pageviews could vary dramatically by month, and these drive most of the variation in the estimates. Two pages that appear to be most responsible for month-to-month variation are Internet.org and Park Yeon-mi. In addition, in the month of November, another page that I expect will get a lot of traffic is the page I created on Giving Tuesday.

Therefore, I will make a forecast for the distribution of total pageview counts for pages I created excluding these three pages.

  • 2.5th percentile: 95,000 pageviews.
  • 10th percentile: 110,000 pageviews.
  • 25th percentile: 125,000 pageviews.
  • 50th percentile: 141,000 pageviews.
  • 75th percentile: 166,000 pageviews.
  • 90th percentile: 190,000 pageviews.
  • 97.5th percentile: 215,000 pageviews.

Here are my percentile estimates including the three pages:

  • 2.5th percentile: 110,000 pageviews.
  • 10th percentile: 135,000 pageviews.
  • 25th percentile: 148,000 pageviews.
  • 50th percentile: 176,000 pageviews.
  • 75th percentile: 205,000 pageviews.
  • 90th percentile: 230,000 pageviews.
  • 97.5th percentile: 280,000 pageviews.

Note the huge room on the right, reflecting uncertainty about the number of pageviews of those three pages.

Subject wikis

General background information: My site page about the subject wikis

I did not spend any time on the subject wikis this month. Year-on-year traffic growth on Groupprops was quite small, at about 6%. It’s not clear what’s driving the variation by month in year-on-year traffic growth.

Metric Oct 2015 Sep 2015 Aug 2015 Oct 2014 Sep 2014 Aug 2014
Pageviews 111,203 73,510 41,813 104,663 60,637 36,844
Sessions 55,802 37,313 21,775 49,971 31,475 17,778
Pages/session 1.99 1.97 1.92 2.09 1.93 2.07
Pageviews in sessions with at least 5 pageviews 35,440 23,066 13,046 36,456 18,157 13,205

Here are pageview counts for the other subject wikis:

  • Market: 22,697 pageviews, versus 24,028 for October 2014.
  • Calculus: 24,430 pageviews, versus 22,170 for October 2014.

Comparison with forecast: The value of 111,206 pageviews was close to the median estimate of 113,000 pageviews, and within my 50% probability interval estimate (95,000-130,000 pageviews) and 80% probability interval estimate (80,000-150,000 pageviews).

November forecast: The number of pageviews in November 2014 was 99,940. Assuming a similar 6% year-on-year growth, my median estimate for November 2015 is 105,500 pageviews. My 50% probability interval estimate is 90,000-120,000 pageviews and my 80% probability interval estimate is 80,000-135,000 pageviews. The intervals have contracted somewhat owing to greater confidence about the slowdown in year-on-year growth.

Other things

I expect the extended weekend of Thanksgiving to be mostly work-free and therefore I hope to get some content creation work done at the time. I intend to have published, by the end of the month, one blog post for the Effective Altruism Forum and one blog post for Open Borders: The Case. However, I’m not very sure I’ll accomplish either goal.

Entertainment

I enjoyed listening to and bought the MP3 for Love Me like You Do, sung by Ellie Goulding and used for the movie Fifty Shades of Grey. I also listened to Gangnam Style and the female version featuring Hyuna and Psy, which I enjoyed but not enough to buy either.

September 2015 in review

This is the twelfth of my month-in-review posts. I started month-in-review posts in October 2014. You can see my first post here and my previous month-in-review post here.

Some overall background

This month was quite busy for me work-wise, so my non-work output was very limited.

Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia

I created the following Wikipedia pages this month:

I also made edits to Wikipedia pages I had created previously, including Doing Good Better, Gusto (software) (renamed from ZenPayroll), and Tracy Chou.

I also started a draft of the Wikipedia page on consular nonreviewability, which I hope to publish in October. Realistically, I don’t expect to do any more Wikipedia work this month.

The numbers below are for pageviews in September 2015, and are based on data collated by stats.grok.se and further summarized at Wikipedia Views. As with all numbers from stats.grok.se, note that these numbers exclude mobile pageviews but include bots.

Comparison with forecast: The number of pageviews (217,908) fell outside of my 95% probability interval of 115,000-200,000. All the unexpected component of the variation came from Internet.org, which became a big news subject in India after being associated with the Digital India Initiative. The pageview count for this page was 62,536 in September, compared to 11,437 in August. Even excluding this page, there appears to have been a slight overall increase in pageviews, which might reflect the fact that July and August were “summer months” whereas September is a “back-to-school” month. There was also a slight increase in traffic to pages about venture capitalists and angel investors, which might have been coincidental or may again reflect seasonal cycles.

October forecast: The extra traffic to Internet.org persisted through the first few days of October. Accounting for how this shades the traffic estimates, here are my estimates:

  • My point estimate (for the median) is 157,500 pageviews. In other words, I believe there is a 50% probability that the number of pageviews will be above this number, and a 50% probability that it will be below or equal to this number.
  • My 50% probability interval estimate is 145,000-180,000. In other words, I expect a 50% probability that the number of pageviews will fall within this interval, a 25% probability that it will fall below 145,000, and a 25% probability that it will be above 180,000.
  • My 80% probability interval estimate is 133,000-200,000. In other words, I expect an 80% probability that the number of pageviews will fall within this interval, a 10% probability that it will be below 133,000, and a 10% probability that it will be above 200,000.
  • My 95% probability interval estimate is 120,000-225,000. In other words, I expect a 95% probability that the number of pageviews will fall within this interval, a 2.5% probability that is will be below 120,000, and a 2.5% probability that it will be above 225,000.

I’ve also described my estimates in terms of values at particular percentiles in my probability distribution below:

  • 2.5th: 120,000
  • 10th: 133,000
  • 25th: 145,000
  • 50th: 157,500
  • 75th: 180,000
  • 90th: 200,000
  • 97.5th: 225,000

WikiHow

For background information, see my site page about WikiHow

I created a new WikiHow page How to Use Amazon EC2 Spot Instances. As of October 5, 2015, it has 75 views.

I also made some edits and updates to WikiHow pages I had created previously. The pageview counts as of October 5, 2015, as well as the increments since September 5, 2015, are provided below:

Subject wikis

General background information: My site page about the subject wikis

I did not spend any time on the subject wikis this month. Year-on-year traffic growth has reverted to about 20% after slumping to 10% in August.

Below is the traffic information for Groupprops.

Metric Sep 2015 Aug 2015 Jul 2015 Sep 2014 Aug 2014 Jul 2014
Pageviews 73,510 41,813 38,388 60,637 36,844 34,973
Sessions 37,313 21,775 19,400 31,475 17,778 16,495
Pages/session 1.97 1.92 1.98 1.93 2.07 2.12
Pageviews in sessions with at least 5 pageviews 23,066 13,046 12,616 18,157 13,205 12,887

Here are pageview counts for the other subject wikis:

  • Market: 20,745 pageviews, versus 19,550 for September 2014.
  • Calculus: 21,579 pageviews, versus 17,843 for September 2014.

Comparison with forecast: For Groupprops, the total number of pageviews (73,510) was close to my point estimate of 66,500, and well within my 50% probability interval estimate (54,000-80,000) and 80% probability interval estimate (45,000-90,000).

October forecast: Last year, Groupprops for 104,663 pageviews in October. My point estimate for October 2015 is 113,000 pageviews. My 50% probability interval estimate is 95,000-130,000 pageviews and my 80% probability interval estimate is 80,000-150,000 pageviews.

Entertainment

I re-watched some episodes of Gilmore Girls. I also bought the MP3 for Wrecking Ball. I also enjoyed listening to Can’t Forget You, Arjun and Jonita Gandhi’s remake of my all-time favorite song, Tujhe Bhula Diya.

Notes: (a) Apologies for delay with publication; I had a bunch of other stuff I wanted to get done. (b) I’ve shortened the update to exclude domains where I didn’t add anything this month and where the passive impact of my cumulative work (as measured in e.g. number of pageviews) was insignificant. Of course, some of these may reappear in future monthly updates if I make contributions on those fronts in those months or their cumulative contribution becomes big enough. This selectivity keeps the update short enough for me to squeeze in the time to publish it.

August 2015 in review

This is the eleventh of my month-in-review posts. I started month-in-review posts in October 2014. You can see my first post here and my previous month-in-review post here.

Some overall background

The pace of work has started picking up again after a (somewhat) relaxed July, so progress for me in non-work dimensions was low overall. I expect this situation to continue (and worsen) till at least March of next year (with the potential exception of December), though I hope to better prioritize within non-work options as time goes along, so that my overall non-work output will hopefully remain roughly constant or even increase.

Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia

I created the following Wikipedia pages this month:

  • Animal Charity Evaluators, created Sunday, August 2, 2015, in about an hour. Got 165 views in August.
  • Holden Karnofsky, created Tuesday, August 4, 2015, in about an hour, part of it spent on a BART ride. Got 400 views in August.
  • Tracy Chou, created Wednesday, August 5, 2015, in about an hour, part of it spent on a BART ride. Got 539 views in August.
  • Jim Greenbaum, created Sunday, August 9, 2015, in about an hour. Got 88 views in August.
  • Operation Streamline, created Sunday, August 23, 2015, after several hours of drafts in BART rides. Got 91 views in August.

I made substantial progress with my user-space draft for particular social group but it did not reach the stage where I feel comfortable publishing it to main space.

The numbers below are for pageviews in August 2015, and are based on data collated by stats.grok.se and further summarized at Wikipedia Views. As with all numbers from stats.grok.se, note that these numbers exclude mobile pageviews but include bots.

Comparison with forecast: I had forecast 152,000 pageviews for all pages I created, and the actual count of 150,407 was quite close. It fell within my 50% probability interval estimate of 140,000-170,000, my 80% probability interval estimate of 115,000-200,000, and my 95% probability interval estimate of 100,000-225,000.

September forecast: Since September has only 30 days (compared to 31 in August) I will adjust my monthly estimates for September slightly downward to account for this. I have also shrunk my intervals somewhat, taking into account the high proximity of recent estimates to my point estimates. Here are my new estimates:

  • My point estimate (for the median) is 147,500 pageviews. In other words, I believe there is a 50% probability that the number of pageviews will be above this number, and a 50% probability that it will be below or equal to this number.
  • My 50% probability interval estimate is 141,000-160,000. In other words, I expect a 50% probability that the number of pageviews will fall within this interval, a 25% probability that it will fall below 141,000, and a 25% probability that it will be above 160,000.
  • My 80% probability interval estimate is 130,000-180,000. In other words, I expect an 80% probability that the number of pageviews will fall within this interval, a 10% probability that it will be below 130,000, and a 10% probability that it will be above 180,000.
  • My 95% probability interval estimate is 115,000-200,000. In other words, I expect a 95% probability that the number of pageviews will fall within this interval, a 2.5% probability that is will be below 115,000, and a 2.5% probability that it will be above 200,000.

I’ve also described my estimates in terms of values at particular percentiles in my probability distribution below:

  • 2.5th: 115,000
  • 10th: 130,000
  • 25th: 141,000
  • 50th: 147,500
  • 75th: 160,000
  • 90th: 180,000
  • 97.5th: 200,000

WikiHow

For background information, see my site page about WikiHow

I created two new WikiHow pages on Saturday, August 29:

My previous pages have continued to get more pageviews:

Subject wikis

General background information: My site page about the subject wikis

I did not spend any time on the subject wikis this month. There was a little year-on-year traffic growth but it’s down to about 10% (from 20%+ a few months ago). This probably reflects a huge jump that occurred around July/August of last year.

Below is the traffic information for Groupprops.

Metric Aug 2015 Jul 2015 Jun 2015 Aug 2014 Jul 2014 Jun 2014
Pageviews 41,813 38,388 48,593 36,844 34,973 38,363
Sessions 21,775 19,400 24,136 17,778 16,495 18,695
Pages/session 1.92 1.98 2.01 2.07 2.12 2.05
Pageviews in sessions with at least 5 pageviews 13,046 12,616 16,314 13,205 12,887 13,065

Here are pageview counts for the other subject wikis:

  • Market: 10,490 pageviews, versus 11,112 for August 2014.
  • Calculus: 12,570 pageviews, versus 8,822 for August 2014.

Comparison with forecast: For Groupprops, the total number of pageviews (41,813) was close to my point estimate of 40,500, and well within my 50% probability interval estimate (33,000-50,000) and 80% probability interval estimate (20,000-70,000).

September forecast: My point estimate for pageviews in September for Groupprops is 66,500 (about 10% more than the September count). My 50% probability interval estimate is 54,000-80,000, my 80% probability interval estimate is 45,000-90,000, and my 95% probability interval estimate is 40,000-120,000. The estimates are a bit wider than for previous months, because the counts are a little more uncertain owing to details about when and how the academic year starts in various colleges.

Open borders

General background information: My site page about open borders

One blog post of mine was published to the site: The bait-and-switch from fiscally realistic to humane, or, the weakness of the mainstream moderate case against deportations. I also made some edits to site background pages but did not get time to draft the blog posts I had hoped to. However, two of the Wikipedia pages I worked on this month (Operation Streamline and particular social group) were related to my interest in migration policy.

Other sites and forms of online presence

  • My personal site vipulnaik.com (on which you’re reading this post) got 2,000 views (excluding spam referrals and fake views in Google Analytics) (WordPress showed 2,073 views) in August 2015.
  • Wikipedia Views got 312 views (excluding spam referrals and fake views) in August 2015.

Friends’ projects

Entertainment

I re-watched some episodes of Gilmore Girls. I also bought the MP3 for Rolling in the Deep.

July 2015 in review

This is the tenth of my month-in-review posts. I started month-in-review posts in October 2014. You can see my first post here and my previous month-in-review post here.

Some overall background

This was a somewhat relaxed month at work for me, relative to the last three months, but still more hectic than the beginning of the year. I was able to spend more time on Wikipedia editing and blogging, but many of my personal projects have exhausted low-hanging fruit, so visible progress was relatively low.

Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia

I created the following Wikipedia pages this month:

  • Shashank Khaitan, created Tuesday, July 7, mostly on a BART ride.
  • Shervin Pishevar, created partly on a BART ride on Friday, July 17, and then completed on the morning of Saturday, July 18.
  • Catch and release (U.S. immigration policy), created on the evening of Saturday, July 18, starting from a long pending draft on my computer.
  • Expedited removal, created on the morning of Sunday, July 19.
  • Reinstatement of removal, created on the evening of Thursday, July 23, after a drafting process that spanned several BART rides. The drafting took longer because I was reading some of the referenced material in greater detail than I needed for the Wikipedia page.
  • Doing Good Better, created on the evening of Monday, July 27 after a draft during a BART ride. The page is about a book by William MacAskill released the very next day about effective altruism.
  • Stipulated removal, created over a morning and evening BART ride on Tuesday, July 28.

The numbers below are for pageviews in July 2015, and are based on data collated by stats.grok.se and further summarized at Wikipedia Views. As with all numbers from stats.grok.se, note that these numbers exclude mobile pageviews but include bots.

Comparison with forecast: I had forecast 150,000 pageviews for the month of July for all pages I created. The actual number of pageviews (148,556), was a little lower. The number falls well within my 50% estimate (135,000-175,000), my 80% estimate (110,000-220,000), and my 95% estimate (85,000-265,000).

August forecast: My point estimate for the August pageview count is 152,000 pageviews, adjusted upward slightly from the July estimate to account for the many new pages I created. My 50% probability interval estimate is 140,000-170,000 pageviews, my 80% probability interval estimate is 115,000-200,000 pageviews, and my 95% probability interval estimate is 100,000-225,000 pageviews. While my point estimate hasn’t changed, I have narrowed my intervals somewhat in light of the relatively narrow intervals in which past pageview counts have fallen. Also, I want to avoid the phenomenon where I simply choose wide ranges and feel happy to hit bull’s eye. A 50% probability interval estimate should be violated about half the time!

WikiHow

For background information, see my site page about WikiHow

I did not create any new WikiHow pages. The pages I had created in May got additional pageviews, as described below:

For July, I had been considering making one WikiHow page, focused on how to reduce Amazon EC2 costs. This will be based on my experience at my workplace, but won’t involve any information specific to my job. I believe that laying out this information clearly will be helpful to everybody: users can save costs, and more efficient use of the computational infrastructure of the world means more value can be squeezed out of it. I didn’t get time to make that page, but I just might do it this month. It’s not a priority though.

Subject wikis

General background information: My site page about the subject wikis

I did not spend any time on the subject wikis. Year-on-year traffic growth seems to have declined, though it’s still nonzero. I expect that we’re running out of whatever caused the 20% jump (accounting for seasonality) around the middle of last year, so year-on-year growth will now be sub-10%.

Metric Jul 2015 Jun 2015 May 2015 Jul 2014 Jun 2014 May 2014
Pageviews 38,388 48,593 77,232 34,973 38,363 63,211
Sessions 19,400 24,136 37,834 16,495 18,695 31,225
Pages/session 1.98 2.01 2.04 2.12 2.05 2.02
Pageviews in sessions with at least 5 pageviews 12,616 16,314 26,016 12,887 13,065 20,727

Here are pageview counts for the other subject wikis:

  • Market: 9,248 pageviews, versus 11,148 for July 2014.
  • Calculus: 9,813 pageviews, versus 7,576 for July 2014.

Comparison with forecast: The total number of pageviews for Groupprops (38,388) was just a little short of the lower end of the 50% probability interval (40,000-52,000) and far from the point estimate of 46,000. It was well within the 80% interval estimate of 33,000-60,000 and the 95% interval estimate of 25,000-70,000.

August forecast: In August 2014, Groupprops had a total of 36,844 views. Using the ~10% year-on-year growth seen in July, my point estimate for August is 40,500 pageviews. My 50% probability interval estimate is 33,000-50,000 pageviews. My 80% probability interval estimate is 27,000-60,000 pageviews, and my 95% probability interval estimate is 20,000-70,000 pageviews. (Note that the bulk of Groupprops’ traffic is seen in the months of September-November, while June-August is the slowest season).

Open borders

General background information: My site page about open borders

My blog post titled Can deportation be a key crime-fighting strategy? was published on the site on July 29, 2015. Also, many of the Wikipedia pages I created this month were related to migration policy. Specifically, I created a large number of pages related to various aspects of immigration enforcement, including various types of deportation and removal.

I intend to do 2-4 blog posts for the site this month (posts that are already partly or fully drafted and waiting to go out the door; plus some quick news-type posts). In addition, I hope to get going with bits and pieces of the site revamp, which I currently see as rewriting existing pages to incorporate more recent material and better overall conceptualization of the issue.

Other sites and forms of online presence

  • This website (vipulnaik.com) got 2,891 views in the month of July according to Google Analytics (and 1,976 views according to WordPress Analytics). I implemented the spam filter exclusion for the site on July 4, and the count of spam-free views measured by Google Analytics for this date onward is 1,643. Extrapolating based on higher overall traffic in the first couple of days gives a number similar to the WordPress Analytics count.
  • The views for Quora content created by me were as follows: about 5500 for questions, about 20000 for answers, and about 200 for posts.
  • Wikipedia Views got 1,721 views according to Google Analytics, but excluding spam referrals gave a view count of 298 for the time period July 4 – July 31 (I implemented the spam referral exclusion only on July 4).

Friends’ projects

  • AI Impacts, started by Katja Grace and Paul Christiano, and managed primarily by Katja, got 3,826 views.
  • Cause Prioritization Wiki, started and managed by Issa Rice, got 1,167 views overall and 1,052 views excluding spam referrals.

Entertainment

I watched Mary Kom. I did not purchase any new music in July.

June 2015 in review

This is the ninth of my month-in-review posts. I started month-in-review posts in October 2014. You can see my first post here and my previous month-in-review post here.

Some overall background

This was a very busy month for me at work, more so than most preceding months. The latter half of the month was in particular very crunched. The crunch ended on July 1, so I expect the workload in July to be more representative of the business-as-usual scenario (which might still be pretty hectic!).

Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia

I created the following Wikipedia pages this month, both in the second week when the workload hadn’t picked up fully:

I also made updates to these pages:

Unfortunately, stats.grok.se, whose numbers I use to feed in to Wikipedia Views, is missing one day from the month of June. Therefore, the numbers reported here are about 3% lower than the actual numbers. As with all numbers from stats.grok.se, note that these numbers exclude mobile pageviews but include bots.

Comparison with forecast: I had forecast 160,000 pageviews for the month of June for all pages I created. The actual number of pageviews (138,745) was significantly lower, and even adjusting for the missing date (to get a total of 143,529 views), there’s still a huge gap. The gap was in the opposite direction to the direction of my gaps in previous months. For instance, for May my point estimate for the number of pageviews was 151,000, but the actual pageview count (excluding two days for which stats weren’t available) was 174,425. The steady underestimation trend had led me to up my June estimate to 160,000. However, the pageview count did fall safely within my 80% probability interval estimate of 125,000-215,000.

The key source of month-to-month variation appears to be the pageview counts for some highly popular pages. In April and May, the Wikipedia page about Internet.org got a lot of pageviews because of the topicality of the topic. There were no comparably topical pages in June, explaining the lower pageview count.

July forecast: My point estimate for the July pageview count is 150,000 pageviews, adjusted downward from the June estimate but still higher than the actual June value. For July pageviews, my 50% probability interval estimate is 135,000-175,000, my 80% probability interval estimate is 110,000-220,000, and my 95% probability interval estimate is 85,000-265,000.

Here is a list of Wikipedia articles I am considering creating for the month of July:

  • Shashank Khaitan, a Bollywood movie director whose directorial debut was the movie Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania. I believe there’s enough material online on Khaitan to justify a Wikipedia page, and was mildly surprised that the page didn’t already exist.
  • Bored Panda, one of the top viral websites, broadly in the genre of BuzzFeed (before it became an uber-serious news outlet) and PlayBuzz. I was surprised to see that Bored Panda didn’t have a Wikipedia entry.
  • Form I-140, a United States immigration form.
  • Expedited removal, a concept in United States immigration enforcement where people may be deported directly without their deportation case going through a judicial process.
  • Arriving Alien, a concept in United States immigration enforcement for somebody who has recently arrived.
  • Immediate Relative (U.S. immigration law), a concept in United States immigration law for a type of relationship that makes one eligible to apply for family-based immigration categories that do not have numerical limits.

I am also considering making edits and improvements to these pages:

  • Cecilia Munoz, a member of Barack Obama’s administration who previously worked as an immigrant rights advocate but has recently come under flak for defending the Obama administration’s record deportation numbers. I’d like to update the page to reflect recent events, and also uncomment some portions in the Wikipedia page that were commented out due to a lack of diverse citations.

WikiHow

For background information, see my site page about WikiHow

I did not create any new WikiHow pages. The pages I had created in May got additional pageviews, as described below:

For the month of July I am considering making one WikiHow page, focused on how to reduce Amazon EC2 costs. This will be based on my experience at my workplace, but won’t involve any information specific to my job. I believe that laying out this information clearly will be helpful to everybody: users can save costs, and more efficient use of the computational infrastructure of the world means more value can be squeezed out of it. Whether I can do a good job writing that page is a moot point, and we’ll only know once I start trying.

Subject wikis

General background information: My site page about the subject wikis

I did not spend any time on the subject wikis. Traffic was within the range of expectation, with robust year-on-year growth (but a month-on-month decline, as expected based on academic seasonality).

Metric Jun 2015 May 2015 Apr 2015 Jun 2014 May 2014 Apr 2014
Pageviews 48,593 77,232 88,046 38,363 63,211 66,233
Sessions 24,136 37,834 43,968 18,695 31,225 34,310
Pages/session 2.01 2.04 2.00 2.05 2.02 1.93
Pageviews in sessions with at least 5 pageviews 16,314 26,016 27,991 13,065 20,727 19,837

Here are pageview counts for the other subject wikis:

  • Market: 11,808 pageviews, versus 13,477 for June 2014.
  • Calculus: 11,575 pageviews, versus 9,310 for June 2014.

Comparison with forecast: The total number of pageviews for Groupprops (48,593) was close to my point estimate of 46,000, and well within my 80% probability interval estimate of 35,000 to 60,000.

July forecast: In July 2014, Groupprops had a total of 34,973 pageviews. Based on the robust year-on-year growth trend, my estimates for July 2015 are as follows. My point estimate for the number of pageviews is 46,000. My 50% probability interval estimate is 40,000 to 52,000. My 80% probability interval estimate is 33,000 to 60,000. My 95% probability interval estimate is 25,000 to 70,000.

I don’t intend to put in any work on the subject wikis in July, beyond fixing reported errors.

Open borders

General background information: My site page about open borders

After a fairly long time, I drafted a blog post for Open Borders: The Case. The post, titled My reasons for skepticism of linking open borders to legalizing private discrimination, was published on the site on June 17, 2015. I also created the Wikipedia page on the Chinese Confession Program, which was an outgrowth of reading and research I was doing for forthcoming Open Borders: The Case posts.

I aim to spend more time on the site in July, resuming the site revamp as well as publishing more blog posts. I believe this will help with a general revival of the site after a significant decline in the publication rate of new material.

Other sites and forms of online presence

  • This website (vipulnaik.com) got 2,154 views in the month of June according to Google Analytics (and 1,871 views according to WordPress Analytics).
  • The views for Quora content created by me were as follows: about 9000 for questions, about 18000 for answers, and about 250 for posts.
  • Wikipedia Views got 1,050 views according to Google Analytics.

Friends’ projects

  • AI Impacts, started by Katja Grace and Paul Christiano, and managed primarily by Katja, got 3,705 views.
  • Cause Prioritization Wiki, started and managed by Issa Rice, got 2,914 views. Issa also set up web traffic minus spam referrals, and got a count of 1,087 views for the time period June 14-June 30 for the site, which extrapolates to 1,918 views for the month (note that the proportion of traffic that is spam referrals goes down as the overall pageview count of the site goes up).

Entertainment

I bought a few songs: Waka Waka (by Shakira and FreshlyGround), Blank Space (by Taylor Swift), and Samjhawan (unplugged) sung by Alia Bhatt (you can read the history of these songs, and get the names of the composers and lyricists involved, on their Wikipedia pages). I also watched the movie Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania (my interest in the movie was initially piqued by the song).

May 2015 in review

This is the eighth of my month-in-review posts. I started month-in-review posts in October 2014. You can see my first post here and my previous month-in-review post here.

Some overall background

As predicted, this was a busy month work-wise. In addition to the greater workload, the increased commute time meant less time for personal pursuits. The increased workload will continue into at least the first two or three weeks of June, at which point I expect to be able to get weekends back for finishing some long-pending projects.

Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia

I created the following Wikipedia pages this month:

  • The Marshall Project, a journalism nonprofit focused on the criminal justice system in the United States. I created this over two BART rides (one on Thursday May 7 and one on Friday May 8), incorporating material I had read sporadically over the past week.
  • USCIS immigration forms, created Saturday, May 23, 2015, after on-and-off editing since the beginning of April 2015.
  • Direct Consular Filing, created Saturday, May 23, 2015, after 1-2 hours of editing.
  • Credible fear, created Saturday, May 23, 2015, after 1-2 hours of editing.
  • Form I-130, created Wednesday, May 27, 2015, after half an hour of editing on a BART ride, and about an hour of editing at home.
  • Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, created Wednesday, May 27, 2015, after half an hour of editing on a BART ride, and under half an hour of editing at home.

I also added some content to these pages:

Unfortunately, stats.grok.se, whose numbers I use to feed in to Wikipedia Views, is missing two days from the month of May (May 9 and May 24). Therefore, the numbers are underestimated somewhat, by a factor of about 5%.

The pageview counts for the remaining 29 days are given below. As always, note that these include bots but exclude mobile pageviews.

June forecast: Historically, my forecasts have tended to be underestimates: I’ve generally managed to just about stay within 80% intervals but actual values have tended to be at or near the upper bounds of the intervals. I’m trying to adjust for this, while also working to avoid erring in the other direction. For June, my point estimate is 160,000 views, my 80% probability interval estimate is 125,000-215,000 views, and my 95% probability interval estimate is 95,000-275,000 views.

WikiHow

For background information, see my site page about WikiHow

On Saturday, May 16, 2015, I forayed into editing WikiHow. My first edits were to the page How to Ride Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). My motivation for exploring editing was two-fold: have a way of sharing wisdom that was of a how-to nature, and understand the nature of the site so I could suggest it to other people as a place to write. Over the course of the month, I created the following pages:

  • How to Ride BART from the East Bay to San Francisco, created Sunday, May 17, 2015 (after about 1-1.5 hours of editing). At the end of the month, the page reported 244 views.
  • How to Efficiently Work Offline, created Sunday, May 24, 2015 (initially drafted offline for about 30 minutes, then incorporated online with some edits and improvements in about 45 minutes). At the end of the month, the article reported 39 views.
  • How to Gauge the Popularity of a Topic Online, created Sunday, May 24, 2015, edited for about 2 hours total on that day (the initial version was created after 30 minutes of editing). At the end of the month, the article reported 401 views.

Subject wikis

General background information: My site page about the subject wikis

I spent some time correcting some site errors (reported in an error-reporting form by others) and also made some other edits (including creating some new pages) to Groupprops. I have a list of further planned edits to Groupprops, that I intend to continue making in my spare time, but it is not a high priority or bound by any deadline. Traffic was within the range of expectation, with robust year-on-year growth.

May impact: I’ve put the numbers for Groupprops in a table for easy perusal and comparison. Numbers are from Google Analytics.

Metric May 2015 Apr 2015 Mar 2015 May 2014 Apr 2014 Mar 2014
Pageviews 77.232 88,046 82,377 63,211 66,233 57,724
Sessions 37,834 43,968 40,280 31,225 34,310 29,249
Pages/session 2.04 2.00 2.05 2.02 1.93 1.97
Pageviews in sessions with at least 5 pageviews 26,016 27,991 27,641 20,727 19,837 17,924

The total number of pageviews (77,232) was within my 80% interval of 72,000-96,000, but a little lower than my point estimate of 82,000, suggesting that my estimate precision could be improved.

Here are the pageview counts on some other subject wikis:

June forecast: June 2014 saw 38,363 views according to Google Analytics, significantly less than May 2014. This is because of the nature of the academic year: students in the US and in many other countries around the world are off studies in June. I expect a similar 20% year-on-year improvement for June as seen for May, so my point estimate for June is 46,000. I estimate that, with 80% probability, the number of pageviews will fall between 35,000 and 60,000.

Quora

General background information: My site page about Quora

I wrote five Quora answers in the month of May, higher than most previous months. Here are the answers:

My Quora views were: about 23,000 for answers, about 11,000 for questions, and about 200 for posts. The view count for answers was higher than usual because of the large number of new answers (new answers get shown more in feeds) as well as Issa Rice’s decision to promote one of my answers (the answer on the benefits of writing web pages that say the obvious things about a topic).

Open borders

General background information: My site page about open borders

Very similar to last month: no blog post of mine was published, nor did I get time to work on any drafts. However, some of my Wikipedia page creations and edits related to migration were indirect preparation for future blog posts. I hope to get enough free time around the end of June to begin work on a much needed revamp.

Other sites and forms of online presence

  • This website (vipulnaik.com) got 2,853 views in the month of May according to Google Analytics (and 2,057 views according to WordPress Analytics).
  • Wikipedia Views got 1,136 views according to Google Analytics.

Friends’ projects

Server downtime

There was about ten minutes of server downtime. The downtime ended on the automatic server restart (that is currently scheduled to happen once every 20 minutes, down from once every 5 minutes now that the server seems quite stable).

Entertainment

After a fairly long time, I watched two Bollywood movies (on alternate weekends) using my Eros Now subscription: Ek Villain and Queen (despite the English words in the titles, both are Hindi-language Bollywood movies, though the latter is partly set in Paris and Amsterdam). I also bought two of Carly Rae Jepsen’s songs (I Really Like You and Call Me Maybe) and the song Galliyan from Ek Villain.

I also explored many cover songs on YouTube with different artists rendering songs I had already heard in their original form several times. For instance, I listened to Siddharth Slathia’s and Gaurav Dagaonkar’s versions of Tujhe Bhula Diya, my favorite song. I also enjoyed acoustic covers by Aakash Gandhi for Galliyan and Tum Hi Ho. While I find the originals (which I’ve listened to hundreds and in some cases thousands of times) better overall, the variants offer new perspectives into the songs. The scope for rich variation also speaks to the songs’ strengths.