My WordPress statistics page tells me that the readership of The Hannibal Blog is climbing at a good clip, but it tells me little else. I know nothing about the interests, tastes and proclivities that brought, and keep, most of you here.
So please take a nanosecond of your hectic online life and vote (ie, click) in the poll at the bottom of this post. I’d like to know which of the threads on The Hannibal Blog engages you most and least. I’m not necessarily planning on changing anything (I will always blog whatever is on my mind), but I’d love to know.
As you will have noticed, The Hannibal Blog currently follows several threads:
- My book: Anything to do with my book, obviously. But at the moment, while the manuscript is with the publisher, there is not much to report. I have yet to work out the title and publication date with my editor, and I don’t want to give away too much plot too early.
- Writing: Brainstorms on book-writing and writing in general; and, coming out of that, story-telling and language in general.
- Ideas: Intellectual currents/nuggets that strike me as interesting, whether or not they have anything to do with my other threads, such as my series on great thinkers.
- History: Backdrop to some of the stories that will appear in the book, mostly from ancient history, but occasionally from recent times.
- The Economist: Anecdotes and color from my day-job and life at The Economist. Of great interest to some subscribers, certainly, though possibly not to the rest of you.
- The media: Musings on my industry as a whole–ie, thoughts on journalism, newspapers, the media.
Hannibal and Me: life lessons from history 
I was about to put a check box for all of them until I saw the last option 😉
You can check several boxes at once. Doesn’t have to be logical. 😉 But I’ve got you down as an eclectic one…
But surely you can tell from the stats which posts (and hence which threads) are most popular? Which is a way of asking people without asking them.
Actually, the stats do not tell me much. They do tell me what posts have got the most views, but this is often unhelpful. For instance, my total, runaway blockbuster top post is a silly little riff I did on Hannibal’s horsemen being Numidians, and hence Berbers, and hence… like Zidane. And in they stampede, apparently having googled “Zidane” somewhere in northern Africa or France. I must assume that they are surprised at the context they arrive in, and leave again.
So there is a lot of GIGO (garbage-in, garbage-out) in the stats. I figured, why not ask.