Readers might want to know which of the posts on this blog offer the most value. I wish I knew! Meanwhile here are some methods to move toward an assessment of a post’s relative quality.
Each month I look back two months and pick the posts that intrigued me the most. A solipsistic method without question, but at least I try to pick the diamonds from the rough. Were there more comments on this blog, I could hold up the posts that attract the most controversy, but that is not possible here since comments appear so infrequently.
More impartially, I have drawn on Feedburner to spot the posts most viewed by those who have LawDepartmentManagementBlog on their RSS feeds (See my post of June 15, 2009: ten posts listed but no pattern observed.). The posts that the sage editors of Law.com and Corporate Counsel select must have something going for them in terms of perceived widespread interest. To the same tune, PinHawk picks up posts from time to time and they could be candidates for quality (See my post of May 28, 2010: Pinhawk.).
In the future, Twitter may let me identify the posts that have been most retweeted (See my post of May 24, 2010: retweets.). There might be a way to find those items most clicked to through the “linkwithin” function on TypePad (See my post of May 26, 2010: new developments on this blog.). Likewise, were there software to do it, I could track the posts that readers email to others.
Eventually, tools will exist that integrate these various votes on quality or interest.