The underlying assumption

One thing that struck me as we were discussing the origins, nature, and behavior of the Web in class Monday is that if success is measured by the number of visitors, the underlying assumption is that all content that is published to the Web is intended for any visitor, regardless of their intentions or desirability. But is this necessarily always true? There are certainly mechanisms used to deter just anyone from accessing a Web site--subscription, fees, technological blocks, access-point placement--but is there a class of Web site where deterance isn't feasible, but you also don’t want everyone to visit, and is success then not measured by number of visits?

An example that comes to mind is a professional blog that a co-worker created last year. Along with other people in our group, he began blogging about an upcoming software product release. In his blog, he discussed one of the controversial features he and his team had worked on and what he thought the benefits and limitations were. In turn he was able to gather comments, often heated, from public site visitors about what they thought this feature should do and how they planned to use (or not use) it. All very good and useful. But this blog also attracted blog-commenters who simply hate the company and posted comments that were derogatory or inflammatory, all off-topic. The content of these posts wasn’t so much the issue--people should feel free to hate the company and publish it if they wish--but it undermined the value of this particular blog exchange and made it more time-consuming to extract the good, helpful information.

So, is the success of this blog really measured by the number of visitors? I think that is the usual measure of success for a blog (number of readers). But, does that measure truly capture the success of the blog. In one sense, it does. A visitor is a visitor, and if you are blogging about something that elicits any kind of response you are at least making an impact of some sort. But, what if you have fewer visitors but a better exchange of information and ideas with a lower amount of effort?