Saturday, October 07, 2006
Riot Central
Today I have had 19 visitors to this site looking for information on the 1913 Paris riot. Why is this? They are from all around the country (Montana, Texas, Washington, Michigan, Florida, Connecticut, Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Virginia), so it isn't students from a particular school doing research for a project. It isn't the anniversary of the Rite of Spring riot, bumping up the number of requests. Looking at one of the search results, my site comes in third behind two Wikipedia articles. Does anyone know how Google comes up with these rankings? At least I am proud of the post in question. Hopefully many music history papers will be turned in that tell the correct story of Stravinsky's reception. It is ironic that my post should receive such attention 2.5 years after I wrote it. In my seminar class I have been playing the BBC reinactment of the premiere, and discussing the experience from the perspective of the audience, performers, and reviewers (each group having just finished their own reviews of performances on campus).
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8 comments:
I have no answer about Google, but I do have a technical question:
Were you able to download the BBC reinactment and burn it to a DVD, or did you find a place to buy it, or are you going online in class to watch this? I'd like to show it next term and am concerned that it will disappear from the blogsphere before we get a chance to see it.
I have been going online to show it. I don't know how to download from Youtube, and am not aware of it in any other source. I think there is a program that records everything that goes on your screen, but I don't remember the name of it.
Scott, your material for class makes me wish I could have had a class like yours back in undergrad. It sounds fun and yet deep, and makes things relevent for young minds. Well done.
As to your earlier, almost poll, at NEC, circa mid 1970s, we were taught movable do.
Thanks, Peter. I have to say, my main idea was for the students to imagine writing a review of the concert, but the first group went off onto a riff on the poor performers. And then another group had a discussion on whether they would have rioted, shushed, or walked out if they had been in the audience. Most felt they would have liked the performance, but then admitted that they had pretty mainstream tastes in regards to contemporary music. It's great how students can make an average class activity into an exciting activity.
And I'm not surprised about NEC. They've had a good theory program for a long time.
Re Google:
It ranks its sites according to how many other sites link to them. So if you Google something, the first site that it returns is the most-linked-to site on the web for that search term.
Thanks for the help, Michael. I wonder how many links I have to that post. I have a feeling Google counts all links out there, whereas Technorati only counts links from the top page of blogs.
Scott - it's not just number of links to a page, but the number of links to the pages that link to your page ... and so on. The more inbound links a site has, the higher Google ranks it as an authority (a sort of automated peer review, if you like). So one link from, say, the New York Times (a site with thousands of inbound links, and a very high Google ranking), counts much, much more than one link from, say, the Rambler.
BTW, downloading from YouTube - I've never used it, but have reliable recommendations for http://www.youtubex.com/
try http://www.snatchvid.com it works great!
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