Julian Edgar, 50, has been writing about car modification and automotive technology for nearly 25 years. He has owned cars with two, three, four, five, six and eight cylinders; single turbo, twin turbo, supercharged, diesel and hybrid electric drivelines. He lists his transport interests as turbocharging, aerodynamics, suspension design and human-powered vehicles.
Thanks two million
Back in February 2011 I wrote in a blog post:
Feedback from the audience can be detailed, it can be analytical and it can be highly structured. Alternatively, it can be very simple, very quick and anonymous.
At AutoSpeed we chose the latter, giving readers a 1-5 continuum they can use to assess every page of content on the site. Because it’s simple and anonymous, many people choose to provide feedback.
In fact, as this is published, we will have received close to one million page feedbacks! One million! That’s quite extraordinary – and from a writer’s perspective, it provides immense feedback value.
Well as you may have guessed, we’re just about to pass another milestone – an incredible two million feedback ratings on our articles.
That is, 2 million times, people have paused over the 1-5 ratings at the bottom of one of our articles, and thought: hmm what will I give this?
Perhaps you’ve been inspired and excited – or perhaps you’ve been pissed off and disgruntled. Or somewhere in between. Whatever your selection, it’s been noticed and factored into the mix of material we provide you.
Most AutoSpeed readers today are not those that have been following us for the last 16 years (although you, as a reader of this blog, are more likely to be one of those ‘long-termers’) but people who drop in and out. Either way, those stats go on to form averages for each article that I, as editor, look at long and hard.
Sometimes the rating is low – and I don’t agree with it. The article in question might be one that my experience suggests that over the long term, will go up and up. (Or of course I might just be completely wrong in my assessment of the article – it still happens.)
Another time, we run an article we have published previously and the new reader ratings are just extraordinarily high – much higher than when we first published it. Was the article before its time, I wonder?
And of course, other times, the ratings reflect just what I expect.
(And the average of the two million ratings? 2.87 out of 5)
Every time you read an AutoSpeed article, I encourage you to select one of the numbers down the bottom, the ones that tell me what you thought of the piece.
That way, the number will grow to 3 million….
on February 2nd, 2015 at 3:59 pm
Congrats on the numbers Julian. But, oh how I miss the New Car Reviews. I gave each of them a 5 as there is obviously no bias and you say it how it is. I also regularly refer back to them purely as they are usually quite entertaining.
on February 2nd, 2015 at 9:58 pm
+many
Please consider restarting them?
on February 3rd, 2015 at 6:21 am
Sorry, there is no chance I’ll be writing more new car tests. As I have indicated here previously, AutoSpeed is a part-time role for me now – and has been for about 5 years. With my other commitments, there’s no room for new car tests.
on February 6th, 2015 at 12:38 pm
Great metric, I’m surprised the long term average is under 3 though! I really enjoy the variety of content you write about, especially that you don’t hide what doesn’t work as well as measuring the result where possible.