[HN Gopher] Are analytics good?
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Are analytics good?
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 79 points
Date : 2023-11-22 13:02 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.todepond.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.todepond.com)
| surprisetalk wrote:
| TodePond makes superb videos on development, the creative
| process, and cellular automata.
|
| [1]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpvcy1gt5yU&list=ULcxqQ59vzy...
| culi wrote:
| My all time favorite youtube channel. I think this video is a
| good introduction to the vibe of the channel
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMJ1H3Ai-qs
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Interesting blog post. I personally believe analytics are bad.
| Optimizing for analytics means:
|
| (a) Taking the path of least resistance instead of trying to
| gauge engagement in other ways. Yes, you can still use other ways
| but most people don't.
|
| (b) Optimizing for analytics means optimizing for an immedaite
| return rather than following your gut on what you like. The
| ultimate reason for analytics is so that you optimize for ad
| views for Google, rather than increasing quality. Google would
| never do anything unless it is in its own self-interest. They
| have zero social responsibility.
|
| (c) I have disabled analytics on my blogs and now I find I write
| just what I want and what I find interesting and I don't bother
| with which posts get the most views.
|
| What do you want? Views from interesting poeple or an interesting
| number of views?
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| > What do you want?
|
| I want to know which pages and posts people find the most
| interesting and which remain popular over time. Just because
| I'm curious, that's all.
|
| It leads to interesting surprises, for example I wrote a pretty
| small post on my blog weighing the pros and cons of merging vs
| squashing first and for some reason it's one of the top Google
| results and I get consistent views for something I felt was
| only minor.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| My thesis is that at one point, people knew this about their
| creations through direct interaction. Analytics are a poor
| substitute, especially since they do not show the subtle
| aspects of engagement.
|
| Our natural instinct for curiosity as you put it is precisely
| the tool used by big-tech to subvert our natural human
| instincts into becoming replaceable cogs of their
| technological kingdom.
| surprisetalk wrote:
| Lovely site, btw :)
|
| And congrats on your marriage!
|
| [0] https://www.lloydatkinson.net
|
| I feel the same way!
|
| I pour out my heart for pieces like this[1] and all my
| traffic comes from stuff like this[2].
|
| [1] https://taylor.town/pardon-2023
|
| [2] https://taylor.town/chatgpt-custom
|
| I've pretty much given up trying to please the various
| algorithms.
|
| Lately, I write about things that make me feel the biggest
| feelings, plus things I think others would find helpful.
|
| But making things is hard without instant feedback.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Thank you! Given I made it, it's hard for me to perceive
| how it really looks to someone else. Yours is good too!
|
| Thank you for the congrats!
|
| Indeed, I have no idea why some topics gain so much
| interest vs others.
| pantulis wrote:
| > Optimizing for analytics means optimizing for an immedaite
| return rather than following your gut on what you like.
|
| You don't "optimize for analytics", you optimize for an
| objective that you are measuring through analytics. If you are
| simply following your gut then you simply don't have a
| quantitative objective.
|
| Note that Im not saying that not having a strategy is not a
| valid strategy per se, I'm just pointing out that analytics is
| a means to an end.
| cwillu wrote:
| The point though is that the tail wags the dog: I don't
| believe for a second that most objectives aren't, in fact,
| being selected for being measurable via the available
| analytics (or even merely the appearance of being measurable
| via those metrics).
| jrumbut wrote:
| There are things that are worth knowing and there are
| things that are easy to measure and the overlap is
| disappointingly small.
| nickdandakis wrote:
| Analytics should just be one point to weigh across others when
| making a decision. I don't fully think it's a binary decision to
| use it or not.
|
| Consider analytics. Consider user feedback. Consider your gut.
| Consider stakeholder requests. Consider historicals. Consider
| your team. Consider your debt. etc etc
| culi wrote:
| Analytics flattens user engagement to more narrowly defined
| single dimensional metrics. And, critically, it ignores the
| bidirectional nature of a creator's relationship with their
| audience.
|
| It's like when politicians cite opinion polls to justify their
| platform but ignore the fact that they often play a huge roll in
| the formation of those opinions in the first place. IMO, having a
| platform means not only that you respond to and are shaped by
| your audience but also that you play an active role in
| cultivating it
| bell-cot wrote:
| Analytics are just some metrics. Paying some attention to metrics
| is usually good.
|
| But too much focus on metrics - vs. the actual long-term goals -
| is always bad.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _I can see what other videos you watch._
|
| > _I can see what you type into the search bar - even when it's
| not for my video._
|
| Wait, wait, wait, _what!?_ How does the platform allow that?
| humbugtheman wrote:
| Article writer here! Yeah it's really creepy. In the "Research"
| tab, youtube tells me what my viewers have been searching for -
| especially the searches that don't produce many results.
| Sometimes the search terms are very general (eg: javascript),
| and sometimes they're more specific (eg: how to [personally
| identifying task]).
|
| It also shows me what my viewers favourite videos are. Again,
| the 'highest rated' ones are general. But as you look down the
| numbers, you can see more specific things.
| isilofi wrote:
| Well. I was in the "analytics is mostly bad" camp anyways.
| But the things that you just told me are more of the
| "analytics are far worse than you think" kind. Like "how the
| hell aren't those people in jail right now"?
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Like "how the hell aren't those people in jail right
| now"?_
|
| Were you under the impression that things you typed in the
| search bar of YouTube (or Google or Facebook or...) were
| not tracked? What about this situation makes you believe
| someone should go to jail?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The reasonable assumption is that it's tracked by YouTube
| and mostly relegated to server logs and automated
| analysis, not that the search queries will be displayed
| verbatim to the channel owners.
| morkalork wrote:
| They don't filter out low-volume queries?? In AdWords search
| term report they would blank out any queries not searched by
| multiple different users which was enough to not leak
| anything personally identifiable..
| cc2562 wrote:
| Hard to make a blanket statement about analytics being 'good' or
| 'bad'. They are there as one of many tools to provide a compass
| and let you know whether you're headed in the right direction.
|
| I think there's a bit of nuance here between an artist's approach
| versus that of a product designer, for instance. Artists seek to
| express an idea, feeling, or concept. Analytics, which (in the
| case of Youtube) optimise for a certain outcome, can easily
| befuddle. Designers seek to solve a problem. Analytics can help
| shed light on whether the problem has been solved.
| humbugtheman wrote:
| Hi I wrote this post! You're right - that's what I was getting
| at in the post :) I've seen lots of people say analytics are
| "bad" recently, and that's what inspired this post (as well as
| starting to write an analytics-free blog).
|
| I think it's especially twisted when analytics companies (like
| google) try to manipulate me into changing from an "artist
| analytics user" into a "engagement engineer analytics user".
| That's bad.
| nix0n wrote:
| No, analytics are not good. They're bad, actually.
|
| They don't solve the problems they claim to solve, and they
| create new problems.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _They 're bad, actually._
|
| "Measuring stuff is bad"?
| stalfosknight wrote:
| More like "Privacy destruction and flagrant disrespect for
| users in the name of slurping up as much personally
| identifiable data as possible that you have no right to have
| or see is bad."
| jwie wrote:
| Good for what?
|
| Analytics are an instrument panel, it's a set of gauges. How it
| looks depends on what you're trying to accomplish and the
| conditions of the system.
| themgt wrote:
| _There is a drive towards "no analytics". For example, this
| wikiblog has no analytics._
|
| view-source:https://www.todepond.com/wikiblogarden/social-
| media/analytic... <script data-
| goatcounter="https://todepond.goatcounter.com/count" async
| src="//gc.zgo.at/count.js"></script>
|
| > GoatCounter is an open source web analytics platform
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| humbugtheman wrote:
| Hey, author here.
|
| When I wrote that post, the site had no analytics. This article
| prompted someone to reach out and recommend goatcounter to me.
| It's lovely! And it avoids the bad points that I mention in the
| post. I highly recommend writing blog posts as a way of finding
| solutions!
|
| By the way, you can see all the analytics at
| https://todepond.goatcounter.com
|
| All best,
|
| Lu x
| elevation wrote:
| For the simple reports it's generating I'm surprised this
| deployment of GoatCounter requires javascript in the client
| instead of just consuming the Location/ip/user-agent string
| from the server logs.
| guappa wrote:
| Feels gdpr violating... Not a functionality and tracking.
| llimllib wrote:
| it's explicitly in compliance with GDPR, check it out:
| https://www.goatcounter.com/help/gdpr
| david_allison wrote:
| > Other information such as the URL or Referer do not
| relate to an identified person.
|
| This doesn't sound like it holds weight: Referer is a
| user-specified string, this could easily be attributed to
| a natural person by the use of additional information
|
| The URL of this comment is [0]. I clicked the link above,
| if Referer is being tracked, it's almost guaranteed that
| you've collected my PII
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=38385378&goto=i
| tem%3Fi...
| bbkane wrote:
| A JS tag is easier to deploy than an agent on a server. I run
| GoatCounter on my Netlify static site (and I don't even have
| access to server logs).
| openplatypus wrote:
| Analytics are good and useful in a broader context.
|
| They often are a valuable signal which combined with a broader
| environment (news cycle, activity by marketing dept, socio
| economic factors, etc) can yield meaningful insights.
|
| Nothing exists in a vacuum.
|
| How do I know? Our customers use Wide Angle Analytics and are
| doing just that. Their feedback indicates that yes, analytics are
| good.
| humbugtheman wrote:
| Hi there, I wrote this article!
|
| I'd recommend also the sequel to this article: "Good and bad
| analytics"
|
| https://www.todepond.com/wikiblogarden/social-media/analytic...
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Consider linking to your youtube channel. If not for self
| promotion, then at least as a courtesy to the reader.
| humbugtheman wrote:
| The todepond youtube channel is a well-kept secret
| reidjs wrote:
| Just learning about your channel now. You make some great
| videos! Thank you.
| fullshark wrote:
| Analytics are good, just be aware of the trap of goodhart's law.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
| rgbrgb wrote:
| After being an extremely data-driven dev/pm/founder I'm currently
| making a mostly offline app with close to no analytics (apple
| gives install numbers but that's about it). It's fun not to know
| how many people click on my button. It's like a whole world of
| concerns melt away and I'm forced to just have (good?) taste. No
| days spent constructing funnels and hunting drop-off.
|
| Would not recommend for a business that's trying hard to
| optimize, but for a hobby project flying without instruments is
| pretty fun.
| theodpHN wrote:
| I like the concept of 'walkouts.' And I'd add they don't
| necessarily reflect badly on those being walked out on -
| sometimes they're just the result of a disconnect between what a
| person thought they were getting into and what it turned out they
| actually getting. As the author mentioned, walkouts occur more
| when there's no incremental cost in walking out, so I've seen
| them a lot at sessions for conferences that have a fixed
| registration fee - e.g., a presentation may be great but just
| over one's head. Imagine walkouts must really be prevalent in
| free MOOCs (how many college courses would you have dropped had
| there been no consequences?).
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