Top 50 2008: Instructables Answered

12 years ago

Who received the most patches?

FaqMan

12 years ago

Why is elf ears viewed so much?

susie

Reply 12 years ago

Once I saw your question I had to look at it. I believe the answer is: Because someone actually modded their ears to look like an elf? I couldn't resist looking. And I haven't checked google but I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of referrers to that page from the north pole, especially around Christmas time.

FaqMan

Reply 12 years ago

Thanks

Reply 12 years ago

Jessy also happens to be gorgeous. How cute is she in her Robot Plushie photo!?! I'm sure a lot of guys just clicked on it to see more pix of her. Not that the Plushie isn't awesome, because it is. I think I need a cute girl to pose with my next Instructable.

Reply 12 years ago

Just realized Elf ears were a friend, but also way cute girl.

Doctor What

Reply 12 years ago

I saw it on boingboing.

Reply 12 years ago

Because it's cool? Because Jessy's cool? Because it got picked up by lot's of blogs?

Reply 12 years ago

Odd things tend to draw attention? :-)

12 years ago

Hey, Ed. Any chance you can generate a plot of unique "referrers" per I'ble (i.e., all the "google.com" URLs collapse to one count)?

killerjackalope

Reply 12 years ago

You thinking most searched 'ible?

Reply 12 years ago

I didn't realize (until I looked at my own "referrers" based on your comment) that search query results got captured. I was actually thinking about counting how many times an I'ble got picked up by someone else's blog (collapsing all the Google results into one count eliminates it as a bias).

Reply 12 years ago

That would be interesting. It would be really hard to quantify though. Gummi Legos showed up on Gizmodo.com, Gizmodo.co.uk, .au, .nl, .de, .sp, .fr (maybe more). Separate posts in different languages by different editors. I think all the English ones were the same guy though. They didn't show up on the non-English sites until several weeks after the English blogs. How would you count those? Same thing with Google in different languages. Before I stopped looking through the referrers about 6 weeks ago, I found the Gummi Legos on blogs, and news sites in 20+ countries. I found posts about it in Dutch, Swedish, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Hebrew, Croatian, Russian, German, Finnish, French, Hungarian, and one I never figured out for sure. The Gizmodo.com post about them, got over 40,000 hits. I'd love to see where those were coming from. A lot of the sites I found linking to it, went to the Gizmodo post instead of here. I stayed in the top ten for ratings, and just barely snuck in at last place for comments. Honestly, half of the comments were probably me replying to comments. Thanks for the stats Ed.

FaqMan

Reply 12 years ago

That is a great achievment for a ible.

Reply 12 years ago

It was pretty wild watching it travel around the world.

fungus amungus

Reply 12 years ago

Yikes. I think I'll leave that one alone for now.

Reply 12 years ago

:-) Yeah, I agree with you. Especially after Handyman's observations of what some of those referrer URLs actually are. I didn't really just how ugly such an analysis would get.

Reply 12 years ago

Someone also rewrote it in Chinese, and there is another version in Japanese. They both have my photos but they rewrote the instructions. How did they write it with only 2 or 3 sentences per step?!? Word for word translation of one of my Instructables into another language would be an insane task. Nobody would take a project like that (except me). It's very difficult to find it in other languages as there is usually a unique word for gummy candies in each country, and they use the local term. The only thing they don't translate is SFHandyman, and I can usually find it by searching for that. I just lucked onto most of the non roman alphabet references. I think a couple of them were from links to my photos over on Flickr. A couple of times it was from a comment posted on a non-english forum or blog that said something like: "Cool I saw this here..." and it would be in yet another language.

Lithium Rain

Reply 12 years ago

You've created a monster you can't feed. :-P

Reply 12 years ago

Giving a physicist numerical data and distributions is kind of like giving a banker free money. We can't help ourselves! :-D

12 years ago

Oh, I'm partly up there.

But only partly.

Reply 12 years ago

Which one?

Reply 12 years ago

The thank you ible (and my signature is on Goodhart's t-shirt).

Reply 12 years ago

I saw the thank you ible in real life! It is really cool. Missing a letter though. Maybe someone snagged it for their desk. There were some really elegant pieces, and the overall effect is very impressive.

Reply 12 years ago

Just one letter missing? I thought several had got lost in the mail - which letter is still missing?

Reply 12 years ago

I remember noticing at least one was missing. There may have been a couple. I can't remember which. I just found a photo of it in the thank you note and there are 4 missing. It seems more complete in my memory but that's not a reliable information repository. I wonder if some arrived later.

Reply 12 years ago

Ahh, I see... And why was I not part of it? :-( Am I making everybody somehow jealous about something????

Reply 12 years ago

There were only so many letters to go around.

Reply 12 years ago

Okay....

Reply 12 years ago

I am only in the Thank You ible.

Reply 12 years ago

But you inspired the entire T-shirt project!

Reply 12 years ago

Well, that wasn't on purpose :-)

Reply 12 years ago

Still, without you, that would never have happened - the first of the site's big secret plot ibles.

You started a small precedent.

killerjackalope

Reply 12 years ago

Which has continued...

Reply 12 years ago

Truly, I am sure the trend would have started eventually with someone, had I not come along when I did. But I am glad, if I have inspired extra good will amongst you all. :-)

Reply 12 years ago

The accidental clandestine conspiracy founder ?

Doctor What

Reply 12 years ago

Kiteman, down in comments, and down in instructables lists. Do I sense a falling from grace?

Doctor What

Reply 12 years ago

*brings trampoline* *brings rocks*

jessyratfink

12 years ago

Yay! I'm in the top rated!

Reply 12 years ago

Yeah, me too, I am on the very top... :-)

Weissensteinburg

Reply 12 years ago

That was a really cool one.

Reply 12 years ago

Yeah, I never expect to have a highest rated instructable...

Reply 12 years ago

Well it was very cool and your photos were exceptionally gorgeous.

Reply 12 years ago

Thank you! :-)

skunkbait

Reply 12 years ago

W00t! Me too!

12 years ago

Nice update to the lists, Ed. And great use of s...argh!

fungus amungus

Reply 12 years ago

Yeah. This is one of the few times a year I'll use 'em.