This week, Res Ipsa hit a milestone in reaching 100,000,000 views on the blog. We have used these moments to give thanks for our many regular readers around the world and share our traffic data to give you an idea of the current profile of readers around the world. We don’t have a running data page, so these periodic posts let our community see the traffic profile of our blog.
As always, I want to offer special thanks to Darren Smith, who has continued to help manage the blog. I also want to thank our dedicated editors, Kristin Oren and Hartwell Harrison, who continue their amazing work proofing posts daily to remove my embarrassing typos. Finally, I would like to thank our regular readers for their continued support and contributions. This blog is a community, and this milestone is a testament to each of our daily readers.
This blog was created roughly 20 years ago during a family vacation to North Carolina. While staying at a beach house in 2007, I was on the phone with my editor at USA Today, who urged me again to join other columnists on their blog. I was entirely unfamiliar with blogs and resisted. As my family can attest, I am one of the most habit-bound, tech-challenged creatures on the planet.
Joining us at the beach that year were my wife’s family, who were already considerable figures on the Internet with great success in the areas of politics, academia, and business. When I got off the call, they called me into the living room and presented me with my new blog, which they had registered and designed during the call. Res Ipsa was born.
From that day, the blog seemed to take deep roots and grow steadily until it was one of the most visited legal blogs. I hear regularly from reporters, members of Congress, judges and others who follow the blog and it gives me a great sense of pride in the heterogeneous makeup of our virtual community.
So here is our current profile:
As of this morning, we have 23, 070 posts.
With over 400 posts, we also have over 1,612,200 comments. In the interest of full transparency, we are having a debate over what to do about trolls who are impersonating others in the comments, including false postings from me (I generally leave the comment sections for our community and do not post comments). This is obviously a small number of unbalanced individuals or paid posters who seek to bog down sites or disrupt discourse. There are no great options, which is why many sites have eliminated their comment sections. As a free speech blog, I have resisted that option, but we continue to debate how to address malicious trolls, but their increased presence is a sign of the growing influence of this blog.
We have also continued our steady rise on X with roughly 1.1 million followers. We have over 26,000 people who follow us on WordPress and by direct email (which you can subscribe to with the box on the right side of the blog home page).
In the last month, our ten biggest international sources for readers came from:
- United States
- China
- Canada
- United Kingdom
- Australia
- Germany
- Netherlands
- Russia
- New Zealand
- France
The top five posts in terms of readership in the last 30 days were:
- The Purge: Princeton Faculty Reach Perfect Zero in Support for Republicans
- Palestinian Activist Defaces Churchill Statue and Boasts About it in Court…British Jury Finds Him Not Guilty
- The Secret to “Sleeping Well”: A Response to Kevin Reddington
- “The Funniest Thing”: Academic Jokes About Celebrating the “Kirkiversary” by Assassinating Nick Shirley
So that’s the update. I cannot thank our regulars enough for their support of the blog. This is an expanding vibrant community and it is a great pleasure to see our community expanding around the world. I particularly appreciate most of our readers remaining civil and respectful to others.
It remains a great honor to serve as the host of this blog and to discuss issues that range from the world-shaking to the merely wacky. Thank you for coming by each day to check in and contribute your voice to our community.
Now on to the 1,000,000,000!
CONGRATS, PROFESSOR TURLEY! GOD BLESS YOU FOR MANY, MANY, MANY MORE MILLIONS TO COME! (..as China in #2.. you must Really Be Having an Impact Beyond Measure!)
Congratulations and many thanks to you and your staff for
My kids are Generation X age and I’ve tried to get them to follow you as well as I do (boomer)
Keep up the outstanding array of pieces. They will make a great book someday!
Recognizing the power that attaches to the creator of a successful blog in stimulating thought and encouraging debate, I greatly trust the prudence and discernment exercised by the good Professor Turley in handling sensitive topics and difficult commenters.
Congratulations to a very worthy recipient!
Congratulations professor! Good job and keep up the good work!
Milestones such as this are further evidence of your success.
As for the trolls, as I have suggested before, a pay to comment paradigm with all monies going towards a educational fund for a high school senior in the lower end of the economic scale. Those monies can only be used for higher education, vocational school, a tech boot camp or similar education. The student has to submit a essay concerning the Constitution, one or all of the Bill of Rights, a current legal topic etc. The good professor judges with winner. And if there are enough paying contributors, maybe awards for the top three essays.
If the trolls really want to pay to comment bomb the blog, at least they can help pay for some poor kid/s education.
“. . . a pay to comment paradigm . . .”
A suggested modification:
Sincere commenters pay X. Persistent, malicious trolls pay 100X.
Sam,
Great suggestion!
Another idea, a Ignore button and similar to the Like button, it tells whoever made the comment they gotten 15 ignores.
Professor,
It is an honor and a privilege to be a part of this community. Thank you for making it all possible.
May the success continue!
(and a big shout-out to Mezpo, wherever you are! Hope you’re well!)
Yes, congratulations professor. We love your work, even though your editors need to up their game.
As for the trolls, there are ways to control the bile: ask the experts.
Great testament to the importance of free speech to a healthy society based on the core principle of individual responsibility that gets judged by their fellow citizens.
Now, while it is troubling to do so, there are ways to tamp down troll postings…just like you wouldn’t allow someone to disrupt a speech you would make to an audience wanting to hear your words and respectfully discuss them, you should apply the same principle to a blog. It’s not an encroachment on free speech. Freedom without sensible boundaries is not free speech.
“100,000,000 views on the blog.”
A well-deserved reward for your years of indefatigable efforts.
Thank you for the daily dose of intellectual stimulation, and for the opportunity to comment.
Congratulations Professor Turley! The best move you did was to stop recognizing “top contributors”. Just sayin.
That’s rich, X … the Trolls will always be there … another profound utterance while attempting another denigrating statement to our benevolent host.
Congratulations, perhaps. I’ve noticed over the past year or so that the “views” on my blog have skyrocketed. So either I’m world famous, or AI bots are becoming very active online. I suspect it’s the latter.
80,000,000 from PSYCHO ANONS!
Congrats professor Turley.
Thank you, Professor Turley.
Luna would be proud too…
It’s’ easy to claim that many views over a 20 year period. “Views” are also generated every time you refresh the page. So one commenter can count as a couple of hundred views a day and multiplied by a few commenters it adds up. Just sayin.
The Trolls will always be there. It’s part of the package that is free speech and in a free speech blog, there’s always going to be…trolls and the unhinged. Everyone gets a say.
you would know
you are the biggest troll here
Georgie/Gigi/Wally/Esquire
discuss issues? All I see are the mad ravings of a bunch of MAGAots.
Mad ravings of loony ANON’S!! Most of ANONS should be in PSYCH WARDS!!
Jonathan – Can’t thank you enough for your wonderful articles. I read and thoroughly enjoy every one of them. I wish I could attend your classes. You call balls and strikes and break down difficult issues in a wonderful way. Thank you!
Well said! Thank you!
Congratulations on the milestone