Happy New Year

Another year of blogging has come to end. Do people still read blogs?

If you stop by regularly, thank you! I started this little experiment back in December 2005. Here it is, 2019, and the Reformation is the topic that keeps on giving. This past year I've tried to post one entry per week.  This upcoming year, I'm not sure what I'll be doing, but I'm not ready to pack it in yet. I'm still a small blip on the Lutheran radar. I guess once they become aware I'm not a Lutheran, I must get flagged... or something. Then of course, those in my own camp, the Reformed, well, I'm usually not writing about anything that they're all that interested in. Ah well. My Roman Catholic readers know that I'm not Roman Catholic and that this blog is a nuisance, so at least I'm on the same page with them.

I'm not entirely sure how many people visit here. Then again, it's never been about traffic. I write what I do because I like doing it. I don't advertise, I don't sell stuff. Of course, I am grateful for readership. According to Blogger's statistics feature I've had close to three millions hits. This feature doesn't provide a lot of precise information, but it does list which of my entries are being read, and which sites some of the traffic comes from.

Here's where it gets a little weird. Over this past year, I've noticed traffic from a website entitled, "PlagScan." This website specializes in checking for plagiarism. I wish I knew which of my entries were being checked; that would be interesting to know. It would also be interesting in finding out who was doing it. I suppose that if it's an online polemicist of some sort, I'll find out soon enough if something is found! I've never purposefully plagiarized anything, though I will say that as the years progressed here on this blog, I have become even more precise in documentation. I've been going back through my archives and revamping some of my oldest entries to fix some of the documentation, typically to make it more precise. This year some of my older entries will be revamped and re-posted. Because I'm such a nitpicker on documentation, it would not surprise me at all to find someone actively trying to catch something here on this blog, as a sort of revenge.

Here's where it gets even weirder, and this is something that appears to be troublesome to all of us who use Blogger. I noticed via Blogger's stats page that I was getting traffic from some strange websites, which turned out to be, porn sites.  The first question I wondered about is why would a porn site link to this blog?  True, I do have some entries about Luther's views on polygamy... but... people that visit porn sites... I find it unfathomable that any such person cares about anything other than decadence. I searched around and found this over on Blogger's Help Forum: How do I stop porn sites from sending fake referrals and views to my blog? The person who posed this question stated, "I have a Christian blog and I find this extremely distressing!" The answer thus far? There is no answer. Blogger has no way to stop porn sites from linking to blogs. It appears that the reason these porn sites are linking to blogs is that they're trying to get those of us checking Blogger's traffic stats to inadvertently click on their link to see whose linking to our blogs! Wow, what desperation. I suspect the porn sites are using some sort of blogger list and have some sort of code or algorithm that automatically creates a hit and a link back to their sites. If anyone has any solution or tips to stop this, please let me know.  The only solution I've come up with is: when checking Blogger stats, do not click on anything that sounds weird.