DOWNHILL SLIDE

In April USC Annenberg's Online Journalism Review published a plug for scienceblogs.com masquerading as a review, with the scienceblog.com collective pictured as one big happy family.

Much was made of the blog collective's ability to attract readers:

"I think the collective nature of this project improves traffic," said [Ed] Brayton, who said he's seen the number of visitors steadily climb to about 4,500 hits per day.

[Tim] Lambert said his traffic has increased 50 percent since he began blogging for scienceblogs.com. He ascribes that increase to the quality of all the blogs combined.

Back then, with his daily visits averaging 3,500 or thereabouts, Lambert confidently demanded $520 a week for ad space ($3,360 for three months). Not surprisingly, no one took up the offer. Why? Because Lambert's numbers were, and still are, on a long slow downhill slide – his counter now shows daily visits as 1,215. It's no wonder then that Lambert did his best to provoke an Instalanche.

A number of factors are contributing to Lambert's shrinking readership. For one thing, his focus is obsessively narrow. Really, how much does any sane person need or want to know about what's-his-name Lott or the current state of the endless hockey stick argument? There's also the little matter of Lambert's relentless negativity, and his off-puttingly snide and whiney tone. Even commenters are complaining:

Hello Tim When is this blog going to start dealing with science? To call it a science blog is a bit mis leading! All this site is dealing with is character assaination and politics.

No matter why his numbers are down, Lambert's fellow science.com bloggers must have serious doubts about the value of his contribution to the collective effort.

Update: Hoping to generate some controversy that will pull his numbers up, Lambert accuses the Climate Audit guys of lying and censorship. This is really rich coming from Lambert who is guilty of everything he accuses the Climate Audit guys of doing, and then some.

At his old site Lambert responded to dissenting comments by repeatedly calling me a troll. Some of my comments were deleted without notice – on one occasion he accused me of abuse for using the disemvoweled word "crtn". He responded to critical posts at my blog by permanently bouncing all of my links.

At his scienceblogs.com site it's much the same. He has falsely accused me of abusing other commenters, some of whom I referred to as "toadies", using this pretext to ban me from a discussion. He continues to moderate my comments, which he withholds until the discussion has moved on – 12 hours in limbo is not uncommon. Best of all, some of my comments aren't allowed through at all.

So, I don't understand what Lambert's problem is with Climate Audit's comments policy: if he has described it correctly the CA policy is the same as his.

Update II: Not getting enough hockey stick related traffic at his own blog, Lambert attempts to generate some interst by commenting at Just One Minute. The guy knows no shame.