mikeyfly

Well this is certainly going to impact on my working week

I've clicked on Short Hair Francis and lost an hour already!

akersnl

There is a trick employed that significantly ups the number of views. That is the strategy of posting out the trip report over multiple pages, rather than putting it all up at once. Make no mistake, this is being done on purpose towards a specific goal.

iluvdoco

In defense of posting the TR out over multiple pages, I have to use this method because:

a) I have too many photos (usu. several hundred) to post at once, and
b) I usually perform light post processing on the photos, which means I cannot post them all at once even if I wanted to.

The increased number of views is simply a nice side benefit.

FallenPlat

This is very interesting, but I think we all understand that these numbers tell a somewhat misleading tale. The comment above about multi-parting, for just one obvious example, speaks for itself, although I don't think most writers are deliberately gaming the system at all. Many, if not even most, reports quite naturally end up as write-as-you-go affairs.

So let me cut to the chase. And these are my opinions . . . .

But we first need to get two preliminary items out of the way. "A Consultant's Life" is simply beyond category, not really a trip report but nonetheless clearly the most interesting thing ever published on Flyer Talk. By far. But if you're reading this, you already know that.

And then, too, the "best" trip report I believe, uncontestably, is "8 Bottles of Dom." Again, if you're reading this, you already know that. It's the only trip report I've read several times over. It's also probably the only trip report absolutely everyone reading this post has surely read already.

Beyond those preliminaries -- which I believe to be essentially inarguable -- we enter the realm of pure opinion. So here's mine. Eightblack is clearly more than a bit shortchanged here, as several others above have noted, and so is Seat 2A. Pure quality doesn't necessary always win a statistical popularity contest.

One "supernova" report writer, FlyIgglesFly, is also clearly shortchanged. "A Double Shot of Minsk," for example, is just about as good as anything I've seen here. A first trip report that immediately ranks as one of the very best. The title (Minsk?) may have turned some people away, I surmise. Oh, and that photo of a bed covered in high-denomination bills won at Russian mafia-run gambling house is the best "narrative" photo I've seen on Flyer Talk.

The comments above about Daniel's reports are bang on. Likewise, I'm not sure why I don't see more of ironmanjt or (unless I'm missing something) hauteboy at all.

On the flip side, SFO777's giant share is actually fully and fairly reflective of the best quality/quantity combination on Flyer Talk.

There's lots of others I could mention, but those are few preliminary observations, anyway. There's so much good stuff here!

bitburgr

Hands down I agree.

And in a sea of great trip reports, eightblack's are right up there among the very best.

txflyer77

I think this is more to do with the fact the long reports include too many photos for one post and (in my case) the report isn't written all at once, I write it as a go and post each section when it's complete.

CarlTheWebmaster

Perhaps not statistically, but this post is at the top of my list for the entertainment value alone. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...lhr-plane.html

work2fly

Agreed.

mpkz

Well it also makes reports MUCH more readable as others have said, so I'd like it if people continued writing them.

Too much content leads to people skipping over stuff.

All three are great trip reporters with interesting destinations, but DanielW's photography is better than you see in actual travel publications. All three are great (as are many trip reporters not mentioned here), but this is a thread to highlight the best of the best.

FallenPlat

Agreed, of course, but when I first came across this I was pretty sure that the credited writer is actually Eightblack's old user name -- judging from the style, anyway, and that's still what I think. So there's a lot more where this came from, in other words.

FindAWay

I humbly reject both of those reasons. I think one easily can post the entire TR in one go (because of post limits, it may, of course, require multiple posts - but, they can all be posted in a single sitting).

a) I post more pictures than most (I usually do keep it under 1,000 though), and
b) I have performed light post-processing on 95%+ of my photos (from cropping to more substantial processing techniques).

And yet I've posted 3 different TRs, each of them all at once with no posts from others before my entire TR has been posted. Of course, with the 100-photos per post limit (thankfully up from 20), I post my TRs in logical, divisible chunks (which, I think makes them easier to read anyway).

It is really simple to do so - I write the TR in a separate document (e.g., Word) and then copy & paste each post into the TR only after I've completed the entire TR. The photos are simply links (from photobucket, picasaweb, etc.); so, the size and number doesn't matter if one writes the TR in a separate document (bonus: it offers a good spell-check for me) and, again, since the photos are really links, whether they are processed or not doesn't really matter. And, one can always make a post that says "reserved" and come back to it and "edit" it later with the content for that section of the TR (instead of posting slowly in later posts which bumps the TR to the top of the forum).

Please don't misunderstand me - I have no problem with people posting their TRs slowly over time, but, it certainly is not necessary (one can wait until their TR is written in a separate document before beginning to post). I am working on my next TR...perhaps I will try a new posting strategy?



I also agree that DanielW has some of the most interesting TRs around! ^

Thunderroad

This is fun thread, matthandy. Thanks for your effort in putting it together. And congratulations to the "winners"...though the real winners are us readers who enjoy and learn from the TRs.

I'll add my voice to the chorus here praising DanielW. For those who haven't seen his stuff, it's about getting far off the beaten track, typically to many countries most of us haven't visited, rather than luxury travel. (Personally, I enjoy both kinds of TRs.) Here's his latest example focusing on mountain gorillas, an active volcano and a genocide memorial in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...go-rwanda.html

Genius1

Interesting stats, thanks for compiling matthandy!

btbx11

It's clear that we all have our own opinions on what the greatest trip report on FT might be. How about nominating candidates based on this statistical method, then inserting a poll so users/readers can vote on entries into "The Trip Report Hall of Fame"?

macabus

I think this is a great idea!