Metrics for benchristel.com

Created: July 4, 2024.
Updated: November 2, 2024.

Background

The goal of the web portal page is twofold:

• Goal 1: Contain my internet addiction. The analogy is to wildfire containment: the idea is to define a perimeter around the bad thing, so it can't expand, and then ratchet it slowly inwards. To that end, I generate a LeechBlock NG configuration file that I use to block all sites not in the web portal.
• Goal 2: Preserve links to the websites I use, in case web search becomes unusable. A side effect / subgoal is that the portal can serve as a starting point for a web crawler, which will come in handy if/when I want to build my own search engine.

Data collected

The metric for Goal 1 is "number of webpages visited per month" as measured by my browser history. This number should remain stable or decrease over time. It's unclear what an ideal value for this metric would be — maybe around 300? (EDIT: 900 pages per month feels about right.) As of June 2024, it's around 2000.

A few webpages that I consider mostly harmless are excluded from this metric. Those include:

• the Web Portal itself
• Bastion
• my meditation timer
• my email inbox

I might add to this list in the future.

The metric for Goal 2 is "number of web searches performed per month." Google and DuckDuckGo searches are counted separately because Google is more prone to enshittification. Lower numbers are better.

How to gather metrics

Run tools/metrics HISTORYFILE

Historical Data

• The target for monthly webpage visits is 900.
• Lower search counts are better.

Notes

November 2024

The number of DuckDuckGo searches for this month is artificially inflated, because I looked up several DDG bangs. Every time you type a character into the search bar on that page, the URL changes and adds an entry to your history. If we exclude those extra history items, I used DuckDuckGo 46 times.

The nine Google searches were me paging through Google Books results trying to find the earliest mention of "deviled eggs."

October 2024

I didn't really work on any projects this month, hence the low traffic. I did, however, successfully "drive web searches to zero" — my stated goal from last month. I didn't have a particular deadline in mind for this goal. I didn't expect it to go so quickly.

Zero searches doesn't seem sustainable with my current setup. The only reason I got away with it last month was because, as I said, I wasn't working on anything. I'm considering trying to maximize the number of searches I do in November — with the rule that anything good I find by searching has to go on the portal page. Not sure I'll do this yet.

In any case, I think it's time to set up LeechBlock on my work computer as well, to remove the temptation to cheat on these metrics by using it for personal web browsing. I plan to cut off web access on the work machine at 5 PM, and use my allowlist during the workday.

September 2024

This month felt balanced. Just over 900 pages. Many of them were personal websites, notably Skyhold and maya.land.

Next goal: hold pages per month at 900 while driving web searches to zero.

August 2024

That one Google search doesn't count - I was using Unicode.org's search feature, which I thought was a first-party thing, but it turned out to just be a link to Google. Why the Unicode Consortium can't build a search tool for Unicode characters, which they presumably already have an exhaustive, in-memory-sized database of, is beyond me. But there it is.

I felt like I visited a lot of pages this month, but I guess it wasn't that many. I did discover many new websites through the Wayward Web, and had to wait through the 20-second delay that LeechBlock imposes for each one. Maybe the delay made it feel like there were more of them.