Numbers.... Black is White and Mine is Bigger than Yours

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This seems the sort of silly yes-it-is-no-it-isn't argument which belongs on my metal detecting nonsense ghetto blog.

I like to keep an eye on who is reading what on my main blog and have noted that over the past few months it seems to have generated an expanding readership, which I find interesting and encouraging to compare with the blogs that give out the damaging propaganda for no-questions-asked collecting of dug up antiquities.

Peter Tompa started his blog before me, and not long ago was boasting he'd had 50 000 hits, which prompted me to look at my own counter and was interested to note that a few days after that, the number of hits to my own rants, comments and observations passed 150 000. Not long ago it passed 200 000 while Tompa's has still not reached 70 000. So the word is getting around, despite my own blog being a rather niche interest thing.

Dorothy King (Blogs and Cultural Property Propaganda ) disputes these figures:

What's that quote ...? "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" Just out of curiosity I looked at Paul Barford's blog figures, since he made such a point of gloating over his blog being more read than those of "coiney" types, and promoted Gill's table as proof to support his theory. Gill gives him 75 to 80 readers, Google Reader 1.

Aha, one reader? So on the days recently when there have been as many as 700 people looking at the blog, Ms King would have us believe that it is the same person, and the ninety or so "returning visitors" a day shown by the tracking software is the same bloke running for some reason from one computer to the next on at least two separate continents? Day after day.

King gloats that a blog she calls "Barford's nemesis, the butt of so many of his posts, Peter Tompa's Cultural Property Observer" has 58 subscribers.

Tompa has 58 times the subscribers of Barford, which does not tally with Gill's table ...

that is assuming that the PACHI blog does indeed have one subscriber. She notes Candice Jarman's recent efforts to contribute to the discussion:

I think starting a blog devoted to Paul Barford was wrong, but ... it has four times the subscribers of Barford's main blog [...]. And I admit that I do find that rather amusing.

So do I, since the actual identity of the author's followers on the home page is shown as six. Ms King claims about herself: "I can be a bit OCD - my footnotes are always accurate, and I like to be thorough with my research. So, I thought I'd check. And the results were surprising". Indeed, a bit of checking would be in order before she calls somebody a liar, because of course this lays one open to having claims like this checked too.

I do not know what figures Dorothy King is using for the readership of my PACHI blog, she says they are from Google Reader. When I looked just now, instead of "1" it says on my screen quite clearly "Liczba subskrybentów: 78". (Number of Subscribers 78). [But in fact what I was talking about was not subscribers but the number of people that have found or revisited my blog and looked at some of what I'd written.] I suspect that, in her efforts to come to the rescue of the honour of writers like Peter Tompa, the poor lady has in her haste mistaken the PACHI blog with this one (which last time I looked did indeed have - for reasons which are unfathomable since it deals exclusively with nonsense like this - one subscriber). *

But this cannot be the whole explanation. Something else is clearly going on here. She says:

Gill's (sic) Blogging Pompeii has well over a hundred subscribers. According to Google Reader it has 22.

On my screen, "Blogging Pompeii" has Liczba subskrybentów: 117 so more or less what Gill stated and not the reduced number PhDiva gives.

Looting matters, Ms King suggests has 68 while on my screen it says: Liczba subskrybentów: 290 so again the number Gill gives rather than the 'revised' figures Ms King would prefer her readers to believe.

So from where does Ms King get the 'revised' figures on the basis of which she makes her claims that the Swansea academic's comments (and my own) on online readership on cultural property matters are false? All very odd.

*UPDATE: For reasons which are even more unfathomable, it seems now to have four. I'll have to be more careful of what I say here now.
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Candy, oh Candy what is the TRUTH?

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"Candice Jarman" is still refusing to discuss the issues of where what I write about artefact collecting is misinformation. Instead she continues her vendetta against the author (This is Mr Barford - Part 2 ) with "what do we know about Mr Barford?" - well actually rather less than she thinks, and report as "fact". But then, she is not exactly being honest with her own readers is she?

I am not going to comment on the sketchy reconstruction she offers - I really have nothing to defend, nor be ashamed of, she is rather the person who should be ashamed.

1) "Mr Barford had his own entry on Wikipedia". This page was a spiteful hatchet-job made by a person who also had an anonymous blog on so-called "Barfordisation" surprisingly close in tone and style - and graphic content to Candy's. The abysmal lack of real content padded out by personal attacks and cheap jibes was not worthy even of Wikipedia, and that is why it was removed.

2) "worked as a field archaeologist on a number of excavations, mainly in south Wales" No. I worked on the finds from these, it's why I am a co-author of the reports she cites. Regretfully I have never worked or lived in Wales. "Candy" seems totally unable to work the Google Scholar Search engine, this is why the blog's author simply misses a whole mass of references to article published by me (including some on the themes of collecting). According to my CV, the total should be somewhere around 176 (I've not updated it recently and really have no intention of doing so just because "Candy wants to know", if she wants to do "archaeology for all" let her join an academic library). The alleged review of my book is misquoted, quite tellingly so and should be compared with the seventeen published properly in academic journals and not by some pseudonymous individual on Amazon.

3) "why was the cross taken and for what reason!" [I think the solicitor's secretary intended that to be a question] Simply because it had the name of the person inscribed on it, given the nature of the project, it was important to document the identity of the source of the DNA. After the cross had been photographed, it was replaced back in the same place on what was left of the body in the vault when it was sealed and is still there. By that time the person who wrote the text you were reading had got bored and gone. Cheap shot based on incomplete information.

4) "In June 2009, Mr Barford reportedly cynically compared the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 [...] with his own struggle [...] ". Cheap shot. That is not exactly what I said. http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2009/06/was-tank-man-archaeologist.html

5) "Candy" is another one who does not want to understand the Heritage Action Erosion counter. So be it. It is of course not "Mr Barford[']s Heritage/Artefact Erosion Counter". So that is another cheap shot - but hey, here we are actually getting on to some discussion of the merits of the matter - but it does not last long.

6) "Mr Barford's personal life". Hmmm. "what a remarkable woman Mrs Barford must be" - Yes indeed "Candy", she is, more than you suspect. She has a few choice words about you too, and some professional connections you'd probably feel safer not knowing about. Since she neither sells antiquities nor collects them, nor writes on the topic, I do not see what my wife has to do with my views on portable antiquity collecting. "Candy" even has posted on her blog a picture called "Barford_home.jpg". Instead of showing Mrs Barford's home, it is in fact a technical school, draw your own conclusions. I really do not see how anyone can call the Zoliborz district of Warsaw "dreary".

7) "Candy" writes: "Below is a short biographical entry on Mr Barford picked up on the internet by a correspondent (my emphasis):" Perhaps somebody might like to challenge her on where her correspondent's "source" can be found. I doubt very much that there was ever a text with that precise wording anywhere on the Internet, certainly not one produced in consultation with me. More to the point, as far as I can see there is currently no such text on the internet, not even cached, so the question arises when and where "Candy" claims to have accessed this text. After all, we recall that she claims she only started collecting this material after "she" became annoyed with what I wrote about the Crosby Garrett helmet. I suspect this has come from the same "source" as the fabrications of the spite-ridden Wikipedia page.

For similar stuff (in fact probably the "source" of some of "Candy's" ideas): http://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2009/06/paul-barford-voice-of-archaeological.html .

NOW "Candy" has got that off her chest, can we get onto the discussion of artefact hunting and where what I say about it is allegedly wrong? No more beating about the bush, take the bull by the horns, let us see the thrust of your argument. Just one ordinary bloke with another. No need to be shy.

Vignette: British metal detectorists try to put their case the only way they know how.

Not just metal detectorists

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A PAS-sponsored artefact hunting rally began in South Canewdon this weekend, and like years past Jimbo Blaggart, bagged a Roman grot in the first hour. “Artefact hunting is part of my life,” he said, as he waited for a FLO early Monday in his gumboots. “It’s my touch to the past.” But these days when Blaggart dons his cammo gear and picks up his trusty Explorer, he can’t help but think of all of artefact hunting’s current regulations and limits, and he fears for the future.“I'm worried about having legislation passed by different entities that want to stop artefact hunting,” Boggins said as he walked through the swampy woods of the 950 acre Woodstock Plantation, outside Canewdon. “I’m worried they will one day get rid of it altogether.”The lifelong artefact hunter now supports a ballot initiative in Essex to change legislation to ensure artefact hunters a permanent “right to hunt.” Blaggart says: “It will keep local entities from passing legislation that would stop us from having a place to go hunt.”That’s exactly what conservation groups say is the problem with the initiative. “We think there are so many better ways to enjoy the past than destroying a piece of it, “ said Hero Whitehat, a spokesperson for People for the Ethical Treatment of Archaeological Sites (PETAS), the main opposition to the initiative. “PETAS as an organization exists to remind people that there’s really no difference in abusing archaeological sites in Britain to them in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else. When any of them are damaged for mere entertainment and profit, we all are the losers in exactly the same way.”It’s that kind of sentiment from PETAS, Heritage Action and other similar groups that have recently sent artefact hunters to collect signatures all across the country.In the last 15 years, “right to hunt” measures have passed in a number of counties including West Midlands, Merseyside, North Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire, Isle of Wight, Norfolk, Wisconsin, Lancashire, and Devon (Rutland declared hunting a right in 1777 but now no longer exists).PETAS has opposed every single one. “If we're going to have the right to search and loot archaeological sites,” said Whitehat. “why not have the right to shop and golf? We're talking about making things that are legal, extra legal for no apparent reason.”Whitehat predicts these initiatives will only lead to frivolous lawsuits in the future. “If artefact hunters are going to open the flood gates like this, you're going to see them demanding better access to land, larger Treasure rewards, more liberal requirements regarding reporting. There's really no end to this”.Blaggart, climbing out of the hole he had just dug, called that “ridiculous,” stating responsible artefact hunters have a vested interest in restricting the damage to the archaeological heritage.“We want artefact hunting to be around forever, that’s all”.

Douglas Kennedy, "The Right to Hunt" Fox News March 19, 2010
Turkey season opened in South Carolina this week, and like years past James Earl Kennamer, bagged a bird the first day. “Hunting is part of my life,” he said, as he waited for a flock early Monday in Estill. “It’s my touch to nature.” But these days when Kennamer straps on his cammo pants and loads his double-barreled Zoli 12 gauge, he can’t help but think of all of hunting’s regulations and limits, and he fears for the future.“I'm worried about having legislation passed by different entities that want to stop hunting,” Kennamer said as he walked through the swampy woods of the 950 acre Woodstock Plantation, about 40 miles north of Savannah Georgia. “I’m worried they will one day get rid of hunting altogether.”The lifelong hunter now supports a ballot initiative in South Carolina to change the state constitution and give hunters a permanent “right to hunt.” Kennamer says “It will keep local entities from passing legislation that would stop us from having a place to go hunt.”That’s exactly what animal rights groups say is the problem with the initiative. “We think there are so many better ways to enjoy nature than killing a piece of it, “ said Ryan Huling a spokesperson for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the main opposition to the initiative in South Carolina. “PETA as an organization exists to remind people that there’s really no difference in abusing cats and dogs to abusing deer and fish. These animals all feel pain in exactly the same way.”It’s that kind of sentiment from PETA and other similar groups that have recently sent hunters to collect signatures all across the country. It’s that kind of sentiment from PETA and other similar groups that have recently sent hunters to collect signatures all across the country.In the last 15 years, “right to hunt” measures have passed in 9 states including Alabama, Minnesota, North Dakota, Virginia, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Montana, Georgia, and Oklahoma (Vermont declared hunting a right in 1777).PETA has opposed every single one. “If we're going to have the right to hunt and fish,” said Huling. “why not have the right to shop and golf? We're talking about making things that are legal, extra legal for no apparent reason.”Huling predicts these initiatives will only lead to frivolous lawsuits in the future. “If hunters are going to open the flood gates like this, you're going to see them demanding longer hunting seasons, larger bag counts, lower age limits. There's really no end to this.”Kennamer calls that “ridiculous,” stating hunters have a vested in interest in small bag counts and age limits. “We want hunting to be around forever, that’s all”

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