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Wednesday 6 January 2021

Amalaric and BrosFate battle to be top New Post of 2020 (MPP1)

 
Amalaric - The Last Sale of the Day (36th of 1001 Nights)

Last year I changed my annual review of new posts to base it on average hit rates instead of total hits. This allowed a fairer comparison of the staggered postings and the inclusion of late posts from the previous year. I have slightly refined the method again this year to strike a balance between total hits scored and rate of hits. The new method is outlined at the foot of this post for those who are interested.
 
 The 20 posts below are the most popular mitchmen posts out of all those newly published in 2020 
and late 2019. (Titles have links to the original posts, overall ranking in first column, ranking position based on total hits and rate of hits in columns 3 and 4 ).

 
TABLE 1 - Top 20
 
Rank
Title (+link)
Total Hits Rank
Hit Rate Rank
Pub Date
Note
1
2
2
Aug
-
2
1
7
Feb
-
3
9
3
Oct
-
4
7
6
Aug
-
= 5
4
16
May
-
= 5
8
12
Jun
-
= 7
10
11
Aug
-
= 7
13
8
Aug
-
9
3
22
Feb
-
10
15
13
Aug
-
11
24
5
Oct
-
12
6
25
Mar
-
13
12
20
Jun
-
14
5
28
Jan
-
15
33
1
Nov
-
16
by ObiCumKenobi (& Mitchell)
20
15
Jan
-
17
22
17
Aug
-
18
14
27
May
-
19
11
33
Feb
-
20
19
30
May
-
 
(Stats collected on 31st December 2020) 
 

The list this year is dominated by Amalaric (6 posts) and BrosFate (3 posts). It was their battle for the top spot that prompted me to re-examine my methodology (again!).

Total Hits v Hit Rate

Under the old 'Total Hits' method BrosFate-Part 3 would have romped away with the title this time. It scored 3407 hits in the year (wresting the all-time record for this particular measure from 2019's top scorer 'Milking Factories 4' with 2820). In second place, a long way behind on 2103 hits, was 'Art of Amalaric-Part 1'.  

On the 'Hit Rate' measure which I switched to last year, Amalaric - Part 8, published in late November came top, scoring hits at a rate of 7426pa. However, it wasn't even inside the top 30 on Total Hits with only 736 hits so I probably would have excluded it from the final table as an anomaly last year. Amalaric - Part 1 was second on hit rate, it scored an annualised 5950 views pa. However, On this omeasure BrosFate - Part 3 with 3838 hits pa was down in 7th place, thanks to some late autumn articles which made substantial scores in a very short space of time. This didn't seem a very fair position to me and other worthy articles suffered a similar downgrading. 

As a result I modified the methodology again to strike a balance between 'Total hits' and 'Hit Rate'. In the final results table shown above the posts are sequenced in an order which combines both these measures. Columns 3 and 4 show the ranking position for each separate measure. The new methodology is explained in more detail at the foot of this post.

 

The Winning Articles

'Art of Amalaric-1' emerges as the overall winner by virtue of coming second on both of the new measures with BrosFate-3 as the runner-up, which is a fairer outcome, I think.

Amalaric - Part 1, which was published in August, made a Total Hits score that secured 2nd position but would have won in most years. It was second on hit rate too, but neither it nor the top article on this measure (Amalaric - Part 8) quite managed to match the previous all time 'Hit Rate' record set by Wrestling Arsenal in 2018 (an exceptional 9195). They did both comfortably beat the 2nd highest - IFNB (3096 in 2018) and last years winner, Milking Factories 4 (2949). In fact the top 11 posts on 'Hit Rate' this year all beat IFNB's score, despite overall visitor levels to mitchmen dropping slightly (a phenomenon I will discuss next time). 

  Amalaric's Art also dominates the rest of the list and this seems an appropriate reflection of the profound effect his images and writings have had on my own thinking and creative processes this year. The opening article in the series has been most popular, partly because I guide new readers to start there. Only 2 of the 8 articles published so far are missing from the list (No 4, 'Ritual of Undressing' and No 6, 'Cruel Justice'). The most recent (No 8, 'A Slave's Life') actually topped the 'Hit Rate' table as we have seen, but it finishes in 15th position in the final table because it was published too late in the year to register a big number of 'Total Hits' and only just beat the combined 'cut', which was 33rd place (see Methodology below). There are more Amalaric articles to come in 2021 and it won't be possible to assess them all properly until this time next year.

As consolation for BrosFate, all 3 of his articles got into the top 20 at 2, 9 and 19. He'll get more recognition for that big score in the 'All Comers' list for 2020 (MPP2) which I will publish shortly. I was surprised that BrosFate -3, a  'round up of the rest' article (3838 hits) did so much better than my own favourite, BrosFate-1 (Captured Soldier) with 1848 hits.

Priapus of Millet is a long-time favourite at this blog (and with me!) so it's no surprise to see the two 'Shooting The Past' articles well placed at 5 and 13. The imagery in this series is remarkable with subtle, erotic undertones that peak in Part 2, which explains the greater interest shown there.

There's been no shortage of other surprises this year, notably Ehrlik who isn't really a gay artist at all, but his (her?) two domination images certainly struck a chord with my readers to come in at 5 and 12 (and even higher on 'Total Hits' alone). I confess I have little interest in women but I do enjoy see them dominating 'straight' men as long as they don't dominate the imagery itself. I think it's a shame that such pictures are rejected by many due to the female presence, but most of my readers seem open to the sight (in moderation). At least, I've had no complaints about it!

Surprise No 2 is the appearance of DooSoo's 'Humiliation Floor' at No 11. It's top quality artwork with an evergreen, forced undressing theme at it's core, but I hadn't expected it to attract quite so much interest. It's 831 hits in just 10 weeks would have propelled it into the top 5 in most recent years. By contrast 'The Bondage Art of Black Prof' (another non-gay artist) aroused only modest interest on publication. The timing in early May was not so good and the dwarf-like characters it features as villains caused me a bit of politically-correct soul-searching. It got a late surge of interest in the autumn and I'm pleased to see it sneaked in at No 18. Tentakun at No. 20 makes up a varied trio of Asian artists who are new to this blog, a result of a resolution I made this time last year to focus more on 'new' Art.

There are a clutch of articles this year which I had a hand in creating myself. My own drawings rarely turn up in these lists but I try not get upset about it! The two 'Crazy Cop Captions' at 10 and 17 are slight pieces in comparison but it's nice that readers like them. These are the only articles based on photographs this year, unless you count Amalaric's manips. I also did some colouring and slight image alterations for the ObiKumKenobi, Milking Factory - 7 post, which at 16, has modestly emulated the success of it's predecessors. The popularity of that series probably accounts also for the presence of last years 'Most Popular Post' article at 14. I'd like to think it's my writing that attracts visitors but I suspect the main draw is the headline image by Sarander, which I cropped for this article to create a greater impact. Looks like it worked!

Even with the changes in methodology, no posts from 2019 made it into the top 20, victims of a late surge in visitors. A couple just missed the cut (and would have just made it into the old-style 'Total Hits' top 20). These borderline posts suffer from multi-part articles crowding them out of the top 20, so I've prepared a supplementary table of the next 10 or so articles which might have found a place if I limited multi-part series to the top scoring article. These also-rans are shown below in the sequence they would appear if they were all admitted to the table.

 
TABLE 2 Near Misses
 

Cut Factor
Title
Total Hits Rank
Hit Rate Rank
Pub Date
35
35
4
Nov
20/20
23
23
July
31
31
19
Aug
43
43
10
Oct
36
18
36
Jan
20/20
26
29
Jun
41
17
41
Dec '19
42
16
42
Nov '19
40 & 20/20
21
40
Dec '19

Ariel XY, notionally in 23rd place is the only 'new boy' in this group. His 'Bulges and Tentacles' is already within the existing cut-off level of 33, it just didn't score enough to gain a place in the top 20. 
 
This annex to the main table has some old school favourites whom it's good to see still scoring, Etienne notionally in 24th place and Jotto (25). Chirenon (26) is a bit tricky on age and gender issues so I'm very selective what I use here but his witty and sexy photo manips are popular. Another more established artist, AbsolutBlue, props up the rest, he is a major omission from my Artist Reviews which I really ought to rectify. 
 
 
 AbsolutBleu is one of the late 2019 articles which fill the last 3 places in this table. Muscle Matt's exuberant muscle cartoonery (27) is already well recognised even though he's not producing anymore and he's a worthy addition to my roster of Fetish Artists. Stefan's pioneering photo manips (28) are further back in our art history, but arguably his work is an ancestor of the popular IFNB fantasy world. 
 
The disparity of ranking scores shown for the first article here (columns 3 & 4) illustrates well the conundrum of reconciling Total Hits with Hit Rate. It's combined score is the best of this group and should get it into 17th place in the main table but it's Total Hit ranking at 35 misses the qualifying cut of 33 which applies to both measures. The cut rule is designed to keep out extremes like this. The number in the left hand column shows the cut-off level at which other articles would be admitted to the top 20 if I were to condense multi-part series into one entry. So 'Be Careful What You Wish For - 1 would qualify next after ArielXY but at a cut-off level raised to 35, then Jotto's Red Barn would be added at 36. Notice that admission sequence is not the same as ranking score, so a later admission can overtake others in the table. '20/20' indicates that the article is presently excluded by a separate rule requiring that they be in the top 20 of at least one of the two rankng lists. These rules are more simply explained in the methodology below. 
 
RANKING METHODOLGY 
 
Remember, this comparison is only made for entertainment, since I don't really know how accurate Google's view count stats are, I suspect they don't even count people who just browse through the blog roll. 
 
  • I started with a short list of the most-visited posts from 2020 (and the second half of 2019) using an arbitrary cut-off of 600 visits. 51 articles made this list and 2 posts from 2019 made it into the top 20 - Muscle Matt 1 (Dec) and Stefan's Muscle Art (Nov). Another one, 'Pirate Booty' was at 21. (No 20 in this list had 896 hits compared with 520 for No 20 in 2019). 
  • Next I calculated the 'hit rate' for all these articles (= Total hits divided by length of time since it was posted) and prepared a second ranking table based on that criterion. This method cancels out the time advantage of early articles but magnifies the popularity of recent arrivals. 
  • To iron out anomalies between these two measures in a reasonably objective wa,y I introduced a further refinement. that articles could only qualify for the final top 20 if they were above the cut-off position in both lists - Total Hits and Hit Rate. A cut-off point of 33 gave me a list of 20 articles. In other words an article only qualified for the final table if they were above 33rd position in both measures. 
  • They also had to have a top 20 position in at least one of the lists, meaning a mid 20's position in both lists would not be good enough to qualify. It seemed absurd to include these in a 'Top 20', but you can see two of them in the near misses, Table 2 just above. 
  • Finally I combined the two rankings simply by averaging them into one number. Table 1 above is the result. 
 HAPPY NEW YEAR! 
Thank you to all my readers for your interest in my blog, 
 
The list of best performing mitchmen articles in 2020 overall (not just the new ones) can be seen in article MPP2.
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