Mark's Notebook

Square Dancing By The Numbers

Altavista shows that there are about one million web pages devoted to square and round dancing. There are about 877,000 pages devoted to square dancing only, 102,000 pages devoted to round dancing only, and 73,000 pages that deal with both square and round dancing.

I ran these numbers on both Altavista and Google, but the Altavista numbers were more consistent and credible. The Google numbers did not all add up properly.

The following table shows the numbers of pages devoted to square and round dancing.

Measures of Page Quality

It's really hard to evaluate the quality of these web pages. I'm working on a project that can evaluate the quality of a web page by examining the its source code. That project is only in the planning stages now.

One easy measure of web page quality when the page was last updated. But it's not easy to determine when a page was updated using a search engine like Altavista. Search engines typically allow searches based on the page text, but not file dates.

So, if we can find the string "2004" or "2005" on a web page, this might suggest that the page was last updated within the past year (well, 15 months). This is not foolproof. It is possible that a page has the string "2005" but it was actually written in 2003. We can easily see this by searching for web pages that have the string "2006" ... we'll find plenty of pages that match. Most of them are web pages or fliers about square and round dance events happening in 2006.

It is also possible that a page could have been updated in 2005, but it does not have "2005" anywhere in the page text, just because the web designer did not feel it important to put any kind of date on the page. Since some users might search for a page based on some kind of date encoded in the page, it is considered good practice for web authors to put a date on their pages. Most of the pages on the Mixed-Up.com web site have a tag at the bottom that says something like "Last updated 08 April 2005." That way anyone who looks at that page can know how current or stale it is.

Overall, about 28 percent of square and round dancing web pages give some sign that they were updated in 2004 or 2005, and about 71 percent do not give any such sign.

Measures of Page Usefulness

Another measure of page "usefulness" is a reference to a class or classes for dancers. This is not really a measure of page "quality" as it is a measure of the "utility" of the page for the non-dancer and for the future of the activity for those already dancing. Most of us would agree that beginner classes are necessary for the long-term survival of both square dancing and round dancing.

So how many of these pages refer to a class or classes? It looks like about 30 percent of square and round dance web pages refer to classes.

What Does This Mean?

So what? Is this good or bad? Does it mean anything at all?

If only 30 percent of square dance web pages have been updated within the last year, this means that a lot of the square dance information on the web could be out of date. This is particularly true of information that changes a lot over time, like club pages, classes, fliers, and calendars. But it is less true of reference information like call definitions, cue sheets, and music lists. That kind of information does not go out of date very quickly at all.

It seems that most square dance web pages do not have any indication of publishing date at all. For example, this link shows that only 384,000 square and round dance web pages have any year indication from 1994 (the beginnings of the internet) until 2005. This means that about 77 percent of square dance web pages that indicate any date at all have been updated within the last year. But it also means that only about 38 percent of square dance web pages give any indication of their last update. This suggests that it is important to address the issue of general web page quality and standards, while in addition hoping to keep the pages current.

I more than most know how difficult it is to keep the information on a web site up-to-date. This site has many hundreds of pages, and many of them were written years ago. I try to remove information that is more than one year old, but I am aware of some pages that refer to classes that took place in 1999 and 2000. Trying to keep up with everything is nearly impossible when the data is edited by hand.

If only 30 percent of square and round dance web pages refer to classes, this says more about the hobby in general than it says about the web pages themselves. It is hardly possible to put up a page about a beginner class that does not exist (or got cancelled due to lack of interest). But many clubs don't post class information on the web because it changes too quickly. This is unfortunate because it short-changes both the newcomer looking for a class, and the club looking for new members.

Callerlab has proposed a system whereby square dance classes can register with a national database. This would allow prospective dancers anywhere in the US to find a class near them, if one exists. However, implementation is slow and gaining the confidence of technophobes is difficult.

Future Explorations

In the future, I hope to break down these figures by country and state, to find out which states and associations have their acts together. I also hope that by running these same figures in the future, we will find that the overall situation is improving.

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Last updated Tuesday 13 May 2008