What this site measures
This site counts how its pages are found, read, and returned to. The numbers are about the site, not about you — they tell us which pages are useful so we know what to improve. Here is exactly what that means.
What gets counted. When you view a page we count the view, how far down the page you scrolled, how long you were actively reading, whether you copied anything, whether you followed a link to another of our sites, and playback progress on pages that carry a video. That’s it — statistics about pages: which ones are found, read to the end, and returned to.
How return visits are counted. One first-party cookie, nkda_mid: a random identifier that means nothing outside this site, kept for 13 months. It exists to tell “one person returning” apart from “many people visiting once”, which is the difference between a page people rely on and a page people bounce off.
What is never collected. No IP address, no browser fingerprint, and no full referring URL — only the referring site’s hostname. Nothing you type on any page is ever recorded. There are no third-party trackers or advertising pixels: the numbers go to this site’s own endpoint and nowhere else.
How long the numbers are kept. Indefinitely. We used to delete the underlying records after 90 days; we stopped, because a library is judged over years and a page’s readership only means something measured across its whole life. What is kept is the material described above — page, scroll depth, reading time, referring hostname, and the nkda_mid identifier that distinguishes a return visit from a new one. No IP address, no fingerprint, and nothing that identifies you. Switching measurement off removes your nkda_mid and stops any further records being written.
Some of the numbers are shown publicly. A page may display how many times it has been read — a per-page total, and nothing else. It is a count of views, not of people, and it can never be traced back to a reader: the counts are only ever compiled per page, never per visitor.
Why there’s no cookie banner. Because there’s nothing to consent to a trade about: the measurement is statistics about this site, used only to improve it — no advertising, no profiling, nothing that follows you across the web. This page and the one-click switch below are the deal, stated plainly.
Switching it off. Use the button below, or the matching toggle in the footer of every page. Switching off removes the nkda_mid cookie and stops all measurement for you; the same button switches it back on whenever you like.
Our own visits don’t count. When someone signs in with an operator (admin) account, measurement is switched off for that browser — the site’s own maintainers are usually debugging, and counting those visits would distort the very numbers they exist to read. That decision is made in your browser, which simply doesn’t send: the measurement endpoint never learns who anyone is.
If you sign in. An account adds features that are yours: hearts, bookmarks, votes, and a viewing history you can clear or turn off on your account pages . Those live entirely on your account, for your use. They are a separate system from the measurement described above — the two are never joined. We analyse totals per content item (how many hearts or votes a page has), never your individual activity, and your identity is never joined to any analysis or to the site statistics.