L.A. Law Wikipedia Page Viewed 874 Times Today“, an article from the satirical media giant The Onion, is funny because it’s painful.

The article starts off telling a story about irrelevant content. In this case, web analytics about a really old TV show on Wikipedia:

“Our L.A. Law page typically gets 915 views on weekdays and 670 on weekends, so we’re about 40 off the pace,” Wikipedia web moderator Ben Stern said of the entry for the Steven Bochco series, which hasn’t aired a new episode since 1994. “Then again, the day isn’t over, and if our metrics are correct, Corbin Bernsen’s IMDB page should be viewed at least 15 more times before midnight. We generally get some runoff from that.”

How often have you read something to the effect of:

“Of the 874 unique visitors today, 762 stayed on the site for less than 80 seconds, with 203 navigating to YouTube to view the L.A. Law opening-credit sequence. However, 366 remained on Wikipedia and clicked on the various hyperlinks within the entry, with 156 accessing the page for “in the closet,” 42 clicking on the link for “Bentley,” 328 viewing the entries for both “AIDS” and “mentally retarded,” and 12 people consulting the article for “running gag,” which has been viewed 64 times today.”

The benefit of selecting Key Performance Indicators that are relevant to the organization is, in part, the mitigation of such paragraphs.