The 2014 Ethics Alarms Best and Worst of Ethics Awards will be along shortly, but right now I want to provide an overview of the blog itself as 2015 dawns.

Posts: There were slightly more than 1,000 posts to Ethics Alarms in 2014.

Traffic: Ethics Alarms had 1,195,812 page views, up about 6% over 2013.

Most Viewed Posts: Outside of the home page, the Rationalizations List remained the most popular. The top ten 2014 posts that drew the most interest were, in order of most visits;

• Kaitlin Pearson: First “Naked Teacher Principle” Subject of 2014
• The Strange, Sad, Ominous Case Of College Student Julian Batts and His Wheel Of Fortune Disaster
• Unethical Website of the Month: Hoax Site “The News Nerd”
• Samuel L. Jackson Was Wrong and Behaved Like A Jerk: Why Is Sam Rubin The One Who Is Apologizing?
• Hard Lesson Of The Walmart Tragedy: Bad Ethics Kills (The last post of the year!)
• Ice Bucket Challenge Ethics
• Sexism, Feminists, and The Scientist’s Shirt
• Maybe I’m Losing My Mind, But I Think Geico’s “Maxwell The Pig” Ads Are Racist (One of my sillier posts, proving that I never can tell what readers will find interesting)
• The Ethics Scrooge On The Starbucks Pay-It-Forward Ponzi Scheme
• Unethical Quote Of The Month: Judge Jeanine Howard

I think it is fair to say that not one of these posts would make my list of the most important, perceptive or useful posts of the year. There isn’t a post on the list, for example, that covers any issues relating to government, leadership, legal ethics or journalism. My guess is that the posts above are relatively unique, while my analysis of issues extensively debated and covered elsewhere are less likely to be noticed.

There are also some  posts from previous years that were read a lot this year. These include, again in order:

• Wanetta Gibson Is Even Worse Than We Thought (regarding one of the worst of the false rape accusers—the second most viewed post this year)
• The Amazing Mouthwash Deception: Helping Alcoholics Relapse For Profit (making me very happy, as I think this is an important post about a serious health problem the news media still ignores)
• Workplace Ethics: 62 Things That Are Legal, But 22 Of Them Are Unethical
• Unethical Advertising Slogan of the Month: Reebok (I have no idea why a post about  2012 ad was deemed relevant in 2014)
• Clark Gable, Loretta Young, and the Betrayal of Judy Lewis
• The Ethics of Workplace Personality Tests (the oldest popular post by far)
• The Message or the Messenger: The Mysterious Foundation For A Better Life
• The Forgotten Meaning of Labor Day

Most Commented Upon Posts: The most viewed posts did not include the most commented upon, except, and don’t ask me why, the Wheel of Fortune post linked above. That surprised me. Here are the posts that garnered the most comments in 2014, and this list does include several of my favorites:

• Of COURSE There’s An Unwed and Pregnant Catholic School Teacher Principle….Don’t Be Silly.
• Embracing Orwell
• Twelve Post-Veto Ethics Observations On The Arizona “Religious Freedom” Bill
• Ethics Dunces (Bigotry Division): Arizona Republicans
• Ethics Observations Regarding The “Little Thing” Letter
• How People Rationalize Being Close-minded: A Case Study
• On Liberals, Dignity, Dogs, Signature Significance and Toddlers On Leashes
• Texas Republicans Forfeit All Claims To Respect
• Clayton Lockett Is Dead, Right? Then 1) Good! and 2) His Execution Wasn’t “Botched”
• The Campus Sexual Assault Witch Hunt Ethics Train Wreck, Complicated By The Fact That The Witches Are Real

Commenters: The most prolific commenter was texagg04, by a large margin. Two of the top ten most frequent commenters of the year, Luke G. and Scott Jacobs, self-exiled in annoyance at the position I took: Scott because he believes “everybody must get stoned,” or at least should be able to if they want, and Luke in horror at my analysis of the Clayton Lockett execution in the post above. Some other prolific and significant commenters either vanished or greatly curtailed their participation: Barry Deutsch, the author of several Comments of the Day in the past, bolted over a dispute regarding blog civility policies. Ethics Bob and Rick Jones dropped by occasionally but apparently were busy. Champion commenter tgt made a brief comeback from his retirement and vanished again. Liberal Dan, an entertaining and reliable foil, seems to have retreated because I lost patience with his absurd insistence that “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan—period” wasn’t a lie. Liberals did not have a good year, here, or anywhere. “Period.”

I banned 13 commenters in 2014, by far the most yet. One, “Art Hawley,” was banned twice, since he tried to sneak back under a new name, and immediately outed himself by returning to his previous persona’s obsessions.

Prominence: Ethics Alarms comes up #2 in a Google search for “ethics commentary,” and #5 when you search for “ethics blog.”

ONWARD!

ADDENDUM (1/2/15): I omitted one key issue: Typos. This is an ongoing and long-standing issue, and I swear, I am trying to minimize their occurrence. I can’t really type; I used to use my mother as my proofreader even in college. I’m just lousy at it. A lot of the egregious typos are caught by you, and e-mailed to me with varying speed: thank-you. That helps, but it usually doesn’t catch the stupid little ones—missing words that I thought I typed and keep seeing when they aren’t there; d for s (and vice versa); missing periods. I’m a lifetime first draft writer. This makes it possible for me to compose a 1000 word essay more or less completely in my head, and that has no typos. (It may still be wrong in other ways, as you know.) It’s the getting from my head to the blog that poses a problem. Writing quickly allows me to cover important topics in ethics (I wish I could get twice as many posts up) while still doing the work that pays the bills, as well as participating in the comments, which I think is equally important (I even write more comments than tex, and yes, I know that my typos there are worse.)

All I can say is that I’m aware of the problem, I apologize for it, I’m trying to address it more effectively, and all assistance is welcome.