The Top 10 Most-Viewed Geneva Stories of 2011

• Editor's note: Throughout the week, we've run a series of editor's picks for the . Take a look at if you get a chance. It's interesting to compare that list to what really were the most-read stories of 2011.

We all have an idyllic notion about what we read and like to read. Of course, you and I—intelligent and discerning folks that we are—choose human interest stories over car crashes. We read long, investigative news stories and completely ignored that that Rick ran on Nov. 24.

The truth is that the big-toe picture did better—in terms of numbers of viewers and page views—than half the stories published that month.

People's taste in stories probably shouldn't be surprising. Yes, human beings like superficial things. We're interested in . We love our and. We like to see our faces on TV.

But we also like to be informed on breaking news. We care about the fundamentals of community life in Geneva: public safety, crime an fire, schools, government, commerce and people. We are about what goes on in our town, and we want to make it a better place.

Based on the data—not just the top 10 below—here are some quick observations about the stories, photos and videos we like to look at on Geneva Patch:

We like a lively argument.

We like to know when there's a new store in town, or when one closes.

We like to compete for things, especially on behalf of our community or school.

We're interested in conflict and controversy.

We care—a lot—about public safety. We want to know when there's an emergency or a weather event. When there's a threat to our kids or our community, we want to know when it happened, what happened and what we can do to help.

We like timely news.

We like to be surprised.

Your Top 10 stories of 2011

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.