As a preface, I’m trying to skip a week mentioning the pandemic in this column, although it did enter into most of my stories this week; and at press time it was too soon to know if we would know who the next president, U.S. senator, or some of our legislators would be; historically, my election predictions’ accuracy has stemmed from the formula: Whoever and whatever my family votes for, loses. Sorry, to the bears; in 2014, if I had voted to let people keep baiting and trapping you and hunting you with dogs, the ban on that might have won.

So I will take up a topic in the evergreen, or good for any week, category: Have you ever checked out our top 10 at wiscassetnewspaper.com or boothbayregister.com, not to mention our also award-winning penobscotbaypilot.com? Well, you should. According to you, those articles, in a gray box titled “Most Popular,” are worth a read. The box appears on each site’s home page and on articles’ pages.

You determine our top 10, an ever-changing list of the widest read stories of the past seven days. If a story is high enough interest to crack the top 10 and maybe climb it, it stays on the list unless pushed out by more popular items or its eligibility has timed out. Every article is eligible through seven sets of 24 hours, exactly. Say a story publishes at 1 p.m. Tuesday. Come 1 p.m. the following Tuesday, whether the story got 60 reads or 6,000, it is no longer top 10-eligible.

But you can still access these older stories. Whether they made the top 10 or not, articles stay live, long term. So if you want a certain story, or maybe you are exploring a local topic, go to the search box and start trying keywords. You should find what you are looking for. If you strike out, or have any other questions as you tool around our websites, write to news@wiscassetnewspaper.com or news@boothbayregister.com

But back to the elections, how did they turn out? Any seats or an Oval Office still in play? Our sites publish towns’ results as we get them, so check there often. And like us on Facebook and please subscribe to our free Morning Catch and breaking news emails to stay up to date this big news week and all year round.