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MDL Chronology
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Home > 1. MDL Users

Who Uses MDL?

General Readership Stats

MDL is visited by roughly 110 users per day, from 208 countries (latest count), but as you see in the next item, major users include the principal seagoing States, the BRICS States, and traditionally strong marine States.  Each user downloads roughly 3 exercises during a visit.  The author receives about 1 HELP request per month, usually a simple procedural question, so he believes the materials are quite self-evident and quickly usable.  Courses outlines are included for individual use, and they have been used by the author on-site during historical IODE courses at various locations.  No statistics exist for such individual use.

MDL Users with Most Visits (of 208 States Currently Involved)

[Flag images through RevolverMaps.com]

Updating and Editing

To be effective, the MDL exercises have been found to be quite volatile, indicating a "half life" of roughly 2 years per item.  You can see the history of updates on the Chronology page.  MDL is a dynamic resource, even if  2 years sounds considerable to you.  The format of the exercises is rather outdated HTML, with profuse JPG and PNG illustrations.  This format has been found to allow very rapid and straightforward updating, correcting and replacing.  MDL would not have been possible to construct within any non-HTML content management system, mainly due to the massive illustrations bank (approximately 6000 images).