Weather was yet again the most popular topic on LJWorld.com Wednesday, which isn’t surprising given the surprise tornado warnings east of Lawrence. Below are Wednesday’s most-viewed stories and most-commented items in the past 24 hours:

Most-viewed stories

1. Flood advisory for Douglas County expires
2. Photo Gallery: Kansas City tornadoes
3. City gives Lawrence Freenet the go-ahead on fiber network project
4. Town Talk: Westar tree trimmers are out and about; new downtown retailer hopes to showcase local crafters; donation drop off set up for triplets; a peek inside an old waterline
5. Recruiting hot topic for KU coach Bill Self

Most-commented items

1. Song Blog: Weathering the Storm
2. Obama denies reality in Israel
3. OTS: What is the first thing you would do if you won the lottery?
4. Kansas likely to enact health care ‘freedom’ law
5. Poll: Did you watch the final episode of Oprah?

We’ve been building a new project over the last five months — a set of interactive crime maps. In December 2010, we decided to map out crimes in Lawrence for each month in 2011. We published the maps we have so far at ljworld.com/crimemaps, and we’ll commit to updating the maps at least once a week (hopefully more).

The incidents in the maps are similar to what you’ll find covered on [LJWorld.com][13] and in our print edition. We’ll map these crimes:

– Burglaries or thefts, only with a loss of $1,000 or more, unless there are unusual circumstances. To protect victims, we generally don’t identify them by name.
– Assaults and batteries, generally if someone had to be treated at a hospital.
– Holdups and robberies
– Homicides
– DUIs

Each month has its own map, and the two main maps show total crimes by month and by crime type. You can filter by crime type, too. Click on the When you click on an individual marker, you get the following info:

– Date
– Location
– Time
– Crime type
– Short description

Let me know what you think!

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