Are we done yet?
Considering that I’ve managed only seven posts since my first one last March, and my fellow LSTOTT bloggers hwiegand and hbogerd haven’t posted in nearly four months and seven months, respectively, I’d say that this place is not exactly staying topical and up-to-date. In fact, it’s barely ticking over.
And, given that the average number of comments over the last ten posts is just less than two (1.9, range 0 – 5), with quite a few of those being my own responses to initial comments from others, I’d also venture to suggest that barely anyone’s reading it. Either that, or those who do are remarkably silent.
So – this begs the question. Is there any point to continuing this blog? I suppose it’s gratifying to see comments, and feel that others are reading, perhaps being stimulated to think about the topics of the posts a little, or at least being engaged. I know that the argument’s been made many times, by many people, that “we don’t blog just to get comments”, and I guess in some way that’s true. But I, personally, don’t blog in order to simply throw my thoughts into the wind – if nobody’s reading, what’s the point of writing publicly? I might as well keep a little notebook, or put it all on a private website.
This all may seem like whining, and perhaps it is. But if anyone’s interested in commenting, I’d like to hear it, as long as you’re not the same people who’ve been hitting the blog with spam comments about various activities consenting adults might engage in. Oh, and yes, I’m aware that I’m not the only SAB blogger who’s been thinking about moving on, shutting down, or finding another forum for his/her thoughts.
We’ll see, I guess. Happy New Year, everyone – new things, and all.
Posted on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 4:01 pm Categorized as:General You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
January 5th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I just discovered this blog, but your situation reminds me of the couple of “unsuccessful” blogs I started about 4-5 years ago. They no longer exist, for the same reasons that you mention, but the one that did click was due to joining a blogring, and interacting with other bloggers in the ring.
Personally, I think I’m “overblogged” these days, but now that I’ve found this blog, I’ll have to check back more often.
January 7th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
RWintle,
Thanks for your comments. I think the subject of this blog is unique in the science blogosphere and that you, hwiegand and hbogerd have done your colleagues a tremendous service with your witty and often pointed observations on the tools used in your lab. I know for a fact that vendors are reading this blog and have heard from them directly when something negative has been posted. (Anyone remember the Easy Access T-Shirts?). We at The Science Advisory Board are well aware that the functionality of these blogs needs to be improved for authors and readers alike. This is a priority for our new Community Manager. We hope we can better serve you in this way in the coming months. That said, comments aren’t the only measure of a blog’s importance or impact. A quick look at ScienceBlogs.com shows few of the blog posts have any comments. Same with Nature Network. Our good friend RGrant has one of the most commented on blog posts with 25 comments as of January 7. But looking at those 25 comments, half are from RGrant himself and only one (yours) substantively deals with the subject of RGrant’s post. This isn’t too take anything away from RGrant’s blog (or anyone else’s) – science blogs simply don’t appear to evoke the kind of community response one might get from a political, religious or sports commentary. Readership may in fact be a better indicator. Since its inception Tools of the Trade has received 40,558 hits with 43 hits just today. So we are getting traffic and I believe the content you and your co-bloggers have is valued by your readers even if they’re not chiming in the way we want them to. Please keep up the good work!
January 12th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Ken – thanks for the positive comments. I totally agree with you about being “overblogged” – and since Bill mentions Richard Grant, he just posted something over there about being buried under RSS feeds as well, which is another hazard.
Bill – thanks for the in-depth comments too. That’s more encouraging. It’s true that comments are not the only benchmark but it really has seemed a bit like howling into the wind recently. Nevertheless, I’ll take your comment in the encouraging spirit in which it was given. Cheers, Richard.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:07 am
I think the “team approach” to blogging is key – I know I have a hard tome coming up with things to write at my own blog (http://marketanalysts.lifescienceexec.com) so maybe a first step is to recruit a few additional authors to TOTT. Second, I think we need to do a bit more cross-promotion with the Forum which remains far and away the most visited section of The Science Advisory Board website. Third, whether positive or negative, I think the SAB staff can do a better job reaching out to the vendor community to reply to posts that mention their products (not sure how you feel about that one). Next, whether your posts are a rant, a rave or just an observation, perhaps some can end with an open-ended question that would encourage more replies. Finally, we need to build more links between ourselves and other science bloggers – perhaps we’ll recruit Richard II to show us how!
January 13th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Update: Kineda.com reports, through its nefarious link-up with Technorati, that LSTOTT is a “D-list” blog, with exactly zero (count ‘em, *zero*) outgoing links in the last 180 days.
Whoever’s reading, ain’t linking either, it seems.
http://www.kineda.com/are-you-an-a-list-bloglebrity/
January 14th, 2009 at 10:36 am
I also come back over here when I get a RSS heads-up. Not quite in a timely fashion, but even so. Readership is fine, comments are more motivating. Both are great. At least here, it is possible to consult the readership stats. Howevers, as rwintle knows, many of those hits are likely to come from bots looking to spew their spam, so it’s hard to know what numbers to take seriously.
Maybe you could take a poll in the forum to see what kind of products people would like to see rated. In fact, Richard and I were just writing about something similar not long ago (see comments here: http://network.nature.com/people/UE19877E8/blog/2009/01/05/in-which-i-shed-my-lingering-frugality), and this might be the ideal place to do it, with a more personal touch from the blog linking in to certain products.
Don’t give up on SAB, but don’t feel guilty about making even very sporadic contributions – RSS takes care of all that.
January 14th, 2009 at 10:39 am
This is not helped, of course, by the fact that WordPress has suddenly decided to start marking legitimate comments for moderation (I had to approve the last three, although I could see the one I’d posted). Makes discourse via comments difficult.
January 14th, 2009 at 11:59 am
I have been thinking about starting a blog on Nature Network, but blogging requires copious amounts of time and energy, both of which are in short supply at the moment. Ah well…good luck, rwintle.
January 15th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Proactively creating links between blogs is an important part of generating readership, and we haven’t done a particularly good job of this. Question for current and future SAB bloggers: Should inviting and requesting links be the responsibility of the authors or the SAB staff?
A couple of other observations…most bloggers (esp. those on NN and SB) appear to be motivated by a desire to express themselves on topics that interest them. The larger the audience, I assume the more attractive the opportunity to blog becomes. The idea behind SB (and later NN) was to create a large audience by putting a whole bunch of blogs in the same place so readers wouldn’t have to traverse multiple links to find interesting material (on the political side, Huffington Post has a similar model) We offered Members the chance to set up their own blogs at the site in October 2004 – years before the other sites were even launched. We considered blogs a service to Members who wanted to express themselves through what was then a new medium, the newer sites now offer the same functionality with the aim of creating a big audience for their advertisers. Since we remain advertising-free audience generation has never been a priority. Is that something we should reconsider?
January 17th, 2009 at 10:59 am
I’m not sure that I even notice the ads on the NN or Seed websites, but then I am even oblivious to Google’s.
Certainly it’s a good thing that you don’t put additional pressure on SB bloggers to generate audience, but I think it’s more about motivation. Few of us keep written, closed diaries (anymore); a blog is more of a soapbox, and without an audience, it loses its appeal after a while for the blogger. Like giving the same lecture in an amphitheatre of educated like-minded individuals, to a rowdy bunch of argumentative students, or out in the middle of the tundra. Some of us like the pat-on-the-back, some the confrontation, but few just writing for itself.
Yes, there are certainly techniques bloggers can use to better promote their blogs. It’s just that in the long run, if they can get more feedback of the kind they like for the same amount of work in another host location, that is where they will head. Some things I really like about blogging here: WordPress, even with its drawbacks; the blogroll; the ability to contribute to the design even if it can be a little bit pulling teeth; the ability to integrate ResearchBlogging tags.
After all, how many among us can be a Bora or a PZ? “Bloggers of this type have been at it longer – a year and a half on average – and post nearly twice a day, an increase in posting volume of over 100% from the previous group. … Some of these are full-fledge professional enterprises that post many, many times per day and behave increasingly like our friends in the mainstream media.”
January 18th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Alethea has, as usual, articulated the point much more clearly than I did in the original post. And, having in recent memory given a lecture to four people, one of whom invited me and one of whom I brought myself, so the legitimate audience was actually two souls, the analogy of lecturing in the tundra tickled me a bit.
I would hate to go too far in the other direction and post so often that there is essentially no opportunity for commenting (I, like many, do not have time to read every post from every blog I peruse; I miss many posts from daily ones, even with the aid of RSS).
I also agree with Alethea that advertisements on NN and similar places (Google AdWords, for example) generally get ignored; having run an AdWords campaign myself while in biotech, I’m not sure that *anyone* clicks through, except perhaps to help out their blogging friends by generating revenue for them. Whether the passive effect of simply seeing the ads on the page makes a difference, I don’t know. Nonetheless, I’m glad there aren’t any here.
January 21st, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Now this is a productive conversation. As part of the Staff that Bill mentions, I’ve found this immensely useful!
As you hopefully will soon learn from my SAB 2009 “welcome” letter, I do plan to be in touch with all our bloggers to better assess how we can advance readership, discussion, and ease of use (eliminating silly administration, as mentioned in a previous comment).
Ken- let’s discuss setting you up here! Or, (privately if you like (a.taft@scienceboard.net) why you would start one on NN vs. SAB.
Last, I’ve been entertained with the idea of twitters, which seem to be “over blogging” equivalent that RWintle mentions, albeit with different intent and format. Suffice to say, I am not sold on their idea, and certainly think they [possibly] would have only a limited role in the SAB. More on that in February!
I think ideally we’d like to see between 1 and 5 posts per week, depending on the topic. The goal, as Ken and Alethea hint at, is that we are all pressed for time. And, different weeks present different circumstances… I’d rather see a solid post than 10 meaningless updates. And lastly, time to comment hopefully generates exactly this type of useful and engaging exchange.
Cheers!
January 28th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Relating to NN vs SAB blogging, I just noticed how painfully bare-bones the NN blogging system is. There’s no link to archived posts, recent posts, even a link to the blogger’s home page. There’s only a generic, top-level navigation bar that takes you to the rest of NN and the NN blogs.
Having discovered a NN blog by way of a link from elsewhere, I wasn’t even able to navigate to an “about the author” page. Maybe I’m just missing something obvious, or maybe my browser is hiding all the navigation links from me.
At any rate, SAB gets praise for having a better interface! On the other hand, I must admit that NN blogs seem to get a lot more exposure/publicity.
January 30th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Ken – I agree. The archives at NN, in particular, are poorly implemented (a nice little month-by-month dropdown menu would be much better). And I seem to remember similar frustration in finding the author’s profile page from the blogs. I also have sporadic re-draw problems where the comment headers get kind of mushed into the body of the comment proper, although that may just be my own personal computer/screen/browser combination.
The SAB blogs are a little fussy looking to me, but I find that with many WordPress blogs. And I know that I’m not using anything near all of the implemented features (it supports blogrolling I think, as an example). Alethea is much more au fait with all of these things than I am.