With your help, the USU SHAFT blog has enjoyed tremendous success. It was voted “Best New Blog” in the 2009 William Law X-Mormon Awards. And since August 2009, when it was launched, the site has received nearly 30,000 visits and 70,000 pageviews! Not bad. Not bad at all. But there is always room for improvement, so I’m requesting your feedback.
Any feedback—positive or negative—is appreciated, but your responses to the following questions would be especially helpful:
- What is your favorite SHAFT post? Your least favorite?
- Would you like to see more authors contribute to the blog?
- Which topics are discussed too often? Which are not discussed enough?
- Do you like the layout/appearance of the blog?
- How is the frequency of new posts?
- What sites should we include/delete from our blogroll at the right?
- Do you feel welcome to express your opinions here?
- Any other suggestions?
Thanks in advance!
I feel that this blog is very informative, my only qualm is that I feel that it is to apologetic toward religions behaving stupidly. That’s just me personally, i would like a little more bias in the post because this blog is geared towards and is mainly viewed by secularist of one type or another. I feel uplinking to the original sources is important and suffices in the realm of fairness. (i know that Jon probably really disagree’s with my neo atheistic view but thats just me. As far as getting more traffic to the site goes, contact should be made with other organizations such as mormoncurtain.org, jref.org,skepchic.com and other various sites in order for them to provide links to this blog.
I’d like more frontal nudity, but that’s just me.
Likes: Increased tolerance for opposing viewpoints. Decreased name calling. Authenticity.
Dislikes: The occasional thuggery, gang first mentality, and stifling of free-thought.
You should have a formspring address, or something similar where topic suggestions and/or submitted essays can be sent to appear on the blog.
To address your points specifically:
- I don’t have a favorite, or a least favorite.
- YES! More Authors would be great. I love you Jon, but I need a little variety in life ;)
- No comment, I think there is a good variety of posts
- I really like the appearance. White text on a black background makes for easy reading of longer posts/comments.
- If anything the posts are a little too frequent. 2-3 a day is pushing it, while other days there are no posts. One a day would be awesome.
- Links are fine on the side. I agree with Neal, try to get other sites to link here.
- I feel welcome, but I also know that I will be challenged. This is GOOD! I love being challenged and shown when my ideas are BS. This basically is due to Kleiner, (thanks) and a few others. I just wish we had more participation from other people.
Other suggestions: Give more space for the text portion on the left side for comments. It squeezes the comments down very small, which makes really long comments (especially the replies). I don’t know how much you can fix that in your coding. Also, if you could change the way that discussions are replied to, that would make for easier reading. A message the moderators tab would be really helpful. So anyone can contact you about future issues.
I’m being a bit nit-picky here. You guys are doing a great job, keep it up!
Very helpful thoughts, thank you! And I totally agree about the need for more authors to contribute to the blog. If you are a USU student, faculty member, or alumnus, you are invited (and encouraged) to write for this blog.
What do you guys and gals think about my recent changes to the site? Among other minor changes, I made it possible to subscribe via email to comments, put a “Top Commenters” widget at the right, added the ability to rate posts, and put a “Related Posts” section at the bottom of posts.
I give a ^5 to you for the subscribe via comments function!
I’d love to see a discussion about several questions and possible answers on a recent USU Graduate School survey.
Utah State University’s School of Graduate Studies is conducting a survey to gain a better understanding of what graduate students value in a graduate education.
Your perspective as a recently finished graduate student is valuable to us.
The survey should take less than 10 minutes to complete. And, as a thank-you for participating in the survey, we’re giving away three $50 cash prizes through a random drawing of survey participants.
If you are willing to help us understand our students better by completing this survey, please click on the link below and complete the survey by June 25.
The winners from the drawing will be notified by June 30.
Link to the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/98YDTFT
Thank you,
USU School of Graduate Studies
Didn’t you graduate? How about coming to write for MSP? ;)
I did graduate, yeah. Is that a serious offer? To write fro MSP? I’m flattered. I’d love to guest post there from time to time, if that’s okay, but I will continue to primarily write for this blog until the current SHAFT officers ask me not to.
I would like to see a link in the top bar to the new SHAFT forum page please.
Your wish is my command.