Anyone have any ideas on how to attract some more readership? I’ve been so focused on the elections and things in my personal life that I haven’t really thought about it in a while. Now that the election is over and a success, I have some time to think about the site itself.
Since this is a frivolous thread, jokes are welcome.
I don’t care who ya are, that’s funny right there. Kinda the legal version of follow the bouncing ball . . . .
More readers, I think a place where you can post just about anything should attract a lot of people. But were always accused of being a Liberal Blog..or is it people just forgot what democrats truly are.
Get more readers..ban me from posting..it worked at that orange place…I think.
the orange place. I think the orange place is in the same boat, now that the elections are over where do the blogs supporting Democrats go from here? They did everything they could to make as much noise revealing scandal as they could and it was all needed and people tuned in everyday because we had to have our momentum and we had to get people to the polls or we were about to face very dire consequences (the consequences out there are still pretty dire). Not knocking the orange place either mind you.
Also, don’t forget that a lot of readers don’t comment much (like me).
No brilliant ideas on attracting more readers at this point, but I do have a riddle/joke I saw on Carpetbagger Report the other day.
Q. What’s the difference between Iraq and Vietnam?
A. Bush had a plan for getting out of Vietnam.
Flame me if you will, but I got a good chuckle out of that one!
How ya doing?
Trying to coast through the rest of a busy/boring day here at work and keep awake! I’ve been voting the last 3 days for PO, so we’ll see how that works out! How’s it going up your way? No weekend work this weekend I hope…
But I think I’m sick now … I’ve got sore throat, fever, and my legs are aching … 🙁 … How are you feeling?
Thanks for the votes! 🙂
😉
That IS funny! Had to break up a unbelievably fierce argument last year between two of my Canadian students who were turning red and refusing to work together. One had revealed himself as a Habs fan. . .
I am certain it was the other guy’s fault…
Go Habs, GO!
I’ll have to remember that one. My cousin will hate it!
BTW? Did you see the Sens/Habs game the other night? 🙂
Give out a free kitten with every 10,000 visits. Make eastcoastmoderate a front page writer, because the kids can’t seem to get enough of that dude. Oh, and porn.
Yeah, but please, no Gannon/Guckert!
The old “pregnant turkey” story has resurfaced this year…
Tasteless…I know…:{)
Now I remember who the culprit is who told me this joke! Guess it wouldn’t have happened if she had used a Weber grill huh?
Still makes me chuckle though…
What`s up dada? Roofing done yet?
If she would have glazed or spiced the cornish hen, it wouldn`t be tasteless.
Sorry about the “ads” the other day. “You kn’O’w who” straightened me out.
short answer…no
no prob, it got sOrted Out…I really like your pics and it bummed me not being able to see them…later
be well
That’s my recommendation.
What were we talking about again?
a) improvement to the style,
b) fact checking,
c) areas that needed expansion or clarification,
d) areas that should be cut as they detract from the argument.
In effect, I am suggesting a kind of mutual editorial function. This editorial function would, of course, provide suggestions, not required changes before publication was approved. Submitting material to the mutual editing function would be voluntary. The procedure could be hashed out later. There would be technical issues to consider, I’m sure.
3) Develop a type of story that one doesn’t find everywhere. One possibility is a weekly cycle of stories that review the major threads in BT, or across the progressive blogs, and attempt to link underlying concerns. Often several apparently different diaries and/or stories will have a common theme. One crowd will be drawn to diary A, another to story B, often without overlapping readership. If a meta-diary could be written that pointed out the links in A and B, then the readers of each will be more likely to go back and read the other one. The meta-diary could also link to stories C and D that touch on the same theme, thus potentially expanding the interests of the narrowly focused reader. It could also suggest areas that needed to be explored, that grew out of the common thread.
That’s it for now. I’ll give it more thought and post again if something else occurs to me. I hope these ideas are helpful.
We’re having the same discussions in North Carolina, and have come to see BT as fertile ground for developing potential collaborations and idea sharing with other states. You’re set up nicely for it already with your regional breaks.
Right now there’s no forum we have a lot of confidence in for keeping the states in focus. Kos is hit and miss: if you’re a sweetheart state or candidate, you can get a lot of traction, but it’s wildly variable.
The neat thing is, national issues always have state implications and impacts, so it’s possible to have plenty of national and international discussions and still keep an eye out for states.
I don’t have this more well developed than what you’ve read so far . . . it’s just an emerging idea.
Sorry, Teach. Meant to post this on the original entry.
No problem. I like your idea.
I thought I escaped you!
It’s been a while since I taught freshman comp. But that was my first teaching job. Who knows? What college did you attend, young lady?
The best teachers always get the biggest challenges and Wyoming is one of those.
Oh yes, you and Dick are joined at the hip. Exactly alike in values, attitudes, and behavior.
And I’m accompanied by a large, 6 foot tall white rabbit. . .
It’s how I got so feisty. Can you imagine having to grow up among such bullshit liars?
Well, I grew up in a multi-generation Repub family, as the switchover from the “old” Repub to the “new” repub party emerged. It wasn’t Wyoming, but it was strange. Most people outside of my family were Democrats and homogeneously alike. It was a VERY conservative atmosphere, hyper-controlled by the moneyed crowd, which sure wasn’t my family.
It was the moneyed crowd that was strange, and still is. Some of them love Cheney, I see some of my old rich elementary school chums on the Repub donor list, there in a county that was at the time about the highest in AFDC families in the entire country. Plantation mentality in all but the presence of the 13th amendment.
Oh, and I’m very glad you are not as bald as he. And I’m sure your spouse is a lot nicer, too!
You’re safe.
I’ve done that w/every Medicare D piece and every piece I wrote on the software used in elections
Already being done epm
Again, I’ve done it w/Medicare D.
As you are so freely taking credit for all that I and others have done without having the decency to even mention my work, an apology is definitely in order.
BooMan asked for ideas to increase readership. I gave a thoughtful response to his question. He did not ask for a summary of what others have already done. He can do what he wants with my suggestions. They were freely given because I care about this blog. If you have a suggestion, please share it. If I think of something else that I think might be useful, I will share that idea as well.
thank you for your suggestions.
It is clear that you were angry with my earlier suggestions. Fine. I think your anger is absurd, but it is yours and you may it keep warm on this cold night. But when you stoop to troll rating a perfectly appropriate, friendly comment I made to militarytracy earlier in this thread, you crossed a line. That is not how people in a community care for and respect each other. You should do the right thing and remove that rating.
her ratings have been erased.
You were showing care and respect and you did the right thing by passing my work and that of others off as your own ideas?
If I understand correctly, Teach313 has recommended some actions to us all, and you (and, I assume, others) have been doing these things. You and Teach313 agree that these are effective. It’s good to see this mutual confirmation.
On a possibly related topic, I think that the concept of “intellectual property” was a bit unsound to begin with, and has grown and mutated to become a disease of modern civilization.
I enjoyed the RFK videos, other than him getting shot it was a small reassurance hearing his words and knowing where our nation was able to make it back from at that time. Keep putting up the stuff like Rove probably on his way out and the readership will come. The game has changed but you have always played for the long term and the long term has arrived even if the readership hasn’t yet.
Ideas for increasing readership:
Surreptitiously place controversial ads at Kos.
Pay Keith Olbermann to mention this blog on air.(Not in the worlds worst segment, but maybe in the oddities segment?)
Pay Coultergeist to post some cookie recipes here.
Invite Costanza to post his prison-blog here.
Post Puss Limbag’s secret formula for ‘male enhancement’.
……
Controversy seems to be the key to more readership. Therefore, post controversial material and invite people from that other persuasion, the conservatives, to comment on what is written here. In other words, instead of trying to identify trolls and ban them, invite them in and have big fights!
Trolls are not conservatives who want to have good debates, trolls are idiots who have no debate, but prefer to slam people who disagree with them with personal insults and taunting.
Maybe that’s what troll rating should be, but in the group think mindmeld that many blogs have become, it is not how troll rating has been used in the last year or so. But it does not matter because the point of my above post was to invite the other side, the conservatives, into this blog discussion for some real POTENTIAL debate fireworks.
I think I’d like some of that, too. I support separating issues of systematic bad behavior from issues of differing opinion and just wanted to be on record as often as possible in favor of that proposition. I think that it does matter considerably how one defines a troll when one uses the word. I do think that some folks are too quick to jump to the assessment that someone is a troll just for expressing differing opinions.
I like to think that we can do better than that here, and that we can even let someone like Megan Brooke vent here without a complete knee-jerk hate-for-hate exchange. I think the community did fairly well with that one, as evidenced by a more thoughtful response on her part.
The problem, it seems to me, with conservative folks is that they do very often speak from an ideological position which is not open to philosophical reasoning and give and take arguments. From an ideological position, a person will only take and never give. Speaking for myself, I enter into every political discussion willing to be moved from my philosophical and/or pragmatic position. I actually want to be enlightened if I’m wrong and I’m willing to expend a good deal of energy trying to understand someone else’s reasoning and POV. I also want for my arguments to be deconstructed if they can be, so that I might question any ideological misgivings I may be prone to.
It’s hard to get a conservative who will engage in that manner and reciprocate the desire to have a good hashing out of real issues. So, to make a story that’s getting longer and longer as short as possible, I understand the conflation of ‘conservative’ with ‘troll’ for some folks. Thoughtful and respectful discussions/disagreements are hard to come by with most conservatives I meet here in Mississippi, but I welcome the opportunity whenever it arises.
Group think is a problem in any community, online or out there. Left, Center, Right, Left-Center, Christian-Right, you name it, when a community either demands or fosters group think, look out. Here be monsters. It is up to individuals in the group to challenge group think wherever and whenever they see it.
I agree with your idea about inviting thoughtful conservatives to discuss matters here. Discussion is always good. Building bridges is always good. Getting to know different people is good. (It’s 1 a.m., I’m getting punchy, and this is sounding satiric, but I am serious.)