Comments on: George Scialabba Seminar – Updated, and with Links Added

By: Henry

Henry — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:42:03 +0000

Thanks for the input. The posts went up two a day, which was within Lemuel’s limit. We could think about spreading them out further. I am not sure that doing the seminars on a different page would work, given our current set-up – my observation of blogs that do this (TPM) is that the number of comments is dramatically smaller on the side blog discussion. If we had critical mass (maybe one of these seminars every month or couple of weeks), the problem would be mitigated – but given work commitments in real job, that is going to have to wait until some indulgent think tank with a penchant for leftleaning intellectual discussion buys out a couple of my lecture courses …

By: bert

bert — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:11:43 +0000

I agree with Lemuel Pitkin.
Like him I want to emphasise my positive feedback. What a thoroughly nice chap George comes across as. It sucks that life often gives the best people rocks to roll uphill. Good on you, George. More power to you.

I also want to chip in on the format.
I think Lemuel’s suggestion a) is a good one.
His suggestion b) could risk reducing the number of comments further.
In general he’s right that there’s a problem right now with the seminar contributions running alongside regular posts, and being presented in an identical format. Regular posts are come-as-you-are. Seminar posts, as with real-world seminars, assume some prior reading, or thought, or preparation. There’s a discussion of this towards the end of Rich Yeselson’s post, and with the current format as it is, I have to say I’m kind of sympathetic to the two people who complained (while amused at them choosing a thread about Christopher Lasch to ask that things be made easier for them).
Maybe the format can be fixed with formatting. Just as a post’s author shows up differently in the comments thread, seminar posts could be given a different look with CSS. Doesn’t have to be anything too dramatic.

By: lemuel pitkin

lemuel pitkin — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:49:42 +0000

What a wonderful seminar! This is some of the best stuff I’ve read on the web in quite a while.

As always, tho, a plea: Could you think about changing the format of these things?

Putting up 6 or 8 or 10 posts on the same book, plus the author’s response, in just a couple of days really does no one any favors. It means none of the posts gets the attention they deserve. And it cripples discussion, since the same basic questions are being talked about in half a dozen different threads. Several posts in this seminar, that probably would have attracted dozens of comments under normal circumstances, have just three or four, because they are competing with all the other Scialabba posts. And of course almost all the non-seminar posts get pushed off the front page, even if they were still having active conversations in comments.

I don’t know how important the CT comments community is to you all. But to the extent it is, I would really recommend you change the seminar format. Either:

(a) Spread out the seminar posts over a longer period, putting up just one or two or day. (This will also make it easier for the author to respond.) Or,

(b) Create a separate page for the seminar rather than putting it on the main page, with (perhaps) a single shared comments section. You could leave a pointer to it at the top of the main page, in that case, to make sure it’s not ignored.

Just my two cents. And again, this was great!