Well, that was a little bit overwhelming. I put out our new instructions for how to apply for a blog here, and we got a flood of responses. Now a few things I have to mention:
There was a glitch in our setup, and so some people got emailed back some initial evaluations, and some of them were critical. That was bad. Those were supposed to be private. I think we have the problem nailed down, but one thing I have to say: if somebody said something negative about your blog, that was one person. We’re going to have a back channel discussion about them, and we have different views. No one has been rejected already. I actually like essentially all of the applications so far.
That said, the turnout was a lot higher than I expected, partly due to initial enthusiasm. I was actually expecting a handful of applications to trickle in over the next month, or maybe even none. We’re going to have to think about how to manage so many — we may simply have to turn down some. We may have a staged rollout, with a couple of people added at a time over a longer period. We may just have to tell some of you to hang in there and wait for the next quarterly review.
We are going to wait until mid-March to announce new blogs — this is one of those things we don’t want to rush. Patience, everyone!
A suggestion: If there is a plethora or people who are like minded and cooperative but don’t produce a large number of posts, perhaps they could be shared blogs. Three to six new blogs with three to six bloggers each is still a lot of new blood.
I was one of the accidents, and A) The guy that accidentally sent me his critique was pretty kind for someone saying something negative he didn’t expect me to read, and B) I can’t disagree at all with what he said. So, huzzah for your process, hopefully that junk doesn’t happen again tho. o_O
“Aw maaan, the mean old dean is behind me isn’t he?”
“Sapkowskiiiii!”
I had the exact opposite. Richard Carrier accidentally emailed me to tell me how much he loved my blog!
Well, that is truly a cool thing (the number of applicants, not the accidental emails).
Hell, I’d apply if I had anything interesting to say, and was regular about saying it. As it is, I think I’ll look forward to the new blogs and the expansion of FTB.
Also, speaking as a (reasonably) long-time reader: thanks to everyone brave and active enough to want to contribute!
Hurrah on you!
I didn’t get a thing, so…uh, I guess I’ll just continue to be nervous until I hear. Mid-March? Cruelty people, cruelty.
I’m working on stuff. I’m fixing it so there are no more accidental replies to applicants, and I’ll also send out acknowledgments to everyone today.
We didn’t expect quite as many applicants already, so we’re discussing how to manage everyone. What we may do (still subject to discussion in the backchannel) is set ourselves a goal of a small, specific number of new bloggers in our initial openings. One reason to keep you all hanging until mid-March is we want to have a pool of candidates to draw from, rather than just grabbing the first to apply.
Oh, I understand, and I don’t envy you all the job of figuring it out!
*facepalm* Why do you keep doing this to yourselves?!
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At any rate, good luck to all who are applying. There are some of you who I’m already reading and a lot of people I should be reading, so I’m happy that FtB is opening up like this.
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P.S.
PZ, if you’re already making changes to FtB, could you please separate the active from non-active blogs in the sidebar?
AlexanderZ:
That’s google groups, which is pretty much tailored for fucking up. It’s really, really easy to end up with stuff you thought was private going out to people it shouldn’t – google sets up *everything* for max responding, and you have to really pay attention to make sure private stuff stays that way.
I’m looking forward to hearing from the fresh new blog voices! I’ve learned so much from the FTB network.
Cleaning up the sidebar is on my to-do list. My long to-do list.
As with Nahuati @11, I look forward to seeing the new voices around FtB.
Did you apply, Tony?