If you know people who are writing good stuff on Darwin or evolution, tell them to put the badge on their site so we see/get a notification and we'll include them.
If they can't be bothered with that sort of community participation, they can just leave a comment in the comments section and maybe that will get them some traffic too, though our pesky no_follow to keep out spammers means it less likely they will get any links.
I'm also off to the AAAS meeting in Chicago tomorrow, the fickle Gods of O'Hare being agreeable, so I queued up my Darwin Day early but that needn't stop anyone else from waiting until the last minute. If you think evolution deserves more than just one day, check out 30 Days of Evolution Blogging instead.
STUMBLEUPON
Back on topic, if you are looking at this article you will see a nifty new button named Stumble! at the top. It looks like this:
We've always had social media links, of course, but this one is a little special. Stumbleupon uses an algorithm that lets its readers find more interesting articles by specifying the things they like - so they can literally 'stumble' onto something they wouldn't otherwise have found. Because they have a robust science community that is interested in serious stuff (and not culture fluff), we have gotten quite popular there so it only made sense to make it a little easier on their readers to find more articles from us.
If you get an account on stumbleupon (and you should - it is terrific) you can, of course, put your own articles in the system but a key feature for the entire science community is that you can also hit that Stumble! button and go to another article on the site. So readers who like us can easily find more great things you have already written.
Give it a try. Sure, we don't do any marketing or self-promotion but the biggest names in science blogging promote themselves like crazy. If you're going to write great stuff, you might as well let people know about it.
NEWSLETTER
For readers who don't come back every day, we have integrated a newsletter feature. Basically, in the header is an icon that pops up a window where they put in their email address and once a week they can get our top stories. It comes in email format with a synopsis of the article and a link if they want to read more. Readers have asked about this for a while and we like to listen - but we aren't a magazine with an IT/programming staff so it takes a little while to get to all the great ideas everyone has.
AUTHOR INDEX
When we switched to Version 2 of Scientific Blogging, people asked where the Index had gone. Well, it had become unmanageable, even for columnists much less trying to include the bloggers, so it had to go. But it has been reborn as Contributors in the menu bar. To cut down on the overwhelming size, we only include recent people so the order of contributors will change and, over time, as more people write, some will fall off and bloggers will become columnists, columnists featured, etc. If you aren't on the list, you need to write more often. If you don't like where you show up, write more good stuff and it will change.
It should be a fun thing and not a big deal, though invariably we will get some complaints. That's okay, we can fix it as time goes on.
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