We have now had two posts here at TVP, and unfortunately neither one has received any comments. I am willing to entertain the possibility that this project is doomed to failure, but given the number of people who have expressed excitement about it to me, I thought I'd try to jump-start it.
So, I'm opening this post for comments and suggestions. Did you read the first couple of posts? Why didn't you comment? Would you be more inclined to comment if you could do so anonymously? Or if TVP changed in some other way?
Here are a couple of other ideas I've had/been given: Would people be interested in reading short essays from well-published philosophers on how they select venues in general and other publishing advice? One possibility is for me to try to contact some such people and request contributions.
Another thought: Would people be interested in a having Primary Commentor position to complement the Current Author position? That is, someone who believes that she has helpful things to say about publishing in area X could be matched up with and serve as moderator a for discusssion of some submission in area X.
I do think you should allow anonymous commenting. That might also result in other changes. It might, for example, allow you to do away with the "current author" email thing, which struck me as making things a bit more complicated than they need to be. An author could just interact anonymously with commentors in the comments section.
ReplyDeleteThings would become even simpler if people didn't have to email you the abstract. One way this could be done is for you to have themed posts, such as disciplinary themes. You could make a post inviting people working in such-and-such an area or on such-and-such a topic to post descriptions of their work in the comments section and that's where the discussion about suitable venues could take place.
Mentioning disciplines and topics leads me to my answer to your question: yes, I read the first couple of posts and I did not comment because of my lack of expertise in analytic metaphysics (I've not read much David Lewis, though I'd like to get around to it).
I would also like to say that trying to post my first comment was made torturous by the terribly hard prove-your-not-a-robot test. I expect it will be terrible trying to get this one up as well, but it's worth it to lodge this complaint.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments. Here's what I'm doing for now: I've turned on anonymous posting and turned off the bot test. I've also turned on comment moderation, at least for now, so I can nip bot posts in the bud.
ReplyDeleteObviously, Current Authors can just use the anonymous posting if they prefer. However, I still like the idea of their being able to use the "official" current.author name if they like. If nothing else, this might cut down on confusion in the discussion (less "anonymous 4:12 said...").
I need to think more (and I invite more comments on) your themed post idea. I'm a bit worried that a thread with multiple abstracts--especially with anonymous posting on--would get confusing.