Thursday, March 22, 2007

Ideas for use

I thought I'd rattle off some ideas for blog postings:

1. Your papers (a la Cecilea's first post).
2. Pose a discussion question; might be related to a seminar or just a question that you are looking for feedback and input on.
3. Raise an interesting problem or counter-example for discussion.
4. Provide a summary and/or quick take on an article/book (philosophically related) you just read (either for class, research, or for fun)
5. Links to interesting philosophical discussions/sites elsewhere.
6. Announcements about conferences or events: philosophy or grad student related.
7. Philosophy/grad student related humor.
8. Philosophy/grad student related news.
9. Announcement about your own philosophical achievements: did you get a paper accepted at a conference or journal?

Any other ideas?

For idea #1, we need to use an off-site file hoster. You can use your own personal website if you have one or use http://www.fileden.com. It's a free file hoster and appears to be legitimate and reputable. After hosting the file elsewhere, you can link to it from your post.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

I was just wondering if the ASU faculty has been made aware of this site. I'm not sure what how the other grad students feel or if faculty would be interested, but I think it would be a good idea to at least make them aware it. Perhaps then, we can foster more faculty student interaction. Also, perhaps we can have this site appear as a link to the department website.

Shawn Klein said...

I have not informed any faculty, I was planning on linking to it from department website at some point...once it got going. An interesting point to consider is inviting faculty to participate. I tend towards not inviting them--like anyone else they can read, but let's leave the comments and discussion between the grad students because that's what we set this up for.

Unknown said...

Hey, I have an idea for a blog posting. How about we start a discussion on 'Blog Posting Etiquette'...Shawn?

Shawn Klein said...

Go right ahead and post about that. Or are you asking me to layout the etiquette conventions? There are probably websites out there (maybe something on about.com) that break it down. I am not sure I have grip on them in an explicit enough manner to lay them out. Basic rules and conversation virtues should apply:
1) Civility
2) Intellectual charity
3) Intellectual honesty and integrity

Michelle Saint said...

I don't really want to suggest this, because it seems rather silly. Instead, I merely want to hope, deeply and sincerely, that we begin to refer to this lovely blog as "Suphi," pronounced Soo-phee, because A) it is charming and B) it's close enough to "sophy" to be punny. And what's better than a charming pun?

Unknown said...

I noticed that there were a couple of comments to Andy's posting on moral responsibility that were a little off topic. They were about opening up the blog 'comment' capabilities to non-ASU philosophy graduate students. I am making my posting here because I think we should keep comments on topic, although I understand why those comments were made where they were.
I agree with Andy and Michelle that we should, at least, open the 'comment' capabilities to others. I understand why some might not want to do so, but really, I don't think it would be that big of a deal. Plus, denying others access to commenting may actually hinder the growth and benefits of the blog. Also, what Andy did is okay, but come on, it would eventually become a pain in the @$$. Finally, although most of the people Shawn asked wanted to make the blog 'read-only' for non-ASU phil. grads, so far most of the people who are currently active in the blog seem to disagree with this decision. So, my suggestion is to allow others to comment, and if it becomes a problem, we can close it again.

Unknown said...

Also, Shawn, you should put 'It's a dry heat' back up on the title page. It was pretty funny and, perhaps, an adequate description of the blog as well as AZ.

Michelle Saint said...

I'm perfectly happy keeping the blog read-only, and I like all of Shawn's reasons. Also, I don't know much about Blog culture, but I'll accept Shawn's claim that a read-only blog isn't all too weird or insane.

However, if outsiders are going to be invited to read the blog, it seems like there should be some sort of explanation provided for why it's read-only. And maybe this series of comments is sufficient for that.