Now that we are well into our fifth year of the blog, I want to pause and ask for some suggestions. As always, I’m happy to hear your suggestions in general, but I have a problem in particular that I’d like to address.
First, in general. Our goal, of course, is to increase membership on the blog, since the ultimate goal is to raise money for charities dealing with hunger and homelessness, through membership fees and donations.
Did I mention donations? I am completely gratified and humbled by the donations that come in. Please think about making a donation yourself, large or small. You will earn my eternal gratitude.
But as to general suggestions: if you can think of anything that is simple to do, that doesn’t take much time, and that can attract new members to the blog, please let me know. The blog has evolved in lots of ways over the years. It’s hard to see because the changes happen one at a time, and we get accustomed to them. But they happen.
It’s like my New Testament textbook, which is now in the sixth edition. People ask me: why are you revising it *again*?? Can you really make it different and, more important, better? Anyone who wonders that should simply look at the first edition then look at the sixth edition. We’re in a different universe here. It’s a bit like that on the blog.
And it’s like that because we have gotten so many good suggestions in the past and implemented the ones that seemed like something we could do that would work. On the whole I’d say things are pretty good.
But that gets me to the problem that is developing. I’m not sure what to do about it, since it is a result of our success. Our numbers are growing, as we want and hope. That part’s good. Sarah (that would be my wife) sometimes tell me we need to stop growing because growth means more time invested. Up till now I’ve been able to tell her that the time commitment hasn’t much changed.
But it’s starting to be a bit of a problem and I’m not sure what to do about it. I try to get through all the blog work in about an hour a day, and as you know, I do it five or six times a week. But for the past couple of months, there have been more comments than before. And much longer comments. And more comments that are asking me a direct question expecting (as they should) a reply. And so I have to read more, interact more, answer more. Now it is often taking me an hour and a half a day instead of an hour. That’s a bit of a problem.
On one level a half hour doesn’t seem like much. Hey, it’s a half hour – big deal! As I’ve mentioned before, though, I’m ridiculously time conscious and structured. I look at these things in what is probably a pretty unusual way. I crunch the numbers. If I were to spend a half hour a day longer on the blog on *average* that would be an additional 3 hours a week. That would be 156 additional hours a year. And *that* would be equivalent to four additional work-weeks of 40 hours a week.
Now like most of you, I work more than 40 hours a week. But suppose I *did* work 40 hours a week. I have just devoted an entire month of my year to the additional time on the blog. Not to the time on the blog – to the *additional* time.
So I’m not sure what to do about it. Among the obvious options:
- I could just shut up and do it. That’s been my solution so far.
- I could post less frequently, say 4-5 times a week instead 5-6.
- I could ignore comments and not answer questions. (I do have to speed read them sometimes, so if I miss a question – apologies: I do try to catch them all)
- I could get a volunteer on the blog to read through the comments, post the ones that don’t need a response, and then forward ones to me that do need one.
- I could hire a Research Assistant – for example, one of my graduate students in the field of early Christian studies – to handle all the comments for me.
All of these solutions are problematic. (The last one, e.g.: people aren’t paying good money to be on the blog to hear the opinions of a 24 year old graduate student, even if it’s someone I’m completely confident in….). So I’m not sure what to do. Any suggestions?
Let me say that I continue to feel energized and completely upbeat about the blog, and am doing my best to stay on top of it. And I definitely want it to grow and not shrink. If we began to shrink and raise less money, I would certainly rethink the whole endeavor. I want it to increase in size and to raise lots, lots more money for charity. But how to do it without making it a full-time job?!?
Let me know what you think! And feel completely free to hit that Donate button!
I would not interfere with posting frequency, but you could make one post each week a repost from a few years ago – “Throwback Thursday,” with posts which are fundamental to the blog’s overall topic or previous posts that fit well into a current thread, as when you post short chunks of your published work. You could also combine it with work by posting more about what you are reading, as with the recent article on Christian numbers.
Great idea.
A few ideas
1. on the lengthening of posted questions, perhaps post some suggested length guidelines to encourage briefer comments
2. on getting more attention to the blog, I have always been drawn to “the best of” type posts — the top 10 most important Bible verses, the 3 most overlooked aspects of early Christianity, the best most influential sayings of Jesus, 3 biggest myths, etc.
3. on encouraging donations, perhaps more mention of the charities themselves and vignettes of their good works
4. on work/life balance — always a problem for us busy people. I suggest trying to stick to your one hour per day schedule and find ways to speed up, eliminate, or modify your approach on a daily basis when confronted with a larger workload than normal.
I hope this is of some help. Good luck and keep up the good work. I enjoy reading the blog!
Hi Professor Ehrman – I love your work. I would just get a research assistant or grad student to do a lot of the maintenance work, BUT, being a grad student myself who has done things for professors like this, you need to give them an incentive. You could give credits, or some kind of research experience and “title” with this for their CV, pay, make it some kind of “fellow” position, something.
Bart, I’ve noticed the increased number of very lengthy comments that contain questions. You’ve raised this subject before, and I believe our members’ overall opinion was to decrease the length of comments.
As part of the answer to the problem, I’d like to see you ignore all comments that are longer than roughly a certain length? Such as equal to about two short paragraphs. When a reader wants to receive an answer to a question, s/he should make that comment succinct.
Hire the grad student!
I agree!
The capable graduate student is a good idea. Many professionals use staff to screen calls, mail, and visitors. Otherwise the important work would not get done.
Agree.
I’m sure it is a very small percentage of members who make the MANY comments/questions you’re asked – so a small number of people take up a lot of your time. Remove the “add a comment” section. Instead, create a “Question/comment” form where people can submit their comments/questions to you directly and you can answer the most interesting one’s on the blog, through the readers mailbag, etc. – and have a link to this form in every post you make. I think this is a good idea because alot of the questions you get are similar, and answering the thousand of questions you get is not really a good use of time anymore (given their substantial growth in quantity). Due to the thousands of comments you get, this is very reasonable. 95% of us read the blog posts, not the comments!
As one of the “five percenters” (who read the comments!) … and how did you arrive at that number! (???) Anyway, besides the fact that I enjoy the comments and even learn from them from time to time (if only because of their questions, not necessarily their posted opinions!), I am unclear as to how much time would be saved by not posting them here (???), as the “time factor” would seem to be in the reading them, thinking things over and then composing an answer … or not. On this last, I do notice that not infrequently a comment is posted without “answer.”
Truthfully, I am unclear that there IS an “answer” as to how to control the expanding demand on time and attention, for even reducing the days for actually posting might turn out to mean that the “work load” remains the same but is just redistributed (???). Apologies for not being more helpful … although I do like the idea of “Throw Back Thursday” (as I have gone back to pick up postings from before I came on board here), but wouldn’t this “take time” just “looking things over”? Still, re-posting old ones remains in my mind a good idea, something that some sort of “assistant” might well be able to handle (???). As I sit here reflecting on all this, the best “way forward” that comes to mind IS “hiring some help.”
Since the blog has started four years ago, Bart has approved 37,411 comments. There are currently 5593 members. Most posts have well under less than a hundred commenters. IF 100 people commented on each post, that’s about 2% of members making a comment. And it’s mostly the same people making comments (which is not a bad thing!)
My suggestion is to post slightly less frequently and try to answer many comments in a single reply, once you can sense a theme in the comments. Or you could hire paid staff, which would obviously cut into the amount you’re able to donate to charity. Best wishes and keep up your great work!
I appreciate what you do for us on the blog, but I don’t want you to get worn out from it. If you ignore the comments and stop answering questions, that would be very reasonable. There are only so many hours and so much energy. Your blog postings are what I’m most interested in. If they need to be cut back too, so be it. If we don’t face our limits, things go downhill.
Hi Dr. Erhman. I run my European Royal History Blog and I can attest to the fact that it can easily become a full-time job! My first suggestion is to post less, 4 to 5 times a week, and give yourself the weekend off.
One of the benefits and selling points of this blog is the fact that the members do get to interact with with you, the author of these best selling books. So I suggest keeping engaged as much as possible.
One suggestion is to only respond to questions twice a day. For example, you could have Friday be the day where you answer the most important/interesting questions that members had posted during the week. Then another day could be the day you respond to questions from other sources such as emails etc. That leaves three days where you don’t have to respond to readers comments. Or just take the last week of the month and devote it to answering questions each day. Then that leaves you three weeks where you don’t have to answer anything.
Another suggestion would have to do with time management off the blog. Is there something in your schedule you could modify, eliminate or hand responsibility to another that will free time up for your blog?
Your time commitment on this is out of whack – I would cut back on the number of posts per week to 4 or 5.
Second, I think the notion of having a filter – that is, an assistant of some sort – who can review the comments, post the ones that are just observations, and then send the others on to you that require a response. It’ll cut back the need to read each post.
The downside is obvious – that is, people write posts because they like the connection with you even if it is just a comment not requiring an answer. If you eliminate that connection it will reduce the value of blog to an extent, or will drive those so motivated to craft their posts as questions. It may result in way more questions than you presently deal with.
The best bet in terms of controlling your workload is almost certainly reducing the number of posts and responding to comments as you presently do.
Edit: third paragraph I meant to say twice a week not twice a day.
Forget about the blog. Five years is enough.
Use what time and energy you have remaining for teaching, research and writing new books. A much more valuable use of your talent than blogging.
And stay healthy.
I vote for #2 (post 4-5 times per week instead of 5-6). Thank you for what you do!!
I think that being able to get answers to questions from a prominent expert in the field is one of the attractions of the blog. Please don’t ignore comments! A volunteer (or a couple of volunteers) might be the way to go; you could always dangle a free membership or two as carrots.
I wonder if some technical improvements could also help. The landing page has “Archive of Posts in Chronological Order by Recent Date per Category”, and I think the mouthful of that description sort of suggests that it’s not an entirely intuitive thing to navigate. Some kind of tag system might be helpful to slice the data set in more than one direction—chronological, by title, by category or categories… The things I find least convenient on that page is (1) finding *series* of posts: sometimes they’re not even contiguous in chronological order, and their titles don’t always align; so it would be great if they could be viewed by series title or something. And (2) the mailbag posts. I might have a question that’s already been answered, and you’ll get fewer comments and questions if it’s easy for me to discover the existing answer, but if all the index says is “reader questions”, I’ve no way to find questions on a given subject. (And if there’s a technical upgrade, maybe someone could remove the red text asking me to log in when I’m already logged in, which breaks up the paragraph flow…)
If you had volunteers to sort through comment submissions, they could of course additionally or alternatively provide a manual mechanism for the same by referring commenters to older posts, if and as appropriate.
Technical improvements would go a long way, especially for the newbies.
I would endorse Peter’s suggestions. I find the landing page difficult to navigate. And I’m reasonably sure that my questions have been discussed if not answered previously but I have no idea how to locate.
Maybe we could have two options for posting on the blog: one to ask a question, and the other to comment. The length of the questions could be limited to fewer characters than the comments. This way, you could zero in on the questions and spend less time reading them.
I think that’s a great idea! Sometimes (like now) I just want to comment but don’t want a response.
1. You mention several times that your graduate students have to be really good to even think about applying, so I think it would be fair to have one of them *help* in some way–we could call them your apostoloi? After all, we are here to learn, and knowledge is knowledge. I know it’s novel and invigorating to have someone of your stature respond to a comment or question, but I’m on a journey here and as your graduate student would know more than I that doesn’t sound like a bad thing at all. You would, of course, have to verify the responses, but maybe that would save you some time.
2. Post syllabi for your Masters level courses?
3. Post a proposed reading list for each of the sections? I have your NT textbook and purchase from the lists therein (and then peruse their bibliographies), but I sure would appreciate a one-stop here. Maybe directed at basic and more advanced levels?
4. Just take a vacation and make us wait a bit for Pete’s sake. There is a lot of stuff archived for us to get through, and you’ve earned it.
I’d use the 24 year old who could give you the most interesting questions. Your posts are much more important than handling every question.
Drop back to 4-5 times a week and then when that’s too much, 3-4 times a week. When the blog membership hits a million, give up teaching and devote yourself to us (the blog), debates/talks and writing books.
Judith, best suggestion yet!
I’ve noticed the increased comment length. How about imposing a word/character limit on comments. Or let it be known that you will only read and respond to comments shorter than xxx. Fewer posts should be a last resort.
How’s your back?
MUCH better!
Glad to hear!
This solution may also have it’s own issues, but you could consider finding out if there is another scholar who would like to join the blog with you. This way, the two of you can split up the work, you each would be able to split up the time writing the posts and responding to the comments. This way, when someone other than you responds to the comments, the readers know it is at least another qualified scholar such as yourself.
The problems are that this would mean it would no longer be just your blog, and also perhaps there may not be anyone with enough time to join on (if they don’t already have a blog of their own to keep up with). I would think that explaining that this is to raise money for charity would give at least a few a good reason for seriously considering helping you grow the blog in any way they can.
Maybe continue to use the Friday mailbag to respond to the most interesting or pertinent readers’ comments/questions, and dispense with responding to comments on each posting? I find the mailbag to be very worthwhile, whereas a lot of your responses to comments on the daily blogs, due to time constraints I’m sure, are not much more than cursory. I’ve been following your blog for about two years and have found it to be VERY helpful and informative. Thank you!
Dr. Ehrman, as one of the members who is guilty of writing long-winded comments, I promise to make them shorter and fewer. As for donations, if I were a rich man (diddy diddy diddy diddy diddy diddy diddy dum), I’d cut you a six figure check right now, but, alas, since I’ve cloistered myself I’ve become such a מסכן I can barely afford the $24 subscription as is! 🙁
I have often marvelled at how you write this blog every day. I have a blog, and writing it once a week seems like a sizeable task (and I don’t write as much as you do!) Perhaps you feel obligated because people are paying to have access to it, but I don’t think you need to. I would think your readers would be just as grateful to have your blog three times a week. I know I would.
As a business owner (auto dealership), I was going through a somewhat similar situation not too long after we opened (probably within 6-8 months; been open 3 years now). I was at this point where I could no longer run dealer operations and still help in the selling process (we had me and one other salesperson and now we have 4 full time sales people not counting me). It was getting to where myself and my other salesperson were probably operating at 50% efficiency because we were so busy, only 50% of our interactions were actually *quality* interactions. The other half we were getting sloppy in follow up and follow through. Finally I had to take the leap and hire another full time salesperson. You think it’s a step back, but before you know it, you can’t remember what it was like before.
Just remember, it’s not just you (or me in my case) who is getting the short end of the stick when you are only half efficient; it’s the end user/blogger/customer who suffers. Many people are on this blog because we feel you have been fundamental in someway on our own personal journey. We all want to ask you questions and have you answer them; however, most people on this blog are more than likely quite competent and understanding of the fact that you can’t be all places or answer all questions at once…especially with 100% efficiency. If you have an under grad whom you trust 100% to speak YOUR mind, then I would say go for it! Have them post under your name as well; I mean, if you personally feel they represent you and what you would say, then don’t even differentiate.
As far as the undergrad…is there a way to incorporate some form of extra credit or using it as an “intern position” which would garner them valuable credibility on a résumé? Maybe each year you could select even 2 undergrads by some process and they handle the majority of the questions for the year?
Trevor
Despite your generosity both with charities and your time, I think your health comes first. Recently you’ve mentioned both prediabetic and back pain so severe that you had to cancel a trip etc. From my humble yogic point of view, these are little “warning” signals to change something in order to restore health/allow the body to heal. Sarah could be onto something …. growth also means more physical and mental demands when you are not your usual 100% ? So of the options you presented, my very last pick would be to “shut up/suck it up and stop complaining. Please choose which option that takes care of you first.
I would hate for there to be fewer posts.
The volunteer weeder-outer sounds like a good idea, if it works.
Shut down the comments, I never read them anyway, As you rightly say, I am paying to read what you write not others.
Yes, I so ask the odd question occasionally but that’s no big deal, if I think it’s important enough I can suggest it as a topic. After that it’s up to you.
I find the answers to questions in the comments to be more on point and interesting. I only read parts of the majority of the blog posts. The exceptions are the reader mailbag questions. I usually read all of those. My time is limited as well so I have to skip the blog posts that don’t appeal to me personally. I find the answers to questions in the comments to be more on point and interesting.
You are saying that the level of donations is directly related to the amount of time you donate to the blog. Maybe you need to link donating more to the results of the donations and not to the amount of effort the blog requires. Maybe you need to take 6 month off from the blog and see what happens. What if you burn out, then all is lost. Solution #1 is not really a solution. Maybe a combination of solutions #2 through #5. I am 71 and can no longer do half of what I could when I was 35. I have learned to adjust but I still do to much. I like to think that wisdom has taken a larger role in my life than brute force.
I think it’s absolutely amazing what you do here–that you take the time you do and share your knowledge with so many–on top of your busy life. I think it’s very well said in other area: “Bart cannot answer all…” If it’s a really good question, valuable for others, and stimulating for you, it is only an honor for us to be answered when we are. I don’t think it’s fair to expect you to respond to all, or read all long replies unless grabs you.
Could also limit amount of comment characters allowed.
We love you Bart!
Through your books, blog, lectures, and debates you’ve taught me 100x more outside of college than I learned in all of college (religious studies/philosophy).
BART
There is a point in Life where you end up making ruthless decisions. Maybe you are NOT there now.
But maybe you are, and don’t yet realize it.
The chief value of this blog, to me — and no doubt to others — are your pieces on discrete subjects.
Stick to them. Lose the comments section. Lose the reader’s mailbag. Spend more time with your family. Look to that bad back of yours. Post 4 times a week and then — look forward to the next week.
This will take discipline at first. There will be caterwauling from some folks. You will feel as if you are no longer providing the same value.
My belief — having been a blogger for a number of years, on a totally unrelated subject — is that, if you do these things, your life will improve. At first, after I killed the blog, I felt . . . a void. But the time is now better spent. I exercise more, spend more time with my wife, do more reading.
I am a healthier, happier person without the blog. Yes, I fielded complaints that said “you never write anymore.” I also lowered my blood sugar to a number I’ve been pursuing (as a diabetic, obviously) since 1998, and get to the gym 4-5 times a week. I have the time at the gym to stretch and do the things you really need to do (instead of worrying about rushing home to post X number of items on the blog).
So I quit and I gained.
I do not want you to quit.
However, if you limited yourself (strict discipline) to FOUR posts a week, the value of the blog itself to me and reasonable folks will remain. That’s especially true considering the small amount of money you ask — as a contribution, no less.
Hey: 4 posts a week x 48 weeks a year x 500 words each = approx. 100,000 words. That’s (NO DOUBT) more than enuf for $25!!!
I am thinking there might be a knee-jerk reaction on your end — this is crazy! It’s not the suggestion for which you were looking.
OK. So print this out, tape it to a wall, and re-read it in a few weeks, or months . . .
I think options 2 and 3 are far and away the best (option 4 is not completely terrible either, assuming you completely trusted the volunteer’s judgment, which I’m sure you would). I don’t think option 1 is fair to you, and I have to say, I hate option 5 (it’d seem almost like a pseudonymous “2nd Ehrmanblog”).
The entrepreneur in me wonders if you’ve considered another option, which is charging current members more. Donations are a hard business no matter what, but slight price increases force the “donations” many are willing to give if *pushed* a bit. I am in this group, and I’m by no means wealthy!
Another idea would be to limit how many questions you answer per user (maybe two or three per week/month, which allows for a couple of follow up questions). Then offer a more expensive account that removes the limit. Something like a Standard Plan and a Premium Plan. This should be relatively easy to implement via WordPress. That’s my two denarii.
P.s. While on that subject, do you think the “mark of the beast” was related to Roman coinage (which bore the image of Nero and other Roman emperors/gods)?
Many posts are just too long – I only read those that are succinct or that you have replied to.
Ideas:
1) Limit the number of words per post.
2) Encourage the more wordy posters to make use of the Members’ Forum. One caveat: the MF would need to be policed (not by you) as some of the discussions verge on the abusive.
3) Limit your time to one hour per day and if some posters don’t get a response or remain unread it is a price worth paying to retain the blog and your intimate involvement.
Hi Bart,
I’m a newbie here but my advice is . . listen to your wife.
People want contact with you and access to all of your knowledge and insight so whatever you give will never be enough.
I think your suggestion of getting a volunteer to go through the comments and only forward to you the ones that need a reply BUT then limit yourself to your current time . . what doesn’t get answered doesn’t.
Teresa x
Trade offs, trade offs. You could raise your rates, Bart. That would, presumably, lower the number of users, but might not decrease your overall revenue.
Or, you could layer the charges.
Getting a volunteer to sort through the questions and forward to you the ones that need a response sounds easy. Instead of directly forwarding the inquiries that need a response to you, your volunteer could push them back to the inquirer and offer options: $1.00 for an answer from the grad student, $2.00 for an answer from the man.
Everybody gets to read for the regular rate, but you gotta pay a little extra if you want extra attention.
I love your blog, Bart. I love being able to ask you questions. But, your time is valuable. Charge for it.
Many, many thanks for all that you do for us! 🙂
Yeah I’ve noticed there’s been a lot of comments lately. I strongly believe you need someone to help, whether a volunteer or student. First thing I would do is limit the number of characters allowed for comments. Some seem to be novels. Then get someone to check the comments and sort them. They can post those that don’t need an answer, and give those that do to you. I’ve noticed sometimes the same question gets asked multiple times. The helper could collate these and just give you the one question, which you answer, then the helper posts that answer to each comment. It’s important that people can make comments, and it’s good if you can answer relevant questions, but maybe unrelated questions are a bit too much. I really think you need a form for the weekly mailbag that people can use to submit questions, rather than in the comments section. These are things that could give you back a month or two. Anyway, I’ll do my bit and try to keep my comments short and relevant, without too many questions.
I like your suggestions.
Bart, I enjoy your blog very much, but can appreciate how time intensive it must be. Perhaps the best solutions are the simplest: fewer blog posts and fewer reader comment responses. I already get a lot of bang for my donation buck, so a few less posts per week would not bother me. Another option might be to get more guest contributors. One upgrade I would like to see is some kind of notification letting me know you’ve responded to my comment. Otherwise, thanks so much and carry on.
I personally feel that it was the best $25.00 I’ve spent all year…To occasionally have Dr. Bart Ehrman respond to my inane posts is priceless! lol … But honestly, I would be willing to pay more just to read your posts! I can’t even believe that you take the time to do this…
In the interest of your charity, and to help you feel better about this, I will make a donation!
Thanks for the great blog!
May be you should go for posting 4-5 times a week.
I hope you continue to respond to our comments, provided that a) they have a pointed question, with a not too long basis and b) the querist has done the homework, looking up wikipedia and other easily accessible sources. When receiving fairly elementary questions, I see nothing wrong in the use of a skilled assistant.
Many members offer long opinions without any clear question, may be they should be referred to the member forum.
The research of Dr. Ehrman is being challenged by the likes of Dr. Richard Carrier… If you haven’t read On The Historicity Of Jesus, you should…Just the breakdown of Mark is worth it…A 24 year old grad student couldn’t possibly get this material… just as a Mormon kid at my door can’t tell me about Jesus…
Dr. Ehrman has given me so much understanding about Christianity, but there is more to the story…
All this scholarship is vital, and I don’t really want to hear, or be limited by the opinion of a kid…
I suggest a variation of #3 (“I could ignore comments and not answer questions. (I do have to speed read them sometimes, so if I miss a question – apologies: I do try to catch them all)”. Don’t answer questions in the comments section. Rather encourage readers to submit questions to your mailbag (how do you submit mailbag questions, anyway? maybe I missed that)
While I find value in all your posts, my favorites are your mailbag responses. Maybe you could do mailbag posts twice a week instead of once (with the increased number of questions you’d get). That would reduce the number of posts you have to produce with original material, too (I assume answering questions in the mailbag take less work than thinking up a blog topic from scratch)
With this approach you’d still have to be selective with the questions you answer, but perhaps you could lump your response to multiple questions in one answer (“I see a theme in the questions generated by my post about x, here’s what I think …”)
Whatever you decide to do I appreciate the work you put into the blog.
I’ve just noticed some members are commenting more than once to a particular post. One member commented 11 times to your June 1 post. Multiple posts are the apparent rule and not the exception. And these comments are often some of the longest. The same members seem to comment every month, perhaps every week, although I didn’t check that. … Bart, you have fully answered two of my questions this year. My non-scholarly conscience tells me I’ve now earned my annual money’s worth and then some. … Keep up your current pace please. I promise I won’t comment unless it’s critically important to me, like today. Hire a research assistant if this situation persists. I’ll understand, and will continue my support.
You could disable the comments section and it wouldn’t matter to me. There is always the discussion forum for people who want to ask questions and interact with each other.
Bart,
I would rather see you go with continued quality, and maintain or lessen your present 1 hour time commitment, over quantity (with, for example, the help of a grad student), so I believe your 2nd suggestion of posting less frequently, 4-5 times weekly, which is still impressive, might be the best solution. Plus, your attention to comments and questions is, in part, what makes this website unique (and is a great selling point for others to join), so adding a volunteer to read and refer comments that need a response would also maintain/lessen the time required.
I suggest having a couple of volunteers but please keep this blog active.
IMHO posting less frequently would be okay. I understand you must be very busy. Also, a small increase in the annual membership cost to pay for an assistant would also be okay with me.
Hi!
One of the things I like the most about the blog is that we are able to make comments and ask questions. I personally read most of the comments and questions and I think that getting to know what other people think and what kind of questions they have makes the blog really unique. However, I do understand how time consuming this must be. So, in light of this, I think that perhaps you should limit the length of the comments to a certain number of characters or lines. This would allow us to continue to make comments and ask questions but within a reasonable frame. I also think that posting 5 times instead of 6 is totally fine. There are plenty of old posts in the blog available to fill in.
Hope that helps! ?
On the forum I sometimes encourage people to ask you here in the comments what I consider to be a good question, but I always stress to keep it to one question (and then if another is needed to follow up to your answer with another single question) and to try to keep the whole thing brief. I noticed a long time ago you tend to not answer long-winded questions!
I think the idea to have someone cull the questions for you, so to speak, is a good one. I’ve thought about how that must be time consuming..
Hi Bart,
I am a member since a couple of weeks and I am absolutely surprised (or shocked..) by the high number of good quality posts and reactions you are writing each week. Although I really like all your posts, I can perfectly understand that your blog is taking too much time right now.
Option 2 is in my opinion the best option and not problematic at all….the last one is a nice option as well.
Ps. Nobody is paying ‘good money’, membership costs less than a Starbuck’s a month, and it perks us up *way* more 🙂
I can see that this is a serious problem. And I’m sorry to say that I can’t think of *any* change that wouldn’t be likely to cause members to drift away from the blog! I myself might drift away.
I’ve long since lost interest in the Forum. But even if that’s true of others as well, the Forum probably isn’t taking up much – if any – of your time.
I do think your posting less frequently would be the *least undesirable* change. But no way would you be attracting new members!
Another possibility might be to discourage long Comments – maybe have an automated cutoff, with some reasonable limit. I know that I – and probably others – skip right past the *extremely* long ones. (Though some members may think I sometimes run on too long!)
– As someone who’s only recently joined, and see’s the many years worth of blog posts to read, I wouldn’t have a problem with less frequent posting per week. Of course that begs the question of how I will feel when I eventually get caught up, guess that’s a question for members who’ve been around a while.
-I think the next quickest and easiest solution is a volunteer to sift through and post comments that don’t require answers.
-Or if no volunteer, perhaps a dedicated question link, where if someone really wants an answer to a blog post, they put the subject in a title and your answer would be in the comments on that particular blog post. That way you wouldn’t have to read all the non question comments.
-Would it be faster to have a list of members who over time have proven not to be trouble makers, so their comments could go right up, instead of waiting for a moderator to approve them, and if they did have a question regarding a blog post, they could ask it with my previously mentioned question link.
You have a blog and you have comments. As far as I am concerned, they’re two different things. Today is the first time I’ve ever been aware that there were comments. I’ve never read one. I’m here (and contributing) to read the blog, not to see someone else’s comments. If it’s a time issue, continue the blog and stop dealing with the comments.
I am constantly amazed at the quality and quantity of material you post! I would be very happy with three days a week of posting new material. It would still be a great value for the money. I would also be receptive to having a grad student respond to questions, referring to you those that the student finds appropriate. It would be worth a try at least, and perhaps would inspire more student participation in the blog and student family and friends would be interested in what the grad students are writing in response to comments.
I have a few suggestions.
1) From my understanding, this is completely a non-profit organization, yes? I would post a statement periodically showing membership, how much money you’re (we’re) getting, and where it is going. People with a vested interest will give more.
2) Raise the membership cost. It is fairly cheap right now for all you offer. Also, if you do the first suggestion I don’t think you would lose much.
3) Do you have another scholar you trust who might be interesting in helping? They could post a couple times a week. I love to see how two scholars handle things differently or the same. This could be a big boon for the blog as well as helping you with your time issue.
4) A grad student can certainly answer some of the more basic questions. Get a grad student (or blog member, as you suggested). A grad student can go over the comments and send you most of them (even 90%), but handle the easy comments.
The beauty is, for a good cause, you can probably find people to do this for free. Surely a blog member will make you a summary of benefits to post monthly, a grad student will work free (or for a good recommendation!) or to serve a good cause, and another scholar might either enjoy the publicity or also like to give to a good cause. In fact, if you hire anyone, in my opinion, it should only be a marketer or someone to manage the blog. With the right approach, even churches would jump on board.
Many of us post responses not expecting your response at all (i. e., mere comments that are not really questions at all) Given all your other time consuming responsibilities, members will just need to understand that you only have time to read, and write so much until it becomes a problem for you. Maybe you could take a day or two of regular posting and use that time for simply responding to reader comments. Yes, you’re doing a one or two less regular posts per week, but if you take that time to respond to comments, you’re not adding any extra time.
Why don’t you form a panel of experts…people you trust.. and charge them with answering blog questions. You could step in if you wanted to add something in particular…or if you disagreed with your expert. If I had any expertise in the field, I would certainly volunteer.
I think that, at least in part, you’ve answered your own question: “But how to do it [all] without making it a full-time job?!?” And, sadly, the real answer here is that you can’t.
I can only suggest what I’ve needed to do (note: not “wanted to do”) when faced with similar situations at various jobs.
1] First decide how many hours can be realistically spent on the project (Rule #1: This number cannot be violated).
2] Decide on a priority order of the tasks, ranking things from “the tasks which *must* be done” on down to “the tasks it would be *nice* if they got done”.
(In this case maybe something like: First a minimal number of posts. Then answering as many comments as possible –up to the hour-limit. Finally, if there is time left over, an additional post or two.)
3] The bottom line here is that, finally, there are sometimes things that won’t get done (but at least you will ensure that the “must do” things will happen).
And, yes, this can be sad. There will always be things that would be nice to do, but just ain’t going to happen.
Like I used to tell my boss “The laws of time and space aren’t my fault….”
(Hope this is of some help.)
I think it would be perfectly all right if you cut down the posts to 4-5 times a week. I would miss reading them, but I also respect your time limitations. One thing I would appreciate from those who send in comments would be if people could somehow make them shorter or more concise. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, and I apologize if I do, but some comments seem to contain a lot of unnecessary quotations and repetition.
Find a way to plug your blog a couple times in your books. I assume there are lots of people who read your trade books that are unaware of your blog.
Well, the first thing I would suggest has nothing to do with you, but with us. We could edit our comments to better accommodate your situation. I have made a couple of comments that really added little or nothing to the conversation, and if it happens again it will hopefully be out of ignorance, and not carelessness. I had already determined not to make another comment unless it was a question to better understand what you are saying. When we ask a question, we could discipline ourselves to ask a single question as simply as possible and directly related to the topic at hand – understanding that the mailbag is a different animal. And finally – and I cant speak for everyone here, but I think it would be something to consider – my purpose here is to learn, not to debate or impress others with my knowledge (as if that were possible) or to advance an “agenda” of some sort, so from now on I will be hesitant to post a comment that is not intended to seek a clarification or additional information. If others took the same or a similar voluntary approach, you might be able to continue on as usual for a while longer. If not, you may have to set some specific ground rules for comment.
Hello Dr. Ehrman:
One financial suggestion is to try to have the almost 300 seminary libraries pick up the subscription as if it was a journal. Of course, there is a risk: some of your CURRENT subscribes attending seminary will terminate their subscription and become freeloaders.
A possible solution to your “time issue” is to have a standard reply message that you would transmit to selective letters… “Thank you for your interest … I will attempt to address this issue in a future blog.” Therefore, you are not obligated to respond immediately and can deal with more pressing matters that you are confronting. Of course, this may seem impersonal… But, it is impossible to please everyone.
I want to thank you for furthering our knowledge and understanding and assisting those in need.
Sincerely,
Michael Alter
Dr. Ehrman
Hi, I truly enjoy reading the blog 5-6 days a week but I could easily live with the 4-5 days a week option. In addition, what if you had a 2 or 3 tier membership option at $5 increments. I’m retired and would be willing to pay $30 per year but for those who can’t afford it they can continue to pay the regular fees and for those who have been blessed with some extra disposable income they could pay $35. Let us decided what we can afford. All the money goes for good causes!
Limit the length of the comments.
Some of the blog comments are folks voicing their own opinions which is nice but I personally want to hear what YOU think and not what an unknown reader thinks, so for that reason I do not spend much time combing through the blog comment sections. However, I do love the Readers Mailbag.
If a volunteer (student?) could wade through the comments and send you only ones that really need your attention, that could be a big time saver, depending on how good your volunteer is. Might save you some aggravation too.
Dr. Ehrman,
I must admit that it has been a special experience (like “little girl giggly” kind of special) to have you reply to some of my posts and comments. Those moments have been real treats. I will admit that I have been amazed (and I really don’t think that is too strong of a word) at how much content you churn out on this blog on a weekly basis AND continue to comment and interact with the readers of the blog AND have an, oh I don’t know, real job where you are a college professor AND also what many would consider to be another full-time career as a regularly publishing author. I hope I don’t come across as a sycophant, but I truly believe your efforts are extraordinary. For me, one job is enough, and I leave work at work and don’t pick it up until the next morning. My evenings are for myself and my family and nothing else. The commitment that you have made to this blog and to sharing your years of study and to charity are, in so many ways, generous beyond anything that I would ever do. So, thank you.
As for the suggestions you mentioned, my personal opinion would be:
1) Personally commit to 4 posts a week instead of 5 or 6. As a substitute for the “missing” post or two, maybe you could post a link to an article by someone else who a) you think makes a great point, b) presents a point you would like to build upon, c) presents a point you would like to debate/counter, d) etc., etc. Or you could point us to chapters in your books (or others) that we can read for some background info on the actual blog posts for a given week (or maybe give them a week ahead of time). You could also point us to some of your video clips of lectures or debates, which you have already done from time to time on the blog. You might even give us a question to ponder on the video, such as “As you watch the video below, please pay special attention to when the speaker (yourself or someone else) refers to [x, y, z]. Do you find his/her argument compelling? Next week my blog posts will fill in the blanks that I think the speaker is leaving out.” You might even set this up as a weekly “teaser” that you do at the end of the week in preparation for the next week’s post, almost a weekly thing like the Reader’s Mailbag, which I think has been a welcome addition to the blog.
2) You could have a blog volunteer or grad student go through the posts first to, as you suggested, post the things that are just comments that don’t necessarily need a reply. Also, often several people will make similar comments on a given post, and whoever is giving the blog a “once over” before you can pull them together and you can comment (should you choose to do so) to all of them that deal with the same issue at once rather than several times individually.
3) Instead of the “missing” post, have one guest-poster a week, who could be another professor, another professional in the field, or even a select grad student or two. While you could have guest-posters post something on anything they wanted to post, you could even have us blog-readers submit questions for the quest-poster to answer. For example, I know that you yourself have mentioned many times that you are not an expert on, say, the Qu’ran or medieval Christianity or even the Old Testament (although you certainly have some knowledge in these areas). You might announce to “the blog” that we will have a guest-poster who is a well-known expert on the Qu’ran in a couple of weeks. Please submit any questions or issues that you might like this guest-poster to address. I think this would be great, since most of the folks on this blog absolutely cherish the expertise that you bring to the discussion in terms of early Christianity but would probably love to hear from other scholars who have a related (but different) area of expertise. I remember several months ago you had a guest-poster make a few posts, which I really enjoyed.
4) Selfishly, I would not want to completely “lose access to you” as a member of the blog, so I would like less the option of just having a grad student (or similar) handle answering all of the blog questions unanimously. While I’m sure there are several who could do a great job, part of the allure of the blog is to have a certain degree of direct contact with “The Buddha” himself (no reference to your physical stature; congratulations on all the recent lost weight!).
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Regardless of what you choose to do (other than just shut the whole thing down!), I’ll still treasure this blog and stay a faithful member for the entirety of its run and/or the end of my life (whichever comes first!).
Thanks
Mike
POST LESS FREQUENTLY – personally speaking, I would suggest bullet point #2 – post less frequently (even maybe as low as 2-4 times a week). I think your direct personal responses to questions/comments are absolutely invaluable for people donating and is viewed by some as authoritative (dare I say, canonical) – i.e, those who are interested in a historical viewpoint.
Just donated another $100 to your foundation and pickup up two more Great Courses last week…
Thank you for your work Dr. Ehrman!
It seems like your initial goal was to do about 6 hours work maximum on the blog per week, and you have gone over that max. I think that quality is better than quantity, and I believe that more so since I moved here to Brussels back in 1994. Hence, do less posts, but maintain the quality of the posts and your life.
Prof. Ehrman, you make substantial posts that are interesting and thought provoking. No reasonable minded person is going to object to you making 4 or 5 posts a week instead of 5 or 6. your blog has grown and you want it to continue that way, so hopefully you will find the following suggestions helpful :
Comments and Moderation.
An active comments section is essential to the growth and success of any blog, ignoring comments would I feel have a adverse effect.
You average 50 to 60 comments awaiting moderation every time you log on, At the time of writing this post has 75. I see no reason why you should not get someone you trust to physically approve / Bin the thrash posts for you. This would save you time and free you up to make comments on approved posts as you see fit. If you use a student I see no reason he/she can’t reply to posts with Prof. Ehrman teaches xyz on that subject … You can always add your own comments afterwards.
Also you could utilize the forum for general discussions on your blog posts … create a new section called “Bart’s blog post discussions” Put a polite notice at the end of each post asking members who want to make a general comment or reply to another members post to do it over there.
J.
My suggestion would be to maintain the posts, but rather than answer questions and reply to comments, have a monthly hour where you answer questions live from subscribers. One hour and that’s it. You could respond to the best or most interesting ones in 60 minutes, rather than having to wade through comments daily.
I read people’s comments and reply to them all the time. It gives me a sense of community, and I enjoy certain members’ comments, like, Dragonfly’s for instance. I am kinda puzzled by so many grad student suggestions. I suppose if people just want an answer, there could be an option to send their questions directly to the student rather than to you.
I’m willing to help out as a volunteer.
I should be more clear–if someone is okay with asking a grad student a question, then maybe there could be an option button or category to do so. Personally, I don’t have any interest in what a grad student has to say. I’m sure they’re smart people, but knowledge is one thing and experience is another.
I think it is fair and very reasonable to give you a break and cut the posting down to 4-5 times a week. Personally I say “X” the comments section too. As others have said, I want to know what you have to say not a wannbe scholar / philosopher who writes a whole treatise on one of your posts. Personally I pass “most” by and usually only get interested if and what your reply is. For those that want to pontificate and monologue maybe bring more awareness to the members forum for that. Seems like the forum section could use some more traffic anyways. I do feel it would be a real shame and a big loss to lose the ability and chance to be engaged with you and ask you questions. For example, your very kind answering of my dating of James question helped me with the pastor to no ends and it felt GREAT to say, “I asked Dr Ehrman”, take that ! How about a, “Ask Dr / Professor Ehrman” section with some rules on length of questions or tack it on with the readers mail bag ? Maybe that’s an area where the graduate student could help. Also a social media savvy student / assistant could easily figure a way to work all the media out there to bring in more members. Either way I thank you for all the knowledge you have giving me. Take care of yourself Dr Ehrman. Peace.
I appreciate all the effort you put in. Here are a few suggestions as to how you could free up more time.
1. We don’t pay much so you could post less. For me quality rather than quantity. At the moment we get quality and quantity.
2. You could get graduate students to volunteer to write guest posts. Maybe 3 posts from you and 1 from student or other guest. Some weeks if you needed a break you could have a guest do a whole weeks worth. You would still be editor of course.
You seem like a “petal to the metal” person. Giving 1000% to what you commit yourself to do. Keeping up with all the comments on your thousands of blog posts you have is only going to get more demanding as time goes on. Remove the comments section and have a form where people can submit questions and you can answer the most interesting ones on the blog itself. Have your tech guy figure out how many people actually comment (I bet its a small amount of people making most of the posts). Or this site will become more than a Q&A site. Most of the questions people can find in your books anyway or by doing a google search!
Cutting down to 4-5 posts per week would be fine with me. Also I confess that I seldom read comments–I’m more interested in what you have to say. So ignoring comments, or having someone filter out the ones that don’t require a response is OK too. I do like your weekly response to 2 or 3 questions though.
It sounds to me like this is starting to affect your life in heretofore unseen ways. I suggest a volunteer or two, a small committee, that forwards comments of particular global interest as well as posting slightly less often. Give us quality, and don’t mind the quantity.
It’s rare that a question is completely new or hasn’t been addressed before-often it seems that most of your responses are “see my post on…” Or “I covered that in Jesus, Interrupted.” It would be a good job for a comp-sci grad student, it would be possible to use off the shelf chatbot machine intelligence algorithms to figure out what a question is asking and generate responses with links to other parts of the blog or which chapter of which book to look in for an answer. The answers would still be yours and would not significantly differ from their appearance, quality or even (for the short ones) style currently. You could go so far as to set up a reader on a mobile phone with accept/reject buttons to listen to the questions and the suggested answers (while walking the dog) so you could come back to the truly interesting and novel questions (and the ones that the algorithm got wrong) later.
The ideas of using a student, an assistant, a co-blogger, a panel, are all non-starters. There is only one Bart Ehrman, you are unique, and there is no-one, nor any group who can substitute for you. I have read your books, read your posts and watched your debates. You virtually always come up with something unexpected–and that’s not only the opinion of a non-scholar like me, but also of the folks you debate, who often claim to be scholars–and sometimes they really are–but you overwhelm them with information from your vast storehouse, or out-think them. You’re never rude or insulting, although sometimes the temptation must be enormous, but instead you simply ask them the hard questions, and often their command of the data is not as great as yours, and they fumble, stumble and fall.
As several folks have commented, your output in all aspects of your life are astonishing. We are all scholarship students at Ehrman University. The tuition is very small and the rewards are great. You really owe us nothing. Still, we would hate to lose you, but all of us realize that you must seriously consider limiting your participation in some way. There have been many suggestions, some pretty good, but eventually, you must decide for yourself. I know you’re an agnostic (Wikipedia calls you an agnostic atheist, whatever that is) , but may I say, “God bless you,” and add my humble thanks for all you do.
I’d be happy if you posted five times a week, quite frankly I’ve always been amazed that you find time to post as often as you do.
You’re the key resource for this blog, and if you want to use your resources sustainably you don’t over-exploit them.
As for responding to comments, maybe you should restrict yourself to a limited number of responses per post, on a first-come-first-served basis?
Hi Bart!
I would like you to do some basic book reviews to give us your thoughts about the many innovative ideas being but forth in some of the popular trade books by other scholars that I’m sure many of us have read. In particular, for example, I would be very interested to hear your thoughts about your colleague James Tabor’s “The Jesus Dynasty.” No other book about Jesus, be it gospel, scholarly work, or novel, has impacted me with such force as to the possible circumstances of Jesus’ situation, and as to the extreme stress he was under and emotion he was experiencing. I think Tabor’s is a profound and comprehensive theory, but . . . do you buy it? Some of it? None of it? Why or why not?
Thanks!
James is on the blog by the way! But I’m afraid I haven’t studied his book closely enough to give a fair critique of it.
Yes, I know James is on the blog, and he is very complementary of it. Thanks for the personal response!
My latest suggestion is be careful what you ask for.
I cannot believe the response to your request and the extra reading you have given yourself. Any decision you make we will live with.
Get a couple of grad students, you can always make edits, one has to delegate in life, nobody can do everything.
After reading the above suggestions from members, I’m definitely in favor of you writing no more than four times a week. And stop reading and answering questions. I always read the questions you answer, but most are a waste of your time. The good questions are few and likely come from less than 1% of members.
Because of your desire to help people in need by raising money for the charities, you’ve been doing far too much for a membership fee of two bucks a month.
I’d certainly agree that you don’t need to post so often, but I suspect you just enjoy sharing your thoughts and ideas with us, beta-testing your arguments. It’s your call.
I sometimes lose track of which threads I’ve been posting on, and sometimes somebody might respond to something I’ve said, and I don’t ever find out–if there were some means of tracking that better, that would be handy.
Hmm? I have no clue how you write a blog and respond to so many comments in 90 minutes, Clearly, it would take me all day. Like with everything you do, you try way too hard!
I suggest writing 2 or 3 blogs a week. I also think $25 a year is dirt cheap. How about increasing to $50 per year and see what happens and then adjust up or down accordingly possibly even eventually going up to $100 per year?
My vote: get a volunteer or hire a research assistant.
My recommendation is to cut back to 5 times per week which coincides with M-F. I rarely find time to check the blog on the weekend.
1) 5 – 6 posts per week is BEAST MODE!!! Cut back to 3 – 4 posts per week (3 is probably your sweet-spot)… you’ll spend less time writing, less time reading comments, and less time answering questions.
2) Put a character limit on comments. People will learn to be concise.
Thank you for your time Dr. Ehrman!
I really do appreciate your hard work for those of us who like yourself were on a spirtual journey, but have other jobs and do not have the time to learn Aramaic, Hebrew, Ancient Greek, etc and study with the brightest minds.
Your blog has been invaluable as I do not trust asking someone who thinks the world is less than 6,000 years old for advice on spirituality and Christianity as unbiased. 🙂
I am a fan.
With that notes here is what I want (some of these ideas can save you time too)
1. A readers mailbag icon where any of us could ask questions unrelated to your blog post where a research assistant could ask questions like mine with the Gospel of Thomas earlier? These could be answered every other week by yourself or your graduate students at one big shot or sitting. This is separate content from your other work
2. Put in rules to keep questions related to your posts and keep the mailbag for other questions. If you talk about Paul the questions need to be about Paul etc.
3. Virtual gift cards aka invite codes for a friend. I pay you the $5 or $10 fee and WordPress sends an invite code to whomever we wants receipt email address. I can share this with my evangelical coworkers for example who may have not heard of you. They click it and become temporary members
4. Advertise your blog on youtube and during debates. I only found you by Youtube when I was looking for answers. Your debate lines popped up “…depends on which Gospel you read..” got my attention! I did not know you had a blog until later doing more research.
5. Advertise it during atheist/agnostic debates and conventions. I think many are former Christians who would love to learn more about what they formally believed and would be happy to continue to stay members
That is my 2 cents.
Keep the blog part as it is. Do an occassional readers mailbag to answer some specific questions. Get a grad student to do the comments and if there is something in vast dispute they could bring it to your attention then. We all want to bend your ear with questions, but I don’t know how in the world you do it. I know why..and I’m sure we all agree it has been wonderful that you do. But stick with the most important things about this blog! Your blog, your archived posts and the ability to search and read them from the past, and your videos. I for one would not like to see the membership fee go up. While it is educational, it is also an extravagance my wife does not share with me. And for your welfare and mine we should both strive to keep the wives happy! Stop killing yourself on the comments, by all means!
Two ideas:
1) Instead of having a graduate assistant field questions (which would not offend me at all if it were a matter of factual information, but if it has to do with your opinion on or interpretation of something, then maybe) s/he might find previous posts or interviews in which you deal with the question and post the link to that.
2) Ask among your colleagues if enough of them could commit the time to your charitable work to provide one guest post per week.
Combined, these two changes would hopefully be the equivalent of going from 5 to 6 hours per week to 4 or 5. You spend 52 hours less per year on the blog than before you started increasing your time spent. And the added value of more diverse scholarly points of view could possible attract more subscribers.
Look, you “give” your time to this blog. You have worked hard to get a doctorate, become an accomplished professor receiving teaching awards, written 30 or so books that have been very helpful to others, raised money to help others through this blog and your debates, directed the studies of graduate students, become chairman of an academic department, given Teaching Company courses and numerous lectures, and the list goes on and on. At this stage of life, you have more than earned the right to do whatever “you” want to do even if that means cancelling this blog. So, for Pete’s sake, do what you like best….
Rereading Comments here…I was shocked at one person’s saying he believes 95% of us read only your blog posts, and not the Comments! I certainly do read Comments (except extremely long ones) – especially when they relate to the specific blog post, and it’s one that interests me.
I would probably lose the comment section and instead do some full-length posts with answers to questions from readers. Maybe open up to comments once in a while?
I would also invite guest bloggers in the form of other experts, not necessarily just in the narrow field of NT history to do some posts, in areas relevant to the blog. I am sure there are academics who would love to expound their views to the general public and at the same time help a good cause.
Two comments, one regarding strategy and one regarding process:
1. I agree with an above poster that prioritizing specific tasks and working your way down until your allotted time expires is best.
2. I also agree with the idea of hiring a research assistant, but with a catch: they could read you certain blog questions/comments meriting a response and you could dictate your response for the assistant to transcribe. This would make things go *much* faster than you sitting there typing everything out; heck it might even squeeze your blog time to less than an hour.
Maybe you could get Richard Carrier to help you out? Just kidding! Unless you plan to live forever, you will eventually have to slow this down. The assistant is a good idea, but he or she has to be on the same wavelength as you. But there must be young people who have agnostic views and have gone through the same experiences as you have in regards to Christianity and can give good answers on the blog.
These are just my thoughts as a very recent ‘newbie’. Make of them what you will.
1. Listen to your wife.
2. Listen to your wife.
3. Your membership fee is excellent value, quite apart from the altruistic/charitable aspect. It has prompted me to set up a monthly contribution.
4. I would have no complaint if you limited your blog posts to (say) three a week.
5. Equally, I would have no complaint if some of the work was undertaken by an intern/student/helper – guaranteed they would know more than I do and would be far more acquainted with current thoughts/knowledge, etc.
6. I count it a privilege to be able to have the interaction afforded by your blog site.
7. You are not superhuman. Take care of your health.
8. I really appreciate your work, your writing, your appearances. But (from personal experience) know how to say ‘no’, spend time just for you, your wife, your family. No-one on their death-bed ever said ‘I wish I’d spent more time at the office’.
I wish you all the best.
Two thoughts:
1. Many of the suggestions I’ve seen here would drive me away from the blog.
2. And I think you should realize that in any case, members will be dropping out – if only because other responsibilities, or other interests, are taking up more of their time. You can’t expect membership always to keep growing; at some point, a more realistic goal will be to attract enough new members to “replace” those who leave.
I agree with her. A lot of these suggestions make my head want to explode. They’re so dark and down and depressing. Some people took the post and went way out in left field with it. They don’t make any sense, they’re not understanding the reality of what they’re suggesting, and some of them are flat out impossible.
I don’t know how the post went from being energized and asking for some suggestions to people saying, “Listen to your wife because she’s obviously crying and fretting over this blog. Your health is suffering because as we all know, blogging is dangerous. Better yet, shut the whole thing down.”
I mean, if shutting the blog down doesn’t bring in more donations, I don’t know what will.
One more thing Wilusa,
I have confidence that he will figure this out without alienating the members of the blog. As for myself, I don’t think I’m going to look at this thread anymore after tonight. It’s driving me batty. lol
I’ve always been amazed that you interact and respond to your readers as much as you do, Bart. This has to be one of the most user-interactive blogs on the Internet.
Be that as it may, and this would not be so great from the perspective of us blog participants, but you could have your blog software modified to where user comments are limited to, say, Twitter’s 140 characters.
Constricting the input is how we computer folk address the problem of data crunching throughput dilemmas when we don’t have the option of increasing the processing power/capacity (which for you to do would mean creating clones of yourself – which am guessing is not an option available to you).
If you posted three times per week, not necessarily on the same three days, your load would be lightened, and that would be enough to satisfy many members, who, although we would prefer more, realize that your best benefit for us is you writing books.
May I also suggest you occasionally offer a ‘word study’ post in the blog. I read recently that the word for Noah’s Ark and the basket in which Moses was sent downstream were in fact the same word?
No matter what you choose, I look forward to being a continuing member.
*Once* more into the breach!
If you were to limit the length of Comments, I’d suggest either 250 or 300 words. (I know I myself have often gone over that.)
But to avoid alienating members, I think it should be made clear that you’re encouraging us to *condense*. (I assume most long posts are composed on the members’ devices, and pasted here.) And if the person feels it’s really, really important that you read something longer, they should still have the option of splitting it in chunks and submitting it in successive posts.
I was truly not going to revisit this thread, and then I saw another idea that made me go…what? Ugh!
Nixing the comments section (No, don’t do it!) and even sorting them from questions has drawbacks. I’ll try my best not to write a novel. It’s hard sometimes, but I’m gonna try!
In a thread on another topic, someone suggested that you do something weekly in Twitter (as a substitute for features of the blog). I can only speak for myself, but I’m not willing to get involved with either Facebook or Twitter! (Not the “social” type.)
My posts lead to a twitter feed every day.
I believe she’s referring to the suggestion that members *meet up* on twitter at a designated time where you answer questions there instead of here. In that case, we would need to keep up with two accounts, flipping back and forth between what you say on twitter and what you’re posting here. It’s not possible to have everyone meet at the same time, and I’m not into live twitter sessions. I don’t want to compete with others to get a question answered. Too stressful.
That’s fine, as long as we can read the posts *without* subscribing to Twitter!
I have a strange feeling that now when the definition for the word “convoluted” is googled, google automatically directs you to this post. Lol !!!
How funny.
First I would like to thank you for spending so much time on blog giving everyone knowledge they deserve. This blog has helped me and I’m sure many others not to mention the charities this blog supports.. That all your work Bart ! You should be proud ! I sure am proud of you! You don’t need my praise, but just want to acknowledge the fact you work hard and it is greatly appreciated..
” I could hire a Research Assistant – for example, one of my graduate students in the field of early Christian studies – to handle all the comments for me.”
If you hire a Research Assistant I will really cancel my membership..? Besides the charities I joined to speak to you …what you say means a lot to me… Just so you know..
Second option is the best.
I may be in the minority here, but I’d rather see one fewer post a week, and still get to see your responses to comment questions.
Do less!
You can increase the subscription fee that commensurate with the additonal time… and/or you can also reduce the frequency of post. Do not hire assistant. We subscribe because of your ideas.
Thanks.
While I know you tend to stick to your academic specialty of early historical Christianity I like the moments you address something current in our society related, of course, to Christianity. Right now in fact we have reports of Donald Trump “accepting” Christ into his heart which seems to bring out the conservative evangelical power players. See NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/us/politics/a-born-again-donald-trump-believe-it-evangelical-leader-says.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Good grief.
Hi Bart,
First of all many thanks for all you do. My feelings for the blog:
1. Post less.
2. Filter comments and questions.
3. Technical changes. Some great ideas have been posted that may help with repeated questions and comments, guiding bloggers to the huge amount of material already on the blog.
Thanks
Paul
How about the option of a registered user wishing to “bookmark” their favorite articles by you and also having the option of looking up their past comments on topics?
We’re working on that one!
Wonderful! That would be great and make it much easier to navigate your site! Thank you, Dr. Ehrman! I appreciate ALL THE HARD WORK YOU PUT INTO THIS BLOG!