2009-2010 Board

We've recent put up both a pre-season commment thread and one addressed to loose ends, the future of the Rumor Mill, and so forth.

Now we've added a board for the 2009-2010 "market." We're updating as new jobs come in to APSA e-jobs, but if we miss something please let us know there. Remember that the comments section of the board should NOT be used for job rumors. For now, those should go on the pre-season thread, as they won't involve interviews and the like.

As always, these posts/threads are available via the nav bar on the right (under the "recent comments" widget).

New Comment System

We just changed over to JS-Kit comments from Blogger. Our hope is that this will make the comment threads easier to follow and to navigate.

JS-Kit is a bit buggy when it comes to updating the number of comments listed under a post, however, so you may see "0 Comments" when, in fact, readers have already left multiple comments.

We've also added a recent comments widget to the navbar, which should make it easier to see changes across multiple discussion threads.

JS-Kit does have an analytic feature, but we don't think it displays IPs. If it does, we will have an open discussion about whether to revert to the old system. We honestly have zero interest in knowing the identities of our posters, and I think that those of you have emailed us appreciate how careful we are about preserving confidentiality.

UPDATE: as of now, JS-Kit's analytic functionality is ideal; it allows us to see the number of people viewing comments, but not their IP addresses! So we have some idea of the cite traffic (a lot) but no way for any malicious person to discover the location that a comment was posted from.

Back to blogger comments.

Preseason Thread

Pretty much what it sounds like: a place for discussions of the 2009-2010 market, strategies for getting a job, strategies for coping with the process, etc. etc.

Loose Ends and Pre-Season Thoughts

Not long ago someone posted a request for us to "fill in" the Big Board for last year's job carnage market. We think that's a great idea, particularly if, as rumor has it, the wiki is an unreliable mess.

But we also remember what happened when we made a plea for our readers to help us with such a task last year: almost no one stepped forward to help out.

Please don't make that the case again this year. We're counting on you.

Here's the plan: we've created a duplicate of the Big Board with a clean comments section. Please help us complete the board by leaving information there.

Now, on to other matters.

The major development on the rumor mill front in 2007-2008 was the advent of the wiki. At the time, we asked for opinions about whether we should shutter the mill. The overwhelming consensus was "no," and we must say that you were right. This year not only did the wiki prove problematic, but a significant number of its rumors came from us.

The major development this year has been the advent of Political Science Job Rumors. A rather lively place, in our opinion. And we find ourselves wondering yet again: has the Rumor Mill lost its raison d'être? Should we continue?

To be honest, running the thing during job season is kind of a pain. A big reason is that we make sporadic efforts to contact faculty and job candidates about rumors we receive (we didn't do this as frequently as we should have in 2008-2009, and if we continue we'll aim to ramp up the effort). On the other hand, we think we're a somewhat cleaner, friendlier place than the message boards, and that probably counts for something. What do you think?

Finally, if we do continue, what can we do better? What should we change? And no, we won't ditch moderation.