It\’s Getting Hot In Here

How’s the Site Doing is a monthly series to update the community on how this site is doing, share some how-to tips and create a space to talk about this site.

Over 100 people filled out our survey earlier this month, giving us a valuable window into how our community sees itself. As part of my monthly round-up of the site, I’ve included some of the graphs (thanks to Liz Veazy) and insights I found most interesting.

To start things off, we’re the best site on the web for some things, according to…. us!

The point of the survey was to help the editors guide the development of the site and the community. We’ve been putting together a proposal for a redesign, and getting a much better sense of how we want to include a lot more people in writing and reading here, and how to expand our editorial board.

Read on for a mock-up of how the site might look, more colorful graphs from the survey and of course the numbers.

When we began the process of re-vamping this site, we had some vague ideas of what it could be and a lot of excitement. Those ideas have solidified somewhat into our working objectives:

1) Feature exciting recent content from youth climate movement activities 1.a) feature diversity of posts/writers 2) deepen/expand community of users to facilitate discussion and sharing  3) invite users to become part of movement by telling the world what they are doing

To do all that, we’re thinking of a number of changes, which we’d like your input on.  But first, here’s a very partial report back from the survey results.

Community:
Select quotes from the survey on the IGHIH community:

• “Maybe a more focused discussion space?”
• “I’d like to see more posts from youth outside the U.S.”
• “[we should weed] out or slow down posts.”
• “I want to hear about the work young people are actually doing!”
• “I like that there are MANY voices … and it’s easy for new folks to start writing. I don’t like the amount of movement cheer leading that goes on. “
• “a few authors in particular seem to be writing from an organizational perspective, with the deliberate aim of raising the profile of their organization, not necessarily advancing the cause of bringing climate solutions to the United States and the world. “
• “I do feel like there is a narrow demographic that contributes stories to the site. I like the breadth of tactics covered, from lobbying to direct action, but it seems like the people reporting those actions tend to be mostly male, and mostly white.”
• “There are many more young people working on climate justice issues that are not students, and I think they are underrepresented in the stories, and that writers tend to assume the audience is students when they write.”
• “Perhaps do some concerted outreach to get different authors up. Youth of color, Women, etc. Also folks who aren’t paid organizers, too.”
• “I would like to see IGHIH working with partner organizations to rep the blog and get more people reading it and writing for it.”
• “I think some of the posters could benefit from thinking about the posts’ content from an anti-oppression standpoint. I’ve frequently seen posts that really demonstrate a degree of white privilege that is not recognized by the author.”
• “I know there has been a lot of feedback about silencing the “white man in NGO land” voice, and that’s a valid point. However, we do have a lot of white men in NGO land, and they are often on the ground during political climate “
• “At times I feel as if only hard-core organizers use the site, so as a smaller scale activist that can’t yet do climate work for a (granted minimal) living it’s harder to feel involved.”
• “If there is a way for readers to support IGHIH (a tip jar or a way to fund the key editors) that would be great. Even if it doesn’t raise much $$$, it will remind people that great sites don’t come free!”,
• “I’m a little dismayed that there doesn’t seem to be any fact-checking ability on behalf of the site in regards to posters/writers”
• “Y’all (we all) rock and IGHIH has emerged as a powerful tool for this movement”

As a small caveat to this section, IGHIH is run entirely by volunteers. There are a ton of things we want to do and just don’t have the time for. Its also a very open community that anyone can help contribute to. If you know international activists, recruit them and bring them in. If you want to see more writers from different backgrounds, help us to make that happen! Anyone can start a short-term or regular series (witness the success of the Climate Generation series) and ask folks to write on certain topics. There are many ways we can democratically and organically shape this community to be more like we want.

Generally, recruiting and mentoring writers on this site is the job of the editorial board.  The board will be recruiting soon, so this is helpful for us to know how folks want us to expand.  We’re also looking for ways to be better writing mentors, recruit from a more diverse audience, and get posts that we do have more of the attention they deserve.

Site Design:

The blog was designed originally by Arthur Colston.  It hasn’t changed a lot in 5 years, and now we’re improving.  Here’s a very brief mock-up made by Phil Aroneanu just to try out ideas and get a feel for something new.

Here’s what some folks thought about how it all looks:

• “Cool logo – old school blog style (needs to be updated!)”
• “Did not look corporate OR amateur”
• “nix the mustard/puke background color”
• “i couldnt tell who was running it and how people got access to adding to it. unsure if it was a project of an organization or what”
• “Please no flashy graphics around the blog, just make the blog centre focus”
• “The right hand bars are fairly cluttered”
• “slightly disorganized blog — now, I kind of like the chaos”

More Features:
You asked for a lot of features, and we’re going to do the best to make them happen:

• Much better search functions
• Visible ‘top posts’ to show most active things posted in the last week
• Twitter feed from an IGHIH curated list of partner orgs
• Facebook connect
• share buttons
• 4 meta-categories to sort our content: News, Action, Politics, Community
• View authors list by state, subject, number of posts, etc.

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Stats for January
We hit 65,000 views for the month according to wordpress. Give or take 2,000, and this ties us for the 2nd highest month ever – we’ve had several months this good, and only December ’09 was a lot higher. Furthermore, historically January is one of our lowest months, after July and August. The big problems in this world aren’t slowing down, and neither are we.

To see full stats, log-in to your wordpress account and visit the stats page.

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Most viewed posts which were posted in the past 30 days:

• Victory for Black Mesa – Peabody Coal Mi 1,492
• Kennedy and Blankenship to Debate Mounta 1,280
• Top 10 U.S. Universities for Cleantech: 956
• Youth Occupy Trees, Blasting Halted on C 530
• Earth to Massachusetts 441

Top referrers in the past 30 days (where people clicked a link to the blog):

• facebook.com 1,024
• twitter.com 269
• tuvaluislands.com 126
• stumbleupon.com/refer.php?url=http%3A…(Its Getting Old In Here) 120
• commondreams.org 100

Top search terms (what people typed into a search engine to find us):

• hummer 10,288
• japan 1,081
• hummer h 11,054
• jack black 335
• civil rights movement 232

And, where people clicked to from our blog:

• focusthenation.org573
• justin.tv/waterkeeper_alliance#r=YDTG…(Kennedy/Blankenship live-feed) 201
• lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_a…126
• spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=e…(survey) 103
• gmhummer.com/hummerspecs/2006_h1alpha…100

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Tell us what you think! How can we make this community better together?