website for collection of skeptical articles

[abkaiser]

Hello,

I'm writing this to see what you'd think about a website that collects skeptical articles from writers, and offers itself as an educational repository for those wanting more information about critical thinking and skepticism.

I'd also like your opinions on how best to advertise this.

I have a website, and would like to advertise it to the skeptical community, but am not sure how. I've already asked at the IIDB, and got an interest in the site itself, but not much help beyond that. I'm not mentioning the site here because that's not my intent for this post. I'd like to instead hear your thoughts on how best to get the word out. Just posting the website to forums seems spammy. I don't want to do that. But it's a small website right now, and may not be able to pull interest from the big resources (like Randi's commentary and others at that level).

What do you think? How best to approach this? Building content and waiting a year or so is certainly possible, but I'm impatient by nature. :)

Thanks,

Andy

[tkingdoll]

I'm sure someone here set up something like that recently-ish, but the more the better, I say. The more results for people googling whatever woo, the more chance they have of coming across something useful.

However, I recall with the other guy's site that he had inadvertently breached copyright - please make sure you have permission to reproduce the articles in whole if that's what you plan to do!

Regarding seeming spammy on forums, build up a posting history first. If you're a contributing member of a community then no-one will mind if you post a link, especially if it's useful.

As far as promoting the link goes, there is the links section here which will put your link on the forum homepage for a while - I can add that for you if you want as I babysit that section. Or you can do it yourself quite easily, just go to the Links section and add a new one.

Email the link to Randi, Shermer etc, with an explanation of what it's about - they may mention it in their newsletters. Ditto other skeptics, skepticWiki, SkepticReport etc. Someone somewhere will say yes if your site is any good. It might be small now but you could either say you're looking for help with article submissions, or wait til it's a bit bigger.

Submit your site to digg, stumbleupon etc.

Start a Facebook group for your site and send out monthly updates via that. It's free and low-effort but a good way of driving regular visitors.

Get onto the blogroll of skeptical bloggers - email skepchick, depleted cranium, bad astronomy etc and see if they're interested in giving you a link on their blog in return for one on your site.


That's some of the stuff you can do for free.

[CFLarsen]

(cough) (http://www.skepticreport.com) But, the more, the merrier. :)

What do you have so far? Do you have a URL we can look at?

[SynapticDancer]

www.skeptic.com does have an archive of really great articles, and their electronic newsletter (which you can regsiter for free on the site) sends articles every week.

Admittedly skeptic.com only features articles from its publication, Skeptic, but it is a great publication and a descent place to start. I think a major problem in organizing and maintaining a database of sorts would have to do with intellectual property violations. But that is why getting the articles from the source is recommended. This involves doing so legwork, however.

Maybe an aternate solution would be to create a website of links to skeptical or scientific publications that make part or all of their content freely accessible. Provided a link to them directly shouldn't be a problem, and for a skeptic interested in researching woo would have a one stop shop.

[SynapticDancer]

To advertise your site, you can post a link to it in your signature, either here or in your e-mail. You can also, depending on who is hosting your site, make it searchable. I have a Yahoo account, and Yahoo allows you to publish your main page with Key words in the properties. These key words are used by search engines to find you. You can make your key words whatever you want (for example, I use my name if someone searches me directly, Skeptic, agnostic, etc).

Also I link my page on my Myspace and Facebook accounts.

This doesn't bring loads of traffic in (which I'm not entirely interested in) but it does put me a bit out there if someone is looking for me or my interests specifically.

[abkaiser]

...

Thanks for the extremely helpful advice. I am familiar with search engine optimization (for improving search engine results), but am more concerned about actively growing the readership and exposure, apart from waiting for the slower movement of search engine placement. Thanks for the advice - some of that I hadn't thought of, and I'll be implementing.

Andy

[abkaiser]

[What do you have so far? Do you have a URL we can look at?

I'd love to post the URL, but I'm a new member to the forum, and URL posting is verboten for me. As it is, I don't want this to be a "post the URL and leave" type of thread. I'm more concerned with "how best to get the word out" methods.

Once I hit the required post count, I'll let you know. :)

Andy

[Eos of the Eons]

Hey, a couple of us laypeople are trying that, and looking for ideas too:

www.skeptix.ca (http://www.skeptix.ca)