MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--WITH THE RESULTS
I last polled the readership not quite two years ago about their reactions to the new philosophy-related blog, moderated by Simon Critchley, which at that time had run for about six months. 6% of readers then thought the series should be discontinued, given its weaknesses (e.g., too many 'friends of Simon' representing philosophy poorly). 83% wanted the series to continue "but with a new editor/moderator and higher editorial standards." 10% thought the series was fine as it was then. The big mystery, then as now, was how a marginal philosophy professor with a weak reputation even in Continental philosophy had been tapped as the "moderator" of a blog series representing philosophy to the broader culture. I'm now told that it's because he happens to be personal friends with Peter Catapano, an editor at the Times. If that's true, it's pretty shocking--one might have thought the New York Times might consult experts in creating a forum to represent an academic discipline, not just pick whoever happens to drink beer with one of the editors. (It's worth noting that Capatano apparently solicits many contributions independently of Critchley, but there are still lots of "friends of Simon" appearing.)
In any case, the blog series went on hiatus at the end of 2010 for awhile, resuming again later in 2011, and now has run for over 18 months since. I largely gave up reading it, except when readers would flag something (usually something embarrassingly bad, sad to say). Others I know read it more often.
I thought it might be worth asking the same question as we asked in November 2010, to see whether the views of philosophers about "The Stone" have changed:
UPDATE: So with about 350 votes, 10% now think the series should be canned, 54% think the series should continue but with a new moderator and higher editorial standards, and the remainder like the status quo. There's been some Facebook lobbying for the latter, so we'll see what develops, but for awhile now it's been about 10-55-35.
THE RESULTS: 711 votes were cast. However, in reviewing the IP logs, it turns out there were eight IPs from which multiple votes were cast for the status quo, sad to say. (Apparently by deleting cookies, one can vote multiple times--we'll fix that for future polls.) This would explain also the late surge for the status quo vote tally. So we'll count 8 votes for the status quo from these IP addresses, but have to subtract 23 (the repeat votes) from the total. So the final tally was 64 favored eliminating the series altogether (9%), 333 (49%) supported continuing the series but with a new moderator and higher editorial standards, and 291 (42%) favored the series just as it is. So while a clear majority still favors changes, many more have "made their peace" with the status quo (a familiar fact in human history!).
Here are the offending IP addresses and their total repeat votes:
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100.1.11.138
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3
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67.189.219.112
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3
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98.142.124.51
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3
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99.249.243.43
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3
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184.152.75.61
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3
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108.176.135.84
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4
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96.28.152.220
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5
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71.193.122.7
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7
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