I’m a fretter. I can’t help it.
I had this newsletter over at Yahoo!Groups, and I really hated using Yahoo!Groups. The administration was a nightmare, the format was not very good, and I had little real control over things. Even so, I had nearly 5000 subscribers, making it the second biggest astronomy group on Yahoo.
But now, with the blog, things are so much better. I can update things more easily– most of you may have noticed I now put up two or three entries a day. That’s fun! I can put in images:
and even make them links (go ahead, try it!). I can categorize things (this is under “About the blog”, for example), and apply lots of other time-wasting devices.
So I posted a last newsletter on Yahoo, and told people to come here. But of the 5000 subscribers, only about 300 came over.
So I fretted. What did I do wrong? Was the timing off? Were people tired of the newsletter, or was it so infrequent most simply didn’t care anymore?
Then a solution presented itself. Grab the email database of the readers, and migrate it to FeedBlitz, the service I use to let people get the daily updates to the blog in their email.
So I did it. It’s doing it right now! I have no idea how many people will subscribe, how many will ignore it, how many will love it, how many will send hate mail. That worries me a bit.
I can’t help it. I’m a fretter. But I’m hoping for the best.
So if you’re coming here from the newsletter for the first time, welcome! Take a poke through the archives to get a feel for how things work. And you can leave comments as well (though I ask that you be polite)!
This is so much better than the newsletter. 
January 5th, 2006 at 12:18 am
I’ve been a newsletter subscriber for some time now, and is also an avid reader of this blog. But I am one of those 4700 who didn’t subscribe to FeedBlitz, mainly because I could easily access this blog (and lesser email to sift through).
And there’s the RSS feed.
I agree that this blog is a much more better medium than the newletter. Though all newsletter subscribers were subscribed to FeedBlitz, I’m afraid I’ll have to unsubscribe from it. I’ll be updated through RSS. Though that would mean one less person in your stats.
January 5th, 2006 at 1:12 am
No, that’s great! I am more afraid of alienating people than anything else. So you’re one less thing to fret about.
January 5th, 2006 at 1:55 am
I’ll also not be counted in the FeedBlitz numbers, but you post so often that I visit every day. I agree that Yahoo Groups is not, um, optimal? This is much easier to poke around and have fun with.
keep it up and thanx
January 5th, 2006 at 2:45 am
Well I am glad I got a little email telling me about this blog. I was on the yahoogroup. Thanks for the heads up!!
~~Maevey
January 5th, 2006 at 2:48 am
Is the email newsletter dead? I wasn’t so sure but RSS + email seems to offer the best of both worlds. Some seem prefer a full inbox but I’ll stick to your feed
I’ve found FeedBlitz to be great and have picked up a few subscribers who said they choose not to get RSS.
January 5th, 2006 at 4:14 am
Yeah, thanks for the heads up! I just unsubscribed to the “Feedblitz” service and put your RSS feed in bloglines. I’m sure there are lots of folks like Joey and I who will opt for the RSS route instead of working with FeedBlitz.
January 5th, 2006 at 5:28 am
more blog entries? cool!
that hubble picture wasn’t a good example of “i can make images links”, because it was 4 (four) clicks to actually see the image
January 5th, 2006 at 5:41 am
I’ve been reading this blog since you started it, through RSS. Since then someone (maybe even me, I can’t remember much these days) made it a syndicated used account on livejournal ( http://livejournal.com/users/badastro ) which has currently only three subscribers – but maybe that’ll increase if LJ users see it mentioned here.
January 5th, 2006 at 5:50 am
ok,ok, I’m here. Sorry it took so long. You are now added to my daily list of blogs to spend the government’s time and money reading instead of working.
January 5th, 2006 at 6:07 am
>> But of the 5000 subscribers, only about 300 came over
thanks for taking the initiative. I must have forgotten to go ahead and subscribe to the blog. this is one of the few cases that I am happy about being autosubscribed.
Don M
January 5th, 2006 at 6:14 am
I switched to regularly checking your blog after your first announcement. RSS rulez. But I wish your RSS feed included ALL the text of an entry, not just the beginning. Please, don’t be stingy
I prefer to read all my feeds from a standalone aggregator (a free program called Liferea), which is separate from my browser. With your current feed, I am forced to click on each entry and switch to the browser to get at the meat. Regardless, thanks for a great–and fun–resource.
January 5th, 2006 at 6:40 am
Good idea BA.. but from your email wording I don’t think you realised it autosubscribed people regardless, ie it was opt-out
. A good thing I think though since obviously some of the old newsletter subscribers didn’t know about the blog. Personally, i’ve unsubscribed from FeedBlitz since I check the site most days & so don’t need the extra email either. Btw fyi, the last newslater, the (un)subscribe notification & the 1st Feedblitz mail all arived within quick succession of each other this morning, no probs 
January 5th, 2006 at 6:53 am
There was a newsletter? I’ve just been reading the blog for last several months. I’m glad you didn’t abandon the blog to work on the newsletter. I would have no place to go.
January 5th, 2006 at 7:24 am
I unsubscribed from the FeedBlitz email because I read the site through Google Reader at this point. It was nice getting plain-text pointers to new posts, but now that I’m on Reader it’s no longer necessary.
January 5th, 2006 at 7:26 am
Thanks Phil I was wondering how to get to the blog as I’m extremely inept at the whole issue of a blog. Thanks for all you do in the issue of advancement of science. There are students in the high school where I teach science that still figure that ID is the REAL science. There is no grey area between our discussions. I used to send students to your newsletter archive frequently but got lost in the shuffle. Now I can send them to your blog. Thanks again. beeb
January 5th, 2006 at 7:47 am
I read this blog, but didn’t subscribe to your newsletter. FWIW, I find email newsletters in general, and yahoogroups in particular, to be a less than satisfactory way to get information.
Nick
January 5th, 2006 at 8:42 am
I had not added the blog to my bloglines (though I will). I will be unsubscribing from feedblitz right away but I’ll be a regular reader. So I’m not alienated — in fact I’m glad because I missed the announcement about the blog!
Cheers
M@
January 5th, 2006 at 9:20 am
When I first subscribed to Bad Astronomy newsletter a few years ago after hearing Plait speak on a radio station, I was fascinated by the topics discussed (although I hadn’t a clue what was being said… I was only 12!). Since then, I’ve been reading the newsletter every time I discover one in my mail box. I’m very much looking forward to reading this blog whenever I get a chance – the live interaction is a great idea.
January 5th, 2006 at 9:39 am
I’m one of the 3 using the livejournal RSS feed– when you sent out the previous newsletter article about having a blog, I jumped right onto it. The livejournal feed is a much better way for me to keep track of it, so I opted out of the Feedblitz notifications, but I’m very glad to be reading this blog!
January 5th, 2006 at 10:45 am
That livejournal thing is interesting. I wonder who set it up? Well, since I have it set to only excerpt the blog, they still come to my site.
Yes, I know, excerpting seems evil. But I do want people actually coming to the site to read the whole entry. That way, they get the images, as well as a chance to see the comments, peruse the archive, and all that. Plus, I can figure out how many people actually read the blog!
January 5th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
Never knew you had a Yahoo! group; always just read you website/blog.
Just for the record, I dislike Yahoo! groups to. It just doesn’t seem user friendly to me.
January 5th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Just casting my vote as another person who’s not going to use Feedblitz because I’ve been reading the blog through Google Personalized Homepage for the past few months anyway. If not that many people use Feedblitz, you should keep in mind that many of them might still be reading the blog through other means.
January 5th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Hey Phil, I signed up for the blog a few weeks ago. So count me in! I read the blogs through My.Yahoo as well as Thunderbird!
January 5th, 2006 at 7:16 pm
BA, Not alienated at all by the transfer of addy’s to feedblitz, but you might have mentioned what happens to those of us (evidently 300 or so) who had already subscribed to feedblitz after the not-last-newsletter. Will we be getting 2 notifications? Based on some comments above and the fact that I didn’t get another feedblitz confirm e-mail, I don’t think that will happen. If you know for sure, please let us know. Thanks.
January 5th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
I was signed up as well on Yahoo Groups however I found that I never looked at it much – perhaps a lot of the subscribers, like me, signed up and then never went back very much. The 300 that did were most likely the ones that read it every week.
The blog is heaps better – I like the audio interviews as well.
January 5th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
I didn’t switch to feedbltz right away, because I check your blog daily anyway. But since you’ve signed me up automatically, I’ll probably stick with it for a while and see if it works for me.
You might find that you get a better reaction from an opt-out system rather than an opt-in one — especially if everyone is as lazy as me!
January 6th, 2006 at 1:54 am
Great Phil,
I’ve been a long time fan, ever since the “we never went to the moon” nonsense started. I set myself up as nemesis to Seethruart (remember him ?) and emailed you, to which you kindly replied. Love the new look and currently receive updates via Feedblitz. Keep it up
Ray aka Occam
January 6th, 2006 at 3:12 am
Oh wow! Are you really Paris? What happened with Latsis? Are you single now? I’m an actor too.
January 6th, 2006 at 3:15 am
Phil,
I am pleased to see your efforts expanded here on the blog. Together with the Universe Today partnership, you are reaching many people – membership or not. This membership number thing going on is a good wake-up call and reinforcement of actual and live numbers. I check, verify and adjust my membership occasionally, it does go down, but I would rather have a good sense of real numbers than pretend fluff. You are a solid presence on the net.
I also do not like the yahoo chats much either. Very restrictive and clumsy. I haven’t jumped into the RSS feeds yet, but examining the option.
Thank you for your work and devotion to astronomy and space exploration endeavors.
Joe
Chicago Astronomer
http://www.chicagoastronomer.com
January 6th, 2006 at 8:35 am
I can’t believe that I am doing this…but. here I am signing on. I enjoy reading your blog and the comments that your readers make. Of course, as you know, I don’t understand very much of it. Whatever it is that you are doing, it seems to be the right thing. So, good luck and keep it coming.
BA Mom
January 6th, 2006 at 8:38 am
You know what I like about the blog vs. the newsletter? The comments! I enjoyed the newsletters – your writing is lively! but they were a relatively passive experience, not to mention being somewhat buried since one had to subscribe to read them. Now you’ve created something of a community through this more public medium, and I think you’re also likely to reach more people.
keep up the good work!
January 6th, 2006 at 9:00 am
Hey Phil, thanks for taking the initiative. I can only blame it on a combination between laziness and being extremely busy over the last several months that prevented me from coming over. I swear it was on my to-do list. I promise, right after…uh… well, it was on there. (I can’t beleive I just admitted to somewhere between 300 and 5000 people that I am in fact lazy… meh, worse has happened)
January 6th, 2006 at 9:10 am
I switched over to Feedblitz since I always forgot to check the site and I still dont understand how RSS feeds work :/ I think this is so much better than the newsletter. We get to hear from you Phil our favorite astronomer much more often. Personally Im not crazy about YahooGroups and I think its days may be numbered…
January 6th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
I used to get the newsletter and was frustrated by the infrequent delivery. When you (BA) sent the last one and notified me of the RSS feed of your blog, I was grateful. I kept forgetting that you have a website, let alone remembering to look at it. I didn’t even know you had a blog. This will help me keep up with what you have going on. I much prefer using RSS to getting the newsletter. Keep up the good work!
January 6th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
Hi there BA!
Before I address the subject of this blog, let me say a little about how much I appreciate your efforts.
I got started with you when I purchased your “Bad Astronomy” book. I was so glad to see someone out there was trying to offer reason and sense to explain phenomena to which many people simply apply superstition.
It is surprising to me how ignorant some of the otherwise well educated people I know and work with are of what we on this blog probably take for granted as common knowledge. The seasons, eclipses, precession of the equinoxes, the times of moonrise and the different shapes the moon has at those varying times, the several (simply marvelous!) trips our probes have taken to other moons, and the July 4th comet impact are all examples of subjects upon which I have offered my now rusty “expertise” to these people.
I also have loaned out your book to spread a much better source of education, and have pointed people to your old Yahoo! newsletter. And these folks are amazed and awed at the truths that emerge when they hear them. Anything you can do to get the truth to the common man (and common woman) on all the subjects you touch upon is great work Phil. Love this blog! Keep it up!
Now, don’t feel abandoned, but I am going to off Feedblitz too. Not you… but the notifications from Feedblitz get a little annoying. So I now have your RSS fed blog prominently located in my “My Yahoo!” front page where I will instantly see your new posts and will continue to read, and quite possibly come back to write more comments.
January 6th, 2006 at 9:06 pm
True Knowledge (specially astronomy!) is welcome anytime and efforts to deliver that knowledge will always be appreciated!
Keep up the spirit!
January 6th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Wish I’d known there had been a newsletter. I bookmarked The Bad Astronomy site years before I found the blog and subscribed to it.
Abstracts are evil. 99 times out of 100 I skim an abstract, think what a shame I can’t read the rest and move on. This is a rare time I clicked through the abstract because of the intriguing newsletter title. My RSS reader feeds images in posts, and if the comments are syndicated (as they are on this blog) I can get those too. What I can’t get is text that’s not syndicated.
If you want to know how many people read the site use Feedburner; you can even use it for your FeedBlitz stats.
Wordpress codex on using Feedburner http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_FeedBurner and Feedburner’s instructions about the recent WP upgrade http://forums.feedburner.com/viewtopic.php?t=2448&highlight=wordpress
Do an experiment.
Try Feedburner and see if you get more or less hits with abstracts or full feeds.
January 7th, 2006 at 2:56 am
The only problem I have with FeedBlitz is this:
=?UTF-8?B?W1RoZSBCYWQgQXN0cm9ub215IEJsb2ddIFRoZX
JlIGlzIDEgbmV3IHBvc3QgaW4gIkJhZCBBc3Ryb25vbXkgQmxvZyI=?=
It’s what appears in the subject line on Demon Webmail where I delete spam before downloading e-mail. So I have to be careful I don’t delete it as spam too!
But with my e-mail reader – Evolution – the subject and content is fine and it’s very convenient to just click on the link and open another tab in Firefox.
January 7th, 2006 at 8:53 am
I only picked up on #56 because it happened 3 days before my monthly 15th “check to make sure nothing important or cool was marked as spam” clean-up routine. It had been so long since #55 (8 months), that my spam filters didn’t even recognize it as a newsletter I was subscribed to (actually, to be more precise, my spam filters were cleaned out in June when I got a new computer).
I’m also not too sure if I would’ve shown up in your stats — I tend to read blogs more on a come-as-I-can basis, and don’t tend to subscribe in any way (FeedBlitz, RSS, Atom, or otherwise).
Hopefully, those other 4.7k folk fall into the same category as me.
January 7th, 2006 at 11:42 am
Hmm, how do you count who tranfered over? I got the old newsletter, and came over here when it changed into blogformat, but I didn’t sign up for anything
January 8th, 2006 at 4:32 am
Feedbiz is great!
Except the brocken images…
I was to lazy to migrate myself, so thanks for doing it for me
January 9th, 2006 at 7:02 am
This a wonderful Blog to visit. About the FTL it is necessary to be a Skeptic!
It still sounds like SciFi.