I was gently reminded last week that I never published the results of our survey, asking our readers for feedback on the first full year of posting on The Garden Professors. All four of us are extremely grateful to those of you that participated, as we could use this information in our annual reporting and reviews. Thank you all for taking the time.
To keep this from being too long for our blog, I’m going to just cover the first two questions today. I’ll continue with this next week, where we’ll consider possible improvements to content and structure.
On the date we ran our analysis, 119 people had responded (the final number was 140).
Reason for reading
Science based information: 107 (90.0%)
Interesting and relevant topics: 101 (84.9%)
Ability to engage bloggers in Q&A: 39 (32.8%)
Usefulness as a CE resource: 75 (63.0%)
Entertaining approach: 78 (65.5%)
Some of the other reasons (you sent us lots!) included:
- Friday quiz/mystery photos
- Trusted source of information
- Balanced and intelligent content
- Diverse subjects
- Ability to get feedback
- Smart, funny, well-written, and challenging
- Fun science fix
Behavior changes attributed to information on blog
Reduce use of chemicals, including fertilizers and pesticides: 52 (43.7%)
Reduced use of potentially invasive species: 40 (33.6%)
Improved ability to protect soil, including reducing erosion: 47 (39.5%)
Some of the other reasons included:
- Stopped promulgating horticulture myths
- Reduced use of peat moss
- Improved ability to plant trees and shrubs
- Improved ability to educate others
- Improved ability to diagnose plant problems
- More informed decision making about plant selection, gardening methods
- Less work using better practices
[Sadly for some of you, I did not include the snide personal comments (about me) from trolls, irrationalists and/or the disgruntled. And to be honest, there were only 1 or 2 of these. But if you’re one of this little group, feel free to send your thoughts on to my supervisors! You’ll need to include your actual name and contact information, however, if you want your comments to be taken seriously.]
Trolls? Irrationalists? Harsh words, indeed. You invite the disgruntled to send thoughts to your supervisor, but you offer no contact information to do so. How does one contact your supervisors?
Benjamin, as I already responded on your other post about this, you can easily find contact information for either Rick Knowles or John Stark on the WSU web site. I am not going to post email information on this blog, since it can be easily spammed.
And as to your first point, if comments are truly constructive, I will happily include them in my summary. In fact, the next post regarding the second two questions will include some suggestions for improvements, both in content and in structure.
But I see no point in posting rants that have no basis in fact and are more along the lines of personal attacks rather than constructive criticism.