Quick Question for the Science Community
There has been a considerable slow down in people adding their profiles to the database, and it seems like updating circles on a different day may help the page reach out to a different crowd. Based on your experiences here on G+, when would be a good day/time to update circles (i.e., when are people most active on G+)?
#sciencesunday
It usually all seems to kick off around 2000GMT.
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Hard to judge. I think what works best for me is close to what Kryptyk Physh said 2100 GMT.
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Another idea – create a mid-week circle for people who can look at it then.
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There is a circle of academic psychologists on Google+, right now it has 112 members. I don’t know if you were aware of this circle or not.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/107191542129310486499/posts/9nnzT6MMC4n
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One thing I’ve noticed: for me as a follower (and non-scientist) it’s sometimes an open question of whether or not I notice them. What might prove useful is some method whereby you can create a circle, say, of everyone who wants updates – or better. Simply creating a public event, “Science on Google+ Update” so we all know when to check; it’s sadly easy to lose posts in your following stream some mornings, even with using circles to look at it all by subject matter.
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What about staggered re-posts to make sure all time zones are covered? Some will see repeats, but I think that would be preferable to having people miss posts completely.
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For me, having all the science circles updated at the same time makes me ignore them, since they basically take over my feed. I would prefer to have the updates staggered, e.g. one circle per day.
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Matthew Leifer I agree that the circles and pages should only be posted with updates separately through out the week and also switch up the day and hours of the day that they are posted. If you post all the circle and page updates together it has a spam like effect in that people ignore most of it. Spread it out over time and revise the schedule of posts.
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One technique that might work is to encourage the people who follow one or more science circles but who are not included to share it (or them) with their followers. Since their followers are more likely to attend to something that they send than something public more new people may notice the science circles.
This approach might help with diffusion. The people who are in the the science circles themselves (who currently tend to share the science circles) may already have a preponderance of people following them who have, at least once, accepted a science circle and so new ground is not being broken.
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Good idea to have the science circles updated staggered during the week. Also, you might want to update the spreadsheet a bit more often I can still see my profile not being included but staying in the limbo at the bottom of the Chemistry sheet (for some reason I cannot fathom).
Also, might want to add some interesting stuff to the Sci pages, for example a list of upcoming conferences in a particular area, events such as Chem Week in USA, etc.
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Thanks everyone for the great feedback! Much appreciated. We have already started addressing your comments and you should see changes in the near future.
Brian Gauspohl – I am aware of the psychology circle. Thanks. The circles differ in two ways. First, our psychology circle also includes individuals who have a psychology degree but are not currently holding an academic position. Second, a person has to be active on G+ to be included in our psychology circle.
Jesus M. Castagnetto – thanks for letting me know that you circled the page. I will update your entry and add you to shared circles. In regards to your second comment, I have no control what other science pages post. At some point, this page might start sharing content besides shared circles. This is something that we will be discussing in the near future.
cc: Rajini Rao
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As Jesus M. Castagnetto mentioned, I actually have degrees in Physics and Chemistry (minor in Biology) but I don’t think I had a way to mention this.
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It seems like Jesus M. Castagnetto’s second comment is getting a different issue, Lacerant Plainer. Maybe I’m missing something. People can add their degrees and minors to the database by adding their information to these two fields in the form: (1) Primary Discipline and (2) Sub-discipline/Area of Expertise/Secondary field.
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Ahhh ok Chris Robinson thanks!
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