This site should be pretty easy to publicize; simply post flyers around the various departments. Would someone with design skills be willing to throw together a flyer to be around the various campuses by Academia SE users?
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design skills... I pass. :(– Stefano BoriniCommented Feb 18, 2012 at 22:54
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7 Answers
Well, since no designers answered the call, I'm going to expand it to designers. Since I'm a member of the "not a designer" crowd, I figured I'll make the first poster.
Click here to see an Academia.SE poster, which you should print and stick in public places in your university
It's not going to win any awards for awesome design, but it is better than nothing. My requests to the crowd are twofold:
Please print these out and put them in public areas. I'll probably kindly ask you to re-post it when the fall semester starts and the new crop of grad students show up.
The original call for someone with some semblance of actual design skills still stands. Please feel free to make something that, you know, looks good.
Here's the same link again, just because I like writing links. Please post it wherever it makes sense to post it.
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It's a very nice poster! just a small comment: many of the printers are black-and-white (one can forget we're already in the 21st century!). Do you think the background will work well when printed b/w?– Ran G.Commented Mar 18, 2012 at 4:29
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It should print well to grayscale, I'm not sure about just b&w.– eykanal ModCommented Mar 18, 2012 at 12:08
Is there a way to get a blurb on the Chronicle of Higher Education, or Inside Higher Ed ? there are some friendly bloggers there who might be willing to mention the site.
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2Not a bad idea at all. I sent off a short letter using the contact form on the Chronicle website asking them if they'd be interested in featuring our site.– eykanal ModCommented Mar 16, 2012 at 18:51
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2Just to keep you folks informed, in order to not annoy these folks with a deluge of mail, the mods are taking care of the request.– eykanal ModCommented Mar 18, 2012 at 12:08
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Letters were sent out, I know I never received a response, I don't think the other mods did either. @suresh– eykanal ModCommented Apr 30, 2012 at 10:36
Could we somehow get Academia.edu interested? They had something like ask-a-question back in the day. I'm not sure what happened to it, but there definitely ought to be some scope for cooperation. I'm not very good at networking or making contact with humans in general, but what do others think of the idea. Perhaps we could form a contact committee?
Another place to get grad-students, especially those in the depth of despair would be Phinished.org.
Would sending a short email to one of the mailing lists (listservs) count as spam? Perhaps more senior people can comment on the appropriateness of such an act. At the very least we could offer a suggestion to take the more flamey (but important) topics to stackexchange, something like the entire Elsevier situation, discussion of responses, etc.
I would appreciate hearing from the more experienced what they think of the appropriateness of these steps in terms of academic etiquette.
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Good ideas. Right now, the contact committee consists of the site admins; myself, aeismail, and charles. We've reached out to some organizations in the past, we'll discuss this one as well. If anyone else wants to be involved, please let us know... we'd love to include you in the discussions!– eykanal ModCommented Apr 27, 2012 at 20:44
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thanks for the invite @eykanal I will try to join the discussions as much as possible and contribute what I can. I wouldn't mind putting up some posters, but I think colour would be more attractive for publicizing, and most of us would have access to a colour printer at work. I did inform some people on a mailing list, I don't know if it had an impact though. Commented Apr 28, 2012 at 20:21
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I like the idea of contacting Academia.edu (I don't know Phinished.org), there is probably something interesting to do together :)– user102Commented Apr 29, 2012 at 21:24
I have some design skills. I suggest that people should think of (and post as answers) some things that could be said about this site. Attractive catchphrases and details are important to attract students. Examples would be like:
"Confused about the academic world? Turn your browser to Academia StackExchange for answers to your questions!"
This is just an example to start of your imaginations. A poster should appeal to a general audience, have a short catchy phrase, and contain a short description of what this site is about.
I can produce black and white as well as colour versions in vector format suitable for a variety of sizes, and others who can design can also try as well!
I think this is a good idea and I would definitely put up a few posters on the bulletin board in my department.
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3I had an idea over the weekend of simply make a flyer out of a hypothetical SE question-answer, replicating the format exactly. THe question would be something along the lines of, "Where can I find useful information relevant to graduate students?", and the answer would be something along the lines of "Awesome site, Academia.SE.com".– eykanalCommented Feb 19, 2012 at 18:22
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Also, please let us know where we can download the flyer you put up... thanks in advance!– eykanalCommented Feb 19, 2012 at 18:23
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1@eykanal, How about we create a flyer to resemble a poster (like academic poster presentation) with a nice title and poster type template? Creativity and I are enemies but I just thought of this.– user107Commented Feb 20, 2012 at 15:27
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@Nunoxic - I like it. Throw something together (be sure to add "free pizza!" somewhere on it) and post it here. If I have time to night, I'll work on the idea I had above.– eykanalCommented Feb 20, 2012 at 15:35
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I'll try to find time and see this through.– user107Commented Feb 20, 2012 at 15:36
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I just wondered if we could get a redirect from academe.se.com. Something like learn the language of learning: academe.se.com academe has the same meaning as academia (perhaps a bit more poetic) and maybe this can bring people in Commented May 7, 2012 at 14:06
I would suggest picking particularly good questions from the site, and making a poster that just has the question in its usual SE theme (so that users will recognize the site if they come from the poster) and then says something like:
Want to know the answer? Come to academia.stackexchange.com
This also allows you to make tailored posters for specific departments.
answered Mar 7, 2012 at 1:16
Another place to put a small banner is the side-bars of sister-SE sites, mainly TCS, MATH, physics, STATs, etc.
This is how I learned about the existence of other SE's (and also about the existence of meta.. :).
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1So, I brought this up in the mod chat room (link for the other mods), and long story short, our "hot questions" are automatically included as ads on other sites, and we'll look into getting a unique ad for some of the more content-appropriate sites like the ones you listed.– eykanal ModCommented Mar 15, 2012 at 13:28
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I think a lot of universities would be interested in this as a resource. At the University of Bath (United Kingdom) we have a small team devoted to generic skills development for postgraduates. Perhaps it's worth publicising to similar teams within other universities? PG student societies would also be interested, I think.
