Most of the biggest things in life started by being small.

This is not a saying of who-knows-what-smart-personality from the past. This comes straight from my personal wisdom well, and it was issued with the occasion of getting tired to submit stories to Digg to see if I can make it to the front page. After Digg, there was Sphinn: another enigma, another trial. Here I noticed from the start that I cannot find an appropriate category for my submissions. There’s no wonder that very few members actually cared to vote for those stories, although some of them were not bad at all.

After two years of being a submitter, I decided to become the one who receives submissions. No, I haven’t got hired by Digg, nor by Sphinn. I’ve just launched my own social networking website, BlogLancer.net, a place where there is no specialization: there are lots of categories, so all readers would find a suitable place to submit their work. If they can’t find it, I’ll create it for them.

On BlogLancer.net, all members are equal and all stories are accepted. Who cares if you choose to publish them on a Squidoo lens, or on a HubPages hub, or on a free Blogger blog? If you thought it to be good for publishing, then I think it is good for reading. All you need to get promoted on the front page are 5 votes from the other members. There is also a Wordpress plugin, for those of you who may want to include the “vote” button in their articles.

As the site is only four days old (or maybe I should say four days young), it is small and ignored by search engines. But Digg and all others must have looked the same in their first week of existence: small and ignored.

So, if you have stories craving for attention, I invite you to submit them to BlogLancer, so we can all read and comment them together.

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If this RC goes well, you’ll see an official release in about a week.

Please leave any feedback in the comments section, or fill out our support form. I will allow test comments here, but please be aware that they will periodically be removed.

Download Link

Please see the official Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 for the latest plugin information. I will update that page as I have time and the official release nears.

For now, here’s a direct link to Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 RC1.

Features?

Rather than repeat myself, please visit the Ajax Edit Comments 2.0 page for a full break-out of features.

I Need Feedback

Specific areas I could use some feedback on are:

• Theme issues.
• Character issues.
• Defensio: I still have not confirmed 100% that this feature works.
• Style issues. If so, what browser and OS?
• Behavior issues. Does something not work as expected?
• Usability issues. Can a rock use it?

Any bug reports should be as detailed as possible with steps to reproduce the error. Screenshots help a lot as well.

If you’re not having issues and want to lay down praise, I’ll accept that too. All feedback is appreciated.

Conclusion

Once again, this is an RC, so please use caution if testing it on a live blog. If there are any issues, please de-activate the plugin immediately.

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If you are able (and have a few hours of spare time), please listen to the podcast below:

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• Peeve Week 3 Update - One Month Left

It’s a busy time of year for everyone, and it has affected quite a few other group writing projects. Peeve Week 3 was no exception to this.

It’s a few days before the deadline and almost half the contributor slots are filled. It’s been difficult on how to weigh sponsors, prizes, and incentives for the filled slots. As a result, Simonne and I have decided to call Peeve Week 3 off. If you are a sponsor, your contribution will be refunded.

The decision was difficult, as some have already completed their posts. If that is the case, I will still gladly post what you have on RAP. I will also work with you individually to compensate you for your time and effort.

I’m sorry this didn’t work out. When I began to launch Peeve Week 3, I told myself, “There’s a possibility this will fail.” However, I’m glad I did try, rather than just wonder.

A big “thank you” to all who helped out with Peeve Week 3, and also a big “thank you” to all you readers out there. There’s still big things ahead of us.

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1. All guest writers need to know nothing about the topics they write about. The less you know, the better you’ll in-appreciate your readers and they will thank you for that.

2. All guest writers should have a cool slogan, something like “The King Of Free Traffic”, or “The GoneSense Queen”, or “The Niche Princess”. Just be hot and trendy, and don’t think that you actually have no clue.

3. All guest writers should write in bullets, think in bullets, and even speak in bullets. Bullets, like in lists, not like in guns.

4. All guest writers should have an exaggerated self-esteem and show it off like every two paragraphs or so. Your readers need to be reminded how good you are, how nice your feet smell and how fast is your latest car paid for with their money.

If you cannot do these, don’t think to apply for a position. We want to hit 1000 feed subscribers over the first three weeks from launch, so we cannot afford even the smallest mistake here.

We shall also have a 5-times-a-day newsletter, which will point to highly useful ebooks and courses about chasing the wind around while making mayonnaise, and we promise you they won’t cost more than $7 per piece, and they will be very easy to read and digest.

So, let the guest authors list begin to build up. You are invited to pitch for one of the 3 positions in the comments box below.

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If you have a moment, please check it out and let me know what you think. The new design is based off the Mimbo Pro theme.

I’d like to especially thank Vivien from InspirationBit. She helped out tremendously with the typography, the color scheme, layout, and even the beautiful strawberry image in the footer.

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Less than one year ago, I bumped into an event called Reader Appreciation Week. At that time, I was looking to participate in group projects, because I was amused of how many people one can meet during such events. I didn’t quite understand what we were supposed to do, and I soon forgot about it completely.

How It All Started For Me

Not long after that, I received a message from Vivien, who was asking me if I wouldn’t like to write for Reader Appreciation Project, because the authors liked my style of writing. I was amazed by that, as I was mostly writing for people coming from the search engines, who were supposed not to find anything interesting on my site and move away by clicking my ads.

It is true that in that period I was just discovering that blogs have loyal readers, that there were about 14-16 people who were subscribed to my feed (it felt good, although I had no idea what that was). Discovering I have readers and not only traffic, I sometimes was trying to catch them, so I changed the direction of my blog. Although I liked what I was writing, readers were not at all flooding my blog, so I started to compare my articles with others on famous blogs.

My conclusion was that I wrote better than many of them, and I started to wonder why readers were not coming to me as they came to those famous blogs.

This was the moment when I got this inquiry from Ronald to write on Reader Appreciation Project. I’m still smiling when I remember: he meant that they wanted me to write one single guest post, but I didn’t get it right and I answered that I cannot write more than 4 articles a week

A Little Bit Of Posting History

I stayed, and I discovered another kind of audience and another kind of writing.

I was pleased to see that being no 1 was not everybody’s goal, I was amused to discover what fishing has to to with blogging, and I couldn’t believe my eyes seeing how a very short post can lead to a huge line of controversial comments.

What You Should Not Expect From Us

I can understand why we don’t see a big wave of audience over us, and I doubt we shall ever see it. For that to become real, we would need to change the style, to stop thinking and to stop asking readers to think. Well, this is not going to happen.

• You should not expect to see here endless lists of what you should know in order to get smart without reading books and without thinking. I’m going nuts when I see14-15 years old kids reading and actually believing those things. Do you want to write better? Go read some dozens of books, think about their content, and come back in a few years: I’m sure you’ll  have a much better writing style.
• We shall never publish guides or courses trying to teach you things that we just came across one-two months ago, thinking that we know everything about them and even something more, and even worse, charge you a fee to share our wisdom with you.
• We won’t give you free things with hidden strings attached, hoping that we are going to make money on your back while you don’t even notice that.
• We won’t make a strategy out of using you, the readers, nor we are going to intentionally offend you in any way.
• We won’t lower our standards only to get followers, so if anybody expects this to happen, please go away, as this place may not be for you.

One more thing: to us, all readers are equal. There are no readers more equal than others. We respond to every commenter, and if sometimes we skip somebody, please accept advance apologies, as we won’t have been doing it on purpose. I know you all do that, but believe me there are lots of bloggers who don’t.
What’s next? Just wait and see. There will be a lot of surprises for you.

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• The Lifespan of a Reader
• Invisible Readers, Where Are You?
• Goodbye Everyone at RA Project - From Bes

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I’d like to introduce our newest guest contributor, which is Isabella Mori from Alphablogs and change therapy. Isabella is a writer and a therapist, and her blog change therapy has been recently named the best psychotherapy blog.

Please keep a lookout for Isabella’s first guest post, which will go live tomorrow.

If you haven’t already, please also check out Andrew’s and Vivien’s guest contributions:

• Care in the Community
• Where Are the Weekend Bloggers?
• 8 Conscientious Ways To Use Your Readers

If you are interested in providing your own guest contribution, please apply or send me an e-mail.

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• Invite Guest Bloggers to Disagree With You

The theme is due to be released within a week and a half, and from there it’s edit time for me and the RA Project design.

I’ve went ahead and took the initial concept for Mimbo Pro and inserted my own content overlays over it to give you all an idea of how the new home page might look.

Any feedback is appreciated. I’m still up in the air what will go in the middle section with the Articles/Reader Appreciation/Interactive. Also I’m not 100% sure what will be in the footer either.

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• RA Project Re-Design Screenshots

This post will go into some of the changes that have already happened or are going to happen soon.

Monetization Poll Results

The results from last week’s poll are in. Nine readers voted, and eight voted that they were fine with monetization. One reader was against it.

It looks like RA Project will soon be on the road to monetization with the upcoming re-design.

RA Project Re-Design

RA Project will be getting a new theme soon. The timeframe is tentative since the theme has yet to be released, but we plan on transitioning to the Mimbo Pro theme.

It is my hope that the theme will help the readers find information faster, and provide incentives for past and future contributors to contribute to the project.

New Contributors

Andrew Rickmann has kindly agreed to post the project’s first ever guest post. The post should go live tomorrow.

Vivien from Inspiration Bit has also agreed to do an occasional contribution to the project.

I’ve approached several others, and plan to approach several more for possible guest slots. If you are interested in helping out the project, please consider applying.

In note of new contributors, I’ve re-done our contribution policy and also added a contribution application form for those who wish to help spread the concept of reader appreciation.

The post schedule, with the exception of guest contributions, is Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and news posts on the weekends.

Other Things to Look Forward To at RA Project

Peeve Week 3

On my personal blog I ran a very successful group project entitled, “Peeve Week.” Peeve Week provided a nice venting mechanism and broke the ice towards guest contributions.

Simonne and I agreed to host the third Peeve Week here and have it deal with reader appreciation topics. The tentative date for Peeve Week 3 is March 17-21 April 7-11. I will post more details in a few days.

WordCamp Dallas

I will be attending WordCamp Dallas on March 29th and 30th. If you’re going, I hope to see you there.

Reader Appreciation Week 2008

The final thing I will mention is Reader Appreciation Week 2008. Last year’s Reader Appreciation Week was a lot of fun and is actually what helped found this site.

The tentative date for this year’s Reader Appreciation Week is April 21-25. I will post more details sometime towards the middle of March.

Other Miscellaneous Changes

The following pages have been updated:

• Our About Page.
• Our Comment Policy.

I’ve also added a new section in the sidebar to highlight our guest contributors. This section will display the authors based on the date of their last contribution.

Conclusion

I appreciate all of your help and contributions during this trying time for RA Project. Thank you for being a reader, and thank you for being here.

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My main drivers towards this decision are:

The Ajax Edit Comments page took “forever” to load

After removing comments, and moving the screenshots and changelog, the page loads significantly faster.

I rarely solved problems through comments

The majority of the problems I’ve helped people with were through e-mail. Some people did alert me of problems through comments, but I would actually prefer an e-mail in the case of a problem or issue.

I set up a new support form to handle plugin inquiries.

The comment e-mails didn’t apply to other authors here

Here at RA Project, all authors receive all comment e-mails so we feel like we’re apart of the site conversation. With plugin comments, this wasn’t the case.

A lot of the comments were “test” comments. I tried to remedy this by posting demonstration videos, but that didn’t stop the test comments.

I encourage those who wish to test the plugin to leave a relevant comment on any one of our posts.

Support Requests Are Time Consuming

Support requests are time consuming, so I have set up a support form to filter all the various requests I usually get for the plugins here at RA Project.

For those who have urgent support requests, a donation to RA Project is encouraged.

All monies received will go towards the contributors of the plugin (I would “love” to compensate the wonderful translators and testers) and back to RA Project and its readers.

The Issue of Disabling Comments

There were lots of comments left on the Ajax Edit Comments page. More than three-hundred the last time I checked (they’re still alive and well in our database). But cutting them out sped up the page significantly (night and day difference).

For Comment Sorter, I’ve disabled the comments from the beginning. And already the support form has been used and used successfully.

Hopefully in the long-run this will prove beneficial to the reader, the users of the plugin, and the RA Project authors.

If you would like to weigh in on this, please leave a comment below.

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Now there is one place where readers and bloggers can go to see what kind of group writing projects are available. I find a service such as this invaluable.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

The site is called Group Writing Projects and remedies a number of frustrations that bloggers have. “Group writing projects are a great way to get links and drive traffic to blogs,” says Jacob Share, SVP of Share Select Media, “but bloggers simply had no easy way of knowing when and where group writing projects were taking place. Until now.”

Besides helping bloggers stay on top of group writing projects from around the blogosphere, Group Writing Projects aims to be the premier resource for group writing project creators. In addition to profiles of successful bloggers, the site will furnish tutorials, how-to guides, project case studies, takeaway lessons and of course, its own group writing projects.

So do yourself a favor, head over to Group Writing Projects, and check it out. What an incredible reader service.

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• Why Spam Is a Reader’s Problem Too

Today’s post may be an interesting one for some. This is my last post at RA Project. I would like to announce, even though it is something that one tries to avoid, that I am leaving RA Project and moving away from it. This is a “moving away” action instead of the typical “moving on” action. Good by everyone.

From now on, you will be seeing Simonne and Ronalds’ name on this site only, until the future brings in someone else. This was a personal project for me, something that was part of my life, so it is not easy to let go in small bits. Among some other important things, RA Project is headed in a new direction now that will do better without me and vice versa. This is a very good way to explain a lot of things for me. I am hoping all of you will give Ronald and Simonne the same courtesy that you have all shown me either directly or indirectly.

Thank you Ronald and Simonne for helping run this site. Thank you Shawn for helping start this site before. The current team has been told of my decision in private also.

I will not be around this site to read comments here anymore, nor will I be around to answer any questions related to this project anymore through this site. Since this was a personal project and not a business project, it is better for me to simply stop a lot of things instead of letting strings attached to different things. If you need to contact me with anything, you can do it through channels outside of this site; my RA Project email will cease to exist within a few hours of this post.

I apologize to anyone who feels any kind of a bad surprise because of me leaving, and also to anyone who feels that they are not appreciated with this post and would have instead preferred a post that talks about appreciation: please be happy. To those of you that do not know me at all and are wondering “Who the heck is Bes? He/she is leaving? I didn’t even know he/she existed!“, rejoice! Now you can be completely sure that what you thought did not exist does not exist here anymore.

Please note that I would choose not participating in something, because I do not want to be biased, over posting and participating simply to keep others happy. That is something that comes with things that are personal and non-business and non-monetary. Appreciation and its concept will be around in different or modified forms whether or not I am around, so I hope you will not take my “bye-bye” as a sign of impending doom on this galaxy.

I am hoping you all will get used to the other posts here, since lately I have been away from time to time anyhow because of different things in life. If you do still miss me after a while, you can easily find me elsewhere online or even offline. As an appreciation project, you can consider this the perfect post in my view where I feel no obligation to anyone as to whether or not I should leave at this point, but I feel obligated to many of you to explain myself as much as possible, even if it is all vague in the eyes of many, of why I am or may be leaving, or as to what is happening.

I would like to thank everyone who interacted with the messages and with me and others at RA Project, including Jeff, Andy, Liz, Andrew, Snoskred Matt, Jayne, Stacee, Valerie, Pelf, Chris, and many others : that includes all the readers, commentors, and e-mailers.

Just like any relationship, it can be very hard for me to say good bye and not wonder later how I could have said some things better. “I could have explained this too”, “I should have mentioned her/him too”, “I should have thanked more”, “I should have thanked less and focused on specifics”, “I should have explained the actual reasons more”, “I should have left a bit later”, “I should have left sooner”, “I should have never left and should have simply hovered in the background decisions at least”, and many other thoughts are already starting to live in my mind, so I would like to stop here and let those life-thoughts and regrets become part of me from today onwards.

It was a very interesting ride for me, everyone. It is time for me to get back to my old car and continue the same journey through a different road. I am hoping you can help drive this RA Project car towards a direction where it can keep providing something mentally useful to everyone.

Keep on reading, keep on thinking, and keep on eating!

Regards, good luck, and good bye!

Bes

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Plugin Description

How many times have you been to a blog where Trackbacks/Pingbacks were interspersed with the regular comments? Or perhaps you wanted the comments to be displayed with the latest one on the top instead of the bottom. With Comment Sorter, readers can disable Trackbacks and also decide what order they would like to read the comments.

As an admin, you also have the ability to assign global options to your comments that you can’t normally do in the WordPress admin panel. For example, if you want Trackbacks to not show on all of your posts, you can do that without modifying any template files. You can also change the default sort order of the comments.

Demonstration Video

Download and More Examples

• To download the plugin, please head over to the WP Comment Sorter page.
• To see screenshots and demonstration videos, please head over to the Comment Sorter Media page.

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The Reader Appreciation Project is now on Facebook. If you are on Facebook, please consider becoming a fan of our Reader Appreciation Page.

As a fan, you will be able to interact with the RA Project authors, receive news that normally isn’t published here, make suggestions for future articles, and show your general support for the appreciation movement.

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• My Year at the Reader Appreciation Project

• Sort comments by date.
• Sort comments by name.
• Disable trackbacks.

See below for a screenshot:

To see it in action, please visit this post (it has a good amount of comments and trackbacks): Google Disabling Comments for Un-Registered Users Plugin disabled here until the near-final release.

If you are interested in being a tester for this plugin, please leave a comment below. I will send you a copy with instructions as soon as I get a little further along with the plugin. Consider the one installed here a proof-of-concept.

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Ajax Edit Comments is under GPL, so there is nothing wrong with the site taking the plugin and listing its information there.

However, there is only one official download location, and that is over at WP Extend.

To illustrate my point, this is the comment that I left over at their site at my plugin’s listing:

I am the author of Ajax Edit Comments. Although the plugin is under GPL and is able to be listed here, I do not (and will never) support or endorse the version available for download here.

If you want to keep up to date, please visit the official download location for Ajax Edit Comments.

I must also point out that the Ajax Edit Comments plugin is installed there. Ironic?

Although this site is “legally” doing nothing wrong, I do have to question the ethics regarding scraping a site (possibly WP Extend) and interspersing ads at the expense of hundreds of plugin authors. Not to mention it’ll likely add confusion to users in the long-run over where a plugin is officially hosted.

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In other news, Ajax Edit Comments 1.13 is out. I added in an option to disable the mb_convert_encoding option, as well as a minor bug fix that has to do with a closing DIV tag.

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If you want to hear me, Jeff, and Brad (from StrangeWork.com) talk about WordPress related issues, please check out the post and listen to the podcast.

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There’s something to be said about Christmas: it’s a FAD. A family appreciation day, that is. It’s an excuse to visit family, take time off from work, and hopefully relax. And Bes, Simonne, and myself are no exception. As a result, posts will be sparse as we take time off and have a much needed break.

I would like to wish you Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays, and if you celebrate it, a Merry Christmas.

As always, the best way to keep on top of our posts is to subscribe to our feed.

Thank you all for visiting and supporting the Reader Appreciation Project.

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The below sites are under no obligation to show any RA Project badge or to link back to Reader Appreciation Project. The people and the sites listed below have exhibited a healthy interest and appreciation towards their readers. Because of such behavior, the readers have benefited tremendously.

So You Want to Teach?

On a blog dedicated to teaching, I was impressed that a blogger would dedicate an entire month to reader appreciation in the form of Reader Appreciation Month. During the month, a different reader was profiled. I can’t recall a blogger (Joel) that has much such an effort to get to know their readers.

Have Fun With WordPress

Andrew Rickmann has dedicated an entire site to having fun with WordPress. Not only is he giving away from free tools, he is also continually polling his readers so that he can write and produce tools that the readers want.

Joyce Babu

Reader David nominated Joyce:

I would like to recommend Joyce for your readers first award. I am not sure whether he is a member of Reader Appreciation Project, but he has been providing very good support for his plugin.

Joyce is also very good at responding to readers in the comments section, which is always commendable.

Things by Mike

On top of helping to start the iReply movement, Mike is great at responding to readers in the form of comments and posts. He is also a big fan of sharing some link love, which is always nice.

Lorelle on WordPress

Lorelle needs no introduction, but let’s just say she has readers at the forefront. Her entire blog, Lorelle on WordPress, is reader centric for those who use WordPress and WordPress.com.

The Badges

The winners of the ‘Readers First’ awards are under no obligation to display the badge and/or link to the Reader Appreciation Project. The ‘Readers First’ award is our way of spotlighting other blogs and/or readers who show exceptional reader appreciation.

Please Check out the ‘Readers First’ page for badges for multiple background colors.

Know of Someone Who Places Their Readers First?

As you may have noticed, there are only five sites here compared to our usual six. We try to keep an eye out for deserving blogs, but it’s difficult with so many out there. If you know of a site that puts readers first, please let us know about it through our contact form. Feel free to self-nominate as well.

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I’d like to take this time to express various thanks to readers/users of this site.

Thank You Plugin Users

Thank you to the 10,000+ people who have downloaded Ajax Edit Comments. The amount of support people have shown me behind this plugin has been tremendous and am deeply honored to have one of the most downloaded WordPress plugins.

Thank You Translators

Thank you to all of the various translators who have provided translations for various posts and/or plugins.

For those who have provided translations to Ajax Edit Comments, thank you very much:

• Chinese, Nicky
• German, David May and iKArus
• Romanian, Tache Ionut Madalin
• French, Lise
• Spanish, Adrian
• Polish, Maclej

Thank You Commenters

Thank you to each and every commenter who has taken their valuable time to leave feedback on this site. I personally value every single comment and “try” to respond to every one.

Thank You Subscribers

As of today we have 130+ subscribers. It’s been a long journey to break the 100 mark, but we finally did it thanks to all of you. Thank you for taking the time to subscribe and continuing to subscribe.

And Thank You Bes and Simonne

Bes and Simonne, you are very valuable RA Project contributors and this project would not be the same without you. Thank you for supporting me on design and plugin issues, and thank you for just putting up with me in general.

And in case I missed anyone…

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! You all have helped make RA Project a success.

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Related Articles at The Reader Appreciation Project:

• New Side Project - the Reader in-Appreciation Project
• Reader Appreciation Initiatives 10-20-2007
• Goodbye Everyone at RA Project - From Bes
• Christmas Is a FAD
• Blogging for Money - Stockholders and Customers

Here are some things you can display:

• Sites
• Post Series or Flagship Posts
• Plugins or Scripts

So please check out the Sidebar Banners post for more details.

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Related Articles at The Reader Appreciation Project:

• Sidebar Banners
• Would You Buy From My Sidebar?
• Peeve Week 3 Called Off
• Peeve Week 3 Update and Sponsors
• Peeve Week 3 Update

The below sites are under no obligation to show any RA Project badge or to link back to Reader Appreciation Project. The people and the sites listed below have exhibited a healthy interest and appreciation towards their readers. Because of such a behavior, many readers have benefited a lot because of the blogger not always viewing other things as being more important than the readers.

Without further ado, I present to you the October 2007 “Readers First” Awards Winners.

October 2007 “Readers First” Awards Winners

• Middle Zone Musings

  

  Robert Hruzek is a talented and amusing blogger who has mastered the art or sprinkling humor throughout his blog posts (sounds of crowd cheering). He is great at organizing his group projects and getting his readers to interact in the comments.

• Clever Dude

  

  Mike is great at giving financial advice and looking out for his readers when spelling out how they can get free money by applying for certain credit cards.

• Fresh Perspectives - aka Interesting Observations

  

  Pearl writes about interesting things, more or less blogging-related. She is very careful with her readers, she answers every comment, and if one of her loyal readers forgets to keep in touch for a while, she would e-mail him asking if she did something wrong (actually I got such a message from her some time ago, and I was impressed that somebody cared whether or not I read
  her blog). Her blog has an original page, Introduce Yourself, where her readers are invited to write a few things about them.

• Pelf - aka Pelf-ism is contagious

  

  Pelf is a grad student trying to save the turtles. And the environment. And humankind… And she does it in a very friendly and impressive style. She would thank her readers for stumbling or digging her articles, and she’s always ready to help.

• Spoken-for

  

  On her personal site Spoken-for, Valerie writes about different things that happen to her, ranging from business to personal stories and happenings. I [Bes] know Valerie for a while now, and she has helped me a lot online since I met her. Valerie is a very good friend, and she has always taken extra steps to give me advice or offer help in both online and offline things, even when she herself did not gain anything from such actions. Since she helped even before we became friends, I think she is a person who knows how to literally appreciate and interact with some reader by treating that reader as another human being, and not as an online pixel.

  Valerie has also traveled in and around her state, Missouri, to meet other online people in order to make friends. That is a huge form of appreciation. Valerie has also written posts which have drawn more criticism than you have ever seen on sites like ProBlogger or PhotoMatt. For many people, some of Valeries’ posts can define the standards on how to treat or react to criticizing readers who literally attack you on a personal level. Valerie usually writes about anything, including any sponsors she may have; if she notices something bad, she will not hesitate to point it out simply because someone may have an ad on her site. Valerie has also gained some online stalkers, and despite all that, Valerie still wants to make friends with her readers and keeps in touch with many readers. Valerie deserves a Readers First award since she has made sure she becomes very good friends with many of her online readers, including me.

Badges

The blogs and people listed above are not obligated to display the following badges on their sites or to wear printouts of these badges as hats in real life. Similarly, no one is required or even asked to kindly link back to this site. Please go ahead and kindly display these badges if you feel like it. You have earned it. The blogosphere unfortunately usually recognizes only those people who brag about raking in a lot of money. We want to mark you down in history as those who at one time appreciated their readers honestly and nicely enough to set an example for others.

More ‘Readers First’ badgespage are also available, in case you want something in a different color or size.

Want to set an example? Know someone who is setting an example?

If you are doing good or know anyone doing good for both themselves and others as selflessly as possible, please let us know about it. We will give you credit for your referral too.

Thank you for reading, and let us hope that it becomes very hard for us to decide which people and blogs to choose for the November 2007 “Readers First” award, not because of scarcity but because of the many more examples that we know and examples that we will find.

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Related Articles at The Reader Appreciation Project:

• November 2007 ‘Readers First’ Awards
• September 2007 ‘Readers First’ Awards
• A Blog Is Not a Community in the First Place. Or Is It?
• Your Measure of Reader Satisfaction
• Placing Readers First - Daniel Ha From Disqus

Sites which are awarded this award have no obligation to display the badge and/or link to the Reader Appreciation Project. The sites below currently show an exceptional dedication to their readers and have proved that it is indeed possible to put the readers first and grow a wonderful site atmosphere.

Be Inspired with Inspiration Bit

Vivien from Inspiration Bit was the one who inspired Ajax Edit Comments and also the text for the very award she is now being awarded. She’s been a big supporter of the Reader Appreciation Project from the beginning and is an invaluable friend. She also introduced Simonne to the project, who is a superb RA Project contributor.

With all of Vivien’s contributions, how could we not give her this award? If you head over to her site (inspirationbit.com), you’ll find a plethora of inspiration posts, and the warm and friendly conversations of the hostess. Vivien is an exceptional blogger and is truly a great example of someone placing her readers first.

Liz Strauss, the Queen of Reader Appreciation

I don’t know how Liz does it, but somehow she finds the time to respond to virtually every comment and e-mail received from her readers. She builds reader confidence by handing out awards such as the SOB and B.A.D. awards.

She provides sound relationship-building advice to her readers, organizes blog conferences, and provides real-life experiences that are sure to benefit just about anyone.

Liz Strauss is the queen of Reader Appreciation. With her hectic schedule, she still finds time to place her readers first.

Fight Back at The Fight Spot

Shawn Blanc is a full-time intercessory missionary, on top of being a husband, blogger, musician, and a host of other talents. He helped found Reader Appreciation Week and inspired the formation of the Reader Appreciation Project.

The Fight Spot is a good example of a blog where the readers have banded together to form a community and driven the blog in a certain direction. The topicality is primarily Christian-focused and the readers provide terrific commentary to the many great articles Shawn churns out.

Shawn has nurtured his community on The Fight Spot and put the readers first by giving them a great voice. He routinely spotlights a reader or reader’s comment and is very approachable in the comment and e-mail section.

Just Thinkin’… About Readers

I first had contact with Kirk from a bug report on Ajax Edit Comments. I’ve since subscribed and dig how personable he is and how much he interacts with the readers on his site. He describes himself as an ex-Cold War submariner in his late forties who spent most of his life in computers, peripherals, R&D and anything else technical.

He’s not afraid to try new things on his blog (in a gutsy move, he upgraded to WordPress 2.3 on Beta 1), and admit his mistakes. And he is excellent at responding to reader’s concerns in the comments. He’s also not afraid of spotlighting his readers.

What’s Life Like in the Country?

Snoskred describes herself as a 32 year-young female who lives in NSW with The Other Half and two kitties. She has also been a big supporter of the project since the beginning and is very generous with her weekly link posts (example).

Snoskred is a good example of a blogger who blogs on a hard-to-comment platform (Blogger), but still can build a good community and respond directly to the readers (example post on losing feed subscribers). With her weekly link posts, she spotlights her other readers and is very loyal to the blogs she enjoys.

She makes contacting her easy, and from my observations, addresses each reader individually as needed.

Reader Appreciation Technology with Jeffro 2.0

Jeff is a good example of a blogger who can blog technology-related topics, yet still show a great deal of reader appreciation. He periodically runs polls asking for his readers’ opinions, and takes a look at his site from a reader’s perspective (and follows up with action).

Jeff responds to almost every reader comment (as necessary), makes himself easily contactable, and provides a balanced view on providing full feeds for his readers.

Jeff’s site is all community, with recent comments displayed prominently, and the MyBlogLog widget placed high on the sidebar. He also has a neat little widget that shows who all is online. He also is trying to promote and give back to his readers through a photography contest.

Jeff is a big supporter of the Reader Appreciation Project, and has left some very supportive comments on A-Lister’s sites trying to promote the project and the concept. Jeff is a shining example of someone placing his readers first.

The Badges

The winners of the ‘Readers First’ awards are under no obligation to display the badge and/or link to the Reader Appreciation Project. The ‘Readers First’ award is our way of spotlighting other blogs and/or readers who show exceptional reader appreciation.

Please Check out the ‘Readers First’ page for badges for multiple background colors.

Know of Someone Who Places Their Readers First?

Let us know about the site through our contact form. It’s always encouraging to see other sites out there who have embraced the concept of reader appreciation.

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Related Articles at The Reader Appreciation Project:

• November 2007 ‘Readers First’ Awards
• October 2007 ‘Readers First’ Awards
• Your Measure of Reader Satisfaction
• Placing Readers First - Daniel Ha From Disqus
• Reader Appreciation Initiatives

The Reader Appreciation Project couldn’t have gone anywhere without our readers, so a big thank you to all of the readers who have visited, commented, linked to and/or downloaded our stuff. It is my hope that we can continue to pump out thoughtful and entertaining articles, and also provide other reader appreciation resources including the very popular Ajax Edit Comments.

New RA Project Badge: The ‘Readers First’ Award

Some RA Project readers have requested that a badge be made that can be included on a site to show support for the Reader Appreciation Project. Although we hope to eventually release a universal badge representing the project, the first badge is going to be something that is awarded to select websites who place readers first.

I’ll be announcing the first websites to receive the award shortly. To view the badge and the award, please check out the Readers First page. If you have a website you feel deserves the award or would like to nominate someone else’s, please use our contact form.

The badge text was inspired by one of the RA Project readers, Vivien (from Inspiration Bit). The badge was designed by Brett Terpstra of Circle Six Design.

New Interviews

Bes posted the first Reader Appreciation Project interview this past week. The topic touched on a very sensitive issue where an Adult MySpace owner was leaving legitimate and thoughtful comments on a blog, but admin were deleting them without notice. I found the interview very insightful view of how a reader is treated when he/she has a controversial website. Please check out the full interview.

More interviews are planned, and it is our intention with the interviews to provide different views of reader appreciation from a multitude of sources. Any feedback on the interviews is much appreciated.

Calling on Guest Contributors

If you would like to support the Reader Appreciation Project by providing a guest post, please feel free to get ahold of us by our contact form. This blog is yours too, and readers have a voice here. As far as incentives, you’ll get a link back, a spot in our sidebar, and a dedicated author page where readers can look up your details.

If you are interested, please send an e-mail via our contact form. We’d love to hear from you.

Posting Schedule

The posting schedule is still Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. To stay up to speed on the project, please subscribe. If you’d like to contribute a guest post or perhaps join us as an author, please contact us and review our contribution policy.

Posts/Comment/Feed Stats

There are currently 174 posts, and 1,718 comments. As of today, we have 84 feed subscribers.

Plugin Stats

• WP Ajax Edit Comments currently has 9,056 downloads (