A question to our readers (okay, several questions)

One of the things that happens when you write a blog - well, when you write, period - is that you often don't get a sense of how happy your readers are with what you're doing. What do you like about what we do, what could we do better? Sure, we get emails from folks, and they give you some idea, but they're a self-selected group of readers, and the several hundred who write us are not necessarily representative of the 300,000 or so unique visitors who visit us every month.

So, I'd be interested in asking you folks a few questions. And if the spirit moves you, weigh in with your answers in the comments. It's very easy, just click the button that says "comments" at the bottom of the post, and it should take you to a page where you'll find a comment box right below the post. Just enter your comments and publish (you don't need to register, though you may need to enter some kind of pseudonym). I'm simply curious what works, what doesn't, and what we can do to make the site even more useful and interesting.

So here are a few questions:

1. What do you like about AMERICAblog, what keeps you visiting?

2. What don't you like about AMERICAblog?

3. Are our posts too short, too long, or just right? Should we have a mix of posts, short and long - more long posts, more short posts? Or what?

4. Frequency of posting. Do we post too often, or not often enough? This is an interesting question, because I honestly don't know if you guys want more posts an hour or less. Do you want more posts in the morning and fewer in the afternoon and evening? Or do you want them evenly spread out throughout the day? How often would you like to see a new post on the blog?

5. What topics should we be covering? Is our coverage just right? Would you like to see more of something, less of something? In that vein, I've noticed something interesting. Sometimes Joe and I will write about things that have nothing to do with politics, like Joe writing about his dog or me writing about the terrible moving company I had, and the post will get 200 comments. Often Joe and I think we're going "off topic" by writing personal things on the blog, but then suddenly it's a topic you guys are totally into. Why do those off-topic topics work, and which ones work? Is it that you guys need a break occasionally from the negative political stories, or what? And, are our stories too negative?

6. How many posts should have keep on the home page, before archiving? We usually keep the last 20 posts on the home page, then they go into the archives. I figure that some people only visit the site every few days, so having the last 20 posts helps. But maybe people don't read beyond the first few posts, so we're slowing down the page loading time by having all those extra posts on the home page. How many posts do you think we should keep on the home page at any one time?

7. What do you think of the design (well, the new redesign)? Are there elements of the design you like, don't like? For example, a lot of people felt the font was too small, so I made it bigger and more legible (by picking a different font). People also didn't like that the white background behind the text in the main column loaded last - so we fixed that too. Do you have other suggestions?

8. The widgets. These are the nifty tools that Blogger (aka Google) let's us put on the site, in addition to the main blog posts (such as the news and blog updates, the RSS feeds, the site archives, and the new map widget that shows you the location on a map of the most recent 100 visitors). What do you think of them? The news updates and blog updates - do you read them? Do you like them? Are there enough of them, too few, too many? Are there sites we aren't including that we should include? Are there topics, issue areas, that we don't have that we should have?

9. Is there something you see on other blogs that you like, that we don't have or do? It could be a way of writing, a functionality, the frequency of posts, the design, anything. I'm just looking for something you've seen elsewhere that you like, that we might want to emulate.

There are lots of additional possible questions, and don't feel beholden to just these, or these at all. Any feedback is appreciated, and welcome. Thanks, JOHN