Posted by Hemant Mehta in I still don’t know the story behind the name, but so far, I’m liking what I see on The Edger, a new collective blog by secular students.
Besides the original, interesting articles, they are doing a lot of important things potential bloggers would be wise to learn from:
- Getting the hang of everything before the big rollout
- Getting people who will contribute to the group blog
- Getting a variety of opinions
- Being unique
- Looking professional and being functional
The Edger is getting linklove from bloggers only in the past couple days (from what I’ve seen), but they’ve actually been blogging non-stop for a couple weeks. This gave them a chance to work out problems and get used to the “blogging schedule.”
When group blogs often begin, a couple people may post often while others won’t do anything. It’s too soon to tell what will happen here, but so far, everyone’s contributing. And as a result, they’re covering a lot of relevant stories.
Already, I’ve seen aggressive atheists, friendly atheists, and everyone in between. That’s a nice mix to have — something for everyone.
This isn’t just an atheist blog. It’s a student-led blog. And that stands out. Much like skeptical women.
There’s a nice logo, the ability to comment and share posts with social bookmarking sites, lots of futuristic green in the design, and a subtitle that makes no sense to me even though I get the reference.
But it looks like it’s professionally done. And that’s important when it comes to looking serious.
I do have a question about it, though:
The site says they are a “Center For Inquiry student initiative” without explaining what that means. There’s no link to the site from the CFI — On Campus website as far I can tell, and I’m not sure what connection, if any, exists between the two. Maybe it means they are students who met each other via CFI’s student conference… but if they met at a grocery store, this wouldn’t be a “grocery store initiative”… so there must be some connection to CFI, but I can’t find it.
In any case, best of luck to the group. I’ll be keeping up with the site, and I hope you do, too.
[...] new “student run” atheist blog is making waves… see Friendly Atheist and P.Z. [...]
Could the name be in reference to edge.org?
I know one of the contributors, and he recently got an internship at CFI. So I guess it was created by students working for CFI?
The Edger was organized at the CFI student leadership conference in Amherst, NY last month.
The students involved in the Edger are all CFI On-Campus student leaders, and that was their original connection.
The name has no special significance, the edge.org coincidence was just that. I’m one of the writers and webs staff at Edger and appreciate the positive feedback!
We’ll keep it up if you keep reading!
Thx for the awesome post Hemant. Ian, the name actually does have a bit of significance. It refers to an Edger…you know…the tool you use to make a nice clean edge between your garden and your lawn. The Garden in this case would be the state and the grass would be the church. We all thought the name was terrible at first, and the reference corny, but it grew on us. It was used as a project name and just progressed to being the final name because it was catchy.
As for our affiliation with CFI, the three co-founders of the site (Me, Katie, Roy) all worked for CFI this summer and used our CFI resources to pick some great bloggers for the site. As of now our affiliation with CFI is their support and their staff’s oversight. A closer affiliation is in the works and should be reached relatively soon.
Oh, and join our Facebook group.
http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?ref=sb#/group.php?gid=22983563801
Hemant, do you realize you have comments turned off for the PZ post above this?
I did not know that! Whoops.
Fixed now.
Thanks!
Thanks for the link love Hemant!
I just noticed, that’s my logo, sweeeeeeet!
Even though Edger just started running, version 2 is in the works.
[...] The Friendly Atheist [...]
[...] from a number of prominent blogs, including PZ Myers’ Pharyngula, Hemant Mehta’s The Friendly Atheist, Larry Moran’s Sandwalk, Skeptico, Tangled Up In Blue Sky, Primordial Blog, and many more. [...]