Concerned about SJMR

[asd]

A lot of the discussions that happen over there already happened here over, and over, and over again. And I would be very surprised if the viewership is much higher over there. It's just that trolling almost by definition will get more responses. Look at the troll free threads in either place and it will have similar numbers of views and responses. As for naming names, it is a matter of self selection. The vast, vast majority of positions are updated here before there, but it is natural that the people who really care about names will post those there first, while people here by definition care less about names. In fact, I'd point to that as evidence of how much people prefer this site to that one. Without obvious trolling and gossiping, this forum goes from dead in the summer to the place to read about the actual market in the fall, even as a few motivated individuals try very, very hard to promote that cesspool (90% of the time information will come out here first and someone will quietly update it over there, but in the few instances where that place has a scoop, you can bet that someone will come here and make sure that everyone knows the source of the information).

This website may not have a lot of activity in the offseason, but the signal to noise ratio is much better (how much of all the activity there is the one well known troll/sock puppet?)

[also puzzled]

I don't in any way mean to incite forum wars and hope that's not the case. But I do think there is valuable discussion that happens over there, so I wind up keeping an eye on both. As I'm sure many people do. But I dislike the fact that every click over there "supports" a culture and a set of practices that I think can do harm to JMCs, which I do not wish to support with whatever tiny financial incentive accrues from "clicking". This is why I would prefer if the useful discussion/resources (for example, a current thread with clips for teaching about epigenetics) happened in what I find to be a less toxic environment. But perhaps that's just on me for not going as far as to eschew those little positives over there entirely.

[actually]

I actually migrated to other site long time ago. I didn't know some people still came to this site. I find that there is a lot more relevant job market info on the other site and I'm not particularly offended by some of the funny threads. Plus other site has a lot of useful information about professionalization and how to succeed in graduate school (like this place used to have years ago). I just don't think this site gets that much traffic anymore. Hell, even my adviser posts on other site!

[loveit]

I love the pretense of disinterestedness of posts like this. "hey, I totally don't care about this, and I just by accident stumbled upon this 2 month old thread, so I just totally wanted to promote the other site, but I don't really care, whatevs."

It must drive Beakman et al nuts that this forum here will be a ghost town for months, and then when the job season actually starts this place will post information much faster on non-R1 searches (which are the majority), and sometimes outright correct false information spread through SJMR (see the recent SMU thread).

I mean, I am pretty sure that everyone on either site knows full well of the existence of both, and so you should actually ask yourself why there are topics where people will still prefer this site, low traffic and all.

[Double trouble]

I frequent both sites. if i have a serious question i want real thoughtful responses to (i.e., no snark, jokes or off topic derailment by racist/sexist trolling), i post here. if i have a time sensitive question or just want to joke around for fun, i post on sjmr. also, while sjmr is good for market info on the ivies and other top programs, im no market star so this site is better for info on the smaller, 'no name' places where im getting interviews.

[agreed]

I agree that the other site has more and more rapid information, but it is mixed in with too much status posturing and general immaturity. The other site seems populated by early grad students in top programs.

My problem with this site is how touch-and-go it is to get a response to a question or a request for information. Sometimes no one ever responds. The toxicity factor is almost nil here though ( a good thing, of course).

My feeling is that this site is in the winter of its life cycle.

[agree 2]

I agree that this site is pretty much dead now. The other site has had some issues recently (they have struggled a bit to counter trolls) but they are firmly established as the 'it' place for sociology discussion and job market stuff. Interesting...