The 2009-2010 SharperIron Reader Survey closes at midnight Wednesday, February 10. If you haven’t yet taken the time to complete a survey, please do so today! Thanks!
If you haven’t yet completed the SharperIron Survey, there’s still time … but not very much!
Whether you’re a member, regular reader, or just a once in a while visitor, we’d like to know about you and hear your views about SI and key issues of interest to Fundamentalists. Take a few minutes now and tell us what you think. (The survey is anonymous.)
If you enjoy Facebook, you can now visit the SI page to interact with other SI fans and easily share content with your Facebook friends. Stop in and say hello, and maybe become a fan. The page updates daily with links to new articles and (soon) Filings posts.
(Since a “page” is more easily updated than a “group,” we’re retiring the old SI “group.”)
If my calculations are correct (they often aren’t), I put on the SharperIron “Publisher” hat 19 months and two weeks ago (May 15, 2008). So I missed my opportunity to write some reflections on the one-year anniversary. Since we were preparing to move the site to Drupal about that time, things were hopping. Plan B was to write some retrospection at the year-and-a-half mark (“sesiquiannual reflections”?). That time “swine flu” got in the way. Plan C was to combine these thoughts with some Christmas greetings, but—well, that’s passed now too. So welcome to Plan D: “New Year’s greetings and reflections on 19 and a half months heading ShaperIron.”
Family times
“SharperIron” has gradually become a household word at our place. With the exception of my youngest (Joel, age 8), everyone in my family now has a pretty good idea of what SI is. They’ve watched me work on it quite a bit. To the degree they’ve been interested, they’ve provided feedback. My daughter (Jenna, age 11) has been vocal about how the site looks. My wife (Marilyn, age—um, 29) has shown interest but is not yet a regular reader. That would require a much larger quantity of content that is warmer, more personal and more devotional than what we currently provide (note to self: more content that is warmer, more personal and more devotional).
My son will really get interested the day we offer some kind of game. (I’m sure he’d be delighted to see an online real-time strategy game where armies of “Fundamentalists” throw Bibles at armies of “Neo-Evangelicals.”)
But life was mostly non-SI-related in ‘09. In January, we heard that my dad was having some worrisome symptoms: some peripheral vision problems, dizziness and disorientation. First, docs looked for an inner ear problem. Nothing helpful surfaced there. Another doctor said Dad had cataracts. Wrong again. read more»
The ‘09-‘10 SI Reader Survey has been in progress for a few weeks now, and the results so far are quite interesting. The survey will continue for another month or so, but I’d like to share some results now in the hopes that first, many of you will find them interesting and second, many who have not yet taken the survey will take a few minutes to go to that.
At the moment, 428 have completed surveys. 55% of these are readers who signed up for membership after June 1 of this year. The rest are split about half and half between readers who used to have memberships at SI (but no longer do) and readers who have never been members.
By the end of January 2010, SharperIron will have been on the Web for a full five years. Those years have seen quite a bit of change. At SI, members have come and gone, the moderating team has changed and one owner/publisher has passed the baton to another. And SharperIron’s context has changed as well. Fundamentalism’s self perception has shifted, the Internet has continued to morph. Blogging has passed out of the “amazing new phenomenon” phase and social networking is now familiar to all. We can only assume that SI’s readers have changed in various ways as well. But we have no idea how they’ve changed.
This survey can partly solve that problem. We didn’t know a great deal about who SI’s readers were and what they thought in the early days, so we lack a baseline. But if participation is robust, we will be able to get a much clearer picture of who reads SharperIron now and what they value most and least about it.
Please take the time to complete the survey. You’ll note that the survey is divided into three sections. The first gathers some demographic information. The second focuses on evaluating reader’s use of, and opinions about, SharperIron. The third polls for views on some issues. A few of the questions in parts one and two are required in order to turn the survey in. The rest are optional, but we’d like to see as many complete surveys as possible. read more»
SI is funded from four sources: donations, advertising, Amazon purchases from our links, and what the site’s owner throws in now and then. The first source pays nearly all of SI’s server-related costs. The second has been the largest single source and funds everything from phone bills and PO box rentals to traveling expenses, editing fees (this expense ended during the 2nd quarter of this year), and compensation for article writers (this year this took the form of contest prizes). Ad income also funds site development and upgrades and—once in a while—a portion of equipment that has a site-related purpose (like a cell phone, for example). The third source—the Amazon links—has not yet yielded much revenue, but it’s growing. Finally, the fourth source—Aaron’s pocket book—funds all of the above whenever the other three sources fall short. After cutting some costs this year, that source has been—thankfully—marginal.
New Advertising Options at SI
With that as context, on to the point of this brief post. Advertising. SI averages 12 to 15 thousand “Absolute Unique Visitors” per month (per Google Analytics) and 40 to 60 thousand “visits” (also per GA). Active membership is just under 1,050 at the moment. So SharperIron remains a good way to reach the conservative evangelical and Fundamentalist niche.
But economic pressures have forced a number of folks in our ad market to cut back. Accordingly (and also for the fun of it), we’re making some changes to the advertising available at SI. read more»
Verbal communication is one of God’s favorite inventions. He created speaking beings in His image and then spoke to them. Over the millennia, He gave visions to prophets and commanded them to speak or write what they had seen. And He inspired select prophets to write His words as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. He gave us a book.
So whenever we use words, we’re doing something of personal importance to God. And since we believers are at peace with God through Christ and represent God to a world that does not know Him, our writing and speaking carry that much more importance.
We should not be surprised, then, that Scripture has so much to say about how we use words. And we should attend energetically to how that instruction applies to posting in Internet forums.
The Proverbial Gold Mine
Here we’ll focus on Proverbs. It’s packed with instruction for how we should and should not use our mouths, and it applies well to the verbal communication challenges we encounter in forums.
In Proverbs, words never simply exist. They are tremendously powerful forces for good or ill.
A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit (Prov. 15:4).
From the fruit of his mouth a man is satisfied with good, and the work of a man’s hand comes back to him (Prov. 12:14).
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits (Prov. 18:21). read more»
As of this writing, about three dozen of you have chipped in to help cover SharperIron’s server and bandwidth costs for 2009 (more info here). A few contributed especially large gifts. You know who you are (though, in some cases, I’m not sure I know who you are). Whether your donation was large or small, I—and all who benefit from SI—thank you for your help! read more»
The 2009-2010 
SharperIron now has a 
If my calculations are correct (they often aren’t), I put on the SharperIron “Publisher” hat 19 months and two weeks ago (May 15, 2008). So I missed my opportunity to write some reflections on the one-year anniversary. Since we were preparing to move the site to Drupal about that time, things were hopping. Plan B was to write some retrospection at the year-and-a-half mark (“sesiquiannual reflections”?). That time “swine flu” got in the way. Plan C was to combine these thoughts with some Christmas greetings, but—well, that’s passed now too. So welcome to Plan D: “New Year’s greetings and reflections on 19 and a half months heading ShaperIron.”
(Read the 
By the end of January 2010, SharperIron will have been on the Web for a full five years. Those years have seen quite a bit of change. At SI, members have come and gone, the moderating team has changed and one owner/publisher has passed the baton to another. And SharperIron’s context has changed as well. Fundamentalism’s self perception has shifted, the Internet has continued to morph. Blogging has passed out of the “amazing new phenomenon” phase and social networking is now familiar to all. We can only assume that SI’s readers have changed in various ways as well. But we have no idea how they’ve changed. 
SI is funded from four sources: donations, advertising, Amazon purchases from our links, and what the site’s owner throws in now and then. The first source pays nearly all of SI’s server-related costs. The second has been the largest single source and funds everything from phone bills and PO box rentals to traveling expenses, editing fees (this expense ended during the 2nd quarter of this year), and compensation for article writers (this year this took the form of contest prizes). Ad income also funds site development and upgrades and—once in a while—a portion of equipment that has a site-related purpose (like a cell phone, for example). The third source—the Amazon links—has not yet yielded much revenue, but it’s growing. Finally, the fourth source—Aaron’s pocket book—funds all of the above whenever the other three sources fall short. After cutting some costs this year, that source has been—thankfully—marginal.
Verbal communication is one of God’s favorite inventions. He created speaking beings in His image and then spoke to them. Over the millennia, He gave visions to prophets and commanded them to speak or write what they had seen. And He inspired select prophets to write His words as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. He gave us a book.
Fund drive ends on Friday
