Frequently asked questions about the site

Saturday January 1 2005    1 00 pm

Frequently asked questions about the site

Why do you use that huuuuge font?

Because I use and read the site myself, and that's what I can comfortably read. And because electronic reading is easier with bigger font sizes, generally -- although it leads to more scrolling.

But perhaps what you are seeing is bigger than what the rest of us are seeing. Browsers do vary in their font size presentation (in particular between some versions of Internet Explorer on Windows and the rest of the world. Most recent versions of browsers allow you to scale the text larger or smaller at the push of a button. The site works well with this feature: if you want to see more text, then scale it smaller and everything will still stay where it belongs.

I'm trying to find your e-mail address, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere. Are you trying to mess with my mind?

I used to hide my e-mail address, because anyone who seriously wanted it could always find it with a simple Google search. It was a remarkably efficient system: you'd be surprised how many people won't Google to find a piece of information like this.

However, now that I've moved the site off the university's network, I've been increasing my online presence. I now accept e-mail at my own domain, (coming soon).

I am always pleased to hear from readers. I especially appreciate tips, and use them for many stories. If you have a book that you'd like me to review, I will almost certainly be happy to get a copy! All books will get an immediate mention, and I review one new book every week. My turnaround is much, much faster than any of the journals.

But please keep in mind that I teach around 400 students a semester, all of whom have e-mail priority.

You seem to write about all kinds of stuff. What do you actually work on?

I have done research on australopithecines, early Homo, Neandertals, archaic humans in Java and China and modern human origins. Some of this work has been historical, but most has used fossil and genetic evidence. My dissertation research was an investigation of population size in human evolution.

What ties things together in my work is the application of innovative quantitative methods. Every paper so far has used a new one. What I like to do more than anything else is to test assumptions.

I really can't talk about what I'm working on right now. I have many coauthors, and some of them are providing data that is not yet public. There is some exciting stuff coming soon, though....

I'd like to use one of those drawings in a paper. Where did you get them?

I drew them. It was a lot of work. My children like to eat. Please don't use them without permission.

I'd really like to meet other people/post my angry opinion/fawn over your blog/try to convert you to creationism. Why don't you allow comments?

Comments mean comment spam, which I would have to clean up. Teachers use my blog in their classes, and I'm proud of the usefulness and quality for this purpose. As long as I have young visitors, I'm not having escort services (or worse) cluttering up the comments.

Personally, I think that most sites that allow comments are really just trying to double their page views for advertising purposes. I don't have any ads.

However, for one category of posts, I'm going to be making an exception. For more on that, keep checking back.

If you are interested in meeting people with interests in human evolution, there are several excellent message boards at Yahoo! Groups and elsewhere. I think that discussing new stuff on those boards is a much better solution than allowing comments here would be -- and you'll hear a wider range of voices.

I linked to your post, now how do I trackback?

The trackback ping address is at the bottom of the post's permalink page. My system should be checking sites I link for trackbacks also.

The layout of your site seems really cool/really ugly/really unfamiliar to me. What weblogging software do you use?

The site now runs on Drupal, which is an open-source database-PHP solution for content management. My posts are database entries, which the system presents themed according to my coding. This means that the appearance of the site is almost infinitely flexible, and I don't use the built-in themes. So it looks different than any other site.

I chose the system because Drupal is very stable, it has been extended by many plug-ins, or "modules", and it works with extensive caching and fast HTTP servers such as Nginx. That should make it capable of supporting the site as it grows. Also, it may allow a few new features that I'll roll out over time.

But I really liked your old look! What happened?

I used to use Blosxom, a lightweight collection of Perl scripts for automatically turning out a blog based on text files in the normal hierarchical directory structure. I really liked it a lot. But over time it became unwieldy for managing the site, as I grew to over 1500 posts. For a low-traffic site with less frequent updates, I think Blosxom would meet the requirements indefinitely. And I really did like it -- it made it very easy to maintain, update, and use text in other applications.

For more of an explanation and comparison, you can check out my post about moving the site.

I have a great product that would interest your readers...

I'm still not accepting advertisements, but if I ever decide to do so, I will keep your name and e-mail.

Your search function leaves a lot to be desired.

You should have been here before I moved to the new system! It works pretty well now, but still you may not find everything you want. After all, it's doing a database query across 1800 posts. You can always try Google: Just plug in your search terms and add "site:johnhawks.net" at the end of the query. Still, I find that the built-in search finds things much better than Google now.

You seem to have all this new stuff on January 1. But I was reading the site then! I don't remember all that stuff being there! What gives?

First of all, thanks for being a long-time reader!

The system processes every new file for inclusion on the main page. But sometimes I don't want something to appear there, like this FAQ, for example. So I give those files a date sometime in the past, so they won't look new to the system.

You said "x", which sounds just like something your undergraduate advisor/graduate advisor/postdoctoral advisor/current colleagues/random person on the street would say. I'm beginning to think you're nothing but an intellectual clone!

If you only knew what they say about me behind my back...

You cited my work as saying "x" when what it really says is "y". I don't think "x" at all, indeed I think my data conservatively show "something only slightly short of x". Can't you see the difference?

The casual reader may doubt that I have ever had this particular question asked. Except for those few who have actually e-mailed me versions of this question and are probably still grumbling beneath their voices about it. And then there are those readers who may never have read an academic exchange to see how biting and ugly they can be.

If you feel that I have maligned your work in any way, please write and let me know. If you are not a regular reader, you may not know that I have given people the opportunity to have their opinion posted with equal prominence to my own if they disagree.

I do try to give an honest impression of the importance (or lack of importance) of current research. If I didn't express an honest opinion, I doubt that I'd have many readers. But I do make mistakes, and I hope to be corrected whenever appropriate.

You keep talking about these "readers" as if someone actually reads this site. Exactly how many readers do you have?

In May 2008, the site was visited 140,000 times from 123 top-level domains (which mostly correspond to countries). During that month, 45,000 distinct computer addresses visited. These mostly correspond to different readers, although dial-in internet connections and multiple home/office computers mean that there are more addresses than people.

In that month, the server presented 9300 pages per day, each page includes multiple files (which aren't always requested because of browser caches), which leads to a total server activity of 19,000 files daily, or around one file every 3.5 seconds.

These numbers indicate that many of my readers are very loyal and check back often. I appreciate this very much, and I know who many of you are. Thank you.

I also appreciate the many links I have received from other sites. Keep it up!

Why isn't my site on your blogroll?

My blogroll evolution is very slow. I tend to add things that I read myself regularly. The most likely reason you're not there is that I haven't seen your blog. Send me an e-mail to remind me to look, and I'll stop by. If I read it, I'll link.

There are a few sites that I don't link because they contain a lot of political content, although things that I read regularly tend to overcome this proscription. Still, the only advocacy here is scientific, and I try to keep links on the site strictly nonpartisan.

Everyone knows that a non-peer-reviewed site can't be a real forum for scientific communication! I choose to ignore your non-peer-reviewed reality and create my own!

Hmmm...this question seems to be inescapably oxymoronic. If someone intended to ignore what I wrote, why would they e-mail me about it?

Hey, you're getting a little biting and ugly there!

Sorry, I forgot this wasn't peer-reviewed.

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