We have a host for May 1st CoE

E. E. Giorgi is hosting the next Carnival of Evolution at Chimeras.

You can submit posts on evolution (even ones you didn't write) by linking to them in the comments here.

CoE #70 the Game of Evolution at Synthetic Daisies

The Game of Evolution is Carnival of Evolution #70. It is up on Bradly Alicea's blog Synthetic Daisies. I swear!

We need someone to host May 1st. BlogCarnival.com is down again, so we need to stop relying on it. That also means that it will be more of the job of the host to scour blogs to find suitable posts for the carnival. Are you up for that, then send an email to bjorn@bjornostman.com.

#69 at Lab Rat

The 69th Carnival of Evolution is up at Shuna Gould's Lab Rat.

Which is great. So great.

But the problem is that BlogCarnival.com is "temporarily" down, and has been for close to a week. I don't know anything about when it will be up, of ever, and since it is the site we use to keep track of hosts and submissions, that does present a problem.

Does anyone have a better idea? Any other way to collect submissions?

Nope, it's out now: CoE #68

I lied. The February edition is out now: Carnival of Evolution, February 2014 Edition.

February edition on the 10th

The February edition of Carnival of Evolution has been postponed to February 10th. Hosts are people with jobs, and this is just a blog-carnival.

Iddo Friedberg will host on his blog, Byte Size Biology. You can submit the usual places:
BlogCarnival.com (login required).
Facebook, by posting URL to page.
Email host directly.

CoE #67 at The Genealogical World of Phylogenetic Networks

Carnival of Evolution, No. 67 — Wallace centenary edition has been posted at The Genealogical World of Phylogenetic Networks. Thanks to David Morriosn for hosting.

Dr. CoE #66 on Evolving Thoughts

Good news! The sixtysixth edition of the Carnival of Evolution is up on John Wilkins' blog Evolving Thoughts: The Day of the Doctor of Evolution: CoE #66. Yeah!

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Doctor.
Doctor who?

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Yes! How did you know?

CoE #65 on Pharyngula

PZ Myer is hosting CoE #65 on Pharyngula: The Horror Host Edition.

Next month's is at John Wilkins' Evolving Thoughts.

CoE #64 up at Reconciliation Ecology

With some delay, our Carnival survives October with an edition at Madhusudan Katti's blog, Reconciliation Ecology: Carnival of Evolution: a better late than never edition cabinet of curiousities

In addition to, of course, naming the bloggers, people who actually made sure specific posts would be included in CoE are also named. Thanks to all (actually, the few) people who dared the login at BlogCarnical.com (which is actually quite a smooth registration and login), or who posted to the Facebook page, or sent email directly to the host or to me.

“We are not the boss of natural selection. It is unpwnable” argues Holly Dunsworth.

CoE 63 at EvoAnth

The Carnival of Evolution: Eclectic September edition is posted at EvoAnth by Adam Benton.

Adam chose to list the names of the people who submitted the posts, rather than those who wrote them. Perhaps this will make a few people realize that for CoE to keep running, someone has to make sure posts are submitted.

Next month is at Madhusudan Katti's Reconciliation Ecology.

We have hosts for the next three months

After much yelling we have now procured CoE hosts for the next three months:

Sep 01, 2013	EvoAnth
Oct 01, 2013	Reconciliation Ecology
Nov 01, 2013	Pharyngula

Rejoice!

We have a host, but we need a host

Great news. Madhusudan Kati (Reconciliation Ecology) has volunteered to host an edition of CoE. Alas, semester starts in September, so he has asked not to do it then, but will instead host in October.

Do we have anyone who could host #63 in September?

Several people have voiced concerns about what gets into CoE, and suggested that perhaps the reason that the diminished interest in submitting to CoE results from too many submissions that aren't really about evolution (just mentioning the word is of course not enough) or are pseudoscientific or too controversial. An example of the latter is a couple of posts submitted by David Peters, who allegedly are on the fringe about Pterosaur evolution. You can read a post by Darren Naish here explaining what the problem is.

I welcome such discussions, but emphasize that it should be made clear when people disagree. I think this should be obvious when blogging about science in general, but when the blogger in question doesn't explain this, the CoE host should do their best to bring it to attention. This would be easy when submissions come from Uncommon Descent, but not equally so in some other cases. To that extent I sincerely hope that knowledgable readers will post-review by commenting on the blog in question.

Any other suggestions?

How to deal with potential junk science bloggers?

I received this email from a CoE reader. My reply is below. Does this seem reasonable to you?

> This is the second C of E to feature a post from the Pterosaur Heresies [http://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com], a junk science site. Is there any screening going on here? Could we see posts from Uncommon Descent in future editions?

The screening we have is reliant on the host. The host reads all submissions and ultimately decides what is in and what is out. The guideline is simply that it must be about evolution, not that it be factually correct or far from the fringe. Yes, there is nothing inherently wrong with including posts from UD, but none has been submitted.

I was not familiar with this blog before. I see that people disagree strongly about the things discussed there, and you may well be right that David Peters is crazy, but I don't think that should deter us from reading it. It would great if the CoE host could point out that there is a discussion going on, and that most people think David Peters is wrong, for example. I will add something to this effect in the CoE instructions before next month.

Thanks,
Bjørn

P.S. We need hosts. Would you be interested?

CoE in trouble

The 62nd edition: The Whig History is up at Joachim Dagg's Ecology and Evolution Footnotes. It's a voluminous and excellent edition, but as Joachim notes, getting enough submissions is more and more becoming the chore of the host.

Bloggers have issues with the site that we use for submitting posts (BlogCarnival.com), because they now require people to log in every time they submit. It's really easy to register and log in, but it is of course another hurdle that many people would rather be without. Is there a better way to handle submissions? A script that trawls the web for serious evolution posts?

It is also up to the host to filter the submissions for spam and posts that are not really about evolution. We don't want CoE to be a dump of random posts marginally related to evolution - we want it to be where people go for the best blogging about evolution every month.

So we need hosts who are willing to read a lot of submissions, make sure they are legit, and write up brilliant summaries in an creative format. If that's you, please come forward. We need hosts for the fall.