We’ve added a number of new features to our philosophy job wiki.
1. Status histories
You can now see how the status of each job listing has changed over time. You can look back to see when users reported that applications had been acknowledged, when they reported that interviews had been scheduled, etc.
To see the status history for a job listing, find the job listing on the main wiki page. Hold your mouse over the “View status history” link in that listing and wait for the popup. You’ll see a table showing every time someone reported on the status of the job, including: the status that was reported (e.g., “first-round interviews scheduled”), the date and time that the report was made, and the IP address of the user who reported it. (Clicking on the IP address will take you to InfoSniper, a free web service that provides detailed information about IP addresses, including geographical location, the institution that owns the address, etc. We have no affiliation with InfoSniper.)
You can also see the status histories on the standalone page for each job listing. (You can reach the standalone pages through the RSS feed or by clicking comment links on each job listing.) Check out the page for the listing for Georgetown’s opening in applied ethics for an example.
The “ditto” effect
When the job wiki was hosted on wikihost.org, users would often “second” a report by adding ‘ditto’. For instance, you might have seen something like this under a job listing: “Called to arrange APA interview (12/4); ditto (12/5).” Among other things, this helps confirm the validity of reports.
The status history allows us to simulate this ditto effect. If you would like to “second” the current status of a job, mouse over the pencil icon and click the current status again. For instance, suppose you go to the wiki and find that your favorite school’s status has changed to ‘First-round interviews scheduled’. While you’re drowning your sorrows, the school calls you to schedule an interview! After celebrating, go to the wiki and do exactly what you would if you were the first person to report that the school had scheduled first-round interviews: mouse over the pencil icon, wait for the popup, and click on ‘First-Round Interviews Scheduled’. When other users look at the status history, they’ll see that two people (with different IP addresses) both reported that interviews have been scheduled. In other words: “Ditto.”
2. Comments
You can now post comments about job listings. If you report on a job listing, the rest of us would appreciate it if you post a comment specifying how you heard (e.g., email, phone, carrier pigeon) and any other information you received (e.g., “the department will make a decision by mid-December about APA interviews”). If you want to spread, confirm, or dispel rumors about a job, you can do that in comments, too. But please don’t spread rumors. It’s not nice.
To read and post comments on a job listing, find that listing in the wiki and hold your mouse over the ‘comments’ link for that listing. You’ll see a list of comment titles, along with links to read the comments or post one of your own. If there are no comments for a post yet, you’ll just see a link to ‘Post comments’.
Comment titles and dates are now also included in the RSS feeds.
3. Personalized RSS feeds
You’ve been able to get an RSS feed of updates to the job wiki since we first launched the wiki. Now, you can create a personalized feed containing just the schools that interest you. To do this, you’ll need to create an account with us. Accounts are free. It takes less than a minute to create one. We’re never going to sell your information or spam you or do anything like that. (You can read our privacy policy if you’re concerned about that sort of thing.)
Once you’ve created and logged into your account, you can subscribe or unsubscribe to individual job listings by clicking on the RSS icons in each listing. The icons are semitransparent for listings to which you’re already subscribed. If you hold your mouse over an RSS icon, you’ll get a popup telling you explicitly whether you’re subscribed, giving you the option to (un)subscribe, and providing links to relevant information, including the personalized feed itself.
You can read more about RSS and our personalized feeds here.
We hope users find these new features helpful. Please let us know what other features you’d like to see and what problems you encounter with these features (or with the rest of the wiki).
Good luck to everyone in a very difficult market!
Dave Gray has a nice Flickr 
