I agree with the earlier readers; please don't let Salon turn into a ditch of self-inspired blogging posts, thinly threaded with editorial selections as content.

Remember portals? Remember how awesome people used to think they were? Get everything in one place! I can already do aggregate news feeds with comments. It's the alternative and progressive perspectives I turn to Salon for, even if those seem to be diminishing. What I wouldn't give to have an Annalee Newitz article again and her mad love for Transmeta or geek sex (does that date me?).

If you're going to navel gaze, at least let it be from look-my-ass hipsters, recalcitrant techies, lesbian women with good haircuts and bad shoes, pinko commie liberals. Shit, hire James Frey, at least he had a story. And he'd fit in with the recent wave of bad writing.

Oh sure, lets take something that works just fine and turn it into a magnet for trolls, flame-wars, and even more endless discussions of breastpumps and Cute Things My Kid Said.

The questions in the survey, and the prefacing editorial suggest that the Editors of Salon COMPLETELY miss the point of Tabletalk. It is one of the few places on the planet where liberals and intellectuals can converse about things that matter without the scrutiny of google-searches and other intrusive technologies. I like it just fine the way it is.

Some of us read/writ on TT during our lunch hour, which means that the pages are usually subjected to corporate filtering. Once you allow posting of pictures, etc., the corporate filters will tag TT as "Unacceptable Content", and those of us who really NEED a 15 minute sanity break will lose it.

Please also take note of the problems Wikipedia is having currently with bogus and inappropriate content and edit-wars. I would really, really like to make sure that when I post my observations about the State of The (Dis)Union speech on Commander Bunnypants that my carefully crafted snark is not going to be edited away by another member who disagrees with me.

Really, this site is just becoming one big blog anyway. And you have lost many of your best writers. And the investigative journalism -- where's that? I haven't seen it lately. You know, it's funny -- my hometown newspaper, the Boston Globe, has been adding interactive features to their print edition of late -- readers' comments, Your Blogs!, Your Photos! -- to reach that all-important younger demographic and in response to the increasing competitive pressure from the...web. :) And now it looks like Salon is adding interactive features in response to the competitive presures of...what? The ongoing People Magazine-ification of our culture? I'm terribly afraid that it's just another part of some horrible negative feedback loop, like melting arctic ice. Have we reached the tipping point yet?

BTW, what's been the change in the subscriber base since Salon went all pop on us? People joining up in droves, are they? Now THAT would be an interesting bit of info to have.

One suggestion -- an arts gallery where people could post work and receive feedback. Or is that not iPod-y enough?

This isn't totally relevant to the blogification of my paid news source (grrr), but WHERE IS THE SCIENCE?? Why is there A&E, Books, Comics, and Life, all justifying distinct categories of "news," but no science? Sorry, but Tech & Business doesn't count. I never thought of myself as much of a science person, but apparently I value it more than the average Salon reader, writer, or editor. No wonder our scientific prominence is slipping here in the States: even progressive, savvy readers don't seem to care about what's happening in science. Not all science is lucrative, and not all of it therefore would fall under "Tech & Business," but it disappoints me that Salon places so little value on research. Do we really need to add to the touchy-feely, self-validating, self-justifying bent Salon has evolved to nurture by adding blog spaces? Are there not plenty of other venues for such "therapeutic discourse"? At least give a nod to the scientific community from time to time, even if it's never as important to your readership as Comics.

You already know the survey only works in Internet Explorer, so I won't harp on the subject except to say all the results you get will therefore be wrong.

As far as shaping Salon, I don't expect reader suggestions to be noticed any more than the numerous complaints about the ugly redesign were noticed. I still haven't seen any serious answers to the complaints (perhaps they were all in Troll Talk -- oops, Table Talk), and as a result I still intend not to renew when my subscription ends. I can get Cosmo on the stands if I wanted to read a women's mag.

TomAnderson -- the survey works just fine for me in Opera, which is my everyday browser, and in Firefox, which is the other browser I regularly use. The developers who built it primarily use Firefox. So it's definitely not an IE-only survey. Of course it's clear some users have had problems with it, and we're working to resolve them -- we've followed up on each complaint we've received with the partners who built the survey for us.

As for whether Salon is listening to feedback: Well, obviously each of you will decide for yourself whether we're paying attention to what matters to you. But, you know, there's a difference between "listening to feedback" and "doing everything that every single user wants." The former is achievable, though we can always work harder and do better; the latter is impossible!

It just occured to me, that this is Salon's scheme for getting a bunch of us to write for them for FREE, isn't it?

Sometimes I think Dr. Johnson had the right idea, and that "no man but a blockhead ever wrote but for money."

But then I get lonely, and I get on the Internet and start typing away.

Let Premium Users rate an article 1-5 and display the avg. rating. Then I can choose to read the best stuff. Way more efficient that reading letters. This is done on Amazon for reviews. Is a bonus for paying subscription (or using site pass).

A guest column could be interesting, if you chose someone qualified and edited it. Same for an essay, fiction, etc. contest. But it's got to be moderated somehow. Writing.com and those places are just a mess, and nobody reads anything.

No on the blogs. Too much crapola out there already. We can do that anywhere.

Also, enforce your policies. TT didn't. People get ganged up on, abused, and stalked. Moderators would not respond. This makes me think they are biased. I also think the editor's choices are biased, like everyone else.