Spectral lines: What readers liked

Readers tell us how we're doing in many ways. Some write letters, a few of which find their way into the Forum column. Others telephone us, particularly if an article or other editorial item hits home in an especially positive or negative way. But by far the most responses — numbering in the thousands for each issue — come in the form of “votes” cast using the reader service cards on the back of each issue. These votes are tallied and are used by the editors as guides in their coverage of specific topics in future issues. Though a low response rate for a certain article does not mean we won't publish articles on that same topic again, it does mean that we'll try to determine the reason for the low vote, perhaps approaching the topic differently the next time around, or possibly we won't run articles on that topic as frequently as we had planned.