Ars is closing in on 20 years old (or 2.0×10-1 centuries). For about 15 of those years, we've had dedicated science coverage. That started out as a weekly column, shifted to a dedicated section, and grew into the news-focused coverage that you see today. Perhaps the biggest changes have occurred over the last few years, as we expanded the staff and opened the horizons of our coverage to things like energy, medicine, archaeology, and space.

With those changes in the rear-view mirror, we thought this would be a great time to take stock of our readers' feelings about how Ars covers science. To do so, we've put together a short poll. There are only a dozen questions you have to answer to get it done, so it won't soak up much of your time if you don't have it to spare. But we're also giving you the chance to provide free-form thoughts on how we're doing now and what you'd like to see from us in the future.

While the questions are intended to help us do a better job of serving our audience, you'll note that a lot of them aren't specific to our coverage. We're hoping to get a better sense of how people view the place of science in our society and discover which ways they view it as important in their daily lives. Knowing this sort of information won't help us write any particular article, but it will help us better understand what kinds of articles we should be writing.

The poll doesn't ask for any personal information, and we won't contact you about your answers unless you ask us to. Unless you answer one of the multiple choice questions with "other" or fill out one of the free-form questions, we'll only treat the answers you provide as part of an aggregate.

In addition to using them internally, I'll write about the results for you. There's a very good chance that I'll also discuss the aggregated results with anyone who asks questions like "what did you find out in the poll?" or "what's your readership like?"

So please, help us out and take the poll.