It’s the 10th week of the semester, and you know what that means — when it comes to that impossible class, it”s time to hold ’em or fold ’em, to race to finals for a grade or take a drop. The cards are all on the table and the decision is up to you.

While you soberly ponder that, I thought this was an opportune time for me to put my cards on the table, too. You and I, we’ve been in this newspaper reader/newspaper editor relationship for a couple months now, and I think it’s appropriate to evaluate where we are.

Here’s my lecture on Iowa State Daily-related topics that have come up since Aug. 23:

Online feedback. It’s true, www.iowastatedaily.com is a fantastic source for news — everything you want to know about things happening on campus and in Ames, breaking news updates, the classifieds; all that and more from just one Web site!

Many of you take advantage of the online feedback feature provided by our Web host, Digital Partners, and it’s absolutely wonderful. Online feedback provides a depth and breadth of insight into stories and issues that our print edition letters page simply can’t because of space and format restrictions. The “Hot Topics” section of the Web site lets debates go on efficiently for days. I, for one, love to see the variety of names and opinions showing up to the site every day.

What we need people to do is follow the rules — and they”ve changed slightly since the spring and summer. You must now give your first name, your last name and your e-mail address before we’ll post your feedback on the Daily Web site.

The reason for this policy is to provide some accountability the online feedback sorely needed. If you”re not willing to put your name with what you have to say, then it doesn’t have much value for our feedback forum anyway.

You still don’t have to post your e-mail address unless you want to. We don’t use it for anything, save to verify you are who you say you are. We haven’t had many problems with people misidentifying themselves on the Web site, and we’d like to keep it that way.

Our feedback moderators are also being slightly more aggressive in keeping personal attacks and obscenity off the site. Everybody can make their points without resorting to either tactic.

For almost everybody, none of these rules present a problem, and I don”t think they restrict anybody’s enjoyment and utility from the site in any way.

Getting your story in the Daily. There are 26,380 ISU students this semester. All of you are involved in at least one thing (not counting my brother). And to only mention students is to neglect an almost equal number of faculty, staff and other Ames residents who do things too.

In short, that”s a lot of paper and phone calls and people coming into the Daily every hour of every day.

But we do want to hear from you regarding your group’s accomplishments and events. Contact information for the Daily’s section editors can be found at a top corner of the first page of each of our sections — News, Opinion, A&E and Sports.

But keep these tips in mind:

1. Be timely … let us know earlier rather than later.

2. Be persistent … the more people who talk to you and write down your name, the higher the probability one of them will do something about it.

3. Be accessible … if a reporter contacts you, help him or her out by being prompt in replying and helping.

4. Be reasonable … if you haven’t seen stories in the Daily like the one you’re proposing, it’s probable yours won’t be the first of its kind — you can still give the idea to us, but don’t be disappointed if we can’t spare the space or resources.

This leads me to:

Corrections. The rate of corrections appearing in the lower right corner of the Daily’s front page is down significantly from the spring … but I don’t think for a minute that we are making fewer errors. We simply aren’t finding out about them. If you see something wrong — a factual error, a lapse in fairness, something indecipherably confusing, a possible ethical problem, whatever — call me or Managing Editor Ayrel Clark so we can investigate and try to fix it. Of course, we want to get it all right the first time, but failing that, we don’t want to leave you misinformed.

Thoughts? Post ’em here — just don’t forget your first and last names and e-mail, please.