Cafe FAQs
Alright, the work goes on getting things settled technologically here at Cafe. We've put together a first draft of a Frequently Asked Questions that we hope will help, and we have a long list of tweaks and bugs that our tech team is working at diligently.
Check out the FAQ and let me know what we should add.
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This may be a part of FAQ #1 but...
After your session times out and you have to re-enter username and password, you always have to enter your password two times before it is accepted.
Thanks.
March 4, 2008 7:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
don't bother to enter twice. Just click on it twice!
Or see my comment further downthread for how to do this simply by keeping another tab open to the main tpm page and sign in that way. Then comment and click it even without putting info in as to name and password.
March 4, 2008 2:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
FAQ questions:
1) As a former FBI agent, can Larry Johnson legally look up my address and have me renditioned if I tick him off?
2) Is Greg Sargent related to Dick Sargent?
3) Josh has endorsed Gravel, hasn't he?
4) Are you all against Republicans or something?
5) Don't you miss the days when people would be emailing you all the time complaining that some user had rated them a troll?
March 4, 2008 8:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Delay in Comment Posting
I assume this delay is written into the script.
1. How long is it?
2. Can it be shortened?
March 4, 2008 9:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
My comment, above, took 3 minutes and 24 seconds to appear.
That's ridiculous. I wouldn't put up with that sort of customer-dissing in my business. We're not working with a Univac, here.
Straighten it out!
March 4, 2008 9:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
While sometimes I think Ellen's snark is a bit rough, in this case, I think she is spot on and I want to ditto it and expand!
I agree, the delay is absurd in this day and age. It's way substandard. I don't get the choice made in tolerating it in exchange for other features, of benefit to who? There is not even a preview or edit function for users, that is also ridiculously substandard.
I was really surprised by the seeing a recommendation of the software company on the front page and couldn't help but wonder what a business journalist would do with that.
I think it's important to let the management here know what that post made me think: was there a quid-pro-quo, a discount fee for a plug? If that was a politician talking about a government contractor, someone like Josh Marshall would be snarking about it.
Something may be working better for the contributors (government), but nothing is working better for users, just like with lots of government privatization. Looks to me that the facts are that the only good thing that happened for users is that a "create a blog post" link was put on the other section pages (TPM, Election Central, Muckraker.) Whoop de do! And how much did it cost you for those three links labeled with fancy words like "integration of the sites"? Did you really need news aggregators easily available elsewhere? And all those graphics and video, do you really want more growth by getting users that don't like to read at a loss to functions for users? What exactly is it are you so happy about? It's not entirely clear to some users. For example, Andrew Golis' time, and your bandwith, are being eaten up by complaints. An intern's time is now required to round up things that used to be handled by software. That post looked like talking head spin to me, because benefits to users were not at all explained.
[/rant]
March 4, 2008 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
All right! Keep us i-n-f-o-r-m-e-d and we won't be so grumpy.
March 4, 2008 9:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Question/suggestion:
When the "here's my comments" section of the profile gets fixed, can you also please add the "recommended" and "latest" user posts to that page?
I want to be able to see where I've commented, and then go to a reader blog post with one click, not two or three.
March 4, 2008 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not sure I understand CSCS. The recommended, user posts and comments are all on your profile right now, right? Are you talking about something else?
March 4, 2008 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Recommends on my own "My Profile" are totally inaccurate, they are old, seem to be stuck. That list simply doesn't work!
Also, Reader Blog recommends do not appear to show up on anyone's profile that I have ever seen, only contributor posts. I'm sorry, if that's intended, that's simply really stupid design! Users don't need an aid in finding front page posts that they have recommended, as they stay on the front page for a good length of time. What users need is a way to find the Reader Blog posts with the conversations that they were interested in.
I'd like to note what I think is an important meta point on that: I think that if that worked, it's still a self-defeating design, as if people could see what other people recommended in Reader Blog posts, you might get some of the downsides of ratings wars and the like, i.e., some would be afraid of uprating posts that don't agree with the general mob rule in content, others would start bitching about "why did you recommend that post and not this one." If the list wasn't labeled "Recommended" but rather something like "Most Popular Discussions" that alleviate some of that problem. But as Tom Wright noted in a comment elsewhere, that rewards the most inflammatory posts.
March 4, 2008 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not sure if you're still reading this...I forgot to go back in yesterday and check.
What I meant was not "my" links, but the list of site Recommended Blogs and the site's current Reader Blogs lists -- when I am in the tpm..../talk URL (that is, the main Readers Blogs page), on the right hand panel, there is a list of the titles of all the rec'd and current reader blogs.
When I am in my profile page, those no longer show up on the right hand panel. All I get are the headlines to the TPM site.
March 5, 2008 9:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
When I try to post a comment and I get the message to enter my user name and password, it won't accept my password, although it works to log on in the first place. I have to go back to a TPM-generated password to post. Also, the first try NEVER works.
I have emailed this problem 5 or 6 times and have yet to get a response.
Here's hoping this gets through!
--Well, it didn't. This is my second try. I logged off and re-logged in, so maybe it will work this time.
March 4, 2008 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
CVille D. I get that all the time too. What I found works is to just go back into my user name field, delete one letter and retype it then retype my pw. Then the second try usually works.
What I hate is the "log in below" notice (even though I am logged in) when there is no log in BELOW!
OK, here's a try at posting this.
March 4, 2008 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's what I do. I keep two tpm tabs open. When the system logs me out, I use the other tab to log in at the top! And guess what, if you do that, the tab where you've written something or where you want to write something will accept what you write!
So, for example, use the main site. If it thinks you are logged in, but the other tab says to log in, then on the main site, go to your profile. And click on that. You'll get a place to log in.
Hope that helps! (there, just did it!)
Andrew, are we ever really going to get our past blogs back? Or not. I just want to know whether to go through all the trouble of trying to reconstruct them somehow!
March 4, 2008 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
What a pain in the ass you are describing! Why are such ridiculous gyrations necessary? I honestly don't think they are.
March 4, 2008 11:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks! that actually works - retyping a letter from the user name. How strange.
March 6, 2008 3:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Do you realize your software people are turning you into Dana Perino on this issue of Reader Blog archives being classified?
Is it really truly managment's intent to allow access to Reader Blogs created before the software change or are you stalling because you haven't decided and hope the old users that want it won't keep asking for it?
Like here:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/02/last-request-to-cafe-managemen.php
You gave no warning that users should copy and save their posts before the change. Any remmants of them are rapidly disappearing from Google's cache as the spiders replace them with new data from the site. You have the only access to this data and you have it locked up.
I noticed your software people have loaded old contributor's posts to the Reader Blog archives
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/archives.php
but refrained from putting pre-software-change readers' blogs there, even though it is labeled "Reader Blogs Weekly Archives," not "Contributor Blogs Weekly Archives." Have you warned the new reader bloggers that their stuff may not be kept either in preference to contributors' posts? Do you really care if they blog here and care what content they create or is it just a way to get more traffic? And is that hunger for traffic self-defeating as to what you want to do? Or is it what you want the power that the traffic gives you, is that it?
You can take those later questions as rhetoricals and ignore them. I've no illustions that I am as capable as the much maligned White House press corps. But I really would like the truth on the old Reader Bog Archives. It's not my own stuff I care about, it's some of the better threads by others, I'd like to see them accessible.
March 4, 2008 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is a serious glitch with Reader Blogs in that the names of many authors are missing once you click on the full post. This was pointed over a week or two ago on another thread, you, Andrew Golis, noted it. (Of course, it is impossible to find that thread, because it is more than a few days old.) And nothing has been done, indeed, it seems to be getting worse, to happen more often.
I have seen some commenters even accusing the writers of writing anonymously not realizing the problem. If one wants to address the writer by name, or figure out who the hell the blogger's name is, you have to go back to the menu. Once their post is off the menu, you will never be able to figure out who wrote the post (if by chance you happen to find it, that is.)
If I installed this software, I would be ashamed that something so simple and important as the name of an author is being omitted and has not been fixed pronto. It's simply extremely sloppy.
March 4, 2008 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
On my profile page, under recommended posts there is nothing listed. And I have indeed recommended posts before.
All of my blogs are there. No problem.
Under that is "latest comments." All are very old and they never change. Nothing recent at all.
March 4, 2008 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
One last thing...
I can't help but echo the comments above regarding that lovely little shout-out you gave your software company. Right in the middle of all this crap? That was very surprising to say the least.
The fact that Josh wants to offer this very fine feature, this open forum for all his readers is terrific. Awfully generous. I think everybody genuinely appreciates it. But it is well past time to have it work properly.
March 4, 2008 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Confusion and rumors I've seen about the Recommend system. It's amazing that anyone believes it, because you get such strange results from hitting the recommend button, both immediately and later. The execution of it is terrible.
29 recommendations suggests something more than self promotion.
Maybe some glitch in the code is cloning recommendations the way Mickey got more than he asked for in the The Sorcerers Apprentice.
Posted by moat
February 24, 2008 5:29 PM
No, there is a way to do multiple self recommendations, and it wouldn't be that hard to do it 29 times.
Posted by Genghis
February 24, 2008 6:26 PM
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/02/why-wont-the-media-establishme.php#comment-2614669
------
Argh. F*&king formatting...
Preview button? Soon?
Please?
Posted by cscs
February 22, 2008 3:07 PM
There should be some kind of port for FCKEditor. There's a plug-in already for the back-end. With MT such a visually oriented system, you'd think the community software would come with some kind of Rich-Text or WYSIWYG editor.
Posted by Eric Stepp
February 22, 2008 6:58 PM
I wish I could recommend this post. But, alas, my recommendations don't stick.
Yet another technical problem for those of us who already had accounts here.
Posted by Eric Stepp
February 22, 2008 3:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'll accept your recommend-in-spirit. A virtual recommend, so to speak.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
Posted by cscs
February 22, 2008 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I recommended it for you, and the next time the server boots me off and I log in, I'll recommend it for me.
So some folks can't recommend, and others like me, can recommend a lot.
Not that I do that...
Posted by workerbee
February 22, 2008 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I apparently can continually recommend, too. Or at least it seems like I can.
Not that I do...ok, once or twice I did, just to test it.
Now that I know I have this incredible power TPM Cafe has bestowed upon me, I use it judiciously.
Posted by cscs
February 22, 2008 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/02/all-the-worlds-a-stage.php
-----
some of us have the ability to rate a post numerous times
Really?
Posted by Diet
February 24, 2008 3:55 AM
Yes, apparently some cannot recommend at all and others can recommend a post numerous times. As I've just discovered, though, the ability to recommend numerous times does not apply to our own.
Posted by seashell
February 24, 2008 4:24 AM
I've been able to recommend my own post more than once, but I did it because I saw it lit up again and I wanted to see if it was possible.
I'm a big fan of TPM, but the blogging software is lacking a few key features. I can't seem to edit things that I've already posted. There doesn't seem to be a way to see when someone has responded to a post or comment without going back to that post or comment explicitly. A flagging system would be nice and an quite effective for the issue described in this post (potentially abusive content.) I also sometimes have to log in twice to comment. The first login gets rejected as an invalid username/password combination, but then I click again without changing the info and it works.
Posted by DF
February 24, 2008 7:02 AM
I just looked at the recommendation situation again and it doesn't look like it's actually increasing the count. It will allow me to click Recommend and it the number will go up, but when I refresh the page it has gone back down.
Posted by DF
February 24, 2008 7:06 AM
Well, thanks for trying to recommend anyway. Mostly I just want that other post gone. All the features you would like to see used to be here until the apocalypse hit the Cafe. No offense to Andrew if he reads this, but it would seem as though FEMA was in charge of this crisis, doesn't it?
Posted by seashell
February 24, 2008 10:52 AM
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/02/calling-andrewcan-you-remove-a.php#comment-2614191
March 4, 2008 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reader blogs do not have an automatic cut-off of intro-text and "read more," althought contributor posts do.
This uses up a lot of the reader blog page and causes this problem:
There seems to be a limit on how much text a Reader Blog post will take, but no one knows what is. I have seen more than a few people try to post a long one, and it comes out as one sentence. Then they say something like "my post got eaten!" Smart posters that this has happened to put the rest of their text in a comment. Others just keep trying to post it again, resulting in duplicate or triplicate one-line meaningless posts.
March 4, 2008 1:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
more complaints by users I copied:
PS: In reply to tpmgary...
(Sometimes the "Reply" thing works, sometimes not. This message board is SO screwed up.)
Posted by hrebendorf
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/21/how_obama_won/#comment-2611037
-----
Please RSVP
By whatdoIknow - February 22, 2008, 10:36AM
....I find it impossible to hold any sort of coherent conversation with anyone through posting to the cafe here since I cannot find any of my recent posts.
I'm reminded of a Skinner box....
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/02/please-rsvp.php
-----
I'm still having problems with the bugs. There is no way for me to find my recent comments other than to remember where I posted and do a "manual" scan. My "profile" doesn't show any comments more recent than 2006. I got my new password and hoped that that would solve the issues. I've been patient, but things are starting to happen (McCain's juicy loosey) and I'd like to have a little better functionality so that I can participate in the conversation.
Anyone still working on any sort of fix?
Posted by whatdoIknow
February 21, 2008 10:46 AM
OK, you know what would really, really help? An upfront, easy to find link to a real discussion forum for technical help. It could be in any format, outsourced to different servers if you have to. It could be a place where, if you've waited patiently, tried to take into account all the difficulties in the change over, you could still get some idea of whether you are the last person to get functionality back for this whole network.
Other users could reply to queries with answers that may have worked for them. Josh and Adam could simply pop in once in awhile and say, "we're still working on it folks, hold on." This isn't a new model.
OK, I'll go back into isolation and wait a little longer.
Posted by whatdoIknow
February 21, 2008 11:08 AM
It would also be nice to just be able to click on the name of a poster and communicate with him/her since we can't do it through the regular postings.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/02/talking-points-memo-suggestion.php#comment-2610855
March 4, 2008 2:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
To sum up my hogging of this thread, looks to me like you are not ready for a "FAQ." That's putting the horse before the cart. You don't have a working site yet, it's just that people are being amazingly patient, expecting things to get resolved.
March 4, 2008 2:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, one more thing:
It is really dumb to furnish a text editor for Reader Blog posts (which one cannot shut off) and not furnish it for comments.
That's very confusing to anyone, as they have to use html in comments and absolutely must not use html in posts. Either have it for both, or don't have it at all.
March 4, 2008 2:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cross-link to member Tankard's current post
TPM Cafe Is Now Suckful
and the comments on it, because in 24 hours no one will be able to find it without them:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/03/tpm-cafe-is-now-suckful.php
March 4, 2008 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Andrew,
I still am unable to understand why TPM traded in what seemed to be a perfectly operable format that rarely screwed up, was easy to use and understand and it looked a whole lot better than what you have now. I wonder why you all put yourselves and everyone who comes here through this? What's the benefit? The new format continues, from my perspective anyway, to be vastly inferior in just about every way as it has from the first day it clunked online. It's unreliable and hard to use though a littel bit less so than before--but truly not by much. In a phrase, it sucks in comparison to the old version... big time.
Can you explain why you all made the decision to put the site and the visitors here through all this? What's the rationale? Is there some theory that would somehow demonstrate to someone like me that, in the end, there is something better about the current system that makes it worth it? I understand that you all have made up your minds to go with what amounts (IMHO) to a "new" coke version of all this, but I'd genuinely like to know why this is a good idea and worth all these headaches and difficulties from your point of view. Perhaps I can be persuaded. I really don't know one way or the other because if you've provided some rationale previously, I missed it. And if I did miss it, my apologies, but I'd still like to know.
This seems to me like one of those classic decisions that was made to improve things, but that actually just made everything worse and more complicated, yet management sticks with it because they are determined things start improving and it never ends. Unfortunately, the problems rarely ever actually do get better.
More specifically, I get very, very tired of having to enter and reenter the password twice every time and to have to wonder whether a post will actually appear once you hit send because of the sometimes really long delays! Oy! What a nuisance! And please do explain... timing out serves what purpose that is user friendly?
And, one last thing, the portion of the profile that has comments is really schizophrenic. For a long while it had under my "recent" posts a few things I had written in 05 or 06 and that was it, nothing even vaguely recent. Now there seems to be one truly recent post and then it skips back a few years. What's with that? It could be a nice feature if it allowed a person to find what they've written previously, but, at least for me, it doesn't do that.
March 4, 2008 11:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
If it hasn't been mentioned in this thread, in the FAQ you should let people know if they recommend something on the front page, it will then show up in their profile page, which could help them with a quick link to posts in which they're interested.
March 5, 2008 9:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
OK, I'm getting links to recent comments I've made. Are we going to be able to see in our profile page if there are any replies to our comments? That would be very nice. It would also help to have a link from the comment posted on our profile page directly to that comment in the original thread.
March 5, 2008 3:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Will the invaluable "tracker" link return??
March 6, 2008 3:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
wayitwas:
No.
That was a feature of the old software which management replaced because, among other reasons given by Josh Marshall, they said it was too hard for people to figure out how to use. Right?
All you have now to track with is
1) your own last 10 comments list on Your Profile page
2) the Recommended Reader Blogs menu, which is a by-vote popularity contest, and those that make it there are only kept there 24 hrs.
3) the regular Reader Blogs menu which scrolls very quickly
It would be possible to "track" a few threads with the "Recommended Posts" list on "Your Profile" page, by recommending threads, but that's not working, not updating properly after the initial recommends. And it does not appear to work with Reader Blogs, only with contributor blogs.
March 7, 2008 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Recommended menu list on My Profile still is not updating. My recommends are stuck on ancient, and that appears to be the case for many other users, too.
It's really outrageous. After many weeks, the software simply is not doing what it is supposed to do out of the box. From the viewpoint of a user, it's very clear TPM is being screwed.
Other recent user complaints I ran across in reading comments:
March 7, 2008 4:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Helloooooooooooo out there in fix-it land. Any thought on whether we will ever be able to check for replies to our comments from our profile page? Something like that would really facilitate conversation.
March 17, 2008 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink