Thanks for your efforts, Josh, and for listening to us oldtimer's comments about needing more information from you about what to expect with all the changes.

I'm probably too bandwidth-challenged to be much good as a beta-tester, but I did want to make a suggestion. Would it be possible to have reader blogs tied to the specific TPM sections? I'm thinking particularly of the possibility of having blogs that are specifically candidate-oriented viewable only in the Election Central portion of TPM. There could be a checkbox or some similar device so a person could direct his/her blog post to either Election Central or other parts of the TPM site. That might be one way of encouraging more extended conversation about other topics at the rest of the site, which I have to admit I miss.

OTOH, given the incredibly high level of interest in the elections, my suggestion may fairly unworkable. So many people want to talk about the elections that it may be too difficult to try to restrain that in any way, not to mention whatever software difficulties it might create. At any rate, the idea is just my two cents...

This is a delightful service.

I'm not completely sure I understand what you're describing in this case. But the blank byline issue is one of the issues this upgrade is supposed to fix.

Those improvements are very impressive. The only thing I could make not work right was the "recommend this" function. If I recommended one of the nonsense posts, then left the website for another, and clicked the link in the email to get back here, my recommendation always was missing - the number of recommendations remained as it was before I clicked "recommend this". Minor glitch, with most likely a simple reason. For example, I wonder if this is something that prevents someone from doing multiple recommendations of a post???

It would seem to me that the ability to change my password to something different than the one you give me through my email would be nice.

Everytime I want to comment here I have to go dig up a new password -- all attempts to change it to something that I will remember have been unsuccessful to date.

Is having the ability to change my password too much to ask?

And the post does not show up immediately, if that was a goal. BTW, using Firefox for now. Formatting is a bit more reliable, although my copy (sometimes conveniently) can't display some ad content, since it tries to associate all moving graphics with Quicktime.

Want to hear some good news? I really like the way that posts show up to the right of comments, so you don't have to back-click to get back to the list. That is a good feature.

Good job on that one! Don't faint!

I actually see some long-timers in this post, but the few times I have stopped by since the software downgrade I really haven't seen any names I recognized. Whatever the goal for the downgrade was it seems to have been accomplished, but IMHO as a charter contributor I think it is too late.

sPh

And whaddya know - even though I had gone through the whole "try to post - not recognized - log out - log in" cycle on Friday I get the "not recognized" error with this post. Luckily I learned my lesson and had done a copy of my text before trying to submit.

After two days with the Beta version I remain extremely impressed. Most of the irritating aspects of this version are corrected. Just seeing a comment appear on the site within a minute is shocking after getting used to the delays we now have.

Remaining to be worked on, as far as I can tell, are the lack of a preview or editing feature, and the lack of clear specifications of what html tags are to be used. But, take my word for it, major progress is at hand. (Better yet, join the Beta testing group.)

What you guys have in beta is light years better. I have sent some notes to your consultants but I'm really pleased overall.

The thing is, Josh, and I say this as a loyal reader who would no sooner say "I'm voting for McCain if I don't get my way" than say "I'm leaving TPM if I don't get my way..."

I still prefer the old Cafe to the debugged new one.