Some Quick Changes
We've been reading your feedback closely and thinking a lot about how to adjust the discussion elements of the site to improve your experience. In that light, we've made two changes to how the reader posts are presented that we hope you'll like. Details after the break.
First, we've moved the number of Recent Posts listed in the sidebar of TPMCafe from 10 to 25. The thinking here is that, as many have said, with the number of posts that are being put up these days sometimes good posts drop off of that list without finding an audience to recommend them. This will give each post more time to breathe, and you more time to find good stuff that you want to recommend.
Second, we've removed Recent Posts from TPM Election Central and TPMmuckraker. The idea here is to make sure that the community is focused here at TPMCafe and that only the very best content gets cross-posted over to the news blogs. The more we can create a coherent community that is discussing and promoting the best posts, the better we'll serve those other blogs.
So, the ten most recommended posts of the last 24 hours will now live here at TPMCafe with the 25 most recent posts below. And the ten most recommended tagged as TPM Election Central and TPMmuckraker respectively will live in the sidebars of those sites.
Now, I know there will be some momentary discomfort as you get used to the shift. But once you've settled in, let us know what you think. We want to try to use these features to cultivate the best community possible, so give us feedback!
That's great! Thanks for much for listening.
May 8, 2008 4:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
sounds good
May 8, 2008 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are there any plans to fix the comment system? It is buggy as hell.
May 8, 2008 5:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
In what sense DFD?
May 8, 2008 5:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the main complaints would be comments that are meant as replies end up at the bottom of threads, double posts, and general usability.
May 8, 2008 5:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
When you try to reply, and submit with the box checked, it doesn't get posted as a reply?
May 8, 2008 5:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Correct. I know other posters have had this happen as well.
May 8, 2008 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Any pattern that you've noticed?
May 8, 2008 5:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
None that I can tell.
May 8, 2008 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
It seems to be fixed from what I can tell. But if you "reply to X" (checked box), it isn't locked in until you're logged in (and it doesn't seem to be logging out as much now). So, when you reply and then log in, it defaults back to a regular reply-to-post. It's best to log in first and then double check that "reply to" is correct before you send.
May 8, 2008 6:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's exactly the situation I've noted. In fact, it just happened to me with this post. It recognized me (cookie), I clicked "reply", it asked me to log in, I logged in, then had to go back to the Don Key response and click "reply" again. EVEN THEN, the reply box was NOT CHECKED.
May 8, 2008 8:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Weird. Ok, I'll pass this on to our tech folks.
May 8, 2008 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've been having this very problem as well. Well, I should say that I've pretty much stopped posting because of this headache. I just wanted to see if it has been fixed....nope. Just had it now!
May 9, 2008 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the improvements, Andrew.
Fairly often, replies do not end up posted as replies. Perhaps people get timed out by some algorithm before they click send, and the check in the "In reply to" box, while still visible on the screen, is no longer recorded?
Obviously, when messages are written as replies to specific messages and not posted as such, discussions quickly lose coherence. It's also not too hard to cause offense; there can be surprising relationships between statements never meant to be adjacent.
May 8, 2008 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ya, that's obviously not good.
How often does this happen? 1 out or 10 times you do a reply? 3 out or 10? More?
May 8, 2008 5:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think a lot of times this happens because so many people have replied to one comment.
May 8, 2008 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
It seems to me it was happening quite frequently two or three weeks ago and is happening less frequently since. However, I've been too busy to enter many messages lately so I'm a poor observer.
The reason I think the problem may be related to being timed-out is that I have the impression it's more likely if you reflect on your original idea for a reply and begin to revise and refine. The more you ponder or refine language, the more likely you are not to find the reply posted where you intended. Tough to judge what's going on from individual experiences, though. Do you have access to any aggregate statistics about things like time logged in and number of threaded replies vs. nonthreaded?
May 9, 2008 5:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
That happens when you hit reply and you've been booted off; when you log back in, it is as though it is a comment, and the reply "check" is gone. If you notice that, you have to go back upthread and click on reply again.
Since being booted off is less of a problem (but still happens -- happened to me this morning), that is why people are seeing it less.
I still want to see an easy way to look at a comment that is a reply to my comment, without having to go through the whole thread again.
Also, I still want new replies to be highlighted (for obvious reasons).
May 9, 2008 9:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Andrew:
Good decision! now if you could only remove the months-out-of-date graphs of the presidential campaigns from the site! :)
Also - I think most people consider the REPLY system flawed because one cannot either EDIT or DELETE their posts once they are made - a shortcoming, considering that information can change quickly these days.
Other than that - the new alignment makes sense! Good job!
May 8, 2008 5:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
The edit and delete features would be good, they're on our development list.
May 8, 2008 5:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even adding a preview before final submission would go a long way here.
May 8, 2008 7:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
What's needed is a site redesign. I'm sorry but this site upgrade(downgrade) is horrible. If I ever rolled out a project like this I'd expect to be fired. One word - Hierarchy.
What exactly was this site change supposed to do? I don't see any way in which the site is better as a user. I hope their revenue or server bills or some crap is better.
May 9, 2008 12:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Seconded with amendment -- simply revert to the excellent interface that was in use eight months ago.
June 11, 2008 1:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Andrew:
Excellent news! :)
May 8, 2008 5:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great. I think that this is an excellent solution. Thanks so much for addressing out concerns.
I also see that the bug that prohibited us from getting to old posts has been fixed. Amusingly, I had briefly changed my screen name to Qenghis for a joke. Now "Qenghis" seems to be permanently fixed to my archived posts along with a yellow-collared avatar. It's not something that needs to be fixed--I can live with a yellow-collared Qenghis--just figured that I would share.
But I do have one low-priority feature request for the archive. The posts are grouped by week, which makes it a pain to go back to old posts. If possible, I would rather see a complete index by title.
(I must say, it's a little disconcerting to me to see that I have posted at least once a week since the beginning of Feb. Oh the countless hours that have disappeared into the blogosphere.)
May 8, 2008 5:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Both of these things are just a result of the way the archives are designed.
Because we're a small company on a small budget, we have to make sure we're not overburdening our servers. So when a weekly archive is built, its designed not to update completely live if you change your name, or picture, etc. Otherwise every time you change your name our system would have to go back and rebuild all your posts fresh, which would be a lot of extra work.
So, the weekly archives are built that way to save space, and will eventually shift to the new picture and name you have, they just do so slower so that TPM employees can eat and all that good stuff ;)
May 8, 2008 5:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the explanation, Andrew. (Though I must say that it raises more questions. Are you caching the archive pages? But why cache, since the traffic for such pages is surely very low. And if not caching, why not pull the current info directly from the database? You don't have to answer. I'm just being curious. And I'm happy to be Qengis as long as your software deems fit.)
May 8, 2008 7:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
It sounds like you understand this better than I do. But I think the basic point stands that the are set up to only do periodic updates to save the servers. Let me know if it doesn't eventually change tough and I'll flag it with the tech folks.
May 8, 2008 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks. The content must be getting cached. It's just not clear to me why it's getting cached, since, while I would love to think that my February posts are putting heavy stress on your servers, I can't imagine that anyone other than I have seen them since they went off the list. But I'm sure that your developers have their reasons, and it probably has to do with the broader architecture of the site.
May 8, 2008 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
(Maybe? Doesn't this sound like a poor use of caching and a misunderstanding of databases?)
May 9, 2008 12:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Uh huh, but I don't know enough about their system to judge, so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. The caching may be designed for the higher traffic pages, and it's just easier for them to use the same mechanism for the low-traffic pages, even though it's unnecessary. Who knows?
May 9, 2008 12:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
(No one)
May 9, 2008 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Being fond of parentheses, I must admire the length of your parenthetical comment.
May 8, 2008 8:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
It looks like Genghis is able to search back in his "latest comments" section, but I'm not able to do so in mine. I can see a page of comments, but there's no button to access past weeks. There also doesn't appear to be any notice of when I joined, as Genghis mentions appears with his comments. Although in my case, perhaps that's not a bad thing. If Genghis rues the amount of time he's spent here since this past February, my own join date of a couple of years ago might make me feel even more guilty.
Just letting you know, Andrew. If it were up to me, I'd place the return of an editing feature (or at least a preview) far higher on the list of priorities than the correction of this apparent archive glitch.
I also think fotw's comment about having separate lists of new comments and recommended posts for the Election Central folks and and us here at the Cafe would make a lot of sense. Why should there be a combined recommended posts list, if the parts of the site, and presumably the interests of those who post at the two areas, are separate? If you offered separate lists, you could always also run a "Top 5 (or 10) Recommended Posts at Election Central" list here at the Cafe, and the inverse at Election Central, to offer people the chance to see what was happening elsewhere at the site, while still maintaining each separate area's flavor. As it is now, the election has permeated just about every nook and cranny of the site, but it doesn't have to be that way. I personally like the election-related material, but see no problem with restricting it more to Election Central.
Thanks for your continued efforts on all this, Andrew.
May 9, 2008 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
On my Safari browser on imac, since last Thursday I've been unable to move off the main TPM page. Error message:
May 8, 2008 6:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your Safari browser has been frozen since last week? Can you force quit it? You're using a different browser to jump over here?
May 8, 2008 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
No it isn't frozen, and works fine on other sites, it's that on TPM if I click on a user blog or a page other than the main TPM page, I get an error message. I'm logging in from a friend's computer today, with a different browser, where everything works fine. Will try the suggestion below when I get home.
May 8, 2008 7:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi wayitwas,
I had much the same dilemma around that time too on my Mac G4 PowerBook laptop running Safari 3.1.1. I was eventually denied access to even the main page! ooooo was I creeped out! As I recall the error message I got was just or about the same as you got.
After some agonizing hours without TPM, suddenly I was mysteriously inspired to go into the Safari preferences, and under the Security pane I clicked on the 'Show Cookies' button. There I found a search box in the upper right and typed in 'talking points' and discovered over three hundred cookies quickly listed. I selected 'Remove All', and hit the Done button on the lower right.
In a flash I was back to all the glorious wonders to which I have become so accustomed*^!
ps I also found another set of TPM cookies which I deleted as well, but now cannot recall the terms by which they were grouped and listed.
pps I'd done quite a bit of recommendations all over the place and suspect that may be related to this problem, but really am not expert enough to know for sure.
May 8, 2008 7:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks so much, Wholly Rogue Empire! I'll try it as soon as I get home (I'm on a friend's computer today, with a different browser).
May 8, 2008 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
wayitwas --
swift! let us know!
May 8, 2008 8:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
...And if it does not work, Firefox 3 Beta 5 has caught Safari up in speed and with the GrApple theme it integrates perfectly with Leopard.
May 8, 2008 8:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
roo_P --
thanks for the tip. I'm still using Tiger (10.4.11), and don't plan on going for the Leopard on this G4 1.5 Ghz PowerBook. Maybe if I got a new iMac, which I probly won't ... I mostly only surf the web anyway ...
May 8, 2008 11:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Success! I'm back in business. I had only 15 to remove, but that was apparently enough to cause a problem. Many thanks!
May 8, 2008 10:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
wayitwas --
you made my day! I so seldom can actually be helpful with these kinds of problems!
May 8, 2008 10:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the (somewhat) resegregation, Andrew. Now, I'm not a bigot and there's nothing wrong with being a TPMEC junkie (I mean if you can live like that- polls on the hour and such- who am I to judge?) but I have found myself slumming in all of these political gotcha threads... I'm kidding, but it's easy to get caught up in the he said-she said hooray-for-the-hometeam stuff while some very good non-horserace blogs or book club discussions seem to come and go without a chance to follow as closely as in the past.
May 8, 2008 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can you just set a cookie with no time restrictions and leave people logged in?
It's annoying to have to re-log in over and over on the CPUs I use to view this site. I have noticed you don't auto-log-out as fast as before, but it's still too soon.
Really, what are the odds someone walks away from a CPU and someone else starts commenting as them? This isn't a banking website with secure financial data.
May 8, 2008 6:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
And as a failsafe, you do have the log-out button people can use on public computers. Most of us are net-savvy enough to know to log out on unsecure computers. And even if someone doesn't log out at a net cafe or whatever, the risk is absolutely minimal that someone will comment as someone else.
May 8, 2008 6:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
How often are you being logged out? I'm almost never logged out since we made the changes. Can you give me details on your experience so we can figure out if it's a glitch or just a disagreement about the actual settings?
May 8, 2008 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am noy understanding why "almost never" is the standard you are shooting for. Whereas the problem seems to be reduced, the fact that we get timed out at all seems a bit overkill. Especially for a site that involves lots of reading and clickable links.
Having said that, thanks for the improvements thus far.
May 8, 2008 9:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, the system is set up for security reason to time out eventually. You may be right that there's not a lot of chance of someone using someone else's account, but it would be incredibly difficult to sort out if that did happen.
May 9, 2008 2:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
But what is it set at currently? Seems like I get logged out every few hours, perhaps 5 or so.
Setting it at 24 hours would be good, or once a day -- then people log in once daily in the morning (or whenever).
I really think the issue of ever having to sort out people posting as someone else is about moot. Just make a prominent reminder at log-IN that folks should log-OUT if they are not on their own personal computer. Then the responsibility is on the user, and if something ever happens it's their fault (and hence nothing for YOU to sort out). Not like a troll here would accidentally walk up on a CPU used by a true fan at a public library. A stranger would make one or two comments at most -- not much of a big deal -- and then that public CPU be auto-logged off in under 24 hours. It's just like if someone leaves their Yahoo email up on a public computer -- the responsibility is on the user to not be careless.
Just make a prominent note for people to log off on public CPUs and up the cookie time, por favor.
May 9, 2008 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you login to the same server or company that maintains the server?
If so, you experience of the site can be most untypical of our experience, as we do not!
May 13, 2008 12:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's a start.
May 8, 2008 6:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Love the new setup.
May 8, 2008 6:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Andrew,
This sounds like it could be an improvement. I have to say, I seldom check out the TPMCafe site; instead, I just hop around the "recommended" posts I see on Election Central. But I'm open to change.
I will say, I'll be happier when we can post on topics other than muck and the election. (Of course, we can now but there's virtually no chance of it being seen by much of an audience.)
Also, can you ban that Genghis guy? Or at least his shirt?
Thank you,
a baby.
May 8, 2008 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Genghis will have to defend his own shirt, I'm not going there.
As for other topics, you can blog about whatever you want! TPMCafe has plenty of readers and if you get up into the recommended section here you'll get lots of eyeballs.
Finally, I hope you'll come over and help us choose what posts get into that recommended section you like. The better the voters, the better the winner, I think.
May 8, 2008 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't see why not. Everyone else has. My shirt is the "great prostitute" of TPM.
As for the baby, don't encourage it. The last time it ventured into the cafe we got two reader recommended posts that said nothing but, "Dear Chairman Dean". I'm telling you, it's evil.
May 8, 2008 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Did anyone else find these two sentences, back to back, more than disturbing? Possibly illegal?
May 9, 2008 12:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
we're waiting on a call-back from the DOJ right now ...
May 9, 2008 1:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am afraid it will be a long wait - the DOJ is stuck in a self referential loop as it tries to determine its own legality under the current administration. All phone logs have been lost in software upgrade that also lost all important administration emails and previous blog posts.
Call back in November. Scratch that - Jan 09
May 9, 2008 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
About that reply glitch.
I've noticed that if someone has two posts in a row, the reply will go to the more recent one rather than the one you are trying to reply to.
It's happened a couple of times to me, and I even have double checked to make sure I hit reply on the proper post.
Also, apparently, if a username contains quotemarks (" ") no one can reply to that poster.
Weird but true. Try responding to a user named "present" 's posts.
May 8, 2008 6:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
If I could offer a dissenting opinion. I rather liked seeing both the recommended (still curious about the metric that gets some "recommended" and other equally good end up overlooked) and the recent -- because often, the readers are beating you to the news.
Plus you can also get a sense, by who is screaming about what, which things are "hot topics."
Maybe you should move the campaign calendar, Intrade and some of the other stuff to the front page to make room there (TMPEC).
OR....
You could create a separate Cafe -- TPM WATERCOOLER where ALL of the reader blogs for an entire day are listed. It is frustrating to find same-day blogs tucked away in the archives.
Editing features are direly needed.
Just one person's opinion.
May 8, 2008 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can see all the reader posts on the reader blog, which is at tpmcafe.tallkingpointsmemo.com/talk.
May 8, 2008 7:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Andrew --
'Sorry, the page you requested cannot be found'
is all I got ...
May 8, 2008 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here? http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/
May 8, 2008 8:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Andrew --
now, your link *did* work for me ... but it (the texts of posts) is full of 'code'-type garble interspersed with the usual English words content ... ???
when I merely copied your above-mentioned listing (same words) into the url location blank in Safari it brought up the other ...
(I didn't enter (type in) the 'http://' myself, however, in my first try)
thanks
May 8, 2008 9:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Andrew --
whoops -- I guess that code-garble stuff was just on some individual posts, *not* common to all! so I guess that's okay ...
May 8, 2008 9:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Andrew, do you see going to that page and scrolling entire posts, with 10 posts per page,no subject grouping, no means of sorting posts, with thousands of members and hundreds of posts, as being efficient or very useful for readers?
This site's organization is horrible. I hate just moving between links on tpm. I love TPM but this site sucks.
May 9, 2008 1:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Andrew.
May 8, 2008 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
this may already have been suggested. But what about a button or something you can click just below the rec list... that directs readers to "recent reader posts" Nothing more than that... but they can click and immediately get to the cafe list of recent posts.
Thanks for streamlining this, Andrew!
May 8, 2008 7:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd just like to say, being a somewhat new abuser of your system, that I like this change you've made today, and I love TPM overall.
Thanks.
May 8, 2008 8:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
LisB --
I've heard some pretty startling stories about how easily feelings of love are apt to course through the veins of some newbie abusers ... well, they often think it's love .... can you make those all-important distinctions??
I have to tell you: ultimately you've got to decide between continued abuse and love -- I hope you don't have to learn the hard way ...
;>@
May 8, 2008 9:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh please, don't go there. I've had so many jokes made about me already, LOL.
But seriously, I can already see the improvement.
I can read a new post now, comment on it if I want to, and then move on to the next, and then see the next one after that, and then scroll down to the next, etc....
Used to be, a new post would be there for all of 10 minutes.
I'm liking this new format very much. I'm seeing posts from people I've never seen before tonight.
In all seriousness, I was joking when I said I was an abuser. I can't even kill a fly without feeling guilty. And now, with the new and improved TPM posting system, I can rest assured that the fly on the wall will be read by everybody.
I abuse this place by posting nonsense that makes sense only to me sometimes, but knowing that my nonsense will stick around longer, I will be more careful.
There. How's that?
Peace,
Lis
May 8, 2008 10:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
LisB --
Yes, yes, I do agree that these are nice improvements which facilitate greater access to all posts and comments ...
I couldn't resist taking your joke over the top! That's my kind of preferred nonsensical abusive bent ... seeing how far I could take the tone so that one might really really wonder: can this be for real? We know there are certainly people who might ...
I've been known to confess to taking out roaches (the kind that crawl and hide in old buildings) with Joy! (Joy -- or any liquid detergent diluted with some water and used in a spray bottle to drown or suffocate the little buggers! hahahaha) But I like to be kind and gentle with pets and other loved ones!
You make a delightful target! No wonder people can't resist ...
May 8, 2008 10:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's a good thing and I laud the decision.
I couldn't understand why one would work several years to develop individual brands for different subdomains, and then in one fell swoop, break down the walls of those brands and basically make it one site again. It's one thing to like the idea of someone being able to stay logged in across all the sites, it's another thing to give the large audience for one sub-domain the power to dominate your other 3 audiences.
By the way, I didn't buy the implication that I got from management that this was just a temporary domination that would go away once the primary was over. The reverse thing could happen with a big news event, say, for example, Bush does an October surprise of bombing Iran: a bunch of people wanting to blog about that could descend on the site, and, with their voting power, shove everything else off the menu, and place those those interested in politics or muckraking into a minority position. Then instead of all "Obama v. Hillary" all the time, you'd have all Iran all the time. You developed sub-domains for a reason.
May 8, 2008 9:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, geez!
I'd hope if Bush did have the unmittaged gall to bomb Iran, we'd all be up in arms about it!
May 8, 2008 10:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
So you're basically arguing that the blogophere has a serious case of A.D.D. and is incapable of paying attention to and discussing more than one issue at a time, a sort of global groupthink, a giant office water cooler? You may be right, but please continue to hope for a cure. :-)
May 8, 2008 10:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Something like that, yeah.
Pity we didn't have more of that there "ADD" over Iraq.
Maybe 4,000 fine Americans would be alive today.
Just choose your subjects with a bit more care.
May 8, 2008 10:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know, workerbee, we actually did bomb in Somalia recently,
Thousands protest US bombing in Somalia: organisers
4 days ago, MOGADISHU (AFP)
and I'd be willing to bet a majority of the commenters on this site don't even know that it happened, much less care, as they are too busy being "fully informed" on the water cooler topic of the last few months, Hillary v. Obama.
As to are the kids learnin' after spending so much time on this groupthink exercise--well, turns out if you take away the name and photo, some can't even recognize that candidate which they espouse to vehemently dislike.
May 9, 2008 1:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good related comment on Purple State's "Insufferably Dull: The New TPMCafe" Reader Blog:
May 8, 2008 10:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
But Art, that was the point of this shift. With 25 recent comments in the sidebar, each post should have three or four hours to be discovered by recommenders.
Also, as I think i said in that thread, the your conversations page we're having designed will help you keep track of threads even if they're old or don't get mass attention or whatever. We're just having them start that, but once it's done I think folks will love it.
May 8, 2008 10:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I know, that's why I said I thought it was a good decision to "re-segregate." I had just seen oceankat's comment right after coming here and I thought it put your purpose much more clearly and succinctly than all my high falutin' meta blather, which, er, might make some eyes glaze over. :-)
May 9, 2008 12:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
oops, my link code didn't work for the above, I will try again:
oceankat comment
Which gives me the chance to say:
Where is that promised preview function? If you wait long enough to install it, you'll eventually spend what it would have cost in server storage for duplicate posts and comments and correction posts and comments. Seems like contributors or editors who fix their posts have it, so it's not like it's a major project. (Which is why they invented preview of submissions on the internet, I think. Imagine trying to purchase things on the net without a preview function, much less edit.)
May 8, 2008 10:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Andrew, for listening to reader feeback and for making these changes.
I have to say, though, that I think the little guy has a good point. Under the new system, readers who only visit TPM-EC will only see posts that have garnered recommendations from TPM-Cafe users. That seems a little counterintuitive - shouldn't TPM-EC readers be selecting the best election-related posts themselves? I know that these are overlapping communities, but shouldn't each community select its own favorite posts?
And I also want to broach (again) a suggestion I've made on these threads before. I'd really like to see a list of "editors' picks" separate from the bi-weekly blog posts, as a column on the side of the page. When a TPM staffer sees a reader post that really stands out, he could add it to the list - new additions would bump older ones off the bottom. This would give thoughtful posts on unusual topics or offering unpopular views a fighting chance to gain an audience. With only the 'recommended' list remaining at Election Central, there's a risk that the only posts will be those relaying a fact or an opinion that's particularly popular. And that'd be a shame.
May 8, 2008 10:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've also been asking for editor recommendations in the sidebar. I don't always catch Gelman's recommendations, and when I do, they're often stale. Even if the content itself is not stale, there's little conversation in the thread. Addressing this would require both more visibility for editors' recommendations as well as more timely recommendations.
This issue could also be addressed within the reader recommendations list by, say, putting a star next to editor recommended items. That would avoid duplicating the same post twice in the sidebar.
May 9, 2008 12:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am on this bandwagon...
how much for a night with your shirt?
May 9, 2008 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the Editor's Recommendation's list is an interesting idea. We'll mull it. The only problem is it may require bandwidth (metaphorically) internally that we don't have for now.
As for the re-segregation of the sites, we considered that. In the end, though, we want TPM to be a single community, not three or four separate communities. And we think it's healthier sometimes to have the discussion of all these topics in one place as opposed to in individual silos.
May 9, 2008 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
And a chat room would be nice, where we can all talk personally with one another without it being published....but maybe that's because I have a crush on DF and Genghis and would love to talk with them one on one.
Never mind. ;)
May 8, 2008 10:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm deeply honored to have joined the inner circle of your virtual crushes. Just to be clear, I don't do threesomes, though DF does apparently like my shirt.
May 9, 2008 12:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
a chat room
Which would involve, somehow, a directed channel for communication, if only to direct a person to said chat room
The old site, for all it's slowness, had more features, including the "send a message" link.
May 9, 2008 2:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Warning: Grumpy Alert!
For you newbies that I don't recognize 'round these parts, I first logged into TPM Cafe in June 2005.
Let me say, at no fault of your own you don't have a clue what you're missing.
As pointed out in my initial and only blog post when this new and improved mess came on line, "This messed up joint has lost something in the translation."
And it's still speaking Chinese as far as I can tell.
Still no comment preview option. No comment edit feature. And no personal blogs archived from the previous Cafe site.
Keep up the good work there Andrew. It's a hard job of stringing the folks along with all these little changes, but someone has to be paid to do it.
~OGD~
May 9, 2008 2:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
From time to time I've had more or less time, and more or less intererst, to spend at this site, but all in all I've been here for a couple of years and seen a couple of transitions.
There is no reason to go into details, but a few things would be more important to mention than other things:
1/ Never, ever, allow your software to automatically log out someone who has logged in, except if one actively and deliberatly has asked for that kind of hurdle against illegitimate use of one's account.
2/ Do everything in your power to avoid a need for re-registering and avoid passwords to be forgotten by the system. Your valuable contributors are, unfortunately, more sensitive to such resistance than the others.
3/ Do ensure that any kind of private messages can be sent between registered users.
4/ Consider presenting new comments in old threads one has contributed to, or otherwise marked as interesting.
5/ Prioritize a preview-function, and ways to correct smaller errors in done comments.
6/ Think hard and seriously about threading. It is's hardly satisfactory if a "reply"-link to a certain comment is by default producing a comment of the main post.
May 9, 2008 6:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
I do also discover that my use of the html anchor tag doesn't work. There may be reasons and explanations for this, like me not being used to needing quotation marks in there, but it's still unsatisfactory.
May 9, 2008 6:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Comments noted Guest. On anchor tags, we just limit the amount of html you can drop in for security reasons.
May 9, 2008 9:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Am I the only one that noticed that while the idea of increasing posts in the recent list is good, combining muckraker and election central posts into this new list doesn't really give them anymore "breathing room." By combining two lists of 10 you've only given them an added buffer of 5. The double posts alone negate any benefit you'd gain from that.
Being able to edit posts for spelling and grammar and also to add updates would be nice. If you could also delete a post, you'd solve the pesky double post problem.
May 9, 2008 11:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Andrew, The two recent changes are a great improvement.
Suggestion: now that the "Recent Reader Posts" is a longer list, and a longer scroll to get to the bottom of, why not highlight the "Recent Reader Posts" header as a link, to serve the same function as the "All Reader Posts" link currently at the bottom?
Also, can the timer on the "Recent Reader Posts" be changed to add new posts as soon as they are entered? We get a lot of redundancy through people submitting essentially the same "Breaking News" posts, simply because they haven't bothered to check the other most recent posts.
Thanks!
May 9, 2008 12:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
In the age of "I scooped it first" you will only be able to reduce the redundancy by a factor of the latency time divided by the number of posters.
AKA hardly at all
May 9, 2008 1:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Besides a "back channel" communiction link, you might consider a feature (common among the free(reference made to economic considerations alluded to by above by AG) sites like Blogger, viz an email alert telling that one's comment has been replied to--failing which , there really is no easy way to track and reply given the time intervals which frequently apply.
Also, listing threads chronologically by their inception is dumb . They should be preserved and listed by the latest comment, which enhances the ability to have "fresh" interaction.
May 9, 2008 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Andrew,
I like the change of moving the recent posts and have found the site to be working fine using FF.
Thanks for all you folks do.
May 9, 2008 5:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Any chance of having a FAQ link, for things like uploading an avatar?
May 10, 2008 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
How many violations of the new TPM policy would subject someone to a ban? Example here. Please post comments at the link. Thank you.
May 12, 2008 1:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
where is a good place to a thumb nail sized photo ? don't have a much of a collection
July 20, 2008 8:18 PM | Reply | Permalink