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Talking Points Memo -- Suggestions and Complaints
We've had some time to work with the bugs (like the one that remains, where my log-on password is not accepted when I post), but those are irritants, which will eventually disappear -- hopefully. There are some other features of the old TPM that I miss that don't seem to be a part of the new one. Has anyone noticed how many fewer posts there are? How few actual conversations there are? Was that the goal? Because TPM was unique in my experience, and those qualities seem to be gone. I will make a list, but I reserve the right to add to it as I think of other issues:
1. There is no indication of, and therefore no way to pass over previously read posts; this can take a lot of time, although the general decrease in posting has made that less of a problem.
2. There is no way to search your own comments for reactions. The latest posts I have searched for myself are from 3 years ago, and even then, they don't include responses. TPM has always been a site where conversation was a part of the deal.
Give and take is now possible only if you have hours to devote to it. And even THAT is only true because the number of postings is down considerably.
3. I agree that the ratings were abused, but it would be nice to have at least an option to support a particular post. Why change completely instead of making an improvement?
4. If you make a comment in response to a post, you are thrown back to a place that you cannot figure out where you are. You also get NO acknowledgment that your comment was accepted. You may as well go somewhere else and, IF you remember where you were, you might just come back. Otherwise, you might justas well go to another site altogether, because your response is going to be delayed.
5. We cannot edit when we make a duplicate post, or we want to make an improvement. Why not?
6. When I make a comment, sometimes I am asked for my name and password, and sometimes I am not. I have no way of knowing when, and if my post is accepted or not. That is why duplicate posts get in.
7. The biggest thing for me is realizing that so many of the "regulars" have just given up. If you can't have a conversation, you may just as well go to Huff-Po (where it is even worse than here -- SO FAR!--) and just read rather than participate.
So I ask the TPM management... what do you want? Do you want participation? If so, surely you have seen the drop-off. If you want simply to compete with Huff-Po and Daily Kos, then you are on the right track. You attract great posters and authors. Your everyday people, ( whom I happen to think add a huge and unique quality to this site) will drop off unless you make an effort to include and accommodate us.
I hope you will.
Jan
Comments (30)
It'd also be nice if you could go back an edit posts.
Or at least a preview feature so you can edit your post before you commit to sending it up.
February 16, 2008 10:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I couldn't agree more.
February 16, 2008 11:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
It seems apparent that Josh did not want to continue having the type of blog TPM Cafe grew to be. In one way I agree with him - as more and more fly by posters showed up to regurgitate talking points but not contribute anything themselves TMP Cafe was becoming another overbusy, but underinteresting (?) site like Daily KOS became for me. If that bothered Josh I can see why he made as extreme a change here as he did.
The glitches here take away the remaining interest I had for this site. I especially dislike the long delay between when I send a comment and when it is visible on the site. It is like being back in the 600 baud telephone modem days.
When TPM Cafe first started I viewed it as a magazine - where I could browse, read an article or two, and best of all, post a comment or two. I would still enjoy it if it becomes that for me again. But, it clearly will not again be a place for long strings of conversation type comments with the easy ability to rejoin the conversation at any time to respond to what others said. That is a shame.
February 17, 2008 12:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree 100%, hoppy. I'm sure if I check back in 12 hours (but not sooner) I'll be able to read my own comment. After roughly 2 years and 30 weeks as a member I find it interesting and disappointing that Andrew and Josh are silent on this topic.
February 17, 2008 8:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Return to your original format, this one stinks.
(especially to those without a Master's Degree in Computer 'stuff'.)
February 17, 2008 8:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Seems like Josh and Andrew needed to clean up a clunky mismatch between platforms--TPM/Muck/Election vs the remaining Cafe. I've been moaning about it since, at my blog,
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/tom_wright/
Josh and Andrew both weighed in, first with indignation, then with a bit more info.
We're maintaining a sort of rump Cafe over at Eric Stepp's forum, Lucidity:
http://www.projectlucidity.com/forum/
February 17, 2008 9:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree, too! I finally decided to create an account after reading the cafe posts for a couple of months, and then came the changeover. I sort of feel like I finally made it to the party, but everyone left as soon as I showed up...
Not to make it about "me," or anything.
February 17, 2008 9:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Many of us holdovers are still around, trying to figure out how to use the existing system.
February 17, 2008 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think Hoppy said it best for me - I looked at it as an online magazine too - only better because we could participate in the conversation. I just had the wrong perception.
I never blogged at this site because I didn't want the responsibility of checking sources, researching and presenting new material. I believe most bloggers and content producers were aware of the responsibility to be good - and they were - I never failed to learn or be informed. Now it just seems to be one silly stream of candidate bashing and cute essays without any regard to truthfulness or reliable sources. If I wanted that I'd watch "Meet the Press" or read Jake Tapper's blog.
I am perfectly aware of the fact that I don't pay the bills, I don't do the work and I don't make the decisions so I don't have a say in how the shop is run. I told you guys we needed a union...just kidding.
February 17, 2008 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think that the old TPM cafe was a little too closed off, but I agree with bev and hoppy that it went too far the other way.
I think that the recommended reader posts is the best way to address that. The good posts should float to the top. (Some of those posts may be cute essays, but I like those as long as they're well written and entertaining. As long as the people like a post, I don't think that it should be excluded.)
The system is working OK, but I think that the kinks still need to be worked out. For instance, people should not be able to recommend posts multiple times, which you can do now after your session expires. Also, see my comment on the preservation of popular posts below...
February 17, 2008 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
One comment on the recommended reader posts list. Allowing recommendations to expire was a big improvement, as the list is no longer full of stale posts.
But I think the change overcompensated. Posts that are really good and widely recommended disappear after a day like all the others. I'm not sure how the algorithm works, but it would seem that as long as people continue to recommend a post, it should stay on the list, at least for longer than a day.
February 17, 2008 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: the old Cafe's encouragement of in-depth discussion vs the new Cafe's (potential) encouragement of a greater number of individual posters and individual posts:
Why is it necessary to chose between the two? Isn't there any setup or software that might create a happy medium, allowing both to flourish? I've suggested elsewhere a "Backroom" to the Cafe, where discussions could be more in-depth.
I have to admit that although I promised patience to Andrew in waiting for all the bugs to be worked out, I am feeling more and more aggrieved. While TPM certainly is entirely justified in doing whatever they want with the site, it just seems like bad form to more or less abandon those members who have for so many years supported the site. I've asked several times for a new progress report from Andrew, but there's been nothing new since the bug post of February 6th (http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/house-brew/).
UPDATE: I've now managed to find some of Josh's recent comments about the site and the problems and where he wants to go with it. My aggrievement is assuaged, but I still think it would be useful for either Josh or Andrew to post a new article (in House Brew?) discussing all these issues. Responses to a diary disappear so easily right now that many of us simply don't see them. Some of the frustration longtime members are feeling, I think, is because of what appears to many of us to be silence from Josh and Andrew regarding the problems here, but it really isn't silence, it's just that we can't find their posts any more than we can find anyone elses!
Even the link that Tom kindly offered didn't lead directly to what I was looking for - Josh's comments. Perhaps this one, which (I think) links directly to the comments, will be more helpful: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/02/now-you-see-it.php
Just in case that link doesn't lead where I think it will, the name of the post is "Now you see it" and will (probably) be accessible through a search.
Tom: I do appreciate your letting us know about Josh's comments.
February 17, 2008 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
You have to click on "permalink" next to "reply". That gets you the page position as well as the page.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/02/now-you-see-it.php#comment-2601161
February 17, 2008 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tom: Actually, since Josh made several comments in your diary, and answered several member's questions, reading through the whole thing is probably worth it, as opposed to a permalink to just one comment. And the link works, I see!
I also neglected in my previous post to thank Josh for taking the time to explain a lot of what's going on - it is appreciated. I'm still hoping that most of what Josh said in those replies will be posted as a post of it's own in House Brew (where it won't disappear quickly as do posts in other areas of the site), so other members can be reassured about what's happening and why.
February 17, 2008 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Totally agree with you Jan. Seems like Josh gave up on the "cafe" idea. The charm of the old site was its democratic character where any reader could engage in dialogue with other readers and with many of the lead contributors. The new site, however, seems to marginalize all of us hoi polloi who read the site and give precedence to the "party elite"--the lead contributors who are selected by site management. In fact, it's almost as if the DLC took over . . . .
February 17, 2008 1:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with quite a bit of what has been said here regarding the new format for comments and the cafe itself. I'm not particularly bothered by the changes though, the few shakeups this site has had have been relatively easy to get used to over a short time.
I have one bug report, which is that the top headline news stories on the front page of TPM often just show up blank, solely telling me that the blank page is "powered" by Mochilla. Any idea what's going on there?
February 17, 2008 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Eric's site deserves a look:
http://forum.projectlucidity.com/
It's set up so there is a way to post to specific content forums. But there's also a "Saloon" part of the site that's been lively and interesting for about 10/11 days.
There are ways to track members, send private message, preview and edit posts.
All are welcome to join or take a look.
February 17, 2008 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have a hard time seeing how we've been silent on these topics. I've personally addressed them in several threads over the past week.
February 17, 2008 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Josh: The thing is, although it's now clear that you had been replying and answering questions, those comments simply vanished before many of us had a chance to see them. It therefore appeared that you and Andrew hadn't replied to the issues regarding the site since Andrew's last post on February 6th in House Brew.
At any rate, I realize now that was not the case and apologize for my somewhat uppity-toned comment above.
February 17, 2008 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
that definitely points to one of things we need to fix -- namely, the inability to keep track of threads and conversations once they slide off the most recent/most recommended queues.
February 17, 2008 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let me try to run through these issues. But first let me put to rest any idea that we made the changes we did to *decrease* participation or conversation. I really do not know why anyone would think that we would set out with the intention to do that. But in case there's any question about that let me emphatically put that question to rest.
Second, it's actually not true that participation has dropped off. There's actually substantially more. But that's numerically speaking which isn't the same as qualitatively speaking.
A few points Jan raises are basically just flaws in execution which we should be able to make pretty rapid progress fixing. Things like non-acknowledgement of comments being accepted. And where you get popped back to after you comment.
The editing of posts is an issue that we had intended to have resolved by the time the site went live but there were programming issues that have delayed that. Basically this programming platform, Movable Type, is not set up to allow that since it opens up potential security holes. And so we've had to have our people do custom programming to make this possible. So that's still coming. Hopefully in the next week or two.
The issue you raise that I hear most often and which seems most critical is having a way to track conversations you're participating in. To be clear, we didn't make a decision to get rid of that because we wanted to make conversation more difficult. There were other reasons which necessitated our switching the platform the site runs on. And the platform we moved over to did not have this functionality built into it. So again we're having to build it from scratch.
I don't think it's true that we've been silent on these points. Tlees2 says we've been silent on these points and suggests I think that we have something to hide or that there's something conspiratorial going on. It's hard to know how to respond to that. On one level I don't think it's true that we've been silent. I know Andrew's discussed this on a number of threads. And I have myself in several threads. To the extent that we've not responding as quickly or as lengthily as we might have liked that's largely because we've spent most of the last two weeks working really hard to keep the site online because of a raft of technical problems even more aggravating and mind-numbing than the ones you've seen on the front end of the site.
I've discussed this before; but i'll discuss it again. Most of the delays in comments appearing has been because of stopgap measures we've had to take over the last ten days to keep our whole network of sites from crashing. The whole TPM network runs on an amount of hardware that is marginal at best for the amount of traffic that we have. And the combination of the changes to the site and the avalanche of traffic from the primaries pushed the whole set up past its limit. So as a triage measure one of the things we did was ramp back the pace of updating. We have a new server box coming online the beginning of this week. So long delays should be a thing of the past. But delays of 30 to 45 seconds for posts to appear will probably continue for some time.
February 17, 2008 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hum.
I am marginally amused that it appears that those who most embrace the concept of "change" in presidential nominations, are the same folks that can't stand even a little on websites.
As a former "SPANner" and "vital" (heh) part of the now long defunct CSPAN community boards, I can't get upset by even the most annoying bugs. The board is still here. Our posts are still here. When CSPAN went away, they left a little message saying they'd be back soon. It might even still be up there, 3 years later. That REALLY sucked. Not that my posts were worth saving, but if I'd known, I'm sure I would have saved some of the other folks posts.
I understand well the "lost" feeling many of the hardcore users here feel. Since the CSPAN community was not as well set up as Josh's board, a kind and enterprising member sought to set up a "back-up" site that members could go to whenever CSPANs server went on the fritz. (Which actually happened pretty often.)
No one ever says thanks for when things are going right, but the truth is, they really do on this site. That is largely thanks to the crew here, I'm sure that it would have been easier to go offline to implement these changes, but they didn't. That was because of their regard for the users here.
Believe me, it's pretty clear that TPM values each and every contributor here. If they didn't, you wouldn't have to wonder.
You would know..
Thanks all. I'll be buzzing around. ;-)
February 17, 2008 5:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have exchanged email with Andrew and earlier management folks that helped me out, and have always been grateful to them. This particular changeover was unlike previous ones and caught me off guard. I was expecting something like the last, I guess.
February 17, 2008 6:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I appreciate all the thoughtful comments. I would just say that the responses from management have been more general than specific, and there are some areas that I think, still need to be addressed because they are not just bugs:
1. Marking new posts as "new" so as not to waste time re-reading.
2. A way to review one's own posts to allow for a conversatoin.
3. A method to give support to a comment. I happen to think this is important. The method of responding is so cumbersome, and I personally would like to be able to at least give a "thumbs up" to someone who has given a great post, without clicking on "reply," then responding, and then trying to figure out where in the hell I am in TPM - formerly the Cafe.
The other features; editing, etc, hopefully will be worked out before long. I'll have to take Josh at his word that there is more responding and commenting going on, because I haven't seen it. It strikes me that if there is more commenting, it must be hard to find.
February 17, 2008 7:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I like that "thumbs up" idea. It goes back to what I have been saying about ratings systems. People will just naturally uprate comments they agree with and downrate those they disagree with. So, rather than fight it, why not two ratings - thumbs up or thumbs down. For me, at least, that would be an adequate way to guage the response to what I post.
A possible use of that kind of ratings system is to reward the comments that get lots of either up or down ratings - they are arousing a response, which is good. A comment or post that arouses little or no responses obviously hasn't been a successful one.
Josh's last comments above encourage me to hang around here longer, just to see if the magic can return!
February 17, 2008 8:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
For #3, I assume you mean something like the recommend function but for comments? For #2, I'm not completely sure what you mean. So you mean a way to track the threads where you've commented and to see responses to your comments? Something different from what I discussed above?
February 17, 2008 9:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
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?
February 21, 2008 10:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
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.
February 21, 2008 11:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
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.
February 22, 2008 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, as for me, it looks like everything of mine disappeared. All comments, all blog posts. I can't find any of it.
Not that I care, because now I get to use my chihuahua picture!
February 26, 2008 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
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