Tom, I too am missing the "back benches" as I called them. I agree that they're gone for good. People tried to assure me that wouldn't happen. But I'm afraid it has. Time will tell.

For me it was the main site and the political commentary from Josh that drew me long ago. So I'm going to stick it out. And perhaps over time there will still be a way to have things post in some different "back bench" fashion. For example, maybe we can persuade them to put the "Saloon" under "Cafe Features" - and there we could have something more like our "back bench" community. Or maybe it's simply gone for good. And we'll have to do a "Saloon" from time to time.

At this point, however, I think the primaries and the political "moment" have become so over-riding as to crowd everything else out. It's going to one amazing ride, I predict, through the convention and into November. And "I have hope" but mostly just want to be sure my hope ends with an intact Constitution.

I salute you, Tom! ♪♪♪

You should see a small check box "in reply to" just under "post a comment". Needs to be checked.

I also find myself kicked out, unlogged, when trying to post. Copy the text just before you try to post. Getting dumped just happened to me, in fact.

I'm losing interest in waiting, given that the final, improved version, will lack what I valued.

Tom, TheraP, anyone else in the conversational back bench...is there any interest in looking into a new virtual Saloon somewhere, even as a "supplement" for those who don't want to leave TPM completely? It would be easy enough for a few of us to create a blog on blogger, or whatever.

I would not want to lose touch with any of the Cafe regulars around here.

And I agree with everything you've said. It's really difficult to keep track of comments on several threads. Lots of scrolling to the bottom of the screen. Bad for the eyes...

Dan, there's a timeout limit set on logins. It's kind of weird right now, in that you're login will register when bringing up the site (like it did for me this morning). But, once a script starts running - like posting a reply - the timeout will take affect (like it did with me when trying to post this comment before).

Clearing out your cache and cookies helps, but I admit it's a pain in the rear.

If you're typing a longish post, I would suggest writing it in your word processing application of choice, then copy/pasting it into the blog window.

Not only will you be able to save more easily and have a backup, but you'll avoid the "Cannot connect" errors which will lose your post.

Since the editors are not necessarily WYSIWYG, the word processing markup won't all transfer (which is great for us Word users).

I miss tracker too but I have found a workaround of sorts to follow my own posts and comments by saving their permalinks to my del.icio.us. It works fine but doesn't help as much when replies aren't attached to the comments.

I hope everything calms settles down and starts working soon. I will continue to check in and post here but if someone from the back rows does start up a new site, please let me know.

It's very clear that this software is designed to get people to communicate, if you could call it that, through blog posts, rather than in comments on fewer blog posts, and that like Skinner rats they already intuitively get that and are flooding the blog posts function. The software obviously pushes the recommend function to deal with sorting that amount of content, which is not working right now, but when it does, that makes it a American Idol type of thing. More amateur celeb bloggers like Deanie Mills will be created, by vote of vox populi.

It is a totally different model than the TPM Cafe at its formation, which was to have discussions of what elite commentators had to say. That was New York Times, this is New York Post.

I wonder if this was a intentional decision about manpower and what result they were getting from that manpower. It was a lot of work to solicit those elite contributors, and, if you recall, towards the end there, after two years of there being nasty comments towards many of them, the reception was getting nastier and nastier, which was not pleasant reading for many much less not a selling point to more contributors.

One could see that commenters were nicer to Reader Blog posters. Wouldn't one think, then, that a software that stressed Reader Blogs was what everyone wanted? Honestly, one could say that the community really wasn't supporting the initial vision with peer pressure to have high level cafe style discussion, respect for the contributors, and with being brave about community policing.

Now I myself read the New York Post for fun sometimes. But I read the New York Times everyday.

P.S. It is also interesting that for quite some time on the main TPM page, it says that Huffington Post is their "sister site." Huffington does have lots of elite contributors, though their comment threads leave a lot to be desired on the quality discussion front. Why compete with your sister?

LOL, how is everyone finding this thread, do we all have it put on our Favorites list? :-)
Our little secret club.

Like artappraiser I am not looking for a social club even though I sometimes participate in some more socially-oriented posts. A site along the lines of the Diogenes Club would probably suit me.

I have mixed feelings about the old ratings system. I liked getting ratings just to know that someone read what I said but didn't really like knowing who rated me what. It tended to make me feel that some sort of reciprocity might be expected. It was very awkward.

Although I originally came to TPM Cafe for political discussions I quickly tired of most of them. I also tired of the predictable views of many of the invited guests and self-promoters who padded three-page essays into books. I am not faulting TPM Cafe here. That is just how things usually go and there were occasionally brilliant exceptions for which I am very grateful.

The posts I most enjoyed were some I never got around replying to because in the process of writing a reply I would find myself rethinking my own preconceptions. Three of those posters that I can recall right now are amike on democracy, irishkg on character and Tom Wright on mate selection. I am still rethinking those topics so thanks, you guys, for the intellectual stimulation. And thanks, artappraiser, for some really excellent links. I just checked out Arts & Letters Daily. It looks promising.

Theoretically, it should be possible to set up a site to discuss issues, articles and events as long as there are well-enforced guidelines on behavior and content. Finding someone willing to take on the challenge of policing such a site is the hard part.

Checked out Eric Stepp's offer and

he has a beautiful new empty forum all set up with lots of nice discussion categories ready to go and one can start one's own categories as well. It has lovely time-tested software with a text editor that works, no bugs that I can see, fast posting, instant gratification. You register right on the site, no email rigamarole involved, takes seconds. Emma Zahn and I have now posted there. I have much experience using that software in the past, and I found it is very easy and intuitive for most people to learn to navigate.

Home page here
if that link doesn't work (my typed html links don't seem to be working here all of a sudden) here's the url
http://projectlucidity.com/forum/index.php

and I just started a discussion there that I would love to have input on here.
If that link doesn't work here's the url
http://projectlucidity.com/forum/index.php?topic=10.0

Saw you last comment on the Bugs thread:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/06/bug_stompin/#comment-2592842
and wanted to get some of my own thoughts to you along those lines about illusions I may have been having.

I haven't made any posts on this system yet. When I go to the "Your Blog" link, it says this:

If this is your page, then please get blogging!

That really makes me see reality about the software change: this Hyde Park Speakers' Corner now. It's neither coffee house nor mall, you're not supposed to come here to discuss, you're supposed to come here to orate, to blog. (Has a strange convergence with the Obama campaign preference for inspirational oration over nuts and bolts, but that's a whole nother topic that will confuse the issue here.)

I can't help thinking that choice was purposeful, ESPECIALLY because it's working very well (for the time being-after November, who knows?) There's a continual stream of new user names trying it out. Josh obviously has a huge market of horse race junkies that wanted to pontificate on their view, one that was not being catered to. They were limited to commenting on Election Central threads, now they can do their own framing and blogging, not limited to what Greg Sargent et. al. puts out.

Note that Josh has never had comments on his own blog, preferring to use email to get feedback and challenge to his thoughts. The initial TPMCafe contributors appeared to mostly be his acquaintances, wanting to blog to what they thought was his audience.

He appears also to like finding blogging talent and helping that along. Hence the appeal of the "vote and promote this blog to a bigger audience" system.

What was always clear here was that civil language was something being promoted. It's less clear that lengthy debate or discussion was a high priority or interest. After all, all the other TPM sites emphasize "breaking" news of the day, not grand ideas. Look a the history of TPM itself and what he has posted on since it's start.

If you remember the original discussion table topics, they really were a quite narrow selection, nothing like History or Science or TV. They all were related to politics in some way. Same with Book Club selections.

There is an obvious market for what they are doing now. I just wonder how well they will manage to keep it a different brand from DKos' diaries. It remains to be seen whether all these new bloggers will vote to promote others and draw an audience to vote on them.

I can tell you what effect it all has on me, and it's interesting: I have this strange desire to make sniper like comments on some of the posts I see. I'm going to do my best to refrain from that because I think it's a juvenile (though initially fun) way to spend one's time, and I don't want to get dragged into using my brain to read lots of idiosyncratic political horse race opinions; it is the same reason I always felt icky and embarassed of myself after spending some time on DKos.

Many of us may have been participating here under some illusions of this being an anti-blog salon, is all I am sayin'. What happened to develop here was encouraged as long as it did not become too much trouble (or a bore) to the management. This is a very pro-blog, pro-news place. That attempts were being made to make blogs and news more civil does not necessarily mean there was interest in defending a space where someone could have lengthy discussions on things like evolution, religion, art or the existence of Israel. The latter doesn't really fit the history of the brand at all.

I found TheraP's recent comment on the three audiences that were here very insightful:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/02/culture-clash.php#comment-2592130
and perhaps proof that I myself was participating here under lots of illusions, still hoping that a little band of people here interested in something else might overtake all of those.

I think nascardaughter intuitively got it right away, in basically saying, "Oh, I see, this is no longer for me":
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/02/something-different.php

Some of us were more like squatters here, as Ellen bascially said, it was nice to be able to decorate the place a bit the way we liked it while it lasted.