I'm not holding my breath for the improvements we would like. I can't work up the enthusiasm I used to feel.

For their sake I hope they have some more traffic.

First visit since the changeover. I agree that this new format seems insipid and less interesting/entertaining. I'm removing the site from my Google Reader -- too many more interesting sites to waste time here. I'll probably visit every month or so just to see if some semblance of website management sanity has made a comeback. Ta ta.

Forgot to invite the poster, PurpleState to Eric's, also.

http://projectlucidity.com/forum/index.php#4

Oh, almost forgot!

Hey Josh! There hasn't been dick posted on the Coffee House page in over a week.

Give it to us.

Thanks!

Al

Alright, I've tried to be patient for a couple of weeks, but I have a number of serious gripes.

There is something much less intimate about the new site. It seems more slick, cold and commercial. The white background and minimalist design is bland and antiseptic, and lacks any feeling of warmth, humor, community or comfort. The blandness of the design also gives more prominence to the ads, which create a sense of impersonal, commercial cheesiness.

The user experience so far seems much less interactive and homey. Three features above all seem like steps backward: (i) the lag time between posting a comment and the comment's appearance make it harder to have a real time conversation; (ii) no highlighting of new comments make it harder to distinguish new comments from old comments or to follow several conversations within a single thread; and (ii) the demotion of the user's screen name to very small type at the bottom of the post weakens the immediate connection between the comment and the person posting it.

And while I was never a fan of the old ratings system, it would be good if there were some other replacement feature or features offered to promote interpersonal interaction.

There are a lot of new names here. I'm not sure how many are actually new users, and how many are old users who chose new screen names during the transition. But the reader posts now seem to contain a lot of hit and run, canned political spam and quickie news items from people who aren't really part of the TPM Cafe community. This adds to the feeling of falseness and phoniness.

I'm experiencing problems with the archives. Once a post moves past the bottom of the blog roll, it appears to be gone for ever. The archive pages are empty when I try to access them.

Clicking on a screen name sends you to an archive of the user's posts and comments, but the posts and comments are in chronological order, with the oldest posts first. This is rather useless. I would also prefer to see the date and the name of the original main post at the top of the comment, rather than the bottom.

The smaller print is tougher on my aging eyes.

I don't like the photos.

I also have to say that, while a certain level of bugginess is always to be expected with any new online application or upgrade, this particular rollout here at TPM Cafe appears unusually half-baked and poorly prepared. Usually the new version is put through weeks of testing by likely users, so that it is as close to fully functional and bug free when it is rolled out as possible. Who tested this new site? Were TPM Cafe members recruited to use it, look it over and offer suggestions? So far, using it is like trying to get something done in an office building that is still under construction, filled with tarps, ladders, dripping paint and screeching table saws.

The increasing professionalization and commercialization of the blogosphere is, I fear, destroying much of its original charm and novelty. I really don't find much that much out here here anymore that I can't find on more conventional media. Everybody now seems to work for a magazine or media company of some kind, and the links are increasingly used for plugging, rather than for information-driven connectivity.

There are fewer sites, it seems, with really interesting and revelatory content. I used to feel like the conventional media operated on a thoroughly phony level of BS pseudo-knowledge, conventional wisdom, and manufactured perception. I had to turn to the blogosphere to find out what was "really going on". The blogosphere was similar to a network of underground ham radio operators in a country under occupation, and you needed to listen to those guys to get the truth and escape from the oppressive ubiquity of the mind-numbing Official Story. The bloggers would dig up some deep and important secret, unreported meeting or obscure but vital connection, and this information would then spread quickly to challenge the various official government and media lines. (For example, while Bush and company were laying the groundwork for war with layers of pure crap, some blogger would dig up a strategic planning report from global oil execs, and maybe a report about an unpublicized meeting between these execs and government officials.) I'm not finding as much of that now. The blogosphere and conventional media have been fused and integrated, with bloggers appearing on radio and television, and mainstream journalists appearing in the blogs, and as a result the media group think and uniformity is now replicated on the blogs. To use a traditional phrase, a higher and higher percentage of the blogosphere has been "co-opted."

I'm beginning to understand and appreciate the complaints of the old-timers. At the same time, I really hope you stick around and weather the changes. Until recently, I would rarely comment at TPM because it was glaringly obvious to me that I had little to contribute to a discussion that was being driven by folks who were so much better informed than I could ever hope to be. If you same folks, who I enjoyed reading so much in the comments and elsewhere here, were to reassert your presence, I'd gladly STFU in the company of my betters. Kinda reminds me of that old T.S. Eliot quote about systems versus good people - even the best of the former depends on the latter to work. If you're an old-timer and you've been disappointed with the offerings from newbies like myself, or with the shortcomings of TPM 3.0, I guess this is my request that you hang in there.