Am I piling on the over-worked staff of the TPM media empire? Absolutely!

Why? Well I expect better, and I expected that TPM would be able to hold out as it was while the most heated Dem Primary in a generation (1992-2008) raged across the land, with important contests in all 50 states (except those states HRC loses, those don't count and allow me to welcome Vermont to the ranks of oblivion).

Okay, so technically what's wrong?
I constantly have to log in, I'm talking every 5 minutes.
I can't seem to get spaces in my profile, no matter what HTML I use.
I couldn't even access the "Blog Now" link until last week. I just got a blank page.

What's socially wrong?
Lots! Look, I tended to talk "smarter" here than at DKos or other sites. That was a function of the beautifully embedded way comments were structured. You could follow an entire conversation between posters much more easily than now and thus could really get into a tone of conversation.

And that's another thing. Columns. I liked the column format before. I could look and see, hey, who's clustered to the top today and what are they saying? It was an excellent way to keep a good handle on the articles of the day. Now those get crowded out. It's not easy to keep up and you have to dig a long way through, which, with the clunky interface takes sometime. It's difficult for a site to pull this off, Kotaku can do it. DKos can mostly do it, but things just get buried here now.

Finally why can't I rate someone? Just recommend--and not even comments?
I'm a narcissist about intellectual things, I craved positive ratings. I'd love to see that aggregate score and examine who recommended me for what and who thought I was an ass and troll-rated.  My theory is that the ratings were a huge part of why comments became conversations. When you scrolled and saw someone have a high rating on a comment you had the little bell go off in your head "Oh, lots of people think that comment is worthy!" and then you'd go read it and maybe join the conversation.

And you STILL can't have comments over on the mothership! I wrote to Sullivan about this earlier (as he had a poll 60-40 against comments) and it drives me crazy.

Well in conclusion about the only thing I really like so far is the profile pics that are attached the comments.

Look, I really liked TPM. I still do to a point. That's why I'm harsh. I want you to to better because I know you can, and above all, actually address the problems. Even something as simple as "Well I don't see it as a problem" is better than silence.