That was when the switch occurred. It happened just before Super Tuesday. What bad timing that was!!!

Has nothing to do with the software problems, per se. Yes, I'd like to get my old posts back. Yes, I'd like to be able to preview a post before posting it. Yes, I'd like to be able to go back and edit a post for errors. Yes, I'd like to be able to track upon which posts I commented. Yes, I'd like to be able to jump directly to only the new posts or comments.

But, that's beside the point.

For over two months we've been hearing "Early next week," or "Late next week." It's like TPM has coined it's own Friedman Unit. And the fact that Josh praised the software company while TPM management was still getting complaints about the software, is, well... quite Rumsfeldian.

And, I do question their truthfulness and integrity. Not that I want to, or like to. If TPM management is willing to stay silent, or feed us a line of BS on when archives will be back, then what's to say they wouldn't "omit" something from a news report? As I said, so much of this online journalism is based on trust of the writer / blogger / journo.

As Mr George Bush once so eloquently put it, "There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."

If you think that tech problems with our site means that our journalism lacks integrity and our truthfulness is in doubt, well, you're welcome to your opinion.

I have no doubts about your journalistic integrity (although there are rumors on some of the Hillary blogs that you've been kidnapped). I do have doubts about the technical competence of the site's technical staff.

There are a lot of sites out there (some with more traffic than yours) with commenting software that works. It's unfortunate that you managed to pick one that not only doesn't work, but resists being fixed.

If that's snarky, I'm sorry. For me, this is the best political site for content, but the worst for commenting.

Respectfully suggest informing users ahead of time regarding the details, not merely announcing coming goodness, if there is a next time.

When o when will your software people fix the bug in their software installation about author names not turning up on many Reader Blog posts?

It was noted by Andrew as a bug about 2 months ago, still not fixed.
It's absolutely maddening to click on something and then have to click back to the Reader Blog list and try to figure out which you just clicked on so you know who the author is.

This "glitch" is absolutely contrary to your stated goal of giving Reader bloggers more attention--they don't even get a frigging byline. Once their post scrolls off the extremely short reader blog page, unless you know how to read urls, their authorship becomes permanently anonymous.

It really strikes me as absured that they can't fix that in 2 months time.

Another thing I just noticed. You have presented the case that this software helped integrate things. I see lots of evidence to the contrary in using this site over the lsst two months. Just now, I see another piece of evidence that that's not the case.
The David Shorr post in the Yglesias Book Club has his picture as an avatar on the home page. But when you click on his name, there is no avatar, no picture. This is not possible with reader accounts, it is not how they work. It is clear that there is still a different system operating for contributor posts. That is not a simplified "integrated" system in my definition, that this happened. That his avatar shows up on a single entry but not on his user page, that's not evidence of a good system in and of itself.

I've seen so many incongruities like this, I really don't buy the integration argument at all; looks to me after using this site for a couple of months that you have a mess of conflicting systems that is bound for continual trouble. And you are now planning on customizing it, adding code, adding more potential for trouble, unless someone with extreme skill is doing it.

A related problem, in case you did not see it, you should see this post:

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/04/this-cant-be-good.php

where member Allsburg was able to look like he was member Ben Hocking posting by uploading Ben Hocking's photo to his account and temporarily changing his screen name to Ben Hocking. (He's changed it back and forth single that post, what you see now may not be what he intially did.) This is simply really crappy design which will easily enable a small group of trolls to cause major havoc to your site quite easily if they want to, by posting under user names already in use and trying to ruin the reputation of those posters.

If you are trying to encourage original writing and blogging, this is not the way to do it. The person writing needs not just a byline but also a secure one that others cannot write under or be mocked or hassled into giving up for a replacement name. To make it clear: I don't think member "Fly on a Wall" would be too happy at this stage to have to start posting as "formerly known as Fly on the Wall" because someone else was posting inflammatory crap under the same name as a joke or to destroy his rep.

I'm more surprised that it seems like some work takes place live on the system rather than on a test version somewhere where the public doesn't see it. Also, some problems get fixed and then go back to where they were - under Profile, most recent Comments are now back to earliest Comments even though it was fixed for a while.

In general, software projects can go over schedule, but typically you still hold off switching to the new system until it's better debugged. My guess is that the TPM folks being focused more on journalism than software didn't have a good pre-changeover checklist to run through (worse, their software guys didn't, but never ever just trust the software guys).

Anyway, I'm sure this change has hurt TPM badly, and I don't think they need scolding from the audience to realize it. However, you might offer a dumbed down bug tracker - a list of known problems you're working on, those that seem fixed and an email address to write if there are bugs there not listed.

Josh, first let me apologize for my poor choice of words in questioning the "truthfulness and integrity" of TPM. It did not really convey what I wanted, and sounded much harsher than intended. Unfortunately, I don't have speech writers or interns to blame for my slip up, so mea culpa.

There are only three people who I fully trust: my wife, my kid, and my cat. Everyone else? They get some grain of mistrust (some - such as our presumptive GOP presidential candidate - much less trust than others). I feel that you would agree that it's healthy to have some mistrust - or questioning if you will - otherwise we'd all believe everything Dana Perino and the Bush administration had to say.

Do I trust the reporting out of Muckraker or Election Central? For the most part. Yes, I feel that Greg and Eric take liberties in how they report, not necessarily on what they report. Do I trust what's on the TPM front page? Well, it's a blog, and as such is good fodder for thoughts and discussions, but I really don't fall lockstep with what TPM front page has to say.

That out of the way... I still stand by my thoughts on how poorly TPM (I'm trying to keep in impersonal, but feel free to take this however you want) has done to communicate with its readers. Other than generate ad revenue (which is not a bad thing; I'm pro-business), TPM's core competency is information flow. Blogs, videos, muckraking, calls for reader contributions, etc all keep the site afloat. There's no tangible product produced, there's no B2B services; just information flow.

And where was the information flow during the whole changeover? I'm sure there were apologies; and as I've listed in my post, a bit of back-and-forth between staff and users. However, I ask that you really take a look at the communications. Was anything pro-actively provided? It seems to me - and this is my opinion, without going through all the research - that TPM staff posts in comments rather than make Cafe posts. There are exceptions: yours from 2-3 weeks ago, and Andrew has posted a few times. You may consider this psychodrama, but do you realize the appearance of disingenuousness when we still do not have tracking, when posts disappear after an hour, when there is no viable way to hold a discourse? How it appears that TPM staff are trying to placate an individual user, rather than address the problem as a whole?

What were two of the biggest concerns by Old Users? Tracking and keeping old posts.

Ok, so the tracking function is being worked on. Great. As I've mentioned to Andrew on multiple occasions, awesome.

But the user blog archives? We've been told multiple times "next week", "the end of this week", "next week" since February 5th. Of course tech projects run over schedule, and I'm fully aware of what it takes to put a community-based site up. Yet, in every company that I've worked for, if there was a project that ran over schedule, or had technical problems, or needed additional resources or patience from end-users; management always communicated that. How long was it from the time that TPM realized they lost the hard-drives to when someone made a formal post on the Cafe front-page?

Has anyone from TPM's staff mentioned to the user-base that their own blog archives are not easily accessible? That the user profile only shows the latest 10 blog posts, and latest 15 comments, without access to their own older items?

More than just myself felt insulted when we realized that TPM staff and all the Cafe front-page contributors all have their blog archives, and their comments. Since the beginning of the changeover. Since we were told that our blogs and comments would be available "next week". As I mentioned, TPM's core competency is information flow. Yet there were no backups? No DVDs or tapes? No one bothered to check?

That is poor data management in any industry. Of course, we can't hold TPM to the same data management standard of IBM. TPM does journalism. But, why no disclosure? I feel this lack of upfront disclosure gives the appearance of hiding behind comments that won't get read, of not addressing the specific problems, and on throwing the issue back to uppity old users.

What really separates TPM from any other political blog? Not the Josh Marshall name: most of the reporting is done by Eric, Greg, and DK. Not the community software: FDL, Dkos, and HuffPo (in my opinion) have much better interfaces - at this time.

It's the trust of the users / readers, who view the professionalism of the site as the foundation to the quality and accuracy of the reporting.

And to me, how a business is run, is just as important as what a business does. Continue to offer false deadlines, lack of communication, and poor data management, and any business will suffer an increase in viewing the product with a grain of salt.

To quote Clearthinker:

While in principle, the journalistic standards aren't connected to the website function, it all reflects that general tone of the operation. And, that is what any business 101 will tell you.

The biggest irony for me in this is that it took four tries for this entire page to load. It would show Eric's post and nothing else, while the little wheel kept spinning round and round.

I've given up after two tries when other sites have done this to me, and I've never gone back to them. If I didn't feel committed to TPM, I'd have bailed.

That's just a business reality. Your software people need to take responsibility for their negative impact on your site.

Clearthinker - thank you for so succinctly putting my thoughts into words.

Yes, you have Eric's point! Not just that the software had its problems, though I assure you many of us would have gladly pretested all the changes prior to the changeover - but that promises were made over and over and not kept! So it's a loss of faith in how Josh treats people who come to the site, not a loss of faith in the quality of the reporting.

If you disrespect your audience, as clearthinker points out so well above, you are doing yourself a disservice. Whether Josh likes it or not, his credibility has suffered. If Josh wants citizen journalists, through a partnership with those who come here, he needs to learn more respect for his "partners," and yes, even their feelings.

I have sympathy for how difficult this has likely been on tpm's end. But tpm seems to have run out of sympathy for the very people it depends on! And that is sad. That cheapens the site!

The recent alteration of Cafe layout and function is the first time that it eliminated several functions (as opposed to adding them), and the first time it was done live, and the first time it has taken so long.

AmericanDreamer, thank you for the comment. I admitted in my follow-up comment to Josh that I did not express myself well enough in my comment back to Allsburg. I realized what I wrote could be (and actually was) highly misconstrued, unfortunately we cannot edit posts or comments, and I did not have time until this morning to respond.

I have also tried to be patient and as supportive as possible. I've cheerleaded Andrew's original progress reports, I've called for patience, I've politely offered bug reports, etc. I even purposely avoided discussing TPM and the software for two months.

Maybe I haven't made it clear, which I'll take responsibility. I don't care about what's wrong with the software, I don't care about getting tracking, or hell, even getting my old blog posts back. I'm not holding my breath on any of those changes. Josh and Andrew talk about the upgrades and how fast the system is working now, logout problems fixed, etc. But, I still get logged out after 10 minutes; I still have no current comments (my earliest is dated February 5th, 2006); and my last 3 blog posts have not shown up - including this one (my latest blog post listed on my profile is February 11, 2008).

I don't care about any of that.

It's the management of the data, and how poorly management communicates to its user-base, that causes me to lose a little respect in TPM. I want the site to succeed, I want to see it all integrated, and I'm sure Josh and Andrew are gnashing teeth and rendering clothes. But no one is going to gain my respect and additional trust when they keep silent about a problem, or offer absolutely no follow-up when a deadlines passes.

We had about a dozen people sign up to help do beta-testing. The testing went on for two or three days. And that was crucial to helping us roll out the first round of fixes, including immediate posting of comments, the forced log out issue and others. I encourage those who participated to share their experiences, good or ill. Josh