Interesting…

You say that, until someone assumes your identity online and starts slurring people...

Yes, all those valuable, informative postings, providing breaking news I could get nowhere else, along with novel spin like

"This is it! Hillary is finally done for!"
and
"Barack's elitism will make him unelectable in the general."

Chill a bit. We're going six weeks without a primary, with the eventual nominee no longer seriously in doubt, and the straight version of the argument has gotten deadly boring. Posts like this are a lot more interesting than "OMG! Keith Olberman dissed Hillary!" Next week things will start happening again, in an actual election, and there will be actual information to be "informed" about. Till then, more power to the meta posts.

Poor guy...

Does this help?

I don't know if anyone saw it, but I can't take that picture anymore!

2 1/2 months, so far, and even the bad software isn't fully operational. So let's consider the publicly stated goals, and the assumed private purpose, and see if either have been met.

Pages load a bit faster, fine. They don't load very fast, but nobody's do, now, with all the off-site linked ads. So that's meager, although it may allow better income structures with google-ads or someone. Half a point for site owner.

Overall traffic might be higher--we would not know automatically, and ad-sourced data sites are not likely representative.

If site owner is saving money overall, somehow, tha's good for him. We also would not know, but can guess that more streamlined web pages and smaller archives mean a smaller data demand, and perhaps a lower hosting cost.

If the previous Cafe clique was scaring away traffic (unproven), the new clique risks doing the same.

As to user issues----

The lack of down-rating means junk posts crowd out interesting stuff.

The ephemeral nature of posts means even the good posts have to try for loud headlines.

The amorphous identities of users mean one has no confidence to whom one is speaking.

The archives from old Cafe are still weird. My "Latest Comments" now shows a few items from late October 2005!

No tracking, even with the meager chasing of one's own comments (not available to some, like me).

No edit/preview function!

At least logins seem stable.

So, the roundup---

From my point of view, the guest contributing is weaker than in 2005, and I find it harder to find stuff in general.

The readers have some new blood, including a few very entertaining or insightful writers. This is offset by the loss of some other equally valuable writers.

I'd say a net break-even, at best. Hope it didn't cost much.

You're right! Considering this mess of a site, I assumed it could be done, but **I** chose not to blab about it. Then these two punks decide they're gonna turn the place upside-down!

But hey, really, it was just a matter of time. :)

Frankly, I feel it's time for the TPM folks to throw out this Hillary Clinton software and switch to something more Barack Obama-like. (I know. Wasn't that metaphor awful?)

Authority?

Show us where it is so we can genuflect...

Actually, this has been a very enlightening thread, along with the trollathon, our psuedo-trolls have illustrated and exercised more than one foible in the program.

However, the concepts of blogger identity theft, habitual sockpuppetry and compulsive posing is not well covered in the legal guide to blogging...

http://w2.eff.org/

...but that doesnot mean precedent can't be established with a few good lawsuits.

Secure blogger ID's may prove to be as elusive as an honest political debate. But at least we ought to try. I'm in agreement with artappraiser, the software re-tuning needs re-tuning.