I usually delete and type my password again. But yeah, this site is weird.

Oh I almost forgot,

*BIG CLUB NEWS*
We've had radio publicity !!!

From TPMCafe,
Articleman's Experience as a Progressive Talk Radio Guest, or, Ride the Unity Pony, Part Two
By articleman - June 18, 2008, 1:10PM:

...Hal complained on the air, as we all have here, about the difficulty of finding anything on TPM. He said it's easier to find a poster you like on Google than to bother within the site, which he said has the most confusing architecture of any he's seen. From your lips to Josh's ears, I said, and I'm going to send a mail to Andrew Golis as a followon to that. When the media starts talking about how your website's functionality cuts against its content, that's a sign....

P.S. Ah Andrew Golis' March 3 comment on Tankard's thread, what fun.

1) Having to re-login when you post a new comment is really, really irritating, but we've found ways to cope.

2) Not being able to find old comments is really, really irritating, but Ben Hocking has offered us ways to cope.

3) No edit and preview feature is really, really irritating, but through Google docs and cut and paste, we've found ways to cope (and we've just been friendly and tolerant with each other which I think has brought our anonymous culture closer together).

I'm not as well-versed in coding and programming as some posters, so maybe this irritates me less, or maybe I'm just okay with coping (my June 5 post that you've referred to was intended to poke fun at the fact that even Josh had a double post on the main page, so maybe he'd feel our pain).

The part that makes me sad, and what I think Tankard alluded to as "suckful" (I *heart* the word-choice, btw) is I got to see the old site for maybe two weeks before it changed. I loved seeing people have real conversations and debating issues in a meaningful way. I learned so much about the election and the issues just from reading these threads - and I eventually created a screenname because I liked that there was a community of sorts here. What could be better - a chance to learn about and discuss issues I found interesting, with people who agree and disagree with me, in an environment that is low-maintenance and friendly?

Now, I don't know, while I love seeing the same people pop up, there's a disconnect between the comments. We're drawn together more by uniting against trolls and railing against the site itself than communing over the issues, and I feel like I missed out on something really good. Besides the exceptions of individuals like Genghis, Ben Hocking, LisB, Laurajordan, and fellow tiger MassDem (and others) who go out of their way to be supportive and share some personal insight, this isn't quite the environment I thought it would be when I signed up.

I felt so bad when I realized a week too late that bslev had asked me a question on his Avatar Time post - how many other questions and conversations are left hanging because we can't look back at our own threads or know when someone has replied to us? What are we missing out on?

I'm not saying this to gripe at TPM - I think it's great that we can access and participate in this discourse whenever we want and for free. I'm just pointing out that some of the smaller glitches and quirks are irritating and we can cope, but they're creating a less cohesive, less insightful, less useful non-community community.

I've noticed that some of our usual folks have disappeared (idiotic, flyonthewall) and I wonder how much of that has to do with the poor utility of the forum - and I feel like we're all missing out on something great as a result.

Sorry for the rambles, but does that make sense??

Google sez it's carrel, not carrell. Maybe you shoulda followed your own advice?