I took a few minutes to update some stuff on the blog. As always, what is intended as an improvement might end up making things worse, so feel free to chime in. In no particular order:
- The death of Google Reader reminded me that not everyone uses RSS feeds. So I’ve added a couple of features that make it easy for people to know when a new post is up (since that’s not every day). On the right you’ll notice that you can subscribe to posts via email, which seems to work pretty well. There’s also a new Twitter feed for the blog that will notify you of new posts. This is separate from my own Twitter account, which often links to new blog posts but not always.
- You used to be able to edit comments, but that featured died when it started to think that everyone was a spammer.
I’ve replaced it with a new editing plugin. Let me know if it works.Update: nope. See below. - More experimentally, I’ve installed a comment rating system, so you can up- or down-vote comments. Not sure if this is a good idea or not, and I worry that it adds clutter to the comment threads. So this one is definitely in a probationary period, feel free to chime in.
Some new tweaks behind the scenes, but hopefully those won’t affect the user experience.
Update: So the comment editor didn’t play well with the like buttons (annoying but forgivable) and inserted slashes after every apostrophe (unforgivable). I’ve deactivated it. Still can’t figure out why the previous comment editor (“Ajax Edit Comments”) thinks everything is spam.
Further update: Now I’ve installed yet another comment editor. We’ll see how it works.
Up. Up. Up!
Down. Down. Down!
I dunno about comment ratings. I worry it’ll encourage group-think. I want to judge comments on their own merit and not based on their popularity. I always remember those notorious psychology experiments where a person fails to choose the obviously correct answer because everyone else (actors in cahoots with the experimenter) chose something else.
Me too. That reminds me of the previous blog where commentators were discussing free will. People can behave like automata at times. If you’ve ever had any “conversations” with Young Earth Creationists you’ll know what I mean. But with experience, IMHO you come to appreciate that they aren’t like that because they’re religious, but because they’re people.
Sean: there’s a little problem with apostrophes, slashes appear. And after doing an edit, the like/dislike line appears twice, and it looks like I can “like” my own comment.
I think you should just have Upvote buttons. Weak or obviously false comments shouldn’t be downvoted to oblivion; and a lack of upvotes need not reflect disapproval either. Yes, sometimes people can be douches. But unless they’re downright offensive, they need to visible. Sean can delete any glaringly offensive remark anyway. (Plus, if a comment was hidden because it was downvoted, I always click to view it (Streissand). I can at least choose to ignore comments that have no upvotes.)
EDIT: John’s correct. Slashes appear when text includes apostrophes, at least upon initial posting (prior to first edit).
EDIT 2: hehe… Second pair of ‘clickable’ (non-greyed out) Like/Dislike buttons appear after you edit your comments. I get a query error when I do click.
Arggh. Comment editor seems wonky indeed, see update.
Maybe there is a better way, as I now demonstrate by editing my comment.
Say, Prof. Carroll, did any of the tweaks do anything to the mobile version of this site? I can’t get it on my Droid anymore, for some reason. Every time I try, I get a blank screen with 3 horizontal, empty squares in the middle. Then, the left one turns blue. Then in succession the blue moves to the middle square, then to the one on the right & then it & the squares disappear. All that’s left is a blank screen with your name in a blue rectangle at the top with a jagged arrow to the left of your name. Weird, eh?
It’s quite possible. Do you do anything special do get the mobile version, or just go to the regular URL?
Try it again, I made a tweak that might fix things.
I think the like/dislike feature works well on informal/fun/joky or very opinionated forums but on a forum like this where the discussion is usually quite thoughtful and informed and pretty mature and moderate it seems a little out of place. On the other hand, I’m probably just being old-fashioned. It could work great – but can you make it not anonymous – ie can a link to a list of who has liked/disliked a post be added?
EDIT: Comment editor works fine on Fedora 18 Linux with Firefox 22.0
No way to make the liking/disliking anonymous, and I don’t really think it would be a good idea even if you could.
I’ll go for it a while, just to see whether it’s abused. I find it kind of fascinating. While most of our comments are constructive, there is definitely a fraction that are just dopey; it restores my faith in humankind (or in my own sanity) to see that other people see the dopeyness as well.
You mean no way to make it “not” anonymous. 🙂
I hope that if you ever discover how to enable non-anonymity it won’t be backdated 😉
Not anonymous, right. No danger of non-anonymity ever happening. Like and dislike to your heart’s content!
Tests’s
EDIT 1: Shouldn’t
EDIT 2: Ok. All clear.
@Prof. Carroll: “Try it again, I made a tweak that might fix things.”
I did & now it works. Thank you! Dunno what the tweak was but hey! It worked so that’s the main thing.
“Do you do anything special to get the mobile version, or just go to the regular URL?”
I do nothing special; I just go to the regular URL, to answer your question.