Hey Marc – just ignore the rage-blind cuss, who’s already demonstrated the classic bully tactic of running and hiding (“…I’m done with you.”) when someone takes the time to point out her lies and logical fallacies. If you don’t read the drivel you don’t have to expend the energy necessary to tolerate it. More advanced sites have a user-settable Ignore feature, which is now sorely needed here, I’m afraid. But that requires registration/login or pretty advanced cookie management.
Don’t know which mods read this, but I have to agree with Marc on the recent (minor) changes. At least my browser remembers the field data, and I’ve gotten used to scrolling through the items in each one (from other sites), so it’s not that big a deal. But it’s still an unnecessary annoyance, as one can see by the “Anonymous” comments here and there, followed by a double-posting with an author added.
<rant subject=”Whittle” to=”PJM Management”>
Before getting to the mundane features, I’d like to point out one unforgivable disservice PJM has done this community – not to mention America – which has been to render Bill Whittle’s legendary collection of essays inaccessible. A galaxy of internet hyperlinks to those essays has been corrupted by this, even though URL forwarding with mod_rewrite is anything but “new” and far from rocket science.
Absorbing Eject! Eject! Eject! into the PJM collective was fine I suppose. But having to scroll through the 50+ (!) entries in the “Choose an Archive” drop-down and THEN hunt through a list of posts to find masterworks like Tribes and Courage pretty much guarantees that unless they own Silent America (highly recommended), NO ONE is ever going to read what are now quite vital elements of American literature – which have now been apparently and inexplicably nuked. Even once they’re restored, I shouldn’t have to go Googling for these and then puzzle over search results like this (uh… where’s the Beef!??).
I understand that Bill’s focus is on new material and Afterburner now, and there’s no question that his recent stuff has been stellar. Nuking the past essays may have been Bill’s call, but… dammit, Jim! … er… BILL! – those essays have changed people’s lives! I dare anyone to read through the comment threads on some of them – which have for some reason survived where the essays themselves have not – and try to convince me they haven’t. Bill’s masterworks should be featured prominently on PJM, not hidden away waiting for a summer intern to figure out how to make them accessible again. IMHO, it’s unconscionable that PJM has allowed this to happen. It really needs to be fixed – and I’ll happily volunteer my time to do the work.
</rant>
Ahem.
Anyway, WordPress has plenty of advanced functions available for community sites – and PJM has definitely developed into a robust community. Ignoring the jharp/BC/Mofo/et al. nonsense, there’s at least as much valuable and timely info contributed by PJM commenters as there is in any of the articles (actually, I probably shouldn’t include BC, who I must once again thank for single-handedly helping to make a significant portion of my case for eliminating comprehensive health care insurance). I’m guessing all the PJM author/contributors would agree. So maybe it’s time to throw the readership a bone here. I’m happy to chip in $$$ for that, as I’m betting others would be as well.
Not sure what the deal is here, but it seems long past time to implement a registration / login function (like the PJTV site where, surprisingly, it’s used for little more than access control), comment Preview (geez – even my little WP site has that!) or better yet, a WYSIWYG comment editor (like Ace o’ Spades HQ), comment flagging (forget about ‘ratings’ though – those are part of what make LGF and DKos such adolescent echo chambers) and a ‘remember my info’ checkbox (for Marc). All of these functions are available as WP plug-ins, I believe.
I’ve admin’d boards with and without registration, and the combination of a registration/login function, over time, changes the moderator job. It shifts the work away from examining every comment post to managing the user database, i.e., supporting the community, which (IMHO) should be the priority at a community site. Providing the readership with vital information – as PJM does – is only half the job here. The other half is providing a mechanism for the readership to communicate effectively, and they can largely self-moderate through comment flagging when necessary. It can be a bumpy transition, but ultimately I think it works better and requires less wasted administration time than whatever army of comment thread moderators is required to filter all these threads. Seems to me I read somewhere that the articles’ authors have to act as moderators here, which is a little bit nuts IMHO. I mean, of course they’ll want to read the responses, but outside that, they should be spending their time researching and writing, not spanking self-righteous, curmudgeonly asshat/trolls like Mofo.
Actually, I’m only half serious about that last bit. Spanking trolls can be fun. In moderation.
