JS-Kit is a bit buggy when it comes to updating the number of comments listed under a post, however, so you may see "0 Comments" when, in fact, readers have already left multiple comments.
We've also added a recent comments widget to the navbar, which should make it easier to see changes across multiple discussion threads.
JS-Kit does have an analytic feature, but we don't think it displays IPs. If it does, we will have an open discussion about whether to revert to the old system. We honestly have zero interest in knowing the identities of our posters, and I think that those of you have emailed us appreciate how careful we are about preserving confidentiality.
UPDATE: as of now, JS-Kit's analytic functionality is ideal; it allows us to see the number of people viewing comments, but not their IP addresses! So we have some idea of the cite traffic (a lot) but no way for any malicious person to discover the location that a comment was posted from.
Back to blogger comments.
12 comments:
You're not alone.
Let me clarify: something is screwy with the "navigator" and we've put emailed JS-Kit about the problem. Waiting on the response. Some go through, some don't.
I hate this new comment system. If its not working can you go back to the old one?
We'll take it under serious advisement. This comment system enables faster moderation and allows us to edit comments (blogger, not so much) and it doesn't display IPs, so it seemed ideal. They're rolling out a new system, though ("ECHO") and that may explain why there are more hiccups.
One thing to do is to create a profile using an anonymous email account. That will allow us to flag trusted users and allow them to bypass pre-moderation.
This new system is terrible. I suggest going back to the old one or using the same format as Political Science Job Rumors. :(
We're curious what you dislike so much. The comments take a few seconds to load and the aesthetics could be better, but they allow threading, display all comments on a single page, allow people to track a thread via email updates, and the back-end management is far superior to blogger comments (we can moderate faster, edit comments on the fly, approve trusted user names to post without pre-moderation, etc.).
As for the PSJR system: we're not PSJR. They're a forum, we're a blog. We operate via different procedures for a variety of reasons, all of which have been covered here elsewhere already.
Visually, this new system is awkward. It's clunky and doesn't seem very intuitive. The whole recent comments section being a sidebar is distracting and doesn't seem to make much sense -- especially because the messages all appear truncated. Also the quick links and labels seem to duplicate information but neither set of options is entirely satisfactory on its own. It would be much better if it were one, cleaner, display. Moreover, all the 2008-09 stuff might go into an archives section?
I was the one who suggested you look at the PSJR system. I didn't mean to imply that you should adopt any of their procedures (mostly because their procedures are terrible) but their visual display is much better designed and well organized. It's critical that you keep up the good work, moderate the comments, make this site professional, etc. but it's just not very user friendly in the most recent form.
Even the old system was better.
Never say we're not responsive. We've replaced the JS-Kit navbar with an RSS feed for all comments from the site. While the feed can have hiccups, we think this is better than nothing to let people quickly check for new comments. We've also eliminated all of the older links (people who really want to can always go to the archives). But what we have now is pretty standard blog design. Admittedly, our template isn't exactly beautiful, but maybe we'll put the time in if/when this ceases to be run anonymously.
This is horrible (the comments system). Why not restore the old format?
We get the message.
Thanks. This is much better.
yes, this is good - i like the feed along the right side, combined with the normal comments. thanks again for updating the big board.
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