Same as the Late-2019 list (which is being closed because it’s gotten too long) and the previous versions, this will be accessible indirectly from the Your Random Comments link in the left sidebar. I wish WordPress made this simpler, but then I wish a lot of things.
[Edit Oct 1, 2020 EditorM: We’re trying placing all these Random Comments series in the left sidebar for direct access. Let’s see how it looks and try it out.]
Please remember that this is intended for public comics-related (or comics semi-related) comments only: if you want to send me a CIDU, or a comic for some specific folder (Ewww, Oy, etc), or you want to inform me of a typo, please e-mail me at 
.
Also: A list of the site’s most recent comments can be found in the left sidebar. A database of all the comments, compiled by larK, is here.
And the site’s FAQ is here.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Bookworm: His obituary is here: https://normandean.com/tribute/details/10477/William-Bickel/obituary.html
It says that we passed suddenly in his sleep.
What about a usenet group? I can’t recall if you can embed an image, tho.
Replying to a few comments:
Usenet text groups don’t allow pictures, but there are also binary groups, which do. The main problem with Usenet is trolls and spammers.
If you click on a link for one of these multi-page posts, you don’t have to click on “newer” and then search for the correct post. You can go into the URL and change the page number to the next higher. When you hit enter, you’ll likely be positioned correctly.
I don’t read Comics Curmudgeon. I have occasionally when something specific was pointed to from here, but it didn’t seem like something I wanted to read on a regular basis.
If possible, I like the idea of a committee for the possible future CIDU. It means not having to search for a single person with all the requisites (including time).
Thanks for letting us know that Bill’s obit has been updated.
There are already comics newsgroups, notably rec.arts.comics.strips. Right now, it’s pretty low on traffic. But you’d have to use image links. There’s no point in trying to form a new group, especially a binary. Realistically. a web forum makes more sense. That can be moderated.
Even if his family passed the controls for this site, I don’t know that anyone would take over. The setup Bill had was fairly labor-intensive for one person.
Here’s the Google Groups interface to RACS.
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.comics.strips
As I mentioned earlier, several former Yahoo groups that I know of (including one I’m active on) migrated over to groups.io
https://groups.io/static/about
I’m a little unclear on the target of the discussions of platforms. That is, are we looking into
1 The appropriate web forum or listserv for continuing this planning discussion? (In case this present site gets unavailable.)
or
2 The appropriate kind of platform for a successor CIDU site, or ways of continuing this one.
To avoid trying to post too much and having it maybe go into moderation, I’ll make separate posts.
For (1) I agree having a backstop for this discussion would be a good idea. There is a Facebook page for CIDU, but several CIDUers indicated just last week that they are not Facebook users.
So I think of Google Groups as a default free resource for mailing lists that can easily double as forums to read and post on the web.
Shrug, were you bringing up groups.io for (1) or (2) ?
If nobody objects, I will start a Google Group for backstop of this discussion.
[Don’t worry, this will not be a foot-in-the-door for using Google Groups as a platform for (2) — it is unsuitable for a couple reasons, though it does have the positive feature of allowing both web and email equally.]
The process for (1) need not be over-worked, as it will intentionally be short-term.
I tried to distinguish two objects of the discussion of platforms:
1 The appropriate web forum or listserv for continuing this planning discussion? (In case this present site gets unavailable.)
or
2 The appropriate kind of platform for a successor CIDU site, or ways of continuing this one.
and posted about (1) with the suggestion of Google Groups.
To take up (2):
I’m a little surprised that WordPress is not being discussed as the presumed first thought choice.
We know that the format works pretty well for this kind of content.
It can be adapted easily to multi-person editorial and admin process (see next comment).
And also, if Bill’s estate or designated online executor does not want to turn over the current site to a committee, they still may be open to running an export-to-file and delivering that managers of a successor site. Then if that new site is WP also, the export file can be imported, allowing for a sort of continuity of the backlog of posts and comments!
(The export files are surprisingly compact, as they do not contain the media – the images. But if the old site is still online, during the import there is the option of obtaining the media from the old site over the net.)
Brian in STL says: ” Even if his family passed the controls for this site, I don’t know that anyone would take over. The setup Bill had was fairly labor-intensive for one person.”
Yes, but as has been suggested, there could be some sort of editorial board, sharing the work. (Or even an almost-open posting interface.) And that is not incompatible with WordPress, whether we’re talking about a) continuing the current CIDU site, b) starting a successor site on a WordPress.com-hosted basis, or c) starting a successor site on an independent hosting service with our own download & installation of the WP software.
People who have used WordPress sites only as readers or comment-posters may not be aware that there is a range of roles that give accounts different privileges. So if you have in mind the way CIDU generally has been organized, with only one account able to make new top-posts, and others limited to commenting, that isn’t required.
From the dashboard of a WordPress.com-hosted site:
Role
Administrator
Full power over the site: can invite people, modify the site settings, etc.
Editor
Has access to all posts and pages.
Author
Can write, upload photos to, edit, and publish their own posts.
Contributor
Can write and edit their own posts but can’t publish them.
Follower
Can read and comment on posts and pages.
—-
So, either on the current site if we can, or a new WordPress site, we can both enable the existing individual accounts of editorial committee members as Editor or Administrator, and probably create a new account with privately shared password. This will take a bit of study from CIDUers who are more expert in secure/convenient tradeoff systems than I am, but it can be done. Similarly with an email account for submissions for posting.
2020-09-20
title
CIDU Continuation Planning backstop
email
cidu-continuation at googlegroups.com
web forum
https://groups.google.com/d/forum/cidu-continuation
here were the type choices:
1 email list
An email list allows users to post from the web or through email. This is a mailing list group.
2 Web forum
A web forum allows people to interact with the group and have engaging and interactive discussions on the web. It has web optimized features enabled including moderation tools. Group members post topics and replies through the web interface, but can still receive updates via email.
3 Q&A forum
A Question and Answer Forum is a web forum with extra features enabled to support the experience of asking and answering issues. Topics can be marked as resolved or be rated by users. In addition, you can use categories to organize questions within the forum. People must post through the web interface, but can still receive updates via email.
4 Collaborative inbox
Topics can be assigned to other members and treated as tasks which can be resolved or reassigned. Additional options are available to control who can assign and receive tasks.
[This sounds like a service desk! ==mm]
I am most used to type (1) but thought this could usefully be (2) so we can see what the special features are like. Perhaps the handling of graphics will be better, and we could think of Google Groups as a possible platform for a successor CIDU site.
Group visibility Anyone on the web
The group’s name, email address, and description will be visible and searchable to the selected users. This setting can be overridden in search. To restrict group visibility in the Groups UI and search, ensure the View topics setting is at least as restrictive as the Group visibility setting.
View Topics All members of the group
Post All members of the group
Join the Group Anyone can ask
Just for, um, fun, I just registered the domain dontunderstand.fun. I can easily configure it to have the subdomain comicsi.dontunderstand.fun.
Thanks, @Mitch4.
No prob!
And thanks to you, Carl.
BTW, extracting from my post about a Google Group, all are invited to go to https://groups.google.com/d/forum/cidu-continuation
and sign up, and post and read.
This and Carl’s domain registration are *not* in competition or contradiction at all!
The Google Group is for discussion like this; the comicsi.dontunderstand.fun would probably be for the continuation of a CIDU site.
Carl, if it’s okay, pending you visiting the Google Groups site on your own, I’d like to post/quote you comment from above there.
@Mitch4, I tried to go there but your link tells me, “You don’t have permission to access this content”
I think you need to click on “Ask to join group”.
Alternatively, I can loosen some setting. Maybe “Who can see topics” whhich is “Group members” but could be “anyone on web”
@Mitch4, I just asked to join.
I’m pretty sure I can direct https://comics.i.dontunderstand and its variants to that group page, should it be requested. I would prefer that the comics & comments be publicly visible, just as this site is.
re: “Shrug, were you bringing up groups.io for (1) or (2) ?”
Not exactly either — I was just responding to someone (Andrea?) who had said something like “we could have moved to yahoogroups, but they’re not hosting groups any longer” by pointing out that if a yahoogroups-like interface was desired, groups.io would be worth considering. But I’d certainly prefer to see this or successor group continue with its current WordPress interface if practical.
Great, and I set you as a Manager.
Also I set the conversations to be visible to all.
But I should have been clearer — I think Google Groups would be not a really good platform for something like CIDU itself. I was figuring on using that for discussion only! (Sort of this discussion, actually :-) )
So hold those domain names until we figure out a platform, I think.
(My 2:35 PM was in reply to Carl, not Shrug, whose latest I had not yet seen.)
@Shrug thanks for that clarification. And I’m glad to see there are others also inclining to Word Press as a platform candidate for a continuation site if necessary.
Sure. I can have a WordPress instance up within a few hours. Either hosted on my own server (which already has WP running as learnhere.info, among others) or various hosting services, including a free WordPress.com account (where I already have reasonablyliterate.com set up).
There are a couple of considerations that come to my mind. One is preserving the existing community. The other is making the content available to the general public and allow new members to find the forums and join. I’m not sure how well the google groups work for the latter.
Good points, Brian.
But don’t worry about the Google Groups as possible successor for the main CIDU site. It is just meant for ongoing discussion of the process, especially in case we cannot continue with this thread right here. (I know, it was misleading that I posted a test of image uploading.)
Meanwhile, what do you think of continuing to use Word Press, in one form or another?
Mitch, how does one reply on the Google groups site? It looked good to me
Chak, please click on “Ask to join group”.
Then when viewing a posting or (conversation?) you click on Reply All and compose in a pop-up box that looks like an email compose tool.
If I felt confident about it doing some filtering or spam blocking, I guess it could be more open yet, and not require membership to do posting. Hmm, worth thinking.
I, for one, will not use Google Groups. One can’t use it without signing in, allowing cookies, allowing JavaScript, and allowing Google to collect damn near everything it can about one.
@Arthur, then you’ll be relieved that you won’t need to, as that group is just a discussion site and intended as a backstop to this present thread in case it becomes less accessible.
OTOH if you felt like letting down those strictures in small measure, you could visit the forum on the web, just once, to sign up — and thereafter interact by email, both for reading and writing. Though still not anonymous, indeed.
Thanks mitch4, Carl, and others working to try to keep this community in existence. I had assumed that the community would end with Bill, but I would love it if there was a way that it could keep going. I don’t have strong ideas about how that’s possible, or if it’s even possible, but thank you for trying.
Is there any chance of getting the password(s) from Aaron and just continuing on this same site?
If anyone is following this Random Comments thread but doesn’t get notifications from the site for new postings, please go to the top and find a new post, from Bill’s son Aaron, and responses from several CIDUers. As Andréa suggests, we could stay in contact with Aaron, after a decent interval, to explore with him the possible future paths for the site and the community.
There are, I think, good thoughts on either side of the question whether it would be better to try to continue here or start a new chapter some other way.
The expression I used, “after a decent interval”, is perhaps the traditional obverse face of the 21st Century formulation, “Too soon?”.
There is a sort of apt C, Addams panel, something like “Did he ever mention source code?”.
I like the idea of keeping something going as well. It is a great community. I know I’m not the one to run it, both because I’m often busy with other things and I’m just too crusty at times. Bill did a great job in making sure I behaved. But I’ll help as and when needed.
I should just resign from Netflix-DVD. It’s been ages since I swapped in for new ones, or visited my queue. Probably the physical discs in the queue are by now mostly available for streaming.
However, that means I need to find the DVDs I have out from them on “rental” and send them back. No, they have never sent me anything like an overdue notice! But I suppose if they have to call these lost, they will want to charge something for that.
As I see it, the main difficulty with continuing in with the same format isn’t primarily getting the password for this site. It’s that the current format requires a huge amount of work from one individual, and I don’t see how that work can be divided up. If someone is willing and able to do what Bill did, and they can get the password for this site, they can continue here; if they can’t get the password, they could move to a new site, and we could shift there. The former is a little better, but either way would work. The main problem is whether there’s anyone willing and able take on all that work. Personally, I could help with hosting fees, or other miscellanous tasks (and I think a number of other people are willing as well), but I couldn’t take on the large amount of work that Bill did.
I’ll mention that I’m only thinking about the not inconsiderable work in the mechanical aspects of running the website. In addition, Bill had an ideal temperament for moderating discussions here, and keeping the the community civil. And he came up with so many witty headlines, and fun off-topic posts. No one is going to match Bill in those aspects. If someone is actually willing to take on the work of running the website, that would be quite a lot to take on, and I don’t think they should be deterred by the thought that they need to be able match Bill’s temperament and wit.
There is almost no work involved in running the site. As I’ve mentioned, I have been known to run 6 at a time in the past, now only 4. It’s nothing. If we divide up the work of content publishing, it’s not even a big workload for that.
Yes, I join with Carl in replying to Winter on the question of what is feasible.
No, nobody can replace Bill. And we should not look to any single person to try.
But there are workable options.
1. Current site. Use Bill’s password to create new admin user, share that to members of an Editorial Committee (or enable their existing WP accounts to admin here.) Also create a new email address, which the Editors will share (either by actually using a shared password to log in to an email, or by forwarding mail to them individually, or some kind of “service desk” system).
Users mail submissions to the submission address as before, on some rota or help-desk basis the Editors respond and post some of the submissions, maybe continuing the once-a-day tradition or adapting.
2. A new site, but with arrangements as in (1). This would in some ways be easier. What we would need from Aaron would be not a password but shared understanding that it would be okay for us to use a form of name related to CIDU and explicitly announce the connection. Much later, maybe incorporate the archives.
3. A new site, but with less editorial presence. A small group to work on maintenance, moderation when necessary, and hosting fees, but (subject to tech implemented rules like first-time posters get moderated) not routinely needing submission and editor-publishing: that is, an almost-open posting site.
For any of these there are subsidiary questions, but they could be settled later.
Ah, OK, it would be a lot of work for me. If it wouldn’t be a lot of work for one of you, or if you think the work can be made divisible, then never mind. :0
Can we hear from more CIDUers on what kind of option you would prefer:
1. Continue on the current site, after working with Aaron Bickel to make new admin users of an editorial committee, then proceeding as now: Readers submit items by email to single point-of-contact address, only admin creates top level posts from them, approx once daily, but visitors may freely respond, responses can use some HTML and can use linked images.
As I said: mostly just like now. But with a committee in place as central contact point.
2. New site, with operations working pretty much like (1), or thus pretty much like now.
3. New site, but close to open posting. (Some protection against spam and uncivil content.)
4. Yes you would like to see a continuation / successor site, but not on the basis of the above choices. Instead, you suggest: __________
5. Sadly, CIDU had its time, and we should let ourselves let it go.
I prefer (1) or (2).
(1) is perhaps slightly better, but if it’s a pain, or involves bothering Aaron Bickel too much, I don’t see a huge difference between (1) and (2).
Echoing WW – 1 or 2. However, since I’m not able to offer my services, I’m also not going to complain about what is finally done. I just hope we can keep this community going.
From Powers, posted to the Google Group:
I’d like to see a more open format, where people can post comics for discussion and it’s easier to jump among them than in a linear blog format. A message board might work well.
Powers &8^]
Which I will interpret as close to 3, with some format thoughts. ==mitch
I’d prefer 1, but 2 would also be fine and 3 acceptable.
Options 1 and 2 seem feasible and desirable to me. I could (would have to) live with option 5.
I would mention that one of the things I really liked about this site in recent years was Bill’s ban on politics. I’ve stopped reading other sites in recent years because, everything seems to descend into political shouting. (And I’ll admit I do it myself, even when I don’t like where it ends up.) If others are interested in continuing that rule, it would be much more likely to be doable with (1) or (2).
Frankly, if it was up to me alone, I’d go for 5 but I admire (and will support) those of you ready to tackle what looks to me a herculean work.
Any of the other 4 options looks interesting. I’ll just mention that the posting rythm is important (1 a day) to ensure unhurried discussion.
My preference’s are 1 and 2. While I understand that would mean more work for the EC, I think it keeps a vital thing about the site intact: the flow.
We knew that comics (usually) went up at midnight. There might be other posts during the day, but midnight was a given. Saturdays and Sundays were for Eeeews and LOLs. New comics came in regularly and everyone knew when to check for them. When a new post went up, there would be a flurry of activity, which would gradually diminish while that comic was pushed down the page, and then off to the “older” page. Having us all focused on a few comics while they were on the front page kept a lot of discussion going back and forth. Sure, we might go into the older comics and comment there, but it’s usually pretty quiet there. That we all knew when it was “feeding time” guaranteed a lot of eyes on an entry.
If we go to open-posting, there is no rhyme or reason and if we have a dozen comics pop up in a day, the activity could get scattered. I didn’t post much on the Saturday and Sunday entries because commenting on all the comics would take more time than I had (as I am quite verbose).
We had something like “open posting” in that you could send your stuff to Bill and he would almost certainly post it.
Certainly things will never be the same without Bill, but I think he found a format that ensured a reasonable amount of activity every day and a very interesting community driving it.
@Olivier: I understand what you’re saying. I think there is something to be said for allowing things to pass. However, we are seeing here that Bill built a community that really appreciates the values he brought to the site. I think if he’s built something that can live on beyond his mortal time with us, I’m willing to try it.
You’ve mirrored my thoughts on the rhythm of posting as well. Great minds think alike, mon ami.
@Winter Wallaby: I agree completely. And I’m one of the ones that would sometimes ride the edge, but I did know there was an edge and a line I should not cross. I only fell foul of the rules a few times. And there was no scolding. Bill would just delete my comment and, you know, on those two or three times he did it, yeah, I knew he was right to do so. Right for the group. But he wasn’t above allowing a bit of controversy. I still remember the time I referred to religion as “superstitions” and that got some noses out of joint, but he allowed my respectful expression of my not-entirely popular disbelief. He even participated in the discussion.
I don’t think he had to pull out the banhammer very often. I don’t know of any case where anyone was banned. If they were, it was quietly.
He just set the example of how he wanted us to behave and, well, you did because that was the way it was done around here.
While we all enjoyed the site, Bill was the first to admit that he was not very tech-savvy. If things did continue here, someone might be able to make some improvements as far as administration. I don’t know anything about WordPress, but several here seem to.
My apologies for taking a while to get my thoughts in presentable order.
As Bill wrote in the FAQ, CIDU is (or was) his “living room”. It is well und just for all of us to discuss our grief here (as a kind of “virtual wake”); as well as our plans for the future of this forum, but when the host leaves a party, it is time for the guests to depart as well. However, by this I mean just this address (and the server to which it points).
I would heartily welcome a new venue in which we all could continue our comic(al) discussions, but I do not think it is fair to expect Bill’s family to maintain or pay for the current hosting arrangement, not to mention accepting the burdensome legacy of administrating it. If we arrange for a site to keep meeting, the new site should have a completely new server, with a new address: preferably a fresh URL that does not even refer to CIDU. The current URL+interface should be reduced to a memorial page in Bill’s honor, with (at most) a link pointing in the direction of the new site.
I’m not really in favor of archiving the past material: trying to transfer it would probably be more trouble than it is worth. However, Bill did mention that there are multiple posts that are still scheduled to appear at some point in the (possibly distant) future. I wouldn’t want to keep this server running just to see what is still in store, but it might be worth moving those future posts to the new system, if that can be done.
I fully concur with earlier (negative) comments about both Google and Facebook: I would be highly unlikely to participate at either of those locations, and even less likely at any unmoderated location (such as Usenet). If possible, I would (strongly) favor a solution based on WordPress, if someone is willing and knows how to set up such a server. We all know that there are several experts among us, the question is whether they would be willing to volunteer their services.
Future website administration is the exceptionally thorny problem. One reason that CIDU has been such a wonderful place is because it was controlled by an absolute monarch who tirelessly defended his own (extremely high) standards of decorum and neutrality. While it is possible that we might be able to maintain such harmony using “management by committee”, I think a benevolent despot might be a better solution, if an acceptable one could be found. And no, I am not the right person.
P.S. I was very relieved to see that Aaron was able to post a new thread about the “Recent News”, so that the most recent “comic” thread no longer sits as an (uncommentable) tombstone at the top of the list. Nevertheless, it is strangely appropriate that Bill’s last (visible) action as moderator was to lock down a post that was threatening to get out of hand. He always seemed to feel that even poor comics have their loyal fans, so that there was no reason for a blanket put down about something that might be someone else’s favorite. Even though I did not always share his taste in comics, it was extremely valuable to be able to see such strips through his eyes, or through those of other readers here.
Kilby, all excellent thoughts/points.
One low-impact approach would be a mailing list via groups.io. That would be *different*, in that when I see another Argyle Sweater that makes no sense (to pick an example–I *almost* sent yesterday’s to Bill, then saw Aaaron’s update, sigh) I’d send it to the list, and everyone would reply via email. Not as good as the site–I’m not suggesting that it would be!–but it would be free and low overhead. To be clear: I would prefer WordPress or equivalent too, but I don’t have time to deal with that. A closed list I could help manage.
As I’m sure a number of others can attest, groups.io became the heir apparent when Verizon finally gutted Yahoo, and they seem to do an OK job. I’m a mod for a couple of lists there, haven’t had any real problems. A friend ported a couple of the lists I’m a mod for from Yahoo; I can ask him if folks are interested in trying this approach.
Re Bill, I, too, am reeling, more so than with some folks I’ve actually met who passed away. I’m wondering if that’s partly because I’d never met Bill, so he was just *there*: seemingly permanent and immutable. (But of course mostly because Bill was such an excellent person!)
My personal regret here is that I only discovered CIDU in the last few years.
And…now I see that I’d missed a ton of discussion. (Mostly) “Nevermind”.
In response to Mitch 4 SEPT 21, 2020 AT 12:45 PM (because it’s now on the older comments page), I’d also prefer 1) or 2) but both rely heavily on someone stepping forward. As I’m not personally stepping forward, I’d say it’s really up to a) if a group of people/person step(s) forward and b) what they are willing and capable of doing.
My options are 1&2 (with no especial preference between them) then 3. 1&2, though, need more in the way of dedicated moderators. I also like and agree with SB’s comments on the rhythm of CIDU as it is now (https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2020/01/30/random-comments-2020-edition/comment-page-9/#comment-67757).
And even though I know better, I’m still coming here just after midnight looking for a new CIDU.
@ Arthur – I have the same problem, except for me it’s at 6am. I’ve saved the CIDU bookmark on my primary desktop system, but I’ve removed it from my “daily” list (and all of the mobile devices in the house). It’s sort of a temporary substitute for a black armband.
P.S. Another (very) important reason why this community needs to move to a new server (with a new name) is that the current URL is still a monument to the frustration caused by the server meltdown two years ago. I would be happy to continue discussing comics, but even happier if I didn’t have to be reminded about “GoDaddy and the Squirrel” each time I visit.
If you get a new site, then all the old threads would have to be moved or be left behind. I’m not sure how difficult of a task that would be.
@ Brian – I am (strongly) in favor of starting over from scratch. It would be different if the old server had not been trashed, but as it is, the work to archive the current “GoDaddy+Squirrel” configuration would only save the last two years of material, which doesn’t seem worth the effort. If we don’t have to worry about importing the old stuff, a new WordPress server could be implemented with a clean template, which may offer some features that had to be sacrificed after the meltdown. In particular, I would welcome a return to numbered comments, as well as numbered main pages (of posts), which would make it much easier to wander back through the (future) archive.
@Brian in STL – Got your corrected membership at the discussion backstop address. That’s great because I think we are ready to get down to brass tacks and might want to move the planning-for-real detailed dialogs to that slightly more private venue.
@Kilby – If you weren’t among the Google-avoiding declarers, please also join that Google group. I’m in bed on a phone at the moment and not able to cleanly copy and paste etc at the moment … but there must have been a reason my “something is happening online” sense woke me up.
We need your overview insights in the process; this is a matter of committing to exchanging a few emails / forum posts over the course f the next few days , not laborious ongoing editorial committee work.
(Still trying to get back to sleep ,,, )
I think there has been some convergence on what I was calling option 2 in an earlier framework posting.
Are we ready to go?
We need some team signups:
POLICY ADVISORY TEAM
IMPLEMENTATION TEAM
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
Please also join at https://groups.google.com/g/cidu-continuation
It will help to thrash out nibbly details in semi-private
Again @Kilby – I think I agree with you on naming. Except that I diametrically disagree with you about naming. Hunh, whaat??
Okay, there are names and names.
There is an actual, technical hostname, along with domain name, together making FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name). The sort of thing used in URLs and “web addresses”. What people type into their web browser or auto completes in their browser etc.
Carl Fink has already remarked about having some domains ready in reserve (on the very modern model of splitting a word into different segments). These will be variations on ComicsIdontunderstand but not literally precisely that , and not typed as that.
Kilby I don’t see whether you are against that , and if so why,
If by the “the current name” you meant something mentioning GoDaddy or a squirrel, I wouldn’t worry, I think we are gone from that.
There is also the kind that of name that appears as title, or informal designation in speech, etc. I think I saw some remarks that we should not call the new site anything using “Don’t understand” or the like, with the suggestion it would be disrespectful.
I don’t see how it would be wrong. Think about tribute bands. (Well maybe that’s something people don’t like so much). They may be bad or sully the originals – if the content is poorly done – but the connection to the original is best reflected right in the name, and if they are pretty good then it is a positive reflection to acknowledge the original.
Okay, this is the sort of thing to be hammered out in semi private discussion by the POLICY ADVISORY TEAM.
Along with things already mooted here, like the cycle of daily posting.
Also design goals – Kilby you had some remarks on WP Theme (loosely called templates) .These are important to get in our heads as goals – though to get a fast start I would think it’s fine to start off with simplest vanilla clunky whatever.
So if you have ideas n this sort of score, please indicate you will serve on the POLICY ADVISORY TEAM. Thanks!!
I’m ready with my first pumpkin [pie] comic of the year. ‘-)
I volunteer to help out. (I think that was pretty obvious.) I’ve done sysadmin work for decades, and also moderation. (I’m a former GEnie sysop, for one. Yes, that old.) I would even be able to contribute editorially, but I don’t think I should do all three at once.
Realizing I had made a mistake, I just bought idontunderstand.fun. It’s not a big deal, both domains together cost me under $7. That lets us use the simplified “comics.idontunderstand.fun”.
Importing one WordPress site into another is very easy. If the Bickel family was to work with us it would be no more than a couple of hours of work, as I remember.
I believe Bill owned “comicsidontunderstand.com” but didn’t know, and didn’t want to learn, how to move it to a new site. (I did volunteer to help him, but he didn’t take me up on it.) If he still owned that as of his death, we might be able to continue using that TLD on a new (non-GoDaddy) server.
Great, Andrea!
What is today? Tuesday morning? I hope by late Wednesday, or anyway sometime Thursday, the IMPLEMENTATION TEAM will post an email address to send it to.
(Of course, it’s kind of nice that this site has not stopped receiving a few comics-posted-in-comments contributions, too, if you prefer.)
Carl, thanks much! We should do some emailing and/or forum chatting today.
At the moment I have a bunch of chores to get too, but wanted to say that and a couple very brief notes/
idontunderstand.fun and comics.idontunderstand.fun should work great!
But please don’t park them anywhere yet. Let’s talk about what kind of hosting. I’m now inclining towards paid WordPress.com but of course it still needs some thought.
(Also, for some key emails it might be nice to use one of those as the domain part. Thus for example “editors@idontunderstand.fun” . I can add a domain on ProtonMail (and I know other mail services will do something similar) — but we should check out that all it does is change the MX record, and not some total forwarding.
I believe Bill owned “comicsidontunderstand.com” but didn’t know, and didn’t want to learn, how to move it to a new site. Yes, but eventually he did — it is *this* site. Paste or type in your browser (not search) location bar or whatever it is called today. It will go to this site, and get rewritten as https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/ .
This is not just redirection or forwarding. The fundamental DNS record actually does point to WordPress. There was just some sequencing issue — Bill wanted to get this site started even while the CIDU domain was pointing to GoDaddy, so he used the “squirrel” name. Later the CIDU name did get pointed here.
(I did volunteer to help him, but he didn’t take me up on it.) I had a similar experience, though not on the DNS move issue. WP on their paid hosting lets you have multiple domains, but one of them is designated the primary domain for your WP site. This determines which one shows up in a visitor’s browser location, even if they were explicitly getting there by the non–primary one.
Switching between the registered-with-WP domains is very very easy. Literally changing one checkbox. I urged Bill to do that, but he said it was too complicated (so I sent him screen shots of me changing it at one of my control panels); and he said it might break something (so I sent evidence of no breakage on my sites); finally Bill said that he had come to really like the “godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie” name, even though it was just originally a temp placeholder. So it remains the primary . Shrug. But test it out, “comicsidontunderstand.com” comes here too.
@ Mitch4 – I have no idea how the URLs for this site are actually registered, but from an outsider’s (or neophyte’s) perspective, it would appear that the “GoDaddy+Squirrel” is the “internal” (technical) address, and “comicsidontunderstand.com” is (or was) the external “home” address for reference and public consumption, which forwarded to “G-D+S”. (Don’t bother correcting this, I know it’s not actually set up that way.)
From a tactical perspective, I think the “G-D+S” should be left as it is, but only as a temporary communications base, and possibly (for a short while) as a comment archive. As I said before, I really don’t think we should transfer this material to the new site. Among other reasons, this would be extending Bill’s “digital footprint” to a new domain. I don’t think that’s kosher (and I wouldn’t even want to ask his family whether it would be OK).
The “comicsidontunderstand.com” is Bill’s and should remain in his family’s possession, perhaps for a memorial page, and possibly (if they see fit) including a link to whatever replacement site we might set up. The redirection to the “G-D+S” page isn’t necessary, and can be removed whenever the family decides to terminate Bill’s WordPress contract.
P.S. I have a moral aversion to Google (mostly because of the irritating, half-hearted way that they pay lip service to the GDPR, without actually conforming to any of its restrictions). However, that wouldn’t prevent me from joining the discussion there on a temporary basis. I can always reset my browser afterwards. What has prevented me from logging in over there are time constraints, coupled with inertia.
Well, these are not entirely mysteries.
From https://lookup.icann.org/lookup
Domain Information
Name: COMICSIDONTUNDERSTAND.COM
Registry Domain ID: 83218243_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Domain Status:
clientDeleteProhibited
clientRenewProhibited
clientTransferProhibited
clientUpdateProhibited
Nameservers:
NS1.WORDPRESS.COM
NS2.WORDPRESS.COM
NS3.WORDPRESS.COM
Dates
Registry Expiration: 2022-01-31 20:27:44 UTC
Created: 2002-01-31 20:27:44 UTC
Contact Information
Registrant:
Organization: Crimeweek
Mailing Address: New Jersey, United States
Technical:
Organization: Crimeweek
Mailing Address: New Jersey, United States
Administrative:
Organization: Crimeweek
Mailing Address: New Jersey, United States
Billing:
Organization: Crimeweek
Mailing Address: New Jersey, United States
Redacted for privacy: some of the data in this object has been removed.
Registrar Information
Name: GoDaddy.com, LLC
IANA ID: 146
Abuse contact email: abuse@godaddy.com
Abuse contact phone: tel:480-624-2505
DNSSEC Information
Delegation Signed: Unsigned
Authoritative Servers
Registry Server URL: https://rdap.verisign.com/com/v1/domain/comicsidontunderstand.com
Last updated from Registry RDAP DB: 2020-09-22 04:54:58 UTC
Registrar Server URL: https://rdap.godaddy.com/v1/domain/COMICSIDONTUNDERSTAND.COM
Last updated from Registrar RDAP DB: 2020-09-22 09:13:12 UTC
Note that the original registration was via GoDaddy! But current name service is at WordPress.
A DNS lookup shows:
http://www.comicsidontunderstand.com A records are:
http://www.comicsidontunderstand.com. CNAME comicsidontunderstand.com. [TTL=14400]
comicsidontunderstand.com. A 192.0.78.25 [TTL=300]
comicsidontunderstand.com. A 192.0.78.24 [TTL=300]
So it does not have an “A” record, which makes sense. Instead there is a CNAME record, which is like an alias (technically a little different from “redirect”). These show numerical IP rather than another name, but these are WordPress hosts for many many customers.
——-
And the squirrelly one is not separate from WordPress .com
Neither is more fundamental.
P.P.S. Another reason I would prefer to pick a new primary address is that I seriously dislike sentences as URLs. Everyone has to type that URL at least once: it should be short, and easy to remember. The question is what acronyms would be available from a reliable host and/or registrar.
P.P.P.S. One possible (not entirely serious) suggestion would be “CTEBWNHU.com”, to mean “Comics That Even Bill Would Not Have Understood“, but that is at least three letters too long, and it fails the second condition entirely.
Woops, posted a long Whois and DNS lookup, and it went into moderation. All to the good!
But @Kilby, my point is that in my view the “G-D+S” name is terrible, and says nothing about the content, while “comicsidontunderstand.com” is transparently what this site (and predecessors with that name) are all about. So as you can project from that, I have little sympathy for your suggestion about the family moving “comicsidontunderstand.com” but leaving “G-D+S” here.
As you say, it’s theirs, not ours, and I would add, not even for us to start outlining plans for them. If we were going to start bothering them for this sort of thing, I would suggest asking for clearance to use AS TITLE OR NON-TECHNICAL NAME (that is, not a domain name or host name) something resembling “Comics I don’t understand”, maybe “Comics We Still Don’t Understand”.
Kilby says: ” Another reason I would prefer to pick a new primary address …”
No reason to make a big point of this. I haven’t seen anyone suggesting retaining “comicsidontunderstand.com” as the domain name of a new site. The only way we need have anything to really do with it would be if we returned to the idea of asking to take over this site — then that domain name would still be attached.
Otherwise, the most we would do is refer to it, and maybe link back here, from the new site. As part of a welcome note along the lines of
This new web home for ‘Comics We Still Don’t Understand’ [at NewCIDU.fun or something] is a continuation and memorial for the ‘Comcs I Don’t Understand’ site founded and operated by the late and fondly remembered Bill Bickel. The last preserved version of that site, with about two years’ of posts and comments, remains up (but not accepting new submissions) at ComicsIDontUnderstand.wordpress.com
@ Mitch4 – I think we are (as Germans would put it) “talking past one another“. I’m not disagreeing, but my point is a little different than the way you understood it. I think the new server should be started completely fresh, with no contractual or other technical connection to the current arrangement. New names can be freely chosen according to popular demand. I have stated my opinions, but I doubt that my preferences will convince a majority of the readership.
My fundamental point is that this WordPress server arrangement does not need to be preserved, and not just because it has a horrible name. We should set up a new home, so that the Bickel family is free to pull the plug on this setup whenever they so choose. If they want to keep it around as a memorial, that’s their business. If they are willing to display up a link to the new server, even better, but that is a decision for (much) later. First we need a server that works, and an agreement about who is going to run it (and pay for it).
One thing that we all need to remember that the current WordPress configuration is virtually useless as an archive of anything older than about three months, because it is prohibitively arduous to continue paging back through a scroll of effectively unlimited length. Bill lost a much larger archive when the GoDaddy server went up in smoke (and that configuration was pageable). I say that we should grin, bear it, and do it again, just for the same of a clean, unencumbered start.
Repeating that we need some team signups. If you will join in one or more, please quote/repost and add yourself.
I was going to include some as recruiting suggestions, but it’s better if you use your own judgement. (I have, however, included some on the basis of remarks indicating interest even if short of “put me in the list”)
POLICY ADVISORY TEAM
Singapore Bill
Kilby
Mitch
Carl Fink
IMPLEMENTATION TEAM
Mitch
Carl Fink
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
Mitch
Carl Fink
Like most, I’m for either #1 or #2.
On a domain name: Not to slight Carl’s efforts, but I was surprised and rather delighted to see that cidu dot us was available. A 4-letter domain is a prize! So I grabbed it.
If nobody else here wants to use it, or thinks that would be somehow ethically wrong, I’ll either forward it to the chosen domain or let it expire a year from now.
I suggest being a bit careful with some of the newer custom TLDs. I can’t say for sure it will happen with .fun, but I’ve noticed that some of the earlier ones (including one I nabbed some years back) were very cheap at first, but rose in price rapidly when it came time to renew and are now more expensive that good old dot com. I suppose that could happen with dot us too.
@Kilby, yes, I think we’re in agreement on most substantive points.
I think the new server should be started completely fresh, with no contractual or other technical connection to the current arrangement.
Yes, with “technical connection” understood narrowly. I hope there is not objection (from any quarter, this is not just a tussle between Kilby and me) to either a free-text Title or technical domain name alluding or resembling current and past ones.
(See my 10:52 AM, two or three up, for an impromptu sketch of welcome text)
New names can be freely chosen according to popular demand. I have stated my opinions, but I doubt that my preferences will convince a majority of the readership.
I’m sorry if my inattention made me miss it, but I don’t recall seeing the affirmative suggestions from you (of either technical domain names / hostnames nor informal Title free-text names). For the new server / site.
Of course I did see your note that we should not try to use “comicsidontunderstand” — but I didn’t see anybody disagreeing with that?
With addition of some explicit or almost-explicit enrollments :
POLICY ADVISORY TEAM
Singapore Bill
Kilby
Mitch
Carl Fink
Le Vieux Lapin
Phil Smith III
IMPLEMENTATION TEAM
Mitch
Carl Fink
Le Vieux Lapin
Phil Smith III
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
Mitch
Carl Fink
Phil Smith III
I think “Der Alte Hase” may have solved the URL issue entirely. Despite my previous objections, if “cidu.us” is available, I think that would be the ideal solution, at least for the primary “display” address.
P.S. Shortly after the server meltdown, there was some discussion about the availability of a “cidu” address, and “cidu.us” was explicitly mentioned as a possibility. Bill was hesitant about using the “.us” TLD, because he feared that an “American” connection might scare off the international crowd, but it was pointed out that we could declare it to be a first person plural pronoun (object case), referring to all of “us“. While Bill seemed willing to accept that reasoning, at that point the new configuration was already up and running (with the “squirrelly” address), and as has been mentioned before, he was very reluctant to adjust anything that was working acceptably well.
I’m always somewhat leery about alternate addresses when the “.com” exists, which it does, and you don’t own it.. Especially as http://www.cidu.com seems to lead to a blank/broken page.
@Lapin, CIDU.us is brilliant. Wish I had thought of it.
Note that the .us TLD is not new and has had no serious price rises in a pretty long time.
@Brian, cidu.com is a “make an offer” domain. That’s another way of saying “four, probably five fiigures.” In dollars.
I think your general point is well-taken, Brian, but dot org is not really among the newfangled additions — it was there at the dawn, alongside dot com, dot net.
Oh, sorry for my mis taking there!
As Carl points out, the dot us was also there from the beginning, as part of the two letter geographic system.
Okay , can we go ahead with CIDU.us? Actually reach a decision? Cool!
Carl or I can get a WordPress.com site claimed ( with of course a whatever.wordpress.com as starting domain name). . Then we’ll report it back and ask LeVieux to do the DNS/ registry to relocate CIDU.us. Then tell WordPress.com to accept it.
Then get a start with theme and some top text.
Eager viewers may need reminder that DNS changes sometimes take a couple days to propagate.
Mitch4: Second the motion!
Whoops, I forgot we didn’t explore together the issue of WordPress.com paid site vs free WordPress software installed on an existing rental host. The reason I was suggesting WordPress.org is that all those accounts owe have will be recognized there, and just need setup as enabled moderators or editors etc. on the other side, wordpress.org wants a second level “business” package to allow you to install custom themes and pick plugins from their gallery, whereas that’s more under your control at your own installation.
Sorry for the hasty virtual kbd typos – I’m back at my iPad. I assume the corrections are obvious?
WordPress.com tends to be somewhat expensive for anything more than the basics. Many alternatives exist, notably Dreamhost. An actually free WordPress account is limited, but works. If we want email, I might recommend a third-party service like Dreamhost because it would be part of the package.
I’d be happy to help somehow, but I don’t have the IT chops to do too much (unless you want things typeset in LaTeX), nor the time to fulfill an editorial role reliably. Do you see a coming role for small financial contributions?
(Side note — are there any women on the team?)
I ran a whois on cidu.com to find that it’s owned by someone in China. Not going there, either literally or figuratively.
There were 4 other TLDs available for cidu, including info, but (‘fessin’ here) dot us was the cheapest. I guess it does indicate USA, but I agree that it can also suggest “us,” as in vois et moi.
At this point in net history I don’t know that TLDs are that important anyway, though dot com or dot org would have been nice.
I’m fine with aiming cidu dot us at whatever solution the collective prefers.
As an alternative – I have 2 shared hosting accounts already. I could easily add another domain with a WordPress instance if that’s what the group prefers. I’d have no incremental cost for that, and it’s just a bit of fiddling.
If that’s of interest, has anyone an idea of how much traffic the site would receive? Theoretically my hosting allows for unlimited traffic, but that never really means what it says. :-\
The only potential negative factor to consider with my hosting the site is that I’m in my mid-60s, just as Bill was. I’m not in bad shape, expect to be around another 15-20 years, and have backup plans in place for my survivors (who use the same email domain) to maintain the server leases after my death. However, I mention it just in case it makes anyone uneasy.
While I’d be happy to set up a WP instance on one of my servers if the collective wisdom so desires, I don’t think I’d want to have much – if anything – to do with the day to day maintenance. I’d immediately and happily hand over a WP admin login to whomever wants to do the thankless lackey work. :-) For such things we will however need a more private means of communicating!
I may get tossed into the moderation black hole for posting again so soon, but FWIW Carl one of my shared hosting accounts is on Dreamhost. The other is on Hostgator. Both are so-so as far a support, but most of the time I can figure out how to make things work. The vast majority of my support requests are for outgoing email blacklist problems caused by spammers sharing my IP address.
@Caro, have a look at my next comment (yeah, being written in another window!) and see if you see a role for yourself in the editorial workflow process. (Which is raised as question, not answer, there!) Moving messages from one webmail folder to another depending on its status is something I’m sure you would not have trouble with. And if we turn to Trello or a help-desk program, that is something we all would be learning, at the same time.
Thanks for your readiness to figure out how to be involved.
The women I noticed in this conversation include Andrea, who seems more inclined to continue as a finder and submitter of comics, and Chak who may well do some of the operational stuff.
[For IMPLEMENTATION and EDITORIAL teams]
@Carl, sorry we haven’t gotten to a general discussion of email ; and editorial committee workflow which I think is a linked matter.
So yes, we do need two or three new email addresses. But not necessarily with @cidu.us. Admin for signing up in the WP mechanism, so it does not have to belong to any one of us singly — but this can just forward to multiple addresses.
The other one would be something for the submissions to be sent to. I was thinking editor@cidu.us or maybe cidu-editor@someother.com or cidu-submissions@someother.com — something along those lines.
But this latter one, say editor@cidu, would need a real log-in-able webmail system. Also of course, forwarding to other addresses, which would be the personal addresses of the editorial board, so they get notified.
—-
But there are workflow questions, about keeping track of which submissions are in what status — seen or not, by whom, answered, rejected, accepted, scheduled, post written, posted, etc etc. Also, where are images stored? Not as simple as when it was a one-man operation.
We can think about a system like some helpdesk software, or Trello and its friends, etc. But as a start, a robust webmail system with easy folder creation and message movement, could be where we start, with folders for those different status. This means all the editor people would share the one webmail username and password. (And not use two-factor auth! Or your phone would get the text whenever anybody wants to sign in!) Also, as I said, forward out but retain emails.
That is something to think of later maybe. For signing up we do need an address for contact. I did make cidu-admin@pm.me in my Protonmail account, but I forgot that the additional addresses they provide are not separate users, and have the same password (and email content!) as the base account address. So this wouldn’t do. I am looking into their options for creating an additional *user* (with of course its own address) for the editorial process , but that’s down the line and there are plenty of other ways of getting this.
—-
For TODAY we just need cidu-admin@anywhere. Maybe simply gmail? And use that for signing up for hosting.
I don’t think we need to be too careful to minimize expenses entirely. The “Premium” package on WrdPress.com (first step up from free) is about $8/mo and gets a few things free does not. But installing your opwn theme is only with the very costly Business package, and I wouldnt go there until and unless we actually have a theme that does the tricks people are asking for. Carl and Lapin and others, if we go with another hosting service and use the wordpress.ORG open software, can we get good storage allowance etc?
Oh poo, there is not going to be a way to release a post that went into moderation!
And that was a big one!
Well, I’ll send it into the Google Group and maybe try to put piecemeal back here!
Part 1 of 3 from moderated post
For IMPLEMENTATION and EDITORIAL teams]
@Carl, sorry we haven’t gotten to a general discussion of email ; and editorial committee workflow which I think is a linked matter.
So yes, we do need two or three new email addresses. But not necessarily with @cidu.us. Admin for signing up in the WP mechanism, so it does not have to belong to any one of us singly — but this can just forward to multiple addresses.
The other one would be something for the submissions to be sent to. I was thinking edi…@cidu.us or maybe cidu-…@someother.com or cidu-sub…@someother.com — something along those lines.
But this latter one, say editor@cidu, would need a real log-in-able webmail system. Also of course, forwarding to other addresses, which would be the personal addresses of the editorial board, so they get notified.
Part 2 of 3 from moderated post:
But there are workflow questions, about keeping track of which submissions are in what status — seen or not, by whom, answered, rejected, accepted, scheduled, post written, posted, etc etc. Also, where are images stored? Not as simple as when it was a one-man operation.
We can think about a system like some helpdesk software, or Trello and its friends, etc. But as a start, a robust webmail system with easy folder creation and message movement, could be where we start, with folders for those different status. This means all the editor people would share the one webmail username and password. (And not use two-factor auth! Or your phone would get the text whenever anybody wants to sign in!) Also, as I said, forward out but retain emails.
That is something to think of later maybe. For signing up we do need an address for contact. I did make cidu-…@pm.me in my Protonmail account, but I forgot that the additional addresses they provide are not separate users, and have the same password (and email content!) as the base account address. So this wouldn’t do. I am looking into their options for creating an additional *user* (with of course its own address) for the editorial process , but that’s down the line and there are plenty of other ways of getting this.
Part 3 of 3 from moderated post:
For TODAY we just need cidu-admin@anywhere. Maybe simply gmail? And use that for signing up for hosting.
I don’t think we need to be too careful to minimize expenses entirely. The “Premium” package on WrdPress.com (first step up from free) is about $8/mo and gets a few things free does not. But installing your opwn theme is only with the very costly Business package, and I wouldnt go there until and unless we actually have a theme that does the tricks people are asking for. Carl and Lapin and others, if we go with another hosting service and use the wordpress.ORG open software, can we get good storage allowance etc?
“(Side note — are there any women on the team?)”
No.
“The women I noticed in this conversation include Andrea, who seems more inclined to continue as a finder and submitter of comics, and Chak who may well do some of the operational stuff.”
To paraphrase a now-famous cartoon, “On the internet, no one knows that you’re a woman [or not].”
So I assumed there were no women involved in this process, but I could be wrong (not the first – or last – time).
I already maintain a comics/politics list that takes up a LOT of my time, as well as an Airedale ListServ, and seeing as I’m in the tropical climate of Florida and prefer to be outside as much as possible, I would rather not be involved in the setting up. AND I don’t work well in committees, being a controlling person. ‘-)
I was frantically/feebly writing and then retrieving that long post and missed until now several posts that went up in the meantime.
Not to get too grim about it, but I was having thoughts myself along the lines Le Vieux Lapin ruminates on — and I am even older, and honestly got so frustrated with Willing’s interface that I don’t even have a regular will, let alone a digital will.
It’s natural for us to be thinking about succession of online resources, since that is triggered by our loss of Bill and what we are doing right now.
That’s why it would be good to have everything that can be shared be owned by two people at least. I know that can’t be applied to an actual payment contract, but those could be prepaid for a couple years, and as Le Vieux Lapin points out, having multiple sign-ins or account links that would have almost complete operational (and further rights-delegation) permissions.
Actually, though I didn’t go into it there (like that comment wasn’t long enough?), when I talked about quickly signing up for two or three new little email accounts, involved in the vagueness about how many was the idea that the contact or backup address for those should also be shared! If a bunch of people are using say cidu-admin@gmail.com and for some reason the password gets blocked or refused, the “change my password” procedure would want to send something to the backup address, and if it were somebody unavailable, we’d be stuck. And this doesn’t even need to have someone deceased in the story to show the inconvenience. If the password recovery goes to somebody individual who might not get it for several hours, the person trying to use it is in bad luck. So the shadow address also needs sharing.
Andrea, no negative reflection on you or your participation style intended in the least!
Re digital inheritance, a “too soon?” cartoon/ [Described earlier but posted now.]
Re digital inheritance, a “too soon?” cartoon/ [Described earlier but posted now.]
The embed technique didn’t work, so let’s see if link to the blog post will avoid moderation.
https://wpdemos.blog/2020/09/22/too-soon/
Vieux Lapin, please send your email address to me mmarks4 at protonmail.com or post it, so I can secure-mail you something about cidu.us dns records
Thanks!
Wow, WordPress sounds kind of pricey and limited. I had no idea it had gone that direction. :-(
The storage limit on my Hostgator account, which is the one I’d be more likely to use, is 900+gb.. Currently using 72gb.
Almost all of the storage is available for mysql databases. There’s no limit on the number of databases.
No limit on the number of email accounts either. Email forwarding is available, so that mail sent to one address can go to multiple people.
You have 3 webmail options – Round Cube, Horde, and Squirrelmail (hmm). Or you can use a mail client such as Thunderbird or Outlook No extra authorization stuff, just log in with your email address and password.
A possibly more robust approach to communication might be to use a listserver for the admin team. Again, that would be easy to set up on cidu dot us if we decided to go that route. Anybody want to volunteer to be the listserver admin?
If I load up a WP instance, what version would you want? It doesn’t have to be the current one.
It may take a while longer for the new domain name to make its way round to your computer, but if not now, soon typing that url should take you to this site. Obviously, I can change that as necessary.
Ha! Those were the same webmail choices I think my job had on a server from what used to be ANHosting. We had a bunch of public school teachers using it before the school system started on their long and crazy path to GSuite, There was something cute about the Squirrelmail logos and look, though it wasn’t the most powerful in terms of features,
Well if everyone agrees, let’s drop the idea of using WordPress.com and accept one of the offers to get an instance of open-source WordPress.org release going on one of the existing rental servers.
Carl Fink, do you think the ones you manage would work out better in some way, or should we go with this offer from Lapin?
But let’s hold off on webmail onboard the same service. Even though there is something nice about having them in the same domain, that isn’t necessary really — and can be accomplished other ways, on a public (quasi-commercial but free) platform. [Thanks for sending me your email — that is what I wanted to take up with you, enabling @cidu.us addresses on protonmail]
Thanks!
@ Mitch4 – If you need a temporary (or even permanent) e-mail address for administration purposes, I would (strongly) suggest GMX (www.gmx.net), which is the service that Bill used (I have my address there, too). It‘s a German company, but they offer free addresses using a number of TLDs, including .com, .net, and .de (not sure if they have .us).
I actually like the current version of WordPress, but I’m pretty flexible, @Lapin.
As I mentioned, I use RoundCube myself on my own personal VPS.
The ones I mentioned (Dreamhost, where I also have managed a WordPress instance, wordpress.com, etc., are probably roughly equivalent to HostGator. I would have done Dreamhost just because I have used it before, but that’s a pretty trivial reason. I have no issue with HG.
The big advantage of WordPress would be for very high-traffic sites, which is where cheap hosting services like HostGator and Dreamhost fall down. Probably not a short-term issue, if ever.
One person who should be involved (or at least consulted) for technical (programming) issues is “larK”. He has not commented on anything here since Friday, but he did place a note on his Comment Harvester, so he is aware of the situation. I would appreciate his input (in particular about the possibility of a new harvester for the new site).
Mitch4: “Andrea, no negative reflection on you or your participation style intended in the least!”
No negative reflection seen. Also, I’m six years older than Bill was – not that age has anything to do with prospects of death and dying – but that would be another consideration. I’m content to ‘collect comics’ and enjoy everyone else’s wit and knowledge.
A few days ago I was thinking about several events that will, to me, ALWAYS be ‘too soon’: Wars, Holocaust, 9/11, assassinations. I think, however, that Bill would’ve ‘preciatd this and its relevancy. My belief, such as it is, is that a person’s afterlife continues so long as s/he is remembered by someone, so say his name every time you read the comics.
Thanks Kilby, I just haven’t felt I had anything appropriate to say, and I’m still processing and mourning, I guess. Just read an apropos proverb today: You have two eyes and two ears but only one mouth; use them that way.
Anyway, if the successor site is WordPress, I can scrape the new one just as easily, almost transparently, as soon as it’s up. I can also stand down if a native WordPress archive can be activated, or alternatively integrate my stuff to the new thing if the hosting service runs ColdFusion (my database is MariaDB, the MySQL fork, but if it’s integrated, there really should be no need to maintain a separate DB, we should be able to just use the actual DB — there must be a native WordPress solution for the archiving question!) All I do is run SQL queries on the data I have to awkwardly scrape — if you have access to the actual DB, you can run all the same queries and then some straightforwardly.
Mitch4: I could help with editorial work, if that’s useful, although I’m a little unclear on whether “many hands will make light work” for that task (I guess it will depend on the workflow for submissions). I can also contribute financially towards operating costs.
I don’t think I’m too likely to be useful for technical issues, which seems to be where the focus is now.
@Lapin, thanks for contacting me in email — I just sent a reply.
@ Lapin, Carl Fink, and others with possible hosting and setup offers — and @ Kilby , larK, and others with important views and questions on hosting and setup ..
— Where have we gotten?
— How do we decide?
Next step —
Beside the hosting and WordPress opensource installation (a very big contribution!), there are steps for a WordPress Manager and (maybe same or different person or collab) and Site Designer to take initially — upon receiving the Go and maybe passwords etc from hoster / wp installer. And that would be to
— select a Theme (what some call “template” but technically inaccurate)
— Start a MOCKUP of the site, with permanent header area showing welcome text and some tribute to CIDU Bill and the present site, etc
— And a sample post, with a comment added when you are not signed in as admin, so we can see if that is working.
— And think about what kind of routine could be communicated to the editorial staff on the steps to upload maerial and use the editors onboard to make a comics post, including settings.
— Ask for feedback on that first draft, maybe public here in Random, semi-private on the Google Group, and particularly in direct contact from designated Feedbackers. Feeders-Back?
@Kilby, would you agree to be a primary Feedback person? I know you have a good feel for what is convenient or impractical to use and pleasant or uncomfotable to see. Others welcome too.
TBH, I had been following this without noticing that there were no women “leaning in.” While I do think female representation is important in many places, like Andrea (sorry – I don’t know how to get the accent to show), I am more willing to participate by “finding and contributing.” It never occurred to me that this was a male dominated space, though it probably is, which again speaks to the high level of courtesy promoted by Bill.
@WW, we absolutely are committed to having a multi-person Editorial Team! And I am glad you are offering to be part of it!
One reason for having a multi-person team would indeed be the “many hands will make light work” principle. (There is a flip side, which might be captured in the equally corny precept of “too many cooks spoil the broth” — explored at length below.) But also crucial is that, as we aren’t trying to replace Bill, we do not want to rely on one single person’s taste, judgement, and tact.
Who do we have? Anybody want to join but “I can do this but not that” could also be accommodated probably.
—
I think I’ve already yammered a couple times about what I’m calling workflow issues — where does stuff go, how are mail-ins marked for reference, where are images held, where are posting drafts held if not uploaded, do other editors review the posting remarks or just the selection?
Some of those can be handled, to start with, using these tools:
1 — A webmail service for the editors@ address with features:
a== Enable forwarding (plus retain!) to several outside addresses [so editors see when something has arrived]
b== Don’t have a web security fit each time “Somebody has logged in from a new device or browser!”. We will have multiple people doing this on a single account and password all the time.
c== Easy setup and use of folders. These will be for “let’s reject” , “seen favorably”, “ready to use”, “has been composed”, “posted and done”. etc Plus detours.
d==Unlikely to find this, but it would be great to be able to attach annotations to filed messages
2 — A private forum (plus maillist probably). This would be the place for the team to discuss
a==Normal process notes on each incoming item, including both what to decide on each plus what stage it has reached (i.e. what folder in the webmail), plus exchanges about wording of whatever.
b==Discussions or statements about the process. Self-conscious reflections. Scheduling. “I will be away Tuesday and Wednesday, when I am scheduled to be initial respionder for the queue. Who can take it? ” … “Can someone review / help me with how to get red letters within a line in the WP editor”…
3 — I don’t know, if those arent’t enough would it help to try using some other software — a helpdesk package, a workflow package, a project management package — I don’t even know what the right category names are. I have used Trello for something (at someone else’s behest) and it wouldn’t be perfect but maybe could help. (I see now it has been integrated with other Atlassian tools, but that doesn’t tell me much.)
So – – let’s CALL FOR ADVICE FROM ANY WORKFLOW EXPERT, PROJECT MANAGER EXPERT, OR ANYON WHO HAS GOOD FAMILIARITY WITH PM SOFTWARE OR TRELLO OR SIMILAR WORKSPACE SOFTWARE
Besides those workflow setup issues, there are some other sorts of setups that are not big but need deciding — maybe not right now of course.
1–Does everybody on the team do all of the various jobs, but on rotating schedule? Or would we have some who can’t stand the WP editor and don’t actually do the uploads and postings (for instance)?
a== If a rotating schedule, would it make sense to change daily, or weekly, or by availability, or by whose selection has been jointly approved to go next? etc
b== Obverse of the “non-posting editor” mentioned, what if the upload and WP interface is deemed too complex to expect everybody to do it the same way, how about making a specialist in some tasks like that?
Seriously, to figure these out, don’t hesitate to copy and paste any isolate item and comment on it!
NEW FRONT CIDU cartoon post!
Maybe someone is going to pick up from Bill!
Just to be explicit: Le Vieux Lapin seems to have most of it already done: WordPress and hosting and even a domain name, and with Carl Fink’s expertise in that area it seems to me that aspect is pretty much wrapped up. Mitch4 is the de facto product lead. I don’t see myself as having anything vital to add at this point, everything seems to be well under control, and I do not want to be one more meddling chef in the kitchen.
@Mitch4:
I think you’re exactly right about what’s needed. Would anyone care to write a draft of the Bill tribute? (I’m still a little too close to writing a good friend’s obituary to feel up for it just now.)
I strongly recommend Trello as a way to “portion out” comic articles among the editorial team.
I’m theme-ignorant, haven’t changed one in two years. I’d say it’s actually not super important, because we can always change it later.
@larK:
Please don’t exaggerate my skills. I have a lot of experience building and running WordPress sites, but “expert” is an exaggeration. My biggest qualification is an addiction to volunteering for stuff.
About the mostly-male thing … didn’t occur to me, mostly because unless someone has a gender-signifying name like “Meryl” I have no idea what gender you are. Lapin isn’t even self-identifying as human. :-)
Oh, one more thing: any tribute should definitely mention Billo.
> Lapin isn’t even self-identifying as human.
Considering what the human race is doing these days, I might just leave it that way.
If you stole a glance at the new domain in its earlier hours, you’ve had some confirmation that I’m (perhaps regrettably) human. You even had a 50% chance of determining my real name and sex. (smile)
I was going to send an email reply to Mitch but I’ll just post most of its sense here instead, if that’s OK.
First, a thought on webmail. I don’t wear a tinfoil hat, but I do have a snappy tinsel beanie. I make some languid motions toward improved privacy, with a few periodic spasms. I’ve read that email left in an online mailbox loses its legal privacy protections after some period of time that I don’t recall. Therefore I use a POP3 client.
But this isn’t my train, I’m just a passenger or maybe a junior porter, so it’s really up to the collective to decide. I can set whatever nameserver and MX records y’all decide on.
Atchoum. Hatschi. Darn. I seem to be having an allergic reaction to the term “w***flow,” probably because it contains a 4-letter word. (Shudder.) Therefore I will let y’all figure out how to handle … uh … that word.
But as always (I hear your eyes rolling) I have a couple of thoughts.
1. I’m a little leery about having multiple people share a single login. It’s a regrettable fact of life that now and then in any group, someone can get his nose out of joint, and the group may need to find a way to pull the communication plug. That’s really tough when everybody shares a login.
2. Before you decide, I suggest that you have a look at nabble dot com. You can easily create a private web forum there. Heck, it might even work for posting comics, since you can also build blogs there. I haven’t tried their blogs, however.
The Nabble downsides are that (1) it’s ad-sponsored, and (2) it carries the same hazard as Yahoo groups and now Google groups – someday they could shut it down or make us pay for it.
If you want to use a good old fashioned email listserver for crew communication, I can provide one of those – but only if I point the domain’s MX record at my host. In that case any cidu dot us email accounts would have to be on that server.
I’ve been running Mailman for decades, if people want a plain old mailing list.
Creating private webfora or running something as a listserv or any other (relatively) closed system (as opposed a controlled system, which I do advocate), risks us becoming an incestuous little village. That the page is open and can be stumbled upon by anyone brings in new participants, even if it’s in dribs and drabs. It also makes it easy for people to lurk. We’ve seen with the tributes there are a good number of lurkers (and more still, as some are undoubtedly still lurking). Those casual and lurking users are also part of the community and give value. I’m sure some were contributing things to Bill to post.
I’m really not wanting to be the guy who shoots down everything…but if we’re trying to keep some of the things that made this group special going, then some otherwise very workable ideas may not be suitable. They would be great in another context, but not for this.
DB-LD, I don’t think I did. I’m not saying, though that there was anything malicious in it. Before it became clear we have some pretty techie people in the group, there were a lot of ideas tossed around, sometimes by less technical folks, and mailing lists and message boards appeared there. I think it was just people talking through ideas about how to keep something going. The Old Rabbit, mentioned it could be done on nabble in passing, not as an actual suggestion, I’m sure. But best not to let the idea get too deeply into anyone’s head. :)
I wish I had the tech chops to be able to participate in the discussion of how to build something that will work well. Since I can’t do that, I’ll just meddle in other ways. :D
So, WHO sent out the new comic today? Or was it ‘stuck’ in the queue for over a week? IF one of Bill’s sons is ‘taking over’ the site, all this is moot, no?
Andréa: I assume it was just queued. If someone was taking over the site, they would probably say that they were, not just quietly add a new comic.
I think highly likely it was previously queued. I doubt one of them would start doing new comics without letting people know. Plus all the tags and such.
I’m actually sort of puzzled why the new posts came to a stop last Wednesday, since I thought Bill had posts queued up for weeks in advance. Until today I had assumed that even with them queued up, he still had to do some daily manual confirmation, or something like that. But now I’m doubly confused.
I felt strangely both happy and sad to see the post today, with it’s reminder of how much I always enjoyed Bill’s wry title-writing style.
“I felt strangely both happy and sad to see the post today, with its reminder of how much I always enjoyed Bill’s wry title-writing style.”
I, too, felt conflicting emotions . . . a reminder of what we’ve all lost.
Singapore Bill, thanks for bringing this up. If you’re thinking it, I’d guess that others are too.
I can only speak for myself, but I haven’t picked up the sense that anyone wants to shut down the openness that CIDU has had all this time. In fact as a relatively recent addition to the crew here, I have to say that I was absolutely delighted to find that I could post comments without having to fill out forms, give WordPress my mobile phone number, and/or mail in my cat as security. My first comments went straight into the moderation tank, but they eventually floated to the surface, and that was fine with me.
What I think we’ve been batting round here are rather ways that an editorial board of sorts could knock their heads together without the whole world watching the sausage machine. (There’s a mixed metaphor that would do Crankshaft justice.) I’ve never worked at a newspaper, but I suspect it’s not much different from what their editorial department goes through when they try to get to grips with some kind of official editorial position for the paper, and I’m pretty sure that process doesn’t go on out in broad daylight on Public Square either.
All that said, as my distant cousin Bugs would say, I’m coagulatin’ a couple of ideas. Being a Bun of Little Brain, I have some of them rattling round in there where the grey matter ought to be, so I need to reread a lot of past posts and coagulate a bit more before posting further on this.
BTW, on the new post: WordPress lets authors schedule their posts to go live at any date and time in the future. I’m pretty sure that I recall that Bill mentioning that he’d scheduled posts. So, there will no doubt be more.
I think of it these little surprises as part of Bill’s legacy. I can tell you that “What the Braque?” at the top of the main page today made me do a little internal dance. I hope it had the same effect on others.
Ooookaay, for now anyway the address for people to send contributions will be
editors@cidu.info
Notes:
1 Thanks for other suggestions. I tried a free GMX account but it didn’t seem to have multiple address outside forwarding either. We’ll have to find another form of notification.
1. @Lapin, we could still change it to @cidu.us, if you are open to dropping a bunch of stuff into your DNS for cidu.us. But it is not just the MX. …
2. Note to the WP designer doing the draft of the site — think about where this would go and how presented.
3. Members of the editors team (which you can be, just about just by saying so) , please email to that address from the working address you would want all new-cidu editorial correspondence to go to. [Or if for some reason the return address on your mail is not what you want used, please give the preferred one in the message body. Also please identify yourself by your familiar cidu alias, if it isn’t obvious.
I will use these to a) distribute login info for that webmail [which you might be able to setup within your own email application to check remotely , b) send you invitation-to-edit the wonderful sideways spreadsheet for tracking emailed contributions (exists now and ready, mostly) c) send you invitation to join private forum/maillist (okay it will be another Google Group, don’t get mad about that please)
Thank you, Bunny. As we see, I am the idiot that “idiot-proof” must be measured against. :)
There’s something else the editors will decide: categories. Bill had CIDUs, LOLs, Arlos, Ewwws, Synchronicity, Geezers, and Oys (and maybe others I can’t think of offhand). He also posted off-topic things which were generally of interest to us. (And let’s not forget Kowalski’s head.)
OTOH, I sent him a couple of things which he didn’t post, such as “comic tropes which annoy me” (a week of a comic where the guy “doesn’t believe in UFOs” when he actually doesn’t believe in flying saucers), and comics where the humor doesn’t work if the writer (or character) gets the math and/or science right.
Do you want to keep all of the existing categories? Do you want to add new ones? And remember that nothing need be carved in stone; change can be good.
@Lapin, thanks much for establishing cidu.us!
I somehow missed your Wednesday afternoon direct email reply, and I am writing a reply right now. Also, I don’t think you will mind (you sort of suggested it) , I will include Carl Fink as well.
I just want to ask about the status of the WP installation. I see that cidu.us is pointing for now right *here* to the “GD&tSMD” cidu site [unless there is a change my DNS hasn’t caught up with], and that’s great, while the eventual new site isn’t in shape. But that latter part is what I wanted to get a better picture of, as there are still a couple ways to go.
Thanks again and an email should be on its way within the hour.
Arthur, I agree. We need to be open to changes, to keep the site relevant and not just copying what Bill did. Obviously we’d have CIDUs and LOLs and Ewwws. I like the Geezer tag as well. I’m not sure that I know, deep in my heart, exactly what constitutes an Oy! so that would be up to others to determine. I’m open to these things evolving. I too have sometimes had my contributions explained by Bill and not posted. I chalked it up to him thinking they wouldn’t drive good discussion. If that loosened up a bit, it might be worthwhile. I don’t know. And while I’ve spoken for a slow, controlled, closed manner of posting, I like the idea of having a more readily accessible archive. It’d be nice to go back over older comics one might have missed. So yes, we’re inspired by, not a carbon copy.
This project is getting a little more involved than I imagined, and here I am to add still more complications. Sorry! I can be a bit chaotic at times, but I’ll try to organize these thoughts as well as I can.
A. HOSTING. It looks like a whole bunch of fingers are pointing at me. Gulp. That happened fast. OK, I’ll set up the server and the WordPress installation.
B. WORDPRESS DESIGNER: We need someone with some WordPress experience, and preferably with a little bit of graphic design sense too. It should be someone who’s diplomatic and plays well with others, because it looks like we’re going to have a fair number of cooks in the kitchen. (smile)
I haven’t yet seen anyone raise a forepaw to volunteer for this. Maybe I missed it.
Warning: if I have to do this myself, no complaints! To find out what will happen if you gripe about it, search Youtube for Moose T*rd Pie by Utah Phillips. (smile)
C. COPYRIGHT. Ooooh, that ugly thing. We have a couple of angles to consider. I have some ideas on these but I’d like to read what other folks think first.
1, First, the big one: let’s come out and say it; we’re mostly posting copyrighted material here. We’ll be relying on the forbearance of rightsholders.
Some of them understand that sites like this one drive new audiences to their official publications and thus have real benefit to them.
Others don’t, and those copyright absolutists can get cranky. Just ask any of the music bloggers who felt the wrath of the media companies around 2008-2010.
How did Bill handle this issue? Did it just never become a problem?
Do we have any experts who’d like to weigh in on what we need to do to protect ourselves?
What else do we need to forge here?
2. Second, the text that contributors and editors write for comic posts – do we need to formalize anything about rights on that?
D. CATEGORIES. I see some discussion on this already. Well done.
Post categories are one thing, but it seems to me that Arlos are cats of a different breed. Bill banished iffy material to the Arlo page, which was totally separate. Do we want to continue putting these behind the counter, so to speak?
“. . . search Youtube for Moose T*rd Pie by Utah Phillips. (smile)”
Hubby and I have lived by his phrase for over 30 years. Works, tho!
Copyright problems tend to fall under fair use, almost by definition. One specific example of fair use is commentary/criticism. Creators could still sue (not because they’re right or would win a trial, just as a deterrent), but really, they don’t seem to. In my own blogging, whenever possible I embed the original comic rather than copying it, and I always link to the comic online if it exists (thus promoting the creator’s work).
I think that may have been part of Bill’s thinking behind his “no disparagement” rule. He probably wanted to avoid any accusations of libel and defamation. Casual discussion is less likely to work up rightsholders.
@Arthur – September 24, 2020 at 3:15 am
RE CATEGORIES
I remember that MASK FAIL was going to become a category, altho I can’t remember if it was discussed among CIDUers, or just between Bill & me . . . here’s one I’d’ve submitted (and yes, B & C is ALWAYS ‘mask failling’) . . .
And I think MASK ON PUMPKIN’ was also going to be a category, albeit a temporary one. Which will probably be a moot point by the time this is all straightened out and a new CIDU is established. Turkeys with masks? Santa with a mask? I’m sure those will all appear.
I am not a lawyer, but I was going to point out the same commentary/criticism fair use that Carl Fink did. A reason for copying a comic, rather than embedding, is permanence. Some embeds would go away after a week; some wouldn’t work at all if the view didn’t allow cookies; sometimes what’s being commented on is changed by the artist at the original site.
Andréa, I think that’s one of the few recent B&C strips that is *not* a mask fail. BTW, I believe there are cities where it’s currently both illegal to wear a mask in public and illegal not to.
“Andréa, I think that’s one of the few recent B&C strips that is *not* a mask fail.”
I agree, but a point was still being made. Besides, I miss seeing and commenting on comics . . .
The new site will need a new name, or maybe we should say a title. (That is, NOT anything to do with domain-name or hostname or URL. Those are now nicely settled.) What I mean is the free-text designation that appears on the site in various prominent places, and in some form in how people talk/write about it.
I know we obviously don’t want to encroach on precisely “Comics I Don’t Understand”. But something related? Something new and different? Do we hope for a convenient acronym / initialism?
Ideas:
More Comics We Don’t Understand.
Comics We Still Don’t Understand
New Comics We Don’t Understand
New Comics I Don’t Understand
New CIDU
And Now For …
Completely Different
Indigestible Comics
Head Scratchers
I’m sure someone will come up with something better.
Comics We Don’t Understand?
It’s simple. Clearly indicates it is not Bill’s, but shows continuity. Loses the CIDU initialism, but I can’t think of a new title that doesn’t (without being awkward).
Whatever the new title, I suggest preserving “CIDU” as a post tag.
Nice!
And according to Google Translate, “cwdu” in Welsh is “cuddle” in English.
(Written Welsh uses ‘w’ for a genuine vowel)
https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=cy&tl=en&text=cwdu
Just an idea: perhaps “CWSDU”, for “Comics We Still Don’t Understand” ? ;-)
P.S. The more I consider all of the details that we have been discussing, the more I think that the old adage about “politics and sausages” should also apply to “websites” (it’s better not to consider how any of them are prepared).
One very important point: no matter what we eventually set up (including whoever is involved in setting up and managing it), the most critical factor is whether the entire community that has been involved with Bill’s “CIDU” website will continue to participate in reading and commenting at the new site. In particular, I think we need to place a little more emphasis on all of those people who just “read” the comics (and the comments), without necessarily adding comments of their own. I have no idea how big the percentage of strict “lurkers” might be, but simply judging from the number of infrequent commenters, it probably has been quite substantial.
P.S. Once a test setup is running (with a working address for submissions), it would be a good idea to solicit e-mail commentary that would NOT be posted for public consumption, just to give those who might not want to put their thoughts out in the open a chance to provide feedback on how everything looks from an “outsider’s” perspective.
@ “Copyright” – Bill once mentioned that in all the years he ran CIDU, he received only two “cease and desist” complaints, both of which concerned the same comic, and both were sent by the syndicate, not the author. He contacted the author, who said not to worry about it.
I like CWDU
CIDU2
Good points, as usual.
NAME: Ack, it never even occurred to me to consider changing the name. Should I admit that?
If we’re going to change it, I’ll toss my hat into the ring for Comics We Don’t Understand.
COPYRIGHT: Thanks for the discussion on this. I’ve had to think about rights, but not from this angle. Since we’re engaging in criticism, and I think sometimes even gentle parody, it sounds like Fair Use applies.
That may not always satisfy over-zealous syndicates. It’s good to hear that contacting the artists worked for Bill, but I have the impression that in most cases the syndicates own the rights, full stop, and not even the artist has authority to grant an exception. It seems wrong, but I think that’s also often the case with music.
This has a personal dimension for me as the site owner, because any infringement suit will land squarely on my head. I’d like to joke about that, but it’s just not very funny: I’d be ruined. If a C&D letter arrives, I have to see it, I have to react, and that image has to go. I’m really sorry I have to be so rigid about this.
EMAIL: Mitch has apparently nabbed the domain cidu dot info (way to go!), and I think he’s setting up email on that address. Keeping it separate from the main site seems like a pretty good idea.
Cidu dot us (or – new development – cwdu dot org) will still be available for other email uses. Any email address at that domain can be set to forward to as many other email addresses as we like. Would that work for the comments and copyright gripes addresses, do y’all think?
Warning: Posting open email addresses on a site attracts an absolute tsunami of spam. I have some tricks to cut down on it, but we’ll still get some. Get a bucket ready.
SITE DESIGNER: Maybe I’ve missed it, but I still haven’t heard from anyone with WordPress chops who’s willing to do this part. I don’t think it needs to be anything flashy – Bill’s WP page isn’t. Light is good.
If nobody steps forward soon, you’re gonna get my design. You’ve been warned!
If I have to do it, I invite you to look at the Libre 2 theme at wordpress dot com and tell me what you think. It’s simple and clean. I’d post a link, but that might dump this post into moderation.
I was planning to install WP this afternoon. However, for technical reasons, I’m putting it on hold until I see who, if anyone, is willing to be the designer.
SITE MAINTENANCE: Someone needs to “sign on” for the thankless routine maintenance. I expect that comment moderation will be a major part of this job.
I’ll take care of regular site backups.
If someone wants – er, is willing – to be both designer and maintainer, that would be great.
Libre 2 appears to use threaded comments. When Bill had them here (or was it the Arlo page?) people didn’t like it.
Also, I couldn’t tell if it showed comment numbers, as we used to get before comicgeddon.
I’d be very tempted to use Disqus, just for the standardization.
For what it’s worth, it’s relatively easy to tweak a “theme” or “template” via css overrides. The reason number don’t show on this “template” is that the css expressly turns the off, even though comments are numbered list items in the html. It’s real easy to turn them back on, either by directly tweaking the css file, or overriding the css via a later over-ride if you can’t access the css file. I do it on my hijack pages
I would vote to keep the same theme we’re using now, and to tweak those things we really hate (eg, numbering, and how quotes get formatted).
Arthur, millions of thanks. That’s exactly the kind of info I need!
I’ve never used threaded comments, but I’m just about positive that they aren’t a function of the theme.
The theme just controls the overall look of the site – colors, window layouts, where the menus and links show up, how the layout adapts to different devices and screens. Mostly, it’s a big stack of CSS (web code).
Comment threading is baked into the wordpress software itself, and can be adjusted or turned off.
A quick investigation suggests that comment numbering is handled by a plugin, so that shouldn’t be a problem to bring back, fingers crossed. I’ll need to do a bit more research.
If the software hooks that allow numbering have been ripped from WordPress in recent versions (uh, why?), and the community wants comment numbering, then I can dial back to a WP version that has them. When we’re running our own copy of WordPress, we’re no longer beholden to WordPress Inc and their mandatory updates and downgrades.
May I ask a favor?
I’m relatively new here and I don’t know the history of comicgeddon, the Godaddy fiasco, or even what all that has to do with squirrels that must also die. (Paging Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale.)
Can someone please either write up for me here a brief synopsis of those sagas or, maybe better, aim me toward a comment thread that might clarify things? If I end up assembling the blog, which is kind of looking likely, I don’t want to build in any more historical annoyances than necessary.
This is the really, really condensed history behind the site’s URL:
Dave Whamond writes the comic Reality Check. In (almost?) every one, there’s a small squirrel who makes some kind of extra comment. Usually, that comment is unnecessary and seems to be trying to explain a joke that’s already obvious. Sometimes it’s a comment that seems to make no sense. Bill used to complain about the squirrel a lot. See, for instance, the comic in
https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2020/08/28/seriously-this-cant-be-a-coincidence/
At some point in late 2017 or early 2018, Godaddy did *something* and the entire contents of the site was nuked. Poof. 20 years worth of history, just gone. Two months worth of queued CIDUs gone. No way of getting any of it back. The first post on the new site may be
https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/and-were-back-ish/
So, Bill needed a URL for the new site and he chose the one you see in a fit of pique. He expected it to be a temporary thing until he created a “real” URL for permanent use. Somewhere along the way he decided to keep it.
Oh, and in case it wasn’t obvious, comicgeddon (with various spellings) refers to the Godaddy fiasco.
While looking for more info, I remembered the backup site which was pressed into service a couple of times pre-comicgeddon. For completeness, those building the new site should know that this exists:
https://cidu.wordpress.com/
And weirdly on that intermediate site Arthur gives, I was still able to use the comment form and submit a comment (to one of the visible posts.) However, it went into moderation.
The Godaddy fiasco in Bill’s own words:
Apparently, GoDaddy was switching servers and some people’s DNS didn’t point to where they were supposed to propogate. Or something. I’m just repeating words.
The bottom line — and I kept asking their tech guy to just give me bottom lines, but he kept insisting on speaking gibberish — is that GoDaddy screwed up bigtime, and for once they’re not trying to tell me it’s my fault.
RE: SQUIRREL: Here’s today’s . . .
Thanks, Andréa. I think that’s a near-perfect example of what Bill disliked about the squirrel.
And, Old Bunny, we’ve been known to use the squirrel as a metaphor when other comics over-explain a joke.
Arthur, Mitch, Andréa, many thanks – that helps enormously! Aargh, what a disaster. I’m not going to say anything about Godaddy, except that I’ve never used any of their services and don’t plan to.
I can’t explain why, but I feel somehow unworthy after reading that history.
Depending on how complete an archive he hoped for, with a large helping of patience, I suspect that a really determined person might be able reconstruct at least the comics from that ancient archive.
I see an extensive list of snapshots from comicsidontunderstand dot com saved in the Wayback Machine at archive dot org. The snapshots go back to 2002. On the 3 that I checked, almost all of the comics were present and accounted for on the front page. Alas, none of the detail pages with comments that I checked had survived. But it’s better than nothing.
As I recall (and my memory is notoriously porous) Bill didn’t want to reconstruct the old site.
Great summary, Arthur!
I would take issue with one detail. (Actually, already posted about it here within the last week — but this time will link a blog post with dashboard screenshot.)
So, Bill needed a URL for the new site and he chose the one you see in a fit of pique. He expected it to be a temporary thing until he created a “real” URL for permanent use. Somewhere along the way he decided to keep it.
Actually I’m not disagreeing with anything Arthur says, but with the missing step. When ties with GoDaddy were finally done (though I looked up the whois and nslookup for “comicsidontunderstand.com” and GoDaddy is in there as the original registry, though wordpress is the name service now) Bill changed where “comicsidontunderstand.com” points, and it is now to this very place we are using, on WP.
And WP has it in there, and recognizes it, and displays the right site. Try it out. Paste it in the location bar of your browser — you may need to use the long form “http://comicsidontunderstand.com” to have it just go there and not search. (Henceforth “CIDU.COM”).
When that works, you will see the location bar in your browser change what it displays, to “https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com” (henceforth “GD&SMD”).
But that’s not because “CIDU.COM” “doesn’t work” or ïsn’t the real URL” or “isn’t recognized by WordPress” or “Bill was not able to get the CIDU.COM back” or any of that. It’s just that both are recognized by WP dashboard but one or the other has to be selected as Primary, and that determines it is privileged in various ways, such as being what it sends back to your browser to display as current location.
Because I dislike the “GD&SMD” name so much, I’m sorry to say I became a bit of a thorn in Bill’s side, urging him, in email and in comments threads, to switch it to the “CIDU.COM” one as primary.
For a while Bill said it would be too complicated; so I posted a screenshot from a WP test/demo site of mine showing the single checkbox change it required. Then Bill said hjr was worried it would screw thins up for visitors looking for the site under the “GD&SMD” URL. So I showed tests of switching my demo wp from one address to the other and back , and how the browser visits worked equally well for either URL at each stage of the experiment. (There is no DNS-propagation delay involved in this.) finally Bill just said he really liked the “GD&SMD” name – so I let it go!
If anybody is still with me on this over-extended anecdote and wants to see some of the trail, the demonstration screenshot I mentioned is in the post at https://wpdemos.blog/2018/03/17/setting-primary-domain/
I do not want to re-open a can of worms, but if the assembled community already has control over “cidu.info“, “cidu.org“, and “cidu.us“, would it be worth taking a poll on which of those three URLs should be the primary front page address?
P.S. After reflection, the title “Comics We Don’t Understand” really captures the essence of the (tragically enforced) transition. Has anyone checked whether (or which) TLD variants of CWDU might still be available? If we decide to go with that name, then perhaps we should use that acronym as the official address, and employ the three “CIDU” TLDs to be referrers to there.
I would suggest CWDU.COM, if it is available, with CWDU.US as my second choice.
Kilby, it sounds as though you are concerned the first url used gets “baked in” and others added later as CNAMES (aliases under DNS) or other kind of add-on will after that be at some disadvantage.
It isn’t quite like that. I’m not sure it works the same in outside hosted WP as in WP.com hosted, but see the screenshot in the Random WP Demos blog I posted a link to at the end of my previous long anecdote. The selection of primary domain (among the ones you control and have entered on your WP site dashboard) can be freely switched later. And the consequences are limited – the non-primary urls still work to get you there, still can be what people save in their bookmarks, etc. The only thing it very noticeably affects is what the server tells your browser to display as your current location.
(This does have some psychological and some practical consequence, in that if you go on browsing within the site and want to save/copy/send an address for that, it will be based on the primary. But not a big deal, I think)
Does any of that address your concern about which of the many possible short FQDMs (hostnames) should end up as primary?
—-
The other practical thing about that is that it isn’t a matter of what the server is addressed as while the WP software is being built and initialized. That would almost always be something else, the established address of the underlying server.
—-
Related questions … I love the suggestion of “Comics We Don’t Understand” for the title. But also CaroZ seems to me entirely correct about saying the WP Category and Tag (the technical distinction of those doesn’t matter here) should remain CIDU or cidu. And while we don’t want to dictate how people express themselves, it’s a good guess that when someone wants to say a comic is still puzzling they would likely say “Yeah, that’s still a comic I don’t understand!” and not “we” no matter what our site is titled! Similarly it seems the abbreviated form would commonly be like “No, I got the joke, it’s not a cidu for me.”
Iow I don’t see much popularity for day to day use of “CWDU”. No harm done if some domain name based on that gets pointed at the site, but also no special need to have them done that way.
The screenshot for selecting Primary domain … freely done later on
My vote is for some variant of the CWDU, both for the name (OK,, that’s not variant) and the domain. But I don’t have a strong opinion.
I’m hoping that when the dust settles we can get Aaron to post something on the old front page explaining and pointing to the new one, just for sanity.
As for helping (Le Vieux Lapin’s note):
I don’t know WordPress, so I can’t help much there.
I think we’ve settled copyright for the most part, but also wonder whether there’s a way to deal with it through some sort of legal chicanery, but IANAL. Someone here must be…?
Keeping Arlos “behind the counter” always struck me as a bit quaint, in an era where (as some comedian notes) websites with adult-only material warn you about it by showing you that material and saying “Don’t click if you don’t want to see more of THIS!” but I’m not *opposed*.
Mitch has done a fine job above of explaining how domain is handled for sites hosted at wordpress dot com. Thanks!
With a self hosted blog, the process is the same as for a regular website. The blog entry point is the site’s index page. Setting it up is probably a little more work, but it may be more flexible too.
You can point as many domain names as you wish at the same server location. Some big operations have hundreds or thousands of domain names. Thanks to the miracle of DNS, typing any of them into a browser opens the proper web page.
So, we can, and will, have multiple domain names that lead to the same new blog.
I’ve reserved both cidu dot us and cwdu dot org. Both will work, once the new blog is open for business.
Carl Fink reserved dontunderstand dot fun and idontunderstand dot fun. We can use those.
Bill’s heirs have the rights to comicsidontunderstand dot com and cidu dot com. We can use those, if the stars so align (they have the login information, they want us to, and we want to).
In fact, anyone here who wants to can reserve a domain name for us to use. If you think that idontgetthiscomic dot com should lead to CWDU / CIDU too, go for it! We can use that. BTW, that domain name is available.
As for helping (Le Vieux Lapin’s note):
I don’t know WordPress, so I can’t help much there.
We could use another hand or two for the editorial team.
The activity there will in principle include some dealing with the WP editing and uploading interface, but not the things you’ve been seeing in recent discussion here on Random like CSS and choosing Themes etc. And for the part that is involved — uploading comics images and getting the posts published — we will all be to some extent learning it together. And probably somebody on the editorial team who throws their hands up and does not get along with the WP stuff directly can still pparticipate the actually more important stuff.
That other stuff is looking at the contributions readers will send in, and dealing with them along with the other editors — tediously trying to use a cumbersome tracking system I am still trying to impose, but beyond that conversing together online to come up with remarks to be put into posts, maybe doing correspondence with contributors, figuring out together if there are special occasions or other reasons to do clever scheduling — all the things Bill did for this site that we have been remarking on. Now our challenge, having said no one person could take that on, is figuring out how to do it collaboratively.
Right now the editors team is two people. I don’t know the ideal size, but probably we could use a couple more. If you are interested, email to (this is also the reader contribution address!) to
Editors@CIDU.info
with a note that you are interested, and maybe mention the address you would want to have enrolled in another GoogleGroup and so on, if not the apparent return address on your mail. And if you have been a CIDU commenter (not a requirement) you might want to mention your alias if not clear from your name and email. We will respond with an indigestible package of details, but don’t worry, we can get past most of that.
(I’m trying to stick to a vocabulary of “reader contributions mailed in” because when I was saying “submissions” some people reacted that it sounded like the main point is exclusion or filtering; when really it is accepting and enjoying together some comics and our puzzlements over them. But I may still at times slip and talk about tracking the submissions — it is easier oin some contexts.)
FYI The “Steering Committee” (ahem) is working towards being able to announce sometime next week a “soft launch” (aka “beta release”) . Well, that should be “quietly announce” if it is to be a soft launch :-)
We have some ways to go, though, as we are not quite cooking on an alpha basis for real! Though close. So just mentioning it and hoping this will reinforce your patience.
Thanks!
Shouldn’t there be an “N” between the “D” and the “U” ?
:-P
Call for graphics contribution.
Anyone able to put together from public/rights-free sources an image that could sit as the header and sort of communicate the nature of the site? Like, a collage of comic strips? A person anachronistically holding a folio size newspaper open, and maybe looking quizzical? These are just the corny ideas from the top of my head, you sophisticates can think of something better I’m sure.
For the vanilla themes we’re temping with currently, the suggested parameters are 1200 × 280 pixels , and probably jpg or png preferred over gif.
Thanks in advance both for ideas and potentially for actual finished images.
Again with the moderation!
Bah, I can’t figure what to try leaving out!
Call for graphics contribution. …. to be continued
…. is anyone ble to put together from public/rights-free sources an image that could sit as the header and sort of communicate the nature of the site? Like, a collage of comic strips? A person anachronistically holding a folio size newspaper open, and maybe looking quizzical? These are just the corny ideas from the top of my head, you sophisticates can think of something better I’m sure.
…. to be further continued
For the vanilla themes we’re temping with currently, the suggested parameters are 1200 × 280 pixels , and probably jpg or png preferred over gif.
Thanks in advance both for ideas and potentially for actual finished images.
P.S. Also a site icon ” Site Icons should be square and at least 512 × 512 pixels.”
For the generic / standard / prepackaged themes we’re temping with currently, the suggested parameters are 1200 × 280 pixels , and probably jpg or png preferred over gif.
Thanks in advance both for ideas and potentially for actual finished images.
P.S. Also a site icon ” Site Icons should be square and at least 512 × 512 pixels.”
For the v a n i l l a t h e m e s we’re temping with currently, the suggested parameters are 1200 × 280 pixels , and probably j p g or p n g preferred over g i f.
Thanks in advance both for ideas and potentially for actual finished images.
P.S. Also a site icon ” Site Icons should be square and at least 512 × 512 p i x e l s.”
Will any of that hide the moderation triggers?!
Phew! Should have let my cat type it in the first place!
Sorry, belay that!
This morning I told my son that people were working on launching a new CIDU site, and out of the blue he asked whether it would be called “CWDU”. In reply to my astonished stare, he explained that that was supposed to stand for “Comics We Don’t Understand“. (I did inform him last weekend about Bill, but have not shared any of the details since then, so I am still astonished that he came up with that on his own.)
For the pedants among us . . .
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/59071/little-known-punctuation-marks-national-punctuation-day
“Interrobang” is an old favorite!
PUMPKIN [PIE] SPICE season is upon us . . .
And from last week . . .
https://safr.kingfeatures.com/api/img.php?e=gif&s=c&file=TXV0dHMvMjAyMC8wOS9NdXR0cy4yMDIwMDkyMl8xNTM2LmdpZg==
Andrea, you are a breath of fresh air
Now, THAT’s a nice thing to read!! Thank you . . .
PUMPKIN [PIE] SPICE season is upon us . . .
With a timely “Dune” reference.
Today I lit my first Pumpkin [Pie] Spice candle of the season.
“And we can all have MORE SUGAR.” (smile) Thanks, Andréa. I needed that.
And now for something completely different . . . altho I did think at first (due to coloring) that it was going to be all pumpkin [pie] spice. I s’pose ‘buffalo chicken’ (whatever that is) is a more manly scent . . .
Andréa,
Buffalo wings are chicken wings made with a sweet BBQ sauce. The recipe originated in Buffalo.
Don’t try them if you don’t care for reeeally sweet BBQ.
I lived in Buffalo for a year – this was 1972/73. The local culinary specialties we learned about, that you could order out form all sorts of places around town, were a roast beef sandwich called “beef on weck” and an interesting kind of sauced spicy chicken wings. This was before “Buffalo wings” became nationally popular, and that name got attached.
No, we didn’t go to the Anchor Bar, and never knew until looking it up recently that that specific place is supposedly the creator of Buffalo-style hot wings. But by that time you could expect to see them at any hole-in-the-wall.
Chak: No. Buffalo wings are fried dry and then tossed with Frank’s hot sauce and butter, and maybe some vinegar and maybe some cayenne. NOT sweet. You’ll get laughed out of Buffalo if you call those “Buffalo wings”.
Source: My wife is from Buffalo, her family mostly still lives there, and I’ve seen several of them send “Buffalo” wings back in restaurants in other cities when they weren’t even close.
As I recall, the original recipe used margarine. I would substitute butter as well. But yeah, not a sweet BBQ sauce.
Brian, I think you’re right. Back when margarine was supposed to be healthier and thus more common…
I remember 5 cent wing nights. That was a LONG time ago!
Yes, Buffalo Wings, or “Buffalo Chicken” flavor is more heat and not so sweet.
I didn’t know if the perceptible thickness was just from baking and layering or mixing the base sauce with something thicker. Brian in STL says margarine or butter, I thought maybe yogurt. Or yoghurt as we used to write.
The fit with the ZITS works better for hot than sweet, too. The cliché is teenagers, particularly boys, gobbling down Flaming Hot Cheetos.
It isn’t ZITS; it’s THE BIG PICTURE, by Lennie Peterson.
https://www.gocomics.com/thebigpicture/
Oh yeah!
(And I do even have THE BIG PICTURE on my GoComics list. )
It must have been the note about “17 year old males” that short-circuited my brain :-)
I’ve never had Buffalo wings, and if I got the wrong description, it was probably a practical joke from a guy who knows I don’t like spicy. Sorry for the false info.
I’ve never had any, either . . . the thought of chicken wings, which would be just crunchy bones, doesn’t appeal. If it’s just a way to carry sauce to the mouth, I’d rather just spoon it up and forgo the chicken bones, senkuveddymuch.
Wings are not devoid of meat. The meat to bone ratio is somewhat lower than other cuts. Then there is the great “flat versus drummette divide”.
More important that flat vs. drummette is “How many wings does a chicken have?” If you buy a dozen wings, will they need 6 chickens to supply them, or just 3? Way too many places count wing parts rather than wings.
@ Brian in StL – “With a timely “Dune” reference.”
I noticed the allusion, but I didn’t understand why this would be the right time for “Dune” until I looked it up, and discovered the upcoming movie (which is still three months off). I sure hope it will turn out to be better than the last attempt (but it really couldn’t be any worse than that horrible stinker).
DIDU – could someone ‘splain the ‘Dune reference’, please.
[SYNCHRONICITY]
I’m no expert , but I think the main Dune reference point is just the obsession with SPICE, which in the Dune saga is a sort of mystical drug, created probably in the biology of the huge sandworms that are treated by the humans as demigods. SPICE was used in ritual consumption that could elevate the human shaman to uncanny powers. At the same time, it was something like an ordinary drug in Tst addictive force.
It seems unlikely that modern Pumpkin SPICE scan do as much, but it does seem craved by some.
@ Andréa – The allusion to Dune is (mostly) the line “The Spice must flow!” (see the penultimate panel). In Herbert’s
trilogyumpteenology of “Dune” books, the “spice” turns out to be a psychotropic drug used by pilots to permit them to navigate between stars. It’s available on only one planet, so whoever controls the spice effectively controls the galactic empire.P.S. Here’s a bit of comic commentary about the 1984 movie, which you should definitely not bother to watch:
I’ve not even read the books[s], so I know I’d never watch the movie[s]. I did break down and watch ‘My Blue Heaven’ for the umpteenth time last week; I needed something ‘feel goodish’, and that does it every time. It’s the only time I liked Steve Martin.
P.S. The face in the background is Sting, who had a part in the movie.
Amazing – you can read my mind all the way across the ocean!
Speaking/writing of Sting . . . I only know him thru a ‘solstice’ (NOT Christmas) CD, ‘If On A Winter’s Night’, which is probably why I didn’t recognize his portrait. I’d know his voice anywhere, tho.
Hi all,
Aaron here again. I realize I’ve missed most of the discussion on this topic but it seems like you are interested in having this site continue, and that there are people willing to do the legwork to keep it going. I think that’s great – again, I can’t say enough how meaningful it is to see all the appreciation for this community my dad built.
I’d be happy to turn over maintenance of the site to a committee of readers, as was discussed earlier in this thread, and it would save you from having to start from scratch. I don’t know his WordPress password but I assume I can reset it via email; I also assume I could add admin privileges for others through his account. Did anyone else already have admin privileges?
Also, interesting that he apparently had some posts queued up and ready to go. Appropriate for Yom Kippur in particular I suppose.
-Aaron
rec.arts.sf.written had a long discussion of the upcoming Dune movie. Reports are that it will only cover the first half of the book.
On the whole, an electric, veg-o-matic experience. Opus, I think you’ve just given us a synopsis of 2020.
Amen. And worse is yet to come.
I was going to add an anecdote about how I recorded the Dune movie on my betamax when they first showed it on TV, adding like about a half hour of cut footage and an introduction to make it more watchable than the movie version had been, and just when we got to the climactic fight scene with Sting at the end, my tape ran out (I think there was a football game before-hand than ran long), so we invested 2 and half hours and never got to the conclusion… but instead, I see Aaron has posted here, and I want to make sure that Mitch above all sees it, so I don’t want to contribute to thread drift and spam…
Oops.
Hi, Aaron,
Thanks for thinking about that sort of option. I do think this reader community would be interested in continuing on this site, if that could be worked out.
Since you are posting from the CIDU Bill account I assume you are logging on to Word Press that way and can access the dashboard or control panel for this site — that can of course work even if you don’t have the password in hand, since the PC or browser may have held onto some credentials that let you bypass entering the password. That’s perfectly fine for going ahead with adding people to the site’s administrative team.
If this works, I will embed a screenshot that illustrates where in the dashboard that happens.
Best regards,
==Mitch Marks
larK, please let’s have your Dune stories! (I saw Aaron’s post in my email notifications, and have responded. But I am not really the only pivot point person to represent the community and I hope others will check soon.)
Mine are more with the books than movie(s). I read the first one serialized in Analog whenever that was, like mid 60s? I think that was during the experiment with large format, which combined with the title change (it had been Astounding with a remarkable history) was hoped to make it come off more as a “quality magazine”. It must sort of worked — my parents sprung for a subscription.
Raleigh: Oh. Maybe I could distract you with the tale of the time I
fell into the water and was almost eaten by a hammerhead shark.
Queen: Yes. All right, try that one.
Raleigh: Well, Ma’am. [with a flourish] I fell into the water.
[pauses for suspense] and was almost eaten by a shark…
And the funny thing is, its head was almost exactly the
same shape as a hammer!
Community “adoption” of Bill’s account sounds like the fastest and easiest way to get up to speed with very little loss of continuity. It’s also seamless for the readers and commentators.
One possible downside is the risk of internal conflict among committee members, but that exists with a replacement site too.
Another would be the usual challenges and annoyances that come bundled with WordPress hosting.
The final one I can think of would be determining who pays WordPress, with what funds from where, and how. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d really hate to see this space offered for rent to advertisers.
Other than those points, it sounds to me like a winner, but I’d like to read others’ thoughts too.
I agree with everyone, and I join everyone in thanking Aaron for his and his family’s generosity of spirit.
The cost can be divided. It’s really quite low–my one for-pay WordPress site is $50/year.
I can pay the cost. You and others here have already done well over $50 of work in figuring out technical issues (assuming your time is worth something).
Those are all quite generous — probably it should be shared nonetheless, even though some individuals would not feel the pinch to provide individually. I would say it’s a matter of affirming that the community has many “stakeholders” as we say nowadays.
Sure thing, if you or others want to split, it’s easy to convince me! :)
Forgot this next step — this pops up after clicking on “Invite” button on People screen (Step 3 of previous screenshot).
Thank you, Aaron.
Thank you, Aaron. That is very generous.
WW, I would certainly be willing to toss a loonie or toonie your way. Though low-value cross-border transactions are troublesome.
I think it is vital that we do not burden Bill’s family with the financial cost of running the site. I think we also should not impose on them in any other way. If they would like to be involved in the site in any way, that’s fine, but, from Aaron’s comment it seems they are happy to set the site free. So we have to uncouple everything that might be connected to Bill’s accounts. E-mail, bank, hosting, etc.
If the community takes over this site, then we become responsible for maintaining the archives and Bill’s scheduled posts. It would be very sad if those were lost somehow in a transition to a new site administration account.
It may seem ungrateful not to want to accept such an eminently kind and sincere offer from Aaron, but I am more worried about the social implications of continuing to use this website, rather than the technical problems of setting up a new one. This CIDU community was forged and encouraged by Bill’s personality and extremely sensitive management. Separating and redirecting the accounting links for this system would probably be a solvable problem, but I just don’t feel comfortable with our committee assuming the rights to Bill’s list of moderational “stop” words, and I really don’t think that any of us should have access to the (presumably short) list of “banned” user IDs and e-mail addresses. That was (and is) extremely sensitive information, and should be kept private. (In the future, we may be confronted with the need to lock down an unruly user, but that is a problem that needs to be solved by us. We can refer to Bill’s principles, but not his data.)
If Aaron wants to keep this address running in parallel to the new site, it would be nice to see whatever Bill still has in the queue for the next year or two, as sort of an occasional “Visit from Elijah” effect (presumably mostly on popular holidays, like Halloween and Christmas). However, I don’t think it would be fair to Bill to turn this into a “zombie” website. It’s OK for us to camp out and freeload for a little while, but please: let’s build a new home, one that will do justice to Bill’s imposing legacy, without imposing any sort of technical, financial, or moral legacy upon his family.
My vote is for ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
Responding to CaroZ’s thoughtful remarks and questions from SEPTEMBER 29, 2020 AT 6:17 AM.
If the community takes over this site, then we become responsible for maintaining the archives and Bill’s scheduled posts. It would be very sad if those were lost somehow in a transition to a new site administration account.
The mechanisms of a possible transition are not clear yet, but as I see it, if a new cadre of managers/editors are added under their own accounts as Administrators, that does not mean removing or downgrading the CIDU Bill account. So posts that he has already scheduled will still appear as scheduled by the WP software — as we have seen happen twice successfully already. (I have no idea if there are more.)
A different question arises for contributions / suggestions that readers had already sent in and Bill had no opportunity to read, process, and possibly post. 😞 They would still be in the inbox for the public announced email account on GMX.
I don’t think the new managers/editors should, or would want to, take over that account. Even though it is supposed to be just for CIDU stuff, there may well be some stray personal correspondence or family matters there. So perhaps someone could log in to it ONCE — or better, ask Aaron if he would do this — and identify and FORWARD OUT the public CIDU submissions, for the new editors to receive and process.
Any changes to the site by the new managers/editors would be small and slow in coming. (Except that new posts would be identified by new editors.) But one thing needed quickly would be to replace the CIDU submissions address shown in a small graphic with a new address, that the cadre would be receiving, so that there would be no further reason to intrude upon Bill’s email.
@ Andréa – But that is exactly the point: this site is broken, it has lost its most crucial component. If you (and Aaron) will permit an impious comparison: this is like a car that has had a catastrophic engine failure. Even though we might be able to install some new spark plugs and get it running again, it still remains that most of the chassis does not belong to us. Aaron has been extraordinarily kind to offer a long-term, potentially permanent loan, but I still think we should leave this car in its home garage, and visit it occasionally to pay our respects, but take out a lease on a new machine for our future cruising.
P.S. We will have to adopt a new submissions address anyway, and I think we’ve already agreed that the “squirrel” URL is of no value. It would also be good to correct a few of the items in the CSS that Bill was unable (or unwilling) to edit. All of this says (to me) that we would be better off starting with a clean slate.
I second Kilby’s sentiments @6:22 am Sept. 29.
@Kilby: you’re seeing it as “Bill’s thing.”
I believe a lot of people are seeing it as “That place Bill created.” Keeping it going after Bill is gone is not disrespectful, any more than (say) reading a magazine after the founder passes. And of course it will change. That doesn’t in any way diminish Bill’s work, creativity, and dedication–it means it’s still alive. Your suggestion is that it should stop changing … which is synonymous with “die.”
I don’t see that as respectful or desirable.
‘I believe a lot of people are seeing it as “That place Bill created.”’
Yes.
@larK — Are you the person who said you have some familiarity with Trello, or experience in organizing w*rkflow? [Censored for Lapin’s sensitivities! “-) ]
Whether as a continuation on the present site, or a new setup, when there is a team rather than one person receiving submissions, corresponding with senders, uploading media, and composing and scheduling posts, there will likely be some mess and even lost items, or else some measure of a system. So far, the team exploring a new site came up with only something both sketchy yet cumbersome. ! [Fact, the bumbling was mostly mine own. ]
So, larK or anybody with experience or skills in that area, and ready to contribute anything from high-level advice to hands-on tooling, please get in touch! Editors@cidu.info
@ Carl Fink – I am not arguing against change, I am arguing for it. The single most important resource belonging to CIDU is the sense of community that we share. If we can establish a place for us all to continue to florish, then this community will continue to grow and evolve. I’m also not saying that there is any sort of a “bad aura” in the current site: I simply contend that this current CIDU website is far too connected with Bill and his personal, private data (and preferences) for outsiders to “take over”. If someone (anyone) is installed as the new “manager” for this (old) website, it will require an enormous amount of effort to identify and separate the public from the private aspects. This is simply not a job that anyone outside Bill’s family should be doing, and I don’t think it would be a good idea to start operations with that kind of legacy, nor do I want to ask Aaron to do that work for us. Let’s leave it here as a memorial, and move the community to a more flexible, wholly-owned property. I am sure that Aaron would grant us a direct link, and possibly a built-in redirection to the new URL. We can move forward on that new site, continuing to invite people into our new home, and Aaron can retain the former site for whatever purpose he sees fit. I might not check in here every day (or week), but I certainly will check for new posts at least once a month, just to see what things Bill wanted to share with us before his untimely departure.
I agree with Carl Fink.
I think there’s merit in both the viewpoints that (1) Bill would view someone taking over the blog as taking something from him and (2) Bill would view someone continuing the blog as a respectful continuation of his creation. The latter personally makes more sense to me, but in the end, I would want to respect whatever Bill would have wanted. I can’t claim to know what Bill would have wanted, but I think it’s reasonable to trust that Aaron is the best judge of the most respectful way to handle his father’s creation.
Kilby, I think everyone agrees that we don’t want to impose “any sort of technical, financial, or moral legacy” on his family. I’m not sure I understand why you feel this is implied in taking up Aaron on his offer. I think the idea is that Aaron would hand over the website to new administrators, and they would take over all the technical and financial work of running the site. On the other side, if Aaron doesn’t hand over the site to someone, but he wanted to keep it running as a memorial, he would have to spend money on it. And without at least some maintenance time it will likely end up dominated by spambots, or with most of us blocked in permanent moderation, or both.
blocked in permanent moderation
Actually a minor question but needing to be decided if a management succession plan does go thru — do we want our comments held in moderation from the last couple weeks to be released en masse when someone visits the control panel? For mine, I kind of think not.
@mitch — I am NOT the person espousing Trello abilities, that was someone else (can’t remember who at this point). My only contribution to the technical discussion was that it is possible — and mostly trivial with proper access — to modify the css stylesheets to tweak the current site to be more to our liking, eg: turn on numbered comments, change how quoted text appears, etc.
I see Aaron’s offer as the best way to revere Bill’s legacy. If someone created a popular daily newspaper and ran it for the rest of his life, wouldn’t it be reasonable for someone else to take over and continue publishing it? Would anyone really think, “Well, that was *his* newspaper; we should start a new one, instead?”
Bill built something a lot of people found worth in. I don’t believe it’s disrespectful to try to continue it. A living site is a better memorial than a static, dead site that no one will visit, except as a stepping stone to a successor site. And, as pointed out, someone needs to keep the site registered anyway so that advertising ghouls don’t take it over.
No, this won’t be Bill’s site anymore. Yes, editorial policy will be different. Yes, we’ll miss Bill’s personal touches. But a newspaper or magazine can still keep its spirit when a new editor takes over. And we can keep our founder’s name on a masthead to thank the person who created this site, this idea, and this community.
Re blocked in moderation:
If someone is willing to go through them and release relevant ones, that would be great, but possibly a lot to ask. But I think that it it’s to be all or none, none is probably the better choice.
*if it’s to be
I’m kinda 80-20 for a new site. I think that since we CAN presumably get a sticky homepage post on the old site saying “Bill was here, now we’re over there”, that path is cleaner. It’s not quite like the newspaper, where the returning native looks for The Daily CIDU and doesn’t even find a paper box: instead, (s)he finds a paper box with a sign saying “The paper you want is in the NEXT box”, with backstory and tribute. Best of both worlds, kinda.
Hi guys,
I have no dog in this fight. I’m in an interesting position because from my perspective, I’m an outsider and this is your space. But I’m also the one who (for now) holds the keys. I’d like to defer to a consensus of the posters here for what to do next.
I will say that I don’t think my dad would see a takeover/continuation of the site by others as an affront. I think he would be proud to see what he built continue, even though it will obviously be different. But that’s not to say that continuing on this particular platform is the way to go; it might be easier to start fresh rather than trying to decipher everything he had set up. I’m not going to be the one running this day-to-day, and whoever is doing that should have a better idea than me whether getting the keys to this particular iteration of CIDU (and I know there have been several!) would be a help or a burden.
What I can do now is add Mitch as an admin, and he can help evaluate what makes the most sense. I can add others too if you’d like to volunteer. I can also commit that even if you guys decide to start fresh elsewhere, I’ll do my best to find old submissions and forward them over. I’m also happy to keep this site hosted with a landing page to redirect to a new place if you guys move on – as long as the cost is actually as reasonable as people are saying, it’s really nothing.
-Aaron
Aaron, have we said enough nice things about you, yet? I do not think it is inappropriate to say, you are clearly a credit to your father’s memory.
I did volunteer to help admin at one point. Mitch?
Hi, Aaron,
Let me again join in with saying thanks, and appreciating your generosity and openness to this community.
WordPress.com has a variety of plans, some of them a bit pricey and some not, plus add-ons for various things, like extra domains. (I think one or two external domains are usually included, however.) Anyway, I know the offers to share the expense expressed here earlier (and there would be many more) are quite sincere and ready.
I would be delighted to step into an administrator setting, along with a team. Do you have our email addresses?
Aaron, what I was saying about forwarding submitted cartoons from the GMX mailbox was not, or not exclusively, about using in the proposed new site — it could be here as well. But the idea of the request was to extract email that had submitted comics Bill never got a chance to get to, just by examining the messages in the ordinary way — if and when you have time — and forwarding in the ordinary email way (but of course including attachments in the forwards). And sending them to an address where the new editors will be looking for public submissions as well. That is to say, getting these lost CIDUs into the pipeline. (That is for the time being Editors@cidu.info )
For everyone to consider: Can I suggest a first order of business could be simply getting daily (or at first, let’s just say periodic) postings going once again. We’re not totally ready, but also not terribly far. Thoughts on this?
Thanks!
==Mitch
Besides looking to Aaron to extract some of those possible lost submissions (full disclosure: a couple of them will show up as sent in by me!), if any of you reading here had sent in something, maybe you could look in your Sent Mail folder for them, and send again. But to the new address, Editors@cidu.info .
Winter Wallaby has already joined the editors team, in terms of looking at these submitted materials and participating in behind-the-scenes discussion of which to use in what order, how much of the sender’s comments to use, what title to give it on the blog, and what to say about it in the post along with the sender’s remarks. If there are others who would like to participate in that process, let us know.
Carl, it would be great to have your voice in the administration planning and execution. I think Aaron said he was going to be doing several of these role-enrollments; but we’ll see this done in any case.
You were already sent an invitation (or an invite, I could care less) to the secret Google Group for editors, if you are interested in joining in the process as mentioned in previous post.
So, everyone, what do you think of the following short-term game plan?
1 Get regular posting going again
2 Get the submission address up there so we will get the new ones as people send them in.
3 Isn’t it time to rotate and start a new Random Comments? Done as before, with the previous ones kept available (to read only) by link.
4 Just an idea — How about having two of those Comments threads, not attached to a particular posting and not meant to have much expectation of continuity between any comment and the next? (In other words, random comments..) One of them to be like the stated original purpose of the Random Comments page, remarks on comics, sure, but also anything on your mind. “Random”. But a second one, more like Feedback Comments, for reporting problems with the site or discussing ideas for how to improve it, etc. — as a public space (with the understanding there are also private channels).
All 4 points sound good to me.
All sound good to me as well.
My own computer tech skills are essentially zero (certainly far less than CIDU Bill’s were — I don’t even do word processing in anything more complicated than Notepad), but I’d be more than happy to contribute significant amounts of money to keeping this oasis a going concern, either under the current masthead or under a new name. (With, a think, a slight preference for the former, but not complaining either way.)
Mitch, I’m actually already an administrator of that Google Group. :-)
Can I add one item to your game plan? Create a tribute page to Bill Bickel.
BTW, regarding a question from long before: I’m inclined to not bother releasing tons of old comments from moderation, since most of them are long-obsolete anyway. The only exception is that if there are condolences, tributes, and other thoughts on the “Recent News” thread, it would be nice to release those.
I agree wholeheartedly with WW’s suggestion to look at the comments in moderation for condolences and tributes. There are likely a fair number of those from heretofore-lurkers and they would all go to moderation. In fact, without looking there we have no way at all of knowing if any of them are offering valuable suggestions for moving forward.
Let’s roll.
What Olivier said!
Carl Fink says:
Mitch, I’m actually already an administrator of that Google Group. 🙂
We’ve clarified this in email.
Can I add one item to your game plan? Create a tribute page to Bill Bickel.
Certainly we should have one!
It happens we did draft one on the practice server. We’re talking to Le Vieux Lapin about re-aiming the cidu.us domain to point to the practice server, so we can share a URL with the Random group without exposing more of the native address of the server. And taking suggestions regarding the text and appearance.
Actually adding a page or equivalent to the ongoing CIDU/squirrel site (that is, here) may be easy or may be hard, since there seems to be some crazy custom HTML doing the frames and tabs setup — remember that the Random Comments thread required workarounds to renew, and Bill was saying “WordPress won’t let me change where the link in the sidebar goes!”. Well, we’ll know more when we can look.
I forgot to resume the italics for the second part quoted from Carl:
Can I add one item to your game plan? Create a tribute page to Bill Bickel.
There’s another person whose input would be valuable here: “B.A.” — Even allowing for typographical variants, I cannot find anything from her in larK’s comment harvester for the past two weeks. I hope the moderation gremlin has not taken a dislike to her.
woozy also hasn’t commented in several weeks. It may be moderation, but it’s also possible they decided that with Bill gone, they were done with the blog.
Hi all,
I believe Mitch is now an admin and he should be able to admin-ize others. I also went through and accepted the comments stuck in moderation; they all seemed benign. It’ll be nice to see what you all can make of this site and this community. I’ll work on getting access to the GMX email (unfortunately not currently logged in anywhere) and we can figure out what makes sense long term with respect to hosting etc. Seems like my dad was having troubles with the new WordPress templates anyway.
-Aaron
@Mitch4:
I already have webmail set up on my own server, as I said. The sysadmin part of setting up mail for one more domain is pretty trivial, it already does a few.
If we do go with a hosting company and our own WordPress instance, the host company will almost certainly provide mail as well, and that would be simpler and less dependent on me, personally not getting busy or ill or something.
Hi Aaron ,
I see the emergence of all those moderated comments. What a fine thing to do!
You say I believe Mitch is now an admin. Thank you for planning to do that! I don’t see it taking effect as of yet. In case it is unclear, my WordPress.com username is mitch4gmail and it is attached to the email address mmarks4@gmail.com
Carl, I think Aaron’s remark about access to the GMX email is because he accurately was following the discussion here of CIDU submissions that people sent in but arrived after Bill’s passing, so never got seen or posted. The idea was, if somebody could go in and look for them, they could be extracted / forwarded out and posted going forward. But it wasn’t that new managers should take it over and continue to use it for fresh submissions. They would change the places where the address is shown to a new one. I think there is already something appropriate in hand, but thanks for your offers / suggestions. (We can talk about this in direct email.)
Goodnight, you’all. I just stopped to check mail between waking from a bad nap on a sofa and crawling into bed for a genuine sleep.
Nevermind, I found it, thanks!
@ Mitch4 – That is truly superb that you were able to extend the link list in the left hand menu. Would it be possible to change Bill’s last subhed (about “white face masks“) to read “R.I.P. CIDU Bill Bickel“?
P.S. What would you think about adding a link to the very first CIDU post (on the new site), to make it easier to “Read the CIDU archive from the beginning“.
We have been discussing the subtitle — noting that Bill liked to change it up roughly every new month. I was suggesting something light — maybe keeping the face masks and connecting it to Halloween (no, that isn’t a concrete wording yet). But your idea might be better, indeed.
BTW what do you (and that’s for everybody) think of closing off this thread and starting ..wait for it … TWO new ones. One the expected new Random Comments, with guideline of being at least semi-comics-related (and in our usual drift-friendly way, accepting most thoughts about life, love, language, literature, and litter). The other a new designation, called something like Site Comments and meant for discussions like this one, or feedback in general. (Not meant to exclude other modes of feedback, like email or private contact form page, but this one for community thinking.)
((I in fact have a draft stored for the next chapter of Random, but wanted to get clear on whether to do the Site Comments and what to say about it before publishing the next Random — so that the headnotes for these two could reference each other))
Also for constructive commentary, on the alternate new server where some of us were practicing posting etc, there is a draft version of a page about Bill and background on CIDU, which could be adapted back for a post or page here. (Draft in the sense of not considered finished writing, but not in the technical sense – it is a published page)
Actual rewritten paragraphs or sentences would be especially valuable, but “try for something a little more xyz” are okay too.
http://cidu.site/wp/bill-bickel-and-history-of-cidu/
Thank you for your hard work with all this.
@Mitch4: both the tribute page and the cidu.site look fine to me. I posted a comment there but got sent to moderation.
In second thought, probably there is no good reason to have ALL the previous Random Comments threads linked at the left. It is overcrowded, and the older ones can be reached other ways fairly easily, including a link in each one to the previous.
But recently the sole Random Comments link at the left led to the next-to-latest such thread, where the headnote had a prominent link to the current one (this one). So adding this one to the list was the real point, but it makes sense to include the previous ONE. First, because that is (sort of) what people are used to getting from the menu link. And second, if there is going to be regular rollover, there will be conversations interrupted by the switch, and it would be good to have an easy way to look at the tail end of the previous thread while preparing a comment in the most recent one.
So these can be trimmed back when the next imminent rollover is ready.
Related question: if the 50 comment setting can be easily changed, would people prefer a different setting? Also, larK, did you say it causes problems with your scrape links?
@ Mitch4 – I fully agree with your ideas for simplifying the CIDU interface.
The links in the left menu could be reduced to:
0) “Home”
1) The CIDU FAQ (which will eventually need to be rewritten, but that is a problem for (much) later).
2) “Random Comments” (no date), which should go directly to the last page of the current Random Comments thread.
3) larK’s Comment Harvester – If the link in on the left, then it can be removed from the introduction to “Random Comments”. The same goes for the FAQ link: put it on the left, and reduce the size of the introduction.
The list of prior “Random Comments” posts could be placed in the introduction to the current Random Comments, but it might be better to set up a separate page that lists each of the links (including the current one), and put a link to that page in the introduction(s) to each of the Random Comments posts.
Related question: if the 50 comment setting can be easily changed, would people prefer a different setting? Also, larK, did you say it causes problems with your scrape links?
I don’t believe the problem is with the scraped links, the problem is that the links are wrong to begin with (they don’t contain the proper page in them, which if you go through the trouble you can manually update so the link to the comment works). But the problem is a WordPress problem; I just collect the links as they appear in the comments RSS feed.
If you can increase the number of recent comments available in the RSS feed (currently I think it’s the last ten..?), that would be very useful in making sure comments don’t slip between the cracks.
larK, would this setting relate to your RSS issue?
Mitch: That looks very likely — can you up it to say 20, just so we can see if it is? As Kilby and I discovered in another thread, there are at least two rss feeds — one that shows the last x comments (that’s the one I scrape); and one that shows the last x topics or threads. Kilby was complaining that that last one had not updated to show the two new postmortem threads.
The thing you found and showed above looks like it would up the number for all feeds, which I think would be fine; not fine would be if it only upped the count for the thread feed and not for the comment feed…
Like I say, set it to 20, and we’ll see what happens.
PS: links to the two feeds can be found on the left tab, by clicking on the folder icon, and then scrolling down past the most recent comments, past the recent posts, and past the “please send submissions to” bit. It has “RSS – Posts” and “RSS – Comments”; I scrape the latter. Let’s see what gets adjusted when you up the count to 20 in the field you showed. Could be both the RSS feeds AND their counterparts shown on the sidebar get upped, could be only the RSS feeds get upped, or less likely only the sidebar gets upped but not the RSS feeds, or even that it only ups one of the categories. Let’s do it and see…
Okay, it’s at 20 now. …
P.S. The next setting below that is
—
For each post in a feed, include For each post in a feed, include
Full text
Summary
Your theme determines how content is displayed in browsers. Learn more about feeds.
—
I just text copied and pasted , didn’t stop to screenshot. There are round choice buttons by both Full Text and Summary, and neither is filled in at the moment. The “Learn more about feeds” is a link to https://wordpress.org/support/article/wordpress-feeds/
Should (one of) these be checked?
I think that with the name of the commentator, you’d get the whole comment or its first n lines.
I see 15 recent comments and 10 recent posts.
I’d never checked this RSS-posts thing, and it does show 20 posts (going back to ‘Racked with laughter’), although not in very legible form. I wonder why the front page doesn’t offer more than 10, then.
And 20 comments in the RSS-comments list.
larK and Olivier, here in one piece are three settings that may be relevant to what you’re looking into.
–Note that the middle one, “Syndication feeds show the most recent” is the one we adjusted up from 10 to 20 earlier this afternoon/
–The bottom one, “For each post in a feed, include” is the one I remarked on earlier and pasted as text. At that time neither bubble was filled. I just now selected “Full text”. That may address something Olivier was asking about, when you said the entries seemed cut off — if indeed you were referring to the RSS feed.
–The top one, “Blog pages show at most __10__ posts” has not been changed recently, AFAIK, and may answer a different one of Olivier’s questions. One thing I’m not seeing but thought would be around the same place is the 50 comments per display page.
There is a quite different matter, that I’m not sure Olivier was asking about, which is the number of Recent Posts and the number of Recent Comments that display in the lists in the left sidebar. Those are settings in the “Widgets” themselves, as is the choice and sequence of bits and pieces that go in that sidebar. These are something Bill was quite familiar with, and adjusted several times in dialogue with readers who saw countervailing inconveniences to different choices. If you have more items in one list that sort of hides or delays getting down to the next lists.
But that’s not to say it couldn’t be revisited now.
–Also controlled right in the sidebar “widgets” is the matter larK pointed out about the two things available in the RSS links menu. I think when I looked at it yesterday it showed RSS-Comments only and I set it to also include RSS-Posts.
–On the subject of sidebar widgets, if nobody objects I would like to put back Meta, for the sake of the Login link. We now have different people logging in and this can be a tiny convenience.
NOTICE ABOUT THIS THREAD
This thread will soon have comments closed.
There are now headnote postings for TWO new threads. They are set up to encourage separation of topics, and reduce thereby the congestion of either one.
The new branch is called Your Site Comments and the current (inaugural) one starts from the post at https://comicsidontunderstand.com/2020/10/01/your-site-comments-october-2020-edition/ . That one will be welcoming to suggestions / complaints / questions / musings on how this site is organized and operates. Thus, much of the posting to this present Random Comments thread recently would most appropriately continued on the new Site Comments thread.
The new rollover of Your Random Comments starts from the post at https://comicsidontunderstand.com/2020/10/01/random-comments-late-2020-edition/ . It may be able to present in a less cluttered context people’s comics-related (and semi-comics-related) thoughts, as the Random Comments idea was originally described. Given the fine tradition of thread drift, “semi-comics-related” is pretty broad,and could accommodate all sorts of your observations on life, love, language, literacy, literature, linguine, whatever.
Winter Wallaby made an interesting observation, that they and probably many others don’t see the need for these periodic rollovers of Random Comments.
I said:
To my shame, I only recently learned about a couple of shortcuts / tricks for jumping to the last page. So I used to be one of those people clicking again and again on “newer comments”, and welcoming the rollover. Now that I know those tricks, I still am concerned for those to whom they haven’t been communicated! :-)
But also conceptually, I think it could be a way of signalling “Hey, new chapter”. That is, the separation of topics into two threads wouldn’t work if we just added Site Comments and left this Random Comments thread accepting new comments. People following this long technical and procedural discussion would very naturally make followups to notes here by putting them here.
BTW, if you haven’t heard those tips for jumping to the last page of comments (and skipping that endless clicking on “Newer Comments”), two that I have recently learned from others here are:
1. On the top area by the starting post for the thread, click on the comments count number — you know, the “650 comments” spot.
2. If the device and browser you are using allows this, click into the Address or Location field to edit the URL. You want to erase all the part to the right of the date and post title. That would leave just https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2020/01/30/random-comments-2020-edition/ and not another section giving the “comments” term and maybe a number. Just scratch those out and Enter or click reload etc.
uping it to 20 is exactly what I’d hoped for — I can scrape more comments at a go, and am less likely to miss a comment when they come fast and furious and more than ten within ten minutes. I’d now advocate upping it to 50 or something nice and high like that — it doesn’t affect the sidebar presentation, and it gives me a nice buffer to scrape.
larK, I’m glad this could be figured out!
That setting now upped to 50, done.
Okay, as declared in Comment #647 (heh) this thread will now be closed to further comments.
The next Your Random Comments thread headnote is at https://comicsidontunderstand.com/2020/10/01/random-comments-late-2020-edition/
The inaugural Your Site Comments thread headnote is at https://comicsidontunderstand.com/2020/10/01/your-site-comments-october-2020-edition/
Both of those should be appearing as links in the menu at left.
Also a link to *this* thread will temporarily remain in that menu too (it is the indented item), for people to have a chance to consult it or catch up on unread. Try not to be disarranged too much by trying to read here but reply there :-)
Thanks,
==mitch