This is the first edition of “Site Comments”, a parallel to the “Random Comments” threads, and meant to relieve the density of commenting in those. While the Random Comments threads will continue to welcome comics-related (and semi-comics-related) topics, as well as life-in-general, this Site Comments thread is the place for suggestions / complaints / questions / musings on how this site is organized and operates. So if you have thoughts about, say, the placement of Recent Comments versus Recent Posts lists, this would be the place for that.
(That is not to say this is the only form of feedback available. Among other routes, you can write to Editors at CIDU.info. But it is explicitly intended to funnel off site commentary from the Random Comments threads.)
This will also be a place for site managers to post questions and requests for ideas, along with operational notices like warnings of theme experimentation coming up etc., besides alerts in separate sticky posts.
At the same time as inaugurating this kind of thread, it is time for yet another rollover of the venerable Random Comments thread. The one about to close, with 650 comments, is “Random Comments, 2020 Edition” , and the one getting started contemporaneous with this Site Comments is “Random Comments, Late 2020 Edition”
Also: A list of the site’s most recent comments can be found in the left sidebar (under “folder” icon 2nd tab). A database of all the comments, compiled by larK, is here, and can also be found linked in the left sidebar menu.
And the site’s former FAQ is here, representing the unique voice and outlook of CIDU Bill. An update for current addresses and notes is now available here, and can also be found linked in the left sidebar menu.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I don’t remember seeing the Category Cloud before. It would have been useful to me a time or two. If it’s been there all along and I just missed it, I’d prefer not to know. Otherwise, thank you.
One of the categories reminds me of what I’d consider an improvement: Dropping the 24-hour Project. For me, it was just too much, too quickly. I’m not on my computer 24 hours a day, and FOMO competed with overload as I caught up with the posts and the comments on them.
Bill seemed to like it, and it was his site, and I would never have said anything like this to him. But this is a good time to contemplate change and perhaps see how popular it is with the rest of the readership.
P.S. I think you had the right idea in creating a separate thread for this, now that you can.
No, the Category Cloud was added today. TBH I was just playing around with the widgets a little, while looking for Meta, and tossed this in for fun.
Tag Cloud used to be popular, and got quite ornate, with funny fonts, words at all angles, and a cloud like scattered look. This Category Cloud is decently calm and restrained :=)
I have to agree with Arthur on the “24-Hour Project”: I see several reasons for dropping it, and only one reason for keeping it. First, it uses up 24 items from the queue of submissions on a single day (and a copious amount of moderation effort to set it up). As Arthur noted, many CIDU readers found it difficult to spend that much concentrated time on the site, especially since the event had a fixed date(*), which meant that it usually occurred on a workday. This in turn meant that many of the comics posted on that day did not get as much attention (or comments) as they otherwise would have deserved. Finally, since it always began at midnight (EDT), the comments for the first several hours tended to be rather “Eurocentric” (since it was already early morning here, and not in the middle of the night). I think 9am to 9pm might have been a better schedule, but then again, there are CIDU readers all over the planet.
(*) The “fixed” date (July 8th) was a meaningful anniversary to Bill. I’m not sure whether that marked the beginning of CIDU, or whether it was his own birthday (I meant to ask him, but didn’t remember to do so in time). Even if we do dispense with the traditional “project”, I think some sort of remembrance on that date would be fitting. (The same goes for September 16th.)
P.S. @ “EditorM” (probably Mitch4) – Would it be possible to get rid of the flurry of “Your”s on the recent administrative posts? It reminds me of the “sergeant speech” that either Strunk & White or my high school English teacher detested so much. Just call it “Current Site Comments”, and so forth. I would also shorten the link text to “larK’s Comment Index”.
Speaking of larK’s alternate index, I seem to remember he was leery of putting a link to it prominently because he was afraid of getting too much traffic.
Wow! These RSS pages are very different on the laptop from what they look like on the smartphone.
50 entries now, I see. On the ‘regular page’, Recent posts & comments are now 15 & 15 instead of 15 & 10.
Fiddling with a website looks very much like fiddling with a VCR where serendipity is a key factor. ;)
Maybe you’ll stumble on the ‘numbered comments’ option soon?
I mentioned this before to Bill, but I’ll bring it up again because we have some people who can fiddle with WordPress and might:
Ever since the last WordPress forced update, I can’t see the comics with my normal browser (Opera). I can see any that anyone else embeds, but not the main one(s) posted. In order to see them, I have to swap over to my less-favored browser (Firefox). WW’s mask post shows me that it’s still doing it.
I know a lurker who’s been following this site for years. That lurker decided to drop CIDU rather than switching from Opera.
So, one commenter annoyed, one lurker gone, and we have no idea about any other lurkers (though I know that Opera isn’t among the top browsers).
You’ve got a lot going on, and I’m not quite asking you to do anything about this situation, but there would be two happier people if you could.
@ Arthur – I think the best we could hope for is a bug report to WordPress. Theoretically anyone could submit one, but it would have a little more weight if it came from a paying account (like CIDU).
P.S. One thing you could do (since you have Opera and I do not) is to look around to see whether other WordPress blogs are (or are not) affected by error caused by the update. That would be a better indication of whether the problem is a Wodpress defect (as I suspect), rather than a CIDU configuration problem.
RE: 24-hour project. I agree to discontinue this, even tho I’m retire and can spend time reading ’em all. I missed having commentary on each.
RE: ‘YOURS”. I agree on the deleting of same. To me, they’re confusing ’cause it appears to lead to only MY comments, which is not what is intended. Who wants to read his/her own comments? ‘-)
RE: FAQs. Reading them made me feel as tho Bill was still here. Bittersweet.
This is wonderful! Glad to see it continuing. I have quite a bit of experience with WP so let me know if I can ever help!
May Bill’s memory be for a blessing.
Yes, I saw it was “Your Random Comments” and thought to keep that in case it was meaningful or wanted by some; and then extended it 🙄. I’ll cut it down – later today.
Do you remember when Microsoft made everything on Windows a “My” something? The icon for the directory browse tool (essentially) was “My Computer”, and it went down from there. (Meanwhile on the professional side there were also naming fads, including “Active” for all sorts of things beyond the “Active Directory” product.)
The current Plan does not provide access to injecting “additional CSS” let alone directly editing Theme files. Those may be key to numbering.
I’ve had little experience with PC/MicroAnything, and only ’cause my library had both a PC and a MAC lab (I worked only the MAC lab), but I noticed the ‘MY’ everything and found it irritating. But then, I found EVERYthing Micro/PC annoying. Yes, I’m a MACFanatic, and proud of it!
Glad people are thinking ahead, but I expect there are many more issues to consider before deciding on the 24 Hours project. Let’s wait until CIDU/CWDU regains a rhythm and our feelings about how to handle things like this settle.
Andrea: I’m afraid the first “Mac fanatic” I had to work with me turned me against the product for life. We were working on publications/program book for an sf convention, and I had to do a lot of the text entry etc. He refused to show me how to do *anything* on his Mac, which is what we were using, insisting that because it was a MAC, everything was intuitively OBVIOUS and if I pretended it was not thus to me I was just being silly.
Somehow staggered through the evening and got stuff input, though not perfectly and taking twice as long as it should have done, and vowed never to willingly touch another Apple product again.
And sorry, I belatedly realized the above grump shouldn’t have been going on this “Site Comments” site. Will try to wrap my head around the new arrangement better the next time my head needs wrapping.
That’s like blaming a dog for barking, when it’s the OWNER’s fault.
Y’know . . . like this . . .
And sorry, I belatedly realized the above grump shouldn’t have been going on this “Site Comments” site. Will try to wrap my head around the new arrangement better the next time my head needs wrapping.
Shrug, no worries! Looks to me like normal thread drift, which belongs here as much as anywhere else.
@Arthur (and Kilby and others) — on OPERA
For a long while, Opera was also my first choice browser, and I still like it some — so I get your point that it’s worrisome when something isn’t working in Opera. (Not relevant to this discussion, but the reason I turned away from it was inability to understand or want to use the huge number of new features they tossed into it.)
But what examples, again, are your test cases? I’ve got my Opera open on my Windows 10 desktop and viewing this site. The images in main articles are showing just fine. I mean, just scrolling down, the pumpkin masks in the most recent comics post, the Yom Kippur, the New Yorker one in “What the Braque”, etc.
I think those are all on this server, not embedded by linking. The latter type also seem okay, such as Andréa’s barking dogs in this thread.
Maybe it’s working for me because I haven’t kept Opera updated? Mine says it is Last update: 2019-04-09 . Maybe it wasn’t just the WordPreess update that triggered the problem, but that in conspiracy with Opera updates? :-)
[I suppose for a good experimental protocol I ought to update my Opera version and see if it’s still working. But why mess something up?]
On my android-based phone, Opera is in version 60.1.3004.5238, configuration 20201002_1245A0 whatever that means (actually, doesn’t it look like today’s date??).
And I’m seeing those same testcase images just fine.
Finally, on iPad Mini I can’t seem to get plain Opera, but the app is called Opera Touch, The version is 2.5.0. Again, both kinds of images show fine when browsing here.
Can you compare your Opera versions? Or correct my misunderstanding if I am testing against the wrong things.
Aaarrggghh, I was looking at that “Last update: 2019-04-09” for Opera but I think that is only the update of the Version History page text!!
My installation on Windows is probably Opera 68 Release date 2020-04-22.
I did download latest and install, and it still works on CIDU.
Hmmm.
The current Plan does not provide access to injecting “additional CSS” let alone directly editing Theme files. Those may be key to numbering.
Well, that’s a shame. Just in case someone knows a way to hack it anyway, inserting the following anywhere in the html will turn numbering on (or more correctly, over-ride the part where the style-sheet turns numbering off…):
<style type=”text/css” media=”screen”>
.comment,clear li {list-style:decimal !important}
</style>
Whoo! Thanks for that, larK!
Not able to inject it here, but did put it in at the practice server. It works!
See it at
http://cidu.site/wp/2020/09/27/hello-world-2/#comments
The numbering however interacts badly with the indented threaded reply structure! The numbers that look wrong are numbering within a sublist!. Good to know this incompatility. I think people here don’t care for threaded replies anyway.
We can continue to look for file access (or simply a “Additional CSS” field which does the job) for this CIDU/GoDaddySquirrel site.
Nerdy addendum:
Because this went in as “additional CSS” rather than in an HTML file, it was rejecting the whole excerpt because of “Markup not allowed in CSS” which makes sense. So I used just the middle line, which is CSS.
Ah. Ok. Well, we’ve learnt to live without numbered comments, after all.
I suppose numbered pages, which I think more convenient than the ‘older posts’ box at the bottom of the page, are also unavailable for this ‘theme’ (which seems aimed at people who dislike numbers).
Don’t sweat too much over it: I’m glad you were able to keep the site going. I can wait until next Comicggedon 😉.
Right, no threaded replies, please: those are annoying when I don’t want to miss anything.
Same problem with comments out of moderation that appear in the middle of other comments; and I remember how these used to throw the comment number references off.
“Everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.”
On the practice server, I turned off threaded replies, to better show the numbering.
http://cidu.site/wp/2020/09/27/hello-world-2/#comments
The general layout of the theme (BTW it’s a standard WP.ORG release, “Twenty Fifteen”) is a little too spacious and loose for my taste, but one thing it does is show off the commenter upload plugin buttons.
Do try them out, if you feel like making a comment and including an mage. This was necessary because something that does not work there is embedding by pasting a URL. (Apart from services like YouTube.) It’s clear howmuch our commenting is enhanced by being able to include the comics or other things we want to show, so readers do not need to click. But getting the url direct to an image from a syndication site can be difficult sometimes, and the filename part needs to be “massaged”. So it might be just as easy, or more so, to download an image to your computer or device, and then use the Upload button to insert it into your comment.
I certainly would want to participate in funding the site, be it current or upgraded version.
BTW, will we keep the good causes annual fundraising? I’d like to.
I also never got much out of the 24-hour Project.
(It feels a little silly to talk about it now, when we have two comics in the queue. At best, we can set up a 2-hour Project.)
Is it possible, when comments are taken out of moderation, for them to appear at the end? Probably not, I guess the system enforces chronological ordering; but it would be nice, if possible.
Some of us have discussed this in email, but maybe it’s not too sensitive for posting. The current plan is “Personal”, the CSS drop-in comes with “Premium”, for which the fees are exactly twice the price. We don’t want to ask Aaron to cover that! But we would need to sincerely talk him out of offering, or refusing our offer to do it by whip-around; and ask him to do the upgrade. (Email me if you want the numbers and “exactly twice” doesn’t tell you enough. But these aren’t big numbers. This is not all of what Bill had to pay, of course, but upgrading to Premium for this one part would not affect that.)
My info on what is required for Additional CSS comes from the control panel itself:
Eeehh, maybe. But by an admin manually changing the “submitted” timestamp.
This cidu.site is really impressive. (Haven’t I said this earlier already? Well, it’s true).
Re. The 24h project: I did it seriously once as I was firing up a new kiln: 3 days mostly without sleep watching burners, this leaves time to comment a lot; otherwise, it’s like coming back after a vacation: most of what you have to say is lost under many newer posts.
I always took “Your Random Comments” to signify that the content was strictly from the users and not Bill.
My version of Opera is 9/15/2020 stable version. Things look fine to me.
@Olivier: “unavailable for this ‘theme’ (which seems aimed at people who dislike numbers).”
We’re in at the Genesis of a new version of CIDU, so I expect we’ll have to go through the Exodus and Leviticus themes before we can get to Numbers.
mitch4: Ah, that cure is probably worse than the disease.
Yup, the game is not worth the candle.
Shrug, that made me giggle.
TAGS question
(Not CATEGORIES)
[The distinction gets smaller all the time, and doesn’t matter much for this question, but you see them in different places in a post. See screenshot.]
Bill used tags to list a comic’s name and the artist. We’re trying to continue that. This has some practical effect (besides informing the readers of this one post), in that tags are clickable and will bring up a summary listing from the archive of all posts that had that tag. (Yes, categories work that way too.)
Besides those names as tags, there were some terms he repeatedly used as tags, very often all together but not always. As seen co-occurring here, three frequent ones were Comic Strips, Comics, and Humor. Since they didn’t *always* co-occur, there must have been distinguishing factors. But we aren’t sure what they were. Who has some insights (or actual knowledge!) on this?
The “Comic Strips” designation can’t be referring to the layout/format of strip vs single-panel — note that this single-panel PMP is tagged “Comic Strip”. I think it has to do with form of publication – the New Yorker cartoons lack the “Comic Strips” tag but do have “Comics”. Not exactly magazine vs newspaper or syndicate site, but continuing/repeating series vs single takes.
And a written-out joke would be Humor but not either Comics or Comic Strips. Did those two ever appear without Humor? What would that mean?
Should we try to continue with these additional designators for tags? Does anybody click them, to find all Comics or all Comic Strips? Can you illuminate when to use or omit which of those?
Thanks!
I liked “Numbers” too, but (at the risk of sounding like Cato the Elder†) if I had to choose, I would prefer “Exodus” (to cidu.site, or wherever), especially since that may give us more freedom to choose numbering as well*. I assume that the difference in hosting costs (of a new site with sufficient bandwidth, compared to W0rdpress “premium”) would not be a significant factor.
P.S. (*) – Although I really missed the numbers when they vanished†, the way that we’ve all adjusted to quoting relevant passages seems almost as simple to use, and is much easier to read.
P.P.S. (†) – Ceterum censeo GoDaddyem esse delendam.
I’ve never used the ‘comics, etc.’ tags.
Maybe they were for filing purposes BEFORE posting, on CIDUBill’s computer?
@ Mitch4 – Bill was a wonderful and in many ways irreplaceable person, but neither his orthography nor his application of categories & tags were completely reliable. There are plenty of errors and inconsistencies in the existing CIDU archive, and even more omissions, especially in the strip and author names.
The “ubiquitous” tags (“image”, “comic” [with or without “strip”], “humor”, etc.) are nearly useless for searching, and thus serve little or no purpose, except perhaps as a placeholder (to distinguish the majority of posts from those with less commonly used tags). The only tags I commonly use are author and strip names; in most cases these may seem redundant (e.g., XKCD vs. Randall Monroe), but there are exceptions (Bizarro vs. Piraro / Wayno).
The whole system could profit from reorganization (and simplification). Yes, this is another argument for starting over with a new site. I will put some ideas in a separate comment, to avoid the moderation gremlin.
The following is just a rough draft, it needs to be fleshed out:
Post type(*): comics, (open) discussion, photos, site information, videos;
Categories: CIDU, Ewww, Humor, OT (or better: “off-topic”), Oy, Synchronicity; possibly also: holiday names (Halloween, Christmas), and extended campaigns (such as “24-hour project”, or “Deathmatch”);
Tags: Strip name(s), author’s name(s), assorted subject(s) (such as “4th Wall” or “geezers”);
Deprecate (replace with): comic strips (comics), LOL (humor), image (comics or photos, depending), Bill Bickel (alas: he sometimes used this tag to distinguish his own submissions, but I don’t think we should put the submitter’s ID in the tags at all).
I would like to retire most (or all) of the “sentence” tags, such as “comics that made us laugh out loud” (which is synonymous with “LOL”, or better still “humor”, and therefore redundant). Let’s keep them as short as possible
P.S. (*) – If W0rdpress doesn’t permit free-form post types, then those listed above will have to become categories, and we can drop the post type entirely. Image is meaningless, since almost every post has an image.
I’ve always thought the “LOL” category/tag was stronger than the “Humor” category/tag. That is, “LOL” is a subset of “Humor.’
Kilby says: P.S. (*) – If W0rdpress doesn’t permit free-form post types, then those listed above will have to become categories, and we can drop the post type entirely. Image is meaningless, since almost every post has an image.
Sorry, these are the least flexible. They aren’t chosen by the person making the post, they are almost entirely automatic. The editing/posting interface just sees what kind of block or format you are using fundamentally, and that becomes the post type. I don’t yet have a complete handle on the posting/editing interface, but there doesn’t seem anything drastic happens on whether you start with an image and add on some text, or start writing then add an image — except that the post type gets recorded differently.
Thank you for thinking thru these varieties of “label” if I can grab that as the generic term. [I was entertained to see a biologist talking with a scientist from another area on evolutionary theory, with the latter repeatedly hesitating and changing his mind in talking about a “family” or “order” or “class”, and the biologist finally saying “You’ll be safe with ‘taxon'”. (Or finally, ‘clade’, but let’s not go there.)]
@ Mitch4 – “post types” … “aren’t chosen by the person making the post, they are almost entirely automatic”
I was afraid of that. It fits nicely with the way that Bill’s posts were only occasionally classified as “image”. In that case, those post types would become categories, and some (perhaps all) of the categories would need to be moved down to tags.
Is there any chance that WordPress would permit an additional type of “label”? It would be nice to separate out the strip and author names into a designated section, simply to preserve the legibility of the more meaningful labels.
P.S. Another (extremely low priority) solution would be to remove the post type from the display template. Since there’s no meaningful information in it, why waste the space?
In my haste to replace “LOL” with “Humor”, I forgot that we already have a separate label for a similar purpose: “Not a CIDU“. This topic probably needs a little more thought.
Re Oliviers remarks about funding: My suggestion for how to finance the costs for hosting, and I think, a small remuneration for editorial volunteers: there could be an annual call for contributions, with the understanding that any amount exceeding a stated goal to cover the actual costs for the coming year will go towards either the March of Dimes or the other charity, I forget the name, in memoriam Bill Bickel. I don’t know if this has already been proposed elsewhere, sorry if you have already decided this. I think it would be an advantage that no funds need to be carried over and accounted for to anyone for more than one year. If at a later time user interest is low or people are for whatever reason unhappy with the new editors, then there are not enough funds for the next year, and CIDU closes down. There would be a short time span every year to think about a financial contribution, namely a couple of weeks up to a date when the surplus is given to charity, the rest of the time we can all forget about it.
Lost: I’ve always thought the “LOL” category/tag was stronger than the “Humor” category/tag. That is, “LOL” is a subset of “Humor.
Thanks. I agree with you conceptually about the subset relation of the terms. But FWIW at the moment they are in different “places” (category vs tag) which doesn’t matter a whole lot , but within the WP system are handled slightly differently.
To put it another way, though WP doesn’t require this, it encourages thinking of Categories as a system of exclusive choices (erm, categorizing something) , while Tags are like labels or descriptors that can be attached in abundance. So the CIDU tradition, which we are looking at carrying forward from Bill, has been that mostly you choose from whether to Categorize a post as CIDU or LOL or OY, etc., though sometimes finding something is in a blend or is outside all those.
But then LOL and “humor” have been on different planes, as it were, and not situated where their subset relation in reality can be used for much operationally.
Of course, another kind of answer — which you might be heading for — could be “get LOL and Humor on the same plane, or drop one or the other” .
The other charity was one his son’s girlfriend was involved in; I donated, but have deleted all emails pertaining to that donation, so I don’t have the information about what it was.
Donations mentioned in his obituary were MOD and ACLU.
It was Charcot-Marie-Tooth (aka CMT).
Yes, thank you. I remember the ‘tooth’ part, but not the rest.
Thank you volunteer editors and Aaron. Glad to see Bill’s good work and good humour continue – it’s been a daily part of my life for a long time now, and helped me to discover some of what are now my favourite comics.
If you can, please do provide a way for us to contribute to the site and to the charities.
Speaking of “charity”… I think it is crucial for the character of this website (and in consideration of its founder) that we preserve everything here as a strictly volunteer operation. I fully support donations to cover actual “expenses”: we should not expect the administrators (nor the Bickel family) to cover any hosting costs, and I would also favor reimbursing DNS registration fees for all those who were kind enough to reserve CIDU-themed URLs (regardless of which ones we finally decide to use).
What I would not want is for any of us to become paid “employees” (not even symbolically). Bill never made a dime on this website: he even shut off the advertisements that it used to carry in the left-hand menu, declaring that they were more trouble than they were worth. He politely refused (or simply ignored) multiple suggestions to cover his operating expenses with a Kickstarter or Patreon account, and seemed to book both his (considerable) time and whatever money he spent as his own personal contribution toward the charities that his readers so generously supported every year.
I haven’t actually done any of the “work” here so far (other than chipping in my 2¢ at opportune moments), so perhaps this is not my decision to make, but I would strongly favor using any and all donations strictly for external invoices. Any funds that are left over should be donated (in CIDU Bill’s name) to whatever charity that Aaron cares to select (such as MoD or CMT).
Ah, thanks Kilby – I noticed in passing an earlier note mentioning recompense to volunteers, and meant to respond with the same as your message: volunteers are volunteers, period.
I agree.
Re my browser problems, I have an update.
First, I am using the real Opera browser. Anything calling itself Opera after version 12.18 is not Opera, but an Opera-like skin on top of another browser engine.
Second, it’s not actually my choice of browser that’s my problem. It’s that I selectively display images. Starting with the most recent WordPress update, there is no ALT text for the image, so there’s no place to click to say “show me this image”.
Has the FAQ been removed? I don’t see it in the sidebar anymore.
Yes, we unlinked it. Temporarily. Trying to figure out how to update content but also leave Bill’s pronouncements in Bill’s voice! :-)
What do you think? Edit but mark new choices as such? (That’s how we did the submissions address, which *had* to be changed.). Or set them out in new, flat footed style, and follow with Bill’s version [mostly] unmodified, below a note saying presented for interest? Or same, but with the Bill version a link to separate page?
Suggestion for the beginning of the FAQ. It’s a general idea, not necessarily the wording we’d want.
1. What is this site?
This is a site to discuss Comics We Don’t Understand. It’s a legacy of the CIDU site created and maintained for over 25 years by Bill Bickel. (See his original FAQ here: <link>)….
Thanks. Something along those lines should work okay.
Re moderation woes (from the Arlo Won thread):
The edress of mine that WordPress didn’t like was on from spamgourmet.com (but no, it didn’t have “spam” as part of the edress). It can be used for temporary edresses, but those temporary ones can be converted to allow indefinite incoming e-mail from specific people. There are quite a number of commercial sites which disallow any spamgourmet edresses. Since my problems started when I started using one, and continued even after Bill okayed my initial change of edress, I figured WordPress was one of those banning them, and that there was probably no way to avoid it. BTW, the address was something at xoxy.net.
Oh, and about the FAQ: In case it wasn’t clear, I was suggesting that the current (new) FAQ needn’t be in Bill’s voice.
Also, on browser and alt text on images – apart from your personal preloading practices, alt text on images is good practice for a number of reasons. I think we can do it by intention even if WP edit tools don’t invite it automatically any more.
P.S. I found again that setting where 50 comments makes it do that “newer comments” / “older comments” paging thing.
Would it create difficulty reading or browsing for anybody if that number were boosted, say doubled? Or outright turned off?
Arthur, thanks for switching the moderation-triggers discussion here, from the Arlo Won thread!
I’ll look thru the stored trigger strings to see what might match based on your account of the addresses that caused trouble. [Can’t do it right now, wrong platform] But I wasn’t sure whether you would want to resume that/those addresses, or if it’s okay to stick with what you changed to.
And really this comes down to whether to clean up that trigger string list piecemeal , or just clear it and start fresh.
Immediately going back on my first take, I did look at some specific strings.
And Woozy, I think I deleted the string that would create a problem for you. Please try making a comment.
It would be nice to use an edress that the moderators/editors could use to contact me directly if desired, but I have no problem continuing to use the fake edress. It’s obvious that xoxy.net is not one of the triggers, or it would have put my post about it into moderation. I would not be surprised if it were a WordPress-wide restriction that can’t be overridden.
But you and the rest have a lot to work on, and I see this as low priority for me. It’s more of a problem in case *other* people want to use such edresses.
I find it easier to pick up where I left off in 50-comment blocks. Scrolling through a hundred responses to get to the 99th would be . . . bothersome.
I understand removing the FAQ link while it’s under construction. But in the meantime, it might be good to make the address for new submissions more prominent (that’s why I was looking for the FAQ).
As for the 50-comment pagination structure, I think it showed up with the new post-Comicgeddon site and I don’t know if Bill even imposed it deliberately. I remember asking him about it at the time but it was clearly a low priority and we learned to live with it. Having some limit is probably good, just to avoid murdering browsers when threads go crazy. But 50 seems too short. 100 might be a good number.
I would prefer to leave the page limit at 50. It’s a rare thread that goes above that mark, and for those that do (such as random and/or site comments), the page load time (for an additional 100 comments) can be high, especially when comments contain embedded images and/or video links.
Is there any chance that the width of the left menu column could be increased just a little bit? While it would be nice to have “Comics I Don’t / Understand” in two lines (instead of three), the primary advantage would be so that the links for “Current XXX Comments” would fit onto one line, rather than two. The same goes for all the links in the “Recent Comments” folder: more space would reduce the number of “wraps”.
Arthur (and anyone following the Opera / image alt text question) , please try the “Saturday Afternoon Oy – October 3rd, 2020” post (at https://comicsidontunderstand.com/2020/10/03/saturday-afternoon-oy-october-3rd-2020/ ) and see if that works with your setup any better.
Okay, you have been heard, no change now for the 50-comments page jump setting!
I like that!
(Andréa I’m guessing your approbation is in reply to Arthur. Oh!, actually that shows up other places, including the email notifications, as well as “reader view” but not standard web view.)
Thanks CaroZ, Arthur, Andréa, and others interested in the FAQ, and making the submissions address prominent or easily found.
Hey, notice that Arthur’s suggested start for the FAQ actually uses question-and-answer format! Which is the great tradition on the Internet, but sadly neglected in these latter days, by some people or organizations that take the FAQ designation to be satisfied by a list of factoids, not needing the Q/A framing. Ah well, where are the Snowdens of yesteryear.
CaroZ, I know it didn’t look like it, but we did try to make the new submission address fairly prominent even without the FAQ. It has been lurking on the left sidebar – below both the Recent Comments list and Recent Posts list, and just above the RSS links. Those are mighty long lists, so I agree it wasn’t at all prominent. :-(
I’ll try moving it up above both those lists. Let’s hope that is not an obstacle to those in a hurry to see the Recent Comments list!
I’m just today noticing these social-media buttons below and to the right of the comment input textbox. Did something happen and they are a new thing? Or did I just never notice them before but did now, having started looking at details with a critical eye?
I don’t see any social-media buttons . . .
… pending fixup, sorry!
Does anyone have your browser set to show Alt Text when you hover? Does that picture have an Alt Text? Thanks.
It’s *after* you click in the text box to Leave A Reply.
For me, at that point the direction “Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:” appears, along with those icons to the right, and the three single-line input boxes for email, name, and website.
More on alt-text and associated.
Earlier today I said:
Arthur (and anyone following the Opera / image alt text question) , please try the “Saturday Afternoon Oy – October 3rd, 2020” post (at https://comicsidontunderstand.com/2020/10/03/saturday-afternoon-oy-october-3rd-2020/ ) and see if that works with your setup any better.
Would you please also try with the “Budget cuts” post? That’s the one currently at the top. Trying a different method of attaching description, which may also help with your original-Opera delay-loading-images issue.
@ Mitch4 – I only see the “W” icon for WordPress, not the other three, and I don’t see the fill-in field, either. It may depend on the state of the wordpress account with which the user is posting the comment.
On the “hover” text: I am absolutely certain that I used to see the file name that Bill had used to store the image(*), but at the moment I do not see any hover text in any pages at all (not even old ones). This would seem to indicate a shift in the WordPress algorithms.
P.S. (*) – For some reason that I have never understood, Bill did not simply post the attached images that were sent to him. Instead, he took a screenshot of the incoming e-mail. Perhaps he was worried about embedded .JPG viruses (I have no idea whether something like that exists for GIFs).
Hmm, maybe that was an offhand remark that you took too seriously, about screenshotting. Or you could be right – but it wouldn’t apply in many cases, like the majority of submissions we have been seeing, where the email does not have an image but only a URL, and that not directly to an image but to a page where the cartoon appears along with other stuff. So we end up downloading the comic image from its site, and turning around and uploading to this WP server to use in a post. Sometimes easy, sometimes a bit harder.
The FAQ did (and will) say something about please send both an image file (attach or embed) as well as a URL. But we don’t want to make stringent rules that could discourage participation!
I just moved the text box with submissions address up higher in the sidebar. Maybe it should also say something about that preference / request (please send both image and link, if you can easily enough) — but not sure that box in that location should get too verbose and large, when people want to get to the Recent Comments list. And still that worry about damping participation.
>woozy, for a short while I used an real edress that Bill could use to e-mail me. I stopped doing that because WordPress didn’t like the domain name and put every single comment of mine into moderation.
Could be. I use an email address of a site I manage myself. But then I had three months or so of posting fine. Plus I can post on the Arlo and crimewatch page just fine.
I figured I was just in a permanent “tag these users file” somewhere.
Well, that seems to have fixed it.
When I click into the “Leave a Reply” textarea, it expands to show the three id fields (Email, Name, Website), and also shows me 4 icons: WordPress, Google, Twitter, and Facebook, that I could use to log in with. As far as I can recall, it has always been thus, and it always slightly irritates me, because I’m assuming just having those links acts as a tracker for those services, plus, who would be dumb enough to ever use those to log in?? (Yeah, yeah, I know: just about everybody and his cat, but that still doesn’t make them not dumb; when I went to law school recently (ha! it’s now ten years ago!), I was annoyed that they were migrating off their own internal email servers to make use of the “service” offered by Google; I complained at an assembly where they were explaining the change, saying I didn’t want to share my personal email — which I would have to be using for school related stuff — with Google, why the heck were they doing this? And this one kid came up to me afterward, trying to explain why this was the greatest thing since sliced bread; his argument: “It’s Google!”, said with full enthusiasm and no irony. *Sigh*)
I read exclusively from LarK’s scrape (unless it’s down) and that has problems when a new post is on a multi-page thread. I’d vote for turning it off, at least on a trial basis. This thread is a good test.
If we turn off multipage to facilitate scraper reading for the few threads that go to 60 or 70 comments, the we will have to roll over the random and site comments posts more often, because they will become unwieldy when 150 or 200 comments are listed in a single thread. It might be better to ask the scrapers to switch over to the WordPress interface for those few threads.
Unless(*), of course, the paging can be activated for individual posts (which might be an ideal solution), so that paging would be active only for the long “comments” posts, but not elsewhere. If a “comic” post goes over 150 comments, then perhaps paging could be activated manually for that post.
P.S. (*) – I think the probability that WordPress would permit such a wonderfully flexible solution will be around 1 or 2 percent.
Nice thinking, Kilby, but I saw the setting in one place only, where it appears to be a site-wide parameter.
@ Mitch4 – It’s nice to see that wordpress is at least predictable, even when that reflects on its general lack of user-friendliness.
Kilby: the WordPress interface is just as broken for those threads — the scraper merely scrapes the WordPress links. WordPress has a fundamental error in creating comment links, or at least keeping up with what page they’re on, when the pagination gets going.
On another topic: the prominent placement of the new address for incoming comics is an excellent idea, and should stay there for the entire transition period, until a final decision has been made about where CIDU will remain for the future. However, it might be nice to condense the text, which currently wraps to 10 lines.
NEW ADDRESS:
Please send all comics to (submissions GIF)
If possible, please attach an image (GIF or JPG) along with the address (URL).
P.S. Hmmm — I’m not sure whether that will save more than one or two lines.
Gosh, you’re quick — that additional verbiage was added just 10 minutes ago! (The text box as a whole was moved up in the sidebar this morning, as outcome from the discussion of losing this info from prominence when the FAQ was unlinked.)
I’m not entirely happy with the hasty prose, but not in the same directions as you. I’ll fix “if you are able” and that sort of infelicity. But naming image filename extensions is not, to my mind, in any way nicer or shorter or clearer than saying “image file” — and there is a problem naming JPG and GIF and not even “etc”– we don’t hate PNG do we? And JPEG still is used, a lot, some places, and …/ More to the point, many people in many circumstances deal with saving images (on a mobile device) and then uploading them without ever dealing with a filename.
BTW, if you want to research the theme, it’s called Editor, and is on WordPress web sites for download and documentation. It does have configuration options, but still not things like the width of the sidebar (an associated matter from earlier) without access to the files.
One nice thing about it is that it already does three formats at once (computer, tablet, phone) and you don’t have to ask WordPress to do something nasty to accommodate. May I ask which kind of platform you’re on? Because I count only three extra lines for the prose blob wrapping under the suibmissions address image, and wonder how you are getting ten.
Sorry, I’m getting grumpy for totally unrelated reasons! I actually meant to be expressing admiration for a WordPress interface feature. On the Design -> Customize screen (or in another area, Appearance -> Customize) there are three inconspicuous buttons, but they drastically change the preview you are looking at, to show how the page will look on computer / tablet / phone. With an adaptive theme like this one, the views are different but each very coherent on its own terms. For a less compliant site I was also dealing with, it was painful to see a page with fixed-width elements just cut off by the edges of the phone screen, requiring the user to scroll it into visibility.
That wasn’t quick, it was just a coincidence. ;-)
You are perfectly correct about the file extensions, but with that in mind I would also leave out “URL” in favor of “address” (although URL is correct, non-techies may not recognize it).
I haven’t checked the wrapping on my desktop, but on both of our iPads it falls out (in landscape mode) as follows:
ADDRESS FOR / CONTRIBUTIONS [2 lines]
(blank line)
Please send all / submissions to / (submissions GIF) [3 lines]
(blank line)
If you are able to, please / send an actual image / file of the comic, as well / as a URL to where to see / it. [4 lines and an orphaned “it”]
Your text was fine, but with 10 text and two blank lines, the “Recent Comments” menu is pushed almost off the screen (in part abetted by additional blank areas).
P.S. I just discovered a new wrinkle in portrait mode: the two (left/right) columns now stack, so that you have to scroll all the way down past “recent comments” to get to the post. I think this is a new bug, but I wouldn’t worry about it for now. I’m sure that the vast majority of CIDU readers are on desktop systems, and for those who are on mobile devices, they can simply rotate the screen by 90°.
Yes, the jumping from side-by-side to stacked vertically is one of the ways in which it is “adaptive”. Disturbing, yes — but better than the websites that don’t even try and just make you fight to see the areas you want to read.
@Kilby or others who may want to experiment with details of the Editor theme :
As a stepchild site of the Practice Server, at http://cidu.site/w2 there is a WordPress installation, almost empty, with the Editor theme (the same as here), comment numbering on, and the upload tool for comments working. Also “Additional CSS” drop-in available, and an editor tool for most of the theme files.
All are invited to try out commenting and see how the uploader works.
But also, hackers and tinkerers interested in, say, changing the width of the sidebar and so on, let me know and you can have a signin with admin privileges. Try not to break too much.
ALSO, to larK or others with CSS skills or a library :-) , what can you suggest for turning he presentation of blockquote tag material more normal. In case you’ve forgotten, this is what it looks like unmodified in Editor:
(And a bit after the blockquote.)
@ Mitch4 – There are a number of (other) things I’d like to see fixed in the CSS(*), so I guess I should volunteer to look at it.
One positive development is that most (but not all) of the newer postings are showing up in the “posts” feed. Off with a warning has not made it (yet), perhaps it’s just a delay action problem.
P.S. (*) – Besides the point size for blockquote, it would be nice if links would show up in a color (like blue), instead of light gray.
Thanks, Kilby.
Just to be ultra-clear, we’re talking about a different server, not *this* one; and whatever we can work out there about “injecting” some Additional CSS to tailor this Editor theme, cannot at this point be brought back *here*. (Though we would like to arrange for it to be possible.)
If you would go to cidu.site/w2/ and drop in a comment, I can later today send you an invitation to admin it (I don’t send invites, only invitations).
And thank you to Arthur for dropping in there with a comment. I’m sorry the upload didn’t work.
What Kilby wants can be done in the same way as the numbering fix (ie: either in html inside <style> tags, or in the css file) thusly:
.comment-content a:link{color:grey !important}
.entry-content a:link{color:grey !important}
That said, I don’t really like to mess with css because it is a black hole of infinite adjustments that magically sucks up inordinate amounts of time fiddling with practically indiscernible gradations that in the end no one agrees on anyway… Best is to figure out what you want something to look like outside of css, and then work in the css to best match the pre-defined look — but even that quickly goes down the hole of infinite fiddling…
Oops; in the comment in moderation, replace “grey” with “blue” to get what Kilby wants — I did grey instead of light grey, and found it works well enough, the problem being light-grey wasn’t noticeable enough, but grey is, but just put in blue to really sell it (and here already begins the infinite fiddling…)
As I just stated (in the thread on the new server), I really don’t like the idea of permitting open uploads for display to everyone. However, we could run such a secondary server as a submission location. Everyone would stay in “new user moderation mode”, so that each user would be able to see only his or her own submissions. We could open separate threads for each category (CIDU, Ewww, Oy, LOL, Synchronicity, and maybe even Arlo). Moderators could pick up the URLs and images from the submission site, and trasfer them to the “live” site. This is just an idea, I can’t judge the practicality of this as a continuing solution.
@ larK – The only reason that I suggested “blue” for links is that it is a fairly common standard. Whoever designed this template was going for “elegance” rather than “legibility”. I like the grays as a background color, but the standard text color should be black (not just “dark gray”), and the links need to be visible, not beautiful.
P.S. Dogmatic aesthetic principles may be good for avant-garde filmmakers, but they don’t necessarily result in a superior product.
Thanks — you can see the link color in action under http://cidu.site/w2/2020/10/03/hello-world/ though there aren’t a lot of links.
larK, your remark about CSS being a potentially huge time-waster is great advice. I remember a cartoon clipped and tacked on a bulletin board (physical), about how “Tweaking my LaTeX macros!” does not really count as “progress on the dissertation”!
However, I do mostly agree with Kilby on not liking to see live links sink into the surroundings.
When there are sufficient CIDUs, do you expect to roll them out once a day as Bill did? Will you choose 00:02 as he did?
I see nothing wrong with continuing as things had been. But this is a good time to remember that nothing is written in stone. What makes things easier for our new volunteers is good. What makes things more fun for the readers is also good.
For various reasons, I can’t volunteer my help. So, I want to make sure it’s clear that I’m grateful that people are volunteering to keep CIDU going, and that I’m quite aware that one does not make demands on volunteers. OTOH, it’s hard to keep me quiet when I have ideas.
Arthur, we were thinking we would roll out CIDUs once a day as Bill did, although we’re short on CIDUs right now. We had thought of changing the time by a few hours, since for petty administrative reasons, 00:02 can be a little annoying. Is there any reason the time is important?
Making suggestions is great; it’s not the same at all as making demands.
@ Winter Wallaby – I don’t think the exact time is important, but one thing that Bill bemoaned at least once or twice a year was the way that WordPress would get confused before and after the Daylight Saving Time shifts. If you are going to make a change anyway, perhaps 5am (Eastern time), to place it farther away from the switchovers.
P.S. Scratch that suggestion, that would land it right in the middle of the changeovers for PST, and I doubt that 1pm (Eastern) would meet with any enthusiasm.
Removed from the left side menu the indented (submenu) item “– Random Comments Jan-Oct 2020”. Now that there is no item with a date, the “Current” on ‘Current “Site Comments” ‘ and ‘Current “Random Comments” ‘ starts to look strange. So, remove “Current”?
I would be in favor of any solution that would reduce each of those links to one (or at most two) lines. Besides, if you get rid of “current”, then the quote marks can be deleted, too.
I don’t see the submission address. Is it supposed to be in the left side menu?
Never mind; it’s in the menu under the folder icon.
Yes, the quotation marks can go, too. They were there to protect the “Your” in the first iteration of those titles, and stuck around even after.
My prior comments about menu length and link text wrapping were based on the results I had with two different tablets and a mobile phone. Rechecking the behavior with two different desktop browsers, it seems that the current layout is much more flexible than I thought. I’m not sure whether it was always this way, or whether any recent WordPress alterations may have had some side effects, but the left column is not as fixed as I remembered; it (now?) stretches as a percentage of the overall window width (which can be adjusted on a desktop system, but not on a tablet). There’s also a white gutter between the main display and the left column that I never noticed before (and which does not appear on the mobile devices). Font sizes depend on the browser and the zoom level, of course, but after resetting the zoom to “normal” (100%), I stretched the window until the title “Comics I Don’t Understand” just (barely) fit in two lines, instead of three, and discovered that the required window width was about 10% wider with Firefox than it was with Safari.
P.S. What does all of this mean? Virtually nothing, I think, except that we really should not fuss with minor formatting adjustments, since all optimizations are system, browser, and zoom-level dependent. As long as it “generally” works, we should leave it alone.
The “Bill Bickel and the history of CIDU” page has arrived! Many thanks to Carl Fink for writing and publishing it, and to many CIDUers for contributing ideas. You can find it in the menu on the left sidebar, hamburger tab.
I just found the “Bill Bickel and the history of CIDU” section and found the article to be well written. Nicely done.
I had been wondering whether we should title the site “Bill Bickel’s Comics I Don’t Understand” as a nod to its creator. Perhaps the article is acknowledgment enough.
Ditto.
I wondered about Billo the clown, though.
Getting back to the subject of moderation: there are some trigger words that I think should be maintained (either here, or ported to the new site, if and when we do move). Bill added the URL for the “Urban Dictionary” to the list, because the material there was all too often way past the limits of “arlo”. I also think it would be a good idea to keep (or add) “tinyurl” to the list, since that can serve as a way to disguise other addresses that would be an automatic trigger.
P.S. @ Grawlix – I would rather not drag along the possessive verbiage in the title: it’s already long enough.
@Kilby, no offense, but you’re mistaken about the contents of the triggerwords list. Perhaps Bill at some point entered something and shared it with you, but later deleted it without updating your info on it.
Commenting question for all! We could enable Markdown in comments. Should that happen? Does entering some HTML markings do the job well enough? (We might note how often people forget closing tags on their italics or bold.)
There is a quick guide to the Markdown system at
https://wordpress.com/support/markdown-quick-reference/
I don’t bother with tags, I won’t bother about markdown.
Yes, I’m not sure there’s a need for Markdown — I just stumbled on the setting to enable it and thought I would ask.
I sort of like having *this* form of emphasis show up just as I typed it, with asterisks present literally.
If we switched to Markdown I would have to learn a whole new syntax before I could use it. Plain HTML seems simpler, and less prone to misinterpretation.
P.S. On my tablet, I’ve defined a couple of shortcuts, so that tapping “.it” produces “<i></i>”, thus ensuring that I won’t forget the closing “italics” token. It saves even more work when defining links.
P.P.S. Bill was a little clandestine when it came to his list of moderation trigger words (because if everyone knows the list, it’s too easy to bypass it). One of the few triggers that he revealed publicly was “s.u.c.k.s“, and although I remember a (private) conversation (not that long ago) in which he mentioned adding “o.r.a.n.g.e“, that was a very rare exception. It’s been a long time since anyone cited anything in the Urban Dictionary, so it’s quite possible that he dropped that entry after the brief fad had fizzled out.
Kilby (8:34) you might be overreading — I didn’t see that enabling Markdown would mean giving up HTML.
Kilby (8:47) Bill was a little clandestine when it came to his list of moderation trigger words (because if everyone knows the list, it’s too easy to bypass it). So you decided to ignore this precaution?
Andréa — You see that your experiment worked! Would you want that test comment released, or has it served its purpose?
Re moderation words: IIRC, there were many that WordPress included automatically that Bill couldn’t change. The term for inhale vigorously was one of them.
But I also remember his accidental war on Christmas when he added a word to prevent the stereotypical comment/caption for New Yorker comments.
We’ll see if I’ve tiptoed enough to say what I mean, intelligibly, without tripping any current moderation tripwires.
The color word that Kilby spelled out with dots was part of avoiding a certain avenue of political commentary. But it may have made it hard to discuss the RwO comic. We could drop that one.
The Hoover-related verb is on local (this-blog) intercept. So we can’t tell whether or not it is blocked by WP overall, if there is even such a thing.
Ha! I never thought o’ that – it wouldn’t go thru. Well, that’s ok; at least *I* know it’s still a ‘trigger word’, altho I always wondered how many other folks ever used it..
Claytoonz is on WordPress, and he uses LOTS of words that I know would be inappropriate here, so I don’t think there is a WP blocking mechanism at all.
Hunh, Andréa 12:45PM *also* was held, I know not why.
I couldn’t figure it out, either.
BTW, where does the time stamp come from? I posted that at about 3:55 pm EDT. Your post is time-stamped 12:59 pm, but it ‘s 4:08 pm EDT.
Perhaps the ‘time stamper’ for WP is the person who wrote these two lines (either Alan Jackson or Jimmy Buffett):
It’s only half past twelve, but I don’t care
It’s five o’clock somewhere
No, if it’s half past twelve, it’d be half past five somewhere [which doesn’t scan very well]. I like the song, a LOT, but still cringe every time I hear those lines (which would be at least once a day).
Andréa, does he say where he is? Maybe he’s in India or South Australia, which have time zones offset by half hours:
https://www.timeanddate.com/time/time-zones-interesting.html
Oh, and to answer your actual question, we know the timestamps are weird based on the month or more weirdness when going to and from DST.
I’m concerned only about the minutes-off errors. Please double-check with a new post (that does not involve going into Pending, i.e. moderation) – look at the timestamp and the actual time. APART FROM THE HOUR, are the minutes close to right?
The WP timezone on the server is now Pacific. (Don’t ask.)
I’m not sure whether to give much credence to the mythology of WP messing up time for more than the one day of actual DST on or off transition. But I personally am a believer in abolishing the transitions. So I’ll go along with blaming them for all sorts of things.
REPLYING AT 4:47 PM EDT
“. . . does he say where he is? ”
USA
OCTOBER 12, 2020 AT 1:47 PM
REPLYING AT 4:47 PM EDT
Thank you.
Lookin’ good — that is just TZ difference.
@ Mitch4 – Even if we still get to keep HTML, I still think enabling Markdown would be a mistake. I don’t think the syntax is any easier, it’s unlikely to be that popular, and it will increase the probability of “accidental” formatting.
P.S. WordPress sometimes does that too (such as when a paranthetical clause ends the digit for “eight”, you get this: 8) ), but the list of WP transformations is rather short.
P.P.S. Strange. I know that there used to be a combination involving an “8” and a “)” that would produce a smiley wearing glasses, but now I cannot recall the exact syntax.
Maybe with a hyphen in between 8-) ?
I would agree with you that html is no more difficult — cognitively. And in execution too, if I am at my computer, with a real keyboard. But since I got in the habit of occasionally interrupting my sleep to make some comments, and using a mobile phone or iPad, the struggles with switching keyboard views quickly to get the angle brackets , the slash, and the letter I, then more symbols, is something of a nightmare , when *this* would be comparatively easier.
Yes, there are tricks to make it easier, but they are yet another demand on preplanning and devoting mental energy to the typing task instead of the content. And even though I have become better at the Android technique of holding a “key” for a moment to get other choices, the iOS equivalent of down-swipe is n good for me. The only iOS trick that has helped came from a CIDU commenter some time ago, and it’s the slide in the space bar. Then I can switch to symbols and put in both the less-than and greater-than, then switch alphabets again and left-slide to put the i in between. Slightly easier, but man, it leaves me thinking of getting up to sit at that modern tech miracle, a physical keyboard. Or *just skipping* the italics.
Thanks for adding Bill’s and the site’s history. Question: is there a reason the FAQ link isn’t in the sidebar?
chemgal: Carl is working on a new FAQ. Much of the content of the old one is specific to Bill, and doesn’t make sense with the new setup of an editorial committee. We were loathe to edit anything Bill wrote, so decided to go with an entirely new one.
“We were loathe to edit anything Bill wrote, so decided to go with an entirely new one.” … And chain-link the original, for its inherent reading / personality interest. And not have to say “The answer now is a little different …” in each place where that’s the case.
So I’m watching the “indigenous people’s day disco” thread with rapt attention and an undertow of thrill and/or dread… How was it that Bill was able to keep the conversation away from dangerous territory while at the same time allowing you to feel like you could freely comment without having to censor yourself except insofar as to not be obviously provocative? I couldn’t help myself and added to the thread, but I felt a frisson of danger, which I don’t think I felt under Bill’s reign. And it isn’t that he could close a subject, or even disappear a comment, which occasionally did happen (and I never really was too happy when it did), but it was more that he himself would chime into the discussion, and somehow, through subtle redirection, utilizing acknowledgement and recognition, while simultaneously moving the discussion off into a new direction, manage to defuse the whole thing. It never felt (much) like there was a benevolent despot in charge of the whole thing being the the only reason it worked: it always felt like it was because we were all mature adults able to have civilized discussions, but I’m seeing now how much of an illusion that was (…?)
I don’t envy the editorial group — you guys have some really big shoes to fill! Good luck and best wishes!
I tried barking earlier today, but couldn’t just bite. ;=)
@ lark – I concur.
In the light of the recent unpleasantness, I wonder if the paragraph ‘“Comics-semi-related” may in practice include your observations on life and language…’ at the top of the ‘Random comments’ page shouldn’t be altered or removed altogether: it’s easy to forget the ‘comic’ aspect and abuse the ‘observation’ part.
@ Mitch4 – Well, that is a subject that Bill would not have touched with a ten-foot
pollpole. I wish you (and all of our fellow CIDU readers) the best of luck in avoiding any flame war fodder.Well after some behind the scenes discussion I was going to retract my call. But now there is the question of stranding your comment. Ay ay ay.
My maternal grandfather was maybe a five-and-a-half-foot Pole.
I should think that ultimately the decision of which comics to use/not use would be determined by the ‘editors’ (how many are there are the moment, BTW?), which would make it easier to ‘censor’ any that could start a flame war.
And . . . if a reader is worried about a flame war, s/he can just not read CIDU ‘election comics’ when they are posted. I think we’re all mature enough AND dedicated to the memory of Bill’s CIDU legacy enough to be careful.
So I’m sorry, could you please clarify: which have we always been at war with, Eastasia or Oceania? Maybe for convenience, you could just alter this comment so it always reflects whichever is the current correct answer?
I noticed there are two different addresses for submissions: one is at the top of the random comments page, the other above the recent comments.
I have more 1 to say up here.
Footnotes will be added to the bottom of the document, with a link back to the original reference
Begin each line with
two spaces or more to
make text look
e x a c t l y
like you type i
t.
Header 1
Header 2
Header 3
Header 4
Header 5
Header 6
Closing hash marks are optional on all levels
Header 1
## Header 2
### Header 3
#### Header 4 ####
##### Header 5 #####
###### Header 6 ######
Closing hash marks are optional on all levels
Header 1
Header 2
Header 3
Header 4
Header 5
Header 6
Closing hash marks are optional on all levels
Emphasize emphasize
Strong Strong
A plain sentence with emphasized phrase in the middle.
Emphasize emphasize
Strong Strong
A plain sentence with emphasized phrase in the middle.
plain pre format didn’t work there!
try as code
*Emphasize* _emphasize_**Strong** __Strong__A plain sentence *with emphasized phrase* in the middle.Emphasize emphasize
Strong Strong
A plain sentence with emphasized phrase in the middle.
The lists and numbered lists and footnotes do not work — for probably the same reason as numbered comments not working — CSS is reducing the appearance of lists.
This is a
piece of code
in a block
This too
~~~~
This is a
piece of code
in a block
~~~~
This tooThe Big Box Store/Cat poll needs another entry: “Shrug.” Oy implies you get the joke but it is a pun or word play. LOL is much too strong a reaction to describe understanding the joke. Neither CIDU (I’m pretty sure I get it) nor Eww (I don’t see it as a litter box joke) capture my thoughts on it.
TedD are you sure this is the place for that suggestion, and not in thread with the poll in question?
But to your point: Yeah, there are many other things that would be a better fit for some people, but it starts to get awkward very quick.
My wording for the missing option was “Mostly lame“, but I agree with Mitch4: the design and results of that poll should be discussed in that thread. On the other hand, whether or not we want to have CIDU polls at all is a valid “site comments” subject. Personally, I would say “at most very infrequently”. I would prefer to leave the selection of category designations in the hands of the Editors, rather than using a crowd-sourced majority decision. After all, category tags are extremely ephemeral, nobody remembers or looks at them ever again after three weeks.
“. . . nobody remembers or looks at them ever again after three weeks.”
Speak for yourself; I often (as you know) find apropos comics many weeks later, to add to the comment section and, sometimes, continue the thread. And, sometimes it doesn’t, but at least it’s up there.
“The Big Box Store/Cat poll needs another entry: “Shrug.” ”
HEY! I resemble that remark!
Not a big fan of polls. I especially dread the ones I get from various businesses I visit, where I am implored to rate how “satisfied” I was with the “experience” in all its nuances from 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 or whatever. This sort of harmless comic opinion poll is not irritating like those, of course, but I’d still rather seem it used sparingly at most.
Not only am I not a fan of polls, I’m not a fan of committees. We can already see how unwieldy this is becoming.
I have a completely different suggestion: ONE of the editors ‘rules’ for a month about submissions. His/Her word is absolute, for that month. Then, rotate to one of the other editors. Lather, rinse, repeat as needed.
@ Andréa – When I said “not look at it again” I was referring specifically to the category tag, and not to the comics. Nobody ever uses the “CIDU” or “LOL” tags to look for things, because they produce far too many matches.
P.S. Rotating editors is a fine theory, but given the amount of work involved in keeping this website running, I’m perfectly happy to let them do it in whatever fashion they deem appropriate.
P.S. @ Mitch4 – I’m not worried about stranded comments at all (see the previous page), but both for now and in the future, whenever this sort of thing happens, feel free to delete my (moot) response along with the (disappearing) antecedent.
Andréa, you may be making some inaccurate presuppositions. In particular, when a post is marked as being done by someone (which is always, as the software requires), that doesn’t mean nobody else had input, particularly in the weekend “collections” posts where multiple hands literally added in comics.
Or if you’re bothered by the intro texts that say “one thought this, another thought that” , that is mostly a rhetorical toolbar for getting into the substantive discussion. I’ll admit I’m a little tired of that gesture, and maybe we can cut back on it. But I hope it doesn’t look to you like the product of real dissension that could not be contained behind the scenes.
In particular, exactly as the post with the polls said right at the top, trying out polls was something we just wanted to try, and the poll about the classification was much more about trying out a poll than about really worrying that much about how to mark the category! :-)
Your thoughts on a Category question? —
Here are two descriptions:
1) An old instance of a newspaper type comic strip (not excluding single-panel form), but currently appearing as a daily or weekly on a syndicate site.
2) An old cartoon, whether standalone or from an erstwhile regular series, found somewhere other than current scheduled republication.
I think neither of these is “Hey Geezers, Comics!” since the point is not whether or not one’s age or generation is a factor in following the references or getting the joke. Rather, these are still CIDUs or LOLs or OYs, etc., but with an additional subcategorization to mark that they are not contemporary, and might need to be viewed thru an adjusted lens.
So, questions about these descriptions:
— Are they different enough to merit different markers?
— How would you understand “Classic” or “Retro” vis-a-vis those descriptions?
— Suggestions for other terms to better fit the descriptions? Maybe “Vintage”? Maybe frankly “Reprint”?
— Suggestions for amending the descriptions to better fit those terms, or terms you have in mind to substitute
An example of (1) would be a Beetle Bailey we were sent, from current appearance in Comics Kingdom etc., but from the reprint series not the current ones.
Yep. Andréa, I’m not sure what you’re referring to when you say we can see how unwieldy this is becoming. There are unwieldy aspects of having an editorial committee, but as far as I can tell, it’s mostly in having an extra layer of communication at the backend. It’s not that we end up arguing about the comics as we write the post.
@ Mitch4 – I think the “Hey Geezers, Comics!” tag should be renamed to read just “Geezers”, and should be reserved for comics that deal with a topic that is no longer “general knowledge” (especially among younger generations), regardless of the actual age of the comic itself. There are more precise options for “elderly” material.
The vast majority of comics submitted to CIDU are normal, syndicated “newspaper” comics (even if some of them don’t appear in many — or any — actual “fishwrap” editions). I have often felt that it might be worthwhile to flag other source types, such as:
1) “webcomics” – features that appear online, exclusively under the control of the author (no syndicate or publisher involved). Common examples: XKCD, SMBC, Bug Martini
2) “reruns” – Syndicated comics that are repeated because of the author’s vacation, sabbatical, or retirement, or death. Prominent examples: Peanuts, Cul de Sac (RIP); Calvin & Hobbes, Bloom County (retirement); Foxtrot, Doonesbury (sabbatical for dailies). This should also be used for all the parallel “classic” features that GoComics keeps creating for no apparent reason.
3) “archives” – This tag could be used whenever a comic has been obtained from a secondary source, such as an old book, magazine, but also from a dated internet archive belonging to the syndicate or author. (For instance, Bill periodically posted items that appeared as if he had laid a book onto a scanner.)
4) “Internet” – Items that have been sourced from shared e-mails or various websites (major social media sources such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. should be identified by name, of course).
Thanks for putting that useful thinking into this question, Kilby!
Your “reruns” category comes the closest to capturing the Beetle Bailey instance that prompted my question, but I think your draft definition ends up excluding it. The syndicator (I might have said GoComics before but think it is Comics Kingdom) is also running a current series of Beetle Bailey strips ( https://www.comicskingdom.com/beetle-bailey-1 ) but also the old ones ( https://www.comicskingdom.com/beetle-bailey/ ) . Would your “reruns” cover these 1950-51 dailies? Or
So tell me again how this is NOT getting rather unwieldy . . .
Andréa: I still don’t know what you’re referring to as getting unwieldy.
Oh, I think I realized where the confusion is!
Andréa, the editorial committee is just a small number of people, having e-mail discussions about what to do with the submissions, and how to make the posts. That’s all done internally to the committee. Whether or not our processes are unwieldy, you don’t see any of that.
Separately, here in the Site Comments, anyone can make suggestions about how the site should work – e.g. “I don’t like polls,” or “get rid of the Geezer tag.” But the ensuing discussions aren’t wieldy or unwieldy. They’re just discussions. They’re not related to having an editorial committee. A single editor could decide that he or she wanted public discussion about what the blog should look like, and a committee of editors could decide not to bother soliciting public feedback.
” . . . you don’t see any of that.”
Actually, I have.
I still don’t understand what unwieldiness you’re referring to.
@ Mitch4 – I think “reruns” is the perfect description for the secondary feed of older “Beetle Bailey” strips, likewise for the “Back to B.C.” or “Read Peanuts from the beginning” features at GoComics. Those strips were published decades ago, and are being rehashed to generate extra income (if only in the form of ads viewed). That is what reruns do. The “archive” tag is a little different: I meant that for comics that come from the syndication archive, but are not “currently” presented. If today’s “Back to B.C.” shows up with the strip from May 4th, 1963, then that’s a re-run, but if I dig up the “normal” B.C. comic for 4-July-2003 by waltzing back in the calendar, then that’s an “archive” item.
Could the Editors please take another look at the RSS “Posts” feed? This feature stalled for a while, then seemed to be revived, but at the moment, the last post in the feed is the “Bonus for a lazy Sunday afternoon — The Polls are Open“. I have a feeling that there may be some sort of a checkbox or other action that is required to get WordPress to add a new post to the RSS list. I hope this can be made the “default”, and doesn’t require manual activation for each post.
I don’t see anything for specific posts. Do you think switching from Full Text to Summary (or switch-and-back) would do anything? larK, any ideas?
No offense, but could it be at your end? I clicked on the Posts RSS and at https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/feed/ am seeing today’s and yesterday’s near the top. (But I’m no expert at reading these and may be looking at the Atom.)
The only thing I can think of is that maybe Kilby’s browser is not refreshing properly, showing only cached versions of the feed. I just looked at the feed, and for me it showed the “Years from now…” thread as the newest.
Sorry, people in general, one more try on this.
So instead of manually parsing the feed, I tried a RSS previewer. No, I don’t know the good ones from the bad, and have never tried one before, but from a cursory search got to https://www.coderedcorp.com/tools/rss-preview/ . And feeding it https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/feed/ here is what I see:
Thanks, larK. It’s good to have knowledgeable people to ask!
Thanks to all of you for the research. The problem appears to be a bug in Safari: when I looked at the links above in Firefox, they worked fine. Since I vastly prefer Safari as an RSS reader, I’ll try clearing the browser cache and see whether that fixes it.
P.S. It’s definitely a Safari problem, and nothing to do with CIDU. Clearing the cache & history did not help. However, this led me to check into all of the RSS feeds that I read with Safari. I discovered that the only two that still work correctly are NPR and the German ARD Tagesschau (which happen to be — by far — the highest volume feeds I read, with a couple dozen posts every day in each). Safari’s RSS seems to be broken for all of the lower volume feeds. For instance, I had been using it for Perry Bible Fellowship simply to flag when (or rather if) a new comic might ever appear. That worked fine up until Lucky Day (on Sept. 1st), but I never noticed that there have been four PBF comics posted since then (which, by recent PBF standards, is a very high level of posts, but that is only a relative measure).
P.S. Upgrading to the most recent version of Safari will not help, because Apple yanked the RSS reader out of Safari several releases ago. I suppose I should be content that it still works at all for my two favorite news sources.
I would like to recommend putting a link to the submission instructions/FAQ in the left-hand rail. Thanks!
P.P.S. After all that griping, suddenly the RSS “posts” feeds has suddenly reanimated itself. Perhaps the trick was clearing the Safari cache and then waiting a day for the next refresh. I have no idea, but at least it’s back.
Enjoy the Wavatars and MonsterIDs for a day or two as a Halloween amusement!
No.
Those crystalline symmetry ones were much nicer , don’t you think?
I don’t really care, as long as they are consistent, and remain consistent, so as to best fulfill their function. I am a visual learner, consistency in location, shape, color, etc. are very important for my working memory. You wouldn’t rearrange Helen Keller’s furniture, would you?
Well then we’d better get back to the nice ones before you or anyone gets attached to these whimsical but ugly monstros.
” You wouldn’t rearrange Helen Keller’s furniture, would you?”
“TRICK OR TREAT! TRICK OR TREAT! TRICK OR — hey, she’s not responding at all! It’s almost as though she doesn’t even hear us! Well, just for that, TRICK! Let’s see now, what would be a good one….?”
A quick group of markdown experiments.This *should be* italics on those two word.
This should* not be ital, but should show the asterisk since it is not before a character and is not paired.
Then what about * before? This was with a space buit how to close it up?
Trying with a backslash to escape \*the asterisk and just in case these are pairing\* there was another.
A quick group of markdown experiments.
This should be italics on those two word.
This should* not be ital, but should show the asterisk since it is not before a character and is not paired.
Then what about * before? This was with a space buit how to close it up?
Trying with a backslash to escape *the asterisk and just in case these are pairing* there was another.
@ Mitch4 – Thanks for the information, but my main takeaway is that “markdown” is confusing, unnecessary, and unlikely to be used by any significant number of CIDU readers. Most of the nerds (myself included) that like to use <i>italics</i> know how to get them with the HTML tokens (and for those who don’t, I just gave the method).
P.S. In case the popular (or just the Editorial) sentiment should go the other way, I’ll just have to stop using asterisks for footnotes. Pesky, but less troublesome than remembering when and how to use the backslash escape route.
I’m with Kilby: WOrdpress already does too many non-standard, non-intuitive things that just get in the way (reformatting the word “WordPress”, randomly deciding your punctuation is really an emoji, etc.), so I really don’t want more.
How about you guys let it ride for a couple weeks? And we can see if there is anybody who falls on the other side, and would welcome being able to use italics casually, who has been put off by a perceived barrier of using HTML markup.
On the substance, I do think you are mistaken in characterizing the barrier as just an information gap. For one thing, it can be more intimidating for someone not used to using HTML at all, and saying “there!, I just gave you the model” is not an empathetic attitude.
But also, as in my case, the barrier is not cognitive but convenience: it’s easy when I’m at my computer, with real keys, including a shift key, and the angle-brackets clearly marked. BUT on my Android phone it’s a minor but real PITA to switch keyboards to get the symbols — made slightly easier because I have installed a keyboard with arrow cursor-movement keys, so I can just mark the
<> <>all at one go then go back and fill in the necessary. On my iPad it is an insuperable PITA requiring 8 alphabet switches.Thanks for allowing me that bellyaching. And please forgive me for not allowing you the same :-) . I’ll just have to stop using asterisks for footnotes. Pesky, but less troublesome than remembering when and how to use the backslash escape route. Oh, c’mon. You don’t have to use backslash escape — just put your footnoting asterisk at the end of a word and it won’t trigger italics. Look at how Pad did it in their comment on Leon Redbone in the “Pardon my Prescription” thread.
So what happens if I type 2 asterisks?
**
I was kinda hoping only the second one’d be left, but in italics.
You’re on track to discovering something …
Can we have *italics and **bold ***together?
It puzzles me as to why the markdown designers didn’t use the long-standing usenet reader system. In that, italics are set off with slashes, bold with asterisks, and underline with underscores. Unique and no need for doubling. Do underscores do anything in markdown? Too lazy to look it up.
The other way round, then italics* and bold** together?***
Ok, I’m tired.
italics*
bold**
together***
Ah, ok. This is the right thread: I’ve noticed that when 2 comments are posted at the same time (12:06pm for example), they disappear for a while; I hit ‘post comment’, and nothing was posted.
italics
bold
together
underscore
bold?
With newsreader markdown, you could chain the markers to get bold underscore or italic bold or italic bold underscore if you wanted. I just ran a check with my newsreader (rec.arts.sf.written).
What happens with three asterisks? Will we get bold italic?
Ok: we can replace asterisk with underscore.
I wonder if this is why my bank won’t let me use most special characters in my dealing with them online.
So underscore is italic as well. Huh.
There goes that theory.
I see: that’s what you (Mitch4) were playing with last month.
makes things #bigger# .
Can we mix* and *not match our _ ‘s and * ‘s?
I do wonder how to underline, apart from that.
Lol: I’m so bad at this.
BTW, dear editors: feel free to erase all my silly experiments.
I’ll link to the guide. When I can sit at computer. Or anyone else who is aware could too.
Here is the Markdown guide:
https://wordpress.com/support/markdown-quick-reference/
Please bear in mind that some features which do not work as described are those depending on the style formatting of lists. (The same thing which is preventing numbered comment threads.) So that affects, of course, lists … also the footnote feature, which would be really nice.
A nice feature when you are experimenting is the “code” format, which uses paired backquotes. It prevents Markdown interpretation, so you can show what you are typing, then paste again without the backquotes to see how it was interpreted.
Like **this**Like this
Some tests
So what do blockquotes look like? Something like this?
Or like this?
I can’t imagine that I’ll ever need to use the footnote feature 1
Better in some other views..
I agree with Brian, if the markdown syntax were more intuitive, it would be less of a nuisance, and possibly worth using. I’ve never bothered with Usenet, but I have been exposed to a series of chat systems at work, all of which have used underlines for italics and asterisks for bold. Making the user keep track of the number of characters associated to different formats is just silly.
P.S. The simplest solution for using HTML tags on a mobile device is to define a keyboard replacement macro. All I need to do is tap out “.it”, and my tablet replaces it with “<i></i>”.
Have you noticed that people are having fun with it, enjoying it?
(Reply to Brian in STL from around noon..)(I typed it in earlier, but did not get posted)
It puzzles me as to why the markdown designers didn’t use the long-standing usenet reader system. [….]
Yeah, I’ve run across a number of other systems, which have many virtues of their own.
The one I recall seeing most often on early web forums was oddly not really a matter of easy shortcuts, and if it had virtues of its own, they were in the area of safety, as then understood, I guess. The system used markup notations just like HTML tags, but a very limited subset, and used square brackets instead of angle brackets, that is, “[” and “]” instead of
<and>. And the user-input form processing just immediately deleted anything in angle brackets — so all HTML was filtered out early, supposedly a protection from sneaking in dangerous code. While still allowing something resembling regular HTML.@ Mitch4 – A few people are having fun testing it, but I haven’t noticed any actual usage (yet). I’m willing to withdraw my objection to leaving markdown activated, as long as there aren’t too many additional ways in which it perverts innocent character sequences into misguided formatting. As I said, I’ve already learned how to get the few things I need (primarily <b>bold</b>, <i>italics</i>, and links) using simple HTML tags, and I just don’t see the need to switch to an equally non-intuitive replacement.
P.S. After all, the reason most people keep returning to CIDU is for the intelligent and polite commentary, and not for the pretty text decorations.
Let me repeat what I said earlier. Let it ride for a couple of weeks, and see if people like it, and also if others share your objection. (Not “share your critique”, but actually would prefer to see it turned off.)
Nothing is stopping you from continuing to use the HTML.
That is BBCode, and still in wide use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCode
That’s supported on almost all PhpBB forums, which are probably the most common forum system out there. That way the forums can weed out HTML altogether and prevent some injection attacks. The main problem I have seen with those is that, like HTML, the tags require closing tags with slashes. The inexperienced users frequently get them wrong, leading to bad formatting.
@Kilby: I agree with Brian, if the markdown syntax were more intuitive, it would be less of a nuisance, and possibly worth using. Brian’s comment did not say anything about it being a nuisance. Stop misrepresenting other people.
@ Danny Boy – Sorry, my mistake. I agreed with Brian only about that fact that the usenet system is better (simpler to understand, therefore more intuitive). I should have placed a semicolon or a period after his name, so that it would be clear that the remaining part of that first sentence was my own opinion.
P.S. Sometime punctuation can be of critical importance.
P.P.S. I think it’s only fair to admit that I am just about the only commenter around here who (heavily) over-uses footnotes. As I indicated earlier, I would be more than willing to sacrifice my use of asterisks so that the rest of you can play around with markdown.
One of the problems or advantages of no longer being a productive member of society is time to waste researching obscure topics. It looks like the “usenet systerm” is org-mode, developed for Emacs. It’s one of several “lightweight markup languages”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_markup_language
Kilby, I *think* in numbered lists and footnotes. I’ve occasionally used footnotes here, I think, but I hand-formatted them. I await with horror the next time I try and then see what it’s turned into. (And I guess this will be the second time my text-mode emphasis (surrounding a word with asterisks) gets converted to italics.) As I said long ago about something else: HTML evolves, but plain-text endures.
Brian in STL, I don’t know if it was Org-mode, but in Emacs I sometimes used what I think was outline-mode in Emacs terms but recognized some of the patterns shown in the Org-mode article, such as multiple asterisks for levels of subordination in an outline. The amazing thing, though, was that with fairly easy clicking or Returning patterns, the mode would close up or reopen a section. So if your section 1.2, say, had many subpoints, like 1.2.1, 1.2.2, 1.2.3, 1.2.4, 1.2.5, 1.2.6, you could be editing the full text of 1.2.5 with, say, 1.2.2.also open to read, but each of the others showing only a short (at most single line) phrase or topic sentence.
Probably. I looked at the org-mode web site, and there was a lot there besides the markup.
@ Arthur – Besides the fact that WordPress does not allow users to edit comments, it is also impossible to go back and see what the text looked like before it was submitted. I think I just experienced another incident of “unintentional markdown italics”, but it’s also possible that I typed “<i>…</a>” by mistake, causing the italics to roll on longer than I wanted them to.
Do you not know what “Let it ride for a couple weeks” means? It means “no bellyaching in the meantime”.
The trial period is now three weeks, and any instance of bellyaching will add another.
@ Mitch4 – I will mark November 29th in my calendar.
For HTML, you should be able to examine the page source to see the original. That doesn’t work with the markdown, because that’s converted to HTML at posting.
So soon we enter the phase of some animals being more than others…
“more equal than others” shirley.
Any reason to try changing either of these?
I’m pretty sure they say XHTML just as correctness and it includes normal HTML. But I have no idea how aggressive the “correcting” would be — if you typed the wrong end tag not matching a start tag, would they correct it to match? Not known, from just this.
I think we’ve seen some sentiment against the emoticon conversion. Is that the general feeling, or is there a silent majority that is happy with it? In this era of emoji, does that obviate the rationale for graphic conversion of emoticons?
Thanks for your reactions and opinions. Please try to avoid moralizing though.
I have used a few ordinary smileys on occasion, and I wouldn’t mind having access to them, but I would not miss them if they disappeared. The problem is that there are other oddball emojis that sometimes get in the way, but I’m sure that the WordPress setting is “all or nothing” [there’s no way to keep :-) and ;-) , but disable 8-) ].
I like having emoticons.
I don’t mind them.
On another subject, I just submitted the following reference list of links to all the Random Comments pages, but the comment wasn’t “moderated”: it appears to have been “trashed”. As I said in the first attempt, this is intended as a “useful reference”, and can (should) be moved to a better (more permanent) location:
(1-Oct-2020) Random Comments, Late 2020 Edition
(This is the “current” edition of “Random Comments”, posted by “EditorM”.)
(undated) Jan-Oct 2020 Your Random Comments
(This post has no author listed, and no comments: it could [and should] be deleted.)
(30-Jan-2020) Random Comments, 2020 Edition
(CIDU Bill’s last “random comments” post: it contains many pages of discussion about how to continue CIDU after his passing on 16-Sep-2020.)
(6-Jun-2019) The All-New Random Comments Page for the Summer of 2019
(This post grew to 302 comments before Bill shelved it.)
(27-May-2019) The New Random Comments Page
(This meta post has 66 comments about the random comments page, plus a link to the entry below. Technically it is still accepting new comments: that should probably be fixed.)
(undated) Random Comments 2019
(no author listed: this was probably an abandoned transitional attempt [it contains a link to the “first” page, below]. Like the entry above, this page is still accepting new comments, and should be closed.)
(1-Jan-2018) The Page Formerly Known as Random Comments
(This was Bill’s first “Your Random Comments” page after the server meltdown at the end of 2017.)
Vast indifference, even insofar as I understand the issues/discussion, which is “not very.”
_(?)_/
Interesting — that little figure on my last line was supposed to be a Shrug-signal:_(?)/
But the formatting stripped off the first slanted line. So let’s see if it does it again _(?)/
If not put on a separate line, as in the cases above (one also without a preceding space) _(?)/
Or if I put quotemarks around it: “_(?)/”
Sigh. Well, I only rarely used that, and can live without doing so again here.
How about if I break the slant lines off by inserting spaces \ (?) /
Worse than ever. I give up.
🤷 😉
Following two unsuccessful attempts to submit a list of all the Random Comments pages (with embedded links and notes), here is an unadorned list of the URLs:
(1-Oct-2020) — https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2020/10/01/random-comments-late-2020-edition/
(undated, empty) — https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/jan-oct-2020-your-random-comments/
(30-Jan-2020) — https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2020/01/30/random-comments-2020-edition/
(6-Jun-2019) — https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2019/06/06/the-all-new-random-comments-page-for-the-summer-of-2019/
(27-May-2019) — https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2019/05/27/the-new-random-comments-page/
(undated) — https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/random-comments-2019/
(1-Jan-2018) — https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2018/01/01/your-random-comments/
@Shrug, try
\\_(?)_/and it should come out: \_(?)_/@ Mitch4 – There is an echo coming from the Moderation chamber. In addition, I’ve had a pair of comments sent directly to “trash”. Could you please take a look?
There is an echo coming from the Moderation chamber.
I have no ideas what that means.
I’ve had a pair of comments sent directly to “trash”. Could you please take a look?
Well, not Trash but Spam*. There are 3 and I’ll release them. They are your long lists with many many links,
--
*Note to those following the tech-insider stuff: Spam detection is in large part handled by the Akismet plugin, and their tests and criteria are indeed hidden from us. That is different from “WordPress has mysterious internal tests for placing comments in Pending [moderation]” which is just false.
In any case, “too many links” is a very public and well-known test. We discussed this and upped the number recently, but that was for Moderation, not spam detection which we do not control, indeed.
@Shrug – Worse than ever. I give up.
Sorry you were having trouble.
A solution has been posted, but I fear has been lost in the avalanche of links posts. So here is a repeat:
@Shrug, try
\\_(?)_/and it should come out as \_(?)_/That is, it uses doubling the initial backslash. Close to some other things you were trying!
Thanks. I am a Bear of Very Little Brain when it comes to HTML or anything other than flat WYSIWYG.
\_(?)_/
@ Mitch4 – The distinction between the spam and moderation filters may be clear to you as Editor, but if a submitted comment does not appear, it is difficult for a normal reader to be sure whether the “perfectly logical” moderation filter, or the”patently capricious” spam filter was the cause. Bill did not distinguish between the two, which must be the cause of the apparent conflation.
P.S. The “echo from the moderation chamber” was a reference to the nearly identical reply I submitted to Shrug, advising him to try a doubled backslash at the beginning of his emoji sequence. That comment was originally (in moderation) on the previous page (#250), but now appears to have been vaporized.
Maybe back-ticks will work:
\(?)/I win markdown!!!!
I see that Bill posted the Arlo and Janis Veterans Day sequence. Will we be able to keep it around, to re-post next year?
No obvious reason why not.
Yeah, I think this is something nice to keep around.
I didn’t see it, just the Doonesbury one . . . ??
Andréa: There were two posts today, the first one was the Arlo one: https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2020/11/11/arlos-veterans-day/
Thanks – I never got that post. Maybe TS/Hurricane Eta blew it away . . . we’re right in the middle of it.
Speaking of the Arlo one, I posted something there today. I didn’t get a moderation message, but it hasn’t shown up either.
Brian: Just approved it. I found in the past that WordPress was for some reason erratic about telling me whether my comment was sent to moderation, or just vaporized.
All right, thanks.
Today’s SMBC has a word to say about emphasis (in the “bonus” panel):
Are others having trouble getting results from Lark’s scrape site, http://scrape.nowis.com/CIDU/index.cfm ?
No, it looks alright to me
I have had off and on troubles with it. Usually I get the last 100 new posts, because sometimes the default 30 isn’t enough. However, that will on occasion fail (bad gateway) but I will have success with a smaller request.
Sorry to all about the bad gateway — it’s been one of those incredibly hard issues to debug, but I think we finally found the issue (had to do with an unupdated parameter after we moved the server to a different location and different ip block…) It’s been driving ME crazy!
Let me know if the problem persists now.
Thanks for looking at it. I will report any further trouble (assuming it’s okay to use this thread for that).
(assuming it’s okay to use this thread for that).
Well of course!
We missed noting a sort of milestone/benchmark. There are now 3,002 published posts here. (Missed noting the 3000.)
Next one on the way might be 60,000 comments. We’re at 58,302. The 50,000th was noted by Bill on 2020/06/06 and was made by Dysfunctional.
And 40,000 was noted at https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/2020/01/09/an-interesting-number/
Although it is no longer “YesVember“, there might be something to be said for preserving Bill’s “tradition” of letting the site’s subheader remain long after it had worn out its welcome.
We’re aware.
I’ve given the matter some thought, and been fair enough to wait and see how the new dividing lines would look in practice. The length is acceptable, and while they could be thinner, my primary objection is the purple color, which still clashes with everything else on the page.
“. . . which still clashes with everything else on the page.”
Which may be the point; you really don’t want the line(s) to blend in, thus negating its/their usefulness.
And could there be a phrase more awkward of execution than “awkward of execution”? :-)
Continuing from elsewhere a discussion of gravatars/identicons.
I was going to say “there’s no good way to test this” but then I checked in a WordPress.ORG free distribution installation, and the options and description are the same. So the code could tell us something. Of course it may be done at Gravatar rather than locally in WordPress. Anyhow this pictured bit comes from a file
wp/wp-admin/options-discussion.php.<tr class="avatar-settings<?php echo $show_avatars_class; ?>"> <th scope="row"><?php _e( 'Default Avatar' ); ?></th> <td class="defaultavatarpicker"><fieldset><legend class="screen-reader-text"><span><?php _e( 'Default Avatar' ); ?></span></legend> <p> <?php _e( 'For users without a custom avatar of their own, you can either display a generic logo or a generated one based on their email address.' ); ?><br /> </p> <?php $avatar_defaults = array( 'mystery' => __( 'Mystery Person' ), 'blank' => __( 'Blank' ), 'gravatar_default' => __( 'Gravatar Logo' ), 'identicon' => __( 'Identicon (Generated)' ), 'wavatar' => __( 'Wavatar (Generated)' ), 'monsterid' => __( 'MonsterID (Generated)' ), 'retro' => __( 'Retro (Generated)' ), ); /** * Filters the default avatars. * * Avatars are stored in key/value pairs, where the key is option value, * and the name is the displayed avatar name. * * @since 2.6.0 * * @param string[] $avatar_defaults Associative array of default avatars. */ $avatar_defaults = apply_filters( 'avatar_defaults', $avatar_defaults ); $default = get_option( 'avatar_default', 'mystery' ); $avatar_list = ''; // Force avatars on to display these choices. add_filter( 'pre_option_show_avatars', '__return_true', 100 ); foreach ( $avatar_defaults as $default_key => $default_name ) { $selected = ( $default == $default_key ) ? 'checked="checked" ' : ''; $avatar_list .= "nt<label><input type='radio' name='avatar_default' id='avatar_{$default_key}' value='" . esc_attr( $default_key ) . "' {$selected}/> "; $avatar_list .= get_avatar( $user_email, 32, $default_key, '', array( 'force_default' => true ) ); $avatar_list .= ' ' . $default_name . '</label>'; $avatar_list .= '<br />'; } remove_filter( 'pre_option_show_avatars', '__return_true', 100 ); /** * Filters the HTML output of the default avatar list. * * @since 2.6.0 * * @param string $avatar_list HTML markup of the avatar list. */ echo apply_filters( 'default_avatar_select', $avatar_list ); ?> </fieldset></td> </tr> <?php do_settings_fields( 'discussion', 'avatars' ); ?> </table>This part does reference user email, but not obvious (to me) how it is used. I think you could well be right (larK) that is index into pre-existing list.
$avatar_list .= get_avatar( $user_email, 32, $default_key, '', array( 'force_default' => true ) );Golly that’s peculiar! Some of that embedded text for html and php code above was “de-represented” as it were, with notation for some simple symbols given instead as the html entities that print as those symbols. For comparison, check this out:
I’m sure that only a vanishingly small percentage of CIDU users will be able to read and understand those code snippets, so I was about to suggest a much simpler solution for avoiding an “undesirable” randomly generated Gravatar. Unfortunately, it appears that Gravatar and Woidpress have been merged, so you may have to register with the latter first, before you can get the former. Such a pity, it used to be easier than that.
“I notice that Dana K got a picture of a coronavirus particle.”
Thanks, Mark in Boston, but I can confirm I have not caught anything from my identity icon! 😏
Those who have followed up on Mitch4’s invitation to read the CIDU FAQ may have noticed that Winter Wallaby’s latest version has omitted the “Arlo” category entirely. It’s a bit radical, but I think this was a wise decision. We can discuss (later) whether and/or when they might be reinstated, but one cardinal feature of “Arlo” comics was that Bill always deported them to a separate (external) location, so that anyone here with a sensitive nature would not be offended. It’s difficult enough to resurrect and maintain just a single posthumous website: I don’t think now is the time to juggle two of them, nor would I be in favor of admitting “Arlo” material into the main CIDU site. Given the extraordinarily high level of decorum among CIDU readers, I’m sure that we are all mature enough to do without a few adult-oriented comics for a while; after all, we’ve already gotten used to doing without a whole lot of other things these days.
P.S. Nevertheless, I really wish that we didn’t need to get used to doing without CIDU Bill.
Wait, that can’t mean no more Arlo & Janis comics!
deety: We can definitely have Arlo & Janis comics. The sort of material that Bill put on the separate Arlo page is a different matter.
I think we can probably have “Arlo Award” material (as Bill put that on the main page). Not as sure about the stuff Bill put on a separate page. I only took both out from the FAQ temporarily until we could have an editorial discussion about them. Removing them from the FAQ wasn’t intended to be any “radical” permanent decision about editorial policy.
Apologies for being so slow to notice, but the multicolored dividing lines that have been used in the last two posts are really cool, and should be made the new default (assuming, of course, that they are easy to set up). The colors that have appeared so far are fine, but if you have the option to select them, you could alternate red & green for Christmas posts, black and orange for Halloween; green, white (and perhaps orange) for St. Patrick‘s day, etc.
Call for theme comics! Beethoven!
Hey, “classical” music fans!
We might have a bonus themed posting for Beethoven’s big birthday. Please send comics (of any category, LOL, OY, etc) or other material of interest, to the usual submissions address, and mention [Beethoven] in the Subject.
(For that matter, Arlo’s cat, or other Ludwigs, if there is more than the name to make a connection.)
I know Beethoven isn’t a core topic for CIDU, but we do mark various public occasions and this is going to be a widely-celebrated event due to the round number of the anniversary (250).
Thanks!
What’s not to like?
(Visible Likes on the regular web interface)
(But did you know they are there in the WP Reader interface no matter our settings?)
Teszting orange
Testing covfefe
Hmm, that proves nothing while I’m signed in.
Testing orange
Testing covfefe
Right, the second one went into moderation, the first did not
(Previous tries nothing was blocked because I was signed in like this and it apparently does not put moderators into moderation.)
Still looking for Beethoven material!
(NOT any more Peanuts though)
Does not need to be related to birthday. Just a good comic and has something to do with Beethoven.
Not to be a curmudgeon, but I don’t like the “likes”. Those who do like them are always free to use the WP interface, I just don’t think we need the additional
clutterdistraction here.Yeah, it leads to bad atmosphere, in my opinion. But I thought regular web users should once in a while have a glance on what it looks like thru the WP Reader interface (also does indented / threaded replies).
I’m curious, what is the view for those using RSS feeds?
My initial reaction to the “likes” was similar to Kilby’s: flibledeeflu! which caused me to consciously revisit what was bothering me. I don’t like the clutter; I bristle at the shallowness of reducing discourse to a one-dimensional inducement to laziness; and I am wary of the largely unexplored and only slowly acknowledged very negative ways that the Facebook and its ilk have changed the face of communication and social interaction. On the other hand, since I’m not on Facebook, I don’t actually have first hand experience of these alleged negatives, and it seems to me my primary reaction therefor is a visceral hostility to change of any kind, which I then try and justify to myself. And I have to be honest enough with myself to acknowledge that fear of change has been a characteristic of humans for time immemorial, especially for those humans who have been lucky enough to survive long enough to get set in their ways, ie: old farts. And reluctant as I am to admit it, I am becoming an old fart.
So then that leads to the question of how shall I deal with this realization? Shall I discount my visceral feelings and perpetually subject myself to things that bring me discomfort? Shall I shelter in the comfort of only known things and hide more and more from society, blaming my own dysfunction on everyone else for changing without my approval? It’s a dilemma, and I don’t see any easy ways out. Live long enough, society changes out from under you, and you are suddenly through no fault of your own less and less main-stream and more and more oddball; hell, even language itself will change itself out from under you, rendering you that much less able to communicate!
It’s a dilemma where there are no correct answers: yes, I have good reasons for bristling at a lot of the changes I see that are largely change for change’s sake, and very often (surprisingly often!) change from ignorance where there actually is a canonical better solution that the implementer of the system was clearly ignorant of. But on the other hand, even demonstrably wrong changes can lead to new dynamics that actually do lead to better systems and new ways of doing things that are better than the old — evolution often reaches plateaus of “good enough”, and the only way forward is to actually retreat from the good enough plateau, and start again in a new direction that avoids the plateau, allowing you to reach new heights.
So what do I do? Do I insist on doing things the way I know are better, assuming for the moment that my way really is demonstrably better, and consign myself to a good enough dead end where no further progress is made? Or do I recklessly ride the cutting edge of revolution in the hopes that through the wreckage we arrive at somewhere good? And at what point do I have to become suspicious of my instinct for what is “better”, that it is not just leading me down the cul de sac to what is “familiar”?
All of which is a really long-winded way to say I had decided not to comment at all, and see what happened. It also shows me that I would actually like a metric for seeing how these long digressions are landing, if anyone appreciates this, or if it would be better if I just kept it to myself — if only there was a way for people to “like” my post…
larK, I like your comment!
So do I.
I usually ignore what I dislike: I noticed the little blue stars earlier, didn’t think much of them, and dismissed them: I don’t see them anymore. 😉
Also not a big fan of “likes”. Sometimes the lack leads to worse things. One forum I read didn’t enable that, so some people will quote and entire large post and put +1 at the bottom. That’s special.
If someone really wants to applaud a comment, there is nothing wrong (and everything right) about saying so, just as WW did above for larK. The aspect I felt uncomfortable about was turning the conversation into a numeric race for appreciation. I get more than enough of that in the chat system I have to use at work, although there the “likes” have morphed to have a secondary meaning, roughly “I have seen your message” (or in walkie-talkie lingo: “roger/wilco”).
(Limited) Call for Comics
Cartoons with themes from The Twelve Days song
Only one of each kind can be used.
Doesn’t have to have the associated number, or clearly allude to the song, though that could be a plus. That is, a cartoon about drummers might work even without having them drumming or saying that there are twelve of them; but those specifics could be helpful.
Please mail to usual address
What we do or do not still need:
Partridge NOT NEEDED
Turtle doves
French hens
Calling birds or colley birds
Gold rings or golden rings
Geese, maybe laying
Swans, maybe swimming
Milk-maids
Ladies, probably dancing
Lords NOT NEEDED
Pipers, or fifers
Drummers, maybe drumming
Thanks!
== Eds.
Twelve Days:
Update on What we do or do not still need:
Partridge NOT NEEDED
Turtle doves NOT NEEDED
French hens
Calling birds or colley birds NOT NEEDED
Gold rings or golden rings
Geese, maybe laying
Swans, maybe swimming
Milk-maids
Ladies, probably dancing
Lords NOT NEEDED
Pipers, or fifers
Drummers, maybe drumming
Also if you know of strips which in some year have done a full or almost full sequence of jokes for the twelve days in turn, and they are in some selectable archive, let us have a link to the first or a key point, so we can consider mentioning it in notes. We are already aware of this for “Mother Goose and Grimm”.
Thanks!
“Hey, don’t worry about it” Alert.
I’m going to be trying out a couple brief experiments with posting / commenting / unpublishing / updating etc. The test entry might need to appear at the top of the scroll briefly at some points.
Thanks for your indulgence.
BTW, in response to an apology for big quote font,
One alternative some of us are using is “code” designation. You can invoke it by surrounding your desired text with a matched pair of “backquote” or “backtick” characters.
`Here is an example. When pasted below it will be in that other crisp and quasi-typewriter face.`
Here is an example. When pasted below it will be in that other crisp and quasi-typewriter face@ Mitch – While you are experimenting, is there any chance that you could tweak the CSS entry for “blockquote” text to reduce its size to something a little more usable? Or was it a limitation of the current wordpress license that the Editors are not allowed access to the CSS file?
P.S. Your comment about
codetext was not there when I suggested editing the CSS. Is thatfeaturesomething in wordpress, or is it a result of themarkdownadd-on module?P.P.S. And did you add “markdown” to the moderation list, or is just a coincidence that every time I mention it, the comment ends up there?
Or was it a limitation of the current wordpress license that the Editors are not allowed access to the CSS file?Yes, almost exactly. It’s not “access to the file” exactly, but access to a place where one can paste “Additional CSS” that will be taken on after the CSS coming from the Theme. We have tested, on another WP.com server, and pasting the CSS to enable numbered comments (as contributed by larK) worked fine, and also allowed small-scale lists.
Another CSS matter we have discussed would be making live links a more distinct (and probably more standard, though that may just mean old-fashioned) color.
(But the experimenting is not about that, it’s the effects of unpublishing and re-dating, which we discussed in email, in the dual context of annualizing some Bill posts and, less significantly, using a single thread for a growing edited post.)
If you eschew the shortcut system which lets the backtick character delineate a passage to put in “code” face, you can still do that with an HTML tag.
<code> This should appear (below) in that small typewriter-style </code>
This should appear (here) in that small typewriter-styleP.S. Your comment about code text was not there when I suggested editing the CSS. Is that feature something in wordpress, or is it a result of the markdown add-on module?Code text is available whether or not markdown is enabled. In another comment, I illustrate the HTML markup* for it.
The shortcut of `using the backtick for code` is indeed one of those shortcuts that comes from markdown.
The shortcut of
using the backtick for codeis indeed one of those shortcuts that comes from markdown.*Footnote the HTML markup is just what you would expect.
BTW I did not have to escape the asterisks or do anything else special to use them for that footnote. A single asterisk does not invoke italics in markdown. It looks for paired instances.
ALL CLEAR
The “Please Ignore #1” and “Please Ignore #2” are done and gone now.
If you are interested, it did turn out slightly trickier than I imagined, but is doable in a satisfactory way.
larK index oddity:
Hmm, to post the second day of the Twelve Days series, in the same post, as well as editing the post body I (a) changed the visible title (but not the slug) and (b) changed the publication date to today, so it would reappear at the top of the scroll for the nonce.
Now in the scrape index, http://scrape.nowis.com/CIDU/index.cfm , looking for Everything by Everybody, all the comments from yesterday on this post show up first in the list, before some from other posts that actually were after these.
Just wondering how that happens. Would it be better to skip renaming? Or is it the re-dating that’s doing it? But can’t think of a better way …
The way I use LarK’s page is to do a new load, then scan down to find the latest followed link. I then go up and open in new tabs links that are above that, but not duplicates of ones I have just opened, but always the one at the top to serve as the marker for the next time. Not sure if that helps. As long as I get an un-followed link to new comments, I’m good.
all the comments from yesterday on this post show up first in the list, before some from other posts that actually were after these.Mitch — not sure I see that — are you saying that some older comments were appearing before newer comments? The only time that happens as far as I recall right now is if a comment was in moderation. My system works by looking at the rss feed for new comments, from the bottom up — every ten minutes it reloads the rss feed, and starting from the bottom, looks to see if each comment is already in the database; if it is, it ignores it and moves to the next; if it isn’t, it adds it to the db, giving it an auto-incrementing ID. When it displays comments on my webpage, it sorts them by this ID. So, in general, this ID will act as in indicator or posting order. The only case I can think of right now where that gets violated is in the case of a comment that was in moderation: it won’t appear in its proper place in the rss feed until it gets released from moderation; at that point many subsequent posts may have already been added to my db; when it finally emerges from moderation (assuming it still makes it into the rss recent comments), my system will see it as new, and add it and give it an ID at that point, so the ID won’t reflect its original post order, but will reflect that it is new to see, and be at the head of the list, until a newer post comes along.
I don’t know if the hack you’re employing to keep the 12 days in one thread could affect that somehow — I can’t immediately see how it would, but maybe it does something strange to the rss feed?
Oh! I see what’s happening (since you did it while I was typing up my previous response):
You are renaming the thread while older comments are still appearing on the rss thread. So, as soon as you rename the thread, I (my system) have no way to know that they are not new comments, because they have a new thread name, so I go and collect all the old comments now appearing with a new title as if they were comments, which also means that there now is a double entry in my db, one for the first thread title, one for the second thread title (possibly triple entries, actually). I could redo my scraping system that it will check by something else (comment content springs to mind, but that adds a lot of new failure points) to see if a comment is new or not. But it had been reasonable to suppose up to now that the title of the thread was that solid unchanging thing I could hang a hat on…. I suppose the most efficient way would be to parse the wordpress comment number, and store that as a separate field in my system, and then compare against that. But do I fully trust WordPress not to 1984 those numbers? I mean, you might decide to start editing your individual posts, but if I’m looking at WP id number, I wouldn’t catch those changes as a new post (and at what point would it constitute a new post?), whereas if I was checking content it would… But if I was checking content, then if someone repeated a post, I wouldn’t catch that…
Whole new cans of worms you’re opening up here…
larK, well yes it does seem to be giving slightly older comments a more recent stamp or something affecting sorting order in the search results. Here are two screenshots from a couple minutes ago, themselves separated only by a minute or so.
In the Scrape one (top) there are one after another all from the same thread; and many of them in fact posted earlier or yesterday. In the CIDU-site one (bottom) we have the sidebar list for Recent Comments. You can see this is more like the actual recency ordering.
The things I am doing to keep all the Twelve Days stuff in one thread is: (i) open it for editing (ii) edit but do not press Update/save; the edit includes adding some material and tags, and altering the headings including post’s Title (but not the Slug). (iii) Press Update to save edits. (iv) edit publication date in the scheduler, to about 5 minutes earlier from real-life clock time. No editing of timestamps for comments.
(My previous does not reflect your previous :-) )
Hmmm, I could refrain from retitling the main post. But would have to do it at least once, since it now says “Third Day” and if changed to be constant should be neutral on content. Ah well, something to deal with tomorrow …
Thanks for looking and figuring it out! And as always, thanks for running this convenience and research tool!
I’d prefer it renamed because that gives me a second check for new stuff.
OK Mitch, I’ve fixed it so it’ll check against duplicates in future and not add them (so when you change the name of a thread, it won’t think the old comments are new), and I deleted the duplicates as far as I could tell for the 12 days posts, so you should be all good to go… Keep doing what you were doing.
Thank you, larK!
Quick check on whether WP follows the hashtag convention for typing within comment text. If I type #LOL or #Bizarro will those produce clickable links to the lists of tagged posts within this blog, as you get for clicking on the category or tag links in the top matter of a post? Does it have to be an existing tag, like a comic name #Peanuts or can it be a new ad hoc nonsense item like #dffgyytrvb ?
So the answer is No.
Well, it’s far from easy and spontaneous, but existing tags have associated URLs which lead to a search results (or lookup) page. So it would be possible, though a little awkward, to click on one, copy the long-form URL, such as
https://godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com/tag/bliss/
and then use that in a clickable link to that listing page.
We are moving our servers to a new office today, so the index will be down for a bit (it will also not be harvesting comments until we get back online). We apologize for any inconvenience. Share and Enjoy.
Thanks for the alert! And continued thanks for the service!
DingDingDing!
*DingDingDing!*
* DingDingDing! *
Okay! That makes 60,000 comments approved and appearing on this site!
The one that went over the top was MARK IN BOSTON, comment on “The Twelve Days – Postscript 3 – icon layouts for all 12” about drumstick grips, at 5:00 PM.
I won’t look them up right now, but CIDU Bill noted the 40,000th and 50,000th, and we thought it appropriate to continue that round-number tradition.
Apparently some residue from the move I mentioned two comments up, the archive site is down, and it might be down the whole weekend; again, We Apologize For The Inconvenience.
Thanks for informing us, larK, and continued thanks for the service.
I did not this time incorporate an alert into the phrasing of the link in the sidebar menu (as was done last time). On the basis that anyone paying attention there would see it here anyway.
Of course this time the outage is more severe… Have to rebuild the server, can’t give any ETA yet on when we may be back…
My sympathies for what this must entail for your firm!
I’m getting the LarK page now, but it doesn’t show any comments. Perhaps a problem with the RSS feed?
Brian, along with you I noticed yesterday that larK’s page was back to an extent. But the queries get no results at all so far, so your hypothesis about problems with (current) RSS feed wouldn’t seem to be applicable. It looks more like no underlying data has been restored, or the connection to the database. But we do stand ready to work on RSS settings or whatever, if larK calls on us to do so.
Glad it’s not just me. I’ve had to remember to check here more often to get new comments because I can’t get a big list.
I’m sorry for not keeping you updated. The problem is indeed on our end. These are basically legacy servers we keep for our own amusement, and they were hit with an encryption attack, so we are working to restore data, and while we probably could reconnect the datasource, and restart the scheduled process to scrape the rss feed, we’d rather not while we work to restore the whole thing.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
So I guess we’re back… Obviously the last two weeks or however long it was won’t have had their comments scraped, but it should be collecting them from now going forward — fingers crossed!
Let me know if you notice any abnormalities.
Thank you , larK!
I noticed that the scrape was down over the weekend. It seems to be back now, but only older posts. It’s not adding new ones. The most recent on I see is from Saturday morning.
Uh-oh. Brian and larK, let’s see if boosting the syndication feed from 50 to 60 will wake it up.
Sorry, it may be choking on an hour or so of feed when experimentally the site was using “comicsidontunderstand.com” as main host name rather than “godaddyandthesquirrelmustbothdie.wordpress.com” — which I think we’ve agreed is a desirable switch. NOTE: No links will break, no bookmarks will break. both have been, and will continue to be valid addresses, and go to the same place. The difference is in what your address bar will display.
It had new messages this morning, up to Andrea’s at 8:24am:
Nothing after that. All three subsequent messages were in the thread. Not sure what to make of it.
I posted something about the scrape site here, maybe in moderation?
Brian, Yes, There were a couple comments in moderation, that I saw and click-approved, almost immediately upon waking. Scooping the litter boxes takes priority.
Your observations seem correct, the scrape has moved ahead but doesn’t seem caught up. I don’t know any more about it, sorry.
I never expect you to fix that sort of thing, just this is the only place to discuss it that I know of.
Brian, thanks for the reassurance, but I was just muttering about the moderation system (doesn’t it know you by now?), not the concern for the scrape index. I do want to keep on top of what can be affecting it, so when larK says to try this or that setting we can follow along.
Sorry guys, we continue to experience the kind of one-off problems you get when you rebuild and upgrade servers. The scheduled task to scrape the site got lost for a bit, and in all the other confusion, I let it lie for a while before coming back to it, so by the time it was running again, apparently more than 50 (or 60?) comments had been posted, so I lost the inbetween ones. Sorry about that. Never upgrade anything if you can help it…
No problem, larK, we appreciate having the tool and the effort you have put in.