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New Stuff (The Return of Comments!)

Wednesday, November 28th, 2007

Your eyes aren’t deceiving you. We’ve made some minor tweaks here in Agitator land. I’m sure there will be some bugs to work out. But for now, the major change on my end is that I’ve switched from the Movable Type interface to WordPress.

The major change on your end is that we now once again have comments.

With one caveat:  Comments now come enabled with a handy up-or-down voting system. I’m hoping that this will encourage self-policing in the comments section, to weed out trolls, silly contrarians, and other cretins. Please feel empowered to vote up comments you think are worthwhile, and to vote down comments you think aren’t. In fact, please feel obligated, as if this site were as much yours as it is mine. Because in many ways, it is.

I plan to take a pretty hands-off approach, here. If someone makes a valid criticism of me in the comments section, and that criticism is supported by a positive net vote, I’ll do my best to answer it, time permitting. I’m counting on my regular readers to vote down people who are trolling or being needlessly antagonistic or engaging in some other form of ugliness (ad hominem attacks, bigotry, etc.), and to vote up thoughtful comments—both those that agree with me, and those that don’t.

If all goes to plan, we’ll return to a lively, vibrant, intelligent comments section, minus all the problems that caused me to get rid of comments a couple of years ago.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 12:29 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

30 Responses to “New Stuff (The Return of Comments!)”

  1. #1 |  Radley Balko |  November 28th, 2007 at 12:30 am

    Test comment. Vote up or down.

  2. #2 |  Nick Gallias |  November 28th, 2007 at 12:36 am

    Welcome back.

  3. #3 |  Dan T. |  November 28th, 2007 at 1:25 am

    Hello Radley.

  4. #4 |  Troll |  November 28th, 2007 at 1:57 am

    Test troll. Vote me down. I dare you.

  5. #5 |  Dale Boley |  November 28th, 2007 at 2:06 am

    Ok, so I guess to really be an accurate test we’re going to need a suitably horrid comment for people to vote down.

    Hmmmm I wish some thick skulled rage maniac would write to Balko. ….. Jeff? Can you help Balko out here?

  6. #6 |  Chris |  November 28th, 2007 at 2:07 am

    Comments? I think this will allow me to linger more on this site than I already do, just to read the responses to some of your posts. (It’s a morning read with my coffee, as it is also on my “end of the day – before bed” website list.

    Thanks for such a wonderful site. It has challenged many of my long held beliefs on several issues, and prompted me to explore just why I had thought that way in the first place.

  7. #7 |  Michael |  November 28th, 2007 at 5:28 am

    Cool. Now I can make you lose The Game anytime I want!

  8. #8 |  ChrisC |  November 28th, 2007 at 7:12 am

    Love it!

  9. #9 |  ChrisC |  November 28th, 2007 at 7:19 am

    This is great Radley.

  10. #10 |  God |  November 28th, 2007 at 7:37 am

    I feel myself reborn. Just like the fella in that book that I thought was all rubbish. What was his name again?

  11. #11 |  Tom Gellhaus |  November 28th, 2007 at 7:55 am

    As one of your regular readers, I welcome this feature. Thanks!

  12. #12 |  Bill F. |  November 28th, 2007 at 8:10 am

    Yay!!!

  13. #13 |  colson |  November 28th, 2007 at 8:11 am

    Finally, been waiting, oh, a couple years for this :D

  14. #14 |  Tom Sullivan |  November 28th, 2007 at 8:13 am

    Good to have ‘em back!

  15. #15 |  Jack the Misanthrope |  November 28th, 2007 at 8:39 am

    Finally! Glad to have the comments back.

  16. #16 |  _Jon |  November 28th, 2007 at 8:51 am

    “silly contrarians” – excellent term for them.

    (btw, voting works in FireFox.)

  17. #17 |  scottp |  November 28th, 2007 at 9:01 am

    This blog used to have a lot of intelligent commenters and I enjoyed reading their thoughts.
    It’s good to see the comments section once again functional.

  18. #18 |  B |  November 28th, 2007 at 9:09 am

    Looks great! I really missed comments here, and look forward to some lively discussions.

  19. #19 |  Adam S |  November 28th, 2007 at 9:19 am

    Welcome back! This should be interesting.

    Does WordPress require a feed update?

  20. #20 |  Nando |  November 28th, 2007 at 9:48 am

    It’s nice to have the comments back. I tried to comment on the email from the racist guy but comments were closed. Are we to expect some posts to be open for comments and some not?

  21. #21 |  bear |  November 28th, 2007 at 10:03 am

    Long time fan and daily reader of yours Radley. Glad to see the comments back.

    hmmmm….I wonder if your server is a little over taxed…just like the rest of us :)

    By the by, I will do what I can to help ensure this commenting business remains viable.

    Best,

    -bear

  22. #22 |  Bryan |  November 28th, 2007 at 10:07 am

    Hurray! Comments are back! Let’s see how many of the old crew are still around. I missed you guys.

  23. #23 |  Jeff |  November 28th, 2007 at 10:09 am

    Great, so this site will suck up even more of my time than it has been. :-)

  24. #24 |  Graham |  November 28th, 2007 at 1:14 pm

    That’s great news. And yes, it will suck up my time too. Great.

  25. #25 |  Robert |  November 28th, 2007 at 1:30 pm

    Like the comments being added back. You need a CAPTCHA to filter out the spam comments that are sure to arrive. Can’t see any buttons or instructions on how to do voting though. Tried looking at the page in both in Mozilla and in IE and didn’t work in either one.

  26. #26 |  Andrew |  November 28th, 2007 at 1:45 pm

    Glad to see comments back. Now I don’t have to sit at Hit & Run hoping you cross-post so I can leave comments there. Though I’ll probably still it on Hit & Run and comment there anyways.

  27. #27 |  Joel Salomon |  November 28th, 2007 at 2:41 pm

    I’m not seeing the comment voting buttons either…

  28. #28 |  Eric R. |  November 28th, 2007 at 4:06 pm

    I’m still here Bryan. Nice to see you. Where’s Littlejohn?

  29. #29 |  wade |  November 29th, 2007 at 4:51 am

    am i being dumb? can’t see how to vote comments up or down…

  30. #30 |  Bronwyn |  November 29th, 2007 at 9:47 am

    Oh, frabjous day!
    Calloo! Callay!

    I’m so happy to see the comments back :-D

    Frank? Are you here, Frank?

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