We're having a problem with comment posts. Several posts are coming over as Anonymous, when we know people are attaching names to many of them. We're working on this problem. In the meantime, please include your name as part of the comment field if you desire, or e-mail me at tslowik@scn1.com, tell me the time of your post and how you want your name to appear in the commenter field.
I think the glitch may also be creating a delay in the posting of comments. We do manually review all comments, and while we check for new comments as often as possible, I believe we may not be seeing some comments until some time after they have been posted.
UPDATE: Our Web people assure us they cannot recreate the problem, thus the conclusion is it's human error on your end. Please be sure to fill out the commenter field unless you want your post to appear as anonymous.
Also, you don't have to fill in the e-mail or URL fields in order to post comments.
Have you guys given any thought to moving from a blog format to a message board/forum format? It seems like a lot of issues that the Potluck has revolves around trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. A blog is designed more for a one-sided conversation. You write things, people post short responses like "Good idea!" or something like that. When people start responding to other people in a comment thread on a blog it becomes very confusing and user unfriendly. By using forum software, users would be able to directly quote and respond to specific responses in a thread.
Most web forum software is open source, and as such is free and have very minimal requirements as far as server software is concerned. They pretty much all run in PHP with a mySQL back-end, something even the most basic and archaic web hosts can easily provide. If you want to keep the current formula of only allowing NaperSun staff to post topics, most if not all forum software will allow you to restrict users to only be able to reply to threads and not post new ones themselves. Switching to a real web forum instead of a blog would be much more conducive to what it seems like you guys are trying to accomplish here.
Drop me an email if you have any questions or need any help, it should be attached to pretty much every post I make on here.
http://shsc.info/ForumSoftwareGuide
Eli,
While I agree with a lot of what you say a lot of the time, I personally find the message board format annoying. You only see a few words of a comment, then you have to click on that comment to see all of it. Sometimes computers slow down or crash with that bouncing back and forth. Here the whole discussion is laid out on each thread, you take your mouse and scroll up and down, how hard is that? Besides, the format of this online community forum as I have taken to calling it is very similar to that of Eric Zorn's on the Trib, and he calls his a blog.
I think there's something to like about each method. The forum method usually involves creating accounts and managing/spotting the schizophrenia prone users is far easier. The quote abilities are easier to deal with (and actually exist) as it the Reply methods. Usually you click REPLY on the message you want to reply on and what you want to reference is right there and not 15 pages away from where you are entering your post (as can be in the blog way on here).
On the other hand, the blog method on here makes it easier for anyone just to hop in and toss something against the wall without much effort. That door swings both ways on the good/bad of it.