Comments fixed

I thought that I had unchecked a settings box that I originally checked to close comments for a brief hiatus over the New Year period. I just realised that apparently that change never went through.

I was enjoying the quiet so much that I kept on procrastinating about actually taking a closer look to see that I hadn’t imagined reversing that setting, but apparently I did imagine it after all.

Apologies, and a reassurance that the comments box being closed on this post is quite deliberate. Please feel free to continue all those interrupted discussions.

Hiatus

It’s school holidays here for the next few weeks. I will only have intermittent internet access as I race about doing holiday things. All comments will go to the moderation queue while I’m otherwise engaged.

New look

Just decided to go for something crisp that incorporated a drop-down menu. If there are any accessibility issues please let me know.

Changes

I’m about to update the template to something that is more accessible to more readers. Bear with us if a few things look wonky until the adjustment has been fully sorted out.

A few small changes

A quick explanation for anyone who’s a little confused by the site’s new page configuration.

Because I want people who stumble across this blog to read the introductory sections before getting stuck into the blog articles, I’ve changed the presentation of the site so that the Where To Start – Introduction is the frontpage now (it used to be called PLEASE READ THIS FIRST). Hopefully clearly marking the blog tab as BLOG should be enough for you all to easily find it! (If you subscribe via a feed-reader, the article title link should still bring you straight to the relevant blog-page)

The things nobody tells you, eh?

Apparently, sometimes readers see ads on this blog, and I never knew. According to the encyclopaedic Lorelle on WordPress, wordpress.com have been inserting ads onto their free blogs for a while now, but those who are logged into wordpress.com don’t see them i.e. the actual bloggers whose blogs are being used to display these ads don’t see them but their readers (those who are not also logged into wordpress.com) do see them. Has anyone noticed any ads appearing here?

The ads module is apparently in the experimental stages, so the ads have been intermittent, but soon they will be a more constant feature. As they work using keywords, you can see why this is a potential problem for a feminist blog that discusses controversial issues – I don’t particularly want my readers to be bombarded with ads touting inappropriate goods and services.

One can opt out of having the ads module display on one’s blog, but it costs US$30 a year. I appreciate the free service provided by wordpress.com, and 0.08c a day isn’t very much, but I’ll have to think about this. It’s yet another example of the WP team implementing new features which many bloggers will hate without any announcement. I hate that.

So frustrating

Half the comments submitted lately appear to be twerps swinging by and leaving a comment on the Open Suggestions or Ask A Question thread that have already been addressed in the FAQs. No, I will not publish a question that’s already been asked and answered on those threads, you lazyboned please-do-my-homework-for-me types.

However, I’ve also had several really good comments submitted that are just way too long. Well over 500 words, addressing multiple ramifications of the topic under discussion and introducing multiple new aspects for consideration. How can such a comment be substantively addressed without the responding comment being at least 800 or 1000 words long, and how long will the next response be? You can’t have a discussion thread where people just deliver long lectures at each other – that’s not a conversation, that’s a correspondence, and a blog comments thread is not the place for it.