Also, I just had to tell you.. I was perusing your MY LINKS section.

Left ‘Toon Lane

THAT is damn funny!! :D

Michale

Got comment numbers working, and permalinks. I'm going to keep the alternating colors and general layout.

I've tested these somewhat, but am going to hold everything back and roll all the changes out together, so for now nothing has changed in the way you see things. More updates will appear in this comment thread, for those interested....

-CW

Trust me... I have worked with Israelis..

They are the ones that are in the best position to know what will and will not allow them to survive..

The US doesn't have clue #1 as to what it takes for Israel to survive..

The BEST thing the US could do is say, "Bibi, whatever you need to do, you have our complete and unequivocal support.."

THAT is what the US needs to say to Israel...

Michale.....

That's simple - because that kind of dictation will save your closest ally in the Middle East and Joe Biden is the perfect person to take charge of that.

I think you're missing the point of my comment - I want Israel to survive as a Jewish and democratic state and, up to now, they have been doing a great job to make sure that doesn't happen.

Chris,

Adding an easily accessible page for comment tips is a great idea!

Why is it that there are those here in the US who howl and scream when the US wants to dictate to scumbag tinpot dictators ( {{cough}} Hugo "terrorist" Chavez... {{cough}} Achmedjihadist {{cough}} ), but then advocates even worse "dictation" to our closest ally??

Michale....

If Joe Biden means what he says then Obama/Biden should be force-feeding Israel the two-state solution, if that's what it takes to save Israel from itself.

Unfortunately, I just don't see that as being in the cards. I hope I'm wrong.

Joe Biden also said something about the need for bold leadership that will take risks for peace on both sides. He forgot to include the US and Arab states.

Joe Biden finally said something that I can completely and unequivocally agree with and get behind...

"The cornerstone of the relationship is our absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel's security. Bibi, you heard me say before, progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel. There is no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel's security."
-Joe Biden

Who knew?? :D

Michale.....

I am not against PR moves, if they have REAL meaning and REAL value..

But this "Gitmo" PR move is worthless. Here is what the world will be saying when (if) Gitmo closes.

"The US closed Gitmo in Cuba and re-opened it in Illinois. Big Fraking Deal!!"

You see?? It's not even symbolic. It's moronic..

It's what happens when our leaders place the value of world opinion over the value of American safety.

It's why the White House is having to reverse their decision on having civilian trials for terrorist scumbags..

but dissing the vital role of peter graves in airplane!, possibly the funniest spoof movie of all time??? now you've gone too far! ;)

Touche'.. :D

I actually loved AIRPLANE. I just felt that it demeaned Peter Graves to be in it. Call me a purist, but it's the same attitude I have towards Star Trek 90210...

It's like Sean Connery hawking George Foremen grills on an info-mmercial. Or seeing President Obama on G4 hawking the latest DEF JAM RAP video game..

One can't help but think, "oh how the mighty have fallen."

Michale.....

i can stand for your dismissal of the vital importance of good PR to the accomplishment of foreign policy goals (public relations are not about political correctness; they do EVERYTHING to enhance the safety of US citizens both at home and abroad), but dissing the vital role of peter graves in airplane!, possibly the funniest spoof movie of all time??? now you've gone too far! ;)

joey, do you like movies about gladiators?
-RIP

For those that grew up with MISSION IMPOSSIBLE on TV, Peter Graves was quintessential Team Leader. Smart, tough and dedicated.

Despite notable forgettables such as his stint as Clarence Oveur on AIRPLANE and the horrid way that Jim Phelps was treated in the Tom Cruise {sic and sick} Mission Impossible movie, Graves will be fondly remembered by this poster.

Good Evening, Mr Phelps. Mission's a success. Well Done. You will never be dis-avowed.
Rest in Peace.

Michale.....

First, haven't even read the political comments yet, I'll get to them. The comments code change will not happen until next weekend, at the earliest, so we've got some time to talk about it. I was busy weedwacking today (lost the cat earlier in the week in the weeds when she was supposed to come in... long story... cat's OK, weeds needed to be whacked...), so I didn't get to programming. Anyway, a few points.

Full editorial control of comments is likely not going to happen, sorry. I would likely have to change permissions for you folks to do so, and I'm in a security-tightening phase right now due to some nefarious attacks which weren't apparent to the general public (thankfully, sqaushed them quickly enough). So that's a no-go.

But there are probably plugins to do "preview" rather than full "edit" -- where you get to view your comment before you approve it. I'll look into this, as it seems to be a favorite feature people would like to see.

I'm still leaning against full threaded comments, where each reply is (usually) indented, because (1) it would require a lot of layout work, and (2) because they do become very tiny, and my middle "column text" column is kind of small to begin with.

I like the alternating colors myself and am going to try to keep them. I think this'll be do-able, programmatically, and pretty easy (the whole section of code needs complete rewriting due to new WordPress software, but I think I can bring this feature forward without too much work).

I agree with Liz on the "letter" format, but that's probably because that's how I've always answered comments myself. Maybe I should add a page somewhere of comment tips so people see how easy it is to make italics or bold or underline or all the rest of the allowable styles. This helps when quoting previous comments.

I will look into whether there's either a plugin or an easy way to make it user-selectable to see comments LIFO of FIFO ("last in, first out" or "first in, first out") if you want to select to see more recent comments on top, or on the bottom. Choosing one or the other programmatically is easy, but allowing users to choose may be harder, I'll have to investigate it further to see how hard.

I think I'm going to forget avatars for now, doesn't sound like there's a huge need for them.

Numbering comments may be a good thing, because (1) it'll be fairly easy, and (2) it'll allow for people to reference earlier comments without having to quote text.

Sorry, Liz, I'm against smiley faces for philosophical reasons. I am a purist, and believe that ASCII is enough to make all sorts of fun emoticons without the laziness of smilies turning them into cutesy little icons. Just a personal bugaboo, sorry.

:-)

or how about

;-)

Heh.

Permalinks may be very easy, as nypoet22 points out, and actually you might find them helpful if you want to refer to a comment you made here elsewhere. The permalinks actually already exist (and always have) but you've got to know they're there and how to use them. A link at the bottom of each comment to the permalink for that comment would make it SO much easier, and it'd be easy to do, so that's one I'm going to definitely include.

Paginating ("read more" links) individual comments would (1) be tough programmatically, although maybe not all that tough, and (2) would likely be annoying. But I also know that it is annoying to scroll through a huge comment that you're not interested in reading. So I'll take a look at it.

Nobody likes paged comments, though? Ten comment per page? Anyone? If not, I won't try to add this.

Moderate, in-line replies without indenting tends to make everything very confusing, because you don't know where to look for new comments. So I'm going to have to say no to that. Indention is kind of cool, I have to admit, but after two or three replies gets very hard to read, so I'm also leaning against it.

And, just out of curiousity, have you set your text editor and spell checker to British English or US English? Heh.

Anyway, that's it for now. Thanks for all the very good feedback, as it'll help me to provide a better site for us all.

Word limits? Hah, didn't even consider that one. Text is tiny, database-wise. As long as everyone's not posting photos and animations and videos, use as many pixels as you feel like, that's my motto.

-CW

You obviously haven't seen some of my friendly arguments ad Bidenitum. You probably just haven't been here long enough! :)

So, what do you think about addressing a specific poster when replying to something they have said ... as I have done, above. That would make it much easier for someone to notice that you have replied to them without having Chris resort to a threaded reply format that, frankly, I don't think would work here.

Chris,

I would just reiterate that the edit function would be great. I used to frequent a blog that gave you 30 minutes or so to edit your post beyond which time, no more editing was possible. I don't know how difficult this would be to add, but it sure would be appreciated ... you know, for those of us who like to think we are crazy perfectionists, or something. :)

Wouldn't it absolutely suck for Democrats if, after all these hoops you lot have had to jump through to get HCR passed (assuming, of course, that it does pass) the Republicans undo it all? Having said that you'll all feel much better when the Republicans pass a proper healthcare reform bill that does what it's supposed to ;-)

But Obey did not immediately raise the stakes in such a fashion, after the all-too-predictable Republican response.

And that's why I think he might now struggle to pull off the trick you call for. Had he derided the Republican one year pledge immediately, it would have looked like the Democrats always wanted the ban to last longer than a year (as we discussed earlier, the language was ambiguous). I suspect too much time has passed for that.

Now it would look too much like he's had time to figure out how to score points against the Republicans. Of course the key to scoring points in politics is to look like you're not out to score points ;-).

forcing Republicans to vote on the side of Wall Street banks, and against changing the rules that almost destroyed our economy

Of course. But just like healthcare reform, the question isn't whether changes are needed but what form these changes make. The key is to ensure you don't actually increase the risk of the same thing happening, or only decrease the risk by driving the best US banks overseas. If you do that, you undercut TP 1; it'll create job loss.

"let's stop sending all of America's money to countries that don't like us, and kick the foreign oil habit!"

Agreed. But rather than spending it all on a bunch of technologies that have been proven to be far less effective (apart from hydrogen and nuclear, both of which are unpopular with the left), the real way to stop dependency on foreign oil is to drill for more oil domestically. But the left constantly deride attempts to drill for more oil.

The prison at "Gitmo" is seen around the world as a Bush-era legacy which harms America's image.

Not in the eyes of this Brit. Of course I'm in the minority but then I've always said this country's going to hell in a handbasket. It's full of the offspring of people too stupid to use a condom at 14. Do their opinions count for anything? :-P

So the law Bush signed will "raise taxes."

That's untrue. You yourself talk of keeping the middle-class tax cuts (which I'm in favour of), so it's not the law Bush signed that's going to raise taxes, but Democratic inaction on the issue which would allow those to expire.

RE: Proposed changes to comments

Avatars: No animated gifs please. Static avatars are OK, with file size limits.

Paged comments: Again, not really a fan. The only way that saves any "load" time is if you never bother loading the later pages, but if you do, the time is equivalent, and in my experience can actually take longer.

Reverse the order: I find that much harder to read, because you have to scroll to the bottom to get any sort of "thread" to the discussion.

Reply and threaded: My mammoth "essay" posts (like this one) are often responses to multiple comments as well as the article itself, so "reply to" is something I'd support. I don't like the idea of "indenting", though (for the reasons the others have given, things becoming too small etc).

I'd love "in-line" replying (your comment appears below the comment you reply to rather than at the bottom of all the comments) if that's at all possible.

Numbered comments and comment permalinks both get my vote.

Bottom line ... as long as you don’t institute a word limit, I’ll be happy!

Are you sure? Have you seen some of my comments? :-P

Of course, an edit function would be nice, too. :(

Yes, yes, a million times yes. I've posted a reply to the wrong post (thanks to tabs in my browser), I've double-posted (thanks to technical glitches) and I'm a repeat offender when it comes to typos. I've taken to using a text editor to proof read my comments before I post them, so I'd love an "edit" option.

I have yet to see ANY evidence that shows or even indicates that Gitmo has produced ONE single terrorist that would not have become a terrorist otherwise.

And, regardless of all THAT, is the "world" going to be any better disposed towards "Gitmo West" in Illinois???

Of course not...

It all comes down to a useless exercise of political masturbation. Sure, it's fun for a while, but it accomplishes absolutely nothing but making a mess...

Michale....

like it or not, one of the things we need in order to accomplish foreign policy objectives is good international public relations. regardless of whether or not it seems logical, closing the prison facility at guantanamo is a potential source of positive PR, which may be needed to gain all sorts of cooperation from various countries.

Can I ask a question??

I know, I know.. I just did.. :D

But seriously...

Why close Gitmo just to create ANOTHER Gitmo stateside??

If yer gonna have a prison to house terrorists, some of which will likely never be tried and never be released, where is the logic in bringing them to the US where they will do the most harm??

In other words, the ONLY logical course of action, if we're going to have a Gitmo, is to have it AT GITMO...

Michale.....

Edit and/or Preview functions would be nicer..

Not a real fan of threaded comments..

Michale.....

below are my responses to specifics:

avatars i wouldn't mind, as long as there's a strict limit on memory usage and file type, to avoid page load issues.

numbers and permalinks actually would be nice. both can be done very simply.

forward or backward order doesn't really matter, though sites are cool where you can choose to view in either direction.

threaded comments can get annoyingly tiny after a few replies, while paged comments make it annoying to refer to posts that are off the "page." so those both get a negative from me. a "reply" feature can be good when it quotes the original without creating a thread.

one thing i like that wasn't mentioned is a "cut" script for long posts, so you can click between the full post and the first five to ten lines, without having to re-load the whole page.

jmho,
~joshua

I like the simplicity of the way you have things set up now. I like the alternating colours, too. It’s easy to carry on a conversation without any distractions ... like avatars or numbers beside the comments. But, I do like that the comments are in chronological order - easy to follow the conversation ... and it makes it easy to continue and follow the conversation if we all address our comments - kind of like a letter format. Most of us do that now and I think it works great.

Reply mode might be nice but then we’ll probably often get beyond a few replies and that can run out of space very fast and then we just have to start again with a ‘new’ comment to continue the friendly argument at Bidenitum, so to speak. :)

I wouldn’t mind if you added a real smiley face, or two ... as long as we use them sparingly. :D

Bottom line ... as long as you don’t institute a word limit, I’ll be happy!

Oh, I just thought of something else ... it might be nice to preview a comment before you submit it ... nice, but not essential.

I'll do my best. I may run into layout problems if I try to indent them (to show "children" comments and "parent" comments more clearly). But I'll at least give it a shot.

Anyone else?

-CW

That would be great if you can manage it.

Hi. This has nothing to do with the article, just FYI.

I am looking into improving the comment code sometime soon. Mostly, to get rid of the trackbacks and pingbacks (weird comments you may have seen with links to other places displaying the articles).

But, I discovered that WordPress has updated the functionality. So I thought I'd run a few things by you folks (especially the ones who comment on lots of different blogs, and know what they like and don't like).

Currently, the comments here are displayed pretty simply. They alternate colors, but that's about it. So, here are some added features I'm considering (some of these may prove to be too much work, programmatically, I warn you in advance). So, what would you like to see here in the future?

Possibilities:

Avatars (those mini pictures some blogs use) to identify yourselves with. I'm leaning against these, because it can take awhile to load all the pictures if the comments grow long.

Paged comments (set number of comments per page, so you don't have to load a giant list).

Reverse the order -- newer comments appear at the top, instead of the bottom.

Reply and threaded comments -- this way, if you reply to a comment, it appears below that comment instead of somewhere way down the list. This one, I warn, may be too hard to tackle right now, although I know it is nice to have. I'll take a look at it, but that's all I can promise.

Numbered comments (does it do this already? I forget, probably not). Just a number on each comment, for easy reference.

Comment permalinks. This way you can link to an individual comment, if discussing it elsewhere. You get a link to the comment itself, instead of just the article's link. This one may also be a hassle, not sure.

Anyway, that's about it for now. Oh, I could get rid of the alternating colors, too, I guess, since it looks like I'm going to have to rewrite the entire chunk of comment code. I kind of like the colors, as it separates the comments, but I could get rid of it pretty easily.

Let me know your thoughts. Or any other comment ideas, suggestions, or bugaboos you may have to offer.

Thanks.

-CW

--- WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULAR COMMENTS ---