Mon 4 Jan, 2010
Just days after a commenter (Hank) said, “Thank you for making your blog nicely accessible by phone,” something went wrong with the mobile version. I got time to do some research today and I found a fix. As far as I can tell it’s working again. Please let me know, mobile users, if you’re not getting a mobile-friendly page. Thanks.
Mon 9 Nov, 2009
Researchers speak of the “Least Publishable Unit” of their research. I’m borrowing that concept to coin a new term for blog commenting: the “Least Mockable Unit” or LMU. Here it is, defined:
“The LMU is whatever small snippet a commenter can find to
mock or sneer at in a blog post or previous comment.”
Carving an LMU out of some prior discussion is easy. It doesn’t require you to think about what the commenter before you was really trying to say. It doesn’t require you to deal with the whole course of an argument from one comment to the next, or even from the beginning to end of one comment. It absolves you of asking yourself, “Based on what I know about this person from other interactions, what did he or she really mean by this?”
It can be fun, too. Making jokes is entertaining, after all. Some people seem to think making their debate opponents look stupid is fun, too, and there’s nothing quite like an LMU to do that for you.
I think that’s why we see LMU blogging as often as we do. There aren’t many other good reasons. It’s certainly ungracious. It sets aside the fact that in the high-velocity, short-article form that blogging is by nature, not every thought is fully expressed in all of its nuance, nothing gets checked over by independent reviewers before it’s published, and as a result sometimes we need to go back and explain ourselves further. It happens to all of us.
And it doesn’t display much by way of thoughtful interaction with a discussion, either. By mocking an LMU, I can walk away feeling like I’ve knocked down my opponent’s whole argument. Usually, though, what it means is either that I haven’t noticed what the argument actually was, or that if I have noticed, I haven’t addressed it for what it was.
For those of you who think LMU blogging is pretty lame, here’s a better way to approach it. Don’t look for LMUs. Don’t even look for GMUs (Greatest Mockable Units). Look for the strengths of your opponent’s argument. If you can find something there to dispute, then you’re probably on to something worthwhile.
Wed 21 Oct, 2009
I have re-enabled the Live Comment Preview function. It was turned off for a while because it was contributing to a problem in which long pages with many comments would not load properly.
If you experience a problem with pages loading now, please let me know.
Fri 11 Sep, 2009
Various reflections:
Mon 7 Sep, 2009
Sat 29 Aug, 2009
I’m getting word of this website crashing sometimes when comments are being posted. The problem is probably the result of my having too many plug-ins activated. Plug-ins extend the functionality of the site, which is great as long as they work, but it looks like it’s time to de-activate some of them. This will affect your experience on the blog, so I’m asking your opinion on which of these I should or should not turn off. Please let me know what you think.
Comment Connection
Link comments referencing one another automatically using the @ symbol.
Comment Saver
Saves comment text in a temporary cookie before it is submitted.
Live Comment Preview
Supply users with a live comment preview. Use the live preview function to display the live preview in a different location.
Subscribe To Comments
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Based on version 1 from Scriptygoddess
WP Ajax Edit Comments
Allows users and admin to edit their comments inline. Admin and editors can edit all comments.
Thu 11 Jun, 2009
This website was broken for a while today, especially if you were trying to enter comments. Thank you for your patience; it should be fixed now.
