I know some visitors are puzzled and/or frustrated when they try to leave comments on this blog, so a quick word of apology for that, as well as a quick explanation about how commenting works around here.

We moderate comments -- in other words, we hand-review and hand-approve all submitted comments. We do this only because we've found that if we don't, the blog quickly gets overwhelmed by spam-comments. And what a misery that can be. As in hours and hours of weeding out loathesome crap.

Depending on how regularly we proprietors are checking in with the blog, this can mean that it might take your comment anywhere from a few minutes to half a day to appear. And given the way we all enjoy the rapidfire, instant-gratification back-and-forth of blogging, this is unfortunate and a little bewildering.

Like I say, sorry for that. I wish there were something I could do to make the process less awkward. Unhappily, spam-comments won't just go away.

Unhappily as well, we have yet to figure out how to build a "captcha" function into commenting -- that's that scheme whereby you're asked to type in some random numbers-and-letters before posting. We also have yet to figure out how to build an explanation of what's going on into the commenting function. Wouldn't it be nice if a box saying something like "Comments are moderated by the blog-proprietors. This means that your comment may not appear for a while. Please be patient" popped up during the commenting process? But, well, my computer skills don't extend much beyond knowing how to link to other blogs.

To be a little less flip ... This blog has been around for so long, and the software it's based on (Movable Type) has been upgraded so many times -- it's full of so much left-over back-end crud -- that even our beloved webguy (the man who set us up as bloggers many years ago) couldn't manhandle a "captcha" function into the process when we had him give it a try. Is this what those who know about such things call a "legacy" challenge?

In any case, apologies for any inconveniences, and please keep those comments coming. They will show up eventually.

It's ironic, but Steve Sailer's blog (where he's now posting his stuff) uses blogspot's commenting feature, which is ABSOLUTELY HIDEOUS (esp. compared to 2Blowhards). But ugly and primitive aside, there is a visual recognition feature and a notice that comments are moderated. I certainly wouldn't want you to switch to Blogger (yuck!), but it's sad that MT won't let you add such a useful feature, not only in filtering spam, but lessening your workload and giving you more time to do what you do best--write really interesting posts.

Posted by: PatrickH on October 7, 2007 10:44 AM

Go ahead...put this up if you dare!

Posted by: Charlton Griffin on October 7, 2007 1:53 PM

It's hard to believe that Moveable Type is completely incapable of accomodating a CAPTCHA, or even just a basic "type something here to validate you're human" form.

Posted by: Cineris on October 8, 2007 8:17 PM

The only problem I ever have with comments on this site is that I keep clicking on them to open up in a new tab, giving me a blank Javascript page.

(Also, hi, Cineris! What a coincidence!)

Posted by: Noumenon on October 10, 2007 8:01 AM

Noumenon, what a phenomenon you are!

Posted by: Rick Darby on October 10, 2007 4:49 PM






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