I can take the harangues directed at me. I can take the intentional and unintentional misreading of what I write. I can take the flaming.
Why?
Because as far as I am concerned, I give as good as I get.
What I can not take, however, is some of you refusing to embed your links in the comments. I am speaking to you, Richard Bottoms (as well as many others). I am calling you out. Use the damned link function and start embedding your links, or fear my wrath. Or something.
*** UPDATE ***
I should probably point out why this infuriates me- because when you do not do it, and just insert a link that is super long, you break the layout of the page and screw up the margins. Then I have to go and edit it or delete your comment (which is what I am going to start doing, rather than fixing them as I have in the past).
*** Update ***
And stop posting entire stories in the comments (Slide- this one is aimed at you). It is especially irritating when you do that and don’t even provide a link. If you provide the damned link (and embed it like a good commenter), miracle of miracles, people will click on it and read the story.
Fascinating stuff.
Doug
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I was all set to enjoy myself a good flame war, but the wide screen formatting made the thing unreadable for me.
scs
John, I just tried out your own embedded link above and it doesn’t work. Come on now, how are we supposed to learn?
Krista
Whatever helps you sleep at night, sugar.
Pb
I agree, John, that is always annoying. I wonder if there’s a WordPress mod that could help with that.
Krista
I kid, I kid. You do take the guff we give you pretty well. A lesser man would have been banning people left, right, and center (well, mostly left…now that I think about it.)
Ancient Purple
I would expect nothing less from the John Cole’s of the Right.
Just sayin’.
WyldPirate
Gotta love this from JCole:
Just can’t let go of trying to weasel out of your “Jane Hamsher’s of the left” crack, can you John?
Vladi G
A primer might be appropriate, John.
1) Copy the link you want to embed.
2) type your post
3) Indentify the text in which you’d like to embed the link
4) click the little “Link” button above. If you can’t see it, click the little arrows on the top left of the comment box to pull up the formatting buttons.
5) Paste your link into the box that pops up.
6) You’re done. That’s it.
Caseyl
I’m amazed people don’t use the link buttons; they make embedding links so easy even an absolute code-ignoramus like me can do it. I wish I could take the buttons everywhere with me.
Vladi G
I have a tech question for those of you who know a thing or two about the internets. Whenever I try to go to the Jane Hamshers of the Left’s site, it keeps redirecting me to a post made two weeks ago, and I can’t see anything beyond that. Even when I type the URL of just the new post, it redirects me back. Any idea why that happens? Thanks.
Mac Buckets
Wait, look who John mentions as format-hogs. Are you honestly amazed that Bottoms and Slide can’t figure out those oh-so-tricky format buttons after having posted here so long? I personally can think of no reason that the idiocy shouldn’t extend from the content to the format.
John
How odd, I’ve never even expanded that menu. I always just wrote the raw <A HREF=”link”>link text</A> code manually.
Blame it on poor upbringing involving waaaay too much coding of various types.
Oh, and Vladi, clearing your cache should fix it. Ctrl-F5 will likely make it all better.
John
*snicker*
Even though I used ampersand escape characters to type mine in, it managed to encode THAT list. Let’s try doing it two layers deep:
<A HREF=”link”>link text</A>
danelectro
so my poorly composed, unfunny two sentence snark attempts are still ok? good to know.
Brian Palmer
But can you take the accurate readings of the misleading things that John Coles write?
The Other Steve
Oh yeah! Well fix your exclamation point replacement!!!!!
I’m pretty certain it’s supposed to refer to some .gif file somewhere.
GTinMN
Vladi,
firedoglake has moved. Maybe try here instead.
John S.
Yes, so typical of the Jane Hamsher’s of the left to misread what the John Cole’s of the right espouse.
Richard Bottoms
Well John since this is the first I’ve heard of your frustration, it’s an honor to make your front page because of it.
I have been scrupulous in including links in my posts because I believe in backing up what I say and not just “making shit up.”
To that end I have been putting links inside the Blockquotes, with the aforementioned text using those very same buttons I’m supposed to be too stupid to figure out.
In the future I will surround them with the link thingy as well. I knew I was getting to you but I had no idea just how much.
Oh, and, just so you know, I design internet based TCP/IP applications for a living, manage Linux & Solaris servers, and code HTML by hand.
I don’t need no stinking WSYWIG to write my code.
Richard Bottoms
Oh snap!
Brian
Help:
What’s the difference between the Link and Ext. Link buttons? I always use the former, but not sure what the latter’s difference is?
Thanks
Richard Bottoms
Do the MacBuckets of the Right all think like the MacBuckets of the Right-here?
‘Cause I’m pretty sure it was one of us liberals who invented both the theory for the Atom Bomb and an another who actual built one.
As a matter of fact, they were rocket scientists.
You keep on with your “all liberulls are” mindset, and I’ll keep on working to kick your hillbilly asses back to the trailer park come November.
ppGaz
ppGaz
p.lukasiak
WHat does OL and LI do?
Oh!
Richard 23
The Ext. Link doesn’t generate the opening anchor tag. Very useful.
Brian
Perfect! Thanks. Now I don’t have to delete the tag any more.
John Cole
Richard-
I thought i had told you before (but then again, I have not slept in a week again), so who knows. Regardless, I have fixed 100 of your links- I thought you would notice that they were magically being embedded.
No biggee. Just fix it in the future.
John Cole
I was actually referring to the Ezra comment, but if you continue to pretend that I meant something other than what I did re: Jane, then I guess I am trying to ‘weasel’ out of it.
John Cole
Yours will suffice.
Honestly, I thought it was self explanatory, though.
John S.
Damn the persistent misrepresentation of statements by the John Cole’s of the right by the Jane Hamsher’s of the left!
DAMN THEM TO HELL!
Krista
And yet another who quit the atom bomb project, because he could see how incredibly dangerous to mankind it would become.
Steve
I still don’t get the Ext. Link thing. Why would you want to leave off the opening tag?
Vladi G
I know. My problem is with the new site.
Well of course, now that I had to go and do it for you.
I agree, but if it was so self explanatory, you wouldn’t have needed to write a whole post on it now, would you?
JC
Vladi G,
He says,
But who is this? Is this the specific John Cole? I can’t believe that the “John Cole’s of the Right” are as neutral about flaming, can you?
BumperStickerist
Wait a second, are you talking about the commenters at ‘Balloon Juice’ specifically or the commenters at ‘the Balloon Juices of the Interwebs?
.
ppGaz
Not if it is subscriber-only content.
Off Colfax
Sheeeesh. I leave the comment sections alone for a while, and you guys pull this kind of shit? Without letting me purchase the movie rights?
For shame.
[/snark]
Seriously, though. How many people start off their day by wondering how many people they will piss off before bedtime? Because from what I can tell, there’s a lot of that going on, regardless of whose comment section you’re reading.
EL
I don’t know if it’s because I use a Mac, or that combined with Firefox, but I don’t see link buttons unless I click the >> button. Possibly others don’t know the buttons are there. I’ve been embedding all the links manually up to now – hope no problems from that.
John, if one of us is screwing up something like that, why not let the offender know by email?