Click below to enter the live blog test. For the real thing, comments are going to be off, but I’m leaving them on for this so anyone having trouble can add a comment.
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by @mistermix.bsky.social| 138 Comments
This post is in: Live Blogging
Click below to enter the live blog test. For the real thing, comments are going to be off, but I’m leaving them on for this so anyone having trouble can add a comment.
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Violet
Why do some people show up with names and avatars and others have “Comment from [username]”?
sb
Okay, the live chat was fun until we all started having (ahem) too much fun and the comments went by lightening fast.
I’d suggest moderating the live chat and letting the threads run free.
Violet
Some of my comments are showing up and others are not. Didn’t use a known filter word or profanity so not sure why that’s happened.
Violet
@sb: THe problem with that is, the entire blog shuts down so there are no threads.
WaterGirl
Can we get rid of the the Share buttons on this thing? They are distracting, especially as everything moves quickly.
Someone said you could turn off auto scrolling, but I haven’t seen where/how to do that yet.
Comrade Mary
Hey, that thingy on the front page rejected my comment. Do we need to login somewhere?
gogol's wife
I don’t get this at all. I guess there’s no hope I’ll be able to tune into Balloon Juice when big events happen. Either it shuts down because of too much traffic or there’s some new system I don’t understand.
Capt. Seaweed
Comments go by too fast. No way to respond to individual posts.
Comments don’t always get posted. Go to the fridge for a beer and miss 25 posts. Hard to read.
Why not just create a blogger account/blog. Edso’s works nicely, looks good, free.
/bitchbitchbitch
WaterGirl
Just a minute ago, the page seemed to refresh itself, and everything before 9:10 just disappeared. ??
Edit: duh. It happened when I posted a comment. So with the live blogging, you can’t come in to it late, and read the older live blogging comments as well as current ones? That doesn’t seem right.
jwb
Initial comment posted, but others have not.
Violet
@WaterGirl: Look at the tiny buttons at the bottom right of the box. Auto-scrolling on/off is there.
different-church-lady
Made 3 comments, 1 appeared, two apparently got eated.
Firefox 12, Mac
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I find this change confusing and frightening. I’m voting for Romney.
sb
@Violet: Yeah, that pokes a hole in my idea. :)
Violet
Is there no way to pay for additional bandwidth for Balloon-Juice for, say, a month? Like now through the election? That might be easier.
Yutsano
It either lags or eats comments in toto. That’ll be annoying come November 6th.
TheMightyTrowel
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: My comments aren’t appearing. Clearly this is discrimination because I live in Australia and don’t pay US taxes (though I file them). JOB CREATORZ! WOLVERINES!
different-church-lady
@Yutsano: Let’s hope it’s not the same technology that’s in the voting machines.
Comrade Mary
@Yutsano: OMG, it’s powered by the Elder Gods! The lucky ones will be eaten first …
Jewish Steel
No dice for me. Can’t get thru.
Capt. Seaweed
I appreciate you are trying to do something to fix a problem.
Your solution is a disaster waiting to happen. It is awful in many ways. Do you know what Battling Seizure Robots are?
Think about getting a Blogger site.
Thank you for your consideration.
jwb
Not really working very well. I posted under two different names, once under the name here and once under a twitter handle after signing in. Each time the the first comment posted, but none of the subsequent ones did.
TheMightyTrowel
@TheMightyTrowel: seriously, i’ve just tried to post a about a gillion comments – at least 7 under the name Sarah Palin – and the thing won’t post any of them. Clearly it’s anti-American, probably Kenyan and definitely a communist.
Jewish Steel
@Jewish Steel: This thing gotta jewfilter on it?
Comrade Mary
At this moment, here’s what the suckage to awesome scale looks like for this app.
SUCKAGE - + - - MEH - - - - AWESOME
I know what it’s like breaking in new software, and I’m sure you guys and the hamster are working on it, but I’ve made several comments and only 1, maybe 2 have gotten through (FF15, Windows 7).
eemom
This is all DougJ’s and mix’s passive-aggressive way of trying to get us all to boycott the blog until Cole does whatever the thing is he needs to do so that the site doesn’t crash on the five occasions every four years when 10 million drunks are all clicking refresh at the same time.
You heard it here.
realbtl
I’m not that pleased with the speed the comments pop up.
Though it could get entertaining around minute 75 or so when some of the folks hit the +5 stage. :)
Jim Pharo
no postee my commentee…No sign-in on twittee…
jwb
@Capt. Seaweed: How many hits an hour can a blogger site take?
owlbear1
2 comments out of 10 made it up.
Maude
Comments aren’t posting. IRC is better. You sign in and it’s live. It’s free.
Baud
All of my comments made it up, and I didn’t even sign in.
Comrade Mary
@Jim Pharo: I could sign in to Twitter, but the agreement says that I’d be granting access to my feed and as Sister Quinn once told us in Catechism class, fuck that shit.
Julia Grey
I seem to be at least 3 minutes behind. So nothing of mine gets posted.
NotMax
System looks to be good news for McCain.
JenJen
Signed in with Twitter but comments not going through, at least not in real time so far.
Just Some Fuckhead
MisterMix:
What happened before was better. Some got through, some didn’t. The difference is that all were equally able or unable.
burnspbesq
Aye, Captain, I can restore the phasers, but I’ll have to take the warp engines off line for 90 minutes to do it.
burnspbesq
Aye, Captain, I can restore the phasers, but I’ll have to take the warp engines off line for 90 minutes to do it.
Felanius Kootea
No comments made it.
raven
@Violet: I logged in with twitter when it first started. That’s why my handle is different and the Vets for Obama thingy is there.
LGRooney
I sent in a comment from my iPad saying all is okay re:reading the feed but my comment never made it through. Is there a filter or login of which I am as yet unaware?
Original Lee
Not seeing anything of mine yet. I am also a curmudgeon and refuse to tweet.
Capt. Seaweed
@jwb:
I don’t know. One way to find out:
1. Create a site, call it Green Balloons or something catchy.
2. Have a FB create a post tsunami: between 7pm to 8pm some-night-this-week everybody go swamp the new temp Debate posting site. Post and refresh as much as you can.
3. See what happens.
TheMightyTrowel
@Violet: “Violet: I’d love it if Biden came up with the Ryan version of “A noun, a verb and 9/11.” ”
“a lie a lie and PX-90”
Violet
@raven: Okay, thanks.
Julia Grey
Wait, let’s test whether my clock is the same as your clock.
PeakVT
Wait, comments in the coveritlive doodad are going to be off during the liveblog? What’s effing point, then? It isn’t the FPers giving the BJ hamsters heart attacks; it’s the brilliant commenters.
Julia Grey
It is not. Your clock is set 3 minutes behind mine. So…..never mind.
sb
All of my comments made it and I don’t have Twitter.
jwb
@Baud: If you got here early, mistermix approved a bunch of handles as moderators. Those people are able to post at will. The rest of us schmucks, not so much.
cathyx
I got one comment through, the rest wouldn’t post.
Baud
@jwb:
Wow. This is the happiest day of my life.
I am somebody.
Keith
@sb: Same reason I find ESPN’s live comments to be unusable – not catchup-friendly.
JenJen
How did you guys log in? I definitely see you, Violet!
@jwb: Ahhh. Never mind.
mistermix
Yeah, I’d say that was a mixed bag. We’re damned if we do and god damned if we don’t.
Felanius Kootea
@jwb: Oh, that explains it :(.
smith
I have used this type of liveblog on other websites and all my comments have gone through – but on this one, I posted several comments and none of them made it through.
I even signed in on my twitter and nothing posted.
mistermix
@jwb:
Yep, that’s what happened. I think we’re going to try 10 at the VP debate and then just green light a few comments. Or the site will just be down for 2 hours. Which is better?
raven
@mistermix: You are doing great. Mistakes are the building block to success.
mistermix
@raven: Constant error is the key to building a shiny new tomorrow.
BGinCHI
I guess if this doesn’t have to work I’ll just have to treat Mrs. BG to my oral liveblog.
She loves that.
jwb
@Baud: Because mistermix approved so many as moderators, the screen now moves so quickly we can’t read all the comments. On the other hand, the rest of us have to wait for our comments to be approved.
Aside from the fact that the last debate brought twitter to a grinding halt, I’d say we should just move the whole discussion to Twitter with a special hashtag.
Comrade Mary
It’s a really tough challenge, and I appreciate you and Doug trying it out, mistermix, but even if your plug-in works perfectly without comments, and you have only a handful of people talking in there, the rest of us mouthy fucks will want to jump in one way or another with comments, so we’ll either be reeeeally frustrated, or the site will crash anyway.
BGinCHI
@raven: You can’t spell trying without try.
BillinGlendaleCa
2 questions
How is this different than IRC?
Do you need to be on twitter?
Steeplejack
I “sent” two comments, but neither went through (so far). Is there a time lag?
I clicked “Login” and got an option only to log in via Twitter, which I don’t use.
burnspbesq
Good grief.
ESPN is reporting that Sandusky is going to stand up at his sentencing and claim he’s innocent.
http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8478770/penn-state-nittany-lions-lawyer-says-jerry-sandusky-speak-sentencing
Whatever the maximum penalty is, he should get it, multiplied by the number of counts on which he was convicted, to run consecutively. And it still won’t be enough.
sb
@Keith I hear you. It depends on the thread. I go there for soccer chats often but anything NBA, forget it.
Dee Loralei
I tried 3 different ways to comment and I only saw 2 of 10 or so comments I made
PeakVT
@mistermix: That makes the whole effort entirely pointless. Ten commenters will be paying attention to the liveblog, and everybody else will still be reloading the website.
sb
@burnspbesq: At least a half-dozen of his victims will be there to express an alternative opinion.
jwb
@mistermix: Yes, in one of my comments that I don’t think posted, I suggested that you choose an arbitrary number of commenters to post and let them post at will. The rest of us can try our luck both there and here. Remember it won’t be BJ if at least one of the commenters is not a parody troll.
raven
@PeakVT: Um, how would you know that without the effort?
Maude
@smith:
My comments didn’t post either. Said it was sent, the liar.
Baud
@jwb:
As much as I enjoy hanging out here, I’m hoping to be doing some volunteering during the debates.
scav
so, slow and iffy for others too? I do love technology rollouts.
BillinGlendaleCa
@Steeplejack: I tried that as well, and I’m not a twitt. I tried commenting and no luck. Not signing up for Twitter either.
Anya
Okay, so now I know I am not a member of the BJ Center-Right Fight Club because my comments did not appear.
Maude
@jwb:
I was on Twitter during the 1st debate. It was fine.
WaterGirl
Comments;
1. can we just pay for more bandwidth for the next month?
2. can you disable the extra WP junk for the big event nights?
3. can we have just one “live” thread at a time on special nights like debates, election, etc?
4. people could comment on debate thread #1, until 300 comments or so, then close comments on that thread and create a debate thread #2, which accepts comments up to 300, then close that one. repeat
5. that way everybody could catch up on the “old” debate threads without reloading all the time, which would help, too
jwb
@PeakVT: If possible, the live blog should be offsite, because the blog will bring the portal to a crashing halt unless they turn comments off on the entire site as well.
Cols714
Time to put Sullivan back on the blogs we mock and monitor list.
Two bad polls (among some good ones) and he’s ready to throw in the towel.
Steeplejack
@BGinCHI:
That sounds vaguely dirty. But in a good kind of way, I’m sure.
jwb
@Maude: I was having trouble with it, but if it works, why not simply have folks meet up under hashtag #balloonjuice
raven
Give constructive feedback, don’t be dicks.
WaterGirl
Another suggestion:
If you do use this LiveBlog tool, which I don’t think would be great (now that we’ve tested it), could you make all front pagers moderators so they could comment at will, and then add 100 predetermined people who could also post? Some of the regulars like BGinChi and others that we would all enjoy.
raven
We could all go over to fdl. . .well, those of you who aren’t banned.
raven
@WaterGirl: Don’t suck up to him just because he just had a baby.
WaterGirl
@jwb: Hey, lots of us don’t use twitter.
Steeplejack
@BillinGlendaleCa:
I’ve been reading down the thread, and it seems like maybe the moderators have to approve each new commenter? Going back to see if my comments have belatedly posted.
Which reminds me: when you refresh this Balloon Juice page, you lose your place in the CoverItLive stream. Trippy. (There should be a Ghostbusters “Don’t cross the streams” joke in there somewhere.)
mistermix
@WaterGirl: I approved fewer than 20 and it still scrolled by too fast. Maybe the hybrid approach where I post a link to a coveritlive page and then just let the regular blog crash would work best.
Schlemizel
I’m just a simple caveman commentor and your live blog frightens and confuses me.
Don’t like. No sir, don’t like it at all.
Now I miss Phil Hartman and Ren & Stimpy
WaterGirl
@raven: You would be on my list, too. :-)
I’m not sucking up cause he had a baby. He does make me laugh, though. Besides, isn’t his baby about to start kindergarten? Time flies…
Steeplejack
@Anya:
LOL. But leave that troll’y crap downstairs. I got burned enough tonight.
sb
@WaterGirl: A good idea but I think the 100 number would be way too high. We’d have the problem we had just now–the thread would go way too fast.
Maude
@jwb:
IRC is better. You just sign in and go.
A lot of people are not fond of Twitter.
@Steeplejack<
I logged in with Twitter, my comments didn't post.
WaterGirl
@mistermix: Did you happen to see my post at #81?
raven
@WaterGirl: Jus kiddin. . .
sb
I’d volunteer to *not* be on the list.
Frankly, I like the comments of others better that my own.
jwb
@Maude: IRC would be fine too. Of course, that would mean I’d have to figure out how to use IRC but that’s not a problem. I think.
sb
@raven: Make a great t-shirt, that.
Jenn
@WaterGirl: Yeah, even if no extra bandwidth is purchased, the other fixes should help a lot.
eemom
@WaterGirl:
Now yer talkin SENSE. I nominate me.
WaterGirl
MikeJ had a ton of great suggestions for cleaning up WP – they were on Cole’s thread from the other day/night when he talked about being okay with BJ not being able to handle traffic for really high traffic events.
Maude
@jwb:
It’s not hard. You get the hang of it quickly and there are mini instructions at the bottom of the page. I used with Oil Drum and it was fun.
It’s fast and free.
Jewish Steel
Obama (very very quietly) endorses coveritLive.
Capt. Seaweed
Email Roy. See if he won’t host.
WaterGirl
Whatever we do, I’d like it to feel like Balloon Juice. I don’t see how letting 10 random folks post, even if you rotate those folks, would feel like BJ.
Steeplejack
Hmm, made a comment on this blog, then refreshed the CoverItLive stream, but the last thing I see is SB at 9:43. That can’t be right. Or did it die?
beltane
Meh. I did like the pictures that were posted.
I’ll be happy just reading the liveblog as long as normal comment posting resumes after the debate.
Maude
@Steeplejack:
That’s what I see too.
If they use it, the rest of us will be here griping.
Steeplejack
Still not seeing anything after SB at 9:43. And, yes, I have mashed the “refresh” button in the CoverItLive gizmo.
ETA: And when I mash the “refresh” button in CoverItLive, it takes me back to the original “Test Liveblog” screen.
ETFA: Now Taco’s in at 10:05. WTF?!
sb
@WaterGirl: Second that.
geg6
@burnspbesq:
A bunch of jurors have been all over the news about this. They are speaking out and saying they expect a life sentence. Several of them plan to attend. As you know, IANAL, so I ask…is this usual?
That said and back on topic, the live blog thingy didn’t post my comment. I could see it, but it moved very quickly. Then I posted my comment and it all froze up. Then I tried to log in, but there was nothing but something asking for my Twitter account, which I do not have. So there’s that.
Steeplejack
I feel like I’m doing beta testing back in about 1996. Windows 95, baby!
PurpleGirl
@Maude: I’m part of science fiction fan club that has an IRC chat every Tuesday night. I use X-chat as my client and there are a couple of free client softwares that can be used.
I tried to comment maybe 10 or 12 times and only 2 comments posted. I thought the movement rate was too fast to read the comments.
Steeplejack
So I guess this test is over? Do we need a new open thread, or should I trudge back downstairs? Decisions, decisions.
Susan K of the tech support
Suggestion: For any live blog event, please post the time and time zone. 8:00 means 24 different things, depending on time zones (or maybe more, for those time zones that are on the half hour)
8:00 eastern. <- minimum
8:00 eastern, 5:00 pacific <- better
You get the idea.
Another Halocene Human
@Maude: Comments aren’t posting. IRC is better. You sign in and it’s live. It’s free.
I like this plan. There are some good irc websites out there. What was the one that #TPMRegulars used to use?
I’m 0/2 with COVERITLIVE! (O’Reilly voice) and it was several minutes behind with its last comment.
Maude
@PurpleGirl:
There’s a free Linux one.
Southern Beale
I don’t think it worked for me. Sigh.
Maude
@Another Halocene Human:
I’d have to look it up. Can’t remember the one I was on.
You could go back and read all the previous comments.
All I remember is that it was a Linux free one. You could have pretty colors to mark a reply to you and a little sound to tell you you had a reply.
I just like stuff that works.
Mnemosyne
@jwb:
Can you explain to me in simple terms how I can get Twitter to show tweets with specific hashtags on my iPhone? I will be iPhone-only for the rest of the debates (probably) so I doubt the CoverItLive thing is going to work for me. Particularly since I’ll be on 3G.
mai naem
I guess I am not spethal enuf.
Maude
I thin the IRC was freenode.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
since people are talking about twitter, here are some tweets from Nate Silver
Anya
@Steeplejack: It’s exhausting watching all the paranoia and suspicion, frankly I don’t know how they cope with it.
The Other Chuck
@Mnemosyne: Just use the official twitter app and search for that hashtag. It’ll continuously refresh. Trust me though, #Debates was a firehose, absolutely impossible to follow.
And the liveblog thing … it’s like IRC except with about 1% of the functionality, scalability, and usability. It’s completely unreadable on my android tablet with its 1920×1200 landscape display (oh you mean android devices aren’t all low-res phones in portrait mode? Golly). The only constructive comments I can give about it involve constructing a catapult to launch it from.
1badbaba3
Finally, a thread without trolls.
I got nothin’.
The Other Chuck
Looks like if I click through, delete the “ipod=y” parameter, and go back in, I get a “droidwidth=300” parameter in the URL, and if I change it to something like 800, it’s much more readable in landscape. Still can’t embiggen the microscopic fonts in chrome, but maybe Opera Mobile will do the trick…
Nope. Doesn’t even _show up_ on Opera.
Steeplejack
@Anya:
I am really a hard-liner about not engaging the trolls, but somehow I got lulled into it tonight. All I can say is “D’oh!”
geg6
@The Other Chuck:
I don’t think I understand two other words of your comment, but this one was crystal clear and wins the toobz today, IMHO. Made me actually LOL.
Steeplejack
Yee-haw! New thread upstairs.
burnspbesq
@geg6:
In my limited experience, it is somewhat unusual for jurors to show up for a sentencing when they have no role to play in the process.
And I don’t remember whether life is an available sentence under Pennsylvania law. Sandusky is old enough that 20 years is effectively a life sentence.
BGinCHI
@eemom: I concur. Genius idea.
Mnemosyne
@The Other Chuck:
Okay, I think I got it. Hopefully people will know to put a #balloonjuice tag on things. I did add John and ABL to my Twitter feed, too.
James E. Powell
@burnspbesq:
Some people will do anything to be interviewed on TV.