A quick update.
I read all the comments from last week’s site update post again, as promised. All 368 of them! We often learn a lot from these threads, and last week was no exception. I had absolutely no idea that commenters were pasting in twitter embed code to get the pared-down version of tweets that show up on Balloon Juice.
When I managed my IT group, I used to joke that if you put 10 tech people in a room you’d get 11 different opinions. My new corollary: if you put 10 Balloon Juice commenters in a room, you’ll find a lot of interesting people, and you’ll also find 11 different ways that people accomplish the same thing.
But I digress!
I spent some time this week documenting what we want from the new comment system and why we want it. I am happy to tell you that we now have a shiny, new, custom-built comment editing system for the new site.
If you want buttons, you’ve got buttons! You don’t need no stinkin’ buttons? You can enter your own html code or create it elsewhere and paste it in. You want to paste in a twitter embed code? You can do that. If you’re a front pager, it will look like a fully embedded tweet, just as it does now on the current site. If you’re a commenter, you’ll get a pared-down version of the tweet, with text and links, as you do now.
You can format your comment with buttons in visual mode and then hit the text button if you want to see the html code. You can do the reverse: compose in text mode and then hit the visual button to see what it looks like before you post your comment. You can compose in one mode and edit in the other, if you want. You can go back and forth so many times that you forget to ever post your comment. You get the same buttons on edit that you had when you created your comment.
If anyone wants to weigh in, and particularly if you were kind enough last week to share your opinions or your place on the Art Pain Scale, you are welcome to use the (10-point) WaterGirl Happiness Scale, as shown below. In random order. Please check all that apply.
WaterGirl Happiness Scale
Yippee!
I couldn’t be more pleased.
Meh.
I am so relieved!
Yawn.
It still feels like there is a rock in my shoe.
You guys rock.
I want to have your babies.
I was terribly distraught last week; now I feel mildly relieved.
No matter what, I will never be happy.
What are you talking about? I missed last week’s thread.
~ WaterGirl
Updated at 2pm Saturday: I will check back periodically all weekend for additional input, questions and comments.
germy
Yippee!
One thing, though: I notice sometimes when a front pager will start off a thread with a tweet. Rather than showing the photo, or video or whatever the tweet features, I’ll just see the tweet’s text, and underneath a balloon-juice ad. If I refresh a few times, then the tweet content will appear.
WaterGirl
Oh, and please feel free to ask any other questions you have about the new site here, as well.
Ladyraxterinok
Zero tech savvy near 80yo here. I assume such as I will be able to read and comment as before– right?
Thanks to all working on making this a super place to plan, share, rest, recuperate,,,,,,
Miss Bianca
I am right there at the bottom with, “Whut?”
Another Scott
“I couldn’t be more pleased.”
Seriously, excellent news. Thank you!
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@germy: New site, completely new programming, new ad system, new everything. Except for the database of posts, comments, etc. But even that has a new schema, so it’s a whole new world from a technical perspective. So if you see a problem on the new site, be sure to let me know.
UncleEbeneezer
I didn’t see the earlier thread, but one thing that would make BJ much better would be to have the option to easily block commenters you don’t want to read. Yes, I know about the pie-filter but I use Safari and something that didn’t involve any downloading would be great. Just my $0.02
WaterGirl
@Ladyraxterinok:
Yes you will!
Amir Khalid
Yay new comment system!
That does count as a “Yippee!”, right?
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca:
For your reading pleasure, the thread from last week: Site Update: Ask Me Anything
Amir Khalid
@UncleEbeneezer:
The pie filter is now built into the site since the previous site rework, so there’s no more need to download it.
Another Scott
@germy: That might be another indication of the CDN (content distribution network) caching stuff that is so annoying at the moment.
Tweet images get embedded after the page first displays on your browser, so there’s often a slight delay to get the whole page. If the CDN is sending you an old cached version, then the tweet image might not appear at all until you refresh (multiple times – “Yes, dag nabbit, I want the actual up-to-date page not your ancient cached version!!1”).
I understand that the CDN is being dumped/replaced/something on the new site, so it shouldn’t be (as much) of an issue going forward?
My guess, anyway.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@UncleEbeneezer:
There is a new pie filter, complete with a choice of dessert-related text, dessert images, or nothing at all in place of the comment. With a toggle button in case you want to read what someone said, after all. If you guys love the new pie filter even half as much as I do, I will be pleased.
it works flawlessly with Safari.
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid: Yes! That nearly made the list, but I wasn’t sure everyone would see the nuances of Yippee! vs.Yay!, as I do. :-)
Wag
All sounds good. I missed last week’s thread, so all this is new to me. My only hopes for addition is for the site to remember my name and email on the mobile version so that I don’t have to input them with each thread.
I’m sure that request has been discussed ad nauseam, but I just want to make sure.
jeffreyw
I’m in the “trust, but verify” mode with my Yippee! (I guess that’s a “Yippee?”)
MattF
Up there around Yippee. Honestly, I don’t plan to post anything in Glagolitic script any time soon, so I don’t really need Unicode— but what about cutting and pasting weird characters?
WaterGirl
@Another Scott:
Replaced/something new is probably the best description, and we are using CloudFlare’s Railgun, as well, which I believe loads only the changes, not the entire page.
TomatoQueen
As a tester, I am at Flounder level:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmlnltVzksgT
WaterGirl
@Wag:
I have seen with my own eyes that it has saved my nym and email for 3-5 days, and that’s as long as I have gone between comments.
edit: I just noticed your reference to the mobile version. What i mentioned above was on my computer, so I cannot yet say that I have seen that with my own eyes on my iPad or phone because most of my testing on mobile thus far has been when I am logged into WordPress.
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: I ignored it completely, WG. For what it’s worth, I have faith in you. :)
geg6
I’m in that very last group. But it doesn’t matter because everything you just explained could have been in Mandarin for all I understood of it. But I am eternally grateful to all who are making this happen. And hopefully, the site won’t require me to understand any of it to use it. And I don’t ever use Twitter, so I won’t be posting anything from there. Just hope posting links won’t be complicated. I already am too stupid to do it properly here (I can’t figure out how to use the link button; it scares me ?). I always just paste in the whole link. LOL! I’m a Luddite around here.
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw: Yes, I would consider that a Yippee with a question mark, or Yippee! in a more hushed tone.
Spanky
It goes without saying that when the Next Big Thing comes along to replace Twitter, the new site is architected to allow it to be added seamlessly. Right?
WaterGirl
@MattF:
Please define weird characters.
WaterGirl
@TomatoQueen: I had never seen that before. That’s awesome!
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: Thank you very much for that!
Keith P.
My only thing about Twitter is that the progressive loading it does makes reading posts that have a lot of embedded tweets a chore, at least while the page loads. Content is constantly shifting as more and more tweets load up and resize. BTW: This is more of a web-wide issue.
WaterGirl
@geg6:
I think you’ll be good.
When you go into edit, it will default to the “Visual” tab, so if you select something and hit the button for Bold, it will instantly be bolded. Even the bold button is a big B that is bolded, the Italics button is a big “I” that is italicized, etc. So I think everything should be pretty clear*.
*Famous last words! When someone is giving me directions and they say “you can’t miss it!”, my first thought is “uh oh”. But I think you’ll be pleased here.
dmsilev
@WaterGirl:
How is the great bug-hunt going? Always feels like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole…
WaterGirl
@Spanky:
Um, let me check my crystal ball. Hmm, it says “impossible to say for sure”.
But what I can say is this: I have been in tech for a very long time and I have never seen a more impressive group or a more clever programmer than the person who is doing most of the coding for the site.
dmsilev
@WaterGirl:
Can’t you just look at the directory of commentators and front-pagers? That’d be a pretty good empirical definition…
(to be serious, probably the question was about Unicode, emojis, etc.)
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Yippee! There will still be buttons for those (ahem) too stupid/impatient to do their own coding!
jeffreyw
@WaterGirl:
Baud?
MattF
@WaterGirl: Well, I might want to cut-and-paste from a passage in a European language where the characters could have various accents or squiggles on them. There’s also things like TM or copyright symbols that might be in selected text. Hard to be more specific than that.
zhena gogolia
@UncleEbeneezer:
Just scroll. That’s what I do. Very simple.
Thanks for all your work, WaterGirl et al.
WaterGirl
@Keith P.:
I could not agree more! In a thread with images but not tweets, if you anchor on comment #25 and refresh, it takes you back to comment #25 and lines up perfectly. With embedded tweets, if you anchor on comment #25 and refresh, it flies back to comment #25 and then slips on the page as the tweets some in fully.
We are doing everything we can to mitigate that, but you are right. Tweets do that. But I do not imagine that anyone wants to give up their tweets.
Amir Khalid
@MattF:
What I do to get my umlauts and sharp esses is use Google Translate and cut and paste from there.
Ohio Mom
Notning to add, just my thanks, many times over to WaterGirl.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: And so, one question is whether that convenient method will continue to work.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev:
That’s exactly what it is!
That’s why we are putting so much emphasis on testing, because by the time the site rolls out, this is where I want to be:
– Having found and fixed the bugs that everyone will experience
– With everything functioning properly on a wide range of devices
Then on rollout, we will discover this weird thing that happens if you use this computer with that operating system and some specific browser version. But I can live with that.
What we won’t do is fix stuff on the fly, because we all know that when you change one thing, something else can be impacted.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev:
Ha!
WaterGirl
@debbie:
Yep. Still buttons, and more buttons than before, and buttons when you edit. If I never have to type “strikeout” or “blockquote” (when editing) again I will be happy.
I was particularly happy last year when I learned the “s” works just the same as “strikeout”, but I am apparently still holding a grudge for all those years when I did not know that.
WaterGirl
@MattF:
That’s a helpful clarification, thanks.
I tested TM and copyright, etc, emojis last week, and all worked fine. But they just converted the old totally fucked up version of the BJ database to a new schema that is able to handle all the curly quotes etc that were screwed up in the imported posts, and I have not yet had a chance to test all those things with the new structure, or with the new editor.
So last week I could tell you that I had personally seen all those things work with my one eyes. I will likely be able to tell you that next week, but not today.
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid: Last week I was able to copy the umlauts, and enter them with the keystroke combo on the keyboard, etc. I will try all that again next week with the new database structure and new comment editor.
PJ
I have been reading BJ since the run-up to the 2008 election, using Firefox or Safari on MacOS, and I have not once seen an embedded tweet by a front pager or commenter – I only get text and a link. But I am not ever signed into Twitter, so I don’t know if this makes a difference.
WaterGirl
@Ohio Mom: Thank you, Ohio Mom! It’s nice to have a thank you mixed in with the questions and the complaints.
laura
Thank you for all your hard work and efforts! This site, these people and their creatures, plus food and that troubling willow is balm for the soul, a way station, illuminates and explains complex systems, makes me laugh out loud and cry rivers of tears, draws top commenters from all walks of life, and I am grateful.
Ya dun good girl, your a good’n!
WaterGirl
@PJ:
Only front pagers can embed an actual tweet and have it look like a tweet, and Anne Laurie does that all the time in her posts. More and more often, now, front pagers will embed a tweet in a comment after a regular commenters has made a reference to something they have seen.
I think that will happen more and more with the new site because the process for doing certain things will be simpler. Also, I plan to have documentation for the front pagers so everybody knows how to do stuff, not just the more techie front pagers who can put an image in a comment. My motto is “no more mysteries” for front pagers, eg. “how did Major Major get that picture of Samwise in a comment?”
WaterGirl
@laura: Thank you, Laura! I love Balloon Juice, too. This is a labor of love for me.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Heh. After seven years on this laptop, I just discovered I could actually get emojis!
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
Do the ‘Contact Us’ links work now, or is that still a WIP?
WaterGirl
@debbie: Ha! I have never been a big emoji person, but once I saw Shrug Girl a few weeks ago, it was worth it to me to see how to do it.
Simple keystrokes on my mac to bring up emojis. Then i noticed the emoji button on my touch bar on my mac laptop. ?♀️ Now Shrug Girl is just two taps away. :-)
WaterGirl
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman):
Contact Us is super simple now. Here’s the contact us page on the new site, except that the John Smith example is an image:
All those email addresses work now, if anyone wants to reach a front pager.
J R in WV
Thanks for the update, WaterGirl, sounds delightful!
I was bothered by the lack of features in edit mode, didn’t complain about it, saw plenty of folks who did. Didn’t expect this good news at all. Thanks for the update and the work it took to get here!
I bet this code gets reused a lot on other things! That’s what happens to good
Vampire storycode that works well! That strike thru was just to show what my tablet thinks BJ is really all about!something fabulous
Hey WG! I am back! Will email you directly when have had some more coffee, to catch up on testing stuff! And when OTR is ready, do I have pictures….!
something fabulous
@jeffreyw: Ha! So many choices so little time…
frosty
“You guys rock!”
Cathie Fonz (formerly Cathie from Canada)
@germy: Same – all the tweets in a post just appear as text for a few minutes, then finally as I wait for it, the photos and tweet format etc will load. I thought it was just my laptop delaying things.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: شخصيات غريبة مثل هذه.
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
JaySinWA
@J R in WV: Much as I like them “good Vampire story” is an oxymoron.
Hopefully “good BJ comment code” is not. This is much better news than I expected.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: So glad to hear it!
WaterGirl
@something fabulous: I knew you were back, but I have been leaving you be so you could settle in! Save those pictures for the new On the Road, for sure! :-)
WaterGirl
@frosty: Yay!
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: I can try that after lunch. Check back.
WaterGirl
@JaySinWA:
Is that halfway between “I was terribly distraught last week; now I feel mildly relieved.” and “I am so relived!” ?
Wag
@WaterGirl:
Yeah, on my computer it isn’t an issue. I tend to use the mobile side during the day, and it is painful.
I would gladly end twitter as an overall concept. The home of too much toxicity in our world.
BruceFromOhio
@jeffreyw: I was thinking eemom.
Yippee!
worn
@WaterGirl: Thank you for all the hard work & dedication. This quote alone gives me great confidence in you & the efforts at improving BJ:
In my industry (putting buildings together) I have learned the truest adage is that “you can’t just do one thing…”
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: What language is that?
PJ
@WaterGirl: To be clearer, when using Firefox for MacOS (currently v.69.0.1) or iOS, I have never seen a tweet embedded by a front-pager, whether in a post or a comment, appear as a “tweet”, like it does if I click on the link. In other words, I get no pictures or video in a tweet, ever. I do see pictures and video when they are in a post, but not tweets. Is this because of a setting in preferences? I have trackers turned off.
I just checked with Safari (which I rarely use), and tweets by front-pagers do show up after about 30 seconds, but they never appear as tweets when using Safari for iOS.
WaterGirl
@BruceFromOhio: Yay!
@worn: Thank you so much!
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
“You can go back and forth so many times that you forget to ever post your comment.”
This is where you scared the kittens.
PJ
@Wag: Twitter is like listening to people’s unfiltered thoughts. When I read tweets by people whose writing (or other art) I otherwise like, I usually like them less, sometimes a lot less. Tweets by random people (or people I don’t like) usually make me despair for humanity.
WaterGirl
@PJ: That is sounding kind of like what I used to experience when I was blocking Social Media in Ghostery.
As soon as I unchecked that, I started seeing tweets on BJ: in front page posts and in John’s twitter widget on the side. It’s been years but what you are describing sounds like my memory of what I used to get. Ghostery is where I block a ton of trackers, so maybe your tracking program is blocking social media for you.
WaterGirl
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I laughed out loud at that. Literally. And I mean the real literally, before literally was bastardized into meaning something other than literally.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@WaterGirl: Arabic.
@PJ: So Twitter is what it would be like to be a telepath?
WaterGirl
@PJ: I know. Sometimes I see tweets posted from random people I don’t know and my thinking is along the lines of “Caring what this person tweeted is like me caring about what your -ex’s brother-in-law’s uncle thinks about something”.
prostratedragon
“Yippie!” and furthermore an option on “For they are jolly good fellows!” until I actually try it, but it sounds great, and thanks for making the extra effort.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott:
The verdict is still out on that one. It works in the site where we are testing the new database schema that solved a bunch of other issues, but it doesn’t currently work in the new editor that is running with the database that is running on the old schema that we are not going to use.
At some point this week we will have a new test site that combines the code from the Dev server, the database with the new schema, and the new editor. At that point, the results of my testing should be definitive, once again.
edit: if this comment made your eyes glaze over, not to worry, you don’t need to know any of that.
PJ
@WaterGirl: Turns out it was the trackers. Which is a shame, because now I have to choose between random websites tracking me or seeing the tweets.
WaterGirl
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Thanks for the tip that it was Arabic.
Didn’t they make a movie about some guy who could hear women’s thoughts? Possibly more interesting than a movie about some guy who reads tweets? Not sure about that, though, since I wasn’t even interested enough to watch that movie.
WaterGirl
@JaySinWA: Jay, nearly every time i click to reply to this i get a bogus system warning about there being 3 viruses on my computer. Only when I reply to you.
PJ
@PJ: But I think I can live without seeing the tweets.
WaterGirl
@PJ: So your tracker doesn’t give you options for specific things that you can click on and off? Maybe try a different tracker. I’m happy with Ghostery on the Mac, but I have no idea what computer you use.
WaterGirl
@prostratedragon: Great, I was hoping that some of the people from Sunday would also weigh in. Glad to hear it!
PJ
@WaterGirl: I was just using the standard preferences in Firefox, but I will look up Ghostery, thanks.
WaterGirl
I will be checking back periodically all weekend for additional feedback, questions and comments.
So even if the thread looks dead, I will still respond.
Ruckus
Damn. First time complaining ever worked. You folks must be serious about the new BJ.
OK that off my chest, it is very nice to see that there is discussion about the place. I’d bet that I’m like many others here, we come early and often, we spend too much time here when we should be doing whatever the hell it is that we are supposed to be doing that we aren’t because we are here.
This place is important to a lot of us because it is a place where we can be heard, even if what we say isn’t important. Some are long winded (me!) and some are terse. But everyone gets heard – or seen actually. I still have two other blogs. I started them to get heard, a place to say what little was on my mind. But here I get to have discussions, to learn, to listen, to maybe have my voice heard. And I’d bet that many people are here for the same reason. It’s important, all of it, the politics, the food, the pictures, the lives of the people, the news/disasters of the day. We learn more here than on any media news show, we learn points of view, we learn what people are thinking, not some polished version of vomited up, polished up, bullshitted up news presentation.
But the most important thing with the new site will be, my fucking name and email actually stays like I ask it to and I don’t have to retype that 1200 times a day.
Ruckus
@jeffreyw:
Now that got a hardy chuckle. Hardy enough that because I’m eating……
@WaterGirl:
Tweeting is a gigantic time waster. I know because I opened an account like 3 weeks ago. But it is also a place to hear a lot of people. Some not worth the time it takes but still, a voice in the wilderness.
JAFD
Dear Water Girl,
Thanks very much for your time and effort !
A couple of years back I would have volunteered as tester, because I did that stuf for living, but have retired now, have to relearn everythng. Not going to. Is now young’uns job. Trust you.
If ever you get to NYC area, we jackals must hold a dinner meetup, feed and wine you
Ruckus
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Yes twitter is exactly that.
The key to twitter is who you follow and who you do not under any circumstance. Also that you read only the first 20 or so tweets after a refresh and then LEAVE twitter. For a while. Too much twitter is too much. Not much twitter is OK, and a lot less despairing about the survival of humanity.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Ruckus:
I agree, which is why I have never joined. I have more important things to do with my time.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to my Reddit and YouTube tabs…
Ruckus
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
To each time waster his own.
I have a friend who has been retired for 9 yrs. His company did a big purge 2 months before he had his 30 yrs in and made the offer so good he had to take it. He watches TV about 12-15 hrs a day. He’s a registered republican, who has voted democratic for decades. He HATES trump, with the heat of a thousand suns.
He does nothing but waste time.
I can’t wait to have that option.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: Arabic.
:-)
I just cut and pasted your query, in Arabic, from Google Translate.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: See me at #80.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@WaterGirl: That would be What Women Want (2000), which my brain was telling me was Jim Carrey but IMDB tells me was Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt.
Never saw it, but I did recently watch the female version, What Men Want (2019) with Taraji Henson which was surprisingly enjoyable and had some actually interesting social commentary on women succeeding in extremely testosterone-heavy work environments.
It’s also a black woman in an all-white environment, but that aspect was downplayed relative to the male/female dynamics.
WaterGirl
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: My first thought was, Mel Gibson, no wonder I didn’t see the movie, but then I googled and that might have been back when I still liked him from the Lethal Weapon movies.
I would watch pretty much anything with Taraji Henson in it. If that ever comes to Netflix, I will definitely watch it.
NotMax
@Wag
Yuppers. Twitter is the digital equivalent of jock itch.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: NotMax! Curious to hear your reaction to the update. Any thoughts?
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Vast improvement in concept over what was delineated last week, that’s fer sure.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Thanks. I would peg that as somewhere in the vicinity of “It still feels like there is a rock in my shoe.” and “I was terribly distraught last week; now I feel mildly relieved.” Is that about right? :-)
NotMax
@WaterGirl
How about “Knot in stomach vanished.”
;)
WaterGirl
@NotMax: That’s a good one! If I had thought of that, it would have been on the list.
WaterGirl
@JAFD: Not much of a big city girl, but meetup with a nice dinner and wine does sound lovely!
Bill Arnold
Since you asked, somewhere between
I was terribly distraught last week; now I feel mildly relieved.
and
I am so relieved!
(Depending on the actual implementation, that I reserve the right to complain about :-)
And very high praise for the responsiveness to all involved in responding to our complaints.
WaterGirl
@Bill Arnold: Thank you, Bill! That’s high praise coming from you.
I would expect nothing less.
Wag
@NotMax:
No, much worse. Twitter is crabs.
Or maybe herpes. Painful and irritating, but unlikely to cause a life threatening complication.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: Seeing “Ceci n est pas mon nym” reminds me.
S/he and I both had apostrophes in previous ‘nyms. (I was first I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet when I first started commenting here, because…). It worked OK, but then there was some update that the apostrophe broke things. (I don’t recall what.)
Have you checked to see if apostrophes are Ok in ‘nyms here? (That they’re escaped properly.) I don’t imagine that I’ll be changing back, but I’m sure that issue may come up again eventually.
Thanks!
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: I had thought to check for emojis in nyms, but I had forgotten about the apostrophes. Good catch! I have added that to the list of things to check.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
WaterGirl, the ‘Submit pictures for On The Road’ link gives me this error.
Thanks, Darrin.
WaterGirl
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): Alain has taken the old On the Road submission tool down because the upcoming new site uses a different tool.
He announced it in an on the road thread a couple of weeks ago, but if you didn’t happen to read that thread, there is no way you could have known. So you are temporarily caught between systems.
If you can wait a little bit, you will be able to submit your photos on the shiny, new form. The presentation on the new form is lovely, and is worth the wait, if I do say so myself.
NotMax
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
Alain mentioned a while back that the submission form is kaput until such time as the new site build rolls out.
joel hanes
Pending actual hands-on experience, I am trending toward
You guys rock!
Yarrow
@WaterGirl:
Since I was one of the more vocal commenters in last Sunday’s thread I feel I should comment in this thread. This:
all sounds great. It’s what those of us who were upset at the stated inability to use HTML code in comments wanted and it sounds like it’s going to work for everyone no matter how they prefer to compose comments.
Thank you so much for posting these site update threads. I’m glad they’ve been helpful for you guys. Special thanks for being so patient and not getting upset when commenters are clearly doing so. Thanks for listening to concerns, taking in what people are saying and finding a way to turn concerns and requests into reality so that the new site works better for everyone.
Not quite sure where to put myself on the WGHS since I don’t anticipate commenting here much going forward. I guess I’d be sort of in the “Yippee!” and “I couldn’t be more pleased” vicinity although it won’t really impact me. I’m glad those who were concerned will be able to compose comments in the manner that works best for them.
Thanks again for all your hard work.
WaterGirl
@joel hanes: Oh, good! With you and Yarrow below, it looks like 10 of the 11 people that were not pleased have weighed in.
I will take “trending toward: You guys rock!” any day of the week. Yay!
WaterGirl
@Yarrow: Thanks for weighing in, and I appreciate your kind words. We all want the same thing – a great site for our BJ community.
This comes as a big surprise:
Did I miss some news? Are you moving on from Balloon Juice for some reason? Moving to a place with no internet? You seemed really invested in Balloon Juice and the new site last week; did something happen?
WaterGirl
Unless I missed someone last week, we are down to just JWR who has not weighed in on the changes. Paging JWR…
Yarrow
@WaterGirl:
No particular news. It has been a long week full of a major natural disaster, the aftermath of which is still ongoing. I am tired of natural disasters in that particular location either being ignored completely or, when brought up, being told people who are experiencing them should die or at least not be helped because they don’t vote the right way, or, if I bring that issue up, being questioned as to whether I’m telling the truth. It’s exhausting and I’m tired of fighting it. Balloon-Juice has chosen what side they want to be on. It’s not one where I feel welcome.
JWR
Why good golly Miss Watergirl! You’re truly a Nym after my heart!
But really, just wow! As I read through this post last night it became quite apparent that you were writing directly to me, and only me! :-)
Specifically this, from last weeks Q&A:
And this…
And as of today, It feels as though you’ve pried open our brains, crawled around inside ’em for a while, and popped out with answers to our liking, wielding tweaks and fixes to address not only our concerns, but also to allow us the luxury of using and abusing these features completely at our leisure! ;-)
But seriously, thank you again for putting in the time and the effort, and for being so responsive in your replies. (Yay! Got just what I wanted!)
WaterGirl
@Yarrow: It’s been my experience that Balloon Juice goes in phases, and just when I am wishing for the old Balloon Juice and it feels like we’ve lost the magic of what we once had – the camaraderie, the snark, the fun, the sense of connection – Balloon Juice rights itself soon enough.
Plus, I think we have lost a lot of folks because of the technical issues with the site + the god awful ads, and I am truly hoping that we will get a lot of those people back once the new site is in place and Balloon Juice doesn’t add one more frustration to a world that can already feel so bleak and frustrating at times.
If you need a break then you should obviously take a break, but please don’t paint all of us with the same brush because someone here says “screw Kansas and their tornado/earthquake/whatever because they are getting what they deserve”.
Right now, lots of us are conserving energy because it’s just not possible to fight back on everything when many days can feel like you are inside a pinball machine with all those balls ripping around you, and at you, every single second.
My two cents, in case it’s useful.
WaterGirl
@JWR: Yay! Reading what you wrote makes me happy.
I try hard to listen, even when people are upset or unhappy. Especially when people are upset or unhappy! And I can mostly stay calm even when people around me are not – a gift I can’t take credit for – and that helps, too.
I’m gonna call this a good day. When eleven of the eleven people who were unhappy are pleased with the changes, what else are we gonna call it?
The proof will be in the pudding, of course, but I think the new site will do everything it needs to do.
WaterGirl
@JWR:
I wish I had thought to include that in the WaterGirl Happiness Scale. I might just have to add that.
Yarrow
@WaterGirl: It’s not just now. It’s been going on for years. It’s exhausting.
I do not. However, I think all of us are obligated to speak up against the “Fuck Kansas (or other red state). They are getting what they deserve because they vote the wrong way” comments. The number of people here who speak up against those comments is very low, as it has been for a long time.
WaterGirl
@Yarrow:
I am guilty of that. I read those comments and mentally dismiss them, but I don’t usually speak up about that particular thing because someone else always does and then I feel the point has been made.
I also think about the huge number of people who read the threads after they are dead, so there’s no point in voicing opposition. I believe that there are far, far more people on BJ who don’t agree with those kinds of comments about the red states – and plenty of other things – but don’t speak up all the time.
But if you don’t see it that way, or you feel that’s not good enough, then I can understand why you might be thinking of putting more distance between yourself and Balloon Juice. I would hate to see that, but I obviously have no say in the matter, other than to say I would be sorry to see you go. Other times when you have taken a break, you have been missed.
Yarrow
@WaterGirl:
Missed? That seems awfully aspirational for a small handful of people eventually thinking they might have seen me post yesterday. Or was it last week? Or the week before?
I will say that I know I’m not alone at being upset at how people suffering in red states are talked about here at Balloon-Juice. Here are two examples from Texas commenters during the Hurricane Harvey disaster. It’s hard working to turn your red state blue and is not made any easier when your fellow Democrats beat you down for not doing it right, not doing it fast enough, not working hard enough (reply to one of the aforementioned commenters), or whatever the wrong thing is and then deem you not worthy of help. Those commenters pretty much don’t comment here anymore. Not many Texans do.
In a previous thread you suggested I should let this issue go and less is more. I’ll shut up now.
WaterGirl
@Wag:
Yes, nyms and emails will be retained on mobile devices, as well as computers.
WaterGirl
@Yarrow:
Aren’t you the originator of Tick Tock Motherfucker? Seems like there were months while we were still waiting for Mueller when you weren’t around much. And wasn’t there a longish period of time when you had a lot of personal and family stuff going on, and you weren’t here much? Apologies if I have conflated you with someone else.
WaterGirl
@Yarrow:
I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you might be referring to here.
I haven’t had much time to comment on BJ for months, so I would think i would remember. If you could let me know what you are referring to, I would appreciate it.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
There will be pudding?
Now we get to argue interminably over what flavor!
@Yarrow
When you’ve been absent in the past it was noted, disappointingly, by quite a few here, certainly by many more than the smug doom revelers.
Take a break and regroup if you feel that’s best, but please don’t become a stranger.
Illegitimi non carborundum.
:)