Blogger's regular breakdown
Blogger had been functioning properly for almost a month, so it was due to start destroying comments again, and indeed it has. If your comments do not appear, be patient. I will repost them in the next hiatus between Blogger breakdowns.
Latest tally: 12 comments obliterated by Blogger.
© Peter Rozovsky 2010
© Peter Rozovsky 2010
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 2:11 PM
24 Comments:
There's a certain craziness in me commenting on a post about comments not appearing, however...
In my searches on blog alternatives, I came across a comment system called Disqus, which can be used to replace the Google comment system and yet leave you still using blogger.
On the face of it, this would be the best of both worlds. Initial checks reveal Disqus may have its own issues, but it might be worth a try. If I weren't 9 weeks away from the on sale date for my first book I'd probably trial it now.
Thanks. Someone suggested an alternative comment system durling Blogger's previous montly breakdown. I looked into it and tested it. I think I may have decided against it because Blogger started functioning again in a few days. I'll see how long the current breakdown lasts.
Test comment from a Blogger Engineer.
I thought maybe the comment loss was only on fairly high trafficked blogs like this one, but I see that it has also eaten your comment on my fairly low trafficked one.
What I think is funny is that this kind of stuff is happening while all these rumors of Google and Verizon doing a separate "Premium channel" or "second internet" abound. Maybe they ought to see if they can get the non-premium channel for plebes like me to work before they start trying sell "special content".
v word=dulgist, as in someone (or some corporate entity) who indulges in wishful thinking...
Oh, hell's bells, is it swallowing comments on yours, too?
That's no surprise. Last month's problems about which I posted here were widespread. Naturally I found this out through message boards and Twitter. Blogger's own tech "support" staff maintained its Kim Jong Il-like silence on the matter.
I had heard no such rumor, but it makes sense to me. I have said amid Blogger's recent failures that Google may well have decided to spend resources on something other than a free service.
As for fixing the non-premium channel for the plebes, offering competent free service would sap potential customers' inventive to pay, wouldn't it?
Could backfire, though, if everybody leaves.
I like blogger in general, but it has to work.
Well, if I'm a Google executive, I first have to determine if I want to stay in the blogging business. If I do, and I decide I want to offer pay service, I have to do a cost-benefit analysis. I have to make my free service just bad enough so users will want to pay for the "premium" service but not so bad that they'll leave Blogger entirely.
It would not surprise me, then, so see Blogger's periodic problems continue while it offers a free limited-time trial of a new pay service.
I'm ou,then. I already pay too much for cable as it is.
Cable is one expense of which I am happily free. But you can understand the process behind what we're discussing. Drug dealers do it all the time, at least in crime novels: Give 'em the stuff free, hook 'em, then make 'em pay.
Now, if only newspapers could figure out how to do that.
I think it's hard to get people to pay when they're used to getting it for free. Which is now newspapers' problem.
It's also hard when there are so many options besides blogger. Half the world would be perfectly happy with tweeting, I think. Or Facebook, or some other thing that's too cool for me to even know about.
Speaking of newspapers, I just came across this passage in a galley (i.e., uncorrected proof) of Dennis Lehane's upcoming Moonlight Mile:
"...He gives advice on the Channel 5 News sometimes."
I shook my head. "I only watch the Daily Show."
"So how do you get your news?"
"I read it."
"Right," she said, with a sudden glazing of the eyes.
Yep, that's one of newspapers' problems all right.
That's a nice passage by Lehane. I was even more excited gfor a moment when I thought he was taking a shot at "The Daily Show," but still.
I have said many times, possibly even to you, that one of the only things that makes me proud to work for a newspaper is watching American television news.
Yeah, the Daily Show was a bit of a ringer.
I like some forms of TV news and fall back on it far more than you do, but I think the decline of the newspaper is a really bad sign. I'll even go so far as to say that a society with a vital print press is the best hope we have for democracy. Sadly, I don't think a lot of people have the patience and the stamina for it anymore.
Sad thing is that many newspapers in their current reduced form are not worth the effort it takes an intelligent, literate reader to read them. So, what are such newspapers and their owners to do? Try to recapture that reader? Try to find some new way to fit in? Or try to grub a last handful of dollars before chucking it in?
I'm not being sarcastic at all when I suggest that I don't know which I'd choose if I were in a position to make the choice.
Well, it's a bit like independent bookstores, I think. And, no, no one knows the answer in this business sector either. Everyone is just fumbling around, trying to survive day to day.
I suppose it's a bit like independent bookstores. But it's easier for me to imagine, in hindsight, what newspapers could have done than it is for me to imagine what independent bookstores could have done.
True. But I think it was probably harder to see how this would all really unfold even for the press.
I stress hindsight. Solutions that seem obvious now might not have worked at the time.
I'll comment over here then.
I loved Jim Rockford's Firebird Esprit. I suppose thats because I'm a child of the 70's
NOBODY comments on my blog...EVER...
I'm now wondering if many gems have been swallowe by the comment system, though this is probably a pipe dream.
Here's hoping this gets sorted out.
In the meantime, you could perhaps use Twitter as an impromptu forum for discussion?
I rand Tweetclean yesterday and found that 41% of the Twits I am following are guilty of "potentially dodgy behaviour".
Brave New World... etc.,...
Adrian, it's just as well you comment here. The current problems seem to be concentratd on that one post. That's an interesting wrinkle: each month's comments problems add something new. Two months ago Blogger failed to post comments. Last month it obliterated comments or else failed to tally them properly. This month it concerntrates on a single post.
The crime-fighting cars of my childhood were the Batmobile from the 1966 series followed by the Green Hornet's limo and James Bond's Aston Martin DB5. Odd, that last one, because I don't think I saw any of the movies. I just loved the gizmos on the Corgi toy: the pop-up shield, and maybe a working ejector seat.
Thanks for the kind wishes, P à D. Though I try not to ramble in my posts here, I could not restrict discussion to 140 characters.
As a matter of fact, I use Twitter mostly as a tool to promote this blog. Each post I make here feeds to Twitter
Peter
I had that same Corgi. It was fantastic wasn't it? It also had a working ejector seat.
You can get them for about thirty bucks on ebay. If I had boy children I might invest but the girls alas aren't interested...
Yeah, it was a cool gold color, too.
You could buy it for your girls, then not let them within a country mile of the thing.
Seana, I'm getting answers on the Blogger help forum from people claiming to be Google engineers who say they'll fix the problem, so who knows?
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