I’ve moved most of the external links to the right
hand column, and moved the internal links to the left. TypePad suggests this will result in quicker
loading since with the three columns layout I use, the entire left column has
to load fully before the center column starts loading. External links often load slower.
So do you think the blog loads any quicker? The same?
Within the last two weeks or so, and for no reason
I can ascertain, there has developed a problem with comments being marked as
Spam. I don’t know why this is. TypePad have clearly changed the rules on
their Spam filter although they have not had the courtesy to warn me or explain
what has changed. I have written several
help tickets and so far this is all the response I have had:
Thanks
for the note. We have reported this comment to our Operations team so that they
can look into why this was incorrectly flagged as spam.
Please
let us know if there is anything else we can do for you.
As you can see – a virtually useless reply. I don’t know why they find it impossible to
tell me what rules they have quite obviously changed on their own filters. I’ll try to follow up with them. But it is out of my hands – only TypePad can
fix it. It looks like it might be long
comments that attract the filter, since those are the ones that get caught, and
apparently splitting them up into smaller comments seems to work. I apologize for this. I can assure you it is not my doing and I am
not preventing anyone from commenting.
If you let me know by email that your comment has
been held by the filter, I can go in manually and release it. The blocked comments are all sitting in a
place that I have access to and I have been able to release comments for one
person who requested it. Unfortunately,
I am out quite a lot in the day right now, and don’t get to check my email or
the blog very often, which means you might be waiting for a while before I
release it. But remember I can always do
that if you don’t mind waiting a bit. Otherwise, I apologize again and suggest you split the long posts into
several shorter ones.
Apologies for my three day unexpected absence. Normally this would not have mattered, but
(as I have written before), due to the disruptive actions of a few Secretards,
I have imposed comment moderation. So
apologies to all whose comments were delayed – everything has now been approved
and normal service has been resumed.
Having said that, the latest lame regurgitations of
the same Secretard arguments have not been impressive. They even including the highly unoriginal “You
once thought the world was flat” – yes
that oft debunked argument was actually used AGAIN, (despite being specifically
referred to as a lame
argument in the Comment Guidelines - you’ll
find it under The appeal to “science doesn’t know everything”).
Considering the continued paucity of valid
arguments from the Secretard groups I’ll soon be closing the comments to all
Secret posts. I’ll leave them open for
another week or two, just to see if anyone can come up with anything new or
original (so LAST CHANCE), but as it stands the lame Secretard responses are
not adding anything of value to anyone.
I have just posted some guidelines
for commenters. I threw it together
pretty quickly this afternoon and will update and improve it over the coming
weeks. I hope it will help people
planning to post comments.
The main rule is – don’t be a jerk. Shouldn’t
be too hard for most people, and you have to behave like a real jerk to get me
to delete a post or ban you.
Has anyone been having trouble with this site’s RSS
feed?
I received an email from one person who was unable
to find the RSS feed for this site. Following discussions with TypePad support,
it seems the problem may be that I compose my posts in Word and that some of
the Word formatting cannot be read by Microsoft RSS readers in Outlook or IE. I
was wondering if anyone else had this problem either with a Microsoft RSS
reader or any other, and if so, had they been able to get around the problem?
I know the RSS feed works in Firefox’s Sage reader.
If there are any other readers people use, perhaps you could post comments.
Thanks.
The post title describes some of The Secret
supporters who have been posting comments here. In the just over two years this blog has been going, I have received over
5,000 comments – many critical of my posts and many blunt in their
criticism. However, in just six weeks, supporters
of The Secret have posted by far the most immature, gratuitously offensive and
content-free comments of them all. And
that’s saying something.
One example of this was someone signing his or her
posts “Kat”. His or her last post (a 1,700 word freestyle
rant) was so vitriolic, content-free and uncivil in nature that I
deleted it, and instigated comment moderation for a day. (Incidentally, apologies to Tom Foss who took
the time to write a detailed rebuttal that was also caught by the moderation
system.) Funnily enough, I think it was
this commenter who then set up a parody site called Skeptical Lunacy. Funny, but probably not in the way its author
intended. Anyone appreciating irony
would note that this site – complaining how I would not allow one of his or her
comments – does not allow comments. Hilarious. I encourage everyone to visit Skeptical Lunacy. Just keep in mind the phrase
“pot-kettle; kettle-pot”. And decide for yourself if “Skeptical Lunacy”
provides any rational reason for you to accept what The Secret is selling.
Another example was an Australian twit calling
himself “What-The?” His posts degenerated to being purely
insulting, while ignoring counterpoints made and questions asked. A week ago I
told him to stop posting here. I
also informed him that if he did post any more comments I would have to
instigate comment moderation, which would be an inconvenience to anyone else
who wanted to post a comment here, slowing down the free exchange of ideas. Unfortunately this twit thinks his silly
games are more important than everyone else’s freedom to comment, and last
night (between about 8 and 10pm Saturday night his time – the middle of Friday night for me), he posted a series of
offensive, vulgar and (surprise) content-free posts, including several where he
posted with the names of regular commenters here, including me. Obviously I deleted these comments. Unfortunately, because this little child thinks
this kind of behavior is funny, and because he will not respond to reasonable
requests to grow up, I have had to instigate comment moderation again, and this
time it will have to stay on. I
apologize for this inconvenience.
The purpose of the comments is to allow further
discussion and exploration of issues raised in the original post. If I write a post critical of, say, The
Secret, people can read my original post and (if they want to explore the
issues more), they can read the comments – some of which will express opposing
views. I hope that comments backed by
evidence would be taken more seriously by readers, but ultimately people will
make up their own mind whether they accept my arguments or not. However, if the comments are a series of content-free
insults, and if the language gets too gratuitously vulgar, people will be put
off reading them at all and will go away without properly considering the
points raised and without making an informed decision. Comments posted with sock-puppet names
confuse the issue further. I have been specifically
told that some of the excessive vitriol in the comments has driven people away
before they can fully consider the issues, and this is obviously something I
want to avoid. Right now, this means
that comment moderation has to be on.
Perhaps it’s time I wrote some comment
guidelines. Not that it would stop the
teenage scribblers, but at least it would make things clear to the
majority. I don’t really have time now,
but I will say that comments will not be disallowed merely because they
disagree with my posts. In fact, a brief
perusal of the comments will show that dissenting voices are allowed without a
moment’s hesitation. However, comments
that are purely insulting, full of playground insults, or with gratuitous bad
or vulgar language will be deleted. Off
topic posts will be deleted. Multiple
comments posted with sock puppet names will be deleted. You can still disagree, and disagree
vigorously if you wish, but not in such a way that it puts people off reading
further. In other words, you can
disagree but don’t be a jerk.
And to anyone who comes here truly interested in
finding out if The Secret makes any sense or not, I ask you to read the
comments to my various Secret posts. Consider that the really immature, vulgar and content-free pro-Secret
comments have been deleted. Consider
that the pro-Secret comments that remain are the very best the proponents of
The Secret have to offer. And make your
mind up about whether you think The Secret is backed by any rational evidence
or not.
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