Friday, February 02, 2007

When blogging goes bad

Blogs can be great. But the system can frustrate both poster and readers, as highlighted by this from a Newsnight post I took part in (and couldn't resist answering):

Ref: vikingar

Or... it might be the system is not working too well.

Calm down, dear, it's only a cock-up.

Usually after posting you get an immediate return to the board with an acknowledgement. These days 2 out 3 I have tried (I used to and still do make the same mistake) either result in half an hour of the spinning pizza of death (I have a Mac - maybe the cause?) and/or eventually a failure sign.

So you retry later. Well, YOU don't, but some of us do because we don't know if it has been received or not. It has and is happening all over the board.

That said...

As it is moderated one wonders why the moderator can't just lop out the duplicates?

And I agree that of all major media I appreciate most the immediacy, reassurance and openness of the Guardian system. Though I have seen a few folk complain they have been removed with no good reason (must take something pretty egregious). The Telegraph is very good - or bad, depending on your view - at moderating out stuff it doesn't fancy, which in a free press is editing that can rather make one doubt their commitment to balanced debate. Despite the BBC’s rather unique status this one is pretty good, but again I have seen folk complain they are not being heard and can only wonder why. Maybe that's why Duncan editted down to repost later?

ps: I'm a MORON - that's Middle Of the Road, Outside Nomenclature – and proud of it. I find political labels (or any mild pejorative, such as 'denier' or 'mentalist' in the enviro debate) to be often inaccurate and lead to further name-calling. A view is a view and you can span the political spectrum without slavishly adhering to one doctrine.

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