Well, there you go. I just spent 15 or 20 minutes listing a half dozen more issues and two made it to the post. This thing is a big piece o' cheese! 

Hey Robb,

I just added a Blog Roll to all of our original TBC blogs. The link for Ask the Californian isn't working right now because of a bug, but you should be able to navigate between our TBC-run blogs a lot easier now.

Davin McHenry

Web Editor

Thanks Davin,

I can see the rest of my original post if I keep hitting my browser's previous page button. It only stays on the screen for a second or two and doesn't let me copy it, so I hope you appreciate the trouble I'm going to in rewriting it.

3. Font and color changes result in a blank post.

4. The delete funtion doesn't work.

5. I question the wisdom of allowing people their own unlimited number of blogs. This has resulted in a lot of clutter including 4th of July recipes, everything you never wanted to know about Lebanon and My Mother the Monte Carlo(sorry, couldn't resist!).

Hope to see the quality posters hang on and return from exile. The new Weedpatch Gazette guy is quite a hoot. He makes Pax Christi look relatively sane, so he must be pulling our legs.

Regards,

Robb 

I don't like the snitch link aka "Report a Violation".

A spell checker would be nice.

I use to like the ability to change my alias without having to apply for a new account.

Posted by Drummel

 

Robb, I think he's serious.  Given the demonstrated average credulity of the American people, and excluding you and me, SOMEBODY must be pulling the average higher...

Is the old Current Affairs blog an orphan now?  Seems something (mumbleSCOTUSmumble) might happen on a national level which could evoke comment (GitmoGenevaConventionViolation).

.

I also don't like the snitch link, especially on every post.  And what constitutes a violation, anyway?  Off-topic posting?  I'm occasionally guilty of that.  Being an idiot?  Zeus KNOWS I could be (falsely) accused of that.

.

Best thing about the new format:  Mucus couldn't figure it out.

Robb,

 

I will pass along your comments on the invisible text and the delete function. I will note that the delete button works on my computers. And this is a test of the colored text.What OS and browser are you using?

 

I too have had some problems though with the text editor. My first response to your comment, for example was double spaced in the WYSIWYG text editor but showed up as single spaced when I posted it. I'm double, double spacing this one to see what happens.

 

Davin McHenry

Web Editor

Oh yeah,

 

I forgot to mention that we are talking about that "report a violation" link. I'm not sure what we're going to do with it, but I think our tech guys are aware it seems a little severe. You should not be concerned about being reported unjustly. I am almost certain those are vettted by someone before any action is taken.  Is Dan Pacheco, our blog guru lurking? Maybe he can confirm.

 

As for the clutter, I hope the new blog roll helps folks navigate among the TBC-run blogs better. However, the proliferation of user-created blogs really is the whole idea behind this new system. We want to give the online community at Bakersfield.com their own voice on this site, a place that is theirs. Fortunately we have a slew of new tools that should make it easy to navigate all this new content. For instance, we've got blog post tags, so you can search for all blog posts on a specific topic. We also have a good search tool that should connect you with any blogs you like. And you can always subscribe to any blog using RSS.

Random:

No, I don't think the current affair blog is dead. That's one of Steve Swenson's babies and I expect it will get moved over when he returns from vacation, at the least.

 

OK, I'm off to check out this Weedpatch Gazzette blog.

 

Davin McHenry

Web Editor

Davin,

Using IE 6+ and windows XP - both up to date. The red font is what gave me the blank post.

Random,

At least you can have a "Left Thinking" blog now!

 

OK Davin,

I got a large font size, green post into Inside Sports. One bug fixed...

Thanks, Robb.  I'm sure they'll give it the same kind of publicity they're giving the "Right Thinking" blog, and I'd gladly donate my stipend to charity.

Does it seem to anyone else that the blogs are loading m-u-c-h slower than under the old system?

I like it :-)

 

But, then again, I'm a simple girl

:-D

What and where are the blog rolls?  AND..how can I get this goofy thing to understand my name was to be nancy 11 (two two as in the second) instead of nancy eye eye.   Geeez it looks dorky with the lower case I.

I'm not making up any fake name..I get confused enough as it is.

Hate it. Sorry. If I go to cruise and want to find a subject to respond to, I have to go thru too many pages. Can all the blogs be listed under categories like it used to be, kinda like a folder you click "ie.. neighbors" then a one line description of what the blog is about, so that way you can quickly choose what you want to view and respond to. Does that make sense?

this sucks. I just wrote a very nice commentary, and now it's gone. What's up? Ok, here it is again.

First of all. Need easily accessible folders,,,, like "neighbors". then need a simple one line description - no photos please - so you can decide if you want to respond. As is, I have to flip thru pages and pages to determine what I might want to blog or respond to.

I dont like this @ all !

Report a violation is probably not the best wording, but it is necessary.  Report abuse would be better.  But in this day and age of the Internet, you need tools where users can help police the conversation.

Here's the biggest issue as I see it: By mixing official TBC blogs in with user blogs, you diminish the visibility of user blogs. TBC blogs so dominate the recency of blog posts, that user blog entries get pushed down.  While the TBC blogs will help draw audience to the Bakomatic blog feature, that benefit is off set by the lessened visibility for user blogs.  Personally, I'm much more interested in what "citizens" have to say than TBC -- with the exception of Bakosphere, of course.

Speaking of Bakosphere, the original concept was that it exist as "Bakosphere.com" and establish itself as its own brand.  That opportunity will be lost if its moved to the Bakomatic blogs.

For spellcheck, get the new Google toolbar.  It has spell check for forms built in.

Best,
H.

It's really, really, really s l o w

Put some more rats on the wheel!

Bakersfield does not have a good chrome shop.  The only one, in East Bakersfield does shoddy work.  When I need chrome work done I send it to Fresno.  The turn around time is about one week, The quality is excellent and usually it's cheaper. The Fresno shop has a pickup agreement with most of the rod shops in Bakersfield.

I can't figure out how to post a picture. When I do I will post a pic of my "29" Ford Tudor street rod....

How long did it take you to come up with this worthless system?  And, how much money and manpower did it take?  Really, this system is just stupid.

Penny Byrd

Hey folks,

Thanks for taking the time to provide your feedback about these new blogs. We're reading everything, and while we may not be able to make immediate changes for everything, your voices are being heard. Don't be surprised if you discover some of your ideas showing up in future releases.

I've looked through the feedback, and I'm pretty certain that most of the usability problems some of your are experiencing are related to older browsers. We highly recommend using one of the following more up-to-date browsers, and not just for the blogs. Your overall experience on the Internet will be a lot better if you upgrade.

Here are the best browsers by operating system:

• If you are on a PC, we recommend using either Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher, or Firefox 1.0 and higher.
• If you're on a Macintosh, avoid using Safari as the Rich Text Editor that you use to create posts and comments will not work.  We highly recommend that Mac users download the latest Firefox browser for the Mac, which is free. (That same link will work to download Firefox on the PC if you need it). 
• If you're on AOL, use AOL version 6.0 if you can. That will ensure that you're using Internet Explorer 6.

I'll answer some other questions in followup comments ...
-Dan

Here are some other changes I can tell you about:

• Report Violation links will remain (they're necessary to maintain a quality community experience for everyone), but we will be making them a little smaller, changing their position and changing the font color from blue to gray. While we understand some people may feel like the Report Violation links are intrusive, we want to make sure the community has an opportunity to let us know about severe violations of the new Terms of Service. If you're not posting objectionable content as defined in the terms, or personally attacking people, you have nothing to worrya bout.
• Spellcheck is coming in the next version, so hang tight! :-)

And some other things to note:

• We don't give everyone an unlimited number of blogs. Every user name can have one blog, which is part of your public user profile.
  
• One user reported invisible text in his posts and comments. I believe this is related to using an older or unsupported browser. Please try the browser suggestions above and let us know if you continue to have problems after that.
• Soon we will be adding links to the Californian blogs to the top of the People tab, so that you have an easy way to get to them. Meanwhile, if your primary interest is int he Californian's blogs, you may want to bookmark this page, which has standing links to them and also show the most recent posts: http://www.bakersfield.net/...
  
• We fixed a bug last week that should prevent comments from posting multiple times. Please contact me if you experience that again.

That's it for now. I'll post more updates as they become available.

Dan

All,

By popular demand, we have added a list of all the "community blog" (blogs from Bakerfield Californian staff) to the top of the new People tab. You can also find the same links in the sidebars of any staff blogs under the heading of Blog Roll. And don't forget that if you're primarily interested in only the staff blogs, you can find them -- and nothing else -- at this page:
http://www.bakersfield.com/...

Thanks again for all your ideas and feedback. Keep it coming!
Dan Pacheco
Senior Manager of Digital Products

Having to scroll through page after page just to read the posts. Great. Is this a way to raise advertising revenue by increasing the number of times pages load? And having them take up to a minute to load. Excellent. Not like we have anything else better to do, right? Oh, and don't bother adding anything useful like a spell checker or allowing you to quote directly from another post without lots of cutting and pasting. Way to go. You've successfully swapped out one set of shortcomings with the past forums with an entirely new set of shortcomings, with the added bonus of bugs. Seems to me that the web people were worried about job security...

no i like the old way

 

I'm still trying to figure out how to make paragraphs.  html <p> doesn't work.  Wil <div> work?  Or do I have to go to format and tell it "new paragraph?"  

Also..since the new format messed up my name..how do I get it fixed????  I put it in as NancyII as in Roman Numeral 2 and got nancyii out of it.  I HATE it as it looks really ridiculous.  Do I have to go back and reregister with another name?

Hey again,

I notice that some of you are trying to post HTML into your comments and blog entries. We don't currently allow HTML for a variety of reasons, but the main reason is because allowing it can cause other parts of the site to look bad.

The toolbar that appears at the top of the Leave a Comment form (and Post form) gives you a great deal of control over how your content appears. Almost anything you can do in MS Word, you can do using the toolbar. If you don't see the toolbar, you may be using an older or incompatible browser (see my comment about that earlier in this post).


-Dan

User names now show up with case sensitivity the way you entered them during registration. NancyII, thanks for identifying that bug! You can still use any case (even all lower case) with your user name during sign in, but your passwords are still case-sensitive.