Back on track

By David Allen on August 16, 2010 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) |

OK, we've got the commenting system working again, with a twist. Now, when you comment, you'll have to type a letter-and-number series you'll see into a box. The same system already applies to RC Now and some of our other blogs.

I don't like those little boxes myself (always seems like there's one letter or number that's hard to read), but we're hoping this will block most of the spam, and with minimal inconvenience to you. If you get a message that your comment didn't go through because you typed the series wrong, use your back button and try again.

To anyone who left a comment from Friday through Sunday, when the system went haywire, your comment never made it through. Sorry about that. This has been frustrating for me too because your comments are the backbone of this blog. If you'd care to resubmit your thoughts, we'd love to read them.

Thanks as always for reading.

3 Comments

Allan said:

I'll assume the comment I made this weekend took the scenic route through the series of tubes and missed that ever-so-crucial left turn at Albuquerque. I suggested...almost pleaded that to combat spam, they go with captcha instead of requiring registration because as inconvenient as it is to read and type extra alphanumeric characters, it's more convenient than having to sign up (possibly with an e-mail account) to comment.

Glad to know your IT folks went that route.

[We gotcha captcha right here. And thanks for resubmitting your comment. It must have become lodged in one of those famous "tubes." -- DA]

August 16, 2010 5:14 PM

Doug Evans said:

Huzzah! Comments are back! The captcha thing is probably a good way to go... In my experience, it's pretty forgiving about typing a letter close to what you think you see, even if the actual letter is hard to make out. Plus, it reminds me that we're still smarter than the robots. TAKE THAT, ROBOTS.

[Robots: "Train lasers on Doug Evans." My captcha experiences (mostly when commenting on RC Now) have not been as forgiving. There's usually one character that could be one of two choices. I guess wrong half the time. It tells me to try again. And I do, and this time guess right. But it works out. -- DA]

August 17, 2010 7:12 AM

Ramona said:

So glad to see comments again. When none appeared for several days I wondered if everyone had abandoned you and/or your blog. I was tempted to submit one of my non-sensical comments just so you would know that someone was reading.

Or did I just do that?

[We'll take 'em, Ramona, sensical or no. -- DA]

August 17, 2010 9:48 AM