Updates.

by

We have a new email address, not to mention a new mailman: Edward, who’s officially here full time now. Other clarifications and changes in the roster to follow; watch this space.

Also, our blogfather is finally switching to Scoop. I dunno if this is going to be the final URL for Tacitus, so I won’t change the link until I know more.

11 thoughts on “Updates.”

  3. Ok, Scoop’s claim to fame is that it is a community moderated site. It allows users to post stories, and the same users vote to determine if the story should be shot down, go back for editing, or be posted to the site’s main page.
    It also allows people to rate comments that they like. Once people become solid members of the site, they can become “trusted” users, with the ability to hide comments they feel are trolls.
    Now, Tacitus’ current site supports none of this. The main advantage of Scoop currently for him is that it allows more powerful commenting modes, it has tighter security to keep malicious attacks from happening, and better collaborative abilities for more than one poster to work together.
    How this all happened is I was discussing with some lefty’s on Kuro5hin about good conservative sites to visit. I plugged this site, and Tacitus, and mentioned it was a shame the commenting system sucks so bad in moveable type. Lo and behold Tacitus is a closet K5 lurker, he contacted me, and the rest is history.
    Basically, I feel he wants to harness the strengths of scoop (the more powerful interface for advanced users) yet modify it to prevent it from becoming an echo chamber like Kos’s site, and keep it easy enough for the guys who inexplicably prefer flat comment threads. I just hope people give it a chance to fulfill the later before dismissing it out of hand.

  4. “inexplicably prefer flat comment threads”
    Hey, I’ll explic.
    I like all of the comments that have been posted since the last time I looked to be in one place (preferably at the end). Generally blog comment threads are thematic enough that there aren’t more than 2 or 3 wildly different conversations going on, which I can easily manage in my head, as long as commentors help out with quotes and the handles they’re referring to and so on. Full threaded conversations are, I believe, complete overkill for this kind of environment and require that I bounce all over the page trying to find recent comments.

  5. “inexplicably prefer flat comment threads”
    I’ll explic too. I like the unexpected jazz ensemble sort of riff that comes about from reading comments real time as they are currently configured at Tacitus. When they are organized by subject or have subject headers it gets too easy just skip whole bunches and you miss good stuff. The conversations can veer off into interesting tangents, a tangent I want to hear, but so unrelated to the originating subject heading I wouldn’t have gone after it.
    It’s one of the reasons I like the commentator’s name at the bottom, if I’m lucky I’ll start in on the comment without knowing the author and so I read it without prejudice. There have been a few times that I’ve started into a comment and realized, “Hey Realish wrote this and it isn’t completely stupid, whaddayknow.”

  8. No, we’re talking flailing your elbows around and then missing 8 consecutive turn around jumpshots.
    Take that, Malone!

  9. Well, just so you know, I’m working on right now the flat unthreaded. That will restore the Tacitus functionality, and there is talk of placing the user at the bottom of the post.
    As for the flip side of the coin, I’d contribute comments more, but I lack the time to read an entire 200+ series. If I could track the threads I initially involved myself in, I could keep up with the deluge.
    As it is, a busy moveable type thread feels like a prison I lock myself into. In otherwords, no fun. Scoop will let us have it both ways. Or I’ll die trying!

Comments are closed.