The Ethics of Blogging
Some people wonder, if I run a weblog, am I a “real” journalist, a pundit, or something else, and most importantly, do I owe it to my readers to direct them to the esthetic wonder that is the newly-redesigned Unqualified Offerings. The answer to this last dilemma is simple: of course you do.
UPDATE: Comments. Obviously there’s a formatting problem. I think I understand the source. I like this preview-forcing plugin that Joyner uses. To simplify life I dropped in a comments.php that used it from a rejected theme into this one, which doesn’t. I know that sounds insane, but Wordpress themes are pretty modular and, in testing, it seemed to work. Honest! Actual operational use of the new design has found its flaws. I’ll work on it, but it means learning enough PHP to understand how to drop a COMPREVAL call in the original Bricks-theme comments.php or put Bricks-theme comments.php pointers into my installation of COMPREVAL.
Also, something I discovered the hard way. The xhtml validator does not like the <i> tag. If you want to italicise something in comments use the emphasis tag (<em>).
Comment by Chris Quinones —
March 6, 2005 @ 2:55 am
It’s nice. Your libertarian blogroll is headlined “Mi Hermanos” again, though. Haga el favor de corregirlo, mi amigo. Gracias.
Comment by blueperiod —
March 6, 2005 @ 5:00 am
2nd comment to make 1st comment less lonely
Comment by Zed —
March 6, 2005 @ 5:04 am
my dog is cuter than yours
Comment by James Joyner —
March 6, 2005 @ 5:22 am
I see you have comments now. No trackbacks, though?
Comment by bob mcmanus —
March 6, 2005 @ 5:52 am
Have read every word you have written here since early 2002. I don’t do much e-mail, so I am glad to get an opportunity to say thank you. Thank You.
Site looks great.
Comment by mikejacobs —
March 6, 2005 @ 7:38 am
but it’s still pukey green!
Comment by CapitalistImperialistPig —
March 6, 2005 @ 8:59 am
Those of us downtown will keep you in mind when we need to go “somewhere that’s green.”
Comment by CW —
March 6, 2005 @ 9:55 am
FYI I (and the other two people subscribing to your XML feed via Bloglines) didn’t see this until Friday night, and at the bottom of the post it says
Posted on: Sat, Mar 5 2005 9:36 PM
not early in the morning – you might want to check your time zone. And if you haven’t, listen to the BSG commentary track podcasts, they’re nifty. Cheers!
Comment by the talking dog —
March 6, 2005 @ 9:58 am
Love the new look… gotta have a picture of a border collie… nice lookin’ pooch… Comments, and everything…
The best gets better…
Comment by Rook —
March 6, 2005 @ 9:59 am
Cute dog. But how did you get him to pose sideways? Nice trick that.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 6, 2005 @ 10:30 am
Rook: Heh. My daughter informed me that “If the picture of Dally is sideways, then I don’t like it.” Symbolizing my . . . angular take on the world cuts no ice with her.
Comment by Charles Hueter —
March 6, 2005 @ 10:36 am
Lookin’ good, even though this comment is from a fan of green colors. Get ready for comments that’ll curl your hair, Mr. Henley. Exposing yourself like this as I did will result in long periods of staring at your monitor wondering, “from what education system did THIS dunce pounce?”
Minor, self-interested gripe: the longer blog names (such as Magnifisyncopathological) spill over past the right hand border into bleak white oblivion. Bleak oblivion is obviously not the place to be for some of your blogroll luminaries.
Comment by Zack —
March 6, 2005 @ 11:14 am
I am not a fan of 3-column layouts, but the dark green complements the sherbet-green well.
Now let’s test your XHTML validation:
Testing
XHTML validation
.
Very nice! Is it me or do you allow no space between paragraphs in comments?
Also like you comment policy.
Comment by Zack —
March 6, 2005 @ 11:20 am
OK, seems like I found a bug there. Why did the last part of my previous comment get wrapped up in <pre> and <code> tags? I wrote those when previewing the rest of the comment and then submitted the comment without previewing the changed content.
Also, the comment textarea was showing different HTML markup in preview than what showed up when the comment was submitted.
And it does turn out that you don’t want people to write multi-para comments.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 6, 2005 @ 7:51 pm
Charles, what browser/OS combo are you running? In mine Magsymp runs all the way to the green border but not off into the white space. You’re damn close to becoming “Drizzten” on the blogroll, frankly.
Chris Q: Fixed! Sorry.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 6, 2005 @ 7:53 pm
Bob, thanks very much. Having seen your spoor elsewhere, I’m pleased to know I have you as a reader. Mike: eat me!
James, I do have trackbacks; they’re integrated into the comments list. Why? Cause that’s how this off-the-shelf theme handles them. It’s the same at CT and some other sites, though.
Comment by Kathy K —
March 6, 2005 @ 11:29 pm
Hmm. Can you do paragraphs with paragraph takes?
The preview seems to just turn them into a single break.
Comment by Gary Farber —
March 7, 2005 @ 4:41 am
“If you want to italicise something in comments use the emphasis tag ().”
Jim, if you want people to do that, you need to put it on the screen that shows up to let one comment; mentioning such a thing in passing simply can’t work.
Also, and maybe you’ve fixed this now, but I’m loath to spend more time finding out, trying to actually “edit” a comment once previewed doesn’t seem to work.
Lastly, it’s a bit tiresome to have to fill out one’s info each and every time one attempts to comment; could you possibly fix this? If so, thanks.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 7, 2005 @ 4:50 am
Gary: You know, there’s a reason I stayed away from comments for so many years. (Adding parenthetical to test editing in preview mode.)
Comment by Zack —
March 7, 2005 @ 9:16 am
After you edit a comment in the preview mode, you have to preview again, but you are not forcing it. So a commenter can make changes and then when one clicks “Submit”, they are lost. I force commenters to preview again.
Another thing I don’t like with ComPreVal is that it shows all the p tags in the comment textarea when I, the commenter, didn’t type them. That distracts and confuses the non-web-savvy. Those tags should just be silently added in the background and not shown in this box in which I am typing.
Comment by Charles Hueter —
March 7, 2005 @ 10:26 am
Jim, I’m using Firefox 1.0 on Win2k w/ service pack 4 under an overcast sky with a hint of garlic in the air.