The wheels are in motion (or do I mean they’re turning, or grinding? I want to get my clichés right, here) and I’m just about ready to start posting at the Freethought B&W. Once the banner is in place I think that will do it.
Josh fixed up my avatar, so it’s more elegant now. Less sloppy and less sparkly, both.
28 comments
Skip to comment form ↓
skepticlawyer
August 31, 2011 at 10:25 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I think I liked the dark blue avatar better, but that is no doubt a minor matter of personal taste
Mike
August 31, 2011 at 11:16 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Ophelia, have Ed or someone who is in charge in here to get B&W on Freethought Blogs main page. Yours is not the only blog that IS hosted on Freethought, but IS NOT visible on the main page or in the blog list.
butterfliesandwheels
August 31, 2011 at 11:23 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Mike – well that’s a wheels in motion thing, I expect. It’s a process.
Deen
August 31, 2011 at 11:56 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Neat, the link from the RSS feed takes me straight here.
butterfliesandwheels
August 31, 2011 at 12:05 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
That’s Josh! Valiant webmaster.
Charles Sullivan
August 31, 2011 at 12:13 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Actually, a number of blogs aren’t on the main page yet.
Mike
August 31, 2011 at 12:20 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Yep, that’s what I said. Some of the blogs have been here for some time now and they are still missing from the main page. Either it’s some kind of a bug or someone forgot to put’em there.
Deen
August 31, 2011 at 12:24 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
And nested comments too
butterfliesandwheels
August 31, 2011 at 12:27 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Ooh ya.
butterfliesandwheels
August 31, 2011 at 12:29 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I think maybe their (our) official debut is September 1. Probably after that we’ll be on the front page. If not I’ll ask Ed about it. (I don’t want to start banging on the table the second I walk in.)
Melody
August 31, 2011 at 12:43 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
It’s nice to have my favorite blogs in one place.
daveau
August 31, 2011 at 12:50 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
One stop shopping! Greta Christina is joining tomorrow, so almost all my daily favorites are in one place. Except for WEIT. But he wouldn’t come anyhow, since this is Freethought Blogs, not Freethought Websites.
Congrats on the move! Hope it’s as good for you as it will be for us.
Sili
August 31, 2011 at 1:30 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgggghhhhh!!
Ack! Ack! Ack!
Sili
August 31, 2011 at 1:30 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Congrats on your metamorphosis.
Josh Slocum
August 31, 2011 at 4:58 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Congratulations on your new digs, O!
May I meekly suggest nested comments are not a good thing?
Philip Legge
August 31, 2011 at 5:31 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Well, it’s September 1, right where I am, so welcome to FreeThoughtBlogs! Huzzah!
Neil Rickert
August 31, 2011 at 7:10 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I like the new digs.
I got the impression that Sept 1 was the date for new blogs to show up on the main page.
badjim
August 31, 2011 at 8:50 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
It’s a conspiracy to shorten my bookmarks menu. I like it.
butterfliesandwheels
September 1, 2011 at 8:54 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Sure you may Josh. I take it Sili is of the same mind. I’m more ambivalent. I know things get unwieldy when there are long discussions, but then again, it saves all that @ tedium, and all those comments where people quote something that was just said immediately above.
………Is it worse than I think?
butterfliesandwheels
September 1, 2011 at 8:54 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
And sure enough.
Josh L.
September 1, 2011 at 9:25 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I’m not a big fan of nested comments. I think they fragment the conversation, and unless you allow unlimited nesting (which means you have to hide comments below a certain depth or it’s just completely unreadable) you end up with the un-nested situation eventually once you reach the maximum depth.
Unfortunately, nesting is the default in wordpress now, and I forgot to turn it off for the new B&W. I still could change it, but it might mess with the order of comments in existing posts. Maybe we should have a vote.
butterfliesandwheels
September 1, 2011 at 9:49 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Being ambivalent, I’ll go with either one. I don’t think it would be too disastrous to mess up the order at this stage.
Josh Slocum
September 1, 2011 at 11:05 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Ophelia -
The reason I don’t like nested comments is that they make it intensely frustrating to find newer responses when you return to a post. One has to hunt through the ever-narrowing column and try to remember “Did X say that already, or is it a new reply?” That has made WEIT, for example, literally unreadable for me. I will not return to an article there because it’s just crazy-making.
Places like yours are at least as enjoyable for the quality of discussion as for the initial posts. Being able to see new responses at the bottom of the page is really important to a reader like me. When I saw the nested comments my stomach lurched; “Oh no. . . my favorite blog? Really?”
Signing up to get new comments to one’s inbox isn’t the answer, either. Sometimes there’s just too much email; sometimes you just don’t want to subscribe.
Thanks for considering this.
Josh L.
September 1, 2011 at 11:20 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I think I’m going to turn them off, then. The Josh Cabal is in agreement, at least.
Josh L.
September 1, 2011 at 11:25 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Losing the numbered comments is kind of a bummer, but those can be problematic too — for example, when a comment gets deleted or when there’s a delay in approving a comment, and everything after it gets renumbered.
Ophelia Benson
September 1, 2011 at 11:26 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
The Josh Cabal is a good one (I’m sure Josh Leach would agree) so thass cool. Plus I know what Josh S means…I half-liked being able to track particular sub-discussions at WEIT but I also got tired of having to sort through them.
Be it so.
Josh Slocum
September 1, 2011 at 11:51 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Thank you, Josh and Ophelia!
Speaking of Josh cabals, there are almost always three or four of us at any dinner party I go to. What a glut of Joshes there are among us boys born in the 70s. And my mom thought she was being original.
magistramarla
September 1, 2011 at 8:19 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Hi Ophelia,
I’m glad to see your blog here. I’ve been a long-time reader and commenter at Pharyngula.
I’ve had an article from your blog bookmarked for a long time, entitled “Why having chronic illness hasn’t turned me to god” by Amy Clare from about a year ago.
I have several autoimmune diseases and I’m quite disabled.
Amy’s article was and still is quite an inspiration to me.
Would it be possible to bump it up from your archives?
There is some interest in chronic illnesses right now thanks to Venus Williams being diagnosed with Sjogren’s (one of my diseases).
Thanks for joining FTB!