There’s a long lull at the L.A. Times Readers’ Rep blog, with no new comments or posts for the last three days. I have no idea why. I have a slew of unpublished comments readers have e-mailed me that were posted there, but haven’t been approved. But I’m going to hold off on publishing them, because the complete lack of activity at the blog indicates that there may be an innocent reason they’re not being published. Stay tuned.
Pronounced "Patter-EE-koh"
E-mail: Just use my moniker Patterico, followed by the @ symbol, followed by gmail.com
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As long as you promise to nail them when the opportunity presents itself.
Christoph (92b8f7) — 12/2/2007 @ 2:29 pmI had one comment published after a few hours on their Homeroom blog. Two lefties responded immediately afterward and I completed and sent another reply. It’s still not posted after five days.
I asked why it took so long and received what appeared to be a form reply – that they’re still trying to figure out how to process messages.
VERY bad service… like the rest of the dog trainer…
Clark Baker (68ef14) — 12/2/2007 @ 3:24 pmMaybe they are trying to work through commenting software issues like the ones SFGate had, and they are holding comments until the issues are resolved. If that’s the case, they probably should post something about the blog being on hiatus for technical reasons.
DRJ (a6fcd2) — 12/2/2007 @ 3:28 pmOr maybe, DRJ, they know Patterico et al. is going to nail them for bias in selecting comments for publication and are deciding how to deal with that.
Which do you think is more likely?
Christoph (92b8f7) — 12/2/2007 @ 3:31 pmChristoph,
Actually, I pick the first option or a combination of the first option and none of the above.
The Readers’ Rep journal is a good idea but I doubt the journalists who write and edit the articles are enthusiastic about getting negative feedback and immediately responding to it on a blog. It may be hard to get them to jump into an interactive format. Add in the technical aspects of moderating comments at a high traffic blog and you have issues that probably weren’t fully anticipated until the journal was online.
DRJ (a6fcd2) — 12/2/2007 @ 3:40 pmWhat I can’t understand is why the LA Times rolled out this Readers’ Rep blog without first making sure it could handle the flood of responses. The crash-and-burn “wikitorial” debacle should have given fair warning.
Bradley J. Fikes (1c6fc4) — 12/2/2007 @ 4:24 pmMaybe they have real lives and are out enjoying the weekend.
Allan Gulik (28577f) — 12/2/2007 @ 5:40 pmThree and a half day weekend. Sweet.
So that’s why people work there!
Patterico (3eadcc) — 12/2/2007 @ 7:40 pmI’m inclined to think they are wokring out technical kinks, maybe overloaded comment section… coupled with the more troubling issue of figuring out the best way to handle audacious, intelligent and insightful readers who (gasp) deign to challenge them…. publicly! It would not surprise me at all if they truly believed this new interactive blog would be one big love fest of affirmation and kudos…
Dana (bead19) — 12/2/2007 @ 8:48 pmWhat would make you think it’s an “overloaded comment system”? I know many WordPress blogs, which handle 1500+ comments a thread on less enterprise-grade servers than the L.A. Times has — as long as the site has wp-cache enabled, which comes, by the way, as a default plugin.
Indeed.
Christoph (92b8f7) — 12/2/2007 @ 8:57 pmThere’s something to be said for finding a way to avoid obsessive behavior. And, frankly, it seems unlikely that anything they do will please you.
Allan Gulik (28577f) — 12/2/2007 @ 8:59 pmAnd, frankly, it seems unlikely that anything they do will please you.
How about posting the comments, Allan…all of them?
Paul (36cd46) — 12/2/2007 @ 9:01 pmThat’s true, but probably not in the way you intended. There’s plenty the L.A. Times could do to please its critics, but frankly, it seems unlikely that they will do it.
Xrlq (8b1564) — 12/3/2007 @ 4:33 pm