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It’s never been so hard to do something so easy

Well that was embarrassing.

Egg on face. Eating humble pie. Feeling two feet tall. Call it what you will … we’re going through it.

With the best of intentions, as announced a few days ago in Having a say has never been easier we introduced what we hoped would be an easier system for commenting on AIMN articles.

But things went wrong from the moment it was installed. Despite all the testing, it’s a different scenario once it goes live. So it is now dead.

Worse than the embarrassment we feel over its failure to deliver, is the angst it caused to the dozens of our commenters who subscribed to it.

Most of those commenters quickly found themselves locked out from commenting on The AIMN, and those who weren’t, saw their comments go straight into moderation.

We can assure those those commenters who were locked out that they are now ‘unlocked’. And we can assure those whose comments have been held for moderation that this will no longer be the case.

We can confidently declare that the equilibrium of the universe has been restored. We do so with our heartfelt apology to those who experienced difficulty throughout this sad episode.

Now, where’s that egg slice?

32 comments

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  1. David Evans

    It’s all experience, Some we can do without, some we live through, but come out the other side laughing at ourselves. Keep up the great work, congratulations on yet another outstanding year of independent journalism. Kick back, have a very Happy Christmas and an even bigger and better, and happier New Year. Best to all.

  2. helvityni

    Please do not feel embarrassed, absolutely no need for that.

    Merry Christmas.

  3. Tina Clausen

    Glad to see that, lol. Yep, I got locked out, though had no idea where I went wrong in the registration process, hehe. Had resigned myself to waiting a month and then trying again, :-).
    Btw – please don’t insist on such difficult and long password criteria again – that was just a bit over the top.

  4. Chris Penman

    I’m still locked out

  5. Michael Taylor

    All fixed now, Chris. From now on you won’t have to login. Just comment as normal. Give it a try now and let me know what happens.

  6. Kaye Lee

    There is always a silver lining to the cloud. At least I got a bit of housework done during my lockout 🙂

    I know how stressful this was for you Michael. As always, you fixed the problem quickly. It also made me realise how much I enjoy conversing with the people here and how much I would miss it if you weren’t all around to keep me up to date with the happenings going on around the world and to reassure me that there are people who still care enough to speak up.

    All’s well that ends well.

  7. Kronomex

    Excrement happens. 🙂
    Anyway you can always blame Labor.

  8. Diannaart

    To Michael and Carol, the very best of the crazy season and a loving and happy 2019.

    To all AIMNers, I wish the top ‘O the season.

    To paraphrase Bilbo Baggins,

    “There is never enough time to get to know such excellent and admirable people. I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.“

    Nonetheless, I wish all peace, harmony and love.

  9. Kronomex

    Darn it Dianna, now I want read the adventures of Dildo Bugger in “Bored of the Rings” by The Harvard Lampoon again and I don’t know where my copy of the book is.

  10. Diannaart

    Try looking under the bed … tis a repository of wondrous things …

  11. Barry Thompson.

    Michael. When you make mistakes it is because you are tying to achieve something. Better to try and fail than never try at all.
    May you all have a safe and happy Christmas and a productive new year.

  12. totaram

    “May you all have a safe and happy Christmas and a productive new year.”
    I couldn’t put it better.
    And no stress was felt on getting locked out. Having had plenty of experience of what might be called the “loneliness of the long distance programmer”, my sympathies. It was a good effort. Perhaps another try later, after redesigning the system?

  13. Barry Thompson.

    I left the r out of trying. See, we all make mistakes!

  14. Shaun Newman

    This reminds me of my last job, they wouldn’t change things for any benefit, just change for the sake of change. As far as I was concerned it has always been perfectly easy to comment on AIM articles, which are generally of the highest standard.

    If it’s working well, please, please don’t try to fix it is the message you should take from this experience and a Merry Christmas to all and a wish for a happier and more prosperous (it could hardly be less) New Year. I really enjoy reading the comments of others on AIM.

  15. Kaye Lee

    Test.

    Ok I can comment here but not on the article I wrote today?

  16. Michael Taylor

    Kaye, that one’s a WordPress glitch. It happened to Joseph a few weeks ago – and Carol earlier in the year – but in both cases it didn’t last for long. It’s annoying, but give it a little time.

    If it doesn’t right itself shortly, clearing your cache might help but I doubt it’ll come to that.

  17. Kaye Lee

    Still no go after clearing cache. I get sent to some sort of home page with this message

    “It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for.
    Perhaps searching, or one of the links below, can help.”

  18. Michael Taylor

    Bugger. It looks like we have to wait until it rights itself. In the meantime I’ll sweep through the WordPress forums to see if there’s a quick fix.

    This has only happened a few times, but they’ve all been since we moved to a larger server.

  19. Michael Taylor

    Kaye, can I get you to send me a screenshot of what you get when trying to comment? I’ll send it on to our developer.

  20. Jon Chesterson

    Ditto, I get same as Kaye, except I couldn’t even post the comment here, unless this one gets through.

  21. Jon Chesterson

    Okay that one got through this time…

    But I can’t seem to post my original comment which I had copied and pasted. I get: ‘It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching, or one of the links below, can help. Link: https://theaimn.com/wp-comments-post.php

    Is there perhaps a word limit on comments, because I can’t think why else this message would get through and not the one I had copied and pasted.

  22. Diannaart

    Michael

    You need to tell the WordPress tech heads, you still haven’t found what you’re looking for – a login system which works

  23. Miriam English

    Michael, the desire to improve things is why most of us are here. Sometimes they don’t go quite as planned. That’s just the nature of things. Many people are too timid to even try, but all advancement depends upon those of us who do.

    I love working with computers, but I hate working with computers.
    I wonder whether the frustration is what makes the wins so rewarding.

    2019 is going to be the year I work on artificial intelligence. Imagine how many ways I can screw that up. 🙂

  24. Diannaart

    Miriam

    If all those working on AI are as thoughtful and inherently kind as you, we’d have nothing to fear.

    As for stuff ups, without those we’d never know when we get something right.

    Happy New Year

    Dianna

  25. Kaye Lee

    Still not working. Not sure how to do a screenshot sorry

  26. Michael Taylor

    Kaye, does it happen after you try to post the comment? If so, give this a try: type in a few words only, then submit. If that works, edit in the rest of the comment.

    I’ll be onto the developer this morning.

  27. Kaye Lee

    It was happening after I tried to paste a short comment I had written and copied so it wasn’t a length issue. I just tried again writing a short sentence and not using copy and paste and it worked? It seems like the pasting was the problem?

  28. Michael Taylor

    We’re getting there.

    This might seem like a silly question, but when you were pasting did your comment have “&” in it?

  29. Kaye Lee

    Nope. It’s weird. I just tried typing it here instead of pasting it and got same problem. I will email you the comment.

  30. Michael Taylor

    I’ve just shot off the email to the developer. They should know the answer.

  31. Kaye Lee

    Michael, don’t waste too much time on it. There are better things to be doing and, as you can see, the comment was nothing earth-shatteringly important. It seems to be something specific about that comment rather than a site issue because I am happily typing away here????

  32. Miriam English

    Kaye, if you’re using Windows on your computer, press the “Print Screen” key. That should take a screen shot.

    Diannaart, thank you for the nice words. And yes, failing is what lets us improve. When people ask me how I know so much about computers, I tell them I’ve just made more mistakes than most people. (Though I’m not really much of an expert… especially when contrasting me against some of my amazing friends.)

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