Thursday, November 08, 2007

you're making it real hard to be supportive, people

I have been diligently trying to uphold my promise to leave witty, encouraging comments on as many Nablopomo blogs as I can. And it's been going pretty well. Until today when I stumbled upon an interesting blog, read the entire lengthy post and even formulated a funny comment. But when I tried to post it, the blog began strong-arming me to join Vox, its bloghost. What's up with that? Disgusted and dejected, I was turned off.

And then the same thing happened to me with a WordPress user. This is really annoying, because his blog was very funny and I had a moment of genius-comment clarity, but was faced with having to register with WordPress to leave it. Seriously people, WHAT GIVES? I totally understand the thing about not wanting spam in anonymous comments and even just needing to know who it is commenting. I'm down with word verification and even submitting my email address. But registering? This kind of exclusivity is especially irritating. Dude, if you want to be so limiting on who can participate, why throw your hat into such an open and welcoming arena as NaBloPoMo in the first place?

I haven't had much luck with the randomizer, which seems clunky and not really random, so I've been clicking on interesting-sounding links from the list to some success. Granted, I have a little more time on my hands these days, but I'm working on DIALUP, people. One homepage can take up to 2 minutes to load if it's got enough bells and whistles and after I've read the post and crafted a comment, to not be able to share it is sort of a slap in the face.

I'm on a very strict schedule of sleeping, cooking, eating, not doing dishes and watching bad '80s movies on tv (yesterday I watched War of the Roses). I do not have time for this.
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15 comments:

  1. lemon11/08/2007 1:13 PM

    lol..so true! it seriously is pissing off when you want to say something and those snobbish non blogger comment boxes don't let you!

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  2. Anonymous11/08/2007 1:47 PM

    I feel your pain! I gave up on the randomizer too!

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  3. Jon11/08/2007 2:01 PM

    This year's randomizer is terrible compared to last years. I know they thought they were improving it, but it takes me forever to load the pages, and I have a pretty decent connection. As to having to register before you can leave a comment, that's garbage. I would rather cheat on my taxes. And you know how I feel about my taxes.

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  4. Anonymous11/08/2007 2:31 PM

    I'm sorry...did you have to register to comment on mine?

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  5. JyllianM11/08/2007 2:42 PM

    YOw, did you have to register on mine? I thought I opened it up as wide as I could without letting spam through. Bad problem lately.
    I gave up on the randomizer too, it wasn't random. I got the same blogs over and over.
    Thanks for stopping by mine.

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  6. Anonymous11/08/2007 3:15 PM

    Thanks for stopping by my blog. I've tried to find one blog a day via the randomizer to add to my nablo list on google reader, but I have become discouraged. Randomizer means random generator of what... over 5000 blogs. Statically, it would be impossible for me to always be getting the same 30. So, I've put you on my google reader for today's find.

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  7. omar11/08/2007 7:08 PM

    I didn't use last year's randomizer, but I haven't been impressed with the one this year.

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  8. Sphincter11/08/2007 9:06 PM

    That's so frustrating. I watched War Games again recently and it was still pure genius. (Ok, it was fun to laugh at how enormous the computers were.)

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  9. Syar11/08/2007 11:07 PM

    I've not had anybody complaining to me about comments since I moved to WordPress, so surely it's not like a default thing where WP prompts it for every commenter.

    That sucks. I have felt the loss of too many witty comments, so I empathize.

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  10. Anonymous11/09/2007 7:09 AM

    I totally agree with the register to comment complaint. I had the same issue with this year's Blogathon with people only allowing comments from registered Blogger or Diaryland users. I've given up on the Randomizer, too, and like you, use the the blogroll to find new fodder for my feed reader.

    I know my page loads slowly for those on dialup and I have tried trimming it down, but I wasn't satisfied with the results (the designer in me, I guess).

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  11. Mischa11/09/2007 8:17 AM

    That's so irritating! I try and leave cool wee comments on people's pages then end up changing my mind in case they don't 'get' what I'm talking about. It sucks =(

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  12. cadiz1211/09/2007 12:21 PM

    oh no, all of your blogs are perfectly great. i refuse to register so if i've commented, then your sites haven't asked me to. and i only mind waiting for sites to load if i spent all that time waiting and couldn't leave my snappy comment.

    thanks for coming by, everyone!

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  13. Dave11/10/2007 3:06 AM

    I've noticed the same thing about the Randomizer. It's not random at all, and worse, it doesn't seem to work the way I expect it to.

    Funny, I saw the entry above about WarGames, and I thought they were referring to the title of MY last post, which you just commented on. Weird.

    Thanks for visiting me, by the way. I hope you come back now and again. I know I'll be visiting here regularly!

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  14. Northern_Girl11/13/2007 4:58 PM

    Hey - I don't do randomizers...they are so not random. (Thanks for leaving a comment - thought I'd return the favor.) Good luck with the posting every day thing. I'm sucking air.

    And War Games? Totally rocks. I wanted to WOPR all to myself - just so I could play war...um...games. Yeah. That.

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  15. Bri11/16/2007 1:40 AM

    I'm glad you took the time to comment on mine.:) I actually only figured out how to allow anonomous comments recently. Anyway, I'm glad you stopped by and I love your blog.

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