T w e n t y S i d e d
First up I would like to apologize for this screwup. I fully recognize the irony of my thanks to you all for keeping up commenting, immediately followed by us inadvertently making it impossible to comment.
Unfortunately one of the many things my dad never set up was a user management system. So the site defaulted to requiring a WordPress login. With the combination of WordPress’ centralized setup and the site being out of date, there is currently no way to easily make an account. Which we found out the awkward way when we noticed suddenly nobody was commenting at all. And some further testing proved that WordPress didn’t actually link to any signup page, or provide an easy way to be logged in.
As of now comments should be back online, with only one major adjustment that won’t affect how they function. I will remain the primary moderator of Bay’s comments section as well as watching the rest until we can either find a better long-term solution or the problem dies down.
Thank you for your patience, and sorry about the mess.
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Yeah, I was wondering about that, and noting that no one else was commenting on anything pretty confirmed that it wasn’t just me. I’d have dropped a comment about it but … [grin].
All of us were reaching the same conclusion at the same time. A few hours of no comments? Sure. 12 hours? Is there an internet trunk outage? 24 hours? Something is wrong in the change WE made.
I tried to tell you on Patreon!
Yeah, I eventually sent an email to the default old address, probably around the time you started noticing something was off. Honestly it’s absolutely awful that you need to put these measures in in the first place. I don’t know how much “by hand” moderation Shamus had to do, although I’d be shocked if he didn’t get some stinkers after daring to, say, criticize the Mass Effect series. Honestly the most surprising thing to me is that this does look like someone who bothered to check the context which implies they were at least vaguely familiar with Shamus’ work when they started and yet at the same time they are so far removed from anything and everything that Shamus stood for in online interactions…
Yep. I was also about to send an email to the old address, then figured out that surely the fact that 0 Comments were on the last few posts would tip them off. :)
Thanks for fixing it!
Is there a feasible way to volunteer some additional moderation as needed?
We’ve considered it off and on but there’s a few logistical issues with how the site set up that has us waiting on the idea, At least for the time being.
Hah! I was trying to work my way around the thing… Nearly got a WordPress account running in the hope that would have done it.
I am so sorry you guys are going through this nonsense, please do take the measures needed and take care of yourselves!
Truly some people are the worst
I DID actually go through and sign up for a WordPress account (which itself was far from intuitive), but I’m glad that things are at least sorted now. XD
Still, I completely agree with your second point. Take whatever measures you need to protect the site against toxic elements. That was always one thing I was super fond of with the Twenty Sided community; we always had respect, and decorum, for each other. If people can’t play nice on this site even if we disagree, then I can’t say I’ll be sad to see them go.
I had clicked through to the WordPress site, but with no obvious login there I wasn’t even sure there was a “wordpress account” and figured I’d wait till someone figured it out and posted. Only natural it turns out there’s some “blargh you’re not up to date so screw you!” problem there too (hi Steam, deciding all my library that runs just fine on Win7 will no longer do so because they’re yanking Steam from old OS’s!). I will resume commenting on the other recent articles when I get around to reading them.
On my last comment it seemed like my lovely avatar had changed. I have grown a bit attached to it. Though it could be that I made a typo in my e-mail address. Testing again!
It is back! Great! Must have been a typo then.
Sorry for the inconvenience of two useless comments.
Shamus did a lot of custom coding, which made sense, and allowed him to do a lot things on Twentysided the way he wanted it done. But since it’s mostly little things here and there, all over the place, we never really know for sure what any one change will do.
And Shamus would LOVE to hear about Steam going and doing exactly what he kept yelling about them going and doing for so many years.
On one blog I read, only your first comment was put into waiting until approval. It is also a wordpress blog. That may help against trolls who use throwaway e-mail adresses all the time.
That’s how mine works.
Glad to see you figured it out. I was also trying to figure out a way to get in touch with you out of band, but… got lazy before I succeeded. :)
I’m truly sorry that all this is necessary, and if some help from an old coder would be useful, you should have my email from this even though it’s not published.
This comment has been removed for violating community guidelines
Ooooooh, that explains it. See, I was reading through some old posts in the last couple of days, and when the option to comment was gone and asked for a WP login I simply assumed it was some artifact of them being old. I had no idea it was an issue with the whole website.
I *thought* something was funky. We have never been so back. <3
Honestly, as an old-timer, I’m really glad the old system is back. How anybody could jump in, but the site was mostly a civil community anyway is a big reason I’ve stuck around for so long.
I’m sad to hear about the current wave of harassment, though. Really hope it dies down, I know how much that shit can weigh on you emotionally even when you know intellectually that’s exactly the reaction the arsehats wants.
For what it’s also worth from a site old-timer, I’ve enjoyed the new content. Just haven’t had much to add to it in the comments lately.