Shaking a fist at a largely uncaring world!

.

I'm just feeling like treating myself to a rant about blogs.

Don't worry, I will lie down in a minute and all will be well. Here goes:

1. Word verification.

What are people hoping to achieve with word verification? I have ten blogs (yeah, really. Some inactive, some experimental and one that lets me have a therapeutic outlet without scaring the neighbours), none of them with word verification and I have never had any serious problem with them.

Occasionally some bod (or bot) will post a suspect comment but they often do it in old posts and so no one sees them anyway. When I did the sex blog post on the effect of Viagra on the drooping of cut roses I got a couple (2) dodgy comments but they are easy to delete.

All word verification does is slow up people who are out to comment-graze.

And most of us bloggers want people to post comments; make it easy for them! How many have something like "Please comment, you really want to, go on, just do it" above your comment screen but then have word verification? Mmmm?


2. New format word verification

Most of the blogs that have word verification look like this:


But some of the new ones look like this:



The nasty difference is that the old style word entry field will let you push 'return' after entering the word and publishes your comment.

The newer style one deletes your comment if you hit 'return' instead of clicking 'finish'. A few times, after composing possibly the most brilliant repartee for a blog known to man, I have deleted it accidentally by pushing 'return'.

3. Moderation

I can sort of see the use of moderation if you feel that you have enemies and want to vet the comments before they a posted. But it is no great thing to delete a troublesome comment. It is disconcerting to post a comment and then wonder where it has gone (no chance for last minute speeling apolgies. Sorry.). And, for the mentally challenged like me, I sometimes comment twice on the same blog. Always embarrassing.

So what is the purpose of moderation? I'm not really sure as it is easy to remove unwanted comments. Mind you it is often funnier to leave them there.

4. Moderation AND word verification.

Really, if you are going to moderate the comment anyway, spare us the hoo-ha of word verification. Why have word verification if your are going to moderate anyway?

5. Slow loading blogs.

Some blogs show the last 50 posts and take ages to load. Just show the last 10 or so. Let the occasional interested person click the 'Older Posts' link. That's what it's there for. Widgets, gadgets, awards, fancy backgrounds and all the other 'guff' in the sidebars can take for ever to load. Do you need them all? People have come to read your latest post, not find out the ambient temperature in Irkutsk.

6. Music.

Arrrgh! Your music is part of you, true enough, but I don't necessarily share your taste. And neither does my wife trying to sleep in the next room.

7. Videos.

They can be funny but they are time consuming and bandwidth consuming. Sometimes they are not funny, they are just sweet and twee. I don't do much sweet and twee. At least give some idea of what they are about and how long they will run for.

That's it.

Time for a nice cup of tea and a wee lie down.
...