Live Blog Thread (Please Read!)

Please read this first.

The thing about the Live Blog is that commenters comments do not go up on the Live Blog automatically. They only go up with moderator intervention -- that is, when we specifically click on a comment and tell the system "Post."

And we only do that for some comments.

First of all, we can't post every comment. We literally couldn't keep up if we did. We (all the cobloggers) post as many as we can without getting too duplicative.

For example, when (not if) Obama says "Let me be clear," there will be a lot of people shouting "LET ME BE CLEAR!!!" We'll post one of those -- randomly -- but obviously there is no point posting the two dozen comments pointing out he said "Let me be clear."

We look for funny stuff and we look for insightful stuff. Bear in mind, while we're doing this, we're also posting our own comments, and our own takes, so sometimes 40 or 50 comments will zip by without getting much notice.

During a particularly important part of this douchebag's speech (hypothetically -- should there be an important part), all of the moderators are going to want to get their own two cents in, so that means, alas, that in such patches, probably there are going to be fewer commenter's posts put up. It's just that you can't do three things at once. Two, yes. Three, no.

Personally, I tend to get pretty bored with this jackass pretty early, and I stop really posting about whatever nonsense he's gibbering about, and I just start posting readers' comments. But if I'm actually engaged with him and posting about the speech (hypothetically), I can't. I can listen/watch and write, or I can listen/watch and post readers' comments, but, again, I cannot do all three at once. Two yeah, not three.

Please don't take it personally. Usually we have, I dunno, 50-100 or so people commenting on one of these; tonight we will likely have 200-300. Hell, we could have 500.

There's no way even ten people (and tonight we will have a bunch of people moderating, including most of the cobloggers and some Special Guest Moderators) can keep up with all the comments.

And we do need to be choosy, again. A Live Blog that consisted of 300 people all talking at once would be pretty incoherent. Yes, everyone's comment would be "up," but, on the other hand, no one would be reading it at all, because there would just be too much to keep up with, and a lot of duplicative material.

Please -- no "Why aren't my comments getting up?" comments! I just explained, so... you know. Plus, obviously we don't want to post such meta-comments when we have a pretty big event to blog about.

posted by Ace at 07:48 PM

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