This post will be a catch-all for questions and comments about the operation of the ASA Voices blog (and the other ASA blogs). Please note that we are still finding our way as to what will serve the ASA best. If you have ideas or opinions about how we have done things so far, please let us know. I can’t promise that we’ll change because of your comment, but it will certainly be heard.
Test comment from Merv. I was attempting log in on a defunct Voices page of the asa3 site, apparently. Thanks for your patience, Randy & others, helping me get this sorted out finally!
Terry Is there some reason that XML-RPC is not enabled on the asa site for our blogs? I am trying to use Qumana wysiwyg editor and it needs remote procedure call. No rush!
I hit the submit button and am trying to edit this post.
I have been getting all my posts and comments on my email reader and find it much better for blogs that have more than a couple of posts a week. Normally my browser is Thunderbird but I find it easier to bring up IE to get the proper url that feeds into my email reader. For example:
http://www.asa3online.org/Voices/feed/
Overall I don’t find things much different now than when we had the email list except that it is possible to include image and charts and I don’t see conversations like I did with the email system. Sometimes I forget that I have a comment or post in progress and navigate away from the blog page and loose whatever I have already written as occurred in this comment.
I have to wonder if everybody had html enabled mail readers if we are much better off. Also I’m not sure and the server at Calvin would have handled images and charts and html markup.
I came across the following on a blog I follow. Is it accurate? Is it more (or less) than this descrption? Is it a topic we might debate here?
“The Manhattan Declaration is a manifesto released late last year by about 150 conservative Christian leaders attacking abortion, embryonic stem cell research and same-sex marriage.”
I note that posts here appear out of chronological order. At least to me. Obviously that is ungood.
It does seem chaotic and I’m not sure I’ve figured it out. What I think is happening is this:
Posts are all in reverse chronological order.
Comments are appended to each post to which they apply.
Comments are in reverse chronological order but replies to comments are pegged to the comment to which they are replying, somewhat indented. That indentation might be hard to see sometimes so it looks like a crazy sequence.
If you go to either the Entries RSS link or the Comments RSS link, you can reorder them by clicking on “Date” to go in either order.
We’re all learning together on this!
Thanks, Randy
I don’t want to criticize, and I really hate to make suggestions that are going to cause other people a lot of work. But I have also been thinking that this layout of nested comments inside comments is going to quickly become unmanageable, in terms of organizing and being able to follow discussions. We have a history of lengthy comments and discussions on many topics, and I find the positioning and ordering of the nested comments to be a bit confusing and difficult to follow. But I tend to just read the e-mails, not try to read online.
I’ve been on other discussion boards where it was laid out differently, with hierarchies of posts and replies listed by title, and you can scan the list to pick out those you wish to read. This is one example (http://www.teachingmom.com/boards/forum/index.php?action=main&forumid=24), but I think I’ve seen others where you could choose to display “View Whole Thread” to look at a particular response and all sub-responses under it. Not sure what could easily be done with this present site to change to a different format.
@John Burgeson
Burgy, the “rules” are the same as before. This is a faith-science list not a general Christian theology list, nor a general Christian ethics list, nor a discussion of political viewpoints. Of course, there are scientific aspects to each of the topics you’ve identified from the Manhattan Declaration. It seems to me, however, that for the most part the Manhattan Declaration is more of a political statement and has little to do with the particular related faith-science discussion.
@John Burgeson
Ungood is in the eye of the beholder. As Randy pointed out the comments were nested so that Comments on Comments stayed together. This is why things were not chronological. I have turned that off for ASA Voices. (Randy, please take note and advise if that was an ungood thing to do.) So now, everything is in chronological order by posting date. It appears that if you reply to a Comment that WordPress now creates a link back to that Comment. If you want that connection then leave that link in place as you write your comment.
@Randy Isaac
I seem to be a very slow learner! I am still baffled by the system.
I just saw (accidently) Terry’s reply to me on the Manhatten Declaration, written 5 days ago.
j
@Terry M. Gray
Terry — you wrote: “Burgy, the “rules” are the same as before. This is a faith-science list not a general Christian theology list, nor a general Christian ethics list, nor a discussion of political viewpoints. ”
I am unsurprised at your post. We see things so differently. In this case, you get to set the rules, and everybody here must accept them. You also get to judge what comments are “within the rules,” and, again, mere ASA members must accept your judgments as authoritative.
Obviously, in this case, what I see id “faith-science” you see as “political.” I am simply not able to understand that POV. The Manhatten Declatation is based, at least in part, on a faith-science foundation, one which I happen to think is fatally flawed.
You add: “Of course, there are scientific aspects to each of the topics you’ve identified from the Manhattan Declaration.”
And it is those scientific aspects which are (or should be) of interest.
But you are the boss here. I’ll go away.