Blogger Bitching #4

Well, here's a winner of a post idea. It will either a) not appeal to you in the slightest or b) offend you in one way or another. Who knows, though, maybe there are some other options as well, like c) you'll agree and change your dastardly ways or d) you'll call me on my b.s.

Anyway, the crux of this hinges on one simple fact: I visit a lot of blogs on a daily basis. Regardless of my LAMB shepherding, there are a number of sites that I enjoy reading frequently. I won't call out any specific names, but if some of these bitches apply to you, don't be too offended - just appease me and fix whatever the problem is.

Bitch #1 - Wordpress Wants to Really, Really Make Sure
If you're familiar with the previous Bitches I've made, you know that the lack of a comment subscription checkbox (to receive subsequent comments by email) is a serious issue for me, so much so that I've already bitched about it twice.

I will not subject you to a third time, as most every blog I read currently has this option. Yay! I win.

However. Much as the blogging world ♥s Wordpress, I take issue with the way their subscription process works. Here's how it shakes out:

I go to a WP blog and leave a comment. While doing so, I click the handy checkbox that indicates that I'd like to be notified of follow-up comments via email. Super. Sometime later, I go to my email, and lo and behold, there's one from the site I just left a comment at. But it's not a follow-up comment. No, it's an email with a link, telling me that I need to confirm my comment subscription by click on the link.

Now, once I click the link, I don't have to do anything. It takes me to the Master Wordpress Comment Subscription Management Page, which shows me every thread I'm subscribed to at every WP-hosted site. I can close the window at will. Not too much trouble, right?

Wrong. Granted, it's about a five second process. But why the hell should I be cluttered with a meaningless email and be forced to click to open a meaningless window just to subscribe to a post's comments? I ALREADY CHECKED THE BOX INDICATING I WANTED FUTURE COMMENTS SENT BY EMAIL. Let's suppose, for instance, that I checked that box by accident - what's the worst that could happen? If you guessed "you'd get an email when the next comment was posted," you're 100% right. And if I didn't like it, I could simply click the "unsubscribe" link from email.

Stop hitting me over the head with stupid, Wordpress. My confirmation that I wanted emails for future comments came when I checked the box in the first place.

Bitch #2 - DIV
If you're not a Blogspot blogger, you might as well stop reading this one right now. And if you never use the "Edit HTML" tab when composing your messages, you're safe to skip it, too. In fact, I don't even know how to explain this one properly.

Put it this way: When I start writing a new post, I usually do so in "Compose" mode. It's a much more visually appealing interface than HTML, and it gives me an idea of how the post will look when completed, as is the intended goal. But often, I think something needs fixing or whatever, and I go to the "Edit HTML" tab to do so. It's there where I discover that the evil <div> tag has taken over. And yet it's usage is inconsistent; it appears as though every time I hit "Return" it shows up, but not always. I hate the <div> tag and will delete it any time I see it. That's all, really.

Bitch #3 - Ungrateful fools
Ask me about this one sometime later...let's just say it has to do with a certain awards show over at a certain movie blog association.

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Got a bitch of your own, for me or some other (non-specific) site? Put your complaining pants on and let me hear it.

And then...

Blogger Bitching #3

Well, here's a winner of a post idea. It will either a) not appeal to you in the slightest or b) offend you in one way or another. Who knows, though, maybe there are some other options as well, like c) you'll agree and change your dastardly ways or d) you'll call me on my b.s.

Anyway, the crux of this hinges on one simple fact: I visit a lot of blogs on a daily basis. Regardless of my LAMB shepherding, there are a number of sites that I enjoy reading frequently. I won't call out any specific names, but if some of these bitches apply to you, don't be too offended - just appease me and fix whatever the problem is.

Bitch #1 - Comment Subscription via Email
I'm not sure if the title gave it away or not, but this is just the third time I've done an entry in this Bitching series. And yet, I'm already repeating one of my bitches...

But it's with good reason. Look, all you people that still don't offer any comment subscription, I'm thinking of you more than me. You do want repeat visitors to your site, right? Right? Well, guess what? If I leave a comment and there's no email telling me when a reply has been made, there's an 82% chance that I'm not going to go back to the site later to check and see if my nugget of wisdom has been praised or panned by you or your other fellow readers. Compound that with my frustration that every time I leave a comment, I get pissed about your lack of email subscription option, and I'm now thinking about not returning to your site at all.

And before you start, don't even try to tell me to subscribe to your comments via a feed reader. The goal I set for my feed reader is for the number of unread items to read "0," a goal that I just about never achieve. The last thing I'm gonna do is start subscribing to comment feeds there, where the average per day for one site could be 30 or more, depending on the popularity of the site. No effing way.

Bitch #2 - Podcaaaaaaasssssstttts
It should come as no surprise that, now that I'm producing a podcast, I've become an insufferable bandwagon jumper as it relates to them. I've asked other LAMB sites that do them to let me know so that I might post a roundup of them there, but aside from being potentially beneficial to them and serving as a general public service to those interested in movie podcasts, I've come to really enjoy listening to them (I know - big surprise, huh?). I'll even be posting a lit of which ones I'm listening to regularly in the next few days.

Anyway, length. WTF, people? Some of these (and some with no more than two people on the podcast) are 2+ hours!

"But Fletch," you're thinking, "you could just fast-forward or not listen or listen in sections. Stop being such a whiny bitch."

No. First of all, no one puts chapters on their podcasts despite the availability (at least through GarageBand; I don't either). If you get into fast-forwarding through bits here and there, you really have no idea when one topic stops and another starts. But that misses the point anyway: as much as I like to listen to these podcasts, they are all amateur (yes, including the LAMBcast). No one is producing radio-ready content; either due to a lack of charisma, quality content or sharp enough editing, many are rambly enough as it is.

Podcasts in general should not be over 60 minutes, and only then if there's a glut of excellent content. If you've got that much more to talk about, break it up into multiple shows.

Bitch #3 - Stop toying with me, Technorati
I'm not sure how new it is (I think very), but Technorati now ranks apparently all of the sites in its listing by a set number of genres. Shockingly, BC is listed in the film section. But their top secret formula has me bouncing all over the damn place, and what's worse, it's inconsistent with their "main" Technorati ranking. I've climbed in that main ranking, but where I used to be in the top 200 or 300 for film blogs, now I can't even find myself in the entire list of 800+. What the hell, Techno? Are my magical authority points going up or down (I'd ask why but that's like trying to learn the location of a rainbow's pot o' gold)? Am I more or less influential than I was yesterday? I need to know these things...

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Got a bitch of your own, for me or some other (non-specific) site? Put your complaining pants on and let me hear it.

And then...

Blogger Bitching #2

In case the "#2" wasn't enough of a clue, I did one of these some months ago. Here be the intro:

Well, here's a winner of a post idea. It will either a) not appeal to you in the slightest or b) offend you in one way or another. Who knows, though, maybe there are some other options as well, like c) you'll agree and change your dastardly ways or d) you'll call me on my b.s.

Anyway, the crux of this hinges on one simple fact: I visit a lot of blogs on a daily basis. Regardless of my LAMB shepherding, there are a number of sites that I enjoy reading frequently. I won't call out any specific names, but if some of these bitches apply to you, don't be too offended - just appease me and fix whatever the problem is.

Bitch #1 - Truncs
* Hey! You with the truncated and/or invisible content showing up for your site when I check it in a feed reader! Stop that. Stop that now. Limiting the number of characters in a post (or worse yet, showing only the title of the post) showing does not make me desire to click to go to your site. There's a reason I'm using a feed reader in the first place - it's because I want to scan all the available content. If I like your post, I will click to go to your site and leave a comment.

The point is, if I see you have truncated posts for feed readers, I will go out of my way not go to your site. Sorry, but them's the breaks.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, it's probably because you don't use a feed reader.

Bitch #2 - Sloth-like Loading
A while back, I featured a neat little widget on this site and the LAMB from a widget maker I'll kindly not name. It essentially served the same purpose that Blogger's "Blog List" does now, only with a bit more functionality - it was more or less a portable feed reader, all Java-y or Flash-y or whatever it is that made it dynamic rather than static. And it was really cool...until it wasn't. It started slowing down the loading of the site to a snail's pace. I took that thing off the page faster than you can say "Get him a bodybag, yeahh!!!"

This is all a long way of saying: pay attention to how fast/slow your site loads. There are more than a handful of sites (er, LAMBs) that I've been to that have loaded so slow as to essentially freeze my computer for the two minutes that they load for. Bad news if this is you: I ain't comin' back to your site. Sorry. It could be the greatest thing since sliced bologna, but if it brings me to a screeching halt and/or takes more than a minute to load, I just can't do it. Don't you visit your own site and notice its snail's pace?

Bitch #3 - Donate buttons
I get it. Really, I do. Many of us (all?) do this for nothing, in it for the love of movies, music, TV - whatever it is, we spend hours a week writing, reading, and commenting about it because we love it. And 99% of us do it for free, or at least some approximation of free - the $40 I've made over two years with AdSense ain't buying me too many steak dinners.

I also understand that many people who do this are students and/or not making a ton of money. I empathize and sympathize simultaneously, even though that may or may not be possible. But I have bad news: everyone wants to get paid for blogging, and hardly anyone's doing it. Everyone would like random strangers (or acquaintances, even) to give them money, but I don't imagine many people are getting that done, either. Now, maybe I'm just ignorant - if you have a donate button and you're gettin' paid like the handsome homeless, let's hear it. However, I'm guessing that those little "Donate" buttons and pleas for moolah are about as effective as the "On the road - pleaze help - God bless" sign currently being held by your local crackhead.

Bitch #4 - Linky open new window
This one's specific to Blogger and not any blogger, if you catch my drift. Every damn time I insert a hyperlink that I want to open in a new window (i.e. not one on this site), I have to go to "Edit HTML" mode and manually insert "target="blank"" after the link. Would it be that hard for the hyperlink button to have a dropdown option so that I could choose "same window" or "new window" (or god forbid, "new tab," since just about anyone that surfs with an up-to-date browser these days uses tabbed browsing)?

Is this on me? Am I missing something? Just don't tell me to hack my main site's HTML so that every link will open in a new window - that puts me in the same boat. Instead of adding code, I'd just be deleting code for every other link.

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Got a bitch of your own, for me or some other (non-specific) site? Put your complaining pants on and let me hear it.

And then...

A quick note to my Blogger brethren (and sisthren)

Recently, Blogger unveiled a new feature called "Blogger Following." It essentially takes some aspects of a feed reader like Google Reader and melds them into Blogger (not coincidentally also owned by Google).

For the life of me I can't figure out why they did it (well, I can kind of, but nevermind that for now). To me, it seems akin to Yahoo Mail starting up a new system called Yahoo Mail Child, in which you get messages for your messages.

Now, if you weren't already using Yahoo Mail (or a feed reader), I can understand why you might like to use the Following feature. Aside from being a feed reader in and of itself, it also gives Blogger users a chance to show off who their following and who's following them (though one could argue that the "Blog List" feature does the former as well).

Short story long, I'm afraid I just can't use this, and I ask you to not be offended if it doesn't look like I'm "Following" you. The fact is, I have 103 subscriptions through Google Reader, and duplicating the time it takes to either read or mark as read all the posts from all those sites is not something I'm looking to do. Likewise, I'm not looking to replace Google Reader - if it's not broke, why fix it?

If you really want to know if I'm following you, just ask. Or check your subscription stats - if you see someone from Arizona, it's probably me.

And then...

Blogger Bitching

Well, here's a winner of a post idea. It will either a) not appeal to you in the slightest or b) offend you in one way or another. Who knows, though, maybe there are some other options as well, like c) you'll agree and change your dastardly ways or d) you'll call me on my bullsh*t.

Anyway, the crux of this hinges on one simple fact: I visit a lot of blogs on a daily basis. Regardless of my LAMB shepherding, there are a number of sites that I enjoy reading frequently. I won't call out any specific names, but if some of these bitches apply to you, don't be too offended - just appease me and fix whatever the problem is.

Bitch #1 - Comments
Would it be too hard for you to have comment subscription? I'm fairly certain that it's an easy plug-in/option for all blog hosting services (it's ridiculously easy with Blogger; in fact, I don't even think it's a choice - it's automatic), and it's probably the central component in driving back return traffic. If I (or any other yahoo) care enough to leave a comment about how I loved or hated your review of Patch Adams, I probably care enough to hear your reply back.

Now, you might be saying to yourself, "Well, why don't you just visit the site in the next day or two?" To which I would say that "Yeah, I probably will," though in the midst of visiting 75 blogs today and leaving 15 comments, do you really want and/or expect me to keep track of every post that everyone writes, much less which ones I left comments on? And then I'm supposed to check back daily to see if you said "Thanks for the comment" or something, only you only log in once a week, so I have to check back six times just for those four words?

I think not. Just let me subscribe, goddamnit. Thanks.

Bitch #2 - More about comments...
Unless you get 1,000 spammers a day, please tell me why you have Comment Moderation and Word Verification and require my Social Security Number and Date of Birth to leave a friggin' comment. You get 15 visitors a day if you're lucky - are you really that much of a control freak? Are you that afraid that someone might disagree or say something disparaging to you? If so, maybe blogging isn't for you. Check out the responses to my IMDb Top 250 post from a couple months ago - I was called nothing short of the antichrist for daring to not love old movies. Flamers happen; embrace them for the humor they bring.

And besides, those word verifcation things are really a pain in the ass to read. I'd have better luck with some of them if they were in braille.

Bitch #3 - Greatest hits?
Again, unless you're a nationally syndicated columnist or get 1,000 unique visitors a day, who the hell are you to think that you're eligible to publish a "greatest hits" (aka recycling) post every now and then? Just because you're too lazy and/or uninspired to come up with some new material doesn't justify your rehashing some crappy post from a year ago and repurposing it as something new.

(Oh wait - maybe this one's just for me.)

Bitch #4 - RIP Dead People
Look, I understand that some of you aspire to run a "movie news" site, complete with 10 posts a day about who has inked a three-picture deal with Paramount and box office updates every 10 minutes. You all are excepted from this bitch.

No, this is intended more at the people like me who write mostly reviews and lists and such, yet feel that every time some actor drops dead that a post is warranted and/or needed to commemorate that person's career. Listen, I liked Sidney Pollack as much as the next guy (which is to say that I found him to be a capable director and an actor that constantly "classed up the joint"), but really, I'm not a friend or member of his family - who cares what I have to say about his passing.

Sure, the shocking death of someone like Heath Ledger (or River Phoenix) certainly might warrant some additional emotional outporing from those that don't typically cover "celebrity news" (births, deaths, marriages, etc.), but when a septugenarian (or older) dies, I'm not cold for saying that it's not news, so please don't treat it as such.

Bitch #5 - Diarrheadvertising
Your experience may be different from mine, or maybe your expectations are different. But really, unless you're making greater than $50/month (minimum) on your blogvertising, is it really worth it to make your site look like something out of NASCAR?

Sure, I've got a couple text link ads both here and at the LAMB, but I'd hardly say that they're eyesores. Really, it's a bit of a wonder that I've even kept them, considering that I've made less than $30.00 in probably more than a year, despite some super high-traffic days courtesy of IMDb.

Though maybe I'm just bad at attracting top-tier advertisers. Sure - that's it.

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Got a bitch of your own, for me or some other (non-specific) site? Put your complaining pants on and let me hear it.

And then...