I see that the Carnival of the Infosciences has a new administrator. Chadwick Seagraves at InfoSciPhi has taken over administration duties from Greg Schwartz at Open Stacks.
I’d like to personally thank Greg for all he has done for the Carnival! Also, thanks to Chadwick for taking it over. I’m hopeful that the new every other week schedule will help it become what I’ve always thought it could be.
Now that the “pressure” of every week is off now, how about making a submission or recommending someone else’s piece, or maybe even hosting. While it is a bit of work, I can personally vouch for the fun of hosting a Carnival. And not that this is the most important thing in blogging, but it will also seriously drive up visits to your blog. It’ll be up to you to keep them, though. 
So that I can’t be accused of preaching, I just asked Chadwick to sign me up for hosting in January. Hopefully, I’ll get the week before classes start. Otherwise, the week after classes start won’t be so bad, maybe. And honestly, if you have never hosted you best keep your preachy thoughts to yourself. It’s not worth counting, but I may still be in the lead for number of times hosting, #6, #9, #25, and #42.
So, c’mon folks, do your part. Submit, recommend, host. There are a whole lot of interesting things being said by bloggers in this arena. No one can read everything, or even just all of the “good” stuff, so help us point to the “best,” the “interesting,” the “useful,” and so on so that we may all benefit.
I was going to comment on “A-Listers” getting in on the Carnival, too. But I have very ambiguous and dichotomous views on this. I think it is (may be?) good for the Carnival generally, but I don’t like it either. And that is probably too much said already. So, whether you are your only subscriber or you have several thousand, please help the Carnival and get in on the fun!
Aside on captchas
I tried to leave a shorter message at InfoSciPhi but the captcha thing kept failing. And, yes, I saw the message about refreshing. Four times. Every time typed exactly correctly. Every time failure. Maybe it’s a specific browser issue, or some other malady. But these things really only work to shut down conversation. I realize that many feel they are a necessity with the hordes of evil spammers out there, and maybe they are. But they are also something besides necessary; especially when they refuse to work! [And yes, I mentioned this to Chadwick when I emailed him. This is not a rant about InfoSciPhi, but captchas in general. In the specific case, maybe it'll alert him to some issues with his implementation.]
Again, a very big round of applause and huzzahs to Greg and Chadwick for past and future work on the Carnival!
Update: I got the 8 January slot to host the Carnival! So please do us all a favor and make some submissions or recommendations. Let’s keep this thing alive.
6 responses so far ↓
1 walt crawford // Nov 3, 2006 at 11:41 am
I wonder about capchas, even for those of us with normal eyesight. My weblog may not be hot stuff, but I do get around 1,200 sessions a day, and I do get a fair number of comments…and, with Blake Carver’s server tuning, my choice of blocking all linkbacks, and only moderately severe Spam Karma settings, spam isn’t enough of a problem to require Capcha. (From what I’ve heard, Akismet might do even better.)
I can appreciate that some sites really do need capcha-style tools because they get way too much spam or because the owners don’t have time to check what does show up. But I’d like to think of Capcha as a third-to-last resort (the last two being full moderation or turning off comments entirely).
2 Mark // Nov 3, 2006 at 11:57 am
Hi Walt,
I agree with you. And from what you’ve said on your blog, I imagine you get a lot more than me. Akismet is working wonderfully for me so far. We’ll see how it holds up as the new template is supposed to be optimized for search engines [not why I chose it, but nothing to snort about either]. It does seem as if the spam has shot up as well in the last day but, so far, Akismet has caught it all.
I have no idea what my traffic is anymore as I haven’t taken the time to learn how to read my log files. Guess I ought to do that one of these days.
Maybe I am gaining some benefit from Blake’s server tuning, too.
I do appreciate that many people get for more spam than I do visits, so I can understand the “necessity” of such measures, but they just seem so antithetical to conversational-style blogging. I also understand not everyone is trying to have a conversation….
Anyway, Chadwick was more than gracious and was happy to know that there may be an issue with his implementation.
3 walt crawford // Nov 3, 2006 at 6:39 pm
Mark, You don’t need to learn how to read your log files, since you’re on LISHost. Urchin comes standard with every LISHost account. That’s how I get my numbers…
Just go here:
http://lishost.org/support/
to link to Urchin–or, for that matter, directly here:
http://lishost.org:8082/
[Which you'll want to bookmark.]
All you need is your accountname and password.
If you have problems, shoot Blake a line.
I can check all three of my sites (waltcrawford.name, walt.lishost.org, and citesandinsights.info) from the one address. Very easy, VERY informative.
4 Mark // Nov 3, 2006 at 7:01 pm
Thanks so much Walt! I didn’t realize that for some reason. I’ll definitely look into it.
I’m assuming your comment got caught for moderation because of the multiple links. At least “it” knew to moderate it and not put it in the spam. Weirdly, earlier my two replies got caught as spam. I mean seriously, am I going to spam myself?
5 walt crawford // Nov 3, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Yep, multiple links will do that–I have WordPress itself set to force anything with multiple links into moderation, and Spam Kismet will start to edge toward spam.
As for your final sentence: Sorry, but my three-meter rod is out of commission. Oh, but then, I wouldn’t use it on that line anyway.
6 Chadwick Seagraves // Nov 6, 2006 at 6:00 pm
Mark,
Sorry again that the post verification plug-in isn’t working for you. I have been testing it from home in multiple browsers and haven’t been able to duplicate your error.
The b2evolution blog software that I use is not as robust as wordpress in some ways, but it had other things I liked that made it worth choosing for me. I installed several blogs when I got started doing this and tried them out. This worked best for me.
I have looked at the other options for comment moderation that might work for me. I want to leave it turned on tho. I get tons of referrer hits because of b2e’s referrer statistics function.
I have deleted the stats section from my blog and have edited the .htaccess file to help cut down on spam as well. I will keep testing and if it happens again will probably switch to another method.