Comments on: Andrea Mercado and her Conversants article http://marklindner.info/blog/2008/03/24/andrea-mercado-and-her-conversants-article/ Palmer, CL. “Structures and strategies of interdisciplinary science.” JASIS 50(3): 242-253, 1999 Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:15:46 +0000 hourly 1 By: Mark http://marklindner.info/blog/2008/03/24/andrea-mercado-and-her-conversants-article/comment-page-1/#comment-16439 Mark Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:08:32 +0000 http://marklindner.info/blog/2008/03/24/andrea-mercado-and-her-conversants-article/#comment-16439 Hi Lisa and thanks for the comment. I fully understand your point. I worked in User Services at GSLIS for 2.5 years of my 4 years (so far) there. In that capacity I frequently taught (extremely) basic HTML to our students; most of them at the point where they were required to use it for a project. The point that I <em>utterly</em> failed to make clear in my comment to Andrea is that no matter what is on that list--and it desperately needs updating, and is being updated but by committee as usual so will be a while--is that they need to be <em>actionable</em>. That is, we (GSLIS) needs to find a way to ensure that we (as students) meet what they say we need to meet. It needs to <em>matter</em>. And right now it does not. That is a shame! Hi Lisa and thanks for the comment.

I fully understand your point. I worked in User Services at GSLIS for 2.5 years of my 4 years (so far) there. In that capacity I frequently taught (extremely) basic HTML to our students; most of them at the point where they were required to use it for a project.

The point that I utterly failed to make clear in my comment to Andrea is that no matter what is on that list–and it desperately needs updating, and is being updated but by committee as usual so will be a while–is that they need to be actionable.

That is, we (GSLIS) needs to find a way to ensure that we (as students) meet what they say we need to meet. It needs to matter. And right now it does not.

That is a shame!

]]> By: Lisa http://marklindner.info/blog/2008/03/24/andrea-mercado-and-her-conversants-article/comment-page-1/#comment-16438 Lisa Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:50:17 +0000 http://marklindner.info/blog/2008/03/24/andrea-mercado-and-her-conversants-article/#comment-16438 For what it is worth - a few years ago ... as an instructor in GSLIS I used the technology listing to help make the case that the HTML skills needed to do an assignment were reasonable for me to expect students to develop. I'm going to chose to not go into how frustrating it was to have students who thought this is a skill they didn't need to develop. For what it is worth – a few years ago … as an instructor in GSLIS I used the technology listing to help make the case that the HTML skills needed to do an assignment were reasonable for me to expect students to develop. I’m going to chose to not go into how frustrating it was to have students who thought this is a skill they didn’t need to develop.

]]> By: Mark http://marklindner.info/blog/2008/03/24/andrea-mercado-and-her-conversants-article/comment-page-1/#comment-16437 Mark Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:20:54 +0000 http://marklindner.info/blog/2008/03/24/andrea-mercado-and-her-conversants-article/#comment-16437 You are quite welcome, Andrea. I may have to chat with you, too, about the email spam options. I am getting far less than I used to but still getting way too many, especially since that is why Comcast changed my email account & address without bothering to tell me 1st. :( And please do move the conversation back to your blog. Just glad you got it figured out. But now I get to add "self-correcting" plugins to my list. ;) I'll send you an email soon (day or so probably) about what I particularly want to ask you about. You are quite welcome, Andrea. I may have to chat with you, too, about the email spam options.

I am getting far less than I used to but still getting way too many, especially since that is why Comcast changed my email account & address without bothering to tell me 1st. :(

And please do move the conversation back to your blog. Just glad you got it figured out. But now I get to add “self-correcting” plugins to my list. ;)

I’ll send you an email soon (day or so probably) about what I particularly want to ask you about.

]]> By: Andrea Mercado http://marklindner.info/blog/2008/03/24/andrea-mercado-and-her-conversants-article/comment-page-1/#comment-16436 Andrea Mercado Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:12:18 +0000 http://marklindner.info/blog/2008/03/24/andrea-mercado-and-her-conversants-article/#comment-16436 Since I don't like Captcha (it has all sorts of usability issues, as you note), I make an effort to avoid Captcha at all costs. Despite the fact that Captcha seems to be an effective spam deterrent, and that I have received hordes of comment and email form spam in the past, none of my comment plugins have Captcha as a feature, because I dislike it so much. So, I was reasonably confused when I saw your post noting that you had received a Captcha when trying to submit a comment on the post on my blog, since I tested these plugins before I launched them (I have the Maintenance Mode plugin which allows me to do this), and had never received a Captcha. After I saw your post, I logged into WordPress and poked around to troubleshoot the problem. I saw that the comment you left on the post was in my comment moderation queue, because it had multiple URLs in it (and likely because of the accidental second submission). Spam Karma thought that maybe the comment was spam, and wanted me to approve it (but had not yet sent me an email to alert me about it). Further poking found that deep within the innards of Spam Karma is a setting for Captcha that flipped itself to "enabled" when I last upgraded the plugin, when it had been set to disabled before the upgrade. The comments are not purposely or normally booby trapped with Captcha, and I apologize for the inconvenience. Because refreshing the page made WordPress think you were submitting a dupe post, when you tried to send me email through my form (which is also protected by the spam plugins), the plugins thought you were trying to spam me with the form (I used to get tons of email form spam before I set up this feature). Therefore, it didn't let you send the message. My apologies for my overprotective spam helpers. That said, I'm more than happy to pursue the discussion of your comment on my blog, now that I've approved it from the comment moderation queue. :) In the meantime, I've changed the maximum number of URLs in a comment to 3, and at some point when I have time, I'll add something to the comment area of the template that states that more than 2 URLs will send the comment to moderation, so that people know ahead of time. Thank you for pointing this out. :) Since I don’t like Captcha (it has all sorts of usability issues, as you note), I make an effort to avoid Captcha at all costs. Despite the fact that Captcha seems to be an effective spam deterrent, and that I have received hordes of comment and email form spam in the past, none of my comment plugins have Captcha as a feature, because I dislike it so much.

So, I was reasonably confused when I saw your post noting that you had received a Captcha when trying to submit a comment on the post on my blog, since I tested these plugins before I launched them (I have the Maintenance Mode plugin which allows me to do this), and had never received a Captcha.

After I saw your post, I logged into WordPress and poked around to troubleshoot the problem. I saw that the comment you left on the post was in my comment moderation queue, because it had multiple URLs in it (and likely because of the accidental second submission). Spam Karma thought that maybe the comment was spam, and wanted me to approve it (but had not yet sent me an email to alert me about it).

Further poking found that deep within the innards of Spam Karma is a setting for Captcha that flipped itself to “enabled” when I last upgraded the plugin, when it had been set to disabled before the upgrade. The comments are not purposely or normally booby trapped with Captcha, and I apologize for the inconvenience.

Because refreshing the page made WordPress think you were submitting a dupe post, when you tried to send me email through my form (which is also protected by the spam plugins), the plugins thought you were trying to spam me with the form (I used to get tons of email form spam before I set up this feature). Therefore, it didn’t let you send the message. My apologies for my overprotective spam helpers.

That said, I’m more than happy to pursue the discussion of your comment on my blog, now that I’ve approved it from the comment moderation queue. :)

In the meantime, I’ve changed the maximum number of URLs in a comment to 3, and at some point when I have time, I’ll add something to the comment area of the template that states that more than 2 URLs will send the comment to moderation, so that people know ahead of time.

Thank you for pointing this out. :)

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