As a temporary fix, until Lizzie returns, anyone who is being moderated and can’t comment is invited to leave a comment here and I will approve it, hoping that it will work as a fix for all commenters in all threads. Perhaps other thread authors could also check to see if they can do the same. I note that Lamont has approved my comment in his thread but this has not stopped my comments in other threads (including my own) ending up in moderation, so maybe it won’t, but you never know!
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Seems that author approval releases moderated comments in that thread only. As Lizzie is, I suspect, the only one with administrator permissions, we are stuck with the status quo.
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Seems it is worse than I thought. Author approval is apparently needed for each comment which is really impractical. Mark Frank has already suggested continuing on his blog but perhaps we could open an ad hoc wordpress blog with shared admin among volunteers and open authorship as this seems to operate well here. The level of abusive posting (apart from one notable exception) has been minimal and I think we should err on the side of open-ness. I will try and be alert to checking moderation.
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Just a thought. It could be democratic with shared admin (volunteers, please) and all members having author status by default as that seems to work well here. Keeping a wordpress format should make it easy to transfer active threads if need be.
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The moderation glitch appears to be fixed!
Trying again!
ETA
That worked! Seems the default is into moderation and approval only restores comments in the thread where the comment was posted. Where’s Lizzie!
Liz is active on Facebook. There’s even a ‘mark frank’ listed as a friend … ?
Yes that’s me. I will contact her and see if she can help.
Just checked by commenting in the sandbox and my comment went straight through. Has something been fixed? Let’s hope so!
It’s a miracle! Praise gourd, the site has been healed.
I prayed to FSM last night. You are all in debt to my piety.
What I’d be even keener to see are some words of wisdom from Liz herself. Are US policitics that much more interesting than the endless theist/atheist debate? Surely not!
I guess I would be willing to volunteer. I did thing of sending Lizzie a message, volunteering to be an additional moderator here, but I decided that would be a bit too pretentious.
I don’t think it a good idea to have a large number of admins (as distinct from a large number of authors). But you would need there to be people who are around and who check the site often enough and are willing to take the time to act as general moderator. The problem with TSZ is that the only backup administrator seems to be never around, and the primary adminstrator appears to be on an unannounced furlough.
That would be excellent, and I’d like to take the opportunity to thank any- and everybody who is prepared to put some personal effort into the development of the site. I speak as a “roll up, talk shite, bugger off” kind of guy, so … good grief, is that the time?