and a little housekeeping… below each entry on the homepage is a little widget that allows you to rate that post. if this proves popular, i’ll look into aggregating the top posts and give them some additional visibility. plus it gives me some additional info to determine what mosts interest you, the audience, so that we can continue to provide great content as the premier alternative news source in Ojai.
another fun little note – we’ve been averaging 3,000 visitors a day since December 8th. as always your support is much appreciated, Ojai!
Open Thread
Previous post: Forest Service Report: Sespe River Trail
Next post: Stop The Trucks: Ozena’s Revised Mine Application
{ 38 comments }
Tyler,
Is is possible to give a post a zero?
nope. a “1″ should be ample to express your dissatisfaction with a post, I think. it’s good enough for Netflix.
For what it’s worth, I don’t care for this rating system. It reminds me of amazon book/movie reviews. It sends a “popularity contest” type message I don’t care for. Plus, once someone who might disagree with your opinion gives it one star, I don’t think you can ever rate five, even if all the rest give a top rating.
I suggest first looking at more reader-friendly ways to organize the presentation of articles all together.
Forgive me if I sound mean and cranky in the above post. I do applaud all your efforts and I’m sure if everyone else likes the stars, I’ll get used to it.
I mean, when we were kids we loved getting those stars pasted on our homework!
Not a big fan, either, of the rating system. I’d rather be a writer than a contestant! Thanks, tho, Tyler for all you do!
Well, I’d like to try it for awhile. One effect it might have is to encourage regular readership, just so someone can give their two cents in the form of a vote. It’s one way to increase participation without diving into the comment fray. So, thanks for your thoughts, its definitely taken into consideration.
It might be helpful to ask the Ojai Post authors for feedback on how articles are presented.
My feedback is this:
Around the time I came aboard in 2007 the author’s names were removed from the margin since there were now too many.
Psychologically, my guess is that especially those authors who took time writing original articles miss this.
Might be good to have a look at how many authors are actually “active” –some may have moved out of Ojai.
I’m not suggesting any names be removed. Things happen. People might take a two year hiatus and suddenly contribute a great piece. So I would like to continue to see all past inactive and presently active authors listed but, at the same time acknowledge the active authors in order to encourage more original Ojai writings.
I think some of the authors are not aware we have a new category “original writings” …maybe announce that…
We are all very busy but I for one would like to see, for example, more of Leslie’s (or maybe it was Evan) “Green Ojai Mom/Father” type writings…maybe it’s time for the Post to have “Columnists” in different categories. Not sure. Just thinking out loud. My yoga columns are popular on other web sites (not necessarily exclusive yoga sites but mainstream healthy natural green living type web sites) but have hesitated to post them here. It feels self-promoting even though the articles are of general interest.
And part of me thinks do nothing. Keep the happy anarchy and creative chaos!!!
how about a star system to rate each individual comment???
ha ha ha
now THAT would be fun……
The rating system for the posts is okay I guess, but kind of think it’s irrelevant. People will read or not read the posts that interest them based on the headline and the verbiage after the break, just like always. Besides, it’s difficult to write a post that good and it takes some actual work and thought. Setting up a rating thing for the posts is kind of belittling.
I’m with imp. There should be a rating for comments like on Dkos, etc. It would give the vast silent majority who read the posts and the comments a painless way to “comment” by rating comments they agree with over ones they don’t. Of course, Dkos does it because you have to be a member to recommend comments or diaries. It would be difficult to do it here because people could “vote” multiple times making the whole thing meaningless.
SO there.
Tyler,
What prevents someone from voting numerous times, is there some type of cookie that monitors that? One this thing I like about it is that if an author is constantly censoring comments that they don’t agree with ( Stop the Trucks) then the readership has the ability to chime in.
Brian
Brian – users are only able to vote a single time per post. It’s not a completely foolproof system, but it doesn’t really need to be.
re: comments – I allow each author to moderate comments on their own posts, if they choose. My personal preference is to allow all comments, and respond or ignore (unless the visitor is banned). But I don’t force each individual author to do so.
Brian — if you are getting censored by some author, can’t you just re-post your views on one of the open threads, and while you are at it, point out that the author who censored you did so?
I guess I could but then I feel like I’m hogging what ever conversation is going on in the current thread.
wow, we’ve apparently got an award-winning front page, with 10 out of 12 visible posts receiving 4 or more stars!
Well…….
I wonder what our resident experts infer from the results — and the quality of the campaigning — in New Hampshire and Nevada?
Is Hillary on a roll — unstoppable?
Has Bill assumed the role of her hatchet man?
Is Barack still working to find his voice?
Is Edwards toast?
Hello David,
Well, Clinton’s doing better than expected. But she’s no where near unstoppable. The delegate count is:
Clinton : 43
Obama : 44
Edwards: 21
Kucinich: 1
I’m only counting actual primary or caucus delegates. Not super delegates and not Michigan.
Looking at it this way we can sweep away the media hype. It’s a tie with Edwards being the potential kingmaker at the convention. No one is going anywhere until Feb. 6 at the earliest. The pressure on Edwards to go away must be insane, but I support his run to keep the Democrats honest.
There’s some really ugly allegations coming out of Nevada. First the Clintons tried to disenfranchise voters that they thought had abandoned them in Las Vegas when the Culinary Union endorsed Obama. Their operatives tried to sue to block those workers from being able to caucus at their places of work at the casinos. Then when the caucus was going on, there’s wide spread reports of Clinton supporters closing caucus doors early to curtail turnout(which was perceived as bad for Clinton). They’re are also reports that the Clintonistas lied to misinformed caucus goers and told them that if they were for Edwards or Kucinich and they didn’t get the needed 15% for viability, they had to go home. The real rules are that they can stay and pick another candidate or stay as uncommitted delegates. This explains the low Edwards showing and the fact that the Edwards and Kucinch caucus goers didn’t go to Obama.
So it looks like the Clinton machine won in Las Vegas alone while Obama won the state. Finally, what the hell’s wrong with Bill Clinton. I saw him ranting and raving at a reporter after the whole disenfranchisement scheme came to light. He doesn’t look well. I’m having a hard time believing the media spin that he’s actually helping Hillary.
Oh/ that hillary,OOOHHH, that bill,amazing how low they can sink in the stygian darkness of hillarys ego.
If it meant not having Hillary as President I wouldn’t mind Obama as president. I like Obama’s positive attitude, though I don’t agree with his politics, I think he could be an energizing president.(as long as there was a republican congress !)
How long can Bill Clinton keep it in his pants? I’m just waiting for some type of affair campain trail scandle to happen. We don’t seem to see them together on the stump as we do with Obama and his lovely wife.
As a member of abovetopsecret.com, I want to ask all of you to please read this thread
http://abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread328087/pg1
It is about an asteroid that is very close to us.
Please research it, and understand it. Media will not cover this due to mass panic possibilities.
This is not a joke. Thanks OjaiPost readers.
Brian,
I just wanted to say that I really respect you choosing to keep the conversation in the thread where it belongs. I haven’t been reading the Post enough to know who’s been banned where, but I like the idea of keeping the thread going in one direction. So thanks for respecting the rest of the conversations on the Post.
Brian, I hope you are watching the CBS special tonight, “The Age of Warming.” 7pm…it’s on now…more later.
Suza,
We don’t have cable and we don’t really watch TV, just movies from the video store. I hope you don’t believe everything you see on TV.
I don’t know anything about this astroid or comet or what ever it is but it is something that could actually happen and the only thing that could be done, if it was serious, would be to use the space station to divert it’s trajectory.
As a member of abovetopsecret.com, I want to ask all of you to please read this thread
We warned you not to go public with this, Scott, but you just wouldn’t listen, would you?
You know what happens now, don’t you?
Scott,
According to JPL the comet is going to pass by almost 5 million miles away. That’s about 20 times farther away then that big, beautiful, old, nearly full, waxing gibbous Wolf Moon outside tonight. It’s no horseshoe and it certainly aint no hand grenade, so it doesn’t count.
Uh…
Sorry…
I was Wrong. It appears that the MOID(Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance) works out to be .0012501 AU which works out to be about 116,000 miles. That’s half the distance INSIDE the orbit of the moon. This is for a solution to the orbit of the asteroid, not comet, on Jan. 29th. That is A LOT closer. What’s worse is they just spotted this thing back in November, so they’ve had a relatively short period of time to project it’s orbit. The math is pretty loose as a result.
Tyler-
I beg of you to close this thread.
I feel more and more suicidal as I read each new post.
I’m really on the edge this morning…
Anybody heard anything about Bird Flu, that new strain of Ebola Virus lately, or all of the new antibiotic resistant forms of hideous old diseases? How about shaving creams and breath sprays that cause brain cancer? People having strokes after drinking certain types of herb tea? People getting Hepatitis C from visits to the dentist? C’mon, Scotty, there’s so much more to worry about besides asteroids! Let’s just get it over with and worry about ALL of it. How about a “What Freaks You Out the Most?” thread? Maybe then we can have done with it.
So I did some research. I’m an amateur amateur astronomer now. Anyway, the best info was from this thread on an Irish astronomy website. Since I’m already cribbing a lot of my info from this guy on that site, I’ll just quote him below. He’s answering a question from someone about the MOID I referred to above.
“The MOID is the minimum distance between the two orbits, that is very different to the delta value given. That just means that according to the current orbital model there is a potential for the Earth and the asteroid to be that far apart at some indeterminate date in the future. The important value this time round is the delta value given which specifies the actual separation (in AU’s at the epoch given.) The current model places the delta value at .00370479766527 on 2007-01-29 08:12UT.
This relates to an actual distance of 554,232kms. The true geocentric distance of the Moon at that instant is 402,303.6 Kms meaning TU24 will be 1.377 lunar distances away from us.” — Dave G.
So it’s not really that close. In fact, it’s not likely to be a naked eye object. You can look due west after sunset on Monday the 28th and find the Pleiades, the annoying group of stars you can’t help but see that resides on the rump of Taurus like a swarm of flies also known as “The Seven Sisters”. From there, hold up about three fingers vertically at arms length to the right of the Pleiades and then three fingers from there horizontally down toward the horizon, and that is the region where the object should be. If you have a telescope and you want a chance at actually seeing the thing, Train your telescope on the star Almach which is the topmost left star in the constellation Andromeda. Park the star in the left side of the field of your telescope and search to the right or North for an object moving “up” from bottom to top at about 7pm local. 2007 TU24 will pass between Almach and Andromeda’s top right most star next to it called 51 Andromedae. That will be it. Hopefully someone out here in ojaipost land will have the hardware necessary to actually get a time lapse exposure of the object and post it here. Sadly I don’t have the stuff…yet.
SO Scott, not really scary, but actually kind of fun if you’re a geek. Calm down El An.
Everyday it seems the AU distance is increasing.They must be able to get much better calculations the closer and closer it gets to us. I heard that this asteroid could be negatively charged, which I was worried about. That could cause weather changes, earthquakes, floods, and ruin electronic devices. It is an extremely fascinating subject to me, I felt since this was an “Open Thread” El Cranky, then it would be accepted. Humbug.
It is an open thread, Scott, which means that we all get to be as whacky (or not) as we want to be. (At least, that’s what I thought it meant.)
I’m still into a Major Phobia thread. (I’m afraid of Republican presidential candidates, at the very least. And artichokes.)
Sorry, I needed to vent: I was taking a shower this afternoon when the drain began to back up…then all the drains in the house started to back up. Lovely. My home warranty company said they would call me back in 8 hours. Not an option. So I let my fingers do the walking. Quick was voted #1 in the OVN poll…they never called me back. Paradise has a local number and promises service in about an hour – but they’re from “town” and it took them more than 2 hours. Who’s your favorite plumber?
Signed,
Held hostage. waiting. again.
Lisa,
Call A & M Plumbing. Tell Mike or Alex that Nigel told you to call.
Alex is a good guy.
A&M..hands down. They are honest and dependable.
Lisa, hopefully your problem has been resolved. But for the future: The Dorans are great people and Alex runs an extremely reliable, efficient and honest business. I’ve recommended them before and can wholeheartedly do so now.
Wow, you guys, thanks! Just after I posted, Paradise finally showed up and had everything back to normal within 30 minutes! Just in time for me to go to Theater 150 for the Playwrights’ Showcase, which is on again tonight at 7pm for a final run. Eight 10-minute plays for $10 – a bargain and a helluva lot of fun. Don’t miss it! …And don’t call anyone but A&M (apparently)!
Mike’s now waiting for a call that will never come…he’s busy at my place anyway!
Ojai cop hits pedestrian:
http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/jan/23/no-headline—nb1fcpedestrian23-wc/
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