Blog Survey

Here is a link to the Stony Brook survey on blog readership, political outlook and acuity, and other stuff.  I zipped through it in about five minutes, but it seemed shorter.

Comments

[JorgXMcKie]

I filled it out, but it's pretty simplistic. I'm really tired of the continued use of Likert-type forced choice answers. Given the computing power and statistical methodologies available I would guess this is a not-too-well overseen grad project. Still.

[Other Tom]

I just did it, after a nice two-Martini din-din. I agree with what the felicitously named JorgXMcKie said.

[TigerHawk]

The validation question regarding John Roberts contains a mistake. He is not "Chief Justice of the Supreme Court." He is "Chief Justice of the United States." So one is forced to wonder what the question is supposed to validate.

[JM Hanes]

I think they'd have gotten a lot more useful information if they'd asked for impressions of Republican and Democratic leadership, instead of asking which adjectives applied to "most" Republicans or Dems. I'm also a Republican, not a Conservative, so it was a real toss-up to decide which crowd to base my answers on.

BTW, Tom, this Typekey thingie really sucks! I'm constantly having to re-open threads in new windows so that I can sign in to post again. How about taking down the stonewall and then waiting to redeploy it till the trolls start showing up in annoying numbers again?

[cathyf]

I'm constantly having to re-open threads in new windows so that I can sign in to post again.

Can't you just hit "refresh" and then click on the "Sign In" link? What browser do you use? I use firefox on windoze, and opera on the mac. It works pretty well. (Main problem I have is when I hit "post" and go to a different tab before it's done, and come back I find the captcha check. I have no idea what causes the captcha to appear or not appear...)

[JM Hanes]

cathyf:

Unfortunately, I keep getting stopped with a new sign-in message between previewing and posting, at which point I can't sign in without losing the post. Sooooo, I have to copy the comment, re-open the thread, sign in, paste the comment, post it, negotiate the captcha test. Over and over again.

I suspect that using both the Typekey sign-in and the captcha check is basically overkill with unpredictable consequences depending on your combo of operating system, browser etc.

[cathyf]

Yeah, I have that problem, too -- my login times out before I finish writing the post. I guess it's the punishment for writing thoughtful comments rather than a line or two dashed off!

The advantage of using opera is that the login is on the magic wand, so it's not too bad --

click in comment box

splat-A to select all, splat-C to copy

click-hold on back button to go back to where I was signed out

click Sign In link

click magic wand button

click in comment box

splat-V to paste comment

click on Preview or Post

Can you tell I do it a lot?

Also, most of the time I'm still signed into TypeKey, and so clicking the Sign In link just signs me in without having to give the username and password. Are you sure that you have cookies enabled?

[JM Hanes]

Not to mention the fact that the captcha check letters are so hard to read, it frequently takes multiple efforts for real people to pass that hurdle -- but at least that's an understandable inconvenience.

When I do the TypeKey sign-in to post here, it signs me in just fine everywhere else but JOM, where the process is uniquely unpredictable & exasperating. If I were the only one with complaints, I'd just make do, but, unfortunately, I'm not.

This is a JOM problem, and the side effects are really unhealthy!

I'm all for discouraging trolls & bots, and I love the crowd of regulars Tom's got, but protective measures discourage legitimate, desirable visitors too. When posting gets unnecessarily difficult for everybody, the attrition which would normally be offset by new voices (and new perspectives!) is also compounded. This is just not good for anybody, for so many reasons.

[cathyf]

If you are using explorer, find another browser where the "zoom" (aka "larger" or "bigger") functionality actually works. Even I can read the captcha check when it's blown up 150%. That's what I use for JOM -- even with my dock on the side, JOM fits on a 15-inch screen with even a spare 1/4-inch of green on each side.

[JM Hanes]

I just select it; the highlighting usually makes it readable, and you don't have to cursor back & forth zooming in and out.

[Maybeex]

I agree, JMH.
Oddly enough, when I go to other typepad sites, I'm already logged into them. And I don't want to be!