[Bleeping] computers update: LU comments working, although may require adjustments

Between Scylla and Charybdis. Illustration by CEA+. (See end of article for illustrator information and public image license.)

Treasured readers, we are on an epic journey.  An Odyssey, if you will.  A vision quest.  A voyage with an itinerary to rival the Epic of Gilgamesh.  The springs of the great deep have opened, and our ark is being carried along on an irresistible tide toward a destination we cannot yet see or even imagine.

Hercules should have our labors; Atlas our burdens.  We are at the mercy of comments software, and its kung fu is strong.

All of this is to say that we miss your comments, and hope you will consider using the new comments section to resume posting them.

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We had to shift away from Disqus, which was killing site performance with some of its ads, and violating industry-standard rules with them to boot.

But we do understand that the new comments system hasn’t been functioning well for all of you.  I’ve heard specifically from two of our regulars, who found themselves unable to create new accounts in the section labeled “Conversation,” at the bottom of the articles just above the Facebook comments section.  (See the link above for a refresher on instructions.)

Two points about this.  One, when I created my account on the new comments system (which is called Spot.IM), it took an unusually long time for the process of creating a new account to run.  I had to let it run for quite a while.  But it did go through for me.  You may just need to wait it out.

Two, there is an alternative to creating a new account, and this alternative doesn’t require you to have a Facebook or Twitter account either.

What you can do is enter new comments without registering for an account.  That means you will be a “Guest,” and receive a new avatar each time you make a comment.  If you go that route, please consider putting a signature with the user name we’ve known you by at the bottom of each comment.

Making comments without registering should work for you, and not require any long wait times or confusing procedural developments.

Of course, if you have an account with the big social media, logging in through one of them will work too.

Oh, and a reminder: you do need to have your ad-blocker turned off for LU to be able to use the Spot.IM comments segment.

Feel free to vent frustration, petition for a menu change in the famous LU Penalty Box, or post theories on Russia, Syria, and those crazy kids in Catalonia.  We’ll declare this post an open thread.  Meanwhile, we’re working with our crack tech squad to see if there’s any troubleshooting that is possible to make the commenting experience more friendly for you.

Scylla and Charybdis image:  An illustration of Charybdis and Scylla; Between Scylla and Charybdis, an illustration by CEA+ via Flickr under Creative Commons license CC BY 2.0