The Burlingame Voice

Tech Stuff category renamed

One of the least used categories on the right-hand frame used to be called "Spam Control".  It was a bigger deal a few years ago.  TypePad has improved since, but some legit comments still get caught in the net.  It may take us a week or more to check and release.  Comments that are long and have embedded links seem more prone.

We've renamed the category to "Tech Stuff:  Spam Control, etc" as the place to put.....tech stuff of all flavors.

This morning TypePad was running slow and rendering some error messages when things timed out.  That happens now and then--sometimes it's their platform and sometimes it's a symptom of a larger internet or cloud provider issue.  Please be patient.

Commenters' Names

The Voice has never demanded that people use their own names and isn't about to start.  But as of now, we will start demanding that the names not exceed 30 or 35 characters (one line in the comment box) so that they do not take up screen space unnecessarily.  The design of the Voice pages has always been important to us and this requirement will keep it looking sleek.  Thank you.

Comments Are Back

TypePad has been having technical problems with the Captcha comment verification part of the blogging platform so while they work on it, the requirement to enter the random code has been turned off.  We will turn it back on when they fix it.  Blog on!

New Additions to Terms of Use

9:30 pm  Burlingame --  Russ and I have waited until today's voting closed to introduce a couple of new Terms of Use to the Voice.  We waited because we did not want to "change horses in the middle of the stream"--where the stream was the Controller's campaign, but that race appears to be over in Juan Raigoza's favor at about 2:1.  You can track the results here.

If you read the comments posted on the campaign thread, you will see two behaviors that will no longer be allowed on the Voice.  First, the repetitive posting of the same link over and over and over again as part of a comment will be deleted in the future.  Frankly whether you like or dislike such a link, it is irritating.  "Frances Jones" was too clueless to even realize when Fred was being sarcastic about having seen the news photo in question.  Just like spam, because of the pure irritation of it all it is now disallowed.

The second new Term of Use involves the images one might choose to be associated with one's comments.  The idea behind the images is to add some personality or character to one's post(s).  But using a current, local figure that is NOT YOU will be disallowed going forward. You can use Marilyn Monroe, George Patton or Clooney, Justin Timberlake or Bieber, your dog, a half-eaten Sam's Sandwich or a real picture of yourself.  We don't care.  You just cannot use someone else who is "live and local".  That's all, thanks for blogging on. 

Spam Control...Again

We've had another big spam attack so while we wait for TypePad to figure out how they are doing it and stop them at the gates, comments are being held for moderation.  You can still comment, the comments just won't appear right away.  Sorry about that!