It’s been a fun week, now, hasn’t it, Word Press.
You did some really good things this week, like Fresh Pressin’ two of my favorite bloggers, Darla at She’s A Maineiac and Nancy at NotQuiteOld.
And, through Fresh Pressed (which I don’t usually bother with), I stumbled onto a woman who is stomping in my old stomping grounds and blogging about it at The Adventures of Miss Widget. She has some great pictures of towns and vineyards near Geneva, Switzerland.
But
You knew it was coming. There is always a “but.”
But automatically subscribing me to every comment on every blog I comment on, well that was nasty. Of course, it did give me inspiration for my entry into K8did’s first round in her 7 Deadly Sins contest: Gluttony.
But then it got worse.
Because today I found out that nobody was writing anything. Nope. My Fiftyfourandahalf@gmail.com email address was empty when I woke up and it continues to be empty. Because instead of sending me emails when my bloggin’ buddies post, and when I want to read the comments of folks commenting on some, but not all, well, Word Press, you aren’t doing that any more.
We all have our own preferences, styles and management techniques for reading, commenting, reading comments, etc. Can we please just keep our own preferences instead of yours?
Let me say this simply:
FiftyFourandAHalf 
I just noticed this post because my email receipt of new blog posts is also patchy. I seem to be missing out on a lot of new posts. Thanks for voicing the issue.
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Glad you found me again! I just wish they would cut it out. They don’t even leave it alone long enough after they make a change for us to get used to it. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.
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Wow. So it’s not just Darla.
I didn’t get all that mayhem, but I DID lose my like button, a button which I never thought so important (until I actually need it for post feedback). Their support forum actually touted “back-end fiddling” as the culprit, even though in the end they made it look like something I did (though I had touched nothing). Hm.
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No, it wasn’t just Darla, or just you, or just me. Everybody was grumbling. Things seem to be somewhat better, but they are tweaking stuff just enough stuff to end up with frequent glitches.
Isn’t it amazing how valuable the like button is sometimes? I use it when I don’t quite know what to say, when I want someone to know I read their stuff but haven’t got time to be brilliant. (It’s entirely a time thing, brilliance!)
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Damn bastards!
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They don’t even earn the money we pay them!
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I’m glad to hear someone name worthy people from Freshly Pressed. That is refreshing.
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And unusual.
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Very true.
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Thanks, for this post. When I suddenly got a gazillion emails from every blog I commented on, I thought it was something I’d done. My reader has been omitting posts from some of the blogs I follow, too, including yours! Very annoying.
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They fixed my receipt of emails two days ago. Apparently it was an error. That coincidentally coincided with them screwing around with other stuff.
Yup, word press is messing with us all — glad you found your way back!
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Elyse – I know this post is several days old, but since I didn’t read it until earlier today on May 15th, I had to show you this link, which I just noticed less than ten minutes ago via e-mail. It is the official WordPress explanation for all the commenting chaos, and I swear it reads just like something that George Orwell could have written in “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. Check it out!
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/follow-comments/
You see, Elyse, the truth is that you LOVE this new system! And you love it more than you’ll ever know… per The Infallible Gospel According to WordPress – the last and ONLY “word” that will ever really matter on this matter, and all others matters pertaining to whatever the hell is the matter with WordPress!
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Thanks for sending this link, Chris. I am trying to decide whether to re-blog it or roast them whole hog. What an asinine piece — we are helping you and nobody has complained. Right.
But it does show you that you should have immediate receipt of my posts. I’m sure Word Press can arrange for you to be awakened from sleep (or coma) in order to read and make a humorous (or in this case, helpful) comment!
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Can you hear me singing? A-amen. A-amen. A-amen, amen, amen.
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I know what you mean; at first it was obnoxious, do I really want a notice of the ob-teenth reply that does not pertain to my comment in my inbox, but then silence… Now I have lonely days sad little days where there is no e-mails at all, only to come to wordpress and find that people have written with no notices sent. So here here from this wordpress junky to you.
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Thanks. It is really frustrating. I wish they would fix it already!
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Spectrum Woman is my hero. It works!
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Pingback: How to Add Drama and Sex Appeal to Your Word Press Comments | Spectrum Woman
I’ve actually started a new email account because every time I log in it’s so overloaded with “New Comment!” notifications.
People also show up in my Reader list with pretty startling inconsistency, lately, and I in there’s.
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I have a special blog email account specifically designed for the blog. But I’ve started experimenting and intentionally clicking “email comments to me” and “Email other posts” but nada. I don’t like the Reader because I haven’t figured out how to delete stuff.
I opened my gmail account when I started the blog because my husband fears that I’m going to write about gun control (or something the right wing nuts will hate) and someone is going to want to shoot me. This way they can only shoot gmail and not me. My husband likes to protect me from myself.
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Hey congrats on being pressed. You certainly deserve it. Now what can we do to teach WP to stop messing with us? Surely if all of us decided to do a critical mass post and all post at the same time, perhaps we could jam the servers in rebellion.
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Thanks, Barb. I was pressed way back in February. Doubt I will again — and certainly not for THIS piece!
I’m sure the WP folks are busily answering questions in HELP. But they’re never there when I try to get help (they seem to be on vacation a whole lot …)
And I’m all for insurrection. After all, I am a leftist-commie-pinko-Democrat.
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Oh, no. What is this world coming to? If I can’t depend on getting your new posts in my inbox, what can I depend on? Maybe we need to become pen pals?
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That or Bosom Buddies!
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Of course! Like the gem of a TV show. Who doesn’t like grown-ups making tampon jokes?
Oh, crap. I made a tampon joke in my post today. I suck.
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A good tampon joke has a cache of its own. You did fine, Angie. Just fine.
I once dropped mine on stage during a performance. I know tampon traumas.
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In college I once dropped a tampon on the floor of a bar in front of several men who were classy enough to sort of look the other way. One of them asked if it was mine and I kicked it across the room and said no. That man is now my husband. Okay, not really.
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One of the beauties of blogging is that no one ever knows when you’re lying. I often get serious questions on what I thought were obvious exaggerations/lies. I think I need to add “prolific liar at times” into my profile …
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Yes, Arindam! It is apparently “feast or famine” here at Word Press!
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Reblogged this on The ObamaCrat.Com™ and commented:
Wordpress is getting worse than that stupid ass Facebook when it comes to doing shit WITHOUT our prior knowledge or permission or suggestions. Without US using WordPress, there is NO WordPress.
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This was the funniest thing happen to me since I started blogging. Last weekend when I saw my inbox was running out of space with so many mails from WordPress, for first I though by mistake, I got freshly pressed. But then I figured out this whole thing. 🙂
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Oh my holy wordpress, I was going to write about this very thing because it was driving me banana bread. But I don’t need to because you voiced the frustration so incredibly eloquently. Yes Yes Yes!!! And now I’m going to remember to uncheck the followup comments.
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Thanks, Speaker7. I feel your frustration, which started way before mine. It is incredibly annoying.
That said, I have MADE banana bread. IN fact, I actually make “exam-a-bread” as a good luck charm for my son when he has exams, but I’ve never been driven banana bread until I read your comment.
And you know, if they want to change things in Word Press, how about letting us use italics and bold and stuff like that that might be helpful. I HATE needing to use ALL CAPS in comments because it seems so F’ING RUDE.
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You can do bold and italics in comments if you paste code.
For italics, type to begin, and to end italics.
For bold, type to begiin, and to end bold. Hope this helps your readers Type both to see bold italics.
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Pardon me – Italics =
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Not showing up. Type one of these first To end italics, type one of these
For bold type the to end, I can’t type them together here without getting the words italic and strong showing up, so I hope you understand what I tried to show you all. Test it out! It’s Fun!
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Oh, screw it. I’m writing a post over at Spectrum Woman today so you can see what I mean.
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I just read all those comments, piecemeal — it made me chuckle. Thanks for trying, and I’ll look over to your site (I would have anyway) to figure it out. I wonder if it is my theme — that it doesn’t permit italics (except it lets you, so obviously I am wrong. Maybe you just need to be tech savy. Or savier …
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Those attempts were screwed up because I used code in a comment to demonstrate code – you might as well delete them…I am working on the post now 🙂
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Hi,
Oh yes WP just seems to be making things worse, I don’t know why they have to change things like this when everything was working fine.
I was constantly checking my spam yesterday, as people that have commented for ages on my blog was ending up in the spam filter, and then I found out it was happening to them on other blogs as well. Whatever WP is doing I wish they would hurry up and do it and then fix all these problems up.
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A spam problem too? Yikes. Mine only contains sales pitches for products I don’t need (hint: they are folks of the OTHER GENDER).
This is driving me crazy AND has hit a nerve. I have lots of hits today!
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Agree 100%. I went into my “follow comments” and deleted stuff, then I wasn’t sure if I deleted blogs I like to follow, and got even more confused. THANKS WP for “improving” everything. Can I have my fifteen minutes back now?
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I’m sure they’re working on making it 30 …
Like you, I have to steal minutes to read stuff and can’t. And I hate these comment bubbles because I lose comments consistently …
It is frustrating.
Thanks for stopping by Les!
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Yeah, I keep forgetting to unclick the “notify” box when I make a comment. And if I comment on a “freshly pressed” – well, holy crap! At least I can change it at the email level by clicking the “subscription options” once I start to get inundated. But WHY????
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Yes, I got, ahem, several on your FP’d post. But comments on your blog are generally fun so it wasn’t really a problem. Word Press just needs to cut it out. I am POSITIVE they’ll listen to me. (And equally sure I will never again be FP’d. Sigh.
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I could get a little wordy on this, but, strange things are happening. I can’t load reader at all on my pc. My ancient mac that can’t even accept browser updates is fine. Should I reset my PC to an earlier date? I contacted WP help and after several back and forths, I was told they hadn’t seen this problem, and couldn’t recreate it, whatever that means. Today, on my mac, I realized that not all the blogs I follow are loading in my reader. Also, WP is changing the look of the page when you want to browse by topic. It also now loads like the new reader loads. The old page allowed you to go through pretty quickly, so now, I probably won’t browse by topic anymore. As for the blogs I follow, I’ve now been creating a page with the links so at least I can check in that way. Spin, spin, spin!
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How incredibly annoying. I know that reading folks I like is one of my favorite things to do, and to have them not be where I want them, well, it is annoying.
There must be some new, young folks just starting at Word Press, trying to prove something to somebody. But HEY — CUT IT OUT!!!
Good luck with keeping in touch with everyone. Hopefully things will settle down in another day or two!
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BRAVO! BRAVO!!! (silent hands clapping,me standing up, giving an ostentacious ovation in the virtual {expensive, over priced} Box-seats -YOU GO GIRL!
WHY? >em> Why, oh WHY does Word press think they need to keep changing things, and not for the better? In their minds, sure – change is always better But in the minds of those of us who have been around in this world for a long time, not all change is neccesary.
YES. at least give us a choice about how we want to read, receive comments, see blogs we fgollow, etc. Right now, I can’t see a single blog I follow. Is it so wrong to say “I hate wordpress”?
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Only if you want to assure, as I did today, that you will never be Freshly Pressed from here on out …
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Oh. That. I gave up any hopes of making Front Page News long ago.
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Amen Elyse! Well done … I especially like the your last question!
For anyone who doesn’t know, go to your Dashboard > Blogs I Follow > click Comments > Unsubscribe to comments by deleting.
Because I forget to always clear the Notify box, I check the above after every stroll. Yes, extra work – but a lot less aggravation. Nonetheless, well done!!!
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Thanks Frank, for your nice comment and for the helpful instructions.
It’s so annoying when I have been really busy these last few days and when I have just a few minutes here and there to check into my favs. Grrrrrrr.
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I know! I thought I had simply imbibed too much wine and went on a random comment notification sign-up spree!
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I think the over-imbibing was on Word Press’s part!
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I particularly like your tags for this post. Well done!
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Thanks! It’s driving me crazy.
And your comment is only visible through that little square which works sometimes but often senhttps://fiftyfourandahalf.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.phpds the comments off to, where, Word Press’s black hole???
Arrrrgght
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Elyse, I sent an email to your gmail account to tell you how to get rid of the mandatory follow-up comment box on your own blog. It won’t help you if you forget to uncheck the box when you leave comments on other blogs, but think of it as a courtesy to your readers.
If you didn’t get that email or it got lost in your crowded inbox, check out this post for the instructions. http://titabuds.com/2012/05/07/a-flood-of-emails/
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I got that and it was really nice of you to do that. After a few times, I just learned to unclick it or delete unwanted comments. The problem is they just keep changing it and it is driving me crazy. Nuts. Mad enough to write it on the wall. Or the internets!
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Why can’t they just leave well enough alone?
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Looking for job security, maybe?
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Can we get a freakin’ AMEN?
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Maybe, but not in your inbox.
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Bastards.
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