[buug] WordPress's Dirty Little Secret

[Pewter Bot]

{{ One of several reasons why I almost never participate in Web forums is
the high degree of oppressive administration that seems endemic on them }}

Well, that's very true. I unexpectedly ran into a wall, on what I consider a
non-issue (image mapping). I had just spent a lot of concentration on
getting my first video series up and running. The representative was very
nice, however, there will not be any image mapping on Wordpress...she only
said she'd put in that request.

And to go via the server method, seems to me a waste of resources, when my
blog/vlog demands are rather simple. I don't want kind of interactive
database, just the ability to link to my photos/videos, text (of course) and
a simple comments section.

I actually couldn't find an image map editor for Linux, except for KDE
(which I'm not interested in using), but I finally tracked down an online
service for that:

On-line Image Map Tool - HTML & CSS
http://www.image-maps.com/

(In case this would be of help to anyone else.) I don't care to hand-code,
because a simple editor will avoid that tedium. However, it was tedious
enough, popping in all the data...only to discover that the 4-column image
was too wide for WordPress, which does *not* provide a horizontal slide in
such circumstances. So I had to go back, edit the image to 3-column  width,
than recreate the whole image map from scratch. Very pl.eased with the
results, I finally uploaded it to my blog, only to be confounded by the
resulting output not providing any links on the image whatsoever.

No alert, no error to warn me that the code was removed...and in such a smal
editing window, that was not obvious...it looked like everything was
copasetic. Took me about an hour of fiddling to finally understand what's
happened. Thus my infuriated remark!

Now that I've calmed down, I'll say that WordPress is an excellent blog
service in many cases...except if you require image mapping,  a popular and
basic feature these days...and absurd for them to leave this out.

Of course, like you said, web forums can be most frustrating. My criticism
here, is that open source services promote themselves as a sane alternative
to bureaucratic corporate layering and lack of attentiveness to subscribers.
I wouldn't have felt as outraged, had I the same situation from a service
run by, say, Micro$oft or Oracle.

I gave serious thought to using tables in lieu of image mapping...but that
would only add an additional layer of tedium...absurd for my simple needs,
and dangerous for my RSI (focal dystonia in both hands). And this is also
why I am looking for more GUI and less text commands: to spare futher injury
to my widdle fingers.

So, it's back to my tried but true tblog, which is destined to disappear
some time in the near future...but I might be able to squeeze a few more
months out of it...plenty of time to search for a new blog service. And the
only reason I just don't  build a blog on my own web site, is because a blog
service offers traffic features. Now, I'm not so concerned in that matter,
considering what I just went through w/wordPress.

{{ It turns out that manipulation of posted contents and public comments is
something of a growth field, in corporate PR. }}

What a world we live in! Thanks for bringing this up...something which I
focus on from time to time in my activist essays: use of memes, and
manipulation of the media, particularly in cyberspace. We all know about
animals/plants using camouflage to seduce their prey...yet most people don't
realize humans also use camouflage to lure and deceive. In the topic at
hand, this camouflage would be those forums that *appear* to be democratic,
but really are not.

{{ There's also the fact that one cannot very easily keep an archive
copy of one's own posts, unlike with mailing lists and newgroups }}

That's another demand I have of blogs...that I can archive all my articles
onto my hard drive...whether or not they provide their own archiving tool. I
can do that in tblog, as well as in wordpress.

{{ the incredibly sucky threading model, the lack of killfiles, the
extremely poor presence those forums generally have in Google caches and
in the Internet Archive, and the fact that they have a high statistical
probability of suddenly getting wiped or collapsing. }}

!!! You are so right, Rick. Even w/broadband, many web forums are very
*slow* in clicking on each reply to the original post. Why can't they use a
flat database option, where one can view the entire thread on the same page?


Remember Dejanews (bought out by Google years ago)? I like to "harvest"
threads of interest to whatever topic I'm presenting on my web site or blog.
But their web format offered no option to download an entire thread...which
was so easily done in the old days of text-based newsreaders. Sometimes,
after an exciting discussion on a newsgroup I'd realize "Hey, I wrote some
pretty  good stuff worth extracting into an article, let me go back and
download it." Instead of being able to download the whole thread, I had to
click through each one of my posts, then paste each post into a text file.
Tedious.

Anywayz, thanks for your remarks, always informative. Someone posted me in
private regarding this WordPress issue, 'cause he figured it wasn't on topic
for this group. I think that's because we have mostly technical discussions
and event announcements.  But I think the social aspect of open source is
quite relevant to the unix world...plus having some non-technical threads
will encourage newbies to participate whereas tech-talk-only may discourage
them.

However, I am  not the moderator for these threads, and I will abide by
whatever he or she decides in this matter. Of course, it may be a non-issue,
not even required a response. But I thought it would be good to take the
time to mention this, in the case that some may hesitate to bring up a topic
of great interest and relevance to the geek community, albeit non-techie.

Cheers! Oh, and thanks for showing up at Jack's new Linux group....thanks
also to the other wizards who likewise attended (Carl, et al. It was a great
get together.) I'm very impresse w/how Jack has managed to achieve such a
successful turnout right from the start...both online and off.

-- 
Zeke Krahlin
"A government is only as good as its operating system."
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