Categories:
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
I’m used to stories about Brad DeLong deleting comments from his blog that he doesn’t like. [Please: this is not an invitation for you to post all your frustrations about Brad DeLong.] It appears (and correct me if I’m wrong, Nick) that Nick Schulz has done the same thing on his blog. I posted a comment on his site yesterday so that his readers could see my response that I posted yesterday. The comment “took,” that is, it showed on his site. But this morning it was gone.
I’m a strong believer in providing consumer information. That’s what this is.
UPDATE: Nick contacted me. He did not remove my comment. I apologize to Nick.
READER COMMENTS
david
May 5 2011 at 12:35pm
Generally: remember to press Ctrl+F5 when checking whether your comments have posted! For most browsers, this forces a reload of all media, instead of pulling from cache. In this AJAX-y age, it is common for comments to show even though the server has quietly filtered it, or never received it.
Positively paranoid blog software sometimes deter trolls by displaying all posted comments to their authors by default, too, but this is rare.
No idea whether that happened this time, of course, but if you’re the type to check, this stuff should be known.
david
May 5 2011 at 12:42pm
(come to think of it, since you said you use Apple: on Safari, hold down Shift and click the Reload button to bypass cache. on Firefox for Safari, Cmd+Shift+R or Cmd+F5 should work).
David R. Henderson
May 5 2011 at 12:57pm
@david,
Thanks so much. If that’s what did it, my apologies to Nick in advance. He doesn’t me as the type who would suppress critical comments.
Lauren Landsburg (Econlib Editor)
May 5 2011 at 12:58pm
David:
Have you emailed or called Nick Schulz? That’s the first response I’d pursue for a disappearing comment.
I see that Schulz and The American have a Contact section for his blog. I’d fill that form in and send him a question. Or perhaps you may have a private email address or even a phone number for him.
The most direct route is always best.
Lauren
Chris Koresko
May 5 2011 at 1:30pm
As of right now, I see a total of four responses to the linked blog post. They are by three authors, none of whom is David Henderson. So if it’s a technical issue, it’s not caused by a browser cache.
Nick
May 5 2011 at 2:07pm
David, what the heck. We’re friends. Least you could do is call me or email me. I have no idea what happened. It’s a new comment system and maybe it got lost. I’ll try to find out. But please resubmit (and I hope you’ll update your post so people don’t think I’m like DeLong!)
Yancey Ward
May 5 2011 at 2:20pm
Did you post a link? Sometimes those get eaten after a minute or two, I have noticed on other sites. Like you, I would not expect that sort of behavior of Schulz.
Nick
May 5 2011 at 3:23pm
Thanks David. No worries. I actually plan to respond to your response, have just been tied up.
Megan McArdle
May 6 2011 at 9:12am
People have accused me of doing this, and in multiple cases, well, I don’t know what happened to their comment, but clearly both they think they saw it “took”, and it’s not on the site even though I know for damn sure I didn’t delete it. What actually happens to the comment is a mystery . . . perhaps there are actually comment trolls, that subsist on comments.
david
May 6 2011 at 11:36am
The Atlantic uses Disqus, which is known to act oddly with comments, and the hard-refresh thing is something your commenters will have to do to check whether their comments have posted.
Comments are closed.