Blog guests wrote:
I think it's great that the CSL has a blog now. I am having trouble with the comments feature. Firstly, when you look at a post without being "logged in" a "comments" link appears beneath each post. When you click on it, you get a message that anonymous comments are disabled.
Fair enough (though I think requiring accounts will greatly decrease the number of comments you get). But, even after I create an account, and then click on the comments link to post a comment to any of the posts, I am told that new comments to the post are disabled--for every single post.
Maybe some setting is just not right somewhere in the blog's administrative set-up. Please allow comments. Or, if not, remove that feature so no one has the expectation that they will be able to leave any. Thanks, Sarah (TheLibrarianInBlack)
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Your blog site says, "This blog is designed to communicate information regarding California State Library programs and services, and to stimulate dialogue on these and other topics relevant to California's library community." but when I joined and wanted to tell you how the Easy Voter Guide has inspired the Voting Made Simple publication in Texas (see my blog: http://texasforums.wordpress.com/2006/10/22/voting-made-simple/) I was told that the comments are disabled. This seems contradictory to your goal of stimulating dialogue unless you just want people to read your postings and maybe talk about it the next day with their co-workers. Perhaps I misunderstood?
Any way, I'm pleased to see you've added a blog. Taylor Willingham
Susan Hildreth responds:
This is great feedback. Right after our launch, many CSL blog guests like Sarah and Taylor were frustrated to find the CSL blog's "comments" feature disabled for both anonymous and registered blog guests.
I'd like to give you some background on why we disabled the CSL blog "comment" feature. My original intent was to allow the moderated posting of comments. However, in discussing this with the State Library's legal counsel and others, I learned that a government agency that allows the posting of comments, even moderated comments, creates what is known as a 'public forum.' In contrast to private party blog postings, a government agency sponsoring a public forum is significantly more at risk of legal attacks for potential defamatory postings, and for First Amendment legal challenges related to moderated comments the agency decides it must edit or refuse to post. For those reasons, I decided not to allow the posting of comments.
Though it takes a couple more clicks than the "comments" link most people are used to, the "Contact State Librarian" tab at the top of the postings is where our guests may leave remarks. Send us your news, observations, and feedback regarding CSL programs and library issues via that tab, and we'll try to answer every communication, by either responding to the writer directly, or by posting the writer's comment to the blog with the CSL's response. (For this reason, we have not disabled the comment feature completely.)
To make responding easier for everyone, we've updated our instructions at the top of every page so that guests better understand how to send us remarks. I hope these changes reduce the confusion some of you may have experienced.
--Susan Hildreth