Registration/Comments

This message is addressed to regular readers so if you are just passing through you can skip it. As regular readers know we had a troll infestation problem here. To deal with it we shut down all commenting until we could get the new Movable Type software installed. We did that in March. The plan from there was to slowly roll out registered comments and then eventually open them to a wider group through some of the tools in Movable Type 4.2. We've done that and I believe all will agree that the level of discourse has improved dramatically now that we have required registration to comment. As folks here know, I've kept a tight lid on adding new commenters by requiring people to email me and then adding new commenters in batches. As of today, you can register to comment by clicking the "Sign In" link at the bottom of any post with comments enabled (most of them). You can either register directly for this site or take advantage of TypeKey or OpenID if you have them already.

Social Media (left sidebar)

I also added a few new goodies to the left rail that I believe are excellent additions to the site and allow readers a significantly better way to interact with our Flickr Photo Gallery and You Tube Channel. As noted in a previous post, I also added a Yahoo Pipe called the Olbermann Flood which both pulls from a variety of internet sources and allows a select group of Olbermann Watch readers to "tag" web pages using Yahoo!'s Delicious bookmark service and have those tagged web pages flow into the Olbermann Flood Yahoo Pipe and display in the left sidebar. Flickr and YouTube now offer readers a way to contribute to the site beyond commenting on a post. If you come across an Olbermann-centric Flickr Photo or You Tube video that you believe should appear in the left sidebar in the Flickr Photo Flood or in our You Tube Faves Channel all you need to do is send us a message through those services (do NOT send emails directly to Olbermann Watch as those submissions will not be processed at all). We will get a notification when you send us a Flickr Photo or a You Tube video and if we like it we will "favorite" your image or video causing it to automatically appear in the appropriate section of the left sidebar. The idea is to bring our readers deep into the fun of OlbyObsession. Now, when you see a video or photo that your fellow OlbyWatch readers just have to see, you can click a few buttons and share with the group. I've got this all set up so that I will be get notifications on my iPhone where ever I am and when you send us something good I can click and add to the widgets on the left side bar. As mentioned above, some readers have been invited to add bookmarks to our Olbermann Watch Delicious account. Because these bookmarks go directly onto the home page without moderation I am not willing to hand out the password to the account. However, there is way that I can set up a Yahoo Pipe just for Delicious accounts that would allow trusted readers to set up their own "olbermann" tag in their account so that everything they tag as "olbermann" would flow into the main Olbermann Flood pipe. I have no way of knowing whether readers care about this or even use Delicious so I need to hear from folks if you this interests you. If you have a Delicious Account or are prepared to open one and would like become a contributor to the Olbermann Flood, you can send an email to my robert_a_cox account over at yahoo dot com. If there is sufficient interest I will set it up. Lastly, I am opening up our long-closed, highly secret, classified press list over at Google Groups. This email list was originally set up as a list exclusively for certain reporters, columnists, pundits, radio show hosts and bloggers who "take" out material from time to time. As this is primarily our "media" list which we use to alert traditional media outlets and blogs to important Olbermann Watch blog posts, we keep this in reserve and use it judiciously. If you get an email from this list you can rest assured it is, in the world of Keith Olbermann, a major news item. As you can see from scrolling the archives, we have only sent out 17 alerts in the 16 months since we set it up. Putting this all together was no small task so I hope readers will appreciate the effort to make Olbermann Watch the finest OlbyExperience anywhere on the web. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions experience any problems or bugs or just add a comment here.