Welcome to the new-look Poll Bludger, brought to you as part of a broader incursion into the blogosphere by wealthy benefactors/gentleman admirers at Crikey. Note parallel developments from Possum Comitatus. The site has a new address in the Crikey domain: the old site will redirect here. The interior decoration is incomplete, so don’t despair for apparently missing features quite yet. To pre-empt the complaint which is now no doubt forming in many minds: no, you do not need to be a Crikey subscriber, trial or otherwise, to comment on this blog. However, you do have to register, which means providing a real email address which you will need to verify – I do not think anyone can rightly complain about this. To pre-empt another complaint: this site is run by WordPress just like my old site was and will run in very much the same way, without the limitations you might be familiar with from the old Crikey blogging platform. Beyond that, it will be business more-or-less as usual. There will be a slight difference in my moderation policy, which is to say that I will have one. More on that shortly.
As you can see, all the posts and comments from Wednesday are present and correct, so please carry on as before. Please keep this thread for requests/feedback/bug reports/complaints about the new order, and direct political discussion where appropriate.
202 Comments
And what a spiffy looking site it is!
I’m just glad it’s not News Ltd!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
well alright i’ll get used to it
DAmn, had to reset my password so I could make a post, and it wouldn’t let me use my current wordpress acoount which I already have
Also can we please have an edit button so if we make a spelling mistake we can corrct it without making multiple posts ?
You can only use WordPress.com passwords on Wordpress.com blogs — Crikey Blogs is self-hosted, and uses the same login details as Crikey News.
So I guess we have gravatars as well.
Excellent work William. Liberal supporters always endorse entrepreneurial risk!
By the way, how draconian will the moderation policy be? I kinda liked the free-for-all of old pollbludger….
Slightly more draconian than before, though continuing to err on the libertarian side.
Will that mean that GP, ESJ and Glen are on Notice then ??
Couple more questions:
1. Can we please get an edit function.
2. How do you use or apply “gravatars”?
Bah, can’t do blockquotes
Hopefully all ALP supporters will be banned.
gravatars probably useful to more easily pick out posters.
Any info on creating a gravatar?
And then you’ll have nobody to talk with
Looking into the blockquotes situation. You can set up a gravatar here. Mine’s working already after only a few minutes.
I like Possums moderation policy
The moderation policy here is very simple.
DON’T BE A DICKHEAD
Well done William, your contribution to Australian politics is immeasurable and we would be a far poorer place without the contributions you make.
William, you could turn on the ‘identicon’ gravatar option to show unique, generated images for the folk who don’t have their own images set up. Spices things up a little bit.
Hear Hear Glen
How do you get a gravatar? Do we have profiles? And thanks for preserving the 2007 election thread.
Hello, is my commentary working?
You can blockquote with HTML tags — what were you using before?
Also – how do you change the time zone on your profile?
The time in Sydney is 6.36pm, not 4.36pm.
You can blockquote with HTML tags — what were you using before?
Was using
Colin Barnett has made his proposal in a letter to the Nats, saying that the Libs got 30,000 more primary votes than the ALP and stressing the support of the regions through the Royalties to Regions and the natural close philosophies the two parties share.
Who knows whether Carps will actually make his submission public like Barnett has??
hmm, as soon as I typed in “
” it didn’t show up, but when I do it with text the quotation marks don’t show.
Glen, that post should go in the WA thread – this is the new blog gremlins and whinges thread
Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3….
I notice the new PB banner includes Fraser and Howard… Any significance?
The gravatar thingy say my username has been ripped off by someone else
William turn on the other thingy – I love random things.
So did the old one, Matt.
my bad
Looks great William.
Any charade of this site trying to be “unbiased” and “even handed” when covering elections can finally be put to bed now teaming up with lefter than left-wing rumour rubbish that is Crikey
Ha, you’re right! Talk about being one eyed, I didn’t even notice.
“You can set up a gravatar here.”
Oops – sorry.
Don’t thank me, Garyrb – thank Jeff “Rock ‘n’ Roll” Waugh and other people I probably don’t know about.
BKH: Tell it to David Flint and Noel Crichton-Browne.
bonza triffic, William. And yes, how do you get a gravatar. G.P. I see you worked it out, though I would point out why not Brendon? Shouldn’t you be supporting him?
Reposted (more-or-less) from over at PollyTics.
A new home! Looks pretty and clean, and smells nice too.
But where are the Grand Opening give away prizes? I wanna giant stuffed pseph.
Three suggestions.
1. Not all of us have the new fangled, ultra wide, cinemascope screens. Unlike the old site, this one does not all fit onto my bog standard 17 inch in one hit, and I have to scroll across to see the hidden 15%.
2. The individual numbers on the top right of each comment are barely readable. Need to be darker, stand out more from the background. (I mean, light grey on light grey/white? How is that gonna work?)
3. Could we please have a preview button?
4. And a direct link to PollyTics?
But otherwise, lovely.
Yes Crikey has diverged greatly from Stephen Mayne’s political philosophy. Well, 90% of bludgers are leftards, so I guess there is quite a synergy now that Crikey and Poll Bludger have merged.
I take it some people are being allowed to use capital letters in their names and some aren’t? GP, what was your secret?
Hey GP another Merc driver?
I have capitals!
I wasn’t able to use capitals. I tried.
Help, I am having an issue. My comments are not working!
Maybe it’s because I’m a Crikey subscriber? Not sure.
No 41
William, the trick is to change your nickname in your profile, save, then from the drop down list of display names, choose the capitalised nickname.
Congratulations William, and all the best with PB v3.
Congrats must also go to Crikey for finally creating a decent blog setup. This looks impressive!
No 43
Yep. Love German luxury cars.
No capitals in the user name, but if you click ‘Site Admin’ up at the top, you can change the way your name is displayed throughout the site. That’s how William and I have our full names displayed (but you can also have a completely arbitrary “nick name” if you want to stay incognito).
GP
SLK here.
Signs of my capitalist past. 
And I like it how you get a new page after 50 comments, makes it easier to manage when reading.
Just testing
Wayne @ 46: I didn’t let your first comment through because I wasn’t sure it wasn’t spam (I emailed you about this). Your comments should go through with complication now.
The one sad thing about the setup though is that my big green smiley is now a monkey
Its all very gorgeous
congrats
My tongue poke is a ???
No 52
ML63.
The tree huggers will now hate me even more.
Let me try again.
Jeff, can we have it so the recent page of 50 comments is the one that loads, rather than the first one? This was a long-time bugbear on the old site until I worked out how to change it.
I would encourage commenters to amend their profile names: the lower case names are freaking me out. As GP points out: “The trick is to change your nickname in your profile, save, then from the drop down list of display names, choose the capitalised nickname.”
Congrats WB
William, it’s doing the right thing for me… showing page 2 by default with this many comments so far.
Arrgh I’ll have to quote by the old way [like this]
zombiemao: We definitely need to fix that one!
So it is, Jeff – sorry.
I suppose I should have thought of the comments section when I asked if you ever used IM. Hooray for inline support!
Jeff, how do I turn on the Indenticon option?
Ok, new site looks good, will take a bit of getting used to
….. signing off to watch the footy now ….
oh, btw, on the US elections, this URL shows that if the election were held today, Obama would win, but as you see, the margin isn’t a wide one.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/maps/obama_vs_mccain/?map=10
Settings > Discussion > Avatars (choose identicons from the list at the very bottom).
test2
Done.
where upon this page do you find settings > discussion > avatars? I’ve looked top to bottom and can’t find it …..
Thanks Jeff.
This is a test.
http://www.watoday.com.au/national/liberal-defends-games-freebie-20080912-4ey7.html
Hmm, she’s in a spot of doggy doos’s
Blue my favourite random colour.
Julie, Jeff was talking to me – you need to be in admin to do that. If you’re trying to work out how to do avatars, try here.
So, got there in the end.
testing gravatar
Looks good William! Nice job.
hope it works
Silly test account to show the new “Preferred display name” stuff working during sign-up… that’s much better!
Very colourful
not sure how I like it. Any updates on the election?
Personally I find Wordpress to be cumbersome, even though this new site looks spiffy.
All the avatar stuff, and profile settings should all be in one place.
Is there an update on how to amend the time zone?
Well, that took some time to work out. Not sure I like the layout of this place. Oh well.
No2
bilbo has set the system time to local(perth) time
I think
On PB – we’re all Sandgropers!
As he should
I LOVE it that you can see the names of other active threads at the bottom of the screen, it makes it easy to know when something new has arrived in the scene and if your comment is more appropriate somewhere else, you can move it there. Previously, I had to keep a second window open to the main page and then refresh that to know if a new thread was open.
Sorry Frank, but timezone changed.
G’day all!
I was formerly Progressive on Poll Bludger, now I’m Evan(my real name) over here.
Thanks William, and good luck with the new site!
Impossible, it shows the year as 2008
Agree Julie, it’s a nice feature
Traitor
It should be user adjustable.
No 95
Thanks William.
Again, I can’t for the life of me work out why these things can’t be individually set by the user. Shame on Wordpress!
They must be communists. There’s no other explanation for it.
William, I’ll sort out a filter for the []-style quoting.
Hello Poll Bludger regulars – Dario, Generic Person.
Another request: can we have user names in a bold typeface like they were on old pollbludger?
Ah, new home new look, took ages to get this gravatar thingy going (ghod I’m so old school sometimes). Could agree with a number of other suggestions but its just nice to be back (BTW the live people side of Sell Out – but I always kinda liked the dead side…).
No 101
Yes, much! Command and control never works!
No 103
Evening evan.
hey evan
whoo hoooo……looks good
Nice work picking up the ] quotes so quickly Jeff!
Done! (modulo the likely bug exposed by this very comment…)
Hello, new setup. Let’s give it a whirl…
final text
Oh nice, they both work. Now to get myself one of those gravatars…
Took me a bit of effort to get into the registration system, but I guess it’s worth it
Make sure you’re all using either IE7Pro or Firefox 3 with Adblock Plus to delete the annoying flash advertisments
As GP said at 104, names should be in bold
There’s a few names I just scroll past when reading, the way it is now forces me to pay more attention to them then they deserve
GP @ 115
Thats mean, how is Crikey! going to pay the bills?
(William’s not on scale ya know, no workchoices at Crikey! mate) 
Well it seems to work…
Names are bold now.
How do you use those quote thingies?
William,
Can we pleasse have links open in new tabs ?
How do I change my icon pic?
test
No 119
Thanks Jeff. Sorry to be a pain again, but can we also have the names in say, size 10 rather than microscopic? Cheers.
No 117
I have no problems with non-intrusive advertisements, like Google ads. Flash ads are obscene and bandwidth hogging. Note to Crikey: don’t use flash adverts.
I can finally read the usernames now. Cheers Jeff/William.
Can’t get the damn gravatar to work
have i got it now?
Nope
Winston, check which email address you used on this website in the profile page (click “Site Admin” up the top), and set up a Gravatar for that email.
Done that. Maybe working now?
yes
Shame for keeping left.
Jeff, could you please take a look at my latest post on NSW council elections – seem to be having an issue with link tags. Thanks.
WB, i did predict that PB and Poss will be taken over by Crikey. Did i get a prize?
I have to make a comment to see if my avatar shows up.
G’day all!
I hope the regulars from PB make it over to the new home!
William (or Jeff, the fixit man?)
I don’t know if this is fixable or not but I thought I’d ask. As you all know, and hopefully I don’t sound like too much of a tool explaining this, posts in threads here are currently separated by various colour backgrounds – ie one post has a white background, the next has a light grey background, then the next one has a white one… etc etc. That part’s fine and easy to identify.
My question is then, is there anyway to possible make the ‘blockquotes’ a different colour entirely so that they are properly differentiated? Reading over a thread a while ago I found a few instances in which a user made multiple use of the blockquote feature in the one post, and it became bloody difficult to differentiate who was saying what, not to mention determining where one post began and another ended.
Just a thought, nothing urging or ultimately deterring, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks it a bit confusing. Otherwise this all looks very spiffy, v. impressed!
Yeah, I just whacked the blockquote support up a couple of hours ago… I’ll take a stab at some better colours soon.
You do not sound like a tool, and I am really enjoying the feedback and suggestions — all of which are making the site better for everyone.
Thanks!
once you have created your gravatar (picture)
you must then click on the picture( shown below your email address info)to activate your gravatar.
(it took me a few goes btw)
Looks great. Once I work out how to use my screen name, I will of course attempt to post something divisive and scurrilous but for now, love youse all and thanks William
Good stuff. Just testing to see if I can post OK.
Shanahan thinks that Turnbull will challenge in the middle of next month:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24338630-601,00.html
Well Shanners has gotten everything else right… not
Shanners’ Weekend Australian article from 4 weeks ago was titled something like “Count on Costello”, implying that he was going to go for the leadership after his book launch.
I want a Gravatar too.
Can’t see the option, but i’ll post first and gravitate to an avatar after?
Try here, Disasterboy.
Just testing
I’ve fixed up the links at the top now, so they should be clearer for everyone. It now says “Profile” instead of “Site Admin”, and I changed “Register” to “Sign Up” (people tend to recognise “Sign Up” more than “Register” these days).
Thanks to everyone for all the feedback (and compliments)!
William, no can do. I don’t get the option. Tried with the avatar, but not that fussed.
Thanks again Jeff, the site is top notch
roxanna: After setting your nickname, you have to save the options, then you can choose the nickname from the display name dropdown. Then save your options again.
Having explained that, it seems silly, so I’ll take a stab at fixing it… and then send a patch to the WordPress team.
Does anyone know what Poll Bludger 1.0 looked like?
Hi, it’s the poster formerly known as Rx here. I couldn’t use that nickname on the new site: something about nics needing a minimum of four characters. So, while having a cuppa I came up with the new nic.
There seems to be a lot of threads open at the same time. Making individual threads slower-moving. I miss the fast pace Poll Bludger had when only a couple of threads were hot at any one time.
I also find myself have to horizontally scroll, which is painful.
Now that my “complaints” are out of the way, congratulations William. Onward and upward.
All the best with this new chapter of PB.
Cuppa: Click on “Profile” at the top and set your nickname, save, then choose it from the list of display names. Then save again.
william, will you still be doing your excellent live blogging when elections are held or is that not possible now?
Chistian Kerr out, PB and Possum in. Crikey is definitely on the improve. If they can stop publishing asinine denialist letters from Tamas Calderwood in their daily E-mail I might even subscribe again …
He’ll still be able to do it here, but we’re going to add some extra stuff to make liveblogging work really nicely… fast for the live-blogger and the live-audience.
Very excited to hear that Jeff – it’s long occurred to me that there must be better ways to do live blogging than what I’ve traditionally done.
It’ll have to improve a lot more before I have anything to do with Crikey again. It’s painful enough having to come here to visit William and Possum.
When are we going to be able to post photos to this blog? That’s lots of fun.
William, are you “live blogging” for the US election or only the Aussie ones? (i.e like ACT next month)
Constructive suggestions always welcome.
Like at the Axis History Forum. I’m sure people here would like to see my concentration camp photos
Test
How do I get bloggers response number to appear?
Photos on the blog!?!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Dr Carr will be giving us slide nights!
The site comes over pretty good on my mobile as well.
FYI
The gravatar is email addy dependent – if you get a message saying username pinched by some swine – just register a name, any old name, but use the email addy you registered here with.
Then hey presto – gravatar with correct user name.
And why not , Possum?
I like this site. It’s easy to use, it looks good and I don’t mind being a lower-case person
Is there a fix yet for this
I’ve always been a lowercase kind of guy.
Would be good to be able to login on the Header rather than click login then enter login and password. I’m sure there’s room for both fields even if small. Could still leave the link for the site/sight impaired.
Links to photos should be fine, I think. Maybe a compromise is that thumbnails (like the Gravatars) would be permitted. If someones on dialup or using a phone you don’t want a blog to be full of Dr. Adam’s or anyone else’s indulgent images. Still they do add to readability and posting graphs as well as tables or calcs could be psephologically effective.
albertross: Click “Profile” up at the top and choose a display name (you can even choose an arbitrary nickname).
Dial-up *ptui*
Disaster boy: Yeah, definitely going to do an inline/popup login thingy, which will be much sexier. People without javascript (or who require a11y support) can just click through to the normal one.
Any chance of making the avatars bigger?
Might get in the way a bit in these mad crazy threads… but I could make them pop up a bigger version if you hover over them. That might be cute.
Thanks Jeff. Good stuff.
Just the fights over who’s can get the biggest Avatar and whether to flood the ‘blog with piccies, to go.
I don’t mind pictures or bigger vatar’s , just a bit of netquete to avoid oversized images being posted.
Thanks Jeffy Bear
Darth Vatar’s! Obviously I meant Avatar… @ 181
Everything looks ok, actually – I don’t seem to mind it – neater, if anything…
it’s taken me two days to get this site to accept a password, they sent me one in the end thats a mile long and complicated, how can i reset it to one i’ll remember, if i wasnt so addicted i think i’d have run a mile, sigh.
Judith: Click on “Profile” up the top. Password change boxes are down the bottom. What process did you go through that resulted in having password difficulties? Did you previously have an account on http://www.crikey.com.au?
Judith, when you’re logged in it should say “Site Admin” or “Profile” on the top right of the page. Click on this and you’ll see a number of options for your account, including setting your own password at the bottom.
Snap …
Just a test to see if the gravatar works.
Another test to see if the gravatar works.
Yet another test to see if the gravatar works.
HSO, it takes about 15 minutes to kick in (I’m assuming you’ve done it just now), and when it does it will appear next to all of your comments, including old ones.
William and Jeff, I cannot read the numbers on my screen. I use firefox if that makes any difference. It is frustrating having to count the entries. Hope you can help.
Ta, William. I notice you are Terry Gilliam’s God. Very droll.
Gravel @ 193. I use firefox and can see the numbers on my screen, on right hand side rather than left.
Umm, it’s a bit odd, William and Jeff. The gravatar now works on Possum’s site but still not here. Should I take it up with the gravatar mob?
Harry: Press Shift-Reload — to make sure the browser doesn’t try to load stuff from its cache — and it’ll appear. Hooray for the political analysis of E. P. Gumby.
Hey, I got capitals!
)
Testing
testing block quotes again