i'm thinking of moving wmtc to substack

I'm thinking about moving wmtc to Substack.

Wmtc has been on Blogger since July of 2004, starting out life as wemovetocanada.blogspot.com, then wmtc.blogspot.com, and finally wmtc.ca. I briefly tried to move to WordPress, but was horrified by their ad policy. 

Now I'm starting to feel like Blogger is a dinosaur, or dinosaur-ish. (I will not say "dinosaur adjacent"!) I've never chased the latest thing, and I don't mind being old-school if it suits my purposes. But I like Substack and the newsletter-based model.

I like many things about Substack. 

• It's easy to subscribe by email.
• No ads!!!!
• I like the look and feel.
• It gathers all the channels in one place. Even though I wouldn't be using most of them, I still like the idea of a creator being able to host their writing, their podcast, the chat, and any other channels, within one well-designed, uncluttered format.
• It offers creators a decent deal that they can control. Of course I have no intention of ever charging a fee for wmtc! But I like the idea of using a platform that supports writing, rather than ads.

Meanwhile, I've had a whole series of issues and frustrations with Blogger's backup function not working. Maybe it's time for a new look.

Naturally any subscription to a wmtc substack would always be free.

why i'm not letter-writing this year, part 2: the sad tale of the lost comments

In my previous post, I mentioned that I'm not participating in Write for Rights this year, for the first time in more than 15 years. This decision propelled me to introduce Write for Rights as a library program, which spreads the word, generates lots of letters, and helps me justify (to myself) not writing.

The real reason behind this decision: I have three consecutive days off from work, and I had slated them for restoring The Lost Comments. And once again, my plans for The Lost Comments have come to naught.

* * * *

The lost comments

In 2020, a series of unfortunate events led to the disappearance of thousands of comments from this blog. 

Allan believes (insists) that this is his fault. He is definitely not responsible, as the trouble began with a very stupid, careless error on my part. But really, despite whatever errors we both made, the whole mess exists because Blogger's backup and restore system is a piece of crap. In fact, it is not really a backup system at all.

I won't recount the steps that led to this disaster. Suffice to say that in February 2020, all the comments on wmtc from July 2006 to February 2020 disappeared. These dates include peak wmtc, when -- in the golden age of the blogosphere -- a community of up to 50 or more commenters regularly posted their thoughts on this blog. Lively, fun, and interesting discussions often took place in comment threads. 

The May 2019 file

I have a Blogger export (.xml) file from May 2019, that, if properly restored, would reduce the comment gap from more than 13 years to nine months -- nine months when comments weren't even that active.

However, the May 2019 Blogger .xml file is corrupted and will not upload. I've created various test blogs, and can import other .xml files, but not that one. And -- an important note -- none of the .xml files have ever imported comments. None. Ever.

An additional issue

After the February 2020 disaster, Allan was able to restore all the deleted posts, but their URLs had changed. This means internal links no longer work, except for posts on the "greatest hits" page, which I manually fixed. It also means that The Lost Comments now had no associated post to be attached to. The text of those posts still exists -- but the posts themselves, with their unique URLs, no longer exist. So the comments couldn't be restored to their original posts, regardless of Blogger's backup capabilities.

No help

Blogger's Help Community has been useless. Several people made some semblance of trying to help, but their answers made it clear that they hadn't read my post and weren't willing to engage on any but the most superficial level. I realize that the problem may not be fixable -- but no one came anywhere close to even trying.

My obsession

Since the comments disappeared in February 2020, I've been periodically obsessed with trying to restore them. I have a post in drafts titled "the lost comments of wmtc: making peace with blogger". There is only that title. I never wrote the post because I never made peace with it.

I now export/backup wmtc more regularly than I used to, and I periodically try to import the May 2019 .xml. I know that's supposed to be the definition of insanity, but it is also the definition of hope.

The plan

Earlier this year, I decided I would copy/paste the comments from the May 2019 file into the appropriate posts. I created a gmail account for this purpose, and I identified December 25-27 as The Comment Project. I don't celebrate Christmas, and three consecutive days off seemed like the perfect opportunity -- perfect enough that I gave up this year's W4R.

My plan was to copy all the comments on a post, open a new comment, paste in the original comments as one long comment, and submit. This seemed totally doable.

Until I opened the .xml file.

I had assumed that comments would appear after each post -- post, comments, post, comments, and so on. Bzzzt. The .xml file contains, in this order: the blog template, all the posts, all the comments.

Comments are not identified according to the post they were associated with, nor with the date of that post, but by the dates of the comments themselves. So if people were coming back to a thread and posting over several days, which is very typical, those comments would be spread out over several dates, and have no identifier to show which post they belonged with.

This may seem obvious to people who regularly work with .xml files, but it was news to me. Very, very unwelcome news.

I tried anyway

Call it tenacity, or stubbornness, or compulsion, it doesn't much matter. I have trouble giving up. 

Allan and I copied the entire .xml file into a Word file: 17,490 pages.

Allan then deleted the template and the posts, shrinking the file to just over 7,500 pages. (Allan had to do this, as my computer would have frozen and crashed.)

He then did some fancy find-and-replacing to make the blocks of comments easier to see.

But here's the thing. 

When this was a simple copy/paste job, I was willing to slog through it. But now there is decision-making involved. Reading, thinking, and decision-making. I simply do not have the bandwidth. The spoons. The energy.

Like most people who work full-time, my time outside work is limited, and I always feel that I don't have enough time to do the things I want to do. In addition, I have chronic illness that demands I manage my rest and energy levels. Do I want to use hours, days, weeks of my precious free time trying to determine what comments go where and pasting them in? No. I do not.

Still, I can't let go

Despite the realization that I don't want to devote the necessary time to it, I still mourn the loss of those comments, and I'm still considering chipping away at this project.

something strange going on with this blog: a sad update

I was so excited. 

I thought all the thousands of lost comments might be coming back.

Now I am let down all over again.

A few weeks ago, I noted that very old comments -- from 2005 and 2006 -- have been appearing in the spam queue of this blog. This gave me hope that the thousands of comments that were lost would be magically restored.

When a big chunk of wmtc was accidentally deleted, and Allan and I restored the posts by importing a Blogger XML file, the URLs of the posts changed. I didn't know if comments on posts with changed URLs would be published. If the URL has changed, would the relevant comments have a place to post?

I asked this question in the Blogger Help Community. Unfortunately, the Blogger Help Person never understood what I was asking. Granted, it is a strange concept, difficult to explain. But their comments made it clear that they were not reading what I wrote. Perhaps they were monitoring too many threads, and giving each only a cursory glance? 

Now I've been moderating comments from the spam queue (not the spam folder, as the BHP noted) for an additional three weeks, for a total of almost eight weeks. I am still moderating old comments daily, all from legit wmtc commenters. The majority are from July 2005 to June 2006; a few are from 2021. None are from July 2006 to February 2020, the time span of the lost comments. I assume that because the posts' URLs changed when we restored the posts, the comments have nowhere to go, so to speak.

If I was able to upload a specific XML file, I could narrow that to May 2019 to Feburary 2020. But I cannot import the file.

So, the situation has not changed. The comments are gone. I am finally beginning to accept it.

something strange (but good) is going on with this blog

In early 2020, I lost a wmtc post that was important to me and had a lot of comments. 

Allan and I were able to re-post the post itself, but in the process, a huge chunk of the blog disappeared. Coincidentally, I had recently done a back-up using Blogger's export/import function -- the first time in years, which is awful and scary. 

However, the most recently exported file wouldn't upload. Blogger's import/export function was always problematic, and Allan and I (and several other bloggers) used the Blogger Help Community to bring this to Blogger's attention.

Eventually Blogger fixed the export/import issues. But I was still never able to upload that one backup file. 

The upshot of all this: thousands of comments on this blog between July 2006 and May 2019 were lost. I was gutted. 

A few weeks ago, for some reason I checked spam comments, something I hadn't done in a very long time. I was astonished to find 95 comments there -- all from 2006, by people who were regular readers and commenters at the time! Lost comments had returned!!! 

I was able to put the comments through, and they appear normally on those old posts.

Since then, I check spam comments daily or almost daily. The folder always contains old comments by known wmtc commenters, and I put them through. There have been about 250 so far.

This is a very welcome development!!

It's possible that Allan and I inadvertently hurt this process -- one we never could have anticipated -- as we were repairing damage to wmtc. Many URLs have changed. (That's why I updated many internal links.) Now I wonder if lost comments will appear for posts with changed URLs. If comments on those posts do come in, will they post when I moderate them?

Meanwhile the old comments continue to appear, and I continue to put them through. I have zero information on why this is happening. 

a note about subscribing to wmtc by email

This is an note for wmtc readers who subscribe to the blog by email. 

Zoho, the service I am now using to handle the wmtc mailing list, allows three "campaigns" (sends) per month on their free level. This will sometimes be enough for one email per post, but sometimes it will not be. This means that subscribers may receive a "there are new posts" email referring to more than one post from the previous month.

I don't see any way around this. As I've mentioned many times, it seems ludicrous to pay a monthly fee to have my (free, ad-free) blog sent by email. So, please scroll down.

new email list manager: apologies if you receive duplicates as i switch from mailchimp to zoho

Mailchimp recently announced that it is changing its free plan, reducing the number of contacts and sends that can be managed for free. Because of this, wmtc will no longer qualify for the free level.

As I said when I switched to Mailchimp two years ago:

I also don't want to pay for a service. I have many paid subscriptions; I don't expect to get everything for free. But since I do not (and never will) have ads on this blog, it doesn't generate income. I write for free and you read for free. All good. But I'm not going to pay so that people can read a free blog!

I did some research in my usual scattershot manner, and found Zoho. Zoho's free level can accommodate wmtc's subscriber list and has a good reputation for reliability.

It's possible that there may be some duplicate emails, as I end the Mailchimp sends and set up Zoho. Apologies in advance.

Pro tip: Forbes' listicles are proving to be very useful. I've used them for several things lately and they've been very good.

housekeeping complete

* The best-of page has been updated to 2021.

* The links on that page are working again.

* Internal links on multi-part posts are also working again -- i.e. on the second part of a post links to the first, the third part links to the first and second, and so on.

* Other internal links on random posts throughout the blog don't work.

housekeeping in progress: apologies for possibly sending old posts

For a very long time, old links on this blog have not worked. This has always bothered me. 

It's bad enough that I lost many thousands of comments (2006 through 2019). I live in hope that this may change, if Blogger fixes the import/export issue, but as time goes by, that seems more and more doubtful. 

Added to that, the posts linked on wmtc's greatest hits are not functioning. It really bothers me.

So I've decided to fix them. I can't find and fix all the internal links on posts, but I can fix the greatest hits page. 

While I do that, and depending how you read this blog, it's possible that old posts will be sent to you or appear in your feed. Apologies in advance.

using mailchimp for subscribe-by-email is no longer working (updated: it is working?!)

If you subscribed to this blog through the widget on the sidebar, that service is no longer working. Mailchimp's free option has a cap on sends -- not only how many email addresses you can send at a time (which I knew) but how many you can send, cumulatively** (which I didn't know). 

Even the lowest paid Mailchimp option is more than I need. And since reading this blog is free, writing it should be free, too. 

I am still receiving emails for blogs I subscribe to, but I don't know how long that will last. Perhaps Blogger hasn't gotten around to completely killing Feedburner yet.

So... anyone who wants to read this blog will have to figure out how to continue without the email alerts. This makes me sad, but I also don't want to fuss with it anymore.

* * * *

** It appears the service is working! Perhaps the cap on sends is monthly, and by blogging every day while we were traveling, I hit the limit. And now the monthly allowance begins again. 

In which case, I will put the "subscribe by email" widget back on the sidebar. And this gives me an opportunity to tweak that a bit.

Nothing to see here. Carry on.

how i resolved the feedburner (subscribe by email) issue: mailchimp

A while back, Blogger announced that it will no longer support the subscribe-by-email widget. This means readers who receive blog updates by email will no longer receive them.

I posted about this, looking for input from other bloggers about how they are handling this. I must have been unclear, because I heard mostly from readers, telling me they don't subscribe by email, and so will not have a problem. That's very good! But didn't help my dilemma.

The only email service I was familiar with was Mailchimp, which is used by many grassroots and nonprofit groups to manage mailing lists and communicate with their subscribers. I've used Mailchimp with a few different groups. It's very easy to use, and has a lot of great functions even on the free level. But I thought Mailchimp would be overkill for my needs.

I also don't want to pay for a service. I have many paid subscriptions; I don't expect to get everything for free. But since I do not (and never will) have ads on this blog, it doesn't generate income. I write for free and you read for free. All good. But I'm not going to pay for people to read a free blog!

I researched all different subscription services, and when all was said and done, I chose Mailchimp. I found nothing better -- not even close.

Bringing the list of wmtc subscribers to Mailchimp also has the hidden advantage of giving subscribers an opportunity to unsubscribe, and cleaning the mailing list of defunct email addresses. I expect my mailing list to shrink a lot, but at least I'll know that everyone who subscribes actually wants to -- as opposed to people who stopped reading 10 or 15 years ago.

I plan to keep this very simple. Current subscribers will get the option to sign up for the new list or to unsubscribe. Subscribers will receive an email whenever a new post is up. The end. I hope!

subscribe-by-email is going away. bloggers, what are you going to use instead?

Blogger will soon stop supporting the function that allows readers to subscribe to blogs via email. This is occurring because Google is killing Feedburner. Like the deceased Google Reader, Feedburner is very popular, used by millions, but Google has not been updating it, and is now officially killing it.

There has been some concern that Google might kill Blogger, but over the past several years, they have been answering Blogger-related questions and upgrading some Blogger features. I am still waiting for an update that will allow me to restore 14 years of lost comments! But it does seem like that will happen, and it appears that Blogger will survive.

However, as of July of this year, Feedburner and Subscribe by Email will be no more.

I very much want to offer readers a subscribe-by-email option, and I also want to use that option for several blogs that I read. I've tried many alternatives, but email subscriptions work best for me. 

Things I will not be doing: switching to WordPress, using Twitter instead of blogging, turning my blog into a newsletter. 

I've been researching alternatives to Feedburner, and there are many good ones out there. However, most are paid subscription services. 

I'm not in the camp that expects everything to be free. I subscribe to many paid services: a ridiculous number of streaming platforms, plus software licenses, news sites, and apps that I use frequently and want ad-free. But my blog is not a commercial venture; it is simply my writing outlet. My blog is not monetized, and never will be. So adding a monthly fee so that a few hundred readers can subscribe by email seems wasteful.

I think the simplest solution is IFTTT. IFTTT, which stands for If This Then That (a coding expression), allows you to create applets that link various apps and services, enabling you to do things that neither app alone will do. (This is a good explanation.) I've used IFTTT before, and it has always seemed simple and reliable.

IFTTT lets you create three free applets, This free option allows you to connect an RSS feed to a Blogger blog. 

I'm pretty sure I'm going with this one. But if you blog and you've found a solution that you like, please share! And I hope all the bloggers I read will all provide some kind of email option.

the post of orphaned notes

Like many writers, especially those of us who grew up before the digital age, I keep a notebook. I use it to capture ideas, capture thoughts about I'm reading, take notes on experiences, and take notes on various activist or community meetings I attend. 

I've learned that I have to make notes while I'm thinking of something, because I am unlikely to remember the thought at another time, out of context. Before the digital age, I carried a small spiral memo pad with me almost all the time. 

These days, however, I don't always have a notebook with me, so I do whatever is quickest -- type a note on my phone, scribble it on a scrap of paper, save an email in drafts, or email myself from one address to another.

Later on, when I'm blogging, I check my notebook to see my notes. But I don't look at the notes on my phone or the scraps of paper sitting in a neat pile on my desk or any other form of notetaking. My note-capturing process has changed, but my writing process has not. (And apparently cannot.)

Then I write something and post it.

Then sometime later, I find the other notes, the ones not in a notebook. And these notes bother me. I don't throw them away, and I don't delete them. And every time I see them, they remind me of my sloppy, haphazard, non-methodical writing methods.

And so, in what is sure to be an ongoing but occasional series, I bring you: a post of orphaned notes.

what i'm reading

I wrote about David Blight's huge and brilliant biography of Frederick Douglass here: what i'm reading: frederick douglass, prophet of freedom. In my phone, a note called "frederick douglass susan b anthony" says:

All racist
Stanton especially
Huge rift btn Douglass and Anthony/Stanton re suffrage
Racist and white supremacist speeches
Douglass and drunken Irishman speech
Anti Indian in many speeches
Ignorance of what was happening to native americans
Also Douglass imperialist re annexing DR, Cuba, Haiti, what his reasons were
What does the moral purity crowd make of this? All it means is no one is perfect. Not even the best.
xref: extend more compassion to others' imperfections and our own.

A note called "frederick douglass" says:

lincoln re emancipation / JFK re civil rights
JFK was no lincoln but good parallel
both making political decisions, delaying moral decisions
both: standard history credits white men for movement they were dragged into, support only when there was no other option

A note called "running the books" (book reviewed here) says:

compassion as most defiant/radical act
complexities of rules - broken bent adhered to - conseqs
kites
books are not mailboxes
"havens for all variety of loners and outcasts" = daytime library

what i'm watching

A note called "shameless uk" says:

redemption
learning the source of pain that drives bad behaviour eg monica's mum

A note called "bob newhart show guest stars" says:

sharon gless
henry winkler
len lesser (seinfeld uncle leo) (also get smart)
terry garr
ron rifkin
terry garr
howard hesseman (early gay character)
john ritter
fred willard
S3 change in open, now shows emily  

A note called "intellectual superheroes" says:

sherlock
bletchley - fantastic four - superfriends - ea. w super powers
murdoch
gets around pre-computer age 

A note with no title says:

red dwarf waiting for film to be developed - limited imagination!

star trek TOS ep 15 "in accordance w/ our laws and our many beliefs"

malcolm dumb irritating people are often bigots

shows used to be 50 mins now 42 shows used to be 22 mins now 18

An ominous note with no title says:

where do their husbands and kids disappear to? 

Cultural appropriation

A note called "cultural appropriation?" has a brief intro from me, then copy/pasted text from letters to the New York Times Book Review.

letters to nyt book review about the ridiculousness of applying cultural appropriation to fiction

Letters to the Editor

‘American Dirt’

To the Editor:

I wish your reviewers would keep to the business at hand of reviewing books. I am not interested in Lauren Groff’s anxiety and fear about reviewing “American Dirt” (Jan. 26), or her lack of Mexican heritage or migrant experience. Or the author’s lack of Mexican heritage or migrant experience, for that matter. We are all human beings, regardless of racial or ethnic background. Human beings love to tell and listen to stories. It’s in our makeup. It’s as simple as that, no matter who’s telling it. Writers have the great pleasure and privilege of creating worlds for us to enter, whatever color they are, or where they were born.

Please urge your reviewers to actually critique and/or praise books, not give us all their feelings about doing so, the controversy behind the book, or questioning the author’s right to tell the story. Save the hand-wringing and the virtue-signaling for the opinion pages.

Gina Ortiz
Claremont, Calif.

To the Editor:

In her review of Jeanine Cummins’s “American Dirt,” Lauren Groff wondered whether she was the right person to review the novel, being neither a Mexican nor a migrant. If this were the case, then only an African-American should have reviewed DuBose Heyward’s novel “Porgy,” a Holocaust survivor William Styron’s “Sophie’s Choice,” and a classicist Mary Renault’s novels about ancient Greece. If the critic represents the reader at his or her highest level, then Groff has succeeded admirably. She realizes she is not reviewing an art novel but a work of commercial fiction and judges it accordingly. She admits her ambivalence about it but cannot deny its emotional impact. Groff should be commended for navigating the troubled waters of cultural appropriation without hitting a reef.

Bernard F. Dick
Teaneck, N.J.

To the Editor:

I haven’t read “American Dirt,” but the whole debate about cultural appropriation strikes me as ridiculous and dangerous. What’s next: telling a female author she doesn’t have the right to write from a male point of view, or vice versa? Was John Steinbeck an Okie? Was Harriet Beecher Stowe an African-American? And yet, “The Grapes of Wrath” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” were powerful works that helped shape public opinion.

In the end, the only thing that really matters is: Is the work of fiction effective or not? Beyond that, it shouldn’t matter in the least who tells it.

Dale Boyer
Chicago

To the Editor:

I have read about all the controversy associated with “American Dirt” and whether it is an appropriation of “Others’” stories. This is my question: I have read all of Tony Hillerman’s novels about the Southwest and the Navajo in particular. They gave me insight into the area and peoples that I never received from my undergraduate and graduate history education. Has anyone ever questioned Hillerman’s appropriation? Was he given a pass because he is a man? And recently male writers have been praised for their novels that featured female main characters.

There needs to be more discussion of these issues.

Dee Pregliasco
Louisville, Ky.

To the Editor:

The idea that certain groups have an exclusive right to certain stories is a critical fallacy; Shakespeare was not a woman, not a Moor, not a Jew, not a medieval — or ancient — English king. Nor was he unable, as a white Christian male of his time, to write sympathetically about them. Let’s get back to judging works on their merits, not by our personal politics.

Gregory Loselle
Southgate, Mich.

A note from antiquity

I have a note to myself from when I read The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead's first novel, in 1999! Yes, not only did I save this note from 19 years ago, I actually know where to find it! I may have sloppy writing habits, but I am very organized!

When she goes to see Coombs (Natchez) he tells the receptionist to her pass.

Vol I and II as old and new testament. Vol III "truly understands human need". shanti?

"It is important to let the citizens know it is coming. to let them prepare themselves for the second elevation."

Fulton as god or prophet, christlike figure. Lila Mae as prophet p 255

listening to joni

mingus, blasted for thinking she could play jazz and "be black"

1 mingus approached her

2 jazz has always been multicultural, first culture in US to be integrated

3 shut up you idiots

and

review her love life or her personality (which they imagined they knew based on songs) or criticized her for not doing ... ? 

and

did critics hate her because they didn't understand her and she made them feel stupid?

and

anthology supposed 2 b walkthru of joni chronology but no revw of blue or c&s?

 Orphaned blog ideas

These are notes for posts I've never written, and since I never see these notes, probably never will.

dr said choose habits that involve movement
why this is not practical or good advice

and

coltrane
giant steps
in btn 2 miles davis albums

incredibly fertile periods of great musicians: joni, dylan, coltrane
what years for each?

and

to find out which one deserves it most, a series of tests
everyone deserves it!
love, meaningful work, decent life, 2nd chance or 3rd or 4th chance
individual/anecdotal stories determining policies
one @ time - luck - policies for better
individuals vs better society

and

when could you get quality food at a decent price?
when could one earner support a family?
is this only true for white people?
role of unions

and

who is the news for?
price of oil
layoffs vs stock market
"growth" - shareholders
who produces the news

These have been sitting in Blogger drafts for ages. I don't write them, but I don't delete them.

thoughts on listening to bob dylan while driving through the [ends there]

what i'm reading: galileo: watcher of the skies by david wootton

seeing the night sky

five assumptions urbans make about rurals and vice versa

the trudeau government should create green jobs, not bail out the fossil-fuel industry

the strange and circular concept of electability

athena is organizing against amazon, and you can help -- even if you use amazon. especially if you use amazon.

mass demos are ineffective and have been for more than two decades

it's national read a book day: let's play the page 56 game

 

In honour of National Read A Book Day, grab the book you are currently reading or the last book you read. 

Open to page 56, and find the sixth sentence on the page. 

Type the line in comments, plus the title and author of the book.

I'll start:

-- What?

Roddy Doyle, Love (2020)

When we last played this game on wmtc in 2008, we had one of the longest threads ever on this blog... now wiped out. I continue to hope. Perhaps foolishly, but I can't live with the thought of thousands of comments being lost.

blogger's backup and restore (export and import) functions do not work properly

Allan and I have spent countless hours this week trying to backup Joy of Sox and to restore posts and comments to wmtc.

I think we are making progress, but I don't know what the final outcome will be. Which is ridiculous. This process shouldn't be this difficult and the outcome shouldn't be in doubt!

Blogger's backup function, through which you export all posts and comments and save them as an XML file, appears to work for small blogs with a few hundred posts and comments. Large blogs like ours with many thousands of posts and comments -- not so much.

We have been searching for an external, non-Blogger backup tool. Mostly we found nothing. After days of searching, Allan did find one option. To backup JoS, it took 26 hours and saved a file that is 23 GBs! That is crazy, given the most recent XML file produced by a Blogger backup was around 200 MBs. 

Right now we believe we have every wmtc post (thank [something]) and all comments except comments from May 2019 to the present. I can live with that. However, we have not been able to restore anything yet, because Blogger's restore function is not working. 

Of course we have posted on Blogger support, and of course that is being ignored.

Important update! I've learned that the 23 GB backup file from Joy of Sox is not XML and cannot be imported. So: never mind. Not an option.

More important update! All comments are gone except (a) the most recent comments, after the backup was done, plus (b) 1,000 comments from 2006.

why this blog looks strange right now (updated) (upperdated)

A post was accidentally deleted -- an essay that took a while to write. Happily, I had recently backed up the whole blog. And thank goodness, as it had been a long while since the previous backup.

In order to restore the missing post, Allan imported the backup copy... and instead of all the posts merging, they re-posted. I think that's because they were originally posted by me, but imported by Allan, making him a new author, causing Blogger to read the imported posts as new.

Now we've got to get rid of about 7,000 duplicate posts.

Sadly, all the lovely comments on this post have been lost. There were about 30 comments; five remain. That's frustrating. Although nowhere near as frustrating as losing the post itself.

* * * *

Update. Horrible update. Now all the duplicate posts are gone... but so are all the comments. Thousands of comments. All our discussions. All gone.

I cannot even think about this being permanent. We are still working on it. Hoping to post another update soon.

* * * *

Upperdate. The 1,000 most recent comments now appear through the comments feature in my dashboard. They do not show up on any posts, but at least they exist. At some point, I could copy them into comments in each post, noting who originally posted them.

Comments from the earliest posts of this blog still exist. That's an enormous relief.

Comments on posts between July 2016 and November 2018 no longer exist. I take some comfort in the fact that I wasn't writing that much during this period!

This has happened because Blogger's backup and restore function does not work properly.

best of wmtc, 2018 edition

The "wmtc's greatest hits" page is now updated to include 2018. Somehow Allan continues to find highlights.

the troll that wouldn't die

He lives.

Those of you who go back a long way with wmtc will remember how this blog was the target of trolls, back in the heyday of the blogosphere, before Twitter and Instagram existed, before so many bloggers moved to Facebook. Social media evolved, attention spans got shorter, and the trolls eventually left wmtc. All but one. You know who I'm talking about. The one and only magnolia_2000, a/k/a Mags.

Mags has disappeared for long stretches of time, but he always returns. Allan says that Mags is addicted to me and will never leave -- that no matter how much time passes, we will always hear from him again. I am his obsession.

Recently he's revived his pathetic attempt at bullying. I can't say I understand it. Can he possibly think I care what some random wacko thinks of my life choices?? It is utterly bizarre.

Here are some recent gems from the boy. He doesn't like Port Hardy. He doesn't like Kai. He doesn't like where we shop. He doesn't like our rugs! Oh noes!

Here's a particularly wacky one from 2017. He's referring to earrings I bought on a trip 10 years earlier! Ten years!!!



I last posted about Mags in 2013; the comments on that thread are quite amusing. My long essay about the Harper government's citizenship guide (reprinted in shorter form on several other sites), plus the death of Henry Morgentaler, brought Mags around. Trolls are nothing if not predictable: Morgentaler is a Canadian hero, and Mags is a viscious anti, misogyny being the sine qua non of trolldom.

Nothing seems to set Mags off more than when we travel. The man follows along on wmtc and complains about our trips. Seriously.

At some point, Mags expressed sympathy when we lost one of our dogs! I find that the most bizarre comment of all. I guess obsessions are complicated.

* * * *

I've enjoyed documenting the trolls over the years. The phenomenon fascinates me, and the comment threads are always interesting.

2013: wmtc trolls are alive and as insane as ever

2013: special update for long-time wmtc readers

2012: a trip down memory lane with wmtc (not Mags)

2009: This was published in shorter form at The Mark as "The Trolls Among Us"

2007: open letter to a reader who hates me (also not Mags)

From 2005 to 2007, there are a lot of posts about troll attacks, tagged "wingnuts". Posts such as i am a fascist pig, i am a coward, the welcoming committee, and begone foul spirit.

google does it again: recent blogger updates are not user-friendly

Once again, Google has reduced the ease and functionality of Blogger.

A while back, the layout of the Blogger dashboard changed. I used to be able to see an overview of all my blogs plus my "following" list on one dashboard page. I found this very useful, and I imagine that other users who also moderate more than one blog would have agreed. Now I can no longer check for and moderate comments on all blogs at the same time, and I no longer have one-stop-shopping for which blogs on my list have updated.

For comments, I have to check each blog separately, necessitating many more clicks.

For blogs I read, I had to subscribe to email updates, on blogs that offer this function. Not everyone does. (I don't like using feeds; I prefer to visit blogs and websites on their native platforms.)

Next, Google discontinued the option to have comments on your own blog emailed to you. So, for example, if Allan put a bunch of comments through on wmtc, those comments would be emailed to me.

I'm talking about this, found in Settings > email, which tells you when a comment has posted --

 -- not this, found in Settings > posts, comments, and sharing, which emails you when a comment is waiting to be moderated:

Now to check for new comments, I now have to go to Comments > published. I have to remember to do this for each blog in order to see what comments may have posted. Not very convenient.

Google also discontinued the option for any user with any ID to comment. Previously, the choices were Anyone (including anonymous), Any ID (Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.), or Only Members of this Blog. This has changed to Anyone (including anonymous), User [sic] with Google ID, or Only Members of this Blog.

When "Any ID" disappeared, I didn't want to exclude readers who might not have a Google ID. As a result, I've been deleting about 20-30 spam comments every day. It's become so annoying that I've changed commenting to anyone with a Google ID. I wanted to be more inclusive, but Blogger and spammers have conspired against that.

It's been months, and I'm frustrated. 

still catching up

venn diagram courtesy of Lucidchart

I just wanted to create a Venn diagram.

how to get your website removed from the wayback machine

During my recent attack by wingnut trolls, I learned something new: how to request that the Internet Archive remove your site from the Wayback Machine.

* * * *

Before I was nominated as an NDP candidate in the recent provincial election, of course my online presence had to be vetted. All potential candidates were asked to deactivate their personal profiles from social media, and in addition I was asked to delete a few random tweets from several years ago. None of this was a big deal to me. The only big deal was wmtc.

Early on, I was asked if I'd consider taking down the site. My first reaction was completely negative. Wmtc is so much a part of my life. Take it down? No way!

It was only weeks before the election would be called -- and I've been blogging for 14 years. That's a lot of words! There was really no way to vet everything. While the NDP was considering the situation from their end, I was also thinking more about being a candidate, and increasingly feeling like it was something I wanted to do. The next time we spoke, I said I was amenable to taking the blog offline for the duration of the campaign. They were happy; I was happy; things proceeded.

This is where someone made a mistake. The NDP research team should have given me instructions for getting wmtc excluded from the Wayback Machine -- but they did not.

The troll that emailed wmtc links to the Toronto Sun columnist might have done it anyway -- that person may have been saving those links for a long time, or may have found them on a message board -- but the columnist would have had no way to verify it.

But that isn't what happened. Only after the columnist got in touch with me, a research person gave me these instructions:

1. Use the email account associated with your blog.

2. Email info@archive.org, identify yourself as the site owner, and request removal of the site from the archives.

Then, supposedly, you will quickly receive an acknowledgement of your email, and in 2-3 days, your site will be excluded from the Wayback Machine.

I sent the email.

I received no reply.

A week went by -- a very stressful and difficult week -- and still I heard nothing. Meanwhile, the trolls and the columnist had dredged up more material to take out of context, selectively quote, and use against the NDP.

The Party's research department got in touch again -- the sight of her number on Caller ID made my stomach turn over -- and we agreed that I'd email them again.

Eight days after my first email, I received this form letter.

Hello,

The Internet Archive can exclude web pages from the Wayback Machine (web.archive.org), but we first respectfully request that you help us verify that you are the site owner or content author by doing any one of the following:

- post your request on the current version of the site (and send us a link).

- send your request from the main email contact listed on the site.

- send a request from the registrant's email (if publicly viewable on WhoIs Lookup) or webmaster’s email listed on the site.

- point us to where your personal information (name, personal contact info, image of self) appears on the site in a way that identifies you as the site owner or author of the content you wish to have excluded - in this instance, we ask to verify your identity via a scan of a valid photo id (sensitive info such as birth date, address, or phone can be blacked out).

- forward to us communication from a hosting company or registrar addressed to you as owner of the domain.

If none of these options are available to you, please let us know in a reply to this email.

We would be grateful if you would help us preserve as much of the archive as possible. Therefore, please let us know if there are only specific URLs or directories about which you are concerned so that we may leave the rest of the archives available.

As you may know, Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library, seeking to maintain via the Wayback Machine a freely accessible historical record of the Internet. The material in the archives are not exploited by Internet Archive for commercial profit.

This was very discouraging. I had waited more than a week, and still I was only at the form-letter stage! I already was emailing from the account associated with the site! Most of the other methods of verification were not available to me. I was a bit panicked and not thinking entirely clearly.

But finally, I logged into the DNS company that hosts my URL, and took a screenshot of the account profile page. I also scanned my driver's license, and sent both DNS screenshot and license pic to the archives' email address.

Three days later, I received the same form-letter reply to my second request.

Two days after that, I received this notice.

Hello,

The sites/URLs referenced in your email below have now been submitted for exclusion from the Wayback Machine at http://www.archive.org.

Please allow up to a day for the automated portions of the process to run their course and for the changes to take effect. If you have any other questions or concerns, please let us know.

By this time, of course, it was way too late.