Welcome, MaddowBlog readers, to the new site! Thanks for your patience while we get settled in. I think you’ll be able to find most of what you’re accustomed to see. One big change is the implementation of “groups” in the comments. Here’s a quick explainer of how that works now.
As before, your Newsvine account will enable you to comment on our posts. When you comment, however, you’ll also be offered a menu of “groups” to which you can assign your comment.
The Mind Over Chatter group is the main official group for the MaddowBlog, so we encourage you to default to that when posting here.
I’ve also created an I Saw It On TV group for show-specific comments, because I think it’s sometimes frustrating to try to talk about what was aired with people who didn’t watch.
And for non-news general business about the site or for questions or for crowdsourcing projects we might engage, I made the Inside Baseball group.
It’s tricky to predict, from a blank slate, what we’ll need in terms of organizing comments. The new system also includes a means for you to create your own group, which you can manage yourself, and invite your friends, including friends you hopefully make here among the comments.
Comments not posted to groups will display at the bottom of the comment thread. That should take the random drive-by comments out of our way.
I’m still learning the ins and outs of the social networking aspect of the new system, but part of the idea behind these groups is that you can follow them like you would follow someone on Twitter, or like them on Facebook. So the system will track and aggregate their content for you.
That tracking and aggregating is built in at the individual level as well. So you can follow Steve Benen specifically, no problem. If you feel like you sometimes miss Laura’s posts and want to be able to follow her more closely, Bam!
The community rules, by the way, are listed here. The new site comes with new staff helping to keep the community healthy.
Have fun!
