Site news

“bullet” You may have noticed a new thing on each post – the “share” button at the lower right. If you pass your mouse over it, it drops down to give a number of options for sharing the post with others. You can email it to a friend, post it on your Facebook profile, Digg it, etc. This is now also on most of the story pages.
“bullet” I’ve updated the Using this Site page — it’s available at the “Problem Commenting?” link at the top left of the home page. I’ve now included a full section about the problems some people encounter commenting here.

If you try to leave a comment and get a message with 403 FORBIDDEN on it, don’t panic. You haven’t been banned, and you aren’t forbidden.
It just means that the stupid comment software thought it saw something that might normally exist in a spam comment, and decided to block it.
As you know, people are always sending messages for via-gra, and po-ker, and cia-lis, etc. Well, the comment software once blocked the word “socialist” because it contained the word “cia-lis” in it! (that one got fixed).
It also sometimes doesn’t like links with a .info suffix, and will often block posts with links to URLs that are in the same domain as your listed Home Page (spammers usually link to their own site, that’s why).
So if you get the 403 message…

1. Look for trigger words and try hyphenating them (“po-ker”) or leaving them out.
2. If you have links to .info sites, try replacing them with a short link from tinyurl.com
3. Leave your homepage blank (or replace with tinyurl version) if you’re posting a link to your own article on your home site.
4. Send the comment to me and I’ll try to post it for you.

“bullet” RSS Feed. No changes here, but a reminder that this site has an RSS feed. You can click on the RSS that usually shows up in the address bar above, or on the RSS feed link at the above left.
This allows you to subscribe to all the posts if you use a newsreader (which is the only way I can keep track of the hundreds of sites I check each day). I use NetNewsWire, which is absolutely fantastic! It’s free and syncs the news feeds on my home computer, office computer and iPod touch.
“bullet” DrugWarRant Tips. Finally, a reminder that reader tips are invaluable to me. I really appreciate all the emails with tips, ideas, suggestions, and corrections. And I apologize if I don’t respond. I’m often terrible at getting back to everyone who writes, but I read every one. Thanks!