The Gaming Outpost

I am one who opposes change for its own sake.  If something is to be changed, it should be because the new is clearly an improvement over the old.  I am at this point hoping that this be the case at The Examiner, where I presently publish my temporal anomalies pieces.  They are upgrading to a new system, and during the upgrade I’m experiencing a lot of downgraded usability.

Of first note, they have always offered a “basic” and an “advanced” editor.  The “advanced” editor allows the writer to compose entirely in HTML–or, in my case, to pre-write the fully coded page, check it for errors, and then paste the full text with all coding into a window on the date of publication and publish it.  The “basic” editor requires that one either type or paste plain text into the window (or actually, into a pop-up window that in turn will paste it into the text window), and then using a point and click highlight and buttons system with more pop-up windows individually add all text formatting and links.  Thus on the day of publication, the “basic” editor demands several times as much time and effort to get an article published as the “advanced” ever did.  I do not count this an improvement.

Second, although I am not certain whether it is a function of the basic editor or a supposed improvement, it use to be that it was possible to preview the article just before sending it to publication.  Now you have to hope that you have everything right, or go back later after it has been published to edit it.

Third, and again I can’t say whether this is a flaw of the new system or of the basic editor, although it was always stated that articles might take a while to appear on the site, they never did.  Immediately upon posting, a link was made available along with quick access to Twitter and Facebook to get the articles announced.  For the last two or three articles, I have had to wait near half an hour for the link to be live, which is a serious dent in my day, because I have to leave the task and return later.

I’ve also noticed that perhaps a month’s worth of the most recent comments posted by readers are absent from the index of comments I can access.  I was looking for one today, hunting through articles in search of a comment posted by someone claiming to be the author of a book that addresses time travel.  I could not find it.

Finally, the transition of my old articles to the new system has played havoc with some of the coding in the titles.  The old system accepted a non-breaking space code for a space in the title; the new system not only does not accept these, but in transitioning all my old articles, nearly all of which have a non-breaking space after the colon in the title, it has included   in every one of them.  It’s ugly, and the system won’t let me fix it.

So I’m annoyed at the changes being made to a system that worked well before the changes were initiated, and can only hope that once they finish what they’ve started it will work again.

Meanwhile, I managed to post The Time Traveler’s Wife part 6:  a future problem, addressing what happens when a time traveler leaps into the future and then returns to his own time.  I also managed to adjust on the fly to plans that changed half a dozen times related to transporting someone whose plans were not entirely in his own control.  What I seem not to have done, though, is bounce back sufficiently to get focused on today’s work.  Hopefully I’ve crossed that barricade and can move forward.

–M. J. Young