I’m hoping to resume blogging shortly. Unfortunately, as readers will have noticed, the site has been plagued by performance problems, and I need to resolve these first. I’m pursuing this actively, and hope to be back on air soon.

I’m implementing a registration requirement for comments. I’m hoping this will help to kill off spam, and also help me in troll control. Please tell me if you find this requirement too burdensome, and I’ll try to find another way around all this.

Hi everyone. I’m testing a bunch of things, and this is an open thread where you can discuss them if you want. Among other things, I’m looking at different themes (=skins/designs). If you’re interested there’s a lot to choose from here. I’m imposing the following constraints
(i) Two-column layout
(ii) Widget ready
(iii) Fast loading (not too much Javascript etc).
The current theme, which is fairly bland, is Aqueous-lite and meets all these criteria. I may be able to do a little bit of fiddling with fonts and similar, but please don’t just say “change the font”, give me some idea what you would like.

On point (iii), I apologise for the technical problems with the site lately, including breaking of the RSS feed for some users. I am looking into all this.

I’m trying to minimise hand-coding stuff and am now working with widgets like the Active Discussions at the top of the sidebar. Suggestions for good widgets gratefully accepted.

One of the reasons I’ve taken a break from this blog is that I’ve found the effort of dealing with various kinds of disruptive commenters to be more than I can justify. Unfortunately, the same problems emerged at the RSMG blog, so I’ve developed a new discussion policy. The policy prohibits flames, snarks, trolls and especially sock puppets. When the new improved version of this blog returns, I’ll be adopting something similar, though probably a little less restrictive (I enjoy a good snark from time to time, but you so rarely get a good one).

So, if you’re interested, pop over and take a look. If you’re so minded, make comments, bearing in mind that the policy is already in force.

With a hugely successful fundraising appeal just completed, this seems like a good time to take a break for a few weeks. When I come back I hope to have some new ideas, new features, better defences against trolls and spammers and some policies to promote discussion and discourage flamewars.

In the meantime, I’ll probably post a bit at the Risk and Sustainable Management Group blog, and maybe also at Crooked Timber occasionally.

While I’m on this topic, I should note the departures of Mark Bahnisch from Larvatus Prodeo and Helen Dale (Skepticlawyer) from Catallaxy. Both have made big contributions.