I think I owe readers a report on the change to registration for commenters.

Yes, it has been even more cumbersome for many than I had hoped. We know 1) that if you have spam blocker on your e-mail that this can hamper the process and 2) firefox browsers sometimes don’t show the registration link. It also seems to be helpful to shut down a browser and restart the blog with a fresh page before beginning the process. But none of these things are surefire. In my own registration, clicking the e-mail registration link worked where pasting the code into the browser did not. Some people report that it took multiple tries before the finishing link appeared. For all this, I can only apologize. The registration procedure is an add-on to the blog software we acquired from an outside provider that is widely used in the blogging world. That means we can’t troubleshoot it. We must accept it as it is.

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The difficulties have reduced commenting, both from old friends and from the anonymice who were the source of the obscene contributions that finally drove us to a registration model. That bullies are cowards isn’t much of a surprise, of course.

We have about 100 people registered and commenting and the number keeps growing. Keep trying. The more the merrier, particularly when commenters add information and perspective to our items. Please send us your news tips and good photos. We’d love to post them.

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Also, we are making progress on the addition of community bloggers. We’ve selected a first round of 10. I have forwarded information about them to out web guru, who should have the new blogs set up to start business on one easy-to-access page before long. They’ll instantly add a roster of new voices for news, commentary and entertaining writing with a primary focus on Arkansas. Stay tuned.

And thanks again for your patience.

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