I have finally upgraded my dinosaur and failing commenting system on my blog with the shiny new wpDiscuz platform. Unfortunately this might have killed all the old comments subscriptions you may have had running. You can start new subscriptions with the new system (which is easier to use). You will also have an easier time editing and formatting your comments now.
I am still keeping it simple (it has more features than I can even comprehend much less work with). But as it is new, please post feedback here about any problems you may be having with it or any suggestions for features you’d like turned on (I won’t likely oblige but the more requested something is the more likely I’ll dig in and figure out how to implement it if it’s available).
❃
P.S. Now if you hover over the upper right of a comment (in the grey title bar) it shows the “link” icon, and if you click that, it auto-copies the URL of that specific comment, which you can then paste anywhere. The comments on my site always had comment-specific URLs but they were hidden. Now anyone can grab and use them with ease, so you can link to a specific comment.
Also: if you hover over the upper right of a comment it shows the “link” icon and if you click that it auto-copies the URL of that specific comment that you can then paste anywhere. The comments on my site always had comment-specific URLs but they were hidden. Now anyone can grab and use them. Many have been asking for this! I’ll add this to the main post.
I also have tested a “stick” feature: I can force a comment to float to the top. So I chose this one.
First on topic comment!
Now I’m going to test nesting.
Does it go to three?
Four?
Okay. I made it go to six levels. Here’s level five.
Now level six.
Anything after that still threads at level six. And unlike my old system it shows you the reply button still so no one will be confused by that!
And I see that on mobile devices with screens too small, all the levels nest at second level and stream from there. So the nesting does not create absurdly narrow comments. Nice.
On an iPad it still goes down to 6, but in my opinion it isn’t absurdly narrow. It’s still pretty readable. On my phone it only nests to the second level as you observed. I think that’s for the best. Anything more deeply nested than that was unreadable on a phone before.
That’s why I had it maxed at 3 before. This system keeps them readable up to 6. I can change that. But for now it looks good.
Much better. I used to get a column of one or two characters on the phone after a couple levels.
~ All the best with the new system.
I will happily accept the invitation to be the first to comment!!
OK. Here is a test comment. Nice Rich Text
Editorfunctions are below.And I just tested the thumbs up button!
Testing
Well welcome to the 21st century, I know all your studies keeps your head in the 0-1st century and all lol.
P.s. love your work btw!
The old system wouldn’t post my comments at all, so I hope this works well (posting from an iPhone).
Went to moderation well and good. And just approved it.
TEST TEST FROM
PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA
I’m going to test a feature here that I doubt I’ll ever use: I will LOCK it, so no further replies can be posted to it.
Okay. Test worked. And I unlocked it again.
Not a techie, but love your work! Good luck with upgrade.
I’m not a techie either. Which is why I waited so long to try this. It’s outside my wheelhouse and these things usually break everything. But so far so well.
Testing out the new comment section…
Would appreciate an article on source and textual criticism of the Old Testament–seems they overlap. Excuse any errors on my part–are you a documentary person…a “Kingly” person…well, I know you are not a Moses person :)…Or other-regarding origins. Will also go back and look at On The Historicity of Jesus to the extent you discuss those topics. Thanks!
Thanks! Note the OT isn’t my field. So I won’t be doing that. For more on how I handle OT data and scholarship see the first part of Was the Entire New Testament Forged in the Second Century.
Good luck with the new set-up! The test will come when things get long, wide-ranging, and v. multi-participant. What new ways will it find to break? 🙂 Very necessary to get this worked-up before al the new publications drop though. I’m looking forward to the reading and discussion about all that.
True, though the way these things usually break things is, they don’t break themselves, they break something else. So, for example, the comment system crashing the entire website or creating weird blog coding for the whole page or generating endless nonce errors and the like. Here’s to hoping none of that occurs!
I am always impressed when people who are quite apparently experts and devoted to their field of study also manage to master the intricacies of web hosting and comment systems – something that’s usually quite far afield from their expertise and which I myself am generally flummoxed by.
I can’t vote up this comment? And none of the other comments for that matter?
Try again and report.
sorry the voting buttons work now thx
No apologies necessary. I didn’t know what the issue was and your reporting let me figure that out.
It looks like it allows upvoting to logged-in commenters whose comment has been approved through moderation. So, I presume, the cookie establishing that status for you still has to be good, and those do expire. So if the problem recurs, you may need to post another comment to “remind” the system you are a logged commenter.
What I don’t know yet is whether every time you have to post a new comment to rebuild the cookie, it still waits for the new comment to be approved before allowing you to upvote things again.
I’ll see if I can find anything on that or if there is a setting I can change.
I have a few of your books … i find them heavy reading, but full of fascinating research. I reckon both mythist and the historical inclined have a great source of reference in your work. And they’ll enjoy you’re new debate forum
Hopefully I will get alerts for me comments now! lol
But you will have to subscribe anew, using the new system. The old subscriptions may have been nixed by the overhaul.
James tabor said recently in a video from deconstruction zone that even though John is a later gospel, the trial narrative is more reliable because it had a better source (nt scholars love their lost sources). Is it reasonable to believe that or it’s an attempt to salvage some historicity like Paul N Anderson does? The new commenting system looks great by the way.
Thanks.
I haven’t heard Tabor’s specific argument you describe so I can’t comment on its details, but in general (a) Tabor has a lot of mistaken and even kooky ideas (but not all of his conclusions are mistaken or kooky) and (b) there is nothing on GJn that suggests a better legal source than the Synoptics. A better legal source would only be evinced by unexpected precision, not more pious fiction.
Moreover, IMO, it seems to be fabricating.
For example, John 18:31–32 is implausible. Pilate would never tell the Sanhedrin to try a case he already knew they were forbidden to try. So even by internal logic John’s plot is contradictory and thus bad fiction (and he credits it to prophecy, not a legal or historical source, so he is clearly not even “doing history” here). But it is also refuted by external evidence:
Not only is there no evidence that the Sanhedrin had lost any right to execute convicts, but plenty of evidence shows they kept that right straight up to the first Jewish War (it was established by treaty and thus could not be revoked even in principle). And indeed that’s self-evident even in Josephus’s James narrative, where the only objection to an execution was procedural, i.e. courts could not be assembled without the Roman prefect’s license, there was not a general prohibition of courts altogether, much less capital punishment.
In other words, if Josephus had never heard of this prohibition (and clearly he hadn’t), there is no plausible way John is getting it from a real source; he’s fabricating anachronistic and ignorant apologetics. Though it may have originated in Jewish urban legend, if the tall tale preserved in the Talmud was extant then, though it might not have been; but there, false claims of this appear in result of convoluted apologetical reasoning peculiar to Judaism, but in a context demonstrating the commentators had no actual knowledge of the matter and were inventing conflicting explanations of an obscure text.
Josephus otherwise has Titus say the right to execute lasted right up to the war (we even have archaeological confirmation of this), and that the Jewish laws were in full force by treaty (which he quotes) until then as well (see my chapter on burial in The Empty Tomb for citations), and in his own summary of Jewish capital laws he never mentions them being suspended when Judea still existed. Other texts in the Talmud likewise say the right lasted til then (Berakhot 58a, Ketubot 30a, Sotah 8b, etc.; cf. Sanhedrin 52b and 37b and the 1961 study of Hugo Mantel).
So, I doubt Tabor has a good case. But since I haven’t seen his case, I can’t say for sure.
Here to say that it works good with a screen reader too, so accessibility is on point (I’m a blind user.) Long time reader but first time commenter, thanks for this and all your hard work!
Oh! Thank you for weighing in. I need to know things like that. I’m glad it’s working for all audiences.
Awesome upgrade. Thanks for putting the time and effort into this =)
I note with pleasure that the new system applies also to the comments on older posts.
Keep an eye on that. It just rebuilt it all using the same database. But that’s a point of possible errors. So if you see any let me know.
Is this the kind of comment section where people put comments under comments and you end up with many comments with sub-comments? I hate that kind of comment section because you end up with a million comments and sub-comments and you don’t know which ones you read or not and if new ones are added. I like comments that go in one long line in order so you just read the comments one after the other. If it is the kind with a million comments and sub-comments, it became chaos and impossible to read through them in an orderly way. I am not even sure I will be able to find out if you answer me or if anyone answers me because it can be hard to find your own comments.
It will sub-thread, yes (down to level 6, then it goes flat). But not on phones. Small screens flatten all subthreads, so you can flatten threads that way; you can also flatten threads by shrinking the width of the browser page on a desktop. So if you don’t like threading, those options are available to you.
But even with sub-threading, rarely does that get to a million of anything or even more than a dozen here. And then it allows conversations to digress separately from the main thread, and makes clear, visually, who is replying to who, so you can read comments in their correct order.
If you want to be alerted to new comments, though—even when in sub-threads—use the Subscribe to Comments feature (it’s listed as Subscribe next to a mail icon at the top of every article’s comments section).
There are also RSS apps you can use that can thread the comments however you want and alert you to new ones. But those are third party applications. I can’t advise what to use or how to use it.
I’m unable to comment after logging into my Google account. It simply re-directs me to this launch page. There may be some issue with some Google or WordPress accounts. Mine certainly don’t work right now.
Yeah. I haven’t built the login keys for third party login apps. I’m working on that today. It’s a major time-consuming headache.
Okay. I think I set it up right. I’ll email you as well. But if you read this: try to use the Google login now and let me know if it works or not!
Note: unlike Google, the Facebook login button is showing but won’t work until Facebook completes a “review” of the credentials (which could take a week).
I was here, test and signature on the wall ✌️😉👍⚜️
All the Arguments Both for Christianity
[Replication of linked article deleted for violating comment guidelines–ed.]
This isn’t an appropriate place to post that, and to be in compliance with comment guidelines you would need to explain the relevance of that linked article to anything you are commenting on by posting it.
If you just want an assessment, its pro section is embarrassingly gullible and its con section reassuringly critical. So, a mixed bag, which you surely can’t need me to explain the problems or merits of as it’s so simplistic and 101.
For 25 years, I’ve sought to understand what truly happened in Judea and Galilee 2,000 years ago. The complete truth may never be revealed, yet the pursuit itself is profoundly rewarding. While ultimate reality may remain beyond reach, I believe a real figure stands at the core of it all—and thanks to the critical work of scholars like Dr. Carrier and many others, we can strip away distortions and glimpse the authentic past beneath layers of interpretation.
Hey dr carrier Ammon hillman just did a live stream responding to you
As I understand it he didn’t really respond to me. He harrumphed about maybe having a debate (we’re seeing if he’ll come through on that) and insisted he wasn’t a satirist (which I never argued).
But if you can timestamp me to anything in that video that actually (a) responds to my article about him and (b) isn’t already refuted in that article, please do.
Hey dr carrier have you got in contact with Ammon to see if he was actually genuine about trying to debate you because all Ammon said was he’ll debate you if you can translate all the Greek sources from antiquity
He keeps making up excuses. He has even lied recently about what terms I did or did not set for the debate, and other things like that, as excuses to avoid debating me. Still.
Hey dr carrier I was speaking with Stephen Nelson and he told me Ammon withdrew from the debate ?
Hillman keeps making up excuses to drop out, rather than negotiating acceptable terms to join the debate.
I have made several alternative proposals. He does not seem interested in any. His latest video claims things about what I asked for that are false (and actually reflect terms I proposed, not rejected). So who knows what’s going to happen with this. He seems keen on always having an excuse to evade me.
I’ve been purchasing things from Amazon and adding your “tag” to the URL. Perhaps you can let us all know if this technique works with Amazon giving you the sellers commission. Just ordered 5 tarps, your new book and some zip ties! About two months ago, ordered a Delta battery powered vaccum cleaner with spare battery. I think I’ve done this a few other times too.
Note that that probably does not work. Amazon tracks where the link comes from and is supposed to only actually “count” the ones that come from my website or social media. You won’t notice the difference, since it’s just whether they are “counting” those sales, not whether they track the tag. So it’s always more reliable to click through any link from my site (you never have to buy that thing, just click through from it then shop).
Hey dr carrier Ammon responded to you on his latest live stream https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0KVITL7M-24&t=1017s around the 16th minute mark he was talking about the debate details and how u only want to debate certain Greek words but not the many hundreds of them
He’s lying. I offered multiple debate proposals, and none said that. And at least one met all his supposed conditions. So he’s just telling tall tales to get out of the debate.
Is there any chance of putting a link to the Comments section at the top (and maybe the bottom as well) of the page?
If you mean the book cover, it’s mechanically centered. So you must be experiencing an optical illusion.
The system doesn’t allow that per se, but would allow an annoying floating link that follows your scroll from top to bottom. The reason I don’t activate that is because I am weary of people commenting on an article they haven’t read. So the last thing I want to do is encourage them to go straight to comments without having read the article. It’s eat your vegetables time.
But if you still want to cheat, the quickest way to go straight to comments is to grab the scroll bar with a hold-click and drag it until you get to where you want to be. Or search the page for the phrase “All comments” (which leads the universal comment header on every page of my blog that has comments).
Hey dr carrier I just wanted to know if your aware that dr Luke gorton is going to be on Danny jones with Ammon hillman are they going to debate ?
No. I didn’t. But I’ll make sure he is aware of my critique.
Though Hillman refused to debate Gorton before. So one wonders what has changed.