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My original thought in creating The Post was that I wanted to emphasize the opening posts, aka articles. Therefore the OP authors would be rewarded with a few extras such as the ability to display videos, display images and to edit their articles.
I felt there was too much kneejerk acrimony in the back and forth replies in the old forum. It seemed too much like a shouting match rather than a discussion. Too minimize that hostility, I reasoned that if it were not possible to edit comments, commenters would by necessity be a bit more thoughtful in their comments. That's also why I gave these pages a more journalistic name and appearance. I also believe it's typical that on news sites like the New York Times that commenters are not able to edit their comments.
There were other reasons that I decided to retire the old forum in favor of this format. One big one is that I wanted the possibility of improving and modifying these pages. To satisfy my own creative impulses, I wanted a forum that could evolve. I have managed to make incremental improvements often in response to suggestions.
Today Donna wondered about displaying YouTube videos in the comments. I actually spent some time this morning seeing if I could reprogram it. I wasn't successful, but it's probably possible. It's something I am willing to consider at least. But as I indicated, I want to encourage the creating of new articles. If there is a video worth displaying it probably justifies its own new article.
In the past, the old forum got a boost in traffic and participation when there was a presidential election. That's why I wanted to make the change to this forum in December of 2019. I was dissuaded to not make the change then. With advent of SSL (the secure website thing) it became a necessity finally. The private messaging function, for example, on the old forum was security risk and for me a potential liability risk.
The old forum was an unsupported, proprietary canned program apart from the rest of the site's programming therefore it wasn't integrated into the rest of the site.
Now it is integrated. The Post's article headlines with links appear on the site's political pages including the 2024 Presidential Candidate Selector results page and under the Commentary button on this page, http://selectsmart.com/categories/Politics.html/. Additionally, these articles can be rated so they appear with the ratings of the selectors, quizzes and polls on the front page and elsewhere on SelectSmart.com.
Could The Post be better? Sure, and that's the point. It can be made better.
