That's a shame - I've found FDL unreadable since they redesigned their site awhile back. I've just plain stopped going there, and following the link reminded me of why.

Anytime you want to read more than 2 paragraphs of anything, you have to open a new page. It's like trying to read a collection of essays that are formatted like a book for first-graders.

I guess it must work for somebody, but I really just plain can't deal with their site design.

YES! I was just coming here to say the same thing! I really think the work that Jane does it great but the site itself is atrocious looking when you are on a real computer and absolutely impossible to read on a Blackberry. I stopped reading TBogg once he transferred over there and that makes me sad.

Dumm Dumm & LTC:
Did you write Jane about it? Maybe she'll make improvements.

Yeah, I haven't read TBogg in forever for the same reason. Sucks.

Punk Rock. Real Talk. Registration.

The interest in politics is leading to market consolidation in the blogosheropticancloud, which is leading to blogs that once did not require registration to comment to be absorbed into newly styled mega-blogs that do. I would think they lose a lot of eyeballs because of that and FDL would better compete with Huff Post if they ditched the registration, but that is just a hypothesis. Maybe they make more money with registration. Registration and participation would be strong motivators to keep the audience within the blog longer and make it a first choice place to spend blog time. I no longer read emptywheel, though.

Ackerman is far to silly lefty liberal for the likes of the faithful TNR, Joe Klein lover Drum.

Why does Kevin care where Spence goes? Has to keep an eye on the radicals I guess.

Uh...is there some inside joke I don't know about or did Kevin make a nice Freudian slip when referring to FDL as a "borg?"

James: "borg" is a Star Trek reference. It's basically a collective.

Kevin,

I know what the Borg is. I just thought it was an amusing insult to refer to a collection of blogs as a hive-mind collective and wondered if was a mistake (which you've answered in the negative) or just a very funny Freudian slip.

James, have some manna.

gotta love fdl - the power of a circle-jerk of links. It started as 24/7 all "fitzmas" all the time, faux analysis and proclamations about what would happen next.

They were always wrong, but the endless linking "branded" redhead and jane as "experts".

Now I am glad that there are sites like fdl, atrios, c&l and that gang - flypaper for stoooooopid people so the rest of us don't have to read the endless twitter.

I first went there for their in depth coverage of the Plame story.

It's changed since then and was very politics-all-the-time and occasionally goes on to specific issues like FISA.

They're clearly more politically activated than PA, but that's good for some who like to participate.

I find emptywheel very challenging. That woman can blog like crazy. I don't read it all the time since I just can't keep up, but I like it for real grit.

All that said, I still like this blog for it's wide-ranging political views as applied to a real wide range of issues that arise and for the really good discussions. There are a few times when it's boring or the people are boring, but not often.

I love the diversity. Isn't it wonderful how all the borgs, er blogs are so different?

yes, mark, flypaper...

Dumm Dumm & LTC:
Did you write Jane about it? Maybe she'll make improvements.

I posted a comment over there about it, right after they did the redesign. It might've even been in the thread there about the redesign - I can't say.

I specifically addressed how little text was viewable of each post on the front page, and said that if they didn't fix that, I didn't expect I'd hang around - that it was that bad. (And I've only posted there once or twice since.)

I posted that under a different username, btw: their software doesn't like hyphens and spaces in usernames.

I mourn the loss of tbogg to the FDL borg as well. Dude was seriously unique and funny. But the site is unreadable.

How are the hounds (sleeping undoubtedly), the exquisite Casey, and the lovely Ms. tbogg?

And who the hell uses FrontPage to make a website, ma gawd, FDL is ugly.

Please come back tbogg. Its been june gloom to long.

Zed!

I just bounced over to FDL for a few minutes, and it looks like they've done some modest improvements since the initial transition. Now, it appears that the three most recent posts in any of their blogs can have 8-10 paragraphs on the front page, before you have to hit the "Read More" button.

But for older posts, you have to decide whether you want to 'read more' on the basis of 2-3 lines of text, and (for me at least; YMMV) that doesn't suffice.

And that still isn't very good: the 'older' posts include the fourth most recent post, which is often only a few hours old. And there are maybe only 8 posts on the front page, even in their excessively truncated form.

Blogging is all about the writing. Reading FDL, you've got to work a bit too hard to get to the text. It's easier just to click over to Ezra or Hilzoy or Thers and see (much more easily) what they have to say.