I have been pleasantly surprised to find that I’m mostly enjoying what MinnPost has been publishing. I’m picking up what they’re putting down (except for this, ugh).

Ed Kohler has already talked about issues he sees with MinnPost, mostly regarding their RSS feeds [1] [2]. I’ll add to that list that I hate their comment registration.

They require you to register to leave comments. Which is fine. But there are a few flaws.

Here’s the process.

1. Read a post.
2. Decide to leave a comment.
3. Click on the comments link at the bottom of the article. Comments appear.
4. Click on To post comments, you must be a registered commenter.
5. Arrive at the comment registration page.

IF you’ve already registered:
6. Enter your email and password, then click the Login button.

7. Get sent to the MinnPost front page.
8. Find the article you were reading and click to it, or go back in your browser’s history.
9. Again click the comments link at the bottom of the post.
10. Leave your comment.

ELSE IF you’ve not already registered:
6. Fill out the form. You’re required to supply an email address and password, and enter your first name, last name, city, and state.

7. Email, confirmation link, etc.
8. Find the article you were reading and click to it, or go back in your browser’s history.
9a. Again click the comments link at the bottom of the post.
9b. Possibly login again depending on your cookies.
10. Leave your comment.

The lesser of my two issues is that MinnPost should redirect you back to the page you left to go the login screen. Several times I’ve opted out of commenting because it’s too much work to get back to the comment form and I’ve lost interest or the process has broken my concentration.

The greater of my two issues is that once you enter that registration info there is no way to go back and modify it. Your city and state don’t even get displayed so I don’t know what they do with that info. Is it just for their own demographic database? What if I move?

Additionally, suppose you made a mistake when you entered it? I entered “Erica” for my first name and “M” for my last name because that’s how I sign a lot of things on the internet. So now when I’m logged in, “Erica M” is already populated in the Name field, but the moderator will flag my comment if I don’t provide my full name. Now that I’ve created my account with “Erica M” I have to manually add my full name whenever I comment.

My bad for not thinking about that when I registered, but the kicker is there’s no way to change it now. So if I have to manually modify it every time. That somewhat defeats the purpose of registering.

I got notification from moderator Sue Peterson that one of my comments didn’t get posted because I didn’t post with my full last name. I was so excited about my comment, I didn’t check the pre-populated fields in the comment submission form because they were already filled in. I asked Sue for info about the profile modification, and was given the name and email address of Vickie Gilmer, MinnPost’s “chief techie.” My exchange with Vickie Gilmer was as follows:

Hi Vickie,

Sue Peterson directed me to you. I’m wondering if there’s a way to modify one’s own commenter profile. There doesn’t seem to be an obvious way to do that via the website.

Thanks!

Hello. Our commenter guidelines require that users use their first and last names to post comments and as their profile.
Thank you,
Vickie

Got that.

When I registered as a commenter, I was required to enter some info (name, location, website, etc.). So now when I go to comment, that info is already populated in the commenting form. I was expecting there to be a user profile page that I can update myself and there doesn’t appear to be one. I’m wondering if I can change my registration info somewhere so I don’t have to re-edit the required fields for commenting every time I want to comment.

Sounds like the answer is no.

And I got nothing back after that.

So if you haven’t already registered at MinnPost, pay attention when you do, because whatever you put in will not be changing any time soon.

MinnPost, if you want to encourage commenting, which I believe you do in light of the debut of weekly comment roundups, you should make commenting as easy as possible. I realize there need to be some checks and balances to keep out the riffraff, but since you’re actively moderating the comments, I believe you’ve got that part under control. Don’t make me dig.