Our dear Clog is going through a lot of growing pains this semester. Not only did we start the year off with a new editor, but we’ve also had to work with a tiny staff while adjusting to a whole new blog design.

If you take a glimpse at the Daily Clog right now, you’ll see a clean, attractive interface–the kind you’d want to show to your mom. Beautiful, yes, but the transition did come with various technical difficulties. Since the semester began in mid-January, the Clog and its resident tech have been working hard to fix a wide spectrum of flaws in the new design, whether they be lost comments or broken links. We still have a lot of work to do, so bear with us.

Speaking of lost comments: Where have all the commenters gone? The last time we checked, blogging was supposed to be a highly interactive medium.

Don’t get us wrong. We do get comments, and we very much appreciate them. The occasional gripe about our writing abilities is nice, but we love what you think about the actual post topic even more. According to Lifehacker’s guide to weblog comments,

“Leaving a comment on someone’s weblog is like walking into their living room and joining in on a conversation … (g)ood blog commenters add to the discussion and are known as knowledgeable, informative, friendly and engaged.”

Why not jump into the Clog’s lively conversations?

Geek to Live: Lifehacker’s Guide to Weblog Comments [Lifehacker]

Popularity: 32%

Everybody and their mother may have blogs now, but it’s still hard to integrate the blog vibe with a professional newspaper. Many major newspapers–such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle–boast multiple blogs. Besides this blog, we have the Clog, and it’s not even a year old. We’ve struggled to fit in this step-child of journalism and often irreverent whining, to make it a part of the paper, to box it into some sort of ethical code.

Hence The Daily Clog’s correction policy, which stipulates all incorrect facts must be corrected in a timely manner. Corrections usually involve strikethroughs, notes at the end of a post or a parenthetical citation. It is also policy to leave evidence of the previously incorrect statement to preserve transparency and honesty. Our most recent correction, however, did not leave in the original text–this was partly due to miscommunication between blogger and editor. Normally, the error would still be visible in the post.

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Popularity: 38%