Blog Note

Commenting will be closed for the weekend while we work on resolving the commenting issue. At some point(s), the blog may appear to be offline. I appreciate your patience, and my apologies for the inconvenience.

UPDATE: Please note that some comments threads appear to be open, but comments left in them during this process will be lost. I will let you know when commenting has been fully restored.

UPDATE 2: Well, I'm going to be blunt about this: Disqus, despite explicitly promising us weekend support to migrate comments and solve the international commenting problem, has failed to respond to a single email or tweet the entire weekend. The migration to the custom domain is not working, and we need their assistance, but we're not getting it. We're in a holding pattern until they decide to respond to our multiple requests for help. I am extremely frustrated and disappointed with this situation, and I apologize again for the inconvenience.

I hope commenting will be back online soon.

UPDATE 3: It looks like we're slowly getting there. However, I am aware that many of you are receiving unrequested emails notifying you when you were mentioned in a comment, and I am sorry for that. I have notified Disqus of the problem. I am truly embarrassed by the way this has been handled, and I hope that issue will get resolved soon as well.

UPDATE 4: 9:00am CT. I am still waiting for a confirmation from Disqus that the migration is complete and commenting is fully functional again. But, aside from the email late last night telling me "We will send you a message as soon as we have more information about what happened to your migration, and what we can do to finish it," they have again ceased communications.

I am disinclined to post new content until I have been assured everything is working and new threads will function properly, so I've got content sitting in the queue, but am still waiting on Disqus.

UPDATE 5: 11:00am CT. It has been 48 hours since we launched the migration. I still have received no support or communication from Disqus except for a single email and single tweet, both promising follow-up. There has been no follow-up.

UPDATE 6: 12:00pm CT. I have received an email from Disqus letting me know they're working on it and "hope to have a solution soon." I have requested frequent updates, which I will pass on, provided I get them.

I have also tried to respond to every email and tweet I've gotten from community members wondering what's going on. If I missed any, my apologies.

UPDATE 7: 1:00pm CT. I have no updates to share. My email requesting updates, sent more than an hour ago, has not been acknowledged.

UPDATE 8: 2:45pm CT. I have finally heard back from Disqus, who have told me that Shakesville's migration will have to be run again. Support is awaiting confirmation from Operations to get the go-ahead. I have requested an ETA on when the migration will be run again and an estimate on how long the migration will take once it begins, but have not yet received a response.

Additionally, I have been told that it's possible to publish new comment with open threads, but, in the same email, I was informed that the large number of Shakesville's comments is the cause of various problems. So I have sought confirmation that the migration will not be affected even if there is a deluge of comments in the new threads, as I don't want to end up delaying the migration even longer, and then hearing after the fact that I shouldn't have opened comments.

Again, my apologies for the delay, and I will keep you posted.

UPDATE 9: 4:00pm CT. I have received no further updates from Disqus. It has been more than an hour since I requested via email an ETA on the completion of the migration. I have received no response, not even a simple but honest "I don't know." The basic communication failure over the past three days is truly shocking.

As is the lack of accountability: In the last email I received, almost two hours ago now, I was told that part of the delay is because it's "necessary for us to appropriately time troubleshooting/restart of your migration" because of Shakesville's size. But:

1. I worked with Disqus Support over the last two weeks to trouble-shoot a test migration, and made it abundantly clear that the Shakesville migration was planned for this weekend, even securing the commitment from Disqus for weekend support, which was not honored. Never at any point did anyone from Disqus suggest to me that Shakesville's migration should be scheduled because of the blog's size.

2. Disqus' migration tool does not indicate that larger blogs should contact Disqus to schedule.

What pre-coordination did happen was at my initiative, because I wanted this to go smoothly. So to now get emails from Disqus implying that this extraordinary delay is somehow down to my failure to schedule with Disqus, or even down to the size of the blog, when I was coordinating with Support leading up to this migration, has made me very unhappy.

And I frankly want this community to know that I did everything I could to avoid exactly what's happening today. I know that many of you depend on this community for everything from news to escapism to moral support in times of crisis, and while I realize that it's mostly just an aggravation when we're offline, I also take seriously the value of the space, especially to its regular commenters. I am very sorry for the interruption in service.

UPDATE 10: 5:30pm CT. The latest update from Disqus: "It may be another couple hours before this delay clears up and we can take a look at your migration. The engineer working on it feels confident he can fix it once he is able to start running it again. As for how long it will take, it's hard to say, but we will try to get a more concrete estimate from our engineering team once the migration starts."

So, two hours after requesting an ETA, I am being told it will be another couple hours before they can give me one. I don't even know what else to say at this point.

UPDATE 11: 7:00pm CT. About an hour ago, I received an estimate of 6-12 hours for the migration to be complete. I asked for the following clarification: "Is that estimate 6-12 hours from now, or 6-12 hours from when the migration is restarted? If the latter, when do you anticipate it will be restarted?" I have not received a response.