August 14, 2010

Our New Commenting System: More Fun, Less Ugg Spam

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You said you’ve had it with spam and trolls; believe us, so have we. To (we hope) cut down on both, we’ve switched to a new commenting system on Motherjones.com, powered by Disqus. [Read more about Disqus here, or check it out on The Atlantic and Alternet.] Don’t worry, you don’t have to create a new Mother Jones login. But now you can also sign in with your Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, or OpenID login. (And if you haven’t started following us on Twitter or joined our awesome Facebook community, come by!) 

A few new features we think you’ll like:

Flag inappropriate comments: See spam? Trolls? Hate speech? Flag it for our moderators.

Sort comment view: You can now change the way you view comment threads for a given article if you like. Want to see only the comments other readers liked? Or only the most recent ones? No problem.

Improved spam filter: Uggs ads, begone (again, we hope).

Please let us know what you think in the, well, comments; you can also email web-feedback at motherjones.com.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

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And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

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