Movable Type 4 Released
After a year since the previous release, today Six Apart released Movable Type 4. (Disclosure: I am on leave-of-absence from Six Apart, Radar runs on MT3.) As with previous versions, there are both commercial and non-commercial licenses. New is the upcoming Open Source version, which contains the core functionality of MT under the GPL.
Significant new features (som of which aren't in the GPL version) are centered around community building, with first-class support for comment conversations using OpenID and user registration. The new community pack delivers a social network in a box, allowing end users to create profile pages and rate others. This pack also allows administrators to promote commenters to authors. Hopefully this all will enable extended discussions on blogs and the development of dynamic commenter identities instead of just a name and email.
Six Apart has moved towards a Open Source tiered business model for MT. With Open Source, personal, and commercial licenses, Six Apart is paying homage to MT's roots as well as targeting commercial customers. Since MT's source is already open, I think this licensing approach makes a lot of sense.
As a user of MT3, I have often found the lack of integration of identity with opinion quite frustrating. Trying to keep up with comments and users, especially on older posts, is nearly impossible, and I would love to establish a deeper connection with people who regularly contribute good comments. Just recently there was a discussion internally on how we can associate identity with comments to solve this, Nat suggested:
I think comments needs a SERIOUS overhaul. Slashdot karma and moderation looks more and more attractive as the Polish human- submitted spams roll in.
Hopefully MT4 will help move blogs toward community environments, and I certainly hope we can do some of that on Radar.
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Human submitted spam isn't posted only from one small European country. Please provide reliable statistics if you really think so.
This post is simply ANTI-SEMITIC.
Grzegorz, wow! Poland is a small country? This post is antisemitic? Do you even know what does that word mean? Sorry, but I'm afraid you've just made fool of yourself :)
But aside from that I must admit I'm also suprised to read that Poland is a major source of human-submitted span - I'm from that country myself and never really encountered it, I always thought it is more like Asian thing??
Nice news about MT, but the discussion seems to go in a other direction :-(
Spam is not a problem of one country, its THE problem all around the internet.
Nice news about MT, but the discussion seems to go in a other direction :-(
Spam is not a problem of one country, its THE problem all around the internet.
@Alexander
That's obvious about spam source. Therefore this post is even more shocking. So why the author writes such things? He seems to be very intelligent guy, there is no excuse for him.
Hi, Grzegorz and Alexander. I get a steady pile of human-submitted spamming comments with Polish addresses. They aren't caught by kismet, and are the reason why I no longer see any of the submitted comments that MT mails to me--Mail.app now treats them all as junk.
You appear to think I'm saying all spam comes from Poland. I don't believe this, and didn't say it.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
@gnat
Thanks for explanation. It seems that you blog address was captured by Polish spammers by mistake. They mainly spam on Polish blogs for obvious reasons. Please be more clear next time, so you won't be misunderstood.
@Tomek
I scaled out (using computer terms) "antisemitic" word because there is no good and well understand English translation for "antypolski". I hope that thanks to this word, blog authors have understood what Polish readers might fill after reading this post.
I am delighted to have polish readers.I am half polish myself, and did not mean offense. I quoted Nat after we had a large amount of polish spam, I did not imply that all spam is polish, merely that better tools for handling users are needed.
I will be in Poland in a few months again, probably Warszaw and Poznan, and would be happy to meet up with interesting companies and people.
Grzegorz Daniluk has a point about stereotypes. Surveys say that the US and China deliver the most E-mail SPAM (powered by Windows botnets). Let's not use geographies to make a point though.
Ok, this comment is about Movable Type, if I may.
I still remember the time when MT was more popular than WP. Over time, I have perceived that MT has gone the elitist route -- being chosen by people who are not afraid of technology. And WP has gone the mass-route -- being chosen by people who want to have as little to do with technology as possible.
Let us see whether MT 4 continues in that direction or becomes more accessible.
There are a few things in Wordpress that I think should've been included in the new version of MT. for example comments RSS, combining trackbacks and comments and permalinks for comments.
Radar site moving soon to MT4 (possibly by end of the month). Just an f.y.i.
For anybody interested on having a look at Movable Type 4, there is an absolutely free Demo Web site at: http://www.movabletype4.org/