Technical difficulties with comments (Again!)

The latest in the never-ending comment problems is that many many comments have disappeared and every post seems to have the "your first" linkies of the monthly special. If I didn't care so much about having the "monthly special" be a place where people can link their work, I would have abandoned the every-buggy Mister Linky widgets long ago. But alas! There seems to be no good alternative, so I will keep working on a fix. And I do LOVE to see what people come up with each month--even though actual participation is a small fraction of my readership.

So let me recap: love comments, love you links, hate the constant bugs of the Mister Linky widget. Hope to get this resolved with the help of the web genius I hired to revamp my pro site.