Readers may recall that on April 10th, I announced that some big changes and improvements were coming to WUWT.
Phase 1 was improving the commenting system, and I think that has been fine tuned now. We did try the comment rating system once again for a few days, but as before, it became a visual annoyance and just isn’t useful. Better to simply rebut bad comments IMHO.
Here is what has changed today.
One of the things I wrote then was:
For example, “Tips and Notes” is going to disappear, to be replaced by a better system. This better system will include the ability for more of our readers to submit stories that make it to the front page. Again, this is to improve the speed and lessen the behind the scenes labor. WUWT has gotten so big, that it is a struggle to manage its upkeep now, so the solution is a smarter story management and comment submission system.
The new WUWT Submit a story system is online now, and is a link from the menu bar at the bottom or the header. It is a two step process now to help discourage auto spam submissions from commercial spammers WUWT had been getting. It consists of a guidelines page followed by a compose and submit page.
There’s a section in the composition page on using HTML tags too, so that you can make your submitted stories better.
I’ve also made it easier to submit manuscripts that don’t translate well into simple web form submissions.
The idea behind all this is to make WUWT more of a community based resource, because our readers are what make it go.
What we are looking for here are two things:
- For news items/other blog posts of interest, provide at least three paragraphs in the story submission so that the reader here can get a flavor of the issue/news, and allow them to click on the link to get more of the story. We get a lot of people submitting nothing more than a single link in WUWT Tips and Notes, and those aren’t useful. Help everyone else out by putting some descriptions of your own plus a couple of fair use excerpts into those story submissions.
- For technical manuscripts, WUWT now provides a submission email address where MS-Word documents can be sent as attachments. See the Submit a story page for guidelines on how to compose such manuscripts in MS-Word. In a nutshell, simple formatting with embedded images is what we need.
We’ll try out and tweak this new submission system over the next couple weeks to see how well it works and adjust as needed. Once fully tested, Tips and Notes will disappear.
Then phase 3 will be coming. More on that later.
As always, thanks for your continued readership – Anthony
The immediate posting makes for a different type of reading, as I can see a lot more back and forth debate between postings. Easier to follow, I would say. Great work Anthony!
PS – are the mods less busy now? I have to give a hat tip to their work… as there was so much reading and manual decision making in the recent past.
Excellent and congratulations for the “need” for a change. Your success suggests that new institutions are forming from a rigorous application of the scientific method — and from a fine, intelligent, intuitive blog-master. Many thanks, Anthony.
Many of us used Tips and Notes as a kind of aggregator for points and links to topics of interest. Quite useful as it would deliver news to our in box . Still the only constant is change and the continual upgrades to WUWT are most welcome as is the decision to drop the comment rating system as that didn’t add much really. Lets see how well the new story system does in replacing T&N.
I thought the Likes style system was good. Some said the number of comments declines a bit, but the quality increases, as commenters are driven to give their best. Also, it provides good feedback, especially if your comment is Liked a lot :-). So, my 2 cents. I know, it’s been decided already.
Thanks for all the hard work.
Mario Lento says:
Great work Anthony!
PS – are the mods less busy now? I have to give a hat tip to their work… as there was so much reading and manual decision making in the recent past.
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May I echo Mario, please?
Auto
[reply – much less busy now – thank you ~mod]
Thanks for taking out the likes, Anthony. They were a distracting interposition, and made the commentary page seem shallow. After all, like or dislike is just feeling. Where’s the thought?
It all sounds great, Anthony. THANK YOU, SO MUCH FOR THE PRIVILEGE you give to non-scientists like I to hang out on this EXCEPTIONALLY CONSCIENTIOUSLY AND COMPETENTLY managed site with some of the finest minds in authentic science. What a golden opportunity to learn!
Thanks to you, Anthony (and Charles R. et. al.), my (and THE) world is a better place.
Big “thumbs up” for binning the comment rating system!
I’m in moderation (all things, hmm?). Is it because I left out the comma after “so much”? Still a fan!
Great move toward perfection!
You may not think you are perfect yet, but we think you are the best site on the web!
Anthony, I have a suggestion.
If a comment does not appear immediately for whatever reason, like “awaiting moderation” or got transferred into the spam folder, and then it is approved, it should appear after all the comments already published in the meantime. Because people do not usually go back to look for new late comments and they would miss it therefore.
Thanks for getting rid of the comment rating system. I felt it encouraged approval seeking. It also kept reminding me of the green-consensus, as though agreement was best. On top of that, of course, it was was open to misuse (clearing your cache allowed one to give multiple votes) and therefore was a complete invitation for trolls to come in and have their fun.
Thank you for losing the “likes” system.
Comments were disliked for saying something that didn’t follow the majority party line. And they were disliked more if it hurt because it couldn’t be easily ignored.. Thus interesting new ideas were viewed with many negative scores… prejudicing new readers against challenging their own preconceptions.
Which is hard to do in the first place.
The improvements so far have been great. I think that you are moving toward a much more interactive, “crowd sourced” resource. Heck, you are close to putting it on auto-pilot! Good stuff.
One change I would like to see is to have the most recent comments at the top of Tips and Notes section. I usually read WUWT on my iPad and it can take some time to scroll down to see the most recent posts
Eric Simpson says:
April 27, 2013 at 12:42 pm
I thought the Likes style system was good….
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I liked what Eric said, but there was no button.
cn
I agree with S. Peake that it would be most helpful if the new “submit story/news” page was arranged with the most recent submissions at the top just as the blog posts themselves are arranged. Also, I want to echo those who are glad the comment rating system has been discontinued. I know having it in place would have discourage me from commenting.
The “LIke” system was ok, but I have always thought that people should be able to articulate their thoughts. Clicking on the icons was too easy, and conveyed little information.
Huh? I can’t fathom the reason for this. A Comments thread in WUWT often forms a discussion, or several discussions, with argument quoting and playing off previous comments. There is no way to follow the discussion in reverse chronological order.
If WordPress offers readers the option of viewing in chronological or reverse-chronological order, then fine, let readers choose; but please leave chronological as the default.
What I’d really like to see is the ability to select text and apply formatting with buttons (bold, italic, quotation, etc.), and the ability to go back and edit a comment for a time. But I gather the free version of WordPress doesn’t offer these features, which are a part of many forums.
/Mr Lynn
Anthony, I am just starting a WP-based website (on a TOTALLY different subject) and, through a glass darkly, begin to get a small inkling of what you and your mods have been dealing with for several years!
You , all, have my TOTAL admiration. It ain’t easy!!
[Reply: No, it’s not. And very time consuming. But thank you. — mod.]
Some sites make it easier to contribute while other sites silently delete inconvenient opinions. Interesting, eh?
“Sean Peake says:
April 27, 2013 at 2:19 pm
One change I would like to see is to have the most recent comments at the top of Tips and Notes section. I usually read WUWT on my iPad and it can take some time to scroll down to see the most recent posts”
There is a solution to this. Just search for today’s date and you will be taken to the end few posts.
Cheers David
The up/down dingy thingy was fun, but not very productive. It’s good that it died. RIP.
“As always, thanks for your continued readership – Anthony”
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The search for knowledge has led us here, and keeps us here.
So, thank you, Anthony.