Back on March 15th, 2009, I was amazed to find that WUWT hit 10 million on the internal WordPress hit counter.
I started the WUWT blog in late November of 2006, and it took me over two years to get there
Now just six months later, I’m amazed again:
Despite the many people of the alarmism bent who dislike what we do here, WUWT continues to be popular. As always thanks to the many many readers, the guest contributors, and especially to our moderators dbs, Charles, and Evan who keep the flow of conversation going smoothly.
I’m grateful to all of you for the continued success and support. I’m especially grateful to those who spread WUWT links on other websites, helping to drive traffic here.
Now my most important question: what could WUWT do different or better?
– Anthony
Well done sir!!!
This site is a breath of fresh air (complete with CO2).
By your reasoned approach you have and continue to present the facts in a straight forward manner. When you have posted speculation you have labeled it as such and invited other ideas. You and your moderators have done a superb job in keeping the discourse civil and free of inflammatory rhetoric. Also congratulations should extend to your readership who seem to be a relatively educated group who while most are not trained in climate science are curious and are educating themselves on the science.
Perhaps an informal call for papers (informal of course) might be useful as the diverse readership seems to come up with many things that haven’t been thought of in quite that way. Faulty premises do tend to get dissected rather quickly by this group.
Again, congratulations to all on a job well done.
Congratulations! Your site here is just right to my eyes. I wouldn’t change a thing. Whenever there is something in an article that I don’t understand one of your commenters will usually post an explanation that causes that little light bulb in my head to blink on. I am learning so much that helps me to explain to family and friends that they really don’t know just how much of a snow job they’re getting from the gov’t and their affiliated media outlets. Your site is a valuable resource to home schoolers, too. You’re helping a lot of us teach our kids how and where to look for the answers for themselves, check sources, and figure things out for themselves. Thank you.
Congratulations Anthony and staff. Great Site!
Congratulations Anthony, kudos are certainly well deserved.
As to changes, not many to this blog, as has been said, don’t fix what ain’t broke.
New considerations: This readership base gives you strength for the following new project: to create the foremost online new professional science Journal with an entirely new set of rules and principles. You can redefine the ugly canard that is “peer-review” as it has always existed. You can demand availability of data, rigorous exposure of methodology. The published authors will know and be seen as having been “tested” for integrity, accuracy, “truth” in science. A journal in which the only agenda is integrity of the new knowledge, and its investigators.
A program to call for an international professional standard for the science PhD degree (and similar doctorates), similar to what exists for lawyers (well, better than that), medical doctors, professional engineers. A program where PhDs who publish spurious research with hidden agendas, falsified or misleading data, substandard methodology will be required to defend against the recall of their degree by their alma mater. There’s enough of this going on in important areas of influence that mere hope for professional integrity cannot obviously correct (as if it ever could).
Much can be done.
I’ve lost count of the things I’ve learned through this site. Even went back and relearned basic algebra and calculus so I could keep up better with the more complicated posts. Am working hard to convince many friends and colleagues to go do some basic research on C0²=Warming, telling them to start here. Thank you Anthony and the moderators for being there.
Mr Lynn (16:31:57) : After listening (in the car) to two NPR commentators lamenting the lack of agreement on a new ‘climate’ agreement for Copenhagen…
Part of me feels victory when reading that. But more of me feels sorry for them that they can’t see objectively.
p.s., wouldn’t it be nice to hear that Washington is doing budget cuts and has decided to stop sending money to PBS and NPR?
WUWT is getting mentioned more in various articles. I still wish to see an ad for WUWT on the front page at Yahoo. 30,000,000 would come in less than 6 months then.
what could WUWT do different or better?
If technically possible:
1. Allow guest editors (I suggest Lucy Skywalker & Pam Gray) to go through WUWT’s archives and highlight or flag the best 20% of the posts. This would make it easier for newcomers to get up to speed by reading the highlights of the skeptics’ position. There is a lot of filet on this site, but a lot of filler as well, which gets in the way.
2. Switch from a blog format to that of a forum, using forum software such as that provided by Invision. This would allow:
Better searching;
“View first unread post in thread” capability;
Automatic flagging of threads with new posts;
A topically organized & hierarchical table of contents of threads;
Ability to edit posts up to 45 minutes (say) after posting;
Numerous other bells and whistles.
3. Expand the number of currently active (clickable) threads in the right-hand pane, now that new threads are being added more frequently.
4. Append periods to the names of threads, so that the reader of the list of active threads can more easily tell where one item ends and the next begins. Alternatively, indent the first line, if possible.
5. Maybe bar certain hyper-political attribution-of-motive comments, such as those that characterize AWGism as nothing but a desire to tax and control or spread socialism, or as nothing but a nature-cult, because (regardless of the grain (or more) of truth such arguments contain) these comments make it easy for critics to characterize and dismiss WUWT as an expression of right-wing crankiness.
When I logged on, the advertisement right after your question regarding what you could do better was this: “Fight Global Warming”. If I had been the first poster, I would have posted this:
…Hysteria.”
The funny part about that is that back in the dark ages (which we seem to have revisited as of late), hysterectomies were the standard treatment for female hysteria. So I think we should be promoting hysterectomies for women and …eh hem… for men who continue in chicken little’s path of warning that the sky is falling.
Congrats on the 20 million mark!
Man, take a look at Antarctica!
– Sea ice is at the 6th highest level in the last 31 years
– 4 of the highest sea ice extents occurred in the last 5 years.
– The 25-year trend is clearly upwards
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.south.jpg
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
Many thanks for WUWT.
Rarely do so many owe so much to so few 🙂
(Monthly donation time for this fan)
Congrats – I see a lot of parallels to your success and Fox. I’m pretty neutral politically, but I like to hear what ALL sides have to say. The mainstream media has treated the political right like they have AGW deniers – like they don’t exist and that their views are irrelevant. I listen to all of the media, because the truth is out there somewhere in the middle. You are a much needed voice in the wilderness and I wish you much continued success.
Congratulations Anthony.
I’m not sure how you can do better. 🙂
This site & the contributors have refined my ideas about AGW (or non-AGW) more in just the last couple yrs than all my ~25 yrs of studying it earlier.
and a Google page rank of 7!
Way to go!
Vincent (06:53:44) :
You know, it’s all due to the “positive feedbacks”.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
I can already hear them thinking out loud over at RealClimate when the news of WUWT’s most recent milestone is announced:
“It’s worse than we thought.”
Thank you, Anthony. And no, I can’t think of any way to make the site better.
Congrats:
The Best.
Dedicated to seeking the truth.
All good lads and lasses, bless the lot of yer!
And sanity amongst the madness – thank you!
Chill out!!
Congratulations Anthony!! You are helping in a very significant way toward winning the battle for truth about the phony and completely politically contrived AGW campaign.
The AGW effort is not about science but about government elitists and bureaucrats trying to control of our lives based on the big lie.
Keep up the great work!!
Congratulations to Anthony and his brilliant team. Considering that the Copenhagen Police here in Denmark at this very moment are busy breaking up a violent group of people trying to enter into Amagerværket, a power station at Amager, Copenhagen, with the declared purpose of shutting down the power station because of its side production of CO2, just proves to me that sites like WUWT are an absolutely neccessity and a blessing. I´m especially impressed by the level of diversity of articles and also of the language used herein which I´m sure will help convey some badly needed common sense to most people. Brilliant site.
Congratulations Anthony!
This is my favorite site for solid science and discussion of the current golbal warming/climate change debate. It would be hard to improve but maybe you could add some topical running discussion pages. Regardless you have done more to clarify this debate than any other site IMHO.
Paul Coppin, you have a great idea with having a new peer-review scientific journal. Just as the internet is replacing newspapers and the MSM so too we need to replace the old so-called peer-reviewed journals.
Anthony, mods, contributors, posters…
Congratulations and thank you for a great site that I visit multiple times daily.
I have an AGW-believing relative that thinks “only climatologists can understand climate.”
I have learned at least two things here at WUWT:
a) ANYBODY can stay abreast of current climate happenings and learn so much by tuning into WUWT
b) NOBODY understands climate!
We’re all in this together, Anthony. Thank you so much for your efforts!
I just wish we could make the politicians in Washington check this site daily.
Hmmm… maybe I’ll send my representatives a note with a link…
Carry on!
Rick
Congratulations, Mr. Watts! The milestone is well deserved. WUWT is my favorite climate blog, a site of economically, politically and morally uncorrupted science, and one of a decreasing number of voices of reason in today’s world; science as it should be. Thank you for the important work!
Well done, and just keep on doing what you do best. We can’t all be wrong, can we?
Flanagan, come on, stand tall. Congratulate the man even if you don’t agree with him!