Running this blog is a lot of work. The comment moderation is the biggest portion of it and it is becoming oppressive. A lot of our volunteer moderators simply don’t have the time to keep up with it all. I find I keep running into the same things over and over again, answering the same questions over and over again. So….I’ve decided to make a post in hopes that I can reach enough people with some do’s and don’ts to make a difference in the moderation workload.
Here’s a few things I hope you’ll read and heed:
1. No, for the ten gazillionth time, I cannot install wordpress plugins on this blog to get feature “X” that somebody wants.
The reason: This blog is hosted on wordpress.com for free, and they don’t allow plugins like you can get on self hosted wordpress installs. Why free? see item #10
Here’s why I use wordpress.com instead of running my own private server:
“We run hundreds of servers in three datacenters (Chicago, Dallas, San Antonio) with instant copies of all your data and uploads in each. This allows us to serve your blog very quickly, and also if something catastrophic were to happen, like Chicago falling into Lake Michigan or Dallas being hit by a meteor, your blog would be okay.”
Longtime readers may recall that when Climategate broke in late November 2009, so did Climate Audit, who was on a single server box that simply could not handle the load. WUWT stayed running, thanks to wordpress.com “hundreds of servers” and distributed processing. After ClimateGate, Mr. Pete, JohnA, and I got CA migrated to wordpress.com so this won’t ever happen again. I’ll take uptime and reliability over features any day.
If you want comment preview/editing, see this post on how to do so. Use the Test page to practice.
2. Lucia has a great self hosted wordpress blog install -and has all sorts of nifty plugins, but:
Blog out last night. ’nuff said
3. When writing a comment, you do NOT need to use HTML tags, just put in the URL and WordPress will auto-link it for you – like this http://wattsupwiththat.com
4. If you are writing sarcasm, end it with /sarc so that everybody KNOWS it is sarcasm. Don’t make extra work for moderators by making a flame up.
5. Please, don’t think that declaring “Off topic but…see this” will make your comment OK. I’m going to start wholesale deleting these because they end up steering threads all over the place.
6. Pursuant to #5 we have a Tips and Notes page for things you want to bring to attention…yes we see them all.
7. Pursuant to #6 Please don’t leave blind links, tell us WHY we should click on it. Otherwise each moderator has to look at it to decide if it takes you someplace we don’t want to promote or is a link that goes someplace bad. Please add a short description as to why you think this link is worth visiting.
8. If you are leaving a tip, be sure to check the front page of WUWT first and use the SCROLL BAR to look at previous stories. About a third of our Tips and Notes are things we’ve already covered.
9. Please don’t ask WUWT to research things for you. Do it yourself, add to the conversation. If you can’t use Google you don’t belong here.
10. Why free hosting? Simply put, I like my freedom. Freedom works best for this venue. Unlike Joe Romm at Climate Progress (Sponsor – Center for American Progress $28 million income declaration here) and Marc Morano Climate Depot (Sponsor – CFACT $3 million income declaration here) this blog isn’t paid for by any organization, nor sponsored, nor under anyone’s external control. There’s no data quotas to watch, no demands to carry diktats, no steering committee, no server maintenance. It’s all done by wordpress.com free hosting, volunteers who moderate and contribute essays, and bit of occasional help from the Google ad clicks and some kind folks that find the donation button. Compared to the organizations above, it isn’t even chump change. “Big Oil” doesn’t shop here.
And yet we still beat the pants off the whole sponsored climate blog pack:
Stats from Alexa.com Learn more about Alexa Traffic Stats
So please, read and heed, help our moderation team, and be thankful I’m not burned out yet like poor Jeff Id who recently closed The Air Vent.
Thanks for your consideration – Anthony
[ADDENDUM] I trust that Anthony will allow me to add a few more items, as some one who endures this stuff daily.
11. Quote the exact words of the person with whom you are disagreeing. I write as clearly as I know how, and yet I am often misunderstood. That’s life, we have to live with that. But if you quote what I said, then I know where the misunderstanding may lie. And if there is no misunderstanding, I know exactly what you are referring to.
12. Speculations and personal attacks as to someone’s motives, honesty, credibility, education, publishing record, and ancestry all have negative weight in a scientific discussion. In other words, doing any of those will detract from your argument, and make it less likely to be believed, despite the fact that it may be valid. Those kinds of attacks are simultaneously bad tactics, bad strategy, and give the attacker a bad odor of desperation. Please avoid them. Me, I bite back at that kind of stuff, so definitely avoid them on my threads. I’m human, and like anyone else, I make mistakes, but I’m doing my honest best.
13. Be as specific as you can. Numbers are preferable to words. Code is preferable to a description of the method. Observations are infinitely preferable to model results. If you are using data, link to either your data or where the data was obtained. Details are often vital. Citations should indicate page numbers and paragraphs; waving the IPCC Report like a demented fundamentalist preacher and saying “the answer’s in there” doesn’t help anyone.
14. Civility roolz. Like the song says, “I’m just a fool whose intentions are good”, and I assume the same about others. The less aggro the tone is, the more people will participate.
PS – way cool photo, Anthony, and many thanks for the blog.
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Anthony, there are times that I wish I could “do this” or “do that”, for example, cut and paste graphs of data from textbooks or the like.
BUT, I also know how that sort of thing can go totally wild.
I’m very happy with the way you have it; and agree with your edict “MY way or the Hiway !” I believe I basically adhere to your rules; and if I haven’t been, my abject apologies; and I will shape up in future.
And I guess, that the times you post some imbecile comments by some well known imbecile; we could lower the case load, by simply chuckling at what you put up, and perhaps pass on the smart alec comments which we all do.
But if you detect some odd rumbling up there in Chico, it might just be me cursing out loud at at some megaimbecile; my workmates will have to deal with the din.
Remember that Coca Cola Bottling Company thought they could come up with an improved recipe; and nobody liked it, so they went back to the old (they say) BUT, the imbeciles renamed it “Classic Coke”; and if it was now “Classic Coke” it sure as hell couldn’t also be “Coke” or why the tandem names ?
So now, we don’t know what the hell they make, and we don’t like any of them even if we liked the original.
So don’t make their mistake; WUWT is what it is; and if it evolves; it should evolve per your whims. NOT SOME CONCENSUS !!
Anthony and Mods, Thank you for a great blog for all to see and learn as i have. A good example of the trolls that show up here are Lazy teenager and a new one Nameless Cynic, remember they only come to getyour goat and disrupt the inner workings. I find it easier when i have read thier comment to decide if they warrant a comment usually they do not bring anything to the table when they do so then why bother, even guilty my self, i remind them that they are dealing with people here that have considerably more knowledge on the subjects at hand, sometimes works but the mods would know more on that than i would considering the work load they have with the traffic. Again my hats off to this site for a job well done bar none. O/T but but that pup is so cute is that the new family member Anthony, hope wife and family are doing fine.
REPLY: Thanks, all is well, the pup is unrelated to us – A
Great puppy!
My favorite is #9. I always have tons of questions when I read your articles and I take those questions straight to Google and I go from there. I learn a lot because I read articles that don’t talk down to me and if there is something I don’t understand then I go look it up. Thank you for that because I really don’t want to be spoon fed. I want to learn and the only way to do that is to look stuff up on my own.
johanna says:
February 3, 2011 at 7:58 am
“This blog is the gold standard. 🙂 …
Love the pup pic. Is it now the WUWT mascot?”
Agree. Every day here is a learning experience for me thanks to Anthony and all the commenters. I just wish I had more of substance to contribute.
And that puppy photo would be a great ‘mascot.’ The look in its eyes is WTFisUWT – presumably as it looks at something offered by the AGW gang – yet it is still so cute you want to hug it. Moreover, it looks like it could survive temperature changes of over 1 degree per century.
This might be a good time to link to Emily Postnews: http://www.templetons.com/brad/emily.html
Note to anyone new to this, the whole post there should the “/sarc” tag …
At last I had some funds to donate! I’ve now sent some as a mark of gratitude to you and will try to do so again periodically. Thank you again for this wonderful work.
The dog looks as happy to be here as Al Gore would look.
I hope the dog can forgive me for making the association.
The efforts of the behind the scenes folks at WUWT is appreciated.
Thanks for the blog Anthony.
A legend in it’s own lifetime – this blog.
A legend in his own lifetime – this Watts bloke!
The puppy will soon become a legend too.
Thank you, “Professor”.
[Was that O/T?]
The constant stream of bogus, misleading and outright false “news” that floods into my laptop and desktop and iPhone daily can ONLY be swept aside by a swift dose WUWT… Your site is the main cure for this blind dogma from the willfully clueless press and I am grateful for your hard work and dedication.
Just a suggestion,
You might want to add the rules to the Test Page — especially the link problem.
Listing the Test page and its purpose below the “Leave a Reply Comment” window might also help.
Great Site!!!
A testament to your discipline Anthony: http://www.walk-wales.org.uk/gsd.html – kitty walking past line of german sheperds
That pup looks like a very young pekingese. Chinese Fu-dog, generally12 to 16 pound attack guard dog. We have a very large one 2o pounds, she thinks she can take on anything! 300 lb bear no problem. And a mouth full of teeth that would make a shark proud. Bosses all the big dogs that come around. pg
Thanks for the tips, and above all, thanks Anthony, for all that you and your team do.
In my opinion, this site (Along with climategate, in which WUWT also played an enormous role) has been the core factor is saving us from Cap&tax, and thus saving our economy. In a just world, Anthony Watts, not Al Gore, would be the one with a Nobel prize.
Thank you all, for all that you do.
CJ
it would appear that the alexa graph for WUWT exhibits a tipping point….now if time had ceased to trudge along…at one point it even looks like a hockey stick…but it looks like lately someone is over-correcting for UHI /sarc
One small suggestion I have is to collaboratively develop a spectrum of non-insulting terms to describe the various shades of opinions on AGW. Or at least a glossary, as the terms used often seem to be more perjorative then informative. I was originally led to this site from RC, because of the frequent use there of the term “deniers,” a word that carries some very ugly baggage, and is as intellectually bankrupt as bringing Hitler or the Nazis into a modern political argument..