I recently met with some of our volunteer moderators and contributors while in the Bay Area, and they provided some valuable suggestions on WUWT and its place in the climate debate.
Of course, I haven’t asked WUWT readers on this topic , so here’s an opportunity to weigh in.
First, I’d like to point out that I don’t know that I will make any changes. I’ve heard some interesting ideas, but have not decided on any course of action. I’d like to hear from readers what they think.
Some topics that I’d like input on:
Format and style: too busy or easy to read and use?
Content: too much/too little/too narrow/too broad?
Content: too much news/not enough news?
Moderation: too heavy/too light? Too troll tolerant/not tolerant enough?
Features: (no I can’t make comment preview work, see this) what would you like to see?
Guest authors: good/bad/ugly?
Ideas for regular weekly features
How do you most use WUWT? Reference, portal, news, commentary, bird cages?
What could we do better?
At the same time, I’d like to mention that a part of WUWT’s success is owed to linkages…and I’ve noticed many readers not taking advantage of the ability to spread the word. It would be enormously helpful if you would use other blogs, Twitter, and Facebook to announce WUWT posts of interest. Some web ranking services now figure these in. Even if you don’t retweet, simply signing up as a Twitter follower improves WUWT’s ranking in some venues.
For example, the Wikio Sciences blog rating we have in the upper right sidebar depends on retweets to some degree, they write in FAQs:
The position of a blog in the Wikio ranking depends on the number and weight of the incoming links from other blogs. Our algorithm accords a greater value to links from blogs placed higher up in the ranking.
A blog linking another blog is only counted once a month i.e. if blog A links to blog B 10 times in a given month, it is only counted as having linked to that blog once that month. The weight of any link decreases over time. Also, if a blog always links to the same blog, the weight of these links is decreased.
Only links found in RSS feeds are counted. Blogrolls are not taken into account.
In December 2010, retweets were added as an additional factor to the ranking algorithm. For each twitter account, only one backlink per blog is taken into account each month.
So, links to WUWT are important, retweets are important. If you haven’t joined up with Twitter and Facebook, I understand, it took me awhile to overcome some of my personal objections to this form of social networking, but once I did, I never looked back.
Thanks for your consideration – Anthony
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I recommend:
1) You are great at herding skeptics (as difficult as herding cats) and converging some pretty diverse philosophies. KEEP THAT.
2) Change the overall tone more toward professional gentleman/gentlewomen behavior in both posters & commentors. I think this would draw more academic scientists who might otherwise be too timid for current environment.
3) Misbehavior under the cloak of anonymity is tiring. So recommend more moderating structure there.
4). More posting related to the philosophy of science would be great.
The above said, you are the best of the best.
John
I am always interested in Anthony’s (and others’) ideas for good paths towards cleaner energy, cheaper energy, renewables, etc. I have lots of good posts in the past. Keep them coming. Can you do a weekly special? It would be quite ironic if WUWT became the REAL green movement. I have noticed sincere mentions of ‘other’ good reasons to get off of coal and oil. I sometimes wonder if that would win a certain swath of CAGWers. Every time WUWT talks about how stupid wind power is, talk about natural gas, nuclear and other up-and-coming ideas that you support. Don’t get me wrong. Keep exposing the idiot ideas too, and the bully tactics that shove those ideas down our throat 🙂
old engineer says:
February 20, 2011 at 4:15 pm
> I am not even sure what html is, let alone how to use it. I have looked for “Ric Werme’s guide to WUWT” but couldn’t find it.
It’s on the right side navigation bar, but you’ll likely have to scroll down a bit to see the link. Or you can simply go to http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/index.html
HTML is short for the gobbledygook “HyperText Markup Language.” Basically it’s an inefficient, ill-designed mechanism to format text, add pictures, and in general produce web pages with a pleasing appearance. Without HTML, a web post or comment would look like a single long paragraph. With HTML, the result looks better, but the source HTML for the page does not, as that becomes extremely messy.
It’s pretty damn good!
How about a zombie feature where a dead thread can come back for a day or two?
Phoenix, if you prefer.
my only beef, and it has nothing to do witth you, sir, is that I wish some of these chaps/chappettes would grow some and actually take you up on your invite to guest post here (R. Gates, what about you? I find your comments considered and helpful.). It just seems childish that someone like Tamino will not put some of his/her opinions here, in the oppposite corner, to try to enlighten all of us.
PS – love that i can actually jump to Tamino’s or RC or …. from here. That is one of the main reasons why I respect you so much A.W. You seem to be somewhat more mature then the others…..
Anthony, as I have said, “You throw a heck of a party!” By that, I mean that I enjoy the free-wheeling nature of the comments to posted stories.
We have a mixture of amazing scientists, engineers, lay folk & others who often generate very insightful comments, many times providing links to articles that expand on the subject matter. Your Mods do a fantastic job of regulating this flow!
I’d suggest a character or word-limit for posts, sometimes folks throw the book in here (guilty as charged). Otherwise, please keep it free-wheeling, and thanks for providing links to alternative views, which the sites like Realclimate do not.
It ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Cheers, Charles the Dr.P.H.
I’ve been reading wattsupwiththat regularly for only about six months. I am still finding my way around it. I like what I see. It seems to me to be well arranged and, so far, I haven’t had much difficulty with finding my way around.
I like the eclectic nature of the content, and authors, finding it challengingly broad, with some nice touches (such as Josh :-).
Keep up the good work.
Anthony—
I’m glad of the chance to respond to this. Your format is relatively easy to read and simple to navigate. The content varies enough to be interesting without ever losing its focus on climate science news (please, don’t become a one-note Johnny!). I can’t speak to the moderation; every comment I’ve ever made has promptly been published in full. The comments of others do seem relatively polite, at least compared to some of the other sites I visit, but that may be due to the nature of your readers rather than heavy-handed moderation. I do value that anyone polite can be heard here—and the other commenters can then pick the BS apart. The guest authors you’ve featured in the past 14 months have run the gamut from good to ugly, but the article itself is only half the story here; the other half is those busy commenters who hold everyone’s feet to the fire and keep it all honest. I enjoyed when you were running the SEPP’s TWTW column on Sundays (and, yes, I noticed it was missing this morning). Mostly what I use WUWT for is as a digest of interesting climate news (1 of 5 I read regularly) that I can then refer brief article excerpts of along with a link to WUWT to a conservative political blog I feed (The Old Jarhead tartanmarine@blogspot.com) run by an old friend. (We’ve both been skeptics for many years and loved Hogan’s Kicking the Sacred Cow and Crichton’s State of Fear long before we ever heard of WUWT.) I also send excerpts with a link to some friends who have “personal” blogs and an interest in the subject. I hope we got you a few dozen votes for the Bloggie, too. All in all, I think you’re doing an excellent job; just keep doing it.
Thanks for asking. Ron Pittenger, Heretic
Don’t change anything unless it NEEDS it. This is the one I always read, OK, and Climate Audit. There seems to be over 1000 unread in all the other blogs that I just can’t get time to read. You must be doing it right, so, as I said, don’t change unless it needs changing for very good reasons.
So far this site has provided me with a lot of joy in reading it. This is Anthony’s place and I am happy to be able to view it. While I deeply appreciate his sense of community spirit in inviting us to share our opinion on its direction, I am content to let it be what it is. It is a product of Mr. Watts’ and I am a grateful consumer of that product. It is a wonderful site and am hoping it continues for many years.
Thank you for providing this wonderful blog for us to share our thoughts and receive yours.
be carefull about any changes, the site is great now !!
about the only thing i would like to see is having the comments numbered making it easier to reference a reply to a commenter. threads might be helpfull but can get confusing. I think I prefer the current system.
Can’t get by without my daily fix of WUWT. Grateful to Anthony and Mods.
What’s there to fix at WUWT? Excellent science, stimulating guest posts from Willis, Ira, et al, many perceptive and humorous commentaries, feels like realtime but posters have time to consider their words, check their facts. I like the way contrary opinions are given space,( I’m all for open societies,) and I think political comments, (not hate rants,) have validity as things happen in contexts.
Most grateful to you, Anthony, for what you put up and the way you do it. Good combination of well-supported scientific observation, well-informed opinion, and fun. Not enough fun elsewhere in this international debate.
Perfect for this 73-yr old non-scientific female general reader, avidly seeking well-researched and well-written news amid all the fluff.
PS Pity about those apostrophe’s, but…
This site is brilliant and needs no energy spent on change IMHO. But perhaps the rest of us could help by scattering the contents of this brilliant site further and wider. I know that I use WUWT as a comfort blanket – however daft the people out there, WUWT has intelligent life and there is hope, but the point is to spread the word to new ears. I should try to see how this Twitter works if Anthony thinks it’s useful……….
When posting about complex maths-heavy and science-heavy matters would it be possible to include an “executive summary” for thickos like me and environmental journalists.
I think that the site is presently unattractive to those that tire easily of the silly accusations of “fraud” or “criminal behaviour” against those warmists they don’t like. Such statements make WUWT look cranky, and I think it would be a good idea to forbid people from making what are libels. It also protects you Antony, because leaving libelous statements up leaves you open to prosecution.
In general the site is most convincing when the items and discussions don’t get into party politics, especially the “Democrat = evil” foolishness. We are always asking the warmists to treat sceptics with respect, but far too many comments sink to their depths on a regular basis. (I’m not saying people can’t being strongly opposed to the Democrats or whoever, just that every overtly party political statement made tends to distract from the main criteria of the site, which is not political. People have other places to do their politicking.)
Wouldn’t . change . a . thing . . . .
239 comments already! It looks like people want to help!
Concisely:
Ain’t broke; don’t fix.
—
Issue of chronological vs. tree organization: CHRONOLOGICAL!!! [Trees are a blasted nuisance (!) to ski (skim & skip) through. No time for that…]
General advice: DON’T do what climate etc. (Curry) is doing. That blog is 98% nothing (aside from 2 commenters, maybe 3 on a good day). There was a recent thread where a single VERY DULL commenter made over 100 (long) comments. Seeing that behavior tolerated by the Climate Etc. moderators was an ABSOLUTELY CLEAR sign to me that the value of sensible readers’ time is NOT sufficiently appreciated. I’ve started considering the possibility that the intent of the site is to “tie people up at committee” with nonsense and FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED ideas about chaos & “uncertainty”. In fairness, maybe Dr. Curry will start cracking down on the handful of hyperactive commenters who are watering the discussions down to almost nothing (LESS than a needle in a haystack), but since Dr. Curry is operating from the ivory tower, she canNOT publicize the truth about the role of untenable assumptions in absolutely misleading statistical inference …so solid NON-ivorytower sites will ALWAYS be needed to keep a CLOSE eye on that NONSENSE…
So long as WUWT continues running occasional stimulating articles on natural variations, I’ll keep visiting regularly. (I have almost zero interest in the politics, but I accept that WUWT has a diverse audience.)
—
Guarantee:
Major breakthroughs are coming down the pipe, so rest awhile and then forge ahead!
—
Best Regards to All!
Please keep it as is. This is a great site. I promote it very often. It is ez to understand, is the right mix of opinion, politics and science. Format is good as is. Reply threads would suck. One of the few sites I trust.
Keep up the good work, It’s well needed Now. Thank You for All, Just an old guy
I think you should start a WUWT monitoring station network. Make a link, people can buy into a groundstation for monitoring. $50 bucks to sign up, a couple bucks a month for the reporting. Owners could log into a web page to see their sites data.
At least then, people would have access to real, unadjusted data. I’d sign up for a station!!
Anthony, the moderators have taken over your website. I have posted comments that have dealt with sociological parallels to the climate change controversy, but they have been censored by the rogue moderators. Most people would have found these revelations to be insightful and a welcome addition to your website. ‘Charles’ in particular seems to have his own agenda.
I second the motion. It ought to be on top, so no page-downs are needed. At present five of them are required.
Require people to use their real names [in addition to whatever nickname or ‘avatar’ they so love].
Leave it as it is.