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 have been around sense the beginning… Perhaps you should take some advice from my first boss in the computer world, some 40 years ago: If it ain’t broke. don’t fix it.
As far as I can see it ain’t broke.
I’ve been a reader for about two years (from the UK) and it’s certainly one of my top three favourites – out of 100 or more – looking in about 3 times a day. For me, being able to learn what’s really important, what’s really going on in climate science and related matters has been an eye-opener – and much in accordance with what I expected being very suspicious about glib, specious stories which are all too readily accepted by our gullible politicians. So, many, many thanks Anthony and your guests and supporters; I marvel at your tenacity – but do try to take the occasional break.
Like many who’ve already commented I think that there’s nothing to be changed, though I’m not taken with the recently introduced weekly round-up. The political comments are all part of the picture and I keep myself up to date on US political headlines anyway as they often affect us, which isn’t true vice versa.
By the most readable site on the climate debate and very well moderated, worked, researched and modest in it’s style and language. Congratulations.
As a non-scientist I struggle to understand the real world meaning of a lot of both the content and comments. I would love to have a ‘translation’ of what a lot of the stuff means, so those of us without the specialist knowledge can understand.
Personally, I seek to find material that can be placed in front of politicians to educate them in why they should be Sceptics. For a politician it has to confront their immediate political agenda (e.g. We have an Energy bill going through the UK Parliament right now) because as far as they are concerned they think they know it all and have other priorities on them. So getting simple “this means that” messages through to them is what people like me can do. We have no such site here in the UK and unfortunately for the Sceptics’ cause Monckton has attached himself to a non- credible right wing party, so he is increasingly dismissed as a nutter, which he is not.
Perhaps each post can be summarised ” what this means is 1), 2), 3) etc.
I think perhaps having threaded discussion, rather than a single wall of comments, would be more conducive to having conversations with other readers about various issues raised by articles. It’s very difficult to reply to a commenter and for that commenter to see the reply, or for another to follow a narrative of conversation in comments.
That’s the only change I would make though.
For me, Wattsupwiththat is perfect as it is, please don’t go making any radical changes. An addition I could think of would be a page explaining what the jet stream is up to as, in the UK, this has a particularly dramatic effect on our summers and our TV forecasts rarely show anything about the jet stream.
Another boring highly satisfied customer, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t change anything. Hell, it’s one of the few blogs I can follow straight away without having to do a retake!
Keep up the good work. I don’t know how you manage it.
Just a small point, and one that effects most blogs – it would be nice to have an option to select a softer background to the text than white.
Great blog – keep up the good work.
Your site has given me hope for integrity in climate reporting. The devil is in the detail with this complex science, and charlatans attempt to ‘modify the truth’ for political and monetary gain, to deceive the uninformed . They need to be kept accountable. So thank you.
“The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.”
~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I would like to see a reference page with peer reviewed research that rebutts or contradicts say 10 major claims of AGW. For example warmer northern hemisphere winters and colder northern hemisphere winters or plants move uphill and plants move downhill.
Warmer Northern Hemisphere winters
Colder Northern Hemisphere winters
Plants move uphill
Plants move downhill
Agree with most posters that messing with success is always hazardous. Tweaking, OTOH, is essential, but you seem to do that anyway.
The format, content etc work just fine for me.
I agree also with those who warn against vitriolic partisan political discussion. I would probably be described as a social liberal but an economic conservative. Being accused of favouring totalitarian world governance or the destruction of personal liberty because of this is pretty offensive. It is also not the way to win the hearts and minds of the majority of middle of the road people, especially outside the US.
Discussing politics and science in a generic way is constructive and important, however.
I especially appreciate some of the generalist science articles such as the recent ones on measurement – interesting and educational for most readers, including scientists, judging from the comments.
Lots of people seem to want a compendium of key reference works – maybe a few regular contributors and commenters in those areas could put something together, so that you don’t have to do it all.
Your moderation policy is the best in the field, although no doubt it is time consuming. Many thanks to you and the volunteers for that.
Finally, kudos for maintaining a nice mix of material. Although some of your ‘hard science’ readers may consider some material and some comments to be ‘fluff’, changing the world requires getting people across a range of disciplines, opinions, degrees of involvement and countries engaged. WUWT does that superbly.
I tend to agree with warmists that the basicscience is settled, however a lot of the uncertainty seems to surround the use and abuse of statistics, and in particular the extraction of meaningful results from sparse, fragmented data.
I would greatly value the addition of an outline of the statistics employed by climate professionals, the software use to perform it and what realistically can be expected of it. This could perhaps feature on your reference pages.
70,269,307 hits
Leif Svalgaard says:
February 20, 2011 at 8:45 pm
Require people to use their real names [in addition to whatever nickname or ‘avatar’ they so love].
Leif, I fear for political persecution. Not everyone has a solid academic career. To challenge the current system.
The Rev,
The amount of information in WUWT is fantastic.
I knew absolutely nothing about the Sun. Today I can read an article by Leif. Without a big scare.
So I am eternally grateful to all information acquired in WUWT.
Do not change the system of moderation. The soul is in the blog post and comments on technical, political and contradictory.
Abraços,
Sorry for the bad english.
Having exhausted several web searches over the last 2-years, I am still unable to find a single ‘factsheet’ or paper showing just how much CO2 is used (or manufactured) for all of the other man-made processes on a global scale. This may help fight our corner – arguing that the level of CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels is absolutely insignificant when compared to every other process. Maybe, Anthony, you could be the first. You may need scientific help to pull it all together. I know others, such as Christopher Booker would support this initiative.
For example, ignoring the baking of it, how much CO2 is produced as a bi-product purely from yeast fermentation when we make one loaf of bread ready for the oven. Now multiply that on a global scale for every small bakery, supermarket and factory.
Both the collossal amount of manufactured CO2 used for all the world’s carbonated drinks market and the daily CO2 output from yeast products (as in all the world’s bread making, beer production & wine making) may surprise WUWT readers. Add to this Life Jackets, Air Bags, Fire Extinguishers, Uses for Bicarbonate of Soda (including the world’s snack food industry), man-made refridgerants, Modified Atmospheric Packaging (MAP) used in all food packaging, the decaffienation process used for our coffee, controlling the alkaline pH level when processing all our sewage, limescale removal products, cement manufacture, lime kilns (brick making), CO2 used in welding fabrication, man-made CO2 pellets used in sandblasting, sealed-beam laser cutting of all PCB’s, composting of the worlds cultivated garden waste, etc. etc.
The man-made infrastructure in place for shifting the AGW ‘blame’ from fossil fuels could have alarming consequences. I don’t know why no one has not yet produced this information – if nothing else, the evidence may persuade politicians to reconsider how present CO2 tax ‘penalties’ are levied (such as petrol in the UK) and – more importantly – make the warmist’s argument totally flawed. Victory. Battle won.
E.mail me if you need any further info/evidence. I’d be more than happy to help.
Your site is great!
The only thing i would like is a forum associated with the site. It is disapointing to have to wait for an article to appear before I can ask a question on a topic that i am interested in.
FWIW:
Format and style: OK
Content: A-OK
Moderation: A-OK (reasons given for /[del] gets A+)
Features: I don’t need anything more.
Guest authors: tres good, but select carefully
Ideas for regular weekly features: I’m not an ‘ideas’ man, me.
How do you most use WUWT?: All of the above (well, maybe not the bird cages).
What could we do better?: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
/[del] should be [snip]/[del]
With all due respect, Anthony: No.
I wrote my first computer program more than 45 years ago, and since then have done nearly everything in this field, from writing code to gathering requirements to designing networks to implementing ITIL requirements. I am now making my living principally on the basis of my knowledge of network security; I’m a CISSP (see isc2.org). And the security of these social sites gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “wretchedly inadequate”. Hacking them, picking up contact lists, bypassing password logons, counterfeiting messages, and social engineering are all so easy that the only reason anyone’s account hasn’t been hacked on one of these sites is that no script kiddie has thought it worth the trouble yet.
I have studiously avoided Facebook, Twitter and the like for years and intend to continue to do so. Something like 10% of the human race have Facebook accounts. That by itself is a scary number, but I’m still in the majority…
DocWat said it nicely. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.
I read WUWT most days and find it easy to follow and quite informative. I don’t always read all the detail due to lack of time but the current format is easy to get in to and follow.
Oh, a point does occur on Content:
Stay mainstream – avoid the wild and woolly fringes of “denial”, esp with guest authors.
Anthony
I love your blog site. I teach geography (both physical & cultural) at a local community college. I have recommended your website for my students to conduct their research on climate. I think your site is well rounded with information directly addressed in the main and in the side borders (other sites to go to). It is easy to read for the most part for students of various degrees of technical backgrounds. My students vary from total non-science/tech types to those who wish to major in science/math/computers etc. You site is perfect for them to quickly read and investigate.
I hope that you don’t get tired of doing this great service to the public. You are much appreciated. In a small way, you are helping to inform a few students (my students) and making them better informed citizens. I have approximately 150 students per year. Not all are motivated, but many now are motivated to be informed citizens, thanks to your source of information.
It is easy to read and follow. Don’t change a thing.
I like it as it is, great news items articles, and humour.
great mods, and I am sorry but I wont facebook or twitter, but I send links to a lot almost every day:-)
please don’t make the type smaller, people like me with dodgy eyes appreciate being able to see it easily.
Would it be bad form to run a short post on passing 70 million?
Another vote for don’t change anything.
Sometimes I wonder where the world would be if Anthony hadn’t wondered at the difference between latex and whitewash and if Steve hadn’t wondered why the Canadian Government was sending every household in Canada what looked like a dodgy mining prospectus.
==========================
Anthony,
IMHO WUWT is fine with no changes – but it is good that you are looking for ways to improve.
Thanks to you, the moderators, contributors and participants.