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
More articles of the kind, quality and calibre of Willis’s latest ‘deconstruction’ of a suspect paper, please. Incisive; thought-provoking; and offering a brilliant window of understanding on the science/statistical manipulation behind the paper’s conclusion.
Thank you Willis; and thank you Anthony for an entertaining, informative site.
I think the WUWT blog is very easy to read and navigate. It has a simple style which is durable, gives it stability and which makes it fluid and adaptable.
It provides a good mix of the serious, light hearted, the technical, the political, news, good range of opinions. I think this variety is important as it provides (almost) something for everyone and it is easier to chose what to read just as a headline and summary or in depth and leads one to read some things which would not be seen in sections dedicated to specific topics, or on a site which dealt with say, just heavy-duty technical stuff, or which is just critical.
I also like the, quiet balanced tone.
I think evolution rather than revolution in terms of how the site develops.
All must have already been said.
I would just like to offer my heartfelt thanks for providing the site.
Leave it as it is.
r says:
February 20, 2011 at 4:41 pm
In my Guide to WUWT I have a list of the most important posts I could think while typing that section. I’ve added some this year, and updated a couple others. Sadly, none of my articles made the cut. 🙂 It is definitely my list, though, and I’m impressionable enough to add links that people think are important references.
Send me suggestions – with URL and why it warrants a pedestal. My contact link at the bottom of my guide, http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/index.html , has my Email address.
I can’t think of anything I’d change, Anthony.
Just one thing – as others have said, I wouldn’t want you to burn out. I think you could easily post with half the frequency and still retain all your popularity. The frequency is already too high for me to follow every post and all its comments. Not a complaint, mind; just an observation you might care to think about.
As to troll-tolerant, Anthony, I think you’ve got exactly the right balance. Commenters recognize anything approaching troll-ness and engage them – some with snarc, some with tech and some with logic. There is no single balance, since every troll comment will be unique enough that one inflexible anti-troll method will leave loopholes.
Just keep on letting the commenters deal with trolls. It is amazing that RC hasn’t awakened to this yet – but that is their problem, isn’t it? It is such a huge flaw in their site, and which takes too much time from their “leading lights,” instead of trusting their supporters to engage skeptics. That is what comes with hierarchies like AGW, the top-down jackboot.
I’d say that is the most pleasant and harmonious thing on WUWT, the lack of hierarchy-in-your-face.
The only thing that irritates is nothing to do with you really. It’s when people post about what the weather is doing where they are, but they don’t say where that is!
Please people, when you make a topical comment about your locale please always say where in the world you are.
I have been coming here for years and think you all do a great job. There is a great flow of good information. People on the other side of the aisle are encouraged to and do post. And everyone does a good job of keeping out most BS.
No need to worry about change. This site is popular because of what you have been doing, not because of what you could be doing.
I am very pleased with the current state of the site. Being new to Twitter I have yet to add this site to those which I follow but I shall do so after I hit send on this message.
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Both Gore and Suzuki think science and politics is different; that is their con-science.
“He who stick head in oven and come out with baked bean” not necessarily in kitchen.
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There probably isn’t a “perfect” blog or forum and we all have our preferences and even quirks that we’d change, but overall WUWT works and is appreciated by many.
I agree with some of the above posters that it would be helpful if the posts were numbered. It would make it easier when returning to a topic to get back to the last post you have previously read.
On some forums you can immediately jump to unread posts.
Perhaps one of these is a possibility with WordPress?
I suppose there’s always room for improvement of WUWT, but I don’t know what it is. I read it at least twice per day. I use WUWT as an example when discussing communication tools in the workplace. If you can’t run it like WUWT, don’t run a blog. Post on a social network site, sharepoint, email, or whatever. A blog is a major undertaking and has a set of certain requirements. So what is at WUWT that makes it a good blog?
Several posts published per day
Moderated by author and helper mods.
Author has a definite opinion/world view and expresses it frequently, yet allows other opinions.
Author and moderator respond to posts as well as keep things in order
Uses guest posters for variety and ease the workload.
TakeS suggestions for stories from readers.
Range of difficulty -challenges with some actual science but mostly understandable to all
Sticks mostly to a main theme but sprinkles in other material.
I know it’s just a preference, but I find threaded conversations confusing as well. And they are definitely tough to follow on mobile devices due to the small window. I hope WUWT doesn’t thread.
Keep up the great work.
I disagree with the suggestion of somehow separating the “scientific” parts from the “political” parts. Which scientific discussions on global warming are not political? Which political debates on global warming are not intertwined with science? Trying to keep the science and the politics apart is like trying to have a coin collection with only tails. Impossible!
More Porn! That would bring in traffic! 🙂
Seriously, though, one reason I love WUWT is that it’s a simple format and you’ve done what I would have done had I still been running my poor, poor neglected blog– separate important issues into separate pages. Now, it’s all easy to find.
Moderators are great. I got moderated once for a joke that went over the top, and the moderator at least had the decency to snip it and said ‘too much’ or something like that. Better to know why your comment was eaten rather to wonder if it was eaten at all.
Tip Jar! I know you probably get some money from the WUWT stuff, but I think people would donate to the blog to help keep WUWT afloat.
There’s my $0.02.
I would have loved to click “like” on Dick Meyers’ comment “More cowbell”.
I’m another “it ain’t broke” voter. But – a “survey response” anyhow:
1: Format and style: Always “easy to read and use”. Black on white text is still the best, and the older I get the better that best is.
2: Content: pretty good balance of content and news as it is, also decently accessible to non-specialists. (I’m generally science-literate, but not s climate specialist.)
3: Moderation: doing fine, maybe a little too kind to trolls sometimes. Re a comment above, it’d be nice if the mods could just fold up the troll posts plus all their answers …
4: Features, what I would like to see: It would be truly amazing if there were some way of assembling all the links which come up in a thread, maybe at the bottom of the page, with the surrounding explanatory (we hope) text. It can take forever looking for that link you’re sure you remember seeing a few days ago when you have to hunt through a couple of hundred comments … on the wrong page … before you realise it’s the wrong page …
5: Guest authors: You have a nice collection already. Do please add anyone you like, and I’m sure they’ll get a warm welcome.
6: Ideas for regular weekly features: Perhaps a roundup of the top general scientific goings-on, maybe “radiating outwards” conceptually from climate.
7: How do you most use WUWT? Reference – frequently, portal – fairly often, news – too darn much per day as I read through all the comments looking for those interesting links 😛
8: What could we do better? Hmm. The campaign for training mainstream media reporters in basic scientific literacy seems a bit slow, along with the Anti-Futerra League, and I haven’t heard of anyone commissioning any Persona Management software to get a few Fake People going for us, … Oh, the blog? Like it fine as it is.
Seriously – it’s a really fine blog and I don’t know where you all get the energy to keep it flying as high as it does. Thanks, and top marks from me to everyone, even if you change nothing at all.
I can’t think of a thing to change. There is so much here it is hard to read everything on a daily basis. Thank you.
Well I visit (regularly) VERY few websites of the informational variety; ie, they are trying to tell me something. I visit NONE more than once; that do not permit me to respond to their “information”, either on their “blog” or perhaps via e-mail. I don’t mind a user screening process.
So I visit WUWT and two other blog/forums/forae. Those other two are quite difefrent from WUWT. One allows me to post photographs (restricted file size). That lets me describe something in a photo sequence, of “how to”. It also lets me post graphs, which I simply photograph out of a book or off the screen and post as digial photos. That site also has a nested posting scheme. The third site has many subject categories related (broadly) to its sphere of Influence (sailing). So you post under the correct heading; or the moderator may move your post to a more appropriate site. Does have e-mail and password screening process.
WUWT is as easy to use as any of the others; I miss being able to post a picture, since it takes a lot of words, to describe one picture, or graph, and not everyone is able to access a graph of Data, that I may have sitting right here in my library; and I don’t intend to cite out of wiki.
I am not into social networking; persons are ok; but I can’t stand people, and avoid them like the plague; so I don’t even have a cellphone; let alone any of the digital toy du jour contraptions that every silicon valley would be entrepeneur believes will be the latest mega-gizmo; most of them are mostly crap. So nyet on the cheeping or faceache.
Biggest irritant at WUWT, is people not delineating what is “their own work” of words, and what is a citation of what somebody else said. So it is impossible to determine who said what. And all the clever tricks of messing with the font etc to italicise or bolden are a wasted effort, since a cut and paste usually wipes out any formatting. Any move to a smaller font, would make it quite invisible to me.
Clearly a lot of folks post immediately after reading your “subject” story; and they haven’t read what others have already responded to it with. So folks post questions that have already been answered. On subjects that I think I can contribute to, I start at the top and read all the responses, so I know where people are following the story. Don’t like the embedded videos; a link to them is fine for me, and often those things don’t return to where you left off.
But basically, I like WUWT exactly as it is, and understand that some of why and what it is, relates to what it costs. I can’t see the Mods (Hi! Chasmod) doing any summarizing; or what does it mean, kind of extraction. If people want the classic comic version as well as the war and piece hard cover; then the posting writer should provide that themselves. Totally unreasonable to expect the mods to be editors of so much stuff; I’m sure they are busy just weeding the flower beds, and don’t have time to pretty up the surroundings.
So for me; it fine the way it is; and I think any attempt to change it much, to something else could backfire. If people are strongly in favor of other formats; well it’s a free country (so far) so they can go and start their own blog in their own image.
To a large extent users can fix a lot of the idiosyncracies themselves by just thinking about what they are doing.
Keep it up Anthony.
George
Offer to pay Al Gore in Carbon Credit IOU’s if he will blog here with us.
Say like 10,000 carbon credits per post.
This is an excellent website, both with respect to content and to format. I see no need for any changes. Granted, some of the comments are excessively verbose, inappropriate, or intemperate, but it is easy to skip through those for the many insightful and informative contributions.
I would like to post my comments under a descriptive heading:
ie:
Scientific Discussions:
E=mc2
Sarcasm/Humor:
HaHaHa
Off Topic:
check this out…
?Questions?:
What about the xyz?
Summaries for the Feebleminded:
It really means it ain’t that hot….
Thank you’s:
Great article!!!
ETC:
This structure would provide a simple filter for comments where I can read what interests me. 300 comments are difficult to wade through. 10 categories of 30 comments each would automatically filter out more what I want to read.
This is different than nesting…. each category is still chronological.
Just a thought. I love the site and your quest for truth. Good work!
The main problem with WUWT is that there is no debate occurring on the comments. It seems that everyone who comments on WUWT disagrees with AGW. It would be nice to read rational well thought out back and forths between both camps – but I am not sure how you would encourage comments from pro AGW since they appear to be boycotting debate.
I come here daily, even if I don’t comment that often. I like the format, contents and moderation as they are currently. It seems to be about the best balance of articles, topics, and permitted comments I’ve come across.
After posting my thoughts much earlier, and reading all the comments since, I would like to second the suggestion that comments be numbered for easier reference. Not essential of course, but just quicker.
And I do find it slightly amusing that we are talking about ‘WUWT change.’