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 wouldn’t change much, except that I like the idea of culling or nesting comments that merely recycle the “foaming-at-mouth” sentiment without supporting facts or helpful commentary.
The sheer number of long-form articles, items, topics and guest writers can get daunting. Perhaps a top-level display could have the current day’s entries as they are now (a couple of paras with “continue reading”), and previous days’ entries listed under their date of posting and with a simple linked title?
I know if I miss a few days here, I tend to scan faster than I would prefer, and a set of titles would make it easier for me to cherry-pick items of interest.
I very much appreciate the practice here of engaging proponents of AGW; it’s a healthy way to avoid becoming yet another cranky echo chamber.
I also find a differentiator of this site is that it contains not just criticism of the scientific establishment of climate change and analyses of its arguably shoddy premises, but also puts forth minority viewpoints that (like solar cycles) concur that some climate change may be happening, but that humans might have less to do with it than the “fear mongers” assert.
To my mind, this is at the heart of academic freedom: the provision of a forum in which any number of ideas can contend. Consider the life cycle of the liver fluke: it took ages to establish all the steps in that little nasty’s survival, and I expect that a true understanding (and a better reckoning) of climate change science will have to allow for far more factors than “turn off your car, evil Gaia rapist!”
Lastly, it’s not just enough to say “these bastards are corrupt deceivers”. You have to establish a counter-proposal that makes better sense than the received wisdom. WUWT does that, which is why I like it here.
First, the site does a terrific job as is, so I wouldn’t complain if it stayed that way.
I come here for science, so I view any other content as diluting your main mission. I love to learn, so I appreciate those authors who teach as well as tell. References greatly appreciated. Abstracts for longer contributions telling me what I’m getting into greatly appreciated. Summaries essential.
Since you want more of this site passed along by links, your contributors might consider slightly greater explanation so that content could be understood by a wider audience. They should also be sensitive to the notion that the WAY the facts are presented (writing style) is as important as the facts themselves. I realize that some contributors are writing in their second language, but it’s clear that others could work a little harder on clarity.
Nonetheless, great job by all.
Anthony:
I sent you a message via your contact page. Hope it doesn’t get skipped because I used that form.
Good luck.
I read WUWT 3 or 4 times a day depending on how many new postings are made. I forgive typos and rail against the grammar police (but mostly in the quiet solitude of my man cave where I keep my man toys, including this laptop I am now using).
My taste in blog entries mostly tends toward those that provide generalized technical background on the science issues associated with the AGW debate. Also enjoy the occasional other science postings such as IT, space, and solar.
I cannot think of a single thing for improvement – You (Anthony) and your crew of dedicated volunteers (CTM especially) do all of us great service.
Thank you, and please continue to provide me and other readers with an excellent alternative to the political science it is too often subjected.
I can’t find data just pictures. For example I want sunspot number data, but I don’t think it is available via WUWT. So maybe as well as ‘references’ and ‘resources’ you could add ‘data’?
Format is good, but it would be nice to have threaded replies like on TOD.
Content is excellent, and reader inputs very important.
Moderation would be better if it cut out the extreme conservative political crap.
Features – we are all still waiting with baited breath for the Surface Stations paper!
Guest authors generally good, often excellent, but how does one get to have a guest paper considered? I have tried several times, and several ways without even the courtesy of a rejection. Some guidelines would help.
Use? for me mainly reference, but often the references come from commentary.
Overall it’s one of my 3 favorite blogs, but some of the commenters! whew!
Links to other blogs are also very helpful.
More mockery and snark for the Alarmists! Not enough disdain and contempt being shown towards them. More Stone Cold Salute!
Love the site. You cover science and politics. I wish that the philosophy and psychology of global warming, group-think, etc. was covered more in depth. (The science of human beings and why they like to believe in stuff like AGW.)
Couldn’t respectfully disagree more with Joe Dunfee above, who thinks that general and political comments should be isolated from ‘scientific’ comments.
Do that and you risk putting both in their individual ghettos, you also diminish your very important educational role, whereby non scientists still read and feel able to comment on scientific matters.
Scientists tend to be specialists (part of the reason we’re in this mess in the first place) but your general readers have a lot of wisdom and common sense spread across a wide range of disciplines…history for example is a fierce tool in debunking AGW…let us ordinary folk have our say.
What I think might help is an instant list of the authoratitive sources we use on this site…NASA, University of Illinois, Jaxa etc etc…because one of the favourite methods used to attack the sceptical position, it to claim that we are all gullible cranks and the science we use to rebutt AGW is ‘made up’, (now that’s ironic!)
Evolution is the way…because yes most of us do believe in that.
Most importantly don’t do anything too fast or too radical
In asking for comments, you will hear many complaints, and I hope you keep in mind that many very satisfied ‘customers’ will not bother to post.
I am one of the very satisfied customers.
Hi Anthony and co!
One point: “Content: too much/too little/too narrow/too broad?” and the point about guest authors:
I believe it must be quite a challenge to make all happy. One commenter says that there is “too much”.
I understand him so far that I cantno longer read all articles, and only fractions of the valuable comments i can check out.
BUT: The thing is, the relevanse of the articles is in my view at least at good as “in the old days”. Its as if there is simply more and more relevant stories. This could indicate to some degree, perhaps, that the sceptics word is spreading out, dominoes are falling, more and more stories evolving.
At the same time, “guest post” authors like me that cannot deliver full PHD´s in private evening hours has perhaps slightly smaller place in the debate simply because more and more professional institutions (like the BEST proj) are interacting, taking part in the debate.
WUWT certainly has had a charm and a force using this broad variety of guest post authors of the “private” type, perhaps even a kind of articles that has contibruted to WUWT rather well, but perhaps time is changing things – partly simply because “we are winning” as sceptics 🙂
I think there will still pop “private-guest-author” articles up at WUWT, but perhaps not as often as ealier. I hope i wont end all together since it is really a charm – in my view.
When the climate debate ends, what a pleasure to go back and study astronomy and origin of life and and and…!
K.R. Frank
So far I have liked everything you have done with the place.
The only thing I might suggest are the “Like” “Dislike” buttons, used for each commenter. If I understand their use, the heavily disliked comments fold away where you don’t have to even look at them, unless you really want to unfold them. I don’t know if WordPress even allows them.
Keep up the good fight, ignorance is a curable condition.
Content: too little!!!
Content: not enough news, I would like to see WUWT get more hits. So an occasional important news story would be good, regardless if it is related to science or not.
Moderation: Too troll tolerant. We already know what they are going to say. They are basically Bots. Everyone can easily find what a troll is going to say just about anywhere in the media. Why do we have to see it here again? (A smidge is ok though.)
Guest authors: EXCELLENT!! (That choice was not among good/bad/ugly?) I wish there were more opinion pieces too, besides guest science works. I am certain Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, John Christy, Anthony Watts, Ross McKitrick, Robert Balling, Nir Shaviv, and so on, have good things to say. And I think readers would like to hear those opinions, thoughts, and feelings (though not too heavy on politics). Opinion pieces may be a good outlet for you fellows to have too.
What could we do better? Have a quick snippers for OT comments followed by a reply that said, politely, “Please post that in Tips and Notes. Thank you.”
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One suggestion I have that would help reduce the work load is to not have a comment thread after every post. If you closed comments on some select posts there would be less commenting to keep track of, but people would still have a post to read. It appears that from the number of hits WUWT gets most people do not comment but come to see the latest. So it doesn’t seem you’d lose hits from having comments closed on some posts.
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Here’s an example of what I mean by opinion piece, which I would like to see more of:
Here’s another nice example of opinion piece:
Speed says:
February 20, 2011 at 10:30 am
1. Nested comments.
I disagree. Unless there is a mechanism to filter or highlight “comments since I last visited” it is just too tedious.
At Climate Audit, you have to re-read the entire comment thread every time you visit to find new comments.
Big fan of WUWT for years. What you’ve done and continue to do is very important, and everyone on both sides of the debate owes you a big thank you (not that the other side realizes it yet, but it will). For those morning you up and feel like the cat in the puppy video above, know that there are people out here who think you’re a hero.
I don’t see that changes are necessary, but I would like to see an addition. Anyone new coming to the site just dives into the deep end. I think the reason climate myths persist is that the issue as a whole is so complex. I would like to see a place on the site organized by issue. Each section would include a background summary of what each issue is about, eg., instrument temperature record, temperature proxies, glacier melt, sea ice, the IPCC, Climategate, complex vs. simple systems, etc. Then new posts could be tagged to sections so people could follow by issue if they like.
Would be some work to set up, but I think you probably already have good intro pieces for all of these (and more) sections–would just need to dig them out and edit.
One of the best science blogs on the web, but I do have one suggestion which will make it bettter – in my humle opinions of course.
I think the blog should have more guest posts with alternative views on global warming. That do not mean that I want any warmist “the end is nigh” stuff here – they have enough other places to go.
What I do miss however, is seroius analyses from people who can provide good analyses and insight without the polarised view we often see in the climate debate. In other words, I miss more stuff from the ‘Lukewarmers’ like Pielke and Engelbeen.
Dear Anthony,
I’m in the “ain’t broke, don’t fix it” camp. This site is invaluable.
Nonetheless, may I offer an “enhancement” instead of a fix?
I’m sure there are many generalist readers out there, like me, who may stumble over some of the more technical posts, and may even have our eyes glaze over trying to get through them.
One of the nice features about CO2science.org is that it has a “What it means” paragraph at the end of its articles (actually there are also “What was done” and “What was learned,” both helpful) written in plain English. The “What it means” is especially valuable, in my opinion, because it puts the article in a context that might otherwise be lost to a reader.
By no means do I suggest that the articles be less technical or incomplete, as it’s the open science that makes this site so valuable. However, bonehead non-scientist readers like me sometimes need some help understanding what’s going on, especially contextually.
Thank you for your hard work making this one of the best sites on the Web.
Best,
Mike Fox
Anthony,
I can’t think of much that needs to be changed. Your moderation is the BEST I’ve seen. The site is sufficiently troll tolerant and you have the best behaved trolls out there (compare and contrast to James Delingpole’s blog at the DT). American Thinker is essentially a troll free zone and they’re hyper-moderated. I’ve had entire comments deleted for no apparent reason. They were on topic, polite, profanity free and completely consistent with their posted comments rules. But if a comment happens to rankle a particular moderator for some unknown reason it simply disappears. Since their great troll purge a year or two ago their comments have become rather dull, just the bleating of the regulars in an echo chamber…but their articles are still VERY good. The comments here at WUWT are one of the site’s best features. It might be useful to have the comments numbered but it’s really no big deal that they’re not.
I certainly can’t suggest any change in content, format or layout. I thoroughly enjoy your guest authors. I use WUWT for everything you listed except bird cages. But, sorry…I’m a twitterphobe.
Dave
Reduce font size please. 🙂
REPLY: Try holding down the Ctrl key and scrolling your mouse wheel – Anthony
One thing great about this site is all the comments. On some topics, someone post a really good comment that really helps with the topic at hand. However, you must go through dozens of comments to get to that really insightful one. I would love to see a weekly collection of the best and most helpful comments on the posts of the past week, along with a synopsis and a link to the original story.
This is not meant to diminish any person’s comment; it is meant to highlight the ones that really help.
This is an excellent site, not only for the science but also for the glimpse of conditions in various countries around the world. Which leads to just about the only suggestion that I can make for an improvement, and that is to figure a way to indicate the part of what country a person lives in. If someone writes that it is 70°F where they are, I’d like to know where they are! (And I would be happier if people would reread their posting before sending it to eliminate glaringly obvious spelling errors- and also if everyone could learn the difference between its and it’s, affect and effect, their/they’re/there, etc.!!)
As a Canadian I am pleased to see so many postings from fellow countrypeople and the confirmation that that gives that this blog is truly international. (Likewise for Australia, of which I have many fond memories.)
Many thanks for keeping this very informative source of information going, and almost-equal thanks to the many posters of informed and informative comments.
IanM in New Brunswick
One last example of opinion piece
I reference WUWT to others frequently, on line and elsewhere. I like it the way it is, but still appreciate the new features like the ocean, solar, etc. compendiums of data.
I own a data center with a number of web servers. On many web sites I host, I provide a visible link to WUWT where appropriate. When not appropriate for the site content to show a link, I embed an invisible link to WUWT (in an odd place on the page with font colors the same as the background color) which, while invisible to the eye, still gets picked up by web bots. I realize that others may not have the latitude I do so I offer this as a suggestion to those who do. At least most people can add a visible or invisible link to WUWT on their social networking pages.
As for format and content, WUWT is the only site I read on a daily basis. Some times there’s too much to read but I pick and choose what interests me and I like that. Most of the time I just do a cursory look at the political news articles and prefer to read the more science based ones. But that’s just me. I understand and appreciate that everyone comes here to read what interests them. So in those regards, I wouldn’t recommend changing content.
The e-mail notification of new posts is excellent. I subscribe to it. When a topic is posted that I have a high interest in, I check it out as soon as my work flow permits. It’s nice being able to sit down to my e-mail in the evenings and see what’s up at Watts Up With That.
The level of moderation seems a good balance. I particularly enjoy reading opposing views being worked out in comments. I learn a lot from the exchanges plus realizing that opposing views are encouraged at WUWT give me confidence that discussion here is fair and open.
My largest concern is that with as much effort you put into WUWT, you may be setting yourself up for burn out. I would prefer that you (and WUWT moderators) balance your time in a way to survive for the long haul. It wouldn’t disappoint me if you reduced the number of postings per week, perhaps create an “Open Thread” more frequently, so you can take a little more time for R&R.