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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Please make your site more difficult to read, more abstruse scientifically and try to bus in more rabid progressive leftist opinion. This will help the site become much less popular so I can finally get a chance to make my extremely important snarky input somewhere before commenter number 468.
Thanks
Re Twitter, I treat it as a miniscule blog. I see following as a screening service.
Don’t get caught up following those who follow you, most are lame. It’s only a “social” medium if you want it to be.
– Format and style: Can you add icons for italics, etc. for comments?
– Content: too much/too little/too narrow/too broad? I am not in agreement with the fairly rabid anti-US-government slant of some of the posts (and a lot of the comments, of course) – but then I am a Liberal who agrees on the scientific position here, so I don’t expect you to change it. I think we need more government, to protect the citizenry from certain (not all by any means) carnivorous corporations; individuals cannot muster enough muscle to protect themselves, and there is nothing but government big enough to do that vs those corporations. As an example, the Lehman Bros. collapse shows the need for government to keep corporate interests from running completely amok. That event and the millions of foreclosures and bankruptcies show that a totally free market is as destructive to the individual as a totalitarian state. I would point at Bernie Madoff, Enron and WorldCom, too.
– Content: too much news/not enough news? Again, it seems good to me.
– Moderation: too heavy/too light? Too troll tolerant/not tolerant enough?Just about right. Other sites could learn from WUWT.
– Features: what would you like to see? Perhaps a Solar Cycle 24 graph.
– Guest authors: good/bad/ugly? Really, Anthony, I honestly don’t know how you could do any better
– Ideas for regular weekly featuresNone from me.
– How do you most use WUWT? Reference, portal, news, commentary, bird cages?All of the above, except I don’t know what a bird cage is.
– What could we do better?No change is necessary, really. You are doing as well or better than any other blog out there.
Only one minor suggestion/complaint. In guest posts, try to discourage the use of formulas or units in SI form, and formulas written in LateX or LaTEx or whatever it is.
When written in regular HTML, those formulas and units turn into gibberish. For example,
Watts per square meter per thousand years.
In SI, as transformed from lAtEx into HTML, this becomes something like
Wm-2kY-1
which seems to be saying “Watts times meters, minus 2 kiloyears, minus 1”.
I can sometimes parse out what’s meant, but when the formula isn’t already familiar I’m lost.
Better to write out units in verbal form, and better to write formulas in a style that can be copied directly into computer code where possible.
Don’t go changing to try and please me
You never let me down before, mmm
And don’t imagine you’re too familiar
And I don’t see you any more
I would not leave you in times of trouble
We never could have come this far, mmm
I took the good posts, I’ll take the bad posts
I’ll take you just the way you are
Generally like the wide range of interesting topics.
My primary objection is that I get tired of filtering out 85% of fluff comments looking for the few that have depth, link to important sites/data/papers etc.
I recognize the challenge of time in moderation. However, I would
strongly encourage asking participants to work towards more meaningful important comments and leave of the fluff, chatter and foolishness.
I agree that the site is pretty close to perfect as it is. I visit daily and have found it to be an invaluable and reassuring source of information that enables me to form a balanced view, in spite of all the hyperbole (and sometimes just pure nonsense) we get served up by the press here in the UK. Long may you have the resolve to keep the site going! Many thanks for everything!
I read it a lot. There is tremendous diversity, which I like a lot. On many blogs, you know what the thrust is going to be before you start, on WUWT you rarely do. Don’t change it a bit.
Moderation: I wish there was more tolerance for trolls. This is WUWT, not Realclimate.
Features: I’d really REALLY like to see a WUWT wiki. I imagine Lucy Skywalker would work with you on setting this up. There needs to be a well-trafficked, high-content place on the web that outlines all the arguments, pro and con, for every aspect of climate science. A wiki is the perfect platform for this, but wikipedia is too co-opted for it to work.
Additionally, I’d like to see a brief post, maybe once a week, asking for WUWT readers to contribute to an article in need.
WUWT has been my home page for a couple of years… It’s the best Earth/Atmospheric Science blog on the web. And Anthony scares the daylights out of the scammers… Nothing brings out knee-jerk, reflexive vitriol from the Warmistas than does a reference to WUWT.
Just right.
Just right.
If the mainstream media did their jobs properly, I’d say too much news.
Maybe a bit too tolerant… Which is infinitely preferable to the intolerance of opposing points of view at RC and CP.
Click-able icons for the HTML tags and the ability to post images in the comments… Both of which are probably just as impractical as comment preview.
It’s a great idea… Particularly in light of the fact that it’s not limited to us skeptics & deniers.
News and reference portal.
I use it as a reference – the references and resource pages are invaluable.
I also use it as a news source and a place where I can escape the climate hysteria.
One shorter thought..
The Opinion pieces idea mentioned above links to gaining credibiity from general
public and the Mainstream Media..
A little while ago Roger Harrabin – The BBC’s long serving Environment analyst had a post here. Whilst many here disagreed with everything he said..
The fact that he would write an article here gives credibiity to WUWT, the general public and MSM see that he (and others like him) would never contribute to some mad conspiracy theory blog.
if people like Matt Ridley – author The Rational Optimist, ,Christopher Booker (Telegraph)or others above. or even Lord Nigel Lawson (former Chancellor) and a voting member of the houses of parliament (unlike Monckton) – his Book Global Warming An Appeal to Reason, about the economics is a good read.
These people give credibilty to WUWT and allow the MSM to report about WUWT, because they are known..
ideally those with an apolitical voice might be best here, less things descend into political tribes… But credibilty in the publics eyes is key, and will move WUWT more into respectability, as FAR as the general public look at these things..
I would like to see a large icon somewhere near the top that takes the reader to maybe the top three most damning (in your humble opinion) peer-reviewed scientific articles to refute anthropogenic global warming. You can then replace these, as applicable, when more damning science is revealed. When I get cold-cocked by someone, I want to be able to quickly refer them to some great refutable evidence.
I don’t use the other technology links. Don’t know a tweet from a toot. I thought Facebook was the new term for a photo album.
I’m old school. The current format is like communicating via letter only faster. For this country gal, I like it just the way it is.
The reference pages are nice but they don’t load very fast for me. It is faster for me to visit the original sites one at a time. But that’s a problem with my system, not yours.
David L. Hagen says:
February 20, 2011 at 1:06 pm
===============================
flagged as fluff………………………
I don’t think that there is any need to morph this site into anything that it isn’t already.
As far as tweeting and ratings go, I think that popularity is a distraction.
The argy bargy of character assasination on both sides of the debate leaves me quite cold.
What is important is to keep up the quality of debate and to stay focussed on the Science as a route to some sort of true perspective on the various threads that compose the warp and weft of climate science.
Anthony,
Since you asked:
> Format and style: too busy or easy to read and use?
Thread start format(s) are IMO fine.
> Content: too much/too little/too narrow/too broad?
Again focusing just on thread starts by you and guest authors: Generally fine.
Comments are the area where IF time & resources allow some improvement would be most beneficial; i.e.: I agree with comment by David L. Hagen @ur momisugly 13:06; on the issue of being able to effectively sort thru what are in many cases a veritable blizzard of fluff comments, without missing the ones that are substantive, interesting, and technically educational. Realize more intensive moderation in this area would chew up a lot more valuable time, and for that reason may just not be practical.
Certainly those who comment could significantly improve this on their own, if they would as David Hagen said resist the urge to divert into ”fluff, chatter and foolishness.” (in saying same expect I have occasionally be guilty of same).
> Content: too much news/not enough news?
Feels about right to me.
> Moderation: too heavy/too light? Too troll tolerant/not tolerant enough?
As per above: On balance I would tend to say a bit too light, but as per above recognize resource limitations. If moderators have the time, I would also be at least a bit tougher on trolls (occasional minor trolling tolerable, but it gets old pretty fast).
> Guest authors: good/bad/ugly?
Many of the guest authors are excellent. As long as they are screened: GOOD.
> Ideas for regular weekly features
In an internet world already suffering from major info overload, WUWT already provides the single-point ”go to” website to keep up with the subjects covered here.
SUMMARY: Can always do more and improve features with more time, money, and people / resources, but WUWT already does an outstanding job.
> How do you most use WUWT? Reference, portal, news, commentary, bird cages?
Reference, portal, news, commentary.
Anthony – if you would like to encourage contribution of articles it would be good to have a page with some details of what would make your life easier in this regard. Things like format (Word, PDF etc), graph style, copyright aspects, file attachments etc. I have not used the email contact form, but from the look it does not allow files to be attached.
Your policy page covers commenting but doesn’t say anything about this area.
I wish you could give us some idea of your “funding” needs.
I’m glad to “fling funds”, just tell me when.
I suppose it’s a dilemma for you, but also for me.
Just say the word.
Please consider introducing nested comments so that we can follow exchanges between commenters more easily. I haven’t looked at Reddit recently but they started this quite some time ago.
This is a great site and we all owe you a debt of gratitude Anthony.
I have never felt a need to change anything but there is one thing I would like to add, if possible, although it might be very difficult to do.
I find the scientific posts and discussions the most interesting because they force me to think carefully about the physics. However the various commentors come at the same issue from various directions. Some are quite intuitive (and very often wrong in my view) but are just as often thought provoking and worth reading as a result. Others clearly have good scientific backgrounds but do not always agree – so some must be wrong and some must be right. I come to my own conclusion as to who is right and who is wrong but I never find this very satisfying – perhaps I am wrong after all. It also takes a long time to read all the comments to sort the wheat from the chaff.
My idea is to have a few expert groups each made up of three experts. The expert groups would specialise in particular scientific domains such as
Atmosphere
Oceans
Sun
Cosmological effects including cosmic rays
Paleoclimate
Statistics and measurement
There may be better ones, and some of these may be combined, but perhaps you can see where I am coming from. My idea is that, if a particular thread is becoming heated and confusing with no clear consensus, we can ask for one of the expert groups to look at the issue. They would disuss it by e-mail between themselves and then issue a view. It would still be just one more opinion and no one would need to listen to it or agree with it but at the very least it could summarise the debate and formally counter some of the more fanciful statements that often sound so plausible.
I realise this may be a lot of work but if it is spread around and the facility is not abused something like this might keep the comments log per topic below the 100 mark where I start to get bored and frustrated.
Perhaps the question that needs to be asked is how best can WUWT influence the decision makers, which in the Western World comes down to influencing politicians who in turn use ministries or departments to effect change. (Of course it works in reverse too.) As one small example, in NZ I worked through my member of parliament to try to stop, or at second best delay, the introduction of our Emissions Trading Scheme. He was very sympathetic but in the end the ETS was passed and adopted. But in arguing against its introduction he was most interested in obtaining recently published scientific papers, not opinion pieces. He wanted authoritative findings that countered IPCC claims – which he understood were not necessarily backed by hard science, but were nevertheless seen as the official word by government.
So, in agreement with other comments already posted, it may help to categorize topics and overtly draw attention to newly published peer- reviewed findings and distinguish them from opinion – even though the opinion pieces at WUWT are excellent. Of course, newly published information is quite evident to current WUWT readers, as is informed comment, but some form of simple guidance on category of topic might help expand readership – hopefully to more decision makers.
Anthony,
I think you’re doing a great job as is. I read the new articles every day. I tend to bookmark peer-reviewed articles that are referenced, since quoting these tends to deflect ad-hom counter-attacks that inevitably occur when one references a sceptic-leaning blog.
Please, keep up the good work!
Neil
Format and style: Good! Easy read, just enough info on home page to see if we want to read more on later pages.
Content: More info is always good, but only if the quality can be maintained. I like the thought put into the WUWT posts instead of bing just another “gossip” site that reposts the thoughts of others.
Content: More news info is good, again only if it’s actual factual content instead of just gossip.
Moderation: So far, so good. Given the tactics of The Team, it’s better to allow opponents to be heard even if it risks giving the trolls a bit too much leeway.
Features: The biggest feature I would like to see is a page with outside links to factual stories that can be used in discussions with others. Often, links to WUWT directly are dismissed out of hand and sometimes I can’t find the WUWT story where I recalled seeing some fact based link. Here’s some examples from my own limited link library:
IPCC cherry picks data
Student nukes NASA scientist
GISS station decline
Guest authors: All have seemed good so far.
Ideas for regular weekly features: Make the warmist editorial cartoons a regular feature instead of just individual posts.
How do you most use WUWT? Primarily, I use WUWT to get “the other side of the news” to see what’s being ignored elsewhere. And in language that’s understandable even if I’m no expert in the field, yet still contains actual factual data and not just opinion. And it’s a goldmine of outside links even if it’s sometimes hard to go back and find link’s you vaguely recall seeing a few days or weeks ago.
What could we do better? My only real complaint is with links. As inserted in the original posts the shortcut text reads well, but it is not always the most descriptive of the content in the link. When trying to find them later, by skimming the articles, it’s hard to find the right one. Maybe a seperate relisting of the outside links at the top or bottom of the post.
I like everything just the way it is as far as “look and feel” other than the no-preview thing.
As to trolls, I think you and the mods are doing a great job right now.
As to a suggestion; I do have one. I would like to see a weekly or monthly debate where some alarmist, warmist, or lukewarmist is invited to write on a given topic. For example, it would be great if one of the hockey-team were invited to explain why data is not available to other scientists and the public, or they could write on where those missing “hot spots” went to, or they could tell why they never co-publish with a real statistician. Stuff like that.