UPDATE: This feature has two undesirable side effects:
1) significantly increased load times for post pages
2) it puts thumbs up/down on all old posts, not just posts going forward, so not only does it add load times to those, it leaves them with conditions not known by the original commenters.
While it seems this experiment was popular, until wp.com can make it work without penalty to the blog overall speed and character, I’m going to disable it. Thanks for trying it out – Anthony
Chronically angry troll Jack Greer left some smarmy comment in the WUWT wins Bloggies Best Science Blog announcement. I didn’t see what it was, because some other moderator snipped it. I suppose Jack can’t help himself.
It did however, remind me that I’ve been meaning to get this new blog feature enabled to try out.
Now, when it comes to other commenters, if you wish, you can be Nero. You can rate comments with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. If you don’t like playing emperor, you can always imagine yourself to be Siskell or Ebert. It looks like this:
Thanks to Jack for the prodding, he’s earned the first ever “thumbs down” vote on WUWT. Congratulations Jack!
You can also thumb your nose at certain comments, but we have no way to record that.
We’ll try this for awhile, and see how it is received. It may be popular, it may not. It may just be noise. But let’s find out. I’ll heed the poll results below:
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Is this a popularity contest? Personally, in certain cases I would be proud to get big thumbs down – when I’m right and everybody else is wrong! ;->
Go ahead and let people vote. I would caution using that info for anything. Some sites let people view the best rated posts. Some hide very negatively rated posts. Here, I think it’s best to just let people have their say no matter who agrees with them or not. Moderators can eliminate the nasty.
From an aesthetic perspective, the rating tool clutters the look. The old way is clean and elegant. Does rating posts really serve any purpose? Novelty wears off.
[VG post. IMHO. ~dbs, mod.]
dp says:
February 27, 2011 at 10:40 pm
You’ve just encouraged me to examine your website HTML and reject the most possible javascript includes in my proxy server. Too much eye candy that distracts from the content. And amazingly high school clique like.
Not to be a jackass, but this does not solve a problem I have.
Vague and yet obscure.
I shouldn’t be too surprised, but blocking all the javascript files (*.js) has not cost any content of interest, but it did drop the page rendering time in half. I don’t agree with those who want something for nothing, though, so when I shut down a site’s revenue stream I go looking for the tip jar.
I’m always amazed at how the dynamics of the web works. A site adds a feature, visitors turn it off locally. It goes around and around. I’d read somewhere that the adblock add-on was written by a disgruntled Google employee who got fed up with the intrusion of web beacons, trackers, analytics, etc. That’s pretty much the way I feel about it, too.
I’m reminded of this: http://www.xkcd.com/810/
How about a facebook style Thumbs up/down for the articles instead?
Or maybe make the comments ones a bit less intrusive
I think it’s a bad idea. WUWT has always stressed that it’s real-world evidence that counts, not concensus.
I’m glad that you read my thoughts.
Thumb’s rating is good for the commentators to check what others think about them but also keep in track who’s bothering reading your comment.
I just wish they were positioned right of the title.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
February 27, 2011 at 11:12 pm
“Yet I shall not complain, shall not suggest/demand the feature be withdrawn. I have options. Specifically I have the Adblock Plus plug-in.
1. Open blockable items
2. Right Click on “http://i.polldaddy.com/ratings/rating.js?ver=MU” and select “Block this item”
3. Filter out “http://i.polldaddy.com/ratings/*” and restrict to domain ‘wattsupwiththat-dot-com’
Done! Site is as it was before.”
——————————————
Thank you for that! My normally fast ADSL is slow and jerky loading polldaddy stuff.
I don’t think I like it, but I don’t really know my own mind. I will wait for guidance from the thumbs.
Anthony
This is a small nit pick but showing the Emperor Commodus (I think I got this right) as Nero is, er , waal, you know, though both were pretty odious characters. But yes, the thumb’s up/down is a polite way of us showing out agreement, not, without the need to write a a lengthy comment.
Brevity is the soul of wit?
Laughing my (snip) off. Jack is OK in my (snip) book. Let the (snip), foul mouthed (snip), infantile (snip), (snip) for brains (snip) holes from (snip) hell post all they want on the other (snip) blogs like Real (snip) Climate.
I have had experiences with ratings systems at other web sites… they will get abused, and it is therefore unclear what they measure other than the mob sentiment. I imagine it might also be a turn off for serious scientific posters.
Personally I don’t like them and I shall refuse to use the rating tool here (except for the initial opinion poll).
I cast a “no” vote for thumb wrestling.
If I really disagree with a comment, I can write
a comment of my own, using my actual name, stating my
particular point of disagreement.
If I may make more than my ususal number of spelling
and/or HTML formatting errors, will I get a “thumbs down”
because of my poor presentation or the impoverished worthiness
of my thought ?
How will I or other readers know the difference?
Will we see special awards for what a consensus of “voters”
considered goodthought?
PS> Ultimately the decision is yours Anthony… do you wish this blog to be more scientifically focused or more populist? The thumbs smack too much of group consensus.
@Mike Jonas: You nailed it quite good. And, “In science it only takes one to be right”. That’s why I don’t see the purpose of this shallow fun park feature on a science blog.
Is there any chance to have the score kept secret? unless you requested an update? I don’t mind the up and down. I actually like that. I just don’t want to be persuaded by others votes.
The Other Jack
Totall agree with Hoser February 27, 2011 at 11:41 pm
/Mango
I have an average speed web connection, but for some reason WUWT is always slow to load. The thumbs-up system has increased the page-loading time so I don’t like it on those grounds. I also don’t feel it adds any benefit to the debate.
By the way, I have no problem with the thumbs up/down feedback concept. I just think it revealing and appropriate for Jack to make a complete Jack(snip) out of himself anytime he feels he is up to it. I likely won’t even bother to check the thumb data on Jack’s posts or even bother to make a mouse click on his (snipping) posts.
I went and made coffee and had a think about this. Then Hoser ^^ pretty much summed up what I thought.
Initially upon seeing the vote I voted yes. I stand by that vote however I don’t see any value in the ratings tool, here or in any website comment section. It’s simply too open to abuse.
Whilst there will be genuine readers, especially those who post infrequently or not at all, who believe that they may be adding in some way to the debate by agreeing with a certain comment’s content the majority of voting will be a simple popularity contest and there will be the usual ‘them and us’ doing the voting. Some may vote a comment down simply because of the author rather than the content and that will work for both sides of the coin. It’s just human nature.
Some people will even go so far as to be vexatious -yes, it would appear that even academics can be childish too – and remove the cookie set by the tool and make multiple votes on a comment to make it appear more or less popular than it might be.
That’s not to say that I disagree with the tool being there, it does offer some loose insight into the number of people reading and not posting, but to take anything of value from the results would be a mistake. They ( the results) are simply meaningless in terms of how persons actually feel about the actual content of the post.
If you were to use the information for an indication of anything I’d suspect that you would have to log the IP of a voter ( something I doubt that wordpress plugins allow you to do ) and determine which way that they vote in order to log those votes that would appear vexatious in order to exclude them from any result you are trying to acheive. I think you see the problem with the work involved.
Then, as Hoser points out too ( I swear I came up with this train of thought independently, honest injun 😉 ) it’s not very pretty and I find the repetitive thumbs a distraction from the erstwhile look.
By all means keep it but personally I think it’s just another tool for certain posters to show allegiance or disdain for other posters without being brave enough to have their head’s above the parapets and at the end of the day that’s a bit churlish. It’s not a survey and not controlled.
And thank you for having a post that does not contain a subject so far above my head that I’m afraid to speak out for fear of appearing to be a great buffoon 😉
( I added the last comment in order to generate the sympathy vote and more thumbs up 😉 )
The thumbs are a great idea. The Guardian has a similar feature called ‘recommend’ which does wonders for sceptics and demoralises Warmists. ;O)
It will just encourage the trolls to compete for maximum disapproval.
What the heck good is a thumbs up or down feature if you can’t load your own comments with a thumbs up?
😉
It’s 8:21 here in the UK. I had a late night and I’m barely one cup of coffee in. Please forgive the erroneous apostrophes which are the bane of my existence.
I like comment-rating because I think:
1. It will encourage commenters who make sensible, middle-of-the-road posts that don’t get any backslapping comments and who worry that they are making no impact. If they get a lot of up-votes it will hearten them.
2. It will tend to reduce the number of angry remarks, or moderate their tone, since people can channel their anger into a down-vote instead.
3. It will provide a better indicator of the true sentiment of this site’s readers. There are sometimes comments made here that aren’t all that supportable, and yet no one wants to get in a tussle about them with someone on our side whose heart is in the right place. Once the mainstream majority here can down-vote wacky or over-the-top statements, warmists won’t be able to claim those far-out opinions represent the consensus here, just because no one here explicitly objects to them. This ability for the silent majority here to dissent from extremism will add considerably to the site’s credibility.
What value does this have? The whole point of this forum is to form your own opinion, it’s not a popularity contest, so the feature is irrelevant and distracting.