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:
Hey, this is all about science.
So, I have already analyzed this new feature and found the sum of the thumbs varies inversely with the distance of it’s distance from the top of the post and this directly infers that the early bird (Jeff’s bird) gets the worm!
I don’t need to know whether I am part of a majority or not. We are grown-ups. This is a thoroughly bad idea, Anthony. Lowers the tone no end. Please rethink.
The trolls will have a field day..
Not happy with the thumbs up/down, for these reasons:
*) open to misuse, such as trolls voting down comments as matter of course;
*) not sure about its value in scientific debates;
*) severely impedes the loading of the pages, especially when clicking on links provided in comments.
Anthony, assuming you’ve made no other changes to WUWT, the thumbs slow page-load time considerably, and that detracts from the site. If your stats all of a sudden show a decrease in page loads, I’d dump the thumbs.
Even though this was an idea that I proposed a few days ago, I think that the current implementation is not good because it doesn’t fulfill the goals that I had in mind when I proposed it.
This is not about a popularity contest. I had thought it more like a help for late-commers to a thread, not to have to go through hundreds of replies to find out whether there was something really important in them. IF there is some visual indication that other readers have found the comment helpful, like a different background or so, then you can go directly to the highlighted comments with some confidence that you didn’t miss something important.
For that to work,
1) The user doesn’t need to know how many people did what. That distracts the attention and drives people to popularity contests. The system doe sneed to know that, to know what to highlight, but the users don’t need. Don’t show it.
2) If a comment is very popular, let the readers easily know since the moment they spot the comment. Don’t show it at the end of the comment with only a small number which you need to compare with another small number.
3) Unless you have a system that allows you to trully control who votes and be sure that nobody votes more than once (which probably would mean having a users registry and access control), I strongly suggest avoiding the thumbs-down option. Allow them to show their likes but not their dislikes.
I shall not participate. This novelty is an unnecessary, meaningless distraction and puts me too much in mind of a baying mob. Is there a firefox addon to filter it out yet?
The No-voters needn’t be worried. If this feature has the negative consequences they foresee, WUWT can take another poll and drop it with no harm done. It’s worthwhile to give it a spin for a few months to see how it works out, because if it has positive effects this is the way to find out.
Hmm, it took poll daddy a while to populate the comments with thumbs. During which time I couldn’t scroll. Hope this isn’t a sign of slow page loads to come.
Thumbs down from me so far for this and the same reasons given by many here.
Thumbs = bad idea. The value of a comment needs to stand upon the merit of it’s contents and not on how people like or not like it.
I voted YES.
1. As I previously mentioned, the system is easily swept from away from view, thus I find it harmless.
2. I checked the poll results. While the comments suggest “No” the poll is saying “Yes.” This tells me others do find the new feature to have value.
3. I wouldn’t really care about the ratings anyway. I’m a skeptical person visiting a “climate skeptic” site, I already know I’m a bit of a non-conformist. I post comments here, in front of the unblinking gaze of the internet. While the nature of such commenting and this site can mask it, I am aware my words can potentially be read by millions, and by the readership of this site those words have at least as many readers as those of an average writer for a newspaper. Yet still I post, and know I don’t care much about what other people think about my words anyway, thus such ratings to me are basically meaningless.
4. Very few readers here actually comment, easily seen by the comment/readership ratios. For those too timid to comment themselves, and they are legion, they now can at least register their approval/disapproval of the comments of others.
For me, no difference. For others, positive difference. Thus I voted yes.
Unfortunately, the function definitely does slow down loading of the page, at least on my computer, so my vote would be no. Whilst I enjoy giving the thumbs up and down on other sites, notably newspaper columns, I think the feature is more appropriate to populist tabloid journalism than to a serious scientific blog, especially to the one that has been voted “Best Scientific Blog.”
Your detracters could also have a field day if someone makes an inane comment which attracts thumbs up support and which could then be used as a justification for criticising the intellectual quality and judgement, especially on climate matters, of your readership.
When I want to write a comment, I don’t need to write all the time my name (well, alias actually) and my email. My computer remembers, maybe because of a cookie, I don’t know. How about remembering too the user’s preference about showing votes and allowing to vote? My suggestion:
1) Deactivated by default.
2) Allow to activate it in the form that you fill-in when sending a comment, having its effect after you send the comment. Never-commenters cannot vote or see votes. To be able to activate it you need to have written some comment sometime in some WUWT thread from the same computer.
3) Being optional, those who don’t like the idea (as well as newcommers) will not get the high download-times inherent to this solution. They will see the threads the same way it has always worked. No thumbs, nothing to populate, no code to execute. Still, those who like the idea can still vote comments and see which comments are popular. You send them a different version of the page.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
February 27, 2011 at 11:12 pm
Specifically I have the Adblock Plus plug-in.
Does anyone know how to block them using only IE9?
My opinion fwiw: dumbing down at its worst.
My feeling is that it is trivialising and open to abuse.
What purpose does it serve?
If it stays, a thank you to kadaka above.
Regards
As someone else noted comments should stand or fall on their content. The thumbs could be useful on the “Tips and Notes to WUWT” for a quick/informal take (on comments where audience feedback may make sense or be useful to you/moderators). Although a quick poll offer could do the same I suppose.
Like Roger and Lucy I voted yes in the poll but have changed my mind since reading through the comments and giving it more reasoned consideration. After trawling through, I find it a distraction which offers no real evaluation of the actual qualities (or lack thereof) of the posts. It’s easy to imagine RC trolls coming here en masse to rubbish excellent opinions – that alone is enough to change my mind. Let people’s words stand for themselves.
Don’t know if it is my pc only, but since the thumbs are added, the comments start to scroll by themselves…
I would like to add, if I may, the observation that there are thousands of people who visit WUWT who don’t post comments in the threads. They may do so out of diffidence or perhaps feel that they have nothing to add to the thread as whatever they feel or think has been covered by others more bold or just earlier than they. They may just not have the time or inclination to post.
The thumbs give such visitors an opportunity to add, in a small way, their opinion to the rapidly accumulating body of work and opinion that is WUWT. Some people do like anonymity for all kinds of reasons and it can be abused but I think, over time that the abusers will become bored and move off.
Let’s see how it goes, hey.
Here’s another reason to vote against the thumbs up/down feature.
You can cheat and vote for yourself. I just tried it. Such behaviour is strictly for the other side.
This will probably get all the warmists that read this blog to autmatially click the thumbs down buttong.
Roger Longstaff says:
February 28, 2011 at 2:08 am
I voted in the poll (yes), and then read the comments – and changed my mind. Perhaps the post should advise readers to consider the comments before voting?
Indeed – my sentiments also. I went back and voted no.
Also the thumbs takes up vertical space on the screen – it might be better on the side.
Not a good idea, methinks, except when you need a voxpop like this.
I think that this is a
VERY BAD IDEA
Ideas do not get merit by being popular and this eautre will drive away people with views that do not agree with the majority. This is ironic is a blog that decries the activist actions of some climate blogs. This has no place in any blog that values skepticism and healthy debate.
Again this is a
VERY BAD IDEA
The changes to the website a few weeks ago made the pages clear and easily read.
The thumbs are now a distraction, and I think add nothing to the site.