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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I will reserve final judgement until it’s been going a while – so I haven’t voted yet.
I do think it’s a bit pointless as I cannot see it serving any real purpose? (but maybe I’m just worried folk will start to diss my comments! LOL)
but I do agree with some of the other commenters who suggest it is a distraction and also it makes the site appear less ‘sciencey’ and more ‘facebooky’ – yes I know they’re not real words, but it was the best I could think of at the time…
I am a south paw (left hander) and lived my life in a culture of non-enlightenment/non-Christian. Or variations of such.
The green shows a left hand with thumb up and the red shows a right hand with thumb down.
Too much noise for me. Like the PNS interpretation dialogue by Ravetz.
I’ll stick with the process of science. As I was taught in the enlightenment sciences by my good teachers and parents. And the excellent article(s) recently by Willis E, thank you Willis.
Jessie
aargh, I am now torn..I like being able to thumbs up some of the great informative and downright funny/witty comments, by the time I read em all its to hard to add a thank you /smiley to maybe 10 ripper comments.
maybe leave it at an UPthumb?
Lot of valid pros and cons mentioned here. Fortunately it is harmless to try this system out and see what happens. I’m quite sure it will be easy enough to eliminate if it proves to be useless or merely distracting. I say we experiment and see what happens.
I’d rather do without the thumbs up/down. The reason is that I generally read all the comments and would like to formulate my own opinion about them without having my perception skewed by others who have already judged them. I’m thinking a popularity contest similar to a YouTube presentation wouldn’t enhance the content. Let those that object to content or support the same do so verbally so we know why.
R.S.Brown says:
February 28, 2011 at 12:01 am
“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.”
Agree with this comment. Thumbing is for those who are too lazy (or stupid) to actually think about and post a comment.
Dont like the idea of thumbs up / down – better to have the exchange with words, to follow or not follow lines of argumentation. For me it was always a very plus of WUWT
that comments normally have a decent standard – you may agree or disagree, but at least
there is an exchange that is interesting, as well as the story itself.
Well, since you’re asking, I would have to say that the voting line has more downside than up …
* Loading/Refreshing the page shows many new requests being sent out to PollDaddy.com, so there must be a speed/bandwidth hit to consider. (BTW: to see what happens on a page load or refresh on Opera, you make sure the status bar is enabled and also set the progress bar to ‘Popup at Bottom’. Anytime that a webpage is loading the requests are displayed which is nice for developers.)
* The voting line does add to vertical space usage within each post so consequently the ‘length’ of each page will grow (get taller).
* Aesthetically I would say that it is a negative, or perhaps they are simply too large in relation to all other page elements, particularly the fonts. Even small comments clock in at about 1.5 to 2 per screenful. WUWT on Opera looks good with page zoom at 80%.
* These things can become troll tools. You know that Eadler and others will low-ball certain posts and commenters. And imagine if Steve Goddard still had Sea-Ice posts here, dozens of those little insects would leave their hive and fly over here to make a point. Why leave thoughtful comments when they can just click on their enemies.
I totally disagree with my thumb rating below!
Seriously Anthony, you can already feel the childish games this would bring to a now great science site. A large number of the people who never participate here are voting at the top to include this voting system and clearly the commenters below seem to be more wary. Maybe the hidden voters want to degrade WUWT.
I too am afraid this would knock WUWT completely out of the realm of real science and cheapen it. I say no, keep it pure and simple. We are all adults and can chose which comment to like or dislike by the words within. And you know, I rarely view a comment as up or down, but if anything at all, relevant or not.
If you keep it maybe you can put words by those thumbs, being something like relevant and not relevant. That seems to make a whole lot more sense. Sometimes when in a hurry I wish I knew which comments were just on the posts topic. That way I could mark my own OT’s as ‘not relevant’ so they could be just skipped by others. ☺
NoScript blocks them. Unfortunately, there’s no such tool available for my Android phone.
One thing I find very distracting – the color thumb images. I see a screenful of comments, but my eye gets drawn the the colored hands. Perhaps black & white would work better for me, I have know idea if that’s a WordPress option.
Just a toy for the trolls. No worthwhile input.
When I read the page on “Ancient Natural Global Warming” the posts suggesting CO2 lags temperature each had a down vote, but no up votes.
I commend Anthony for being innovative, but I don’t think this is a good idea. As some have previously noted, it encourages groupthink, and reduces intellectual discussions to the blogging equivalent of blowing a raspberry.
On the other hand, those who have written something outstandingly good, deserve some recognition, so how about a thumbs up only button – a nice little pat on the back from fellow bloggers for an outstanding response.
BTW, the picture was Emporer Commodius from Gladiator.
Sorry, another anti here. For pretty much all the reasons people have stated above.
I could do without thumbs up or down, but what I do want is the ability to look at all post by individuals. Leif Svalgaard’s thoughts and comments are not only brilliant but his abolute rejection of what he sees as shenanigan science has had me laughing out loud more than a few times. Unfortunately I cannot easily access his post. Am I missing something?
See now I am fearing the thumbs down for thread derailment!!
Like many others, I votes thumbs down on the thumbs. Put the substance in the commentary. We can vote with our minds on the comments we read. I just don’t think this enhances WUWT.
I don’t mind the comments, as long as you are going to do something with them, i.e. have the comment collapse when it reaches some level of negative reviews. Otherwise, it’s just noise.
Can it be made an optional feature from the base camp? Perhaps a “v” after date/v/and before title. Or simpler maybe a box on the top of a discussion page to flip from one to the other which doesn’t alter URL?
And default setting without – some having problems re loading time.
Is this a way to balance ‘consensus science’ with ‘consensus commentary’? I have about equal regard for both. It just lowers the level of discourse.
I don’t like this at all…
People should be able to vote with their words….
…if you do or don’t like someone’s word, post and tell why
This is just distracting
Plus, it seems like it would lead to a gang mentality…..
Don’t like it………….don’t need it………..
Anthony, what happened to if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it………..
Initially, I thought this a good idea, now I’m reconsidering. On the post indicating WUWT’s Weblog Award (Congratulations!), two people took the time to vote a “thumbs down” on each congratulatory notice….until about 10:21pm, which was presumably when mother put the little troll to bed.
It seems that gives the trolls another way to express their distain for WUWT and its readers without explanation. It’s more anonymous and a step away from accountability.
I’ve also seen, on other blogs, a oneupmanship on comments which may be driven by the psychological need for more up-thumbs. I would suggest that WUWT’s better the way it was.
I am against ratings — “It’s about the science”, not popularity.
“So can I get a wish,
to end the politics,
and get back to the music
that started this sh*t?” — B.O.B. “Airplanes”