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:
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Upon consideration, I prefer WUWT without the thumbs. The considered response that you get here – either positive or negative – is far more valuable.
I think thumbs work better as a concept if…
1) There’s a side-thumb for indifference
2) There’s a question-mark for when someone simply communicated badly but you don’t want to thumb-them-down. (this has the added benefit of encouraging posters to think about their posts before submitting)
3) The results are not presented numerically, but iconically.
Yay. And we still have Jack Greer’s Thumb Down for posterity.
I was against, so it appears it was majority. Thumbs have gone. Thanks.
Hey, what ? , the consensus won, hmmm…., but I am not for consensus… confused…
Thank you for removing the thumbs up/down posting rating system. It added nothing to your excellent website.
Thumb things are just not to be.
I’m another who wholeheartedly agrees with your decision to drop the thumbs.
Some comments are quite remarkable and informative, and excellent for newcomers.
If I saw at the beginning of the comments that 50 people thought comment # 27 was exceptionally noteworthy, I could jump to it and not miss it.
If posts could be numbered, a chart could be at the beginning of the comments with a tally I could click on to mark the numbered comment as “don’t miss reading this one.”
Or a “Best Comments/Most Informative Comments” identifier of some type.
As a site’s popularity grows, the comments become unreadable when they number in the hundreds or thousands. Individuals voting on the best ones makes thousands of comments “usable and practical”. I want to read those “most suggested” at the top of the comments and nothing at the comment itself.
A newcomer could go to older posts and quickly read the highest recommended best comments if they were identified as a summary after the article.
I envision a table with numbers at the top of the comments and if I think a post is very informative I click on a number on the table and the number changes in physical size. 10 clicks on a number and it swells to become obvious that people like it. A quick glance at the table gives me a visual cue as to which to read. I like this idea.
Thank you Anthony for turning thumbs down on thumbs!
An excellent idea.
Vuk etc. says:
February 28, 2011 at 9:56 am
but I am not for consensus… confused…
Truth.
But
Your comments are important.
We can start with the internal non-violence.
IMHO assigning a number to each post would be far more useful than ‘thumbs’.
This feature crashed my IE browser repeatedly; I couldn’t open any of the comments or articles below the fold until Anthony disabled it again. At least, I assume that was the reason for these crashes, absent any other changes being implemented at the same time.
A proposal was made, an experiment was conducted, the results were analyzed. This is science.
I wonder what results came from the computer models evaluating how good the new feature would work. Did they show it would be more or less popular after being in use for a hundred years? Did they evaluate how popular it would have been thirty years ago based on the demographics?
No more thumbs please.
This (excellent) site has always been about the science.
It has taken me on a steep and rewarding learning curve.
This site has never been a popularity contest. Let’s keep it that way.
REPLY: Yeah, it might be popular, but not worth the load time. – A
Thanks, was crashing mine too on certain posts with many, many comments.
Aye; I remember when Charles implemented that ‘feature’. Things seemed to go downhill from there although that was not the only reason … I would write more but I have a green-cheeked conure insistent on getting attention and I require two hands to type …
.
I am not much in favour of this idea. Too gimmicky.
You are a serious blog. Damn it, you have just been voted the best science blog. Lets remain adults and leave these trivial gimmicks to the children who believe everything they get out of the PSP3s (aka climate models).
If something is good, it will get good ratings -People just voted WUWT best science blog on the planet- The same thing applies to comments: We cannot read all comments, we cannot hear all songs that are made, ratings help to separate what is worth reading from what is not worth.
I changed my mind. Warmists are organized. I remember commenting on a youtube video and my comments -and the comments of other skeptics received about 20 bad thumbs in a few seconds. They are organized to disrupt us, they will sabotage us, they often do not care about truth, they seek POWER & CONTROL at any price. I know them, I fought them big time in the past.
Phew!
Thanks for deciding to remove the ratings, Anthony. Quite a relief; and proof once again that you have adventure in your veins, but a sixth sense when you realise it’s not a valley but a box canyon ahead.
Kip Hansen:
what’s the antonym of reinforce?
“extinguish”?
Can now say:
Tried it; didn’t work.
Change back to sensible: *greatly appreciated.
Other commenters have mentioned it, but that is indeed not Nero; it is Commodus, the less than great son of the great philosopher and Emperor Marcus Aurelius.