You may have already noticed that commenting is faster. That’s because whitelisting is now enabled. Of course the usual banned words and blacklisted commenter memes will go straight to the nether regions as before. Some comments that are questionable, and require the attention of a moderator will get held for review, but for 99% of people making comments, you’ll see an immediate speed improvement. After a million comments the hard way, it is time to work smarter. This is a win-win for the readers as well as the moderation staff, and particularly for me.
And, there are other improvements coming.
For example, “Tips and Notes” is going to disappear, to be replaced by a better system. This better system will include the ability for more of our readers to submit stories that make it to the front page. Again, this is to improve the speed and lessen the behind the scenes labor. WUWT has gotten so big, that it is a struggle to manage its upkeep now, so the solution is a smarter story management and comment submission system.
Stay tuned for more details, and in the meantime I welcome suggestions. Many of the changes will be implemented this coming weekend, and I’ll have a second post describing how to make the most of them.
In the meantime if you see inappropriate comments, drop us a note in the contact section of the header menu. There may be some tweaking we still need to do, but after years of this I think we have it tuned where spam and inappropriate comments are acted upon properly.
Note: No we can’t provide a comment system that allows you to edit your comments after they are submitted. That’s a feature wordpress.com won’t allow due to it being what they deem a security risk for code injection, even though it is often requested by WUWT and other blogs.
As always, my sincere thanks to everyone in this community that helps make WUWT successful from the readers, to the moderators, to the story tipsters – all of you are part of the success.
Is there a Carlinesque list of the words that shall not be said? I understand publishing the list would be an opportunity for haters to hate, but if the truth is on your side secrets are not required.
As a mischievous script troll, I’d like to make an automated generator to reverse engineer the list, but admiration for your site fosters restraint.
OldWeirdHarold says in part, April 10, 2013 at 4:44 pm:
>Candidates for diversion to the round file:
>“consensus”
>“overwhelming evidence”
>“deniers”
>“Koch”
>“big oil”
>“multiple independent lines”
Anthony Watts even mentions some of these words and phrases. If he
can decry or despute “consensus”, use in debate phrases using the word
“deniers”, and a moderator can mention lack of one cent from “Big Oil”,
then such words and phrases are fair play.
A good feature would be to add threaded discussions.
Concerning editing, people should carefully read over what they write before clicking smbit taht yaw werfe simtakes lliw eb dema.
It’s also a security risk for having civil conversations when after some robust debate, someone edits what they posted to make it look like something completely different or to make it appear that someone who responded to their comment is an imbecile. I rather like being forced to “own” our words. We can always correct, amend, and elaborate in subsequent comments.
Also, if you have the Google Toolbar with “PageRank” enabled, every single URL that you visit is reported to Google. That is how they collect the data that creates the page rankings.
Anthony, there are days when it looks over bar the shouting …
… and then I get emails like the recent one from my MP who told me it’s alright for the BBC to say sceptics are anti-science because: “Sceptics, in my experience, have varying views on why the world is warming or why they believe it isn’t warming. Climate change sceptics are not a uniform and coherent group singing from the same hymn sheet. I’ve come across those who deny warming at all and others who accept warming but don’t attribute it to anything humans are doing. So, when the BBC makes an assertion about the position of sceptics, it cannot have lied because there is no singular position which all sceptics hold.”
Where do they get this twisted logic? This logic that.allows someone to say “Blacks are criminals” … because some blacks are in jail.
Or to be more personal, It allows me to say “Jo Swinson MP, Minister for equality, is a prostitute”. Because Jo Swinson is a women, there are women prostitutes, so (according to her logic) it cannot be a lie to say “women are prostitutes” and as Jo Swinson is a women …and women are prostitutes it therefore follows that Jo Swinson MP is a prostitute. (Apologies to all other women … except those in the BBC)
So, on days like this when I despair at the double standards and downright nastiness of people like my MP … I need to have a place like WUWT, where people still talk common sense.
WUWT is always the best in countless ways. Thanks Anthony and everyone for standing in the gap for science.
The trouble with threading is that people who feel they are extra special always post their geniusness as a reply to whatever unrelated thought was posted first – so we are not burdened with searching for it. There they are, right at the top of the thread, often dozens of times per thread.
“Strong as an ox and nearly as smart”
I’ve seen “assets” censored on Yahoo financial boards.
Also threading enables other aberrant behavior:
Posters with standing disagreements are more prone to long strings of repetitive tape measure spats.
Fans of Aristotle like to create two or more handles and use them to expertly coax and confirm themselves in solipsistic debate.
A “preview” button would be just as good as an “edit” button.
Tom,
Sorry to hear your assets were frozen. Hope you weren’t trying to put in a hot tip… Like go long ABX.
Ok too much, that’s my last one tonight.
Thanks Anthony!
Recently I was asked to write a column on climate skepticism for a daily newspaper in a small nearby city – the hitch was they wanted it done for (almost) free. I almost said “no”, but then I remembered that you are tireless in your dedication to this blog, and without pay too. So you’ve inspired me to “do my part”. (and Jonova and Donna La….and many more)
THANK YOU!
Anthony, it works too fast. It is startling. Reminds me of some work I once did for the Telephone Company where we retrieved phone numbers [basically 411 service] based on requests and showed them on the operator’s screen. A lot of work went into making the retrieval and display as fast as possible [of the order of one tenth of a second]. The operators complained that they got nervous by the instant response and we had to build in a delay of a quarter of a second to make them happy again.
Thanks, Anthony. You and the moderators, commentators and guest authors have made WUWT a “must read”, twice a day. Best wishes for the smarter way coming on.
daveburton,
If you want Preview and some other handy features, go to CA Assistant and follow the directions.
Great upgrades Anthony and please pass on thanks to John the fellow that looked after my order for my soil temp and moisture addition to the Vantage Pro II that we bought a couple of years ago. Works like a charm and looking forward to have this info magically appear on our console every hour.
VP II info was used to CSI our loss of all our bees last week. Hot dry summer last year we feel led to smaller hive size and even though well fed none survived. After a look at temps during the winter saw dreaded warming for 4 days in late January with night time lows +2C or more, daytime highs up to 8-10C(V warm for here). Jan 31 high of 12C at 1AM to be followed by high N winds (mean 25 KPH with gusts to 48). Temps plunged to -12C late the same day. Bees were out about feeding and froze. Nucs and queens on order….
“As always, my sincere thanks to everyone in this community that helps make WUWT successful from the readers, to the moderators, to the story tipsters – all of you are part of the success.”
No, thank You.
Hello test … testing one two three … “mic check – mic check” … “signal check on alpha one two, one two”.
.
Wow!
Sweet!
“Test out”
Out and about feeding on stored honey near the cluster in the hive I meant!
Anthony,
Awesome – the best keeps getting better – thanks to you, mods, and all the great contributors and commentators; I am consistently learning about our fascinating climate and keeping abreast of the latest in climate news. After all, MSM won’t (or simply can’t) cover it.
I am convinced that this blog is making history if only as a media outlet – probably much bigger than that; but you know what they say about the future – it’s something hard to make predictions about!
Anthony, is there any chance to get consecutively numbered comments like i.e.
#123 Someone says:
It’s sometime very nerve-racking to find a certain comment out of hundreds to refer to, or searching a certain comment in a thread after a few days.
Would be a nice feature for WUWT.
Anyway … thumbs up!