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.
Nice Anthony!
Sooooooo, WUWT TV too?
I think many of us have been wondering when the next episode will be coming.
🙂
REPLY: part of my plan is to get the moderation system improved so that I’ll have more time for this – Anthony
Tom in Texas, April 10, 2013 at 6:13 pm: “I’ve seen “assets” censored on Yahoo financial boards.”
Hmm. Hadn’t considered that. Guess I won’t be plugging my first SF novel here. Not really a net loss, though. [grin]
Sweet! Gotta love the changes to such a great site!
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 for your great work!
Preview button plus basic format buttons would be great. Add-ons really aren’t the same.
Major mike
As$mart, as$tubborn, as wise as an ox
Cool!
Not that I comment a lot but have you considered all the rude words in foreign languages to be filtered as well and the entire Viz Profanisaurus?
No, really, it’s getting cool here! heh.
Among the reasons that WUWT remains at the top of blogging world is that you stay open to change. Best wishes for continued leadership and success.
The only drawback I see is that it will be much more difficult to avoid off-topics sequestering the threads. Even the most good-intentioned and usual commenters can fall into off-topics from time to time. But overall, I think it is an improvement.
“This better system will include the ability for more of our readers to submit stories that make it to the front page.”
Anthony, This will be interesting to see – my initial thought is it makes me worry a bit that there may be more stories that really don’t capture the audience – right now, you do a great job posting only stories with “plenty of meat on the bones” – so we as readers & commenters know that when there is a new post, it is worth our time to read it. Would hate to see that change & have stories posted that you otherwise might not post ( I assume you make the decisions on what gets posted & what doesn’t – you hopefully will still be in charge of that vs having that decision automated ).
And these are valid replacements in the URL? Better, perhaps, if he used the %xx format (as shown below)?
Let’s see if this works:
http://strongasanoxandnearlya%73%73mart.blogspot.com/
.
And – it worked!
This link works as an exact replacement for MajorMike’s name ‘URL’ and doesn’t snag in the spam filter:
http://strongasanoxandnearlya%73%73mart.blogspot.com/
.
In case any other combinations of letters are trapped by the span filter, simply replace the letter with the two-character Hexadecimal code for the letter(s) preceded by the percent symbol (%) and the %xx set will translate in an URL to the proper letter(s).
Use the “Chr” column to find the letter to be replaced and look across to the left in the “Hx” column for the two character Hex-code and precede that with “%” in the following chart:
Char to Hex table: http://www.asciitable.com/
.
“REPLY: part of my plan is to get the moderation system improved so that I’ll have more time for this – Anthony”
It is hard to imagine – even with moderator’s help – how you managed to do all that you have done, and still have some time [but probably not much], left over for business and family.
Thanks
I realize that there is no perfect way to structure or implement such a site. The clearer the rules and limitations are, the better.
With exclusion based on words, this seems to me to be diabolically problematic. Ditto any construction of a phrase or placement in a wider context decided by a computer no matter how sophisticated it claims to be.
Is it possible, if a submission is rejected, for the reasons to be highlighted to the sender, allowing modification – if of course the sender feels that can be done without compromising the point of the message?
Or to have a list of proscribed words (as mentioned by others) or phrases?
Personally, I would hope any restriction is extremely limited. It is part of being functional as a person to be able to tolerate the unpleasant, the irrelevant and the fatuous. I actually find, as in normal human interactions, that it is extremely useful to be able to see displayed the fullness of a persons response to anything. Abuse, empty slurs, and evidence of a vicious personality are very telling. Parts being “left out” does not help, it hinders. There can be very good reasons why someone may appear, in isolation, intemperate.
As always, there are limits, justified to some, not to others. Will, if the great majority go through automatically, this allow any rejected to be moderated so as to allow a human to assert primacy over The Computer? I have no idea what proportion this might be. Five %?
As an example of the impact of possible misdiagnosis by The Algorithmic, I recently posted what seemed to me a completely innocuous comment, both in expression and content, at Climate Audit, where I don’t normally comment. This didn’t appear so I sent a follow up enquiring why.
Then followed a confused and to me impenetrable process of my original appearing to me as “under moderation”, then disappearing, reappearing in the same form, along with other comments, cryptic and pointless comments from a moderator, and a final appearance of a selection, out of order, and not including my original comment. I have no idea what happened or why. And it is entirely possible they don’t either. The end result is that it is impossible for me to have any confidence that what appears there is actually representative of what the response is. I can only view it on the basis that it is bowdlerized by machine or man. With the resultant reservations.
As I say, I have no idea what happened at CA and possibly neither do they. There was a response from a moderator a couple of days later saying that my original comment may have been rejected because it raised religion in some way, and this was 100% proscribed. It is beyond any possibility to me that any words I used might have triggered such a mechanism.
The point being that this is obviously clumsy. Would using the word “religion” in itself be reason to prohibit? Or God? Or god?
The fact that I have recently been caught up in this has focused my mind. It has real implications to me, beyond the appearance or not of any comment I post, in the way I view a site. It seems to me what is ultimately important is that everyone – of any inclination, devotion or obsession – knows that when their views do not appear, that this is for “technical” reasons rather than censorship of meaning.
And obviously this has to fit with what is possible for the people involved with running the site. Hopefully not a mutually exclusive proposition.
I assume I’ll still be moderated out of existence at some of the AGW bloggers’ comment sections such as 350orbust…..
I don’t want to write stories, but I do leave the occasional tip. I hope that stays possible.
Thanks for a great effort Anthony. Start saving up, looks like you all in Democrat run States may soon join Maryland, and have to pay tax on rainfall. CO2 not enough? http://pindanpost.com/2013/04/11/taxing-ideas/ Testing … testing
Thanks very much for all the improvements, Anthony. Hats off to you and your assistants.
Just get rid of the comment facility. It puts off a lot of people by its sanctimonious tone, and rarely adds anything of value. Even Lief is becoming predictable.
@ur momisugly petermue says:
April 10, 2013 at 7:09 pm
Good idea. Difficult, once having gone past, to re-locate a comment.
If, somehow, it was possible that if someone quotes a previous comment it could be viewed directly this would be enormously beneficial. Also, if it was possible whilst reading a comment, or just after, to see the preceding comments by the same person, this would be very helpful.
The fact – as it must be – that there may be 5, 10 or 50 comments in between relevant points makes coherence in the above way unachievable. Presumably the above is difficult or not possible at the moment.
A BIG opportunity for a programmer. Lots of money in it.
@ur momisugly TFN Johnson says:
April 10, 2013 at 11:27 pm
Excellent. Less is more. Stated without sanctimony. Stated without awareness of utilizing the condemned facility.
There are still printed magazines available. Try them.
Great stuff keep up the good work.