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.
You go Anthony!
Hi Anthony
Wish you had a subscription option I would love to sign up as WUWT is always valuable. I could use the money I saved when I cancelled my New Scientist subs when they went all CAGW in their editorials a few years back.
I did use the tip jar but my memory is shot when it comes to that sort of stuff.
I do remember what Flannery said about non-filling dams etc.
As always …
Thanks Anthony, Mods and posters.
Cheers JJ
Melbourne
Erratum: Mars Society post did appear in T&N—but won’t hurt if it’s here, too. Zubrin is one of the Good Guys. /Mr L
Jeremy says:
April 10, 2013 at 5:48 pm
Ah, keep in mind that if you speed up commenting, the conversation changes and grows in size/noise-to-signal…etc…
Sometimes it’s best that things stay in a hopper for a few minutes, let people cool off.
First, I agree that threaded comments, even though they look more organized, are a bad idea. They allow too much sniping at one another. I think the reason you see so little of that in WUWT is that the snipe ends up buried so far down the page that it becomes irrelevant to all but the person it’s directed at, and they might not see it anyway.
However, as pointed out by Jeremy, fast commenting might have somewhat the same disadvantage. Perhaps building in an automatic 2 to 5 minute delay would make sense? There’d be no need to implement it unless the problem crops up, of course, but it might be a rational solution.
I will say this. As WUWT has been operated up until now, I find the comments usually as enlightening as the original article. The “signal to noise” ratio in the comments is very high. If that changes in the future, consider the implementing the delay feature.
But I’m sure threaded comments would lower the signal to noise ratio. You’d find the comments filled with all sort of inane comments like “Attaboy,” “I agree completely,” and “You’re an idiot.”, comments that people just don’t bother to post now because they don’t appear in a context that makes them relevant.
A “Preview” button would be appreciated, however, especially to check that html code was working properly.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks, Anthony, for making this site. I’m enjoying the posts and all the comments. My advice to people asking for “edit features” is to read over your work, slowly and carefully, BEFORE you click on “Post Comment.” It is the surest way to prevent typos and misstatements. Given that pressing Return does not cause your comment to automatically post, as is the case when replying at Facebook, there is no excuse for errors other than laziness, IMO.
To say I am delighted in any improvement to profection is , well, obvious. I have noticed lately that there are fewer original posts then there used to be. I suspect Anthony is freeing more time to post more articles. I’m all for that!!
I use a tablet for a lot of my blog and news reading and the up and down scrolling can make one dizzy. So, I like the idea of numbering the comments to make them easier to locate. Also, can you put a “top” button at the bottom of the comments section or repeat the previous/next post option? Thanks for all the effort you put into this blog.
microphone check, 1 2, what is this, it’s the five foot assassin with the roughneck business
I float like gravity, never had a cavity, got more rhymes than the Warner’s got family..
I comment hardly ever, but that’s my ‘test’ comment. For the bonus, name the song and artists.
Anthony / mods / posters / commenters,
Your time is precious.
John
Test of new WUWT speed
John
REPLY: For some reason you are flagged by wordpress, I think it might be “anal” in your URL.- Anthony
nice, thank you 🙂
I would like to see as many temperature points taken in the Antarctic and in the far north of Canada and Russia as any other land mass in Europe or the United States. Plus I would like the same temperature data points on mountains IF we are to get a true Global temperature trend. That is not happening now. Therefore how can we get a true global temperature?
Whooooosh!
crikey! 🙂
No we can’t provide a comment system that allows you to edit your comments after they are submitted.
I think that it is better this way, to see errors corrected rather than buried.
My congratulations to you on your continued success! Matt
I understand the motive behind it (too much work for Anthony and mods). But as a result, the general quality that we were used to seeing in the comments section will suffer a major downgrade. Unlike many posters apparently, I find that more comments usually dilute quality. Multiple posters in great need of attention, along with online social and political activists, always hijack “fast posting” forums.
Wow! That was fast!
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
WOOT! Well done!
Can’t wait. Just please, please don’t mess with the (currently excellent) printability of the pages. I occasionally run off a copy when you post a particularly long and / or interesting article, so I can mull it over in the bath / the park / bed or wherever.
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Thanks for the tip Anthony.
So, this is Another test of the new WUWT speed but without adding my website address (which may have a verboten word in it).
John
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So, this is Another test of the new WUWT speed but without adding my website address (which may have a verboten word in it).
Oops did not actually remove my website from that retest.
So here I re-retest again with it removed.
Thanks for the tip Anthony.
John
WUWTers may refresh their memory of many blog-improvement ideas suggested six months ago in the following thread,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/02/wuwt-web-retooling-comments-welcome/
WUWT is setting the appropriate tone for a balanced climate dialog.
John
Here’s a suggestion for dealing with the problem of the filter’s finding fault where none is intended:
Can you have the filter watch for the problem words in combination with a leading space and a trailing space?
I’ve never managed my own blog, so I don’t know if this is feasible, but I have used it in my work with much success.
Thanks for all the hard work.