Readers may recall that on April 10th, I announced that some big changes and improvements were coming to WUWT.
Phase 1 was improving the commenting system, and I think that has been fine tuned now. We did try the comment rating system once again for a few days, but as before, it became a visual annoyance and just isn’t useful. Better to simply rebut bad comments IMHO.
Here is what has changed today.
One of the things I wrote then was:
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.
The new WUWT Submit a story system is online now, and is a link from the menu bar at the bottom or the header. It is a two step process now to help discourage auto spam submissions from commercial spammers WUWT had been getting. It consists of a guidelines page followed by a compose and submit page.
There’s a section in the composition page on using HTML tags too, so that you can make your submitted stories better.
I’ve also made it easier to submit manuscripts that don’t translate well into simple web form submissions.
The idea behind all this is to make WUWT more of a community based resource, because our readers are what make it go.
What we are looking for here are two things:
- For news items/other blog posts of interest, provide at least three paragraphs in the story submission so that the reader here can get a flavor of the issue/news, and allow them to click on the link to get more of the story. We get a lot of people submitting nothing more than a single link in WUWT Tips and Notes, and those aren’t useful. Help everyone else out by putting some descriptions of your own plus a couple of fair use excerpts into those story submissions.
- For technical manuscripts, WUWT now provides a submission email address where MS-Word documents can be sent as attachments. See the Submit a story page for guidelines on how to compose such manuscripts in MS-Word. In a nutshell, simple formatting with embedded images is what we need.
We’ll try out and tweak this new submission system over the next couple weeks to see how well it works and adjust as needed. Once fully tested, Tips and Notes will disappear.
Then phase 3 will be coming. More on that later.
As always, thanks for your continued readership – Anthony
“””””…..jdgalt says:
April 27, 2013 at 6:53 pm
I don’t like the removal of comment ratings. I mean, do you really want everybody to post their likes and dislikes as additional comments instead? There are already unmanageably many…….”””””
The like/dislike up/down thumbs, was worth every penny of the time it took to click one or tother.
If readers can’t actually write in complete sentences, something that they got or didn’t get out of someone’s post; who on earth would have any interest in their inclination to click an up/down arrow, and moreover, do so in complete anonymity.
In a few more years, many suffering from terminal texting, will be needing to sign up for remedial English language courses.
PS, my hat’s off to the many posters here who are ESL commenters. Wish I had a small fraction of that competence, in some of your native languages.
Attention Moderators. You may want to look at this carefully.
As one who has been snipped more then once I half expected snipping on many occasions. I must point out I bear no ill will to the moderators who snipped me (Including Anthony). I have a personal tendancy to push the edge. That’s what snipping is for.
My thought is, in view of the Gosnell trial in Philly, maybe it is time to change the word snipped. redacted comes to mind.
I hope when I “push the envelope” I usually flag what I have commented. I even did that prior to the changes in WUWT.
stan stendera says:
April 28, 2013 at 8:13 pm
“My thought is, in view of the Gosnell trial in Philly, maybe it is time to change the word snipped. redacted comes to mind.”
How about “[murdered]”.
I’m happy to see the thumbs up/down junked. Agree it was visually annoying, and not helpful in any meaningful way. Overall, love the changes. Well done.
Janice Moore says:
April 27, 2013 at 1:35 pm
It all sounds great, Anthony. THANK YOU, SO MUCH FOR THE PRIVILEGE you give to non-scientists like I to hang out on this EXCEPTIONALLY CONSCIENTIOUSLY AND COMPETENTLY managed site with some of the finest minds in authentic science. What a golden opportunity to learn!
Thanks to you, Anthony (and Charles R. et. al.), my (and THE) world is a better place.
_______________________
Bears repeating.
personally I liked the like/dislike but thought it should be presented as an agree/disagree.
but this same mod has also been known to cause actual site slowdowns/issues (even on wp hosted servers) so its probably just as well.
you do good work, I learn a lot, keep it up 🙂
on a side not I would like a disqus or livefrye type commenting system, easier to follow replies to specific posts.
just a thought though.
For scrolling to bottom on ipad Dolphin browser allows you to create a “gesture” to do this
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I think WUWT can be used in Facebook as well for making more likes.
Regarding like and dislike, or agree and disagree, this site is not about consensus, it’s about listening to both or many sides of scientific claims, mostly with regard to climate so that we can seek the truth. Pardon the Hillary-ism but “what difference does it make” if comments are liked or not?