One of the most requested (or most complained about depending on your view) is the need for the ability to preview and/or edit comments. I have asked for this feature time and again of the operators of wordpress.com where WUWT is hosted, but they don’t allow this feature.
Since I cannot install plugins on blogs hosted at wordpress.com, I am unable to use one of the standard plugins that allow this feature.
But wordpress.com has asked for input from both blog operators and readers, so here is your chance to ask for this feature. Given that WUWT is almost always in the top 5 blogs on wordpress.com, your input will have weight.
See below for the link to the survey:
Follow this link:
The 2013 WordPress.com Survey: We Welcome Your Feedback!
Please note:
Question 26: What’s the most frustrating thing about WordPress.com?
…is the one to fill in with the lack of a preview/edit feature for comments.
Note also (h/t JohnWho)
It is question #36 if you answer the first question that you read blogs on WordPress.
Some people wonder why I don’t self-host WUWT such as Lucia does for her blog.
The reasons are simple.
- Traffic – running a single machine wouldn’t handle peak loads, Climategate and Climate Audit’s meltdown proved that.
- Maintenance – I have none, wordpress.com handles it all. No worrying about updates.
- Reliability – As you may have noted, self operated blogs like Lucia’s and Jo Nova’s go down from time to time, wordpress.com gives me 24/7 reliability, and the horsepower to ward off attacks from people that would surely like to see it taken offline.
So, please take a few moments and take the survey and ask for the comment preview/edit feature and/or features you want
Thanks for your consideration – Anthony
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Comment preview/edit would be “nice but not necessary”. There’s plenty of opportunity to edit what you write before you submit it.
Sasja L! You are DOUBLE-impressive. So glad you’re here. It humbles me to think what fine minds (v. a v. my own, I mean) and expertise and language abilities and cultures are represented here. I only speak/write ONE language. Note: DO NOT WORRY ABOUT SPELLING OR GRAMMAR ERRORS. I write that so LARGELY so that others like you might be encouraged to speak up. Nitpicking on those points is ONLY addressed (by a sane commenter, anyway) at those with fluency in English. And, moreover, nitpickers should just go find a happy little nitpickers site and have a fun time nitpicking each other. WHO CARES? It is the substance of the post that matters. And 99.9% of the WUWT commenters would, I have no doubt, agree.
You obviously missed my comment at 6:18 pm or do you suffer from dyslexia like me?
Editing would be good because I’m looking at my “I Like Likes” comment above, and I’m thinking the “I Like Likes” part would be fine (better) not bolded! But also, that reminds me that a PREVIEW feature would be almost as good as an Edit feature. If I had to pick one or the other, I’d probably go with Preview, though both would be great. And Likes would be awesome! Not for a lame comment like this though, as it would probably be buried in dislikes, lol.
Done
Eric Simpson, I liked the bold version. I like your second comment better than your first, though, because it reflects your fun personality (MOST of your comments show that, BTW — they have (usually) zest, humor, and joie de vivre). Oh, brother, I need to go exercise something besides my virtual mouth!
Later.
Comment editing? YES!!! But time limited 10-15 minutes to avoid re-writing. IIRC there are pre-built modules that do this.
Janice Moore says:
July 20, 2013 at 6:25 pm
Macro — if A-th-y goes to a cloud situation — I am out of here. I find those servers waaay too creepy v. a v. potential government surveillance.
___________________
Dear Janice,
Nothing can save you from them. Nevertheless, take heart- they are gov’t employees, after all.
Janice, I actually care to a certain point. Misspell’s I’ll get eventually but grammatical errors can be horrible when I read. Often I’ll get stuck on simple stuff like a comma before an conjunction (it becomes a “double conjunction”) and are common in american english (not “allowed” in other western languages and probably not in eastern either)
I’ve met young people that think it’s ok to “modernize” (native) language in any manner that suits them and no suprise, same young people complain about older people not understanding them. Wonder why …?
@Janice Moore says: July 20, 2013 at 6:52 pm
THANKS a ton! Sometimes, though, yes, I might wake up on the wrong side of the bed. And though I’d like to have zest and humor, I know that I can sometimes be pretty bitter when it comes to characterizing the opposition. But I like our side, us ragtag skeptics, so I’m not much into shooting out friendly fire.
And your comments are much appreciated. And it’s really good to have someone who pays attention to the others here, and can offer uplifting / motivating comments like you are doing. +10 Likes!
Another point regarding editing, you often see a typo, like perhaps an “and” instead of an “an,” or a their instead of there. Or even a word that shouldn’t be there that to some degree changes the meaning of your comment. And you have to fight the urge to put in another comment just to make the correction. Because few pay any attention to your offered correction anyway. And people usually get the meaning of it even if you made a significant error.
Proofreading is so much easier after you hiit the “Post Comment” button.
Too many tracking cookies. I did yoused too run a self-hosted blog and used UBB code; :rolleyes:
I don’t mind my own confuser keeping track of what I do but, not anyone else.
Multiple threat detection appears for me quite often. I understand they want to advertise and can-do. No, I do not wish to be “TRACKED”! DA’S!
The servor side maintenance is a plus.
I would like to see some self-editing though, with a time constraint.
Like my opinion matters.
It is a very fast process. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Anthony.
Self-editing is tough, especially for a second language. But if post editing will require a bunch of cookies and more work for Anthony and the moderators, I’m OK as we are now.
WUWT is a learning experience for me. Thanks to you all, and the mostly good people that comment, there would no blog without you.
Done: 4 questions… easy.
If it ain’t fixed, don’t break it.
Stuff has been tried before, but there’s nothing like a “live” performance to demand the best in cementers. (See–it can get quite Freudian.)
And because we’ve all made mistakes, the occasional “oops” is overlooked–if we had editing, there’d be no forgiveness.
And please, no “Likes”–this isn’t a popularity contest. Consensus is for beauty pageants.
For years I have been using Greasemonkey which has been created for Climate Audit but works here and Lucia’s. It has a “preview” and normal functions, links, bold italic
negateetc, have not been able to use successfully the “insert image and underline options.I am using Firefox .
anna v
Actually it’s CA Assistant which employs Greasemonkey.
Comment edit for a limited amount of time, say 5 to 15 minutes after post but even up to 30 min would be ok.
[OFF TOPIC (mostly) WARNING — GO TO nextpost.]
Thanks, Luther, that was, actually, reassuring! Heh, heh. LOL, what do I have to hide, anyway? And, O Martin Luther’s namesake, you reminded me (blush) that I need to remember what I know to be true from Psalm 91. Hope all is more than okay in OK. Take care.
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Good point, Sasja. I can tell I’m waaay out of touch with people under 30, for I DO NOT GET why they would prefer to sit tapping madly away at their tiny keyboards to “talk” to each other instead of just picking up the phone and TALKING! Weird. Say, that reminds me of a cute anecdote in Walmart about 3 months ago…. Two little girls were sitting in a shopping cart-become-playpen in the aisle where I was shopping. I overheard them earnestly chatting away to each other about a pretend party they were planning. And this is what they were saying:
Cutiepie 1: “And then I texted you, and you said, ‘Let’s invite those guys to come, too.'”
Cutiepie2: “Okay, and I texted YOU, and said, ‘That sounds great. And let’s have pizza.'”
I looked at them and they did NOT have pretend phones to their ears. THEY WERE PRETENDING TO PUNCH TEXTS on a couple of small books!!! Amazing. They were doing what the BIG kids do.
Kind of sad, really, given the pidgin English (or whatever language) they are texting in. They aren’t even teaching cursive writing in many elementary schools anymore. AND HOW DOES ALL THIS RELATE TO THE TOPIC OF EDITING POSTS?
Well, LOL, it shows why we need it! #[:)]
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Eric Simpson, my pleasure and THANK YOU. Yeah, I tell you – it is SO frustrating when people respond to what I did NOT say because they read only 30% or so of my post. Gotta laugh. BTW, when you skewer CAGW liars with sharp language, you are using PTW (precision targeted weaponry — just made that up — heh), for your harsh language underscores the fact that their policies are VILE.
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Mike McMillan — happens ALL the time, lol.
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Martin, your opinion matters. You matter. Now, go look at yourself in the mirror and say, and SMILE while you say it, “I matter. My opinion MATTERS. I like me.”
The poll is really short and convenient for anyone who responds that he’s a reader.
Comments on WordPress are really stone age, any 10 years old forum has better editing aid. I really hope they’ll improve that.
Preview is such an easy thing to incorporate, I can only assume that they are cheeseparing not to allow it.
As for editing comments, this is a good idea but needs to be limited so that people can’t weasel out of what they said (thereby making responses seem stupid). A time limit – 15 minutes is common at other blogs – is definitely required.
geologyjim says:
Of course, posters could just re-read their own material before clicking on “submit” – – – – – and we’d all be saved from the scores of “oops, pardon my late-night typing” re-posts.
Is that asking too much of WUWT posters?
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For some reason spotting errors is easier once the text had been reformatted. I’ve never looked into the psychology of why that is but reorganising the words often makes a typo or other fault immediately obvious, whereas proof-reading has missed it.
I always re-read before posting but very often find something I missed once it gone up.
So I don’t think a preview function is too much to ask from WP. Hopefully they will listen. Afterall we are one of thier biggest ad revenue sources !
” something I missed once it gone up. ”
something I missed once it HAS gone up.
See what I mean ?
Editing is absolutely fantastic … on Tech forums where specifications and procedures are critical. We usually have infinite editing ability in these cases.
On controversial sites it is problematic because of political tactics, it is a gift horse to spammers, and on high traffic sites it is almost suicidal because your moderators will never get any sleep. Hit count should skyrocket even further as each edit results in a page load. But if you can handle it who are we to question it! I suggest you also have a “Report” button attached to each entry to flag posts for quick moderator attention.
As others have already said, time limits for editing is a really good idea that will prevent post editing to modify entire conversation direction like SkS is infamous for.
Far more important though is the ability to “Preview”. This is a high value add as it will cut down seriously on typos and formatting errors.
Anthony, one other missing feature is displaying the sequential post #. It would make in-thread referencing much easier ( e.g., “Willis in post #87 said …” ).