I figured that I should give people a heads-up, rather than just dump changes unannounced like wordpress.com did with their recent beep boop editor bomb.
Two changes – comment filtering and format. Two notes: editing for guest authors and a personal note about the future of WUWT.
1. Comment filtering has become stricter
This change is already in place this week and has been necessitated by the rising amount of spam comments not just at WUWT, but all blogs seem to be getting. Steve McIntyre laments his trouble with recent spam increases here.
WUWT gets about 3 times the amount of spam that Climate Audit does, most of it commercial link-back spam disguised as a comment. I too have seen the increase, and clearing out the spam filter has become quite a chore on some days. As a result, I’ve turned on this setting in my wordpress.com dashboard:
Strict: silently discard the worst and most pervasive spam.
What this means is that occasionally, some legitimate comments that meet this criteria might get thrown out with the bathwater. Some comments that are on the fence may also go to the spam holding que for review.
So, if you make a comment and it immediately disappears, it may go straight to either of these places. But, that doesn’t mean it is lost forever, it may be in the holding queue. Give it some time to see if it is retrieved by a moderator. For overnight, typically 11PM-6AM PDT, some comments may take awhile before they are rescued.
For a few people who have no manners and have been warned and finally banned (for example, Doug Cotton and his variety of shapeshifting sock puppets, and NASA GISS scientist Jan Perlwitz who made a death threat) those comments will straight to the bit bucket. Words with the usual variety of cuss words, profanity, and banned topics, etc. will also go straight to the bit bucket.
If your comment doesn’t fit any of these categories, and you don’t see it rescued within a few hours, it may have been a victim of the new stricter spam policy. I wish this wasn’t the case, but the enormity of the spam increase requires it. There just isn’t enough time in the day as it is and we shouldn’t be wasting it wading through dreck comments to decide which require permanent deletion and which don’t. Due to WUWT being a high traffic blog and in the top 10 of wordpress.com blogs worldwide on a daily basis, it is a prime target for spammers.
Also, some comments may be held for moderation, as we’ve recently added some words to that filter. Some people who have been known to post wildly off-topic, long rants, hateful, or otherwise inappropriate comments will get the inspection of a moderator. Also, first time commenters will be held in moderation, and after the first comment is approved, you are whitelisted.
The vast majority of regular commenters are also whitelisted, but occasionally somebody may trigger moderation. One of the surest ways for your comment to be held is to put a whole bunch of links in it, which mimic commercial spam. Right now we have it set to 4 links as the maximum. If you have a comment that requires more than that, try to break it up into two comments, or just accept that your comment will be held for moderation.
Also, moderator, please step up in removing off topic comments, we have a handful of people who think that “anything goes” when it comes to posting these sorts of comments on threads. Likewise, feel free to snip and warn purveyors of abusive comments.
The WUWT comment policy page is here.
2. New format
One of the biggest problems that WUWT (and many blogs like it) is that given the linear scrolling format, stories often get shuttled to the bottom of the stack pretty quickly, especially on busy news days. This means that some topics die a premature discussion death.
WUWT readers may have noted that I’ve been trying some experiments to keep stories of interest at the top, trying for awhile a “top stories” sticky post for a few weeks. While it helped, the amount of work to keep up with it was large, and some people didn’t like it. Of course in any change, there will be those that don’t like it.
The last major format change I made to the WUWT format was in early 2010, a couple of months after Climategate broke. I found the old Freshy theme we were using then was too narrow, and restrictive (it didn’t support mobile devices well) so I opted for the new (at the time) 2010 theme, which has served us well for over 4 and half years. But, it too is now showing signs of age, especially with so many topics and so much traffic.
After months of trying out new ideas offline, I believe I’ve found a new theme that will solve the problems mentioned above, while still retaining much of the look and feel of WUWT along with being able to keep all posts in a linear scrolling format as we have before.
The new theme is called “Expound” and you can read about it here. WordPress describes it as:
Expound offers a fresh, clean magazine-styled look for any type of blog. With a responsive design that looks great on any device, its support of post formats and featured posts will help your content shine.
Here is what it will look like. I still have not included the header image. This is a scaled version to show what the scrolled areas below the main headlines look like. It will be full width on any browser, and will properly adapt to tablets and phones as well.
The five most recent stories are at the top, you can see other stories directly below by scrolling down.
The only thing that will significantly change is the front page of WUWT and some sidebar elements will be removed that are no longer relevant. Posts themselves will pretty much look the same and commenting will work as before.
One big improvement to this theme is that it will allow bigger images, 720 pixels wide, up from the previous width of 640. We’ll be able to do HD! This is important for graphs with a lot of details and some videos in HD.
Here is a full-on view of the main page before scrolling:
The change will start on Monday morning, August 25th.
The good news is that if it doesn’t work for some reason, it can be changed back.
UPDATES
UPDATE: As you can see by now, the new format is live. Like with any new format, there may be some hiccups or some things that aren’t quite right. I’ve spent the evening doing some font tuning, and I hope the body font for posts is OK now for most people. If not, you can magnify/shrink in your browser using CTRL and + keys simultaneously as well as CTRL and – keys. CTRL and 0 (zero) puts you back at default magnification.
There are a couple of missing elements, such as comment count, and “leave a comment” on main page entries, along with some other small tweaks that will be put back in over the coming days with the CSS editor. BTW, if anyone is a WordPress CSS specialist, and can help me with such tasks, please leave a note in comments – thanks, Anthony
UPDATE2: Some things that I expected to retain got broken, such as the mobile theme, which I believe is fixed now. Some other things that we are used to got broken or removed because the default theme setting didn’t support them.
The good news is that most everything can be fixed with CSS tweaks over the next few days, though I have a bit of a learning curve on these items. Anybody out there a wordpress CSS specialist?
Some things already fixed are:
- Mobile theme
- Header font and body of story font sizes
- Making body font more readable by making it sans serif
- Put back “latest posts” on sidebar since some users still need it
- Background image restored
Things I’m working on:
- Putting back real time stamps
- Putting back comment counts
- Getting comment body fonts and comment name headers sized properly
- Less white space
- About a half dozen other small tweaks
Your patience is appreciated while these things are dealt with. – Anthony
Note: editing for guest authors.
For guest authors who can post on WUWT, to get an image to appear in the top five, you’ll have to select it as a “featured image” (on the lower right sidebar) during editing, otherwise it will appear as text only. Putting a short summary in the first sentence or two is more important now, since that is what readers will see at the top of the main page.
Also, to get around invoking the horrid beep boop editor that wordpress.com refuses to dump, here is a workaround. In the dashboard, simply click on the “Posts” item but NOT on the drop down menu where it says “Add New”:
To edit a post, click on “all posts”, select the post needed to edit, and edit from there.
Personal note:
After this change settles in, I will make the decision as to whether to stick with wordpress.com any longer. They assure me they are trying to polish this beep boop editor turd fix the beep boop editor, but I’m not sure they are going to be successful. They’ve pretty well ignored users concerns in this thread, and then decided to close it.
Closing threads where users are sounding off angrily sounds like the tactics some newspapers and magazines we know that simply choose to ignore overwhelming reader input when it comes to the many climate science faux pas that grace their pages.
Bad move, WordPress. I’m not sure your free hosting is worth the hassle anymore. Many other users feel the same with this “jumped the shark” moment with the “beep boop” editor debacle. Being able to control one’s own destiny has its advantages, and I’m beginning to feel abused by wordpress.com.
BTW, the video ads that appear at the bottoms of posts give the highest payback to WUWT, should you be inclined to watch them.
stevefitzpatrick August 24, 2014 at 11:55 am
Those responsible for the changes you so dislike will have to be either shouted down within the company, or run away on their own.
___________________________________
Yes, like the disasterous iPad 7.0 update, which slowed older iPads to a crawl. One key-stroke per 5 seconds.
The main problem was that this was the new executive’s first major update, and it when spectacularly wrong – and he was not about to admit it was a complete &!@*#+^. Apple took over 6 months to slowly get back to where they were before 7.0 was issued.
ralph
Whether I’m on the iPad downstairs in the kitchen,
or the laptop in our lounge,
or the PC upstairs in our study,
WUWT is first to be found.
For over five years now and counting,
this obsession to learn every truth,
about CO2, the swindles and climate,
has made me a real weather sleuth.
On occasions, I may post a comment,
but mostly, I catch up with the views,
expressed by our skeptic community,
whilst ignoring the trolls who abuse.
Like many, I’ve allowed WUWT to take over,
when there’s other more important jobs to be done,
so, whatever layout tweaks or moderation change,
our wonderful host’s site is still second to none.
So from the Jimbo’s, the Courtney’s, the Pamela’s,
from Zeke, Bushbunny and Tonyb
and all those to numerous to mention,
we are owe a lot to An. Tho. Ny.
Just tested with 5-10 resolutions above 1024 horizontal and with Firefox, Chrome and IE the gray bars get bigger the wider you go.
fyi my native res is 1920×1080 and looks like this in Firefox:
http://i.imgur.com/WHScyu4.png
REPLY: So? What’s the problem. The old theme did exactly the same. This one is actually wider than the old one. I’m not sure where people are getting the idea that all of the sudden it should fill the screen. – Anthony
@redcords, try it now – background from previous WUWT restored. I think that because it was missing, it gave the wrong visual idea.
Disappointing. When you first referred to editing, I was hoping that you had engaged a real editor to correct the gross misuse of commas on this site.
REPLY: Well if that is your worst complaint, I’m a happy man. – Anthony
Anthony it’s fine, but I got the idea it would be different from this sentence:
“It will be full width on any browser, and will properly adapt to tablets and phones as well.”
REPLY: Ah, OK I didn’t make it clear. My bad. You can make it full width with zoom using CTRL+ and CTRL-
-Anthony
From GeeJam on August 25, 2014 at 12:57 am (bold added):
Gee, wild guess here, but did you post that with your iPad in the kitchen?
Well offhand I think there’s only one Jimbo, two Courtney’s needing family counseling and conflict resolution (will you two please just stay in a bar ’til you get it all resolved and hug it out). There’s only one Pamela, as two would make WordPress explode as the servers melted, especially if the second one is Anderson, as that would be adding catalyst to the cocktail.
Looks good. My main reservation concerns the new shrinking font – I’ve Ctrl-+’ed it a couple of times but it’s still not as dense and readable as before. I’m sure we’ll get used to it. And another voice of support for this excellent blog, which often reads like a full-scale newsroom.
Anthony – When you find you’re stuck for a subject (ha!), could you do a post on the trials and tribulations of living through the current California drought? I’m thinking more of how it affects your day-to-day life than “news” stories (which we see anyhow). It could be instructive for those of us living in places like the UK, where a “drought” usually means not much more than a month or two of hosepipe bans and assurances that it’s “patriotic” to drive a dirty car! Thanks if possible.
73 de Steve
What about allowing italics, bold and block quotes etc? They help greatly to emphasise commenters points.
Shame about losing recommends, as that can be very useful identifying outstanding posts that deserve to be read. (Despite their shortcomings the Guardian has the best ‘recommend’ feature – simplicity itself)
However these are small points. WUWT has been superb so do keep up all the great work and I’m sure the new format will be a success.
@Cheshirered
You can still do italics, bold and block quotes as before.
I like the look on the front page. I like the comments. I did have to enlarge the screen to be able to read it, but then that is not all that unusual for me at my age.
I look forward to seeing the evolution of the site as the tweaks are added over the coming weeks.
Anthony, you need to do something to improve the readability of your chosen text font. It’s a sans serif one, which might look smarter but is much less easy to read that one with a serif. Check out the Flesch readability chart to see what I mean. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch–Kincaid_readability_tests
The Times of London came up with a great font (called Times Roman, oddly enough) when they produced their early newspaper.
Newspapers’ rule of thumb for layouts: A sans serif type for headlines (Helvetica, etc). and a serif type for text. You’ve done the opposite.
@Old Ranga
Refresh and have a look now. I’ve switched styles.
The font is rather small and grey. Could it be boosted and be the default?
I also liked the previous posts reminder down the side which made it easier to navigate. The overall concept looks good however and the picture alongside the top posts makes the format smart and modern.
tonyb
MR Watts, I can only thank you for hours you put into this to help the rest of us. Thanks and Well Done. Best wishes.
Anthony
I can’t really see any difference even after refreshing. Are you now using Calibri in 11 point size? It still looks small and does not stand out. To me Times Roman can’t be beaten but it needs to be in a suitable font size.
Many of your readers are not going to be in the first flush of use and having a default that recognises that eyesight deteriorates as we pass the age of 21 (which I suspect even Pamela has done) might help improve readability.
I like the overall effect but as with everything new a few tweaks may be needed
tonyb
@ur momisugly kadaka (KD Knoebel) August 25, 2014 at 1:35 am.
Correct – yes, it was the ipad – and it is well documented that the ipad’s keyboard function is frustratingly difficult to use. Maybe chill a little and call my typos and use of plural names ‘poetic licence’. I’m sure the regulars will not be offended – they’ll know that my comment meant well. There are not many websites that allow you to contribute to healthy debate about how the site’s design and layout could be improved. I cannot tell my bank that they need to modify the font – just as I cannot suggest that Amazon needs to modify their confusing layout or stop sending me overly-repetitive and annoying marketing emails.
We are all privileged as followers of WUWT.
PS I typed this on the laptop – so you wouldn’t split hairs again.
Now I’ve spent some time with the new format may I make a couple of comments:
1: Too much white space – partly because of the change to a smaller font.
2: It is going to be harder to move between posts when using a tablet – and I’ll continue to bang on about needing quick ‘buttons’ to go to TOP and BOTTOM of a long comment stream.
3: The summary posts do not give any indication of the number of comments any longer.
To those complaining about fonts and sizes, you do have the ability to decide how you want them to appear.
For example, on Iceweasel (re-branded Firefox) I can go Preferences, Content. At “Fonts & Colors” I click “Advanced”.
I un-checkmark “Allow pages to choose their own fonts”.
If I don’t like WUWT being Sans-Serif, I change “Proportional” to “Serif”. WUWT now displays Serif. Every else will display Serif as well, but if it’s a problem here then it should be a problem elsewhere too.
Are you finding the text too small? Select a “Minimum font size” that suits you.
Note that “minimum font size” is independent of the ‘page chooses fonts’ setting. I recommend everyone set it to something other than “none”, smallest setting for my browser is 9. On one site I visited, juvenile posters would add personal insults in tiny sizes that looked like fine dots, hard to see, couldn’t read unless I cut and pasted to an editor. But once I set minimum size, not a problem.
But I did become amazed at the amount of words now popping up on commercial and media sites, hidden near graphics and between words. “Terms and Conditions” are hard enough to read. But curious things were found in those and similar pop-up documents. If I had saved what I was agreeing to by copy and paste, I would be at quite a loss later to understand how I could ever have agreed to such disadvantageous terms. I may get tired, but I don’t get wasted!
The new font is much better, Anthony. Responsive, as always.
I think the home page is looking tremendous. Well done.
Anthony,
Do what ever you have to to reduce your workload on this site…whatever you do will be accepted by most of us as it is such a gem. I look at it several times every day and get so much useful information for talks and discussions. You need to get your life back and avoid burnout.
Many thanks for all your efforts over the years.
I’m finding the lighter text harder to read too. Much harder.
I agree.
I miss the prev/next links at the top of the page.
Jim Jelinski wrote
August 24, 2014 at 11:26 am
“THANK YOU Anthony for all the work you put in to this site!
Never forget, as you are picking through some irritating issue (whether it is a scrap between article authors or between people making comments, or cleaning out spam, dealing with your website service, or whatever) that there are a BUNCH of people like me who really value and enjoy the information, the stories, the back-and-forth discussions that you make possible.
An informative, highly readable website on issues that affects us all.
Again, THANK YOU Anthony!”
May I second that.
I have learnt a lot from this site, even from Nick Stokes, Steven Mosher and Zeke. Not that I agree with much of what they write but long may they keep posting as each of them appears to provoke some of the best discussions. And unlike some (many) other sites heretical opinions are not censored.
It looks great – nice change!
“This is a scaled version to show what the scrolled areas below the main headlines look like. It will be full width on any browser, and will properly adapt to tablets and phones as well.”
You knows ah ain’t bashful, this buggy sux on a droid, looks awful and functions worse.
Cool, looks good and very structured. Congrats and thanks Mr. Watts
Very nice, Mr. Watts. You done good.