As readers know, I announced changes to WUWT’s format last Sunday, and the changes went into effect overnight from Sunday night to Monday morning. As is the case with any change, there will be some issues, some people won’t like it simply because it is change, and some will embrace it. Below I’ll address the improvements and the things remaining to be fixed.
My goal was to bring WUWT into a more modern realm and address these issues:
- Scroll off – stories often disappeared down the page too quickly and didn’t get seen
- Style – WUWT still looked like a blog rather than the most read resource it has become
- Readability – The way it was presented didn’t lend itself to readability as well as it should
- Mobile compatibility – the mobile theme we used to have was terrible, we needed to make the experience better for tablet users and phone users
- Comment filtering – was problematic, too many comments were being held that shouldn’t be, some comments that should be held for inspection haven’t been
- Comment reading – there was a lot of room for improvement
- Comment SPAM – moderators were getting overwhelmed
What we’ve done and learned:
1. Scroll off – stories often disappeared down the page too quickly and didn’t get seen – The new Expound theme format of providing “capsules” on the main page seems to have solved this nicely. I can report we are getting a consistent 40-50% increase in daily page views, which means more people are reading stories than they were before. I call that success. Also, the new format provides for “infinite scroll” on the main page, making it easier to find older stories. Just keep scrolling down.
2. Style – WUWT still looked like a blog rather than the most read resource it has become – Besides the new theme format making WUWT more professionally styled from the get-go, I’ve spent since Sunday night making CSS tweaks to all sorts of visual style parameters, many of which were brought up in the previous thread. I could not have done this without the help of WUWT reader Jim Reekes, who offered help in that original thread. At this point, I think most of the major style, color, and formatting issues have been addressed. However, there may be some that can still be improved upon. I’ve tried to accomodate many requests, but I can’t please everyone. What we have now is what I consider the best strategy based on user input.
3. Readability – The way it was presented didn’t lend itself to readability as well as it should – Font size tweaks and color tweaks have made WUWT more readable, IMHO. Jim has helped be put the fonts into “em” mode in CSS, which helps them scale much better to various venues. Your mileage may vary. Bear in mind that for those who have font size issues, the zoom control of your browser using the CTRL and + or CTRL and – key combinations is your best friend. BTW CTRL and 0 (zero) resets your zoom. Pressing CTRL and the scroll wheel on your mouse does the same thing,
4. Mobile compatibility – the mobile theme we used to have was terrible, we needed to make the experience better for tablet users and phone users– From what I’ve seen myself on my own set of mobile devices, and the reports I’m getting from users, the new mobile device compatible theme is a win all around.
5. Comment filtering – was problematic, too many comments were being held that shouldn’t be, some comments that should be held for inspection haven’t been – I’ve spent several hours tweaking this, with the most recent change made this morning that caught a problem that caused a lot of comments to be held when they were not supposed to be. We’ll see how the new setup goes. For those suddenly have a comment in moderation that think that their comment is being held on purpose, bear in mind that this is algorithm and keyword based, and never perfect. Don’t take it personally. Some people who have been problematic, such as doing thread bombing with off-topic posts or otherwise making nuisances of themselves may still be held for moderation.
As before, if you need attention, leave a new comment with the full word “moderator” in it. Comments that use my name are also held, so that I see them in the firehose of comments we get daily.
6. Comment reading – there was a lot of room for improvement – I think we’ve got this one sorted out. Early versions of the theme for comments weren’t very good, but I think we have a good balance of size, color and style now. Many people have reported they like the new 3D offset for blockquoted text. Thank Jim Reekes for that one.
In the past, we’ve had a lot of requests for threaded comments, and I tried it a couple of times, but didn’t like the way it flowed. Some readers didn’t either. Now, I’ve enabled threaded/nested comments again, and I think it works better with the new format. Both Climate Audit and Judith Curry’s sites use threaded comments, and while “me too” isn’t a reason, being able to reply to people directly below or to make a correction update directly below your own comments is.
As it stands now, pressing the small blue “Reply” link below a comment will pop up the comment form right there in place, no more scrolling to the bottom to post comments, though you can still do that.
TonyB writes on the original change thread:
I’ll give the ‘reply’ facility a go. Not sure how we will notice comments that are inserted days after the event. On the whole I prefer the linear format of WUWT over the nesting format of Climate Etc but let’s give it a fair chance.
If you want, you can be notified of new comments via email, simply by checking the box on the comment submission form where I highlighted in yellow:
Some people don’t like threaded comments, and I get that. But let’s see how it goes with the new format. Some people worried that nested comments would allow “last word” derogatory comments to happen months later. That’s rubbish, we have tool in place to prevent such things from happening, though I’m not going to give details to what they are. Basically, we don’t have the problem now with regular linear comments, nested comments won’t make this non-problem worse.
NOTE: You can test comments before posting them on the WUWT “test” page. Get them right by trial/error, then copy/paste them where you want them to be. There’s also help there too for making italics, bolds, blockquote, and other codes.
One thing you can do right now is to insert images, simply by putting in the image URL in the form http://someserver.com/images/graphic.jpg (.gif and .png files are also supported) WordPress will automatically format and display the image in comments.
7. Comment SPAM – moderators were getting overwhelmed – I think we have this under control now, though spammers are always trying new things.
Things that remain to be addressed:
1. There are a couple of missing elements, such as comment count, and “leave a comment” on main page entries – I had hoped this was available to tweak in CSS; sadly, no. This feature is actually missing from the Expound theme. WordPress has a bug report into the developer, so we’ll see how that goes. Unless the developer fixes the theme, I can’t address this feature unless I move WUWT off of wordpress.com and onto private hosting. WordPress.com doesn’t allow us to tweak PHP code for security reasons.
For now, comment counts appear on the top of the story itself after you click to see it in full. In the meantime, for those that want to see which posts are getting the most traffic, can view the Top Posts & Pages on the right sidebar.
2. Navigation buttons within posts – some people lamented that the previous/next story buttons have disappeared – they haven’t! They simply moved. See screencap below. They are at the bottom of the story. Like with the comment count issue, I can’t move them unless I move my entire blog.
3. Comment editing – a feature to allow editing of ones comments for a few minutes after posting – this is my most requested feature over the years, and wordpress.com has steadfastly refused to provide this feature even though I continually ask for it. Again, I can’t implement this unless I move off wordpress.com or pay their $500/month “Enterprise” service…which I tried last year, and was a disaster in my view. It wasn’t worth the money and the comment editor they provided was lame.
And there may be others that need attention that have gotten lost in the shuffle, or haven’t been noticed yet.
While I can’t promise we can handle all requests, we’ll at least try.
Finally, I’d like your opinion on the changes in this poll.
Thanks to everyone for your patience through this upgrade, and thanks for being part of the WUWT community.
I’ll have another major announcement coming next week, a big one that will allow our community to make a difference in what Michael Mann calls “The Climate Wars” Stay tuned.
UPDATE:
Readers may recall in the original thread that I made quite a stink about the new WordPress “beep boop” editor, and even wrote a full post about why I thought it was a stunning failure. WordPress seemed oblivious, but I and many others continued to bombard them with emails, posts, phone calls, and anything we could do to tell them how bad this change was.
Today, all of the sudden, things were back to normal, and this appeared above the editor page:
That “new and improved posting experience” aka the “beep boop” editor, is corp-speak for “we took this turkey out back and shot it in the head”.
Two thoughts:
1. Users win. Lesson to WordPress – trust your users.
2. Thank you WordPress for finally seeing the light.
Having tried it for a few days I must agree that the only thing I still dislike about the new format remains the nesting.
When there are so many stories each day and each might retain interest for 4 or 5 days, the number of potential conversations you might wish to follow becomes far too many to make it feasible.
The linear thread system works well on a high volume of articles/high volume of comments blog such as this one.
tonyb
I’ve held off speaking for a day or two to giver it a go.
But I concur. The nesting isn’t easy to work with.
Love the design changes though.
Anthony,
tonyb sums it up in one sentence.
“The linear thread system works well on a high volume of articles/high volume of comments blog such as this one.”
Here, nesting is a huge negative. It adds nothing positive. If your goal is to “up the game” at WUWT, Jeff Alberts laid out the path to follow.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/27/status-report-on-changes-to-wuwt-with-user-poll/#comment-1720283
“What would be more effective, IMHO, is a reply button which jumps you down to the “leave a reply” box, automatically placing the comment you’re replying to inside blockquote tags. It’s then a simple matter to delete the parts of the comment you don’t need to duplicate, and add your reply below. Unfortunately that also requires some programming, javascript at the least.”
This method is in use at the Skyscraperpage forums where I follow some Calgary and Vancouver topics.
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/
With that, I’m off to work.
regards,
Just a note to everyone who is making a suggestion about making things work differently, such as running Disqus, or some other commenting system, or making the reply button do different things, etc.
My options on wordpress.com are very limited. I can’t do custom coding, I can’t add external processes or widgets. I can’t install commonly available plugins at wordpress.org. The only way I can get those things is to move to private paid hosting. And, BTW climate audit has threaded comments, but for some reason I don’t see people complaining about it there. I’m not sure why.
On wordpress.com I’m trading simplicity and security and free cloud based hosting for lack of these features. This is why we moved Climate Audit off a private server in 2009 and onto wordpress.com. Climategate traffic killed it, and Steve didn’t want to be a sysop. Neither did I. WordPress.com solved that problem nicely.
So please think twice about such suggestions, I know they are made with my best interest in mind, but I really don’t want to be a sysop. I really don’t want to spend time stopping DDoS attacks from the Forces of Darkness. Those sorts of things are handled automatically for me now.
And for the threaded comment haters. We are going to continue and see how it does for awhile. Sorry. My best advice – try using it rather than complaining about it.
” And, BTW climate audit has threaded comments, but for some reason I don’t see people complaining about it there. I’m not sure why.”
It’s manageable at CA because the number of head posts and volume of comments is much lower than here (although it’s still irritating).
I go to CA maybe every 2-3 days to see if anything new has been put up, and for threads that I’m interested in, I skim through all the comments each time to see if there are any new ones in the body of the thread.But that’s not feasible for this site – to keep up I check in almost every day and there are usually several topics on the boil that I like to follow. Under the old system, I would just keep the tabs for those threads open and read new comments by doing a page refresh.
Anyway, I’m happy to give it a go, but suspect that my visits will be fewer if nesting continues. I’ll only read threads after they are pretty much done and dusted WRT comments.
90% of the complaints about nested comments could be addressed with a fully functioning CA Assistant, which colors comments based on age and can hide old ones, etc.
Can you ask Mr. Pete if he could get CA Assistant fully functioning on this site?
@Steve P 8/28 8:30 am
In looking to grab the date & time of my earlier post, I was startled to see many new comments littered throughout the comment thread, and I can see it will be a chore to scroll through the entire thread again to read the latest comments/replies.
On the whole, I think the nesting is working well.
The social dynamic rule about nested replies is:
Do not expect your reply to be seen unless:
1. if the reply is within an hour of the parent comment, or
2. you are replying to the person who wrote the parent comment and they will see it only if your are lucky.
If you want your comment to be read by the general readership, then make it a level one reply with reference to poster, date and time like the old days.
Nesting is a tool. It is a new tool that doesn’t obsolete the old methods. Use the tool wisely.
Do not expect your reply to be seen unless:
1. if the reply is within an hour of the parent comment, or
2. you are replying to the person who wrote the parent comment and they will see it only if your are lucky.
I think you are on to something. So for example if someone in Britain says something while I am sleeping, and I do not see it until 4 hours later, then perhaps I should not reply via the reply button but at the bottom as before?
Perhaps we need to be educated as to how to make the best use of the reply feature. And we need to be aware of the fact that we do not always know the time zone or work schedule of participants so a lack of a prompt reply can readily be explained.
Agreed. The host has requested we give it a try, and I’m interested to see what dynamic develops. I think your suggestions are good. One obvious utility to nested replies is the ability to add corrections, errata and such in closer proximity to the original, flawed comment.
@Werner 8/29 11:23 am,
A nested reply within an hour is probably going to be read in context of the parent comment. But if it is several hours later, then I would make a nested reply only if you expect it to be missed except by anyone anyone reading parent for the first time or perhaps the author of the parent.
Expect a nested reply to a 12 hour old comment to be mostly ignored, so use it for a focused purpose.
—–
Experiment: This started off as a nested reply to Werner’s. Then I hit the “Cancel Reply” box. The Edit box kept my text. And I think I can still hit the “Post Comment” button.
Let’s see…..
It worked!
The “Cancel reply” link-command is really “Cancel Nested Reply – Make Level 1.”
So an interesting strategy is to use the “Reply” Link, compose your reply with or without quoted references, then decide whether to
1. post it as a nested comment (Click the Post Comment button), or
2. post it as a Level 1 at the bottom of the page. (click “Cancel Reply”, then click “Post Comment” button.)
Thank you!
However who is going to read your suggestions at the end of a thread? Perhaps a new post could be written by starting with your two points and expanding so we all know what “rules” to play by. For example, do not click “reply” if the time is more than 4?? hours since the last post. And if you post something, you would not be considered rude if you stopped checking for a reply to your post after 6?? hours, etc.
I think people will find it easy to see any replies by simply checking their own comments. It may be right underneath their own comment. I do not understand the argument that people will not see replies to their own comments because…they are located right underneath them, instead of at some random location further downstream.
Indentation allows for others to skip over long flame wars and continue past them, or to read them, if they like. But if two people do not use that “Reply” feature, and are not disruptive, I am sure that no one will complain.
1. Need a way to make the banner go away. (this one is better than most, but banners take away screen area and make page-down function useless).
2. When I use my mobile, I get sent to the mobile site, even though I choose the request desktop option on my phone.
3. Nesting comments make it hard to keep current. Chronological was better. At least, a filter by date/time would be helpful.
Comment count and the dates on the top posts is the most important things currently missing.
Thought count is at the top, currently 272.
Sorry, I meant off the main page.
So essentially, the best way to deal with nesting, is to ignore it and don’t use it. (which to me underscores how bad it is)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/27/status-report-on-changes-to-wuwt-with-user-poll/#comment-1722374
Anthony,
Just to wrap up then.
This month, my visits to CA, Judith’s and Joanne’s might add up to 10.
My visits to WUWT are much higher and are reflected in the numbers 🙂
WUWT 9,783
Jo Nova 83,490
Judith Curry 104,335
Climate Audit 143,853
They don’t get the complaints because if you only visit one a week…..
Agree, Robert.
I value the content on Judy and Jo’s sites very highly. But, the nesting makes revisiting threads tedious and very time-consuming. So, I usually only invest in a thread by reading it (and scrolling frantically past the usual suspects) once or twice.
At WUWT, I would often revisit a thread several times a day when all I had to do was refresh the page and read down.
As I said above, the much smaller scale at CA makes it bearable. Besides, I don’t want to be carping at Steve because of his site (which is awful, IMO). He needs all the time and space we can give him for better and more important things.
Forgot to add, I put John Brignell’s Numberwatch in the same category as Steve McIntyre’s. Dreadful site, but you don’t undermine living treasures by complaining that they are not wearing this year’s fashions.
One day our esteemed host will be in the same category. But, he needs to get a few more white hairs in his beard first!
I assume those are Alexa traffic ranks. Always cite your data source.
Yes, those are Alexa numbers.
I recall you mentioning WUWT’s Alexa ranking this week, which is why I didn’t specifically cite the source.
Don’t like the look at all, it validates Mann’s “…flashy (apparently widely distributed)” comment. This is an aesthetic critique not a functional one. The new look feels less professional, it’s simply too flashy. The large size of the fonts and inclusion of graphics Bloom the eye on opening and detract from the experience. Like him and his politics or not, part of the reason Drudge’s site is so successful is the spare layout.
I won’t be using the Reply button. I am not interested in whether or not I get traffic under my comments. I am interested in what you all think and what evidence you all bring to the table. The only place I can readily find that would be within the main stream of the conversation, not in nested replies.
I also am not a huge fan of the banner. Especially the present one. Something less cheesy eerie- the green slime looks like an alien invasion from Ghost Busters. A serious classic look maybe?
Pamela,
The “green slime” is Aurora seen from the space station. I happen to like it. It’s my house, so my choice for decorating it. Surely you understand.
Yes. I knew what it was. And yes, it is your house. As for banner space, it is what it is. The ad strip above it and any space at all used for the purpose of a “banner” (with whatever design you chose) would be about the same size regardless. So motor on. The banner thing is tiny compared to the tremendous value of the blog. Even if over-populated with nests.
The important things are the relevant well-done posts and thoughtful complete comments. Any design that encourages those two things would be important to me.
Anthony, so is the best way to get you to notice nested replies to your comments to use your name anyway so it gets grabbed?
One can do “once a day” comment checks by searching for the date. For example, today I could search for “august 30” to check for recent replies. So one can quickly check for new replies on older stories without digging through the stack, depending on how often you check.
I usually just search for my handle to check for replies to my comments.
Very interesting changes in format will take some getting used to. Generally, I like your changes and consider them improvements. The nested replies create true dialogues, and lend a sense of immediacy. There’s some incentive for commenters to answer a question which is nested under their name.
I much prefer to see total contributors in the lead – headline or first paragraph-teaser, in order to know whether a thread is still alive with commenters and readers. I don’t want to get e-mails telling me this.
A chief concern of mine anywhere I go on the internet (including here) is still (my own) security in visiting. It would be good if websites all offered the following information: What are you monitoring? How much information do you log and keep on each user? And how is it being used?
Anthony,
Maybe it’s just me but I am only seeing the top story on the Home Page in my Firefox. There is a banner ad at the top with lots of white space on top of that. It seems the magazine format for me has gone!
One small disadvantage of the new mobile format (I do my reading on my iPad) is that the previous and next article links only appear aftere the main article instead of both before and after. It’s nice to have them in a known, easily accessible location instead of having to scroll through until you find them.
What a bunch of princesses. Like they say about Teamsters, “Under the Carhartts, lace.”
Zeke, actually…yes.
Yes, ma’am, and I am not opposed to that. In fact I endorse that on a case by case basis. (-;
“Princesses” is an argument? And if it is, please explain just what you mean by that.
There is always a tension between content and presentation. How about dealing with that, as Anthony has to, instead of just slinging around insults?
Sorry ladies, I just meant the princesses with HAIRY LEGS, and they know who they are.
And I have suffered to around here, too…esp. when WUWT started posting seven new posts a day. I could’t possibly read them all. And the comments? Don’t ask.
I can live with the whole thing, except for threaded comments. Threaded comments suck.
I have adapted.
I can find new comments by searching the page for a day like “august 31”, I can find by hour like “august 30, 2014 at 11” and note am or pm. I can find replies to me by my handle.
In a small way nested comments are better, as before there were a-holes who would give derogatory replies using my words without using my handle, or use some version of my name. I’d have to scan the list to catch them.
Now, when they use the reply option, there it is near my handle, easy to find.
But as mentioned above, it still would be nice to have a fully-functioning CA Assistant to do the heavy work of keeping the nested comments organized on the user end.
It sux, reading used to be easy over here, it’s always been making a comment that was like getting nibbled to death by a damn duck. Now everything is like that.
We’ve had a few days to check out the new nested comments format. I, like kadaka in the comment above, have adapted. I believe this is going to work out well.
Not to be bitchin’ but I’m not adapting well to the 3D look for quoted comments.
Anthony, just saw your comment from three days ago.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/27/status-report-on-changes-to-wuwt-with-user-poll/#comment-1722154
overwrought and rigid. — Thanks a lot.
Robert in Calgary: Nothing personal, and I’m sorry if your were offended, but it just seemed an over the top reaction to a formatting change. I honestly don’t get the sort or reaction you wrote.
Well, it’s been at least a week since I saw a comment from Leif Svalgaard. We have threads with solar cycles, Sun affecting climate, or even just that “solar engineering” project. Got nothing.
Willis Eschenbach is also MIA. No posts, he didn’t even comment on the Burning Man thread. Tim Ball expositions are running for filler.
So when were you planning to announce the unfinished format change was rushed out to temporarily hide they are both dead and/or gravely injured? Was it an accident? August 24, the 6.0 South Napa earthquake hits early in the morning. August 24, blog changes announced later in the day.
Come on, we’re adults. We can handle it. Tell us what happened.
Nothing happened. It’s all in your head.
Leif is traveling, Willis is on a job, and Tim Ball loves the new format and has been submitting as he always has.