In comments on Dr. Roy’s Facebook page about him turning comments off on his blog because he’s simply tired of dealing with sockpuppeting troll Douglas J. Cotton, there was this quote that I thought was very, very succinct and appropriate. It also applies to the climate debate in general.
“The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.” :- Alberto Brandolini
Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/11485742.Alberto_Brandolini
Spencer replied:
That quote is a great description of what has been happening. Person #1 can put together a meaningless string of technical jargon. Person #2 can say, “that makes no sense at all!” Person #1 then says, “sorry you don’t know enough to understand it.” It just goes downhill from there..
Indeed, and the amount of energy expended by me and others is great. We walk a very fine line here, trying to balance giving a legitimate forum to open and honest people, while ferreting out and limiting people who simply want to disrupt the conversation via sockpuppetry. It is a lot of work. If I didn’t have volunteer moderators for WUWT, I probably would have gone the way of Spencer long ago. Since we routinely process a thousand or more comments a day here, many of which are from sockpuppeters and posers (you know who you are with special attention to K-man) It would certainly give me more time to research and write articles. It’s certainly less effort.
So, I thought it was time to ask the question:
Doug, don’t even try to comment here again.
I caught up at 191 comments.
Keep the comments.
WUWT is important. Thanks host & mods.
This is a community and as in a community there are lots of different opinions – some which are valuable and informed and some that just stink. I like to read the informed opinions – I sometimes get more from them than the posts. Some of the others? Well, I take my mother’s advice “Consider the source” and skim over them. My advice? “It takes 2 to have an argument” and if these trolls are ignored then they can’t catch anything.
Howza bout trying what the newspapers are doing? Set up a subscription to WUWT and only let subscribers comment. If anyone abuses the privilege, cancel their subscription w/o refund.
Even a small subscription rate would still give you control.
As I said down thread, if a troll pays the fee then you must post their comments. Plus you now have a for profit business and that may cause you to set up a business, get a business license, account for all money and file taxes. Too many potential legal problems. Remember, if some files suit, then A.W. must defend. No need for those headaches.
Anthony, WUWT is a great site. I’m only an oldish mechanical engineer who has forgotten most of the detail of thermodynamics, heat transfer, etc., but I learn a lot from the articles most of which I try to find time to read. And I also learn much via the comments. Reading all the ideas and arguments, including the alternative ones, is thought provoking but I can understand that it is time consuming and frustrating for you and the mods to wade through them all especially when some are from trolls. I can understand Roy’s position because it is important that he focusses on his important job of observing and maintaining the temperature databases
Well, considering that I read every single comment on every single WUWT posting, you would think that I would make a great, cost free moderator ..BUT, unfortunately, I sometimes have a very twisted sense of humor !…….alas !
Part of the attraction of WUWT is the differing articles and commentators.
Having said that, on occasion even some of the regular and popular contributors can become tedious to many readers and carry on long bitter ‘slanging matches’ with someone of differing opinions.
Some challenging scientific discourse can initially be interesting but when it continues unabated it inevitably ends up just insulting each other and instead of attracting readers turns them away.
We are all guests of Anthony on his blog so my choice was shutting off comments only on some articles (at Anthony’s and moderators discretion) for known trolls and also if comments degenerate into long insults or even vacuous dead ends.
As regard using real names, I work for the public sector in the UK and due to the problems it may cause me I would never comment here using my full real name (Anthony has my correct email address) and am sure there are many others. I have also noticed that some people who have commented on other sites using their facebook or similar accounts have been followed, trolled or outed as a ‘denier’. On occasion people who appear to be using their real name aren’t.
I can certainly sympathise with the enormous workload for Anthony and the moderators especially with disruptive trolls but the popularity of WUWT must be in part due to the open format.
I like the limits idea. Limit a commenter to 3 comments per thread, with excess comments going automatically to moderation. I hope it is technically feasible. There should be a limit on a comment size, let’s say 1000 words, and a picture is worth 600 words.
Curious George, you and others don’t seem to grasp there is no simple solution as you propose. Doug simply comes back with a new screen name, new email address, new IP address, several times in the same discussion thread! There is no way to stop the abuse when someone is that motivated. An army of moderators with the free time to invest is required.
..If I had known you had a problem, I would have gladly donated 10 hours a day to help defend your site from Trolls !! If you change your mind and can use me, let me know !
Dr. S., seeing how this may be my last chance (evah!) to ask you a question, i thought i might ask you a thing or two regarding your “fundanomics” and the possibility of a trump presidency… My thinking is that even if trump were able to grow his pledged dynamic economy, the federal reserve would find it to be inflationary and would simply cancel it out by hiking interest rates. Let’s assume that the fed would succeed at holding the economy steady at 4% unemployment (a no growth economy such as that which occurred during the last few years of the bush presidency). Do you think trump’s efforts could result in your “fundanomics” sort of economy where standards of living would actually go higher even though wages would not increase? OR, for that matter, could trumps efforts end up being inflationary anyway even if the rate remained at 4% (meaning that jobs would be of higher quality, higher paying) and thus the fed would simply cancel out his efforts by causing a recession (similar to what volker did in response to the stagflation of the carter years)?
I don’t “see too many faces” here from your blog, but i think i can speak for all of us when i say thank you so much for such a wonderful educational experience. One thing that you offer is a knack for wading in with the folks in your patented personal and professional way. I don’t know if that is quite replicable anywhere else. (the best that one ends up with here is ferdinand and his sophisticated brand of junk science…) That’s pretty much what attracted me to your site in the first place. Obviously the proponents of agw aren’t quite cutting it, but then again the skeptics so often don’t quite cut it either. I found your’s to be the voice of reason in an unreasonable world. So for this budding agw skeptic ( /climate change denier) you have been quite the godsend…
Thanx, fonzie
Excuse me if this was suggested above: a three-level system:
1. Registered commenters sign up via a small annual credit card payment, plus maybe a $5 entrance fee. Pen names are OK. A $5 charge for deleted comments. Comments are posted immediately.
2. As above, but on a “whitelist” of old-timers so their comments are flagged as such internally, so moderators can just skim them after posting.
3. Unregistered. Their comments are held for moderation. This delay would eventually encourage them to register if they comment often. Borderline trollish comments would be allowed, but in a lighter or smaller typeface, or at least in an
unusual typeface.
This would bring in a little money for WUWT, cut moderators’ workload a bit, and cut down on dopey commenting a bit. (I don’t think it has a downside.) Then we can decide on the next step.
Whitelisters’ status would be revoked after one deletion or two knuckle-raps.
The above would only make things 25% better, but maybe that’s all that can be accomplished.
I like the following suggestions downthread:
Report button
Ignore button
Comment numbering
Am I a troll?
..That’s it , your barred !! LOL
You’re
your?
Ur round…
Fs I’ll get this one lol
Sparks,
Taletell signs you may be a troll:
a) if you have a Scandinavian accent and live under a bridge and torment passersby
or
b) if your permanent address is in Middle Earth and you fear that sunlight will turn you to stone
or
c) if your family trait resembles this:
John
You forgot the quote marks and italics. Get it right John 🙂 thanks very funny.
Institute a way to vote comments down, sort of like Reddit does. That way other commenters could point out that a commenter is not making sense. It might make your job easier.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/intensedebate/
Does that work on the wordpress.com system?
I vote no. You just never know when a comment that is “off the consensus path” might just lead to a better understanding of why exactly the hypothesized “greenhouse effect” does not seem to be observable at all.
Surely if it can raise the temperature by 30 some degrees we would have noticed the hypothesized temperature rise by now.
Sure you will get a lot of manure, but where there is piles of manure there is also a PONY, you just have to dig for it.
Cheers, KevinK
PS: not sure who the “K man” is that you consider a “poser”, but I can assure you my hands on experience with “radiation physics” is not a pose.
[‘K-man’ was not referring to you. ~mod.]
From a purely business point of view, it would be a mistake for WUWT to ban comments. That would certainly reduce readership not only of commenters but of lurkers.
Instead, pop-sci bloggers should concentrate more on the scientific quality of content of their postings. All the more so on a site whose regular guests have produced such “gems” as explaining the greenhouse effect in terms photon-splitting, conflated heat transfer with radiative intensity, invoked scientifically aberrant notions of “feedback” to explain changes in system response, attributed ocean circulation to planetary vorticity, and claimed superiority for “slow” Fourier Transforms. While Doug Cotton’s posting tactics are indeed deplorable, they can be countered effectively. His contentions are best left to the mercies of a higher standard of scientific judgement, rather than to rank censorship.
Would it help to rotate moderators to allow each regular breaks? Two months on, one month off sort of thing. Day in, day out can be a lot and wear a person down after a very short time. Regular, lengthy breaks might be enough to keep everyone fresh and eager. No one should be expected to be at it 24/7.
Maybe give that some thought?
Keep the comments –
1 – As many have said, you often learn more from the comments than the original article.
2 – Why should I / we bother reading an article that cant be tested by discussion ??( too much of that is going on in the world) the reason I suspect most of the 265 million hits are because of free, frank & informed discussion.
3 – The zealots have been very successful at stopping informed discussion in most areas (the science is settled, discussion is over, we will not debate you……) they would love to shut us down.
4 – Just think of the spin they’ put on it-
‘WUWT won’t allow comments because it’s scared of the truth’
‘WUWT only puts out propaganda so won’t allow comments’
Etc etc.
5 – A report/spam button, as first filtering is done by readers before alerting mods may help
6 – Nested & numbered comments would make reading & keeping track of comments a lot easier.
Thanks for all you do/have done.
I’m in the middle of a project right now, but in a few mths time I would gladly donate 10hrs a week to help moderate, Email me.
This blog belongs to Anthony Watts. He can and should determine who can comment and which comments will be published as a form of quality control and a service to his writers and serious readers. Neither the New York Times nor the Wall Street Journal publish each and every letter-to-the-editor received.
If Anthony is fair, reasonable and rational in his editing of comments it will be a service to serious readers and commenters. If someone is unhappy with that policy, they can go comment on someone else’s blog or start their own. It’s a free internet. Growing an audience is hard and time consuming. Morons shouldn’t be permitted to steal Anthony’s.
Good comments can be interesting and informative — sometimes more than the head post. But when half of them are food fights it’s too much work to find the nuggets so I go elsewhere.
Anthony, I truly appreciate the value you have provided to our community by creating/maintaining this site. Just because those of us who comment may not have formal ‘credentials’ doesn’t mean they don’t seek to better understand the issues involved – at least that is the way I approach most comments.
I’m sure you can tell which commenters add to the value and which are ‘not-so-much’. May I suggest that you contact those who, in your judgement, add good value and ask them if they have time and energy to help out. I believe many will.
Thank you again for your time and effort.
I too voted no.
I do try to donate as regularly as possible.
Anthony gets my subscription money that used to go to several now unreadable science magazines.
If subscription would help reward the moderators, Go for it.
While the rabid rants and obsessed souls can bog this blog down, the majority of the comments usually enhance my understanding of the posted topic.
With some pseudonyms who post repetitive off topic rants or seem to be perpetually trolling,, eventually I recognize their style and move on.
However some discussions certainly go sideways and degenerate into bickering.
These I think you have no choice but to end comments on.
However this is Anthony Watt’s Blog.
You have done great so far, I trust you will find a way that works.
I was scrolling down and reading the comments on the way to suggesting more moderators when I saw Charles recommend it.
I have to believe WUWT has an abundance of potential moderators who would be level headed and reliable.
With numerous moderators like Charles it would be like a police force creating the sufficient law enforcement presence to minimize the blogging crime.
Some forums have an ignore option allowing you to block certain people from replying to you and their comments aren’t visible to you either. Also the admin can make all of their posts visible to only them. There’s a similar thing on YouTube. So basically they just end-up talking to themselves, wondering why everyone is ignoring them. There’s nothing a troll hates more than being ignored. They go nuts. I don’t think Doug is a malicious troll, he just can’t help himself from derailing threads. It’s like an addiction of sorts. The thing above would be a better option than trying to ban someone who is essentially unbannable or blocking comments altogether. Doug’s unwavering perseverance may eventually bring every skeptic-blog crumbling to its knees.
Anthony, you are the biggest lightning rod (and enlightening rod) globally in the climate science field. I think this stuff is going to get worse as the CAGW movement continues to decline. I am, however, against closing comments. I’ve just watched what happened with a planned Trump rally in Chicago. Democrat goons succeeded in shutting down the rally. This is the reaction of the anti-democracy left who’s sense of entitlement is so huge and threatened that there can be little doubt this is highly organized. Hillary is particularly terrified of Trump’s popularity. These goons and the ones behind the scenes are cracking the champagne right now. Don’t give the trolls this power.
What needs to be done is to get the positive contributors to stop engaging the trolls. Strongly encourage them to simply ignore them. I’m guilty of engaging these destructive idiots but I’m prepared to make a resolution to not do so in the future. Maybe put an orange star at the beginning of the most egregious trolls as a reminder and sign. I think there should be another post on this subject with this message.
I voted no. I don’t have much to contribute (other than the occasional snark or sarcasm) here since many of the topics discussed are outside my areas of expertise. Shutting down or limiting comments would be a sad day. I have enjoyed this blog since the day I found it and visit regularly (almost daily). I find most of the articles to be informative and educational. The comments likewise. This blog, the articles and the comments have allowed me to filter the over hyped, over the top CAGW articles I see all over the internet. This blog has provided me with reasonably intelligent counter points (at the barely knowledgeable layperson level) whenever I have had to engage in conversation with a CAGW supporter (as I occasionally have to do in my profession).
I also hope a subscription fee will not be required. I am of modest means and must closely watch the money I spend. Even a small fee would force me to evaluate the value of the knowledge I gain versus the cost.
For what it’s worth, SMC are the initials of my name. Mr. Watts and the moderators know my name since they can see (I assume they can see) the email address I provide. I use my initials since they are an accurate reflection of my name while still providing a (admittedly false) sense of anonymity.
Regards,
Keep the comments section, Anthony. They are extremely valuable. This website wouldn’t be the same without them.
Trolls are easy to spot for this reader. I have no trouble at all skipping over their conversations, and finding the real treasure that is on this site. So trolls are no problem for me. I can ignore them quite easily. They should not be a reason to shutdown the comments section.
I visit Dr. Spencer’s site from time to time, and I have been surprised at how much column space DC has been allowed. He seems to meet Churchill’s definition of a fanatic: one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
I would personally be happy to pay a registration fee for the privilege of posting. So long as comments were open for reading to everyone, I don’t think it would deter newcomers from visiting the site.
I do wonder if there could be some way to distinguish between statements and questions. Some way that visitors with honest questions could do so without registration, but those of us who want to put our opinions forward would be expected to help support the operation.
I read wattsupwiththat largely FOR the comments! Sometimes my science (or my attention span) is not sufficient for me to follow an article. But invariably someone else will ask a question in the comments, and someone else will answer, and the light dawns for me. I’d name helpful names but I’d certainly forget many I sincerely owe understanding to.
Still, I have no idea how much work is involved in keeping this blog’s comments section as clean as it is. Do what you feel you need to do, Anthony, and remember what they say about oxygen masks when you fly: put your own on first.