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.
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Feedback at WUWT is one of the few real forums of peer review there is, not just for skeptics to engage and learn from each other but for providing effective and widely seen review of those “consensus” research papers that only needed to undergo pal-review to get published. An initial critique is posted by Anthony or Willis or Bob or whoever else (every once in a long while me), and informed readers often complete the demolition. I suspect there are many consensus authors, from the most well known to the wallflowers, who live in fear of being exposed on this website. Without that check the level of integrity in consensus climatology would be even lower than its current dismal state.
Anthony,
@mod
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1.WUWT without comments would just be a news feed.
2. I detest nested comments because they become hard to both follow and participate in if discussions grow lengthy and/or involve more than two participants. One thing that would help immensely for both nested and regular formats would be to encourage commenters to follow Willis Eschenbach’s oft repeated request to quote the exact words you are replying to. This simple courtesy, instead of just simply hitting the “reply” button, makes any forum much more understandable in any format.
3. DC and trolls – there have been several recommendations upthread for varying systems to control behaviour. My own observation is that as soon as you put a system in place, people start figuring out how to game the system, and the ones that are successful are the very ones you are trying to control. If that means that instead more moderators are required to do the heavy lifting, I expect that a shout out for same would yield results.
4. For regular readers, DC is a real problem. I ran into him early in his “career” and soon realized that I was ensnared in a debate with a zealot for whom reason, facts, and logic were of little use. That he is in theory on the skeptic side is not the point. Our “side” is trying to get the science right and DC simply discredits us.
And lastly, thank you Anth_ny for all that you have done. For the forum you have created which has entertained me, educated me, infuriated me and more for countless hours over the years. I’ve made friends, I’ve made enemies, I’ve helped inform others, made embarrassing mistakes, corresponded with elite scientists I would otherwise have no hope of ever meeting. I’ve made people laugh, been laughed at, and laughed at the humour of others. And all for free.
I’m off to the tip jar, feeling kinda guilty about neglecting it of late.
^This^
I’m totally fine having to be registered to post to the comments section. I’d even pay an annual subscription to be a member. You can always give free membership to contributors.
The consensus is apparently to keep the comments, and a Very Good Thing too. There are some exceptionally well informed commenters here and it would be a tragedy to lose their inputs. And there are enough differences in knowledge, experience and ideas between the smart ones, that a lively debate often results. Which is not only informative, but often entertaining too, even when the physics goes over my head (i.e. most of the time).
WUWT is a global asset, an oasis of sanity in the desert, a beacon of light in the darkness, ….. (I could go on, but you know what I mean). And it just wouldn’t be the same without those comments.
Please don’t use facebook or other social medium as an entry mechanism though, Anthony. I’d rather pay money to be able to hang out here.
Agreed. I don’t belong to any social media unless WordPress is considered such. And how does being a member of, say, Facebook solve anything?
I like Dr. Roy’s blog and hope he reconsiders.
Andy: If you are going to continue to liberally allow skeptics to post at WUWT, it is imperative that you allow comments that might inform your readers when you post material that is scientific nonsense or badly flawed. If you want to spend more time serving as an editor and/or managing some sort of peer review or rebuttal process, then there is less need for commentary. At the moment, the only peer review comes from comments.
Anthony,
I suspect you have more views and comments because of your generous comment policy and practices . . This may be a small factor, but I sense in myself an added interest/attention when I could comment, whether or not I eventually do so. There is more of a sense of “being there”, in the audience sort of . . (front row seats no less ; )
(PS ~ I can live with either sort of thread structure, but wish (at times) there were visual clues in the form perhaps of pale colored lines that originate with the original breaks from the base thread. I imagine it might help with easily following the lines of conversation one was truly interested in . . )
???
wondered when something would show up
Trolls aside, the comments on articles and essays are part of what makes this experience what it is. It’s not everywhere that really talented and smart people weigh in with thought provoking material. It’s worth it to endure a few trolls to see some good thoughts.
A few times I’ve been called a troll (I suffer from foot in mouth disease), but really I don’t have much to say on this blog. I enjoy reading the articles and others’ comments.
The surest way to lose a war is to stop fighting. – Sun Tze, the Art of War.
The public are the police, and the police are the public. Sir R.Peele’s Principles of Policing.
This is my first post on WUWT. Please don’t stop the comment section. Often, the commenters on this forum support stories with further facts. Generally speaking, this comment section contains the most well spoken and intellectually challenging group of minds I have ever seen on the internet. I know that’s not saying much…but there it is.
REPLY — Good first post. ~ Evan
I voted “I don’t know.” Although it’s axiomatic that “nothing is impossible to the man who doesn’t have to do it himself, I appreciate that riding herd on nonsensical Warmist troll comments is an endless, unrewarding, impossible, and odious task, one I don’t have to do myself. Also, restricting comments would better suit my priorities. But only Anth0ny knows the full extent of the effort; only Anth0ny should make the decision. If more volunteers are needed, I think they will appear. This is almost the only site I log onto ~daily. It well deserves its plaudits.
Some thanks from an old engineer from OZ, your blog has been a guiding light in a fog of obfuscation from the PC warmanista mob. The main stream news services have been brainwashing all those whom would listen. You have been a beacon of reason, polite and sensible, you sir are a gentleman, thank you Anthony your contribution to sense and science will be noted in the future. Wayne.
I have read every comment made at this point in time. Many good comments and suggestions have been made, as well as a few that are garbage. (ain’t it always so)
I think the comments section should be as open and free as possible. Just because someone believes a certain thing does not mean the host of the blog also believes that. Even if one of the lying members of the “team” (Gavin the liar) claims that WUWT is a bunch of [fill in the blank] don’t make it so.
The crazy spammers and the obsessed will have to be dealt with as long as the blog is popular. I would think our host would prefer widely popular rather than have a few dozen readers. I would also think that our host would recognize that debate over the issues is healthy and encourages readership. In the education business we try to encourage informed debate. (hell, any debate sometimes with these modern kids)
The person in question (I have never willingly mentioned his name — superstitious I guess) is a problem but he wins if you drop comments or go overly restrictive just because of him.
One final word; most of climate “science” right now is wrong, as wrong as nutritional “science” is. The real skeptics can see that. It will be generations before we figure out the planet’s weather machine — we first have to drop the ideas that are wrong but that we think are right. (all adherents of eastern religion will recognize that from the sages of thousands of years ago)
The best way to stop trollers and sock puppeteers is to ignore them and not respond to their idiotic comments
Or, to give them a stock reply as to why they are wrong. Most of the trolls keep repeating the same stuff over and over, e.g. wind’s intermittency will be solved by energy storage, so it doesn’t take too much writing to build a bank of answers. When they get a well-reasoned answer that would call for a bit of thinking to frame a reply to it, they generally give up. My most oft-used one is the explanation of what ‘ad hominem’ means, and why it signals that the poster has run out of other options.
I like immediately preceding comment. A lot of bloggers need to get a life. If you have a persistent troll you need to ignore him (her) and not glorify the comment by responding. This happens on all blogs – particularly in the climate wars space. Trolls and hit men have about ruined dotearth. I comment there and ignore the personal attacks, which are plentiful.
This has nothing to do with “which side you’re on”. The climate base has become toxic and all sides are responsible. One can still make one’s point in a civil manner and you’ll often get civil responses – sometimes not. But you have a right to make your point in the way you see fit.
One of the rewards of open comments is the exposure to seeing things from a different point of view. Too often we lock in on view from a personal experience and fail to realize others have different experiences that have shaped their position. Open comments also exposes us to other people from around the world. Sometimes that is nothing technical, just a different way of seeing things based on a different lifestyle and political system.
My two cents is that nested comments make it easier for trolls to comment and harder for readers to follow the entire thread.
I’ve gotten used to the nested comment layout and I still don’t like it because it makes simple thread reading into difficult thread reading. Simple is better in this case.
John
..Needs a HIDE/SHOW REPLY button ?
In what I’m sure is a bad paraphrase out of a book by Victor Davis Hanson;
” tractor vs stump always draws a crowd”.
Has anyone ever considered using website Discussion Forum software for WUWT? This would solve the difficulty in following threads, and would keep threads alive much longer, if that were desirable. It wouldn’t solve the troll problem, though. Just ignore the trolls and they will go away.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22website+Discussion+Forum%22 isn’t terribly helpful. Where does the software run? It needs to be on a site big enough to handle DoS attacks, e.g. wordpress.com.
I spend quite a lot more time reading comments on this site than reading or thinking about the article, and the comments are usually very enlightening, if I have time to read right through them. I would really miss them if they were not here, and I see the majority agree. Nevertheless, I voted some pages need no comment (second V page for example).
I disagree the discussion about filtering comment contributors as an overly terse commentary will result, which becomes stultifying fast, reading it a it too much like work.
Plus this discussion of ‘elite’ verses non-elite is simply divisive, it promotes deliberate exclusivity, which is very damaging to the flow of open discussions and promotes rank. I hesitate to mention Bob Carter as he’s been mentioned a fair bit lately, but will do so for one reason, he was a well respected accomplished scientist, a great communicator, and displayed not one scintilla of a tendency towards elitism or exclusivity, or divisive snobbish attitude, or sharp language. It was one of his natural talents, you’ve got it or you haven’t. But it is highly prized, at least as much as the quality of the knowledge he conveyed with it. It’s on of the reason he will be remembered and others not. But if some people want a castle with motes around their ideas to fire arrows at passersby they don’t much like the look of, to guard “my precious”, or their imagined status, this approach belongs in a reference section, not at the core of public discussion.
In the end many of the topics and pages in here deal not with formal data, but with ancillary issues, claims and conversational events. The balance of interest levels and mix of content at WUWT is already pretty good, both in articles and in the comments.
It’s a tough call. If comments are so rude or overbearing, I leave. If I can’t comment, I often don’t read a blog. As for blocking commenters or charging them, people can and do create account after account. Looking at the IP address helps, but there are public computers. I think if comments were shut down, people would go elsewhere to read. I would also note that comment problems are in part because this site is so popular. Smaller sites don’t get deluged by commenters and spammers. Plus, there are a small number of people who spoil things for everyone with the constant self-promoting comments.
Once again, the problem of serial commenters is solved (mostly) by ignoring them and not responding. Persistent commenting on Dotearth drives some people crazy but I just skip over them. But I think Andy Revkin, who actually reads comments not submitted by pre-approved commenters, has recently shied away from the climate wars in an effort to drive serial commenters elsewhere. Just my opinion.
I am not an apologist for DC. Doubters may go to Dr Spencer’s site where a few years ago DC and I had some real ding-dong exchanges. I suggested that Dr Spencer might even make money as a comedy script. Some of his perennial, unwarranted taunts thrown at Dr Spencer is cringe-worthy and hard to stomach. DC being off topic is legendary as can be his rude manner. Bear in mind that Galileo was not exactly a charmer. Neither was Newton with his hounding of Liebniz. No, I don’t compare DC with either in intellect.
If this is the complaint then I agree. But I see other complaints about silencing him because of his hypothesis. This would be unwarranted and simply emulating sites like SkS. Is this any different to the cabal of so called scientists wanting to enlist RICO legislation to silence opposition? We would all be the poorer if this was a consideration.
For those claiming his ideas are deficient I will make this observation as I did on Lucia’s board: No one has actually been able to disprove him despite many vowing that they could and would. That still holds.
He has managed to put together a coherent mechanism to explain the lapse rate (>0.1bar) and go beyond that. It seems to have a more universal application judging by other planets and mediums. Is that not moving along the path that is a fundamental objective in science? Should we ban that discussion? Can we find a way to accommodate it and put it to the test? I would like to think it can be done.
An up/down rating on comments like on Yahoo would work well. If a given comment exceeds X down votes a script bot automatically hides it and a message appears in its place – “Message hidden due to low rating – (click to) show comment”.
Yep . Some very good mechanisms are available .
I miss having a thumbs up mechanism here . I would have used to upvote your comment rather than consuming this bandwidth .
I would like to know the percentage of bandwidth you just took up.
Is it counted by keystrokes or what ?
Sorry if I’ve gone past any limits with this comment.
🙂 ‘Taint much but more than clicking on an icon or emoticon like Facebook just implemented .
And I remember when bandwidth was billed at $1 % kB .
If a given comment exceeds X down votes a script bot automatically hides it
As soon as you do something like that, the trolls will organize to down vote the best comments forcing the mods to fish them back out manually. The moment you implement a “system”, the very people you are trying to control conspire to game the system.
It’s a good point; we’ll have to make it a smart bot. How about for any given poster to be able to give a down vote, he has to meet some criteria to become ‘approved’ to give one such as he has earned a minimum number of up votes or, has written a minimum number of comments or, has written prior comments older than a minimum age, etc.?