NOTE: This will be a top post until Monday, new stories follow below. A couple of Saturdays ago, I posted an “Open Thread” with a question about “What could we do better”? You responded, and I’ve listened. In the meantime, WordPress.com has thrown us all a curve-ball with a new software update that I really don’t like because it has now made running WUWT harder. So, I have a few caveats that I need you to be aware of, and I want to ask a question of my readers that will help me determine the future of this blog.
1. Personal:
I have some personal issues (including my hearing and health) going on in my life during the past year that have prevented me from spending as much time researching, writing posts, and keeping up with comments on WUWT as I used to. Regulars may have noticed this. This is all slowly getting resolved, but it takes time. For those that read about my new hearing aids and the great boost they gave me over a year ago, that benefit has faded, and I’m fighting a pattern recognition problem that I didn’t have as badly before. I’ll expound on the whys of this in a future post.
2. Image fetching for reference pages got broken by an update I had no control over:
Some readers may or may not know that I am hosted at wordpress.com using their highly resilient and automatically backed up cloud based infrastructure. Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit and Judith Curry’s website also take advantage of this platform and it has worked very well. WUWT has been on it since October of 2007. During this time there have been dozens of updates to the software automatically deployed by WordPress that have been mostly positive, until now. A few weeks ago, they deployed a new update that forced https: on all sites hosted at wordpress.com . In theory, this is a good thing, in practice, it broke just about every reference page (especially the sea ice page) at WUWT because the update causes all images fetched with http rather than https protocol to become cached. This made the images in the reference appear as if they didn’t update. The only solution is to click directly on them. Some might ask, why don’t I simply change all the http image fetch requests to https? That seems like an easy and obvious fix, except when you discover that a number of the government websites used in our reference pages don’t support https, and the images won’t display when called by that fetching protocol. Here is an example: https://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/seaice/analysis/global.gif
I placed a trouble ticket into wordpress.com support for this issue and here is what they say:
Hi Anthony,
I’ve received a reply from our software department and here’s the conclusion:
We won’t disable the https on your site because it’s a bad practice and may introduce security holes. However, we can stop caching the images on your site, but then your visitors will get the warning about mixed content because as I explained earlier, some of your images are from http (unsecured) sites and your site is https (secured). Let me know if you are okay with this.
Cheers,
Rasto L. – Happiness Engineer
WordPress.com | http://support.wordpress.com
I have told them to turn off caching images, and that I’d fix the pages that had mixed http/https and I’m waiting for confirmation. It’s been three days, and I’ve received no notice, but they may have made the switch already. I’d greatly appreciate it if readers would check out our multitude of reference pages shown below and report back in comments.
- Atmosphere Page
- Atmospheric Oscillation Page
- CO2 Page
- Beaufort Sea Ice Page
- ENSO (El Niño/La Niña Southern Oscillation) Page
- ENSO Forecast Page
- “Extreme Weather” Page
- Geomagnetism Page
- Global Climate Page
- Global Temperature Page
- Glossary Page
- Great Lakes Ice Page
- Ocean Page
- Oceanic Oscillation Page
- Polar Vortex Page
- Paleoclimate Page
- Potential Climatic Variables Page
- Northern Polar Vortex Reference Page
- Northern Regional Sea Ice Page
- Sea Ice Page
- Solar Page
- Spencer and Braswell Papers
- Tornado Page
- Tropical Cyclone Page
- US Climate Page
- US Weather Page
3. Sea ice images got broken by a satellite failure:
At about the same time wordpress initiated their https switchover that caused our images in reference pages to stop updating in your browser, the DMSP F17 satellite had a sensor failure that caused the loss of sea-ice data for several organizations, including NSIDC, Cryosphere Today, and others. WUWT has had several posts on the issue, yet some people still write to me wondering why images aren’t correct. The most comical aberration presented by this satellite instrument failure comes from Cryosphere Today:
A more perfect example of a climate “hockey stick” could not possibly be generated, and it is just as bogus a presentation as the original:
![Hockey_stick_chart_ipcc_large[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/hockey_stick_chart_ipcc_large1.png?quality=75)
NSIDC reports that they are updating their images based on DMSP F18 data, and that it is provisional pending calibration. Other sea-ice agencies have not been so quick to respond.
Patience while the problem gets resolved will be appreciated.
4. Our comment system got broken by the same wordpress update I had no control over:
As mentioned in point 2, in April wordpress.com threw out a major update on https, and this same update also changed the way comments get moderated.
It used to be that comments that were flagged by our banned word list (expletives, hot button words, etc.) would simply be held for moderation. The person who wrote the comment could still see the comment, and that it hadn’t been approved yet, but now with this new update, those flagged comments that need the attention of a moderator to determine if it violates WUWT site policy simply get sent to the trashbin, and disappear from the view of the commenter. This might give the impression to some whose comments disappear that we are engaging in wholesale censorship, we aren’t. But again, this change was out of my control when it was implemented by wordpress.com. I sent in a trouble ticket and this was the response from the Akismet service that handles spam filtering and the moderation system for wordpress.com:
Hi Anthony,
Unfortunately, there’s no way to change what happens to comments that match the blacklist. However, have you considered using the Comment Moderation list instead? It’s on the same settings screen as the blacklist, and comments that match the Moderation list will be left in Pending Approval status instead of being approved or moved to the spam or trash. Then, you wouldn’t need to monitor the spam or trash, and you could just focus on the moderation queue.
Chris F.
Akismet
I’m in the process of working on this today and tomorrow, so hopefully the issue will be resolved. That said, there’s another much bigger problem, see point #5 below.
5. Some commenters have simply gotten out of control.
WUWT is the most viewed and most commented on website in the world related to climate. As of this writing, there are 273,124,092 views and 1,782,475 comments. Obviously, there’s no way I could read all of those comments, there simply isn’t enough time in my life. Early on in WUWT history I did read each and every comment, now it’s an impossibility. WUWT used to be entirely moderated, and every comment required approval, but the task was tedious and mostly thankless, and we lost some very good people who volunteered to help me manage this crushing load by attrition and by death.
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. This adds to the load, but the recent change by wordpress.com mentioned in item 4 may actually help solve this issue while creating a new one.
In August 2014, I announced a change to WUWT that I thought would improve it on several fronts. Format was a big change, the way comments were dealt with was another. I wrote then:
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.
In retrospect, the whitelisting thing was a bad idea, because it allowed some unscrupulous types, as well as people with no sense of decorum or decency, to post a single innocuous comment, which gets approved by a moderator and putting them on the whitelist, to then post comments where they aren’t flagged for moderation at all. As a result, the quality of commentary has eroded, and I’ve had to ban several people who only come here to spew invective, hate, and rants.
Because WUWT often gets linked on Drudge, Instapundit, and other political traffic drivers (because after all climate has become mostly political now) we’ve had an influx of people (from both sides) that don’t understand anything about the issues, but simply regurgitate talking points. This gets tedious, fast.
Some are here for nefarious purposes. We’ve had a couple of people who have taken sockpuppeting beyond what even Doug Cotton does which caused Dr. Roy Spencer to stop accepting comments on his website. No this is even worse; we have two people assuming the persona of another poster. We have clearly identified who these people are (because in your zeal to denigrate, you made mistakes), and we’ve been documenting your behavior for months. if you are reading this (and you know who you are), let this be notice that you’ll be seeing some legal paperwork appear soon, because frankly I’m tired of both of you and your illegal actions, and the people you have impersonated using their full names are furious. I don’t blame them. You deserve some payback and you are going to get it.
It just goes to show how pathetic some people are when it comes to a disagreement of opinion. The AGW proponents use illegal and nefarious tactics like this rather than open and honest debate. Then, they wonder why they are viewed with contempt.
After Dr. Spencer stopped accepting comments, I considered the idea as well. If I didn’t have to deal with comments, I could accomplish a lot more. OTOH, many of the comments are quite useful. I wanted to see what readers thought, so I ran a poll with his commentary:
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.
Here are the results:
There are a few ways that I’m going to deal with this on the short-term. First, you are going to start seeing notices like this image below appear on threads. It is going to be a fair warning to those that aren’t following site policy.
We have serial offenders on both sides, they’ll get equal treatment. If the thread gets unruly after that, I’ll simply close it. I have better things to do than moderate idiotic food fights.
Second, for the long-term, in the not too distant future, I’m going to implement changes to the way comments are moderated. To that end, I ask readers the following questions:
- In the first option, requiring registration will mean that your real name and email will have to be verified. It is a lot of work up-front, but it weeds out sockpuppets and posers for good. Successful blogs like “Little Green Footballs” use this technique. The downside is that it limits open debate on the spur of the moment and tends toward a closed community.
- The second option, requiring that all comments be held for moderation is what WUWT used to do from 2006 to 2014, but it is a huge amount of work. I’ll need more volunteer moderators to pull this off.
- The third option, running a detailed filter, would send known disruptors, sockpuppets, and comments with expletives, banned words (like chemtrails, bigfoot, etc) directly to the trash were they won’t be recovered. Steve McIntyre does a version of this on Climate Audit, though he gets a small fraction of the comments we get. He never bothers to recover those comments, but instead concentrates his limited time on content.
- The fourth option, turning off comments altogether solves the time and effort problem completely, prevents disruption, and allows focus on content exclusively. The downside is that the free exchange of ideas, some of which are very useful, dies with it.
6. What do you think? I can make articles on WUWT “peer-reviewed” before publication.
For technical articles, I have a way where I can invite peer review from both sides of the debate before an article gets published. Links to the unpublished article would be sent to people who have offered to be reviewers (possibly due to a solicitation announcement first) and the article can be checked for accuracy, depth, and citations prior to publication. As we all know, Internet peer review is some of the harshest form of review, but often the best, because it doesn’t invite “pal review” like we’ve seen in climate science circles.
This would be a first, not just for WUWT, but for any climate or science blog as far as I know.
7. WUWT’s ten-year anniversary is coming up
I have been doing this non-stop since November 2006, I’d like to take a real vacation to recharge. Even when I have traveled, I keep up the blog. I need a break, but I’m not prepared to go on a one year sabbatical to fix “burn out” like Dave Roberts did.
I’ll need help in the form of guest posters, moderators, etc, and maybe even a little financial help to get me on my way. Willis and I have been talking about a trip to Russia to investigate the cause of the great Red Spot in the surface temperature record.He could blog while we are on the trip like he does when he travels . Thoughts welcome.
8. Hosting – wordpress.com is quickly becoming restrictive
I have danced around this question for years, but the recent changes at wordpress.com that have caused problems cause me to take a good hard look again. I may want to go to a subscription/donor model to make this happen, since getting the features I want for the kind of traffic this blog produces would be several hundred dollars a month. That would mean I’d have the freedom from code restrictions that wordpress.com imposes (they only allow certain features), and could offer features readers have been asking for years, such as comment editing, better threading/numbered threading. Interactive graphs, made with JavaScript etc and much more. It will allow growth, but it will also require more of my time to manage it.
To that end, I thought I’d ask this question:
9. Thank you
I realize many of you have become as frustrated as I have with the state of things in the climate debate, and I hope that WUWT can continue to contribute to it in a meaningful way. I owe a debt of gratitude to readers, moderators, and guest essayists. You have my sincerest thanks. Comments about all of these changes and proposed changes are welcome. – Anthony
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As it relates to subscription, I agree it might improve content bit i also think it would substantially decrease viewership and being the most important skeptic blog on the web, I feel widespread viewership is critical to spreading the message. Would hate to see readership go down. Perhaps there are other ways to fund better hosting – such as advertising – to keep the site free but have better content?
I think with a subscription only policy, your site would essentially be “Preaching to the Choir” so to speak, and viewership would go down…
J.P. Peterson,
Very good point. Commenters on the alarmist side of the debate would never put their money into a skeptic’s pockets.
Concerning the reference pages… For me, they don’t appear to have been fixed.
Anthony at this point and considering your service to scientific debate and myth dispelling and encouragement of open debate, it is time to put your health first, and take that trip to Russia, then a jaunt about with Willis, who knows where you’ll end up.
The internet Peer review is an excellent idea.
$$ should certainly go to you as well as for WUWT
A willing subscriber here, absolutely. I see it as a duty to all those out there who may be misled by the junk science cacophony.
Seeing as I am only more or less a reader with nothing of value to add in general given my lack of scientific experience and knowledge in EVERY area other than OA, whatever is decided is fine as far as my unimportant big mouthed self is concerned, I value the service you have provided to internet denizens by the million such as myself.
Россия здесь приходите
In Russia, Russia comes to you 😀
This is answering the last questions first:
At a five dollar per month level, I am in.
At a ten dollar per month level, I will be out.
Yes, the five dollars make that much of a difference. Based on the nos, a five dollar a month subscription would cause thousands to stop visiting.
Consider; at $60/year ($5X12months), that equals a quite expensive subscription service; easily over topping my most expensive magazines.
Yeah, the WSJ and IBD are more per year, but there is a difference in their detailed global in-depth coverage. Even then I had to drop the IBD.
Yes, we need to help ensure that Anthony certainly suffers no financial harm and ideally sees that Anthony is reimbursed for his valuable time. But those are relatively small numbers averaged over thousands of users.
Anthony, using WUWT subscription funds should be able to secure the monthly services he needs along with any hardware and software packages he finds necessary.
So what makes an affordable subscription level?
Charging a premium price eliminates as members almost anybody who isn’t a professional with access to official subscription support..
Charging too low a price, say $1 a month, still allows the trolls open access for small change.
How about charging an initiation fee followed up by a small monthly fee? Say $5 or $10, even up to $25 initiation fee with perhaps $2 or $3 monthly subscription.
This puts the annual cost at the price of a decent magazine while forcing trolls to cough up cash to join. Not that the service paid trolls would not have their employer just pick up the costs.
–
–
I don’t mind using my full name in closed groups, but I hesitate when the internet spiders scrape every bit for their cross reference value.
WUWT thrives on internet scrapings! Perhaps the full name registration process will allow the use of a pseudonym after registering with our full name?
My pseudonym is ATheoK which does represent my full name. Within my family and circle of close friends and co-workers would recognize that pseudonym as likely mine without hesitation.
Only people who do not know me don’t get the connection and I really don’t care that they don’t.
Which brings us to that crux, in a world of extroverts and introverts I and many others are introverts.
What many extroverts fail to understand is that introverts do not become extroverts when they’re forced into the public eye. Calling everybody’s attention to an introvert is a good way to traumatize the introvert.
I am not sure what Steve McIntyre is using for his moderation/discard process; but I have been unable to comment at Climate Audit for years. Every email I’ve tried to send was either lost in a black hole or rejected.
Still, Steven’s blog is of immense value and I check it frequently for updates.
I just wanted to say I appreciate everything Anthony and his cohort have done, it’s a Hell of a big horse to ride.
That’s a great idea for a statue! Only with all four legs on the ground.
“Mixed content” (unsafe images on a secure page) is OK. It means a third party could see which images you request and replace those. Reasonable browsers with a reasonable config allow that.
Only active mixed content, where active content like scripts (or potential active content like CSS) is loaded from ostensibly “secure” pages (actually unsafe pages because of the unsafe active content) is verboten. (Yes, we have been seeing that stupid unsafe Web design on many serious websites, including official websites, banking etc.)
The generalization of HTTPS to fight global surveillance and increase Web security is a noble goal, but let’s not break the Web with malfunctioning “caching”.
So go with mixed content. With you click on the icon next to “https://wattsupwiththat.com/…” Google Chrome correctly indicates:
Florida Links on Extreme Weather are “file not found 40x”
A side comment:
All of my attempts to reach WUWT using Internet Explorer 11.0 failed.
Dumping me to an URL: https://r-login.wordpress.com/remote-login.php?action=auth&host=wattsupwiththat.com&id=1799261&back=https%3A%2F%2Fwattsupwiththat.com%2F&h=
Reaching a page with the following message; Invalid key [1]. Back
Oddly, the WordPress.com application login/window does bring up WUWT and allows reading some of each post; but clicking on the linked titles just goes to the dead end URL and message above.
Clicking on a comment link also hits the same message page.
So, I switched over to chrome to get to WUWT.
Yes, Chrome is still reliable. Safari is now getting worse, too. I have been on the internet ever since it was born many years ago via my father’s computer systems and watched it grow and grow and then SHRINK. It is actually getting ‘smaller’ when we are talking about useful sites that give good information and have real debates. Now it is all silly stuff or the people who own media talking one-way conversations with the rest of us who have no voice.
This site allows conversations! A rarity these days.
Re subscriptions: Maybe make comments available to subscribers (‘members’) only, but keep the site itself open to all. That is essential.
Re WordPress: Are yoiu still using the free WordPress? As I understand it, there is also WordPress.org, which requires programming expertise, but I would assume gives you much more flexibility. I may be wrong, but if not, I am sure there are software development experts among your fans who would be delighted to help develop the site.
/Mr Lynn
The problem with WordPress.org is they don’t host, but provide you the software to set up your own hosting and servers. This makes you responsible for the security, including defending against the paid activists’ distributed denial of service type attacks. The activists don’t care about free speech or other people’s interpretations of data, they just want to win and go with a “ends justify the means” approach to everything. Whatever hosting Mr. Watts uses is going to have to have a first rate internet security team as a result of the nature of his opposition.
Which is why it is so hard to move to a new provider.
Again, the expertise among WUWT readership might be able to create first-rate security. The question is, what would hosting/servers cost? I’ve no idea, but maybe that’s where a membership model might work.
/Mr Lynn
IT can cause major headaches and problems where none existed before. Who Knew ?
Good job there are no major scientific theories or projects that rely almost 100% on IT….
Every site I visit has a login or uses Disqus. They have been doing so for years. It is time that this site did the same as I cannot see any problem with it. However, I believe that an onsite server may be the answer as I have had three different sites set up on WordPress and every one of those sites I have killed due to the hapless and nonsensical intrusion of WordPress updates and demands. They made the entire exercise almost impossible. I do not know how they go about deciding on how to sabotage one’s site but they manage continuously, the structures they set in place is purely for their own needs and revenue. An own server and suitable program would by-pass that all and allow you to finance this site and yourself a lot better via advertising that you decide to expose. Worth consideration.
“An own server and suitable program would by-pass that all”
In order to run your own server, you will select a server capable of handling usual load plus a margin for spikes, plus a safety margin just in case, but you are still vulnerable to DOS attacks. When running on a big shared infrastructure, you get good DOS resistance for free.
Good suggestions but please let me advise against DIsqus. Yes, it’s a set and forget it kind of solution, but complete reliance embedded on javascript to load comments, and the resulting “Who’da thunk it?” tactic of making the comment section a ‘fake’ rolling window… Disqus is great if quick anonymous snipes are the whole point of your website, but it is an affront to discourse.
Disqus represents the worst effects of the ‘cloud’. Not only do they host your subscriber base’s actual content, they impose their own regime on everything. The broad Disqus user base is also rife with sockpuppet stalkers and throwaway accounts, because — not surprisingly — many activist and news sites go for this drop-in solution.
Yeah I have a Disqus account. But I’d never put the effort into editing, citation and linking I do here. What’s the use? It’s like typing into a black hole. And if you take an interest in the topic and imagine you can capture/save/print all threads as your own, wake up. Something will prevent you from doing so. Or you’ll save a page to disk that you load in two years, which says, “Sorry! Disqus has forgotten everything that this great website once was. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Disqus is the Internet’s answer to writing on toilet paper.
WUWT is presently a pure threaded text page to the client, or in the least it is served as one. This becomes incredibly voluminous at times — like THIS thread of threads. But it is real and actual It is self-contained, complete. It can be saved to disk and reviewed in its entirety. Indeed, there are countless WUWT articles on my disk where the essayist lays out the general topic and the commenters collectively fill it out beyond thesis level…!
Due to its almost-static text nature WUWT is loved by Google and other search engines, and the material added by comments becomes a rich compost of relevant keywords that bring people to the page. By contrast, a Disqus comment section looks like it is there, but (to the search engines) it’s not really. It’s an empty hole.
Comments-as-static-text is becoming a rare and precious thing nowadays. I never dreamed years ago I’d be saying this, back then doing it that way was a simple matter of search engine survival. But now, style and drop-in-outsourcing is overtaking hosted content at an alarming rate.
If this sheer volume of real text written by REAL PEOPLE chokes some small Internet device, it is not time to revamp the Web to accommodate the poor device. It should be put out of its misery, ’round the back of the shed, with a shotgun. If people start complaining that this site is not mobile-friendly, invite them inside out of the rain and show them a real computer. They’ll be amazed! They’ll murmur to themselves, “This must be the next new thing…”
Anthony you’re a blessing to all rational folk.
If you make this blog a paid subscription you’ll lose folk and others won’t be able to browse. Donations or more advertising might be a better method. How much do you need per year?
As far as burn-out I’m a sufferer and to regain normalcy I needed a complete change of life-style. A year off isn’t very long especially if you don’t travel, leaving the “job” well behind you.
What ever you chose to do I wish you well.
Question: Where is the tip jar? Is it the donate to surfacestations.org? That is the only one I can see.
In common with others, I support a subscription for commenting, but free viewing. Also, $5 a month US would be ok, but $10 would need careful adjustments, eg I’d have to find something I could dump.
How about $50 per year in a lump sum or $5 per month?
Agree about free viewing, naturally. Subscription just to comment. Also free article submission. Or even get paid for professional peer-reviewed journal papers.
The Journal of Watts Up With That. Or the Journal of Climate and Other Interesting Things.
I’m a little suspicious of the “technical issues” that both WordPress and the data custodians like NOAA seem to be having. E.g. WordPress demand https, NOAA stay with http. There is some discomfort at mere commoners accessing and discussing climate data. I wonder when they will start communicating in Latin?
Sunt qui scire Latine >-)
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes. 😛
Sic transit Gloria.
She threw up on the subway.
Anthony, I can vet and manage an new gaggle of moderators. I also believe almost every single article should have minor vetting. I can also help manage the group of peer reviewers/vetters.
I would suggest peer review only be a labeling scheme that rates the credibility of the article, not to reject articles except really bad crap, but you do that already.
Absolutely enjoy the concepts around naming groups. I coached soccer and always like the term ‘gaggle’ for a group of young girls. Now a group of moderators…hmm…. Emily Post (EP) wrote about the correct behavior, can’t think of any good ones yet. Modsters is just too juvenile.
The mods are hopelessly out-of-date:
A group of young girls was a giggle,
a group of pre-teenage girls used to be a gabble, and
a group of teenage girls was the gaggle.
But with the clothes they aren’t wearing lately, it’s just oodles of google-addled oggles. .mod]
Corinne Lepage is a French environnement lawyers, known for the defense of the interests of cities victim of the oil spill caused by Erika in December, 1999. (Some city council said she failed to defend the cities.)
She is also a politician (party name: “cap21”).
Source: http://www.wikistrike.com/2015/11/corinne-lepage-veut-ficher-les-climatosceptiques.html
She says she doesn’t seek a judicial condamnation of “climate skeptics”. But then she says:
She says: I believe one day we will create a responsibility of environnement crime.
If the subscription was less per month or on a per visit scheme then I might go for it. But as usual, people don’t price their subscription models with the idea in mind of what exactly they’re providing and how much that is worth.
Most take the amount of money they need to operate the blog and divide by some number of subscribers and that’s the number OR they under rate the viewer ship when dividing the number.
Think about it. How many new articles are on the front page every day? 5 maybe. that’s 150 articles a month or about 3 cents an article. Sounds reasonable right? The problem is that some of those articles won’t be of interest to some and then you have to consider how much of a budget a person has for casual acquisition of information.
If you were supplying information for people that could not get this elsewhere or it wouldn’t be as convenient or whatever then the amount would be reasonable. Maybe.
But a lot of us are casual hobbyists and have limited budgets with zero value for those articles other than satisfying our curiosity and being an informed citizen.
Mean while you’re competing for the viewers budget with other more pressing or every day news that also requires a subscription.
In other words your price starts out too high at 5.00 in my view.
I wish that someone would invent a way to provide micro payments securely over the net. Then when I see and article I want to read, then I’ll pay for it. Otherwise I’m not going to invest $5 on the hopes that some of the articles will be worth my while.
Not denigrating the value of what you do and what is written here. Just about how much we have to spend on acquiring that information and how important or necessary for our finances that we know the things you write about.
good luck figuring that out. I myself will pass if you go to a subscription model as the information provided although important and timely just doesn’t have that value for me at my budget level.
YMMV
Interesting. Micro payments. Yes, why not. You want to reply, pay something per response.
“pay something per response”
I was expecting this one. If you pay per comment, you are encouraged to post less comment, and group comments! Do you believe this is a good thing?
So instead of many comments posted using the reply to message button (well threaded comments that maintain ordering and readability), you post one long comment which doesn’t fit anywhere in the threaded ordering, destroying the hierarchical ordering.
Some people believe that posting many non-repetitive, short, focused, logical and relevant comments in a correctly threaded way is “flooding” but posting a few very long unreadable comments is not. I usually can’t communicate with these people.
Fine with registration .. and let the hissy-fit throwing kiddies play in someone else’s sandbox
Much of this was already said…. Free browsing, register to comment (with a two strike rule for flagged rule-breakers) and paid subscription (keep it to below $50 a year) allows a range of other forms of discussion and contact – including self-organizing groups to crowd-fund and produce material that the real Lewis P Buckingham mentions above.
As someone who did fund-raising, only about 10-15% of the funds promised verbally show up in actuality. Forewarned is fore-armed.
Please don’t cut the comments…
Please take an extended vacation…
Please know you are profoundly appreciated for the work that is done here.
Wow did I do a spit take when you put “successfully” and LGF together!!!! It works for chuckle because he only allows sycophants.
As it relates to peer review, I think this is the best idea going & perhaps a model for science in general going ahead. Yes, it would be a small step, but that how everything on the internet begins – small …. but a necessary first step.
Think if it ultimately led to that being the predominant form of scientific publication & got us away from all the money , politics & “pal review” that dominates science today? It would ultimately do in the CAGW meme faster than anything and be a fundamental shift in the way science is done (actually bring science publication into the modern era). It could bring credibility back to science.
Anthony, I’m glad that you pointed out the amount of effort it takes to run a site like this. I run a fishery website, and although I don’t generate the views you get here, the work required to keep fresh content, maintenance of the site, and all the other chores to keep it running smoothly are un ending.
You’ve got to love it to keep your nose to the grindstone.
Your regulars appreciate your efforts, but, that don’t pay the freight.
You mentioned the new software update which I assume was a theme update.
When my site was updated, it was broken, and I was not alone.
I had to hire a guy from Athens to get into the backside, and my hosting account to debug things. Money well spent. the key words, money spent comes out of my pocket, which there isn’t a large cash reservoir. It was painful, but necessary.
All’s well now, but WP has made changes that are annoying.
My goal has always been free access.
The people I serve are small boat fishermen that are family owned operations being run out of business by NOAA, and bad science.
These people don’t have a lot of money, but they need information, and industry entertainment, and a place to contribute their views and opinions.
We sell ads to keep it open access. You should consider that.
Also, every page should have a ggle ad, and everyone coming here should click them if they see something they are looking for.That will add up, and they actually might see something their interested in and make a purchase!
As far as comments and commenting systems, DISQUS is great, and you can get the plugin for the back end. They also have a new revenue generating program.
The time to do what you do is hidden from most, but I know how much you give. Its a commitment most could never do. Carry on, and God Bless you. BH
Suggest a WUWT open support day, like Google or Wiki sometimes does every 4 months, no pressure.
Might get to me.
I am not a good supporter, too uncommitted, too tight with my money, someone else will do it and not really happy using my credit card on the internet.
Despite all my lame excuses your blog really reaches out to people and keeps the fight alive, keep going as long as you can.
Some bloggers seem to pose as supporters but put very strong messages out of invective and hate. While I realise some people actually think that way a silent blog group system could perhaps help a moderator alert to and remove offensive comments.
By that I mean only those of invective and hate.
Opposing views must be tolerated.
So you could have a two stage process incorporating AtheOK’s suggestion.
One a little group of tick circles for alerting and second a group of names [email addresses that the moderator knows are regulars with good sense] and if they are the ones upset with the comment the moderator is alerted after say 5 such genuine hits.
I like angech’s suggestion for a two stage process.
Only; after some overnight thought, consider these possibilities.
Leave WUWT as an open portal to all visitors for excellent information.
WUWT Posting privileges require full ‘The OAS’ registration as citizens.
Use a membership initiation fee coupled with a paltry monthly subscription; membership status is for The OAS, (‘The Open Atmospheric Society’)!
Use the different membership levels within OAS.
• All memberships require full address, name & financial information:
e.g. 1) The OAS Founding membership: Includes Anthony’s trusted comrades and WUWT anchors
•° — New members desiring Founder status level, pay a substantial sum; which Anthony can forgive.
e.g. 2) The OAS Supporting Full membership: The full initiation fee:
• Members can comment on WUWT,
• Moderated until proven civil,
• Trusted Members can fill in as moderators during needful times. (even I can help out some days)
e.g. 3) The OAS Associate/Student membership level.
• Members can comment on WUWT:
• Moderated until proven civil
e.g. 4) The OAS Citizen level of membership: Free or small annual donation
• Kept in the loop for OAS announcements,
• Receives all WUWT news,
• Allowed XX WUWT moderated posts per month
• At Anthony’s discretion to remove from moderation.
Any transgressors of common courtesy and civility:
• Lose posting privileges until/if Anthony/moderator decides otherwise.
• Lose all fees paid; no refunds.
Serial offenders and banned persons are removed.
My 2c on your primary points:
WordPress: I run several websites/blogs for various people/groups using WordPress (the stand-alone version, not the hosted version). I don’t really know how much commonality there is between the two, but I would guess quite a lot. Honestly, its a pile of . Unfortunately, its the go-to software for people starting out, and its non-trivial to extricate yourself from it later. The attitude of “we know whats good for you” on the hosted site is an invitation to move elsewhere. Maybe understandable for a customer getting “free” service with a few dozen hits a week, but for one of their primary attractions (and probably primary revenue generators) that attitude is unacceptable. There is a push by various large corporations (such as Google) to force every website to use HTTPS. If the website carries any sensitive information, it does make sense, but otherwise it is an added complication, added overhead and added cost (I suspect that a lot of the cheap/free certificate sources will disappear shortly).
Fees: No problem with voluntary fees, or even a small fee to “buy” posting privileges — that helps in the identity of posters too. Feed to view, no, I don’t think so. Viewership would plummet. Drudge (and others could no longer link, people that come here doing their own research would never find the wealth of resources and alternative points of view.
Peer review: For the more technical posts, definitely. As an aside, if/when you move, I would suggest separating posts into a (very few) topic areas, such as “Technical”, “Commentary”, “Politics” etc. Oh, and a “Willis” category too !!! 🙂
Moderators: By all means expand the group to allow 100% moderation. You may want to consider a small number of highly trusted “super moderators” to moderate the moderators, basically to avoid the wikipedia type problems.
Trip to Russia: Go for it! I think that would be of huge interest, even if you never ended up finding the source of the “red spot”. I don’t think you will find any problem getting the financing.
Philip
Anthony – First: I hit the “Require all commenters to register first,…” button – but will go along with whatever is easiest for you.
Second: Take a vacation. My PayPal finger is itchy, red-hot, ready to donate!
[ My PayPal finger is itchy, red-hot, ready to donate! ]
relatively new to WUWT, but have become a daily reader and occasional poster. As some have said, I often learn more from the comments stream than the article. I do make small monthly contributions to several web sites and organizations, and adding one to help out this blog would not be an issue, so off to paypal and figure out how to set it up for WUWT.
BTW, I do have a personal wordpress site–just don’t add to it very often. Guess as I age, I have less and less to say about more and more