Recently, this blog passed a few milestones that I thought would be worth sharing with readers. For all of our critics and the vitriol all they throw our way, I challenge any of them to find a climate related blog that even comes close to the level of readership we enjoy here. We recently passed 300 million views and 2 million approved comments (more on that later).Here are screen grabs from the WUWT dashboard showing the numbers:
We also recently passed 40,000 email subscribers.
Given these events, I thought it might be time to refresh some of our readers on the most contentious part of operating this blog and that is the comments section. One of the downsides of being number one is that you’re also the biggest target. And being the biggest target we have a plethora of “anonymous cowards” who try to post comments here that are either wildly off-topic, inappropriate, angry, hateful, or otherwise uncivil. Some of the serial offenders use fake IDs, fake e-mail addresses, and even fake IP addresses to try to get their unwelcome point of view or hate-mongering across.
Because of that I’ve had to implement a strong filter to catch a lot of these people so that such inappropriate comments are not published. Occasionally some get through but fortunately readers tend to point them out and they get deleted by moderators or myself because they don’t adhere to site policy. This would be a good opportunity for all readers to review the site policy which you can view here.
Some of our critics say that we should allow for some of the other points of view to be discussed here such as barycentrism, atmospheric pressure theories, chemtrails, electric universe, geo-engineering theories, etc. etc. etc. In the earlier days we did some of that, and quite frankly a lot of that stuff proved to be nothing more than nonsense, and turned into food fights in the comment section. Been there, done that, not going to do it again. There are other venues and blogs to discuss those things, feel free to go there but don’t ask for them to be discussed here or make comments about those topics. They will be deleted. I don’t allow those topics here for the same reason I don’t share my home with a honey-badger; it’s not productive, it’s noisy, and somebody gets hurt in the end. And like a honey-badger meme, I just don’t care. 😉
For those of you that have wondered why some comments may disappear that contain what you seem to think are very innocuous words, this is the reason; some of the most persistent fake commenters use particular word combinations or phrases that are part of their writing style that we have identified, and sometimes regular commenters fall into that trap accidentally. Bear in mind that each comment is reviewed and if it meets the site policy it will be published. Occasionally there are some comments that may not fit into the categories defined by the site policy but don’t get published. That’s why we have a clause for “on an event basis” to cover such instances. There’s no need to e-mail us to say my comment disappeared! We will find it and recover it if it meets site policy, if you don’t see it after a few hours, you can consider it out of bound for site policy.
There is also no need to keep posting the same identical comment dozens of times hoping that if you just keep trying it will somehow get through. All that does is just create extra work for the moderation staff to clean out duplicate comments. Speaking of extra work, we cannot move comments between threads if you somehow accidentally commented on the wrong thread, and generally we don’t have time to edit people’s comments when they request such things. It would be better if you would just post a new comment directly below it saying the previous comment had an error and fix it, or just simply repost the appropriate comment in the appropriate thread.
Some of our critics say that we should publish all comments because otherwise we’re engaging in censorship. To that I say, bollocks. We wouldn’t have reached 2 million comments in my opinion if this blog allowed a Wild West policy for commentators, and I think the success speaks for itself in the numbers. I challenge any other blog that covers climate to show me their numbers.
I’d also like to make a note about e-mail subscribers. We don’t have a management tool for e-mail subscribers because the entire system is run by WordPress.com and it is designed to be self maintaining by the end-user. Therefore if you want to unsubscribe you have to do that yourself. Each e-mail that comes from each blog post contains a link that will allow you to unsubscribe if you look carefully.
Finally, I’d like to mention that occasionally some of the ads here cause some readers problems due to the ads injecting inappropriate code or badly formed code. Over the past year I have worked very closely with WordPress.com to help them weed out some of the advertisers that have done stupid things with their ads like injecting code that causes the scrolling the jump right back to the ad every 5 seconds. Largely as a result of complaints from our readers about these problems and due to the efforts I put into troubleshooting and relaying the information to WordPress.com staff, I’m happy to announce that about two months ago they implemented a “predatory code filter” that weeds out these kinds of advertiser tricks. I’m happy to report that since this has been done the number of complaints I received has dropped to near zero.
That said, I still occasionally get complaints from readers about pages being slow or pages not loading completely, etc. a lot of this has to do with browsers and the state of the computer hosting their web browser. I have noted a common theme in many complaints like this which is: fear of upgrade. The Internet is an evolving animal and if you don’t keep your web browser updated and most importantly your computer updated you may find that you get left behind at the back of the herd. For those that are interested, I consider the best browser for viewing this website is Chrome with at least 4 GB of memory and processor that’s running at least 1.5 GHz. About two years ago Firefox was my browser of choice but it had become buggy and unstable and I abandoned it. If you are still using Firefox you might want to consider downloading Chrome for a better experience.
As always, I thank you the reader for making the success of WUWT possible. I also thank the many moderators and guest contributors that keep this blog running smoothly and make the wide variety of content available here.
My best regards to all – Anthony Watts
[note: about 10 minutes after publication, a number of typos were corrected that came from voice recognition dictation imperfections]
I assiduously pass-on many of WUWT’s threads to my Alarmist friends, and got this reply today:
“Thanks for your many missives from Watts Up etc, I tend to skim read most of them so your effort isn’t wasted although some of the writing leaves much to be desired and sometimes seems to be an ego trip on the part of the authors.”
To which I replied:
…. I’d guess the “ego trip on the part of the authors” (struggling to be heard in an adversary environment of the Alarmists’ making) is no less than many of the Alarmists’ themselves , trumpeting how RIGHT they are.
Give ’em a break, Simon …. many are experts in their respective fields. JUst because they don’t preach from the Orthodox Bible is not to say that they don’t have valid & valuable input to The Science (hitherto disparaged by association witht he Skeptics) leading us to Understandings about Climate that we might never have otherwise got. The fact that you think they may have to shout louder than you’d prefer is more an indictment of the audience’s unwillingness to listen, than of the deliverer.
Remember that Galileo was RIGHT and the Orthodoxy WRONG!”
Anthony
I have been reading WUWT for almost (but not quite) 10 years. It has been one hell of an education. Thank you very much for all your efforts.
Anthony, WUWT is a shining light of how the internet CAN bring valuable information to people. And it is spirited information, due to the diverse but intelligent cadre (Yes, there are exceptions!) of individuals who come here. Unless I have something specific in mind, WUWT is always my first stop on the web.
You, the mods, the contributors, the commenters are all part of a vigorous, smart, determined group of individuals who marvel at the interesting things Nature throws our way and want to understand how it all works. We’ve all learned a lot here from each other. Thanks to all!
Like everyone says, everyone is a critic. 😉
Thank you everyone for making and keeping WUWT the coolest, best blog on the the Intertubes. I visit here every day and read every post.
Thanks Anthony, it has been a daily or more often read for me for many years.
Glad to see that Griff has also recognized your contributions to the science of climate with his steady readership and commentary.
“…find a climate related blog that even comes close to the level of readership we enjoy here.”
Anthony, “readership is the fruits of leadership” in the blogosphere.
Bravo on that, you continue to excellently accomplished what you long ago set out to do.
What an egregious display of ego!
Some people have earned the right to such a display – Anthony and his aides being a prime example.
Congratulations, Sirs! And Madams, as the case may be!
(One note – nobody using Firefox should panic at the last bit. They had a period of instability a couple of years ago, which is now fixed. I use it every day with no problems whatsoever. Originating with Firefox, that is – WordPress is a different beast…)
WordPress works fine for me in Chrome or Firefox. Microsoft keeps claiming that Edge is safer, has anybody migrated to it that could give an opinion?
I use Firefox and Chrome with no problems loading WUWT. Indeed, WUWT is one of the fastest-loading sites I visit. Very rarely a problem.
Without WUWT the climate debate would have been much less balanced and open. You have opened a door that has allowed thousand of other voices to speak and be heard.
Boy, that’s for sure, CMS. As one of the voices Anthony has allowed, I am, and will be, grateful to my death.
Thanks, Anthony and staff for all your work! This site will ultimately, I hope, become a priceless evidence locker for History of Climate Science and Policy.
i too forsook {a word?} Firefox for Chrome about three years ago because it was and unstable. Fully deleting addons and reinstalling essentials or entire browser didnt help. And then the employees booted out a founding genius for one political statement.
Now I am back with Firefox (new version) because Chrome has become buggy and unstable.
And the last thing I want to spend time doing is maintaining a browser.
Visit everyday, get all excited when the topics are really good, sometimes stay way too long (Climatgate, Gleick). Anthony you are like a trusted dentist–no concern just do what you think is right.
I was in a bar not long ago with a full mini of beer and a basket of wings. An IT guy I had seen before sat down to join me and after chatting hockey for a few minutes asked me if I ever heard of the electric universe….long night pour moi, thank God I had beer!
I’ll understand if comment isn’t posted!!
polski,
My wife had open heart valve replacement and an implanted defibrillator.
I spent long nights learning about how the electric heart works.
Thank God I had beer! I still kept up here at WUWT, though.
What a journey! A long way from “screeching mercury monkeys”.
Congrats to Anthony Watts for his work, even if we disagree on various points.
A hint concerning Firefox: many problems might be due to the ad blockers! I have no problem at all when using it on WordPress-based blogs like WUWT or Clim etc, but I never could manage to enter comments at Nick’s blog (based on Google ware), and thus use Chrome there instead.
How great is it to have a blog owner take the time to explain, in detail, every thing that’s going on to the people that post!!
Thank you Anthony…..is goes without saying, it’s not the subject….as much as it is you
..and it’s you that’s make WUWT what it is
“I wonder…,” thought Anthony Watts. Little did he know where the path ahead would lead him. He was simply following in the steps of all genuine scientists. Gathering data. Testing. It was hard work. Watts felt it was worth it. Basic science always is.
Before long, thunderclouds gathered and the road (literally, at times!) became rough and steep. And Watts had a choice to make. Keep going….. or stop the work. He kept on going.
Thucydides
Logging hour after hour at his PC, moderating WUWT (aarrrrrrrgh!!!!!! 🙂 ),
spending hour after hour patiently explaining the facts via video
and from the lecturn
http://climatechangenationalforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Mr.-Anthony-Watts-at-a-conference-by-the-notorious-Heartland-Institute..jpg ….
and driving and driving and driving, and flying across the country, even across the Atlantic Ocean,
the valiant warrior for science truth just kept on going. In spite of scorn and abuse, in spite of a severe hearing impairment, in spite of bone weary fatigue, he kept going.
And, as others have said, Anthony Watts’ labor has not been in vain: the envirostalinists are fighting a flaylingly desperate war of attrition. Thanks to WUWT and many other climate blogs, e.g., Pierre Gosselin’s and EIKE, Truth now controls the battlefield (that it does not control the reporting of that battle does not change that fact).
Thanks, Anthony. The world owes you.
Dear Moderator, my comment at 12:58pm, in moderation at this moment, has photos — not one of which materialized in the moderation preview above — I tested most of them on the test thread and they should WORK. Please, if you can, make the images above in my 12:58pm comment appear — thank you!
Janice
Janice, Asking for a comment to be fished out of moderation…
Isn’t that exactly what was asked for us not to do?
M Courtney:
1. I did not ask for my comment to be fished out of moderation. I asked the mod to be sure that the images appeared.
2. Why say anything to me about it, even so? Is that not Anthony’s job?
MCourtney –
“Isn’t that exactly what was asked for us not to do?”
Yes, exactly what was asked for us not to do.
Janice, occam’s razor – decision between
bad – senza una Donna
OR
better – senza una Donna.
[‘Tis always better to “Senza una Donna” than “Censor dos Donnas, true? .mod]
coward [.mod]
never stop to be aware of
https://youtu.be/Cv6tuzHUuuk
Well done and many thanks, Anthony.
I agree with all you say but suggest two, minor, blog improvements that might be considered:-
1. A comment rating a la Jo Nova.
2. The ability to edit a comment: no-one is perfect so typos sometimes slip through and a simple edit is much better than another comment.
Keep up the good work!
My understanding is that the blog service being used doesn’t support editing.
Congratulations on the milestones and thank you very much for going to the effort to run this site, especially knowing what it costs your personally. Also, to your good self and the tireless moderators, thanks for the efforts to keep it civil; I have visited a few ‘wild west’ gullible warming blogs and quite frankly, the reasons for their lack of sustained readership become all the more obvious when compared to WUWT.
You da man! (which is infinitely better than being da Mann 😉
Congratulations Anthony and the moderators for all the hard work to maintain this blog for my multiple per day reads, always hoping there is new food for thoughts, which is often the case.
As occasional contributor and many times commenter, it is one of the highlights of my life!
F.E. (contributor and commenter),
Yes, and thanks for those.
May I say It’s informed comments from people such as yourself that make me come back every day!
Congratulations!!! More power to your elbow!!’
I stop by at least a nice a day to see what is new.
A truly great blog.
I would urge a very liberal comment policy, even if that means a moderate amount of cr@p. Other sites don’t allow skeptics to post or allow free exchange of ideas. I dismiss them immediately as mere propaganda blogs.
Some trolls and troublemakers must be cleaned up but you must be careful not to edit out those with different views.
I love our trolls. Without them there would be no conflict, except among ourselves.
I refuse to join any organization that would have me as a member!
Yes , Anthony . WUWT is an historic facilitator of science at WWW speed with instantaneous peer review by some truly great peers .
I even appreciate your description of your hearing problems and Stryker’s technology because I have an ear which rarely works . I’ve thought of an in-the-ear aid with the entire frequency_x_amplitude space tunable from your “phone” as an example of an extreme project for which CoSy would be competitive .
But I will continue to argue for constructing a quantitative computable physical “audit” trail from the energy impinging on a planet to its surface temperature .
So far , I have not seen the equations , which should easily fit on one page , which explain how some electromagnetic phenomenon “traps” heat in excess of its “radiative balance” temperature determined by it spectra and its sources’ .spectra . I would expect such a summary in introductions to any other branch of applied physics , eg : semiconductors .
I will continue to press to simply computably understand the differential you plug into your Navier Stokes style voxel in your model , nothing more complicated . Because mapping that over a sphere is rather trivial in an APL .
Particularly given that gap in the computations , to rule the other macroscopic force and energy , gravity , out of the discussion and thus out of the equations itself leaves a gap .
I know in practice , despite your listing of taboo subjects above , you do not filter rational discussions which include discussions of the implied taboo parameters . And that is a strength of WUWT . It is the most general discussion seeking to pin down that “audit trail” .
A most worthy accomplishment .
Brilliant thought leadership Anthony. Worthy of a Nobel Prize.
Far more than the IPCC and Al Gore in 2007 – the peace prize no less! And Obama in 2009,
Great work Anthony and team
Surely the WUWT Archives are a Treasure-Trove of:
1. Criticism of and challenges to the Received Wisdom, as perceived by the Alarmists and their acolytes.
2. Alternative ‘constructions’ of supposedly argument-winning adducings by the Alarmist camp.
3. Alternative conclusions based on the biased analyses of set(s) of data by the Alarmist camp.
4. Criticism of analytical modelling algorithms & conclusions therefrom.
5. *New*, hitherto ignored/rejected data that refuse(d) to confirm neatly the Construct of the Received Wisdom, carefully nurtured by those with a financial interest in the furtherance of the Gospel of Received Wisdom (scripted by them!)
6. Ditto, ‘Inconvenient Scientific Postulates; e.g., Solar Cycles, planetary influences, geo-magnetic influences on energy-flux, paleo-cliumatic studies & trends, etc., ) that tended to oppose the Papal Diktats emanting from the proponents of Global Warming Alarmism …. remember Galileo?!)
7. What have I missed in WUWT’s repository of “heretical thinking”
Wdn’t it be nice to catalog this stuff and release it for further analysis & writings : “Look, we told you so, and you brain-washed & blinkere — and those morons who chose to believe you — all chose to ignore it and throw money and government policy in the direction of incomplete Scientific endeavour (if not outright fallacious & self-serving for its protagonists)!
I agree, Ross. Everything that has been posted on this site since its launch should be maintains as an historic record in the hope that it may short cut the fight against a similar folly or tulip mania in the future. Alternatively, ala Monty Python, you could hit them with the book, just there!
Dear John:
I appreciate yr response, .
One of my fave books Is ” Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds”, published — what — 150 years ago, but nonetheless just as applicable today to the ‘lemming-like’ propensity of homo-sapiens to get carried-away on a tsunami of ‘group-think’. Anyone who hasn’t read it — go get it and read it!
Beats me why we collectively have such wisdom as this and the Galileo saga to-hand but seem incapble of learning from such instances.
Thank-God for bold folks such as Anthony to stick his neck out and challenge (or be the repository of challenges) for pervasive Group-Think in and of itself.
And here we are, in a post-modern environment of ‘Post-Truth-Society’, ‘Fake News” (– as a strategem in the political & media biz.!)
WTF has happened to what I call: “Intellectual Honesty” … a personal measue for each and every one of us to consider as we try to get to sleep at night?
Unfortunately, the first 1500 or so WUWT threads haven’t been tagged and so don’t turn up when looking tags up in the categories list.
Congratulations Anthony. You and the crew maintain an excellent site here I’ve watched the site morph into one of the top sites on the web so thanks to all those involved.
tks anthony your site has helped me a lot well done
Thanks, Anthony! You make a major positive contribution to the world.