In the last two weeks, WUWT changed the cloud service it was hosted on, and made significant changes to the way comments are handled using the new WpDiscuz commenting system, while allowed editing, comment up/down voting and many other features.
I also made a big change to the Tips and Notes page, so that it doesn’t get bogged down and need to be purged periodically..
The process of change has not been without hiccups. But, I believe they are mostly solved now.
Just a couple of caveats before the discussion.
- I can’t move the posiion of the main comment form, currently at the top of comments. The software was designed that way and people asking on the WpDiscuz support forum have also made the same request.
I can’t current make the text in nested comments the same size as the main comments. Perhaps in the future with some CSS tweaking it can be done. I’m not a CSS expert.See update below.
Comments suggestions, what ifs and polite complaints are welcome.
UPDATE: Based on feedback in this thread, I’ve disabled the “read more” comment button. Comments will load in full now.
UPDATE 2: In case you don’t know, inline image embedding works, but ONLY if you use https, not http in the URL.
UPDATE3: The differing text size between top level and threaded comments has been fixed. My thanks to Eric Worrall
UPDATE4: I added a plugin that provides a comments search next to the very top comment box. Helpful on large threads.
6/11 10AM – I had to remove it, as it was being exploited and slowed the entire system down.
UPDATE5: 04/11/18 I added another plugin, this one designed to handle YouTube and image embedding, as well as allow for direct uploads of images, audio, and video files in comments using the new icons that now appear in the comment box.
UPDATE6 BY WILLIS: I’m overjoyed to announce that Anthony has fixed the problem with the formatting on all of the previous posts. They display correctly now, so I’m able to recommend WUWT once again without reservation. Please ignore my comment below, the issue has totally gone away. My thanks to Anthony for his usual dedication to detail and his unwavering support of the blog. Well done, my friend.
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I like it (a lot). The ability to edit comments is great (I don’t always get it right the first go-round!)
Yes. The ability to edit comments is great.
But no-one will know I think that as this comment will be in micro-text (as a reply) and thus ignored.
And why do I have to delete text from a blank form in order to write a comment?
The replies are smaller but not so small that they are hard to read. I think the benefit is that we seem to be getting an extra layer of threaded comments.
I don’t have to delete text from the blank form. It disappears when I start typing. Maybe it’s your browser.
Boy do I ever like the editing feature! I find so many errors after I hit ‘Post’.
The other thing I like is ‘read more’. It makes it much easier to follow a thread. Some folks, me included, write very long comments that disrupt the visual flow. In that light, if/when graphics come back it would be nice if they were restricted in size for the same reason.
The downside of ‘read more’ is that it kills links and block quotes. It makes it hard to read the text that does appear unless you click on ‘read more’.
I find the text small and the font used is also a bit weedy and faint. I see the read more aspect has been removed, thank goodness.
I am sure we will get used to it and understand why the changes were made
Tonyb
In Mozilla, I just zoom he text size up or down.
You can change the fonts your browser uses. You can set your own fonts and you can make those take precedence over what the web site specifies.
Usually I provide a link but there are so many different sets of instructions for different versions of different browsers … Google is your friend.
Preferences / Content / Fonts and Colors or some variation thereof
Thanks for the comments but that would mean I had to change the font and size every time I visit here, whereas on every other web site I am perfectly happy with what is served up.
As I say, I am sure I will get used to it but I don’t think the site has the presence and sheer boldness it had before, through the use of the current default font and text.
tonyb
I’ve wondered, does your post show up as soon as you post it, or does it wait until the edit feature times out?
It seems to load faster to me. Ability to edit comments is a big improvement too.
The big costs, though, are
1. Comments are not only shown truncated, but with formatting removed
2. Only a subset are shown; you have to load more. That means searching doesn’t work until you do that.
Nick, “Read More” has been removed..
Good news!
Anthony,
Thanks for all your work on this. My comment would be to not have to click on read more in order to see the complete reply to a post. It’s easier and less annoying if it’s all there and we can just keep on scrolling.
pbh
Agree. Let us see the whole post.
Agree .
Also agree. On this kind of site the longer, more thought out posts are usually the ones most worth reading.
No matter what:
“illegitimus non carborundum”
Well, I found a plausible translation at
https://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Illegitimi_non_carborundum
Stilwell lives! Don’t let the bastards grind you down!
Before:
Best climate skeptic website in the world.
After:
Best climate skeptic website in the world.
My only suggestion is to change the name of the website to
Watt Up With That,
which I believe will attract
a more diverse audience.
Am I allowed to say that?
Ey Yo Watt Up Wit Dat, Mann?
Watt Up Wi Dat for a more urban edge.
Watt The Hell’s Up With Your Dinialism for a more alarmist edge.
Watt’s In It For Me for a more grant-seekery edge.
Watt Am I Doing Here for a more existential edge.
Watt Is My Gender for a more trans-sexual edge.
… and so many other possibilities.
Perhaps you wish to edit this and delete the word “skeptic”?
I disagree. That would only encourage less literate replies.
Like, wot like?
Richard Greene : Shame on you “ROBIN HOOD” !!!!!!!!!!
“Watt Up With That,”
YOU HAVE JUST DISPOSSESSED THE MAN OF HIS Website !
IT IS CALLED ” Watts ” FOR A GOOD REASON.
( and NO……it’s not named after the “steam engine” man ! )
Trevor:
You desperately need the edit feature
to delete your bad jokes (all of them).
Or stop drinking before posting.
.
I refuse to use the edit feature —
editing is for weenies,
not real men.
.
My own jokes are high quality …
as long as I first tell people
“I’m going to tell a joke”,
and then conclude with:
“I just told a joke”.
.
Anyone who equates “Richard Greene”
with Robin Hood must be old,
and possibly British.
Thank you for not taking life
too seriously.
Really like the new look. Up or down voting is a plus. No more annoying Amazon lucky spinning wheel pop up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE-Nyt4Bmi8
videos still not working?
OK – what about this
I like it…..took some getting used to…..thanks Anthony for listening to my whining! LOL
Here’s a good place for this….something you will never see in the news
…what winning really looks like
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/g7-1024×851.jpeg
Oh, look!
A President!
Not a resident.
There are two more pictures that just have to go with that one….
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/06/09/15/4D144D2E00000578-5823853-image-a-39_1528555865438.jpg
http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/embed-lg/public/2018/06/07/justin-trudeau-donald-trump.jpg
This image doesn’t load, and clicking on it gives a blank page that loads forever.
And Anthony: it’s annoying to have to retype name and address for each comment. They used to auto-fill. Not anymore.
2222222Mine loaded up on their own.
But those numbers didn’t go away on their own. Will remember that.
Which nbr’s did not go away?
jd…that image was on Newsweek….looks like they took it down because so many people were making fun of Trudeau
Try this one…almost the same image of Trudeau man speading
http://canada.autonews.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/storyimage/CA/20180527/CANADA/180529779/AR/0/AR-180529779.jpg
nope that one didn’t work either…..never mind
The owner of canada.autonews.com has configured their web site improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this web site.
LOL
How’d you do that??….LOL
test
..we have lift off Houston
The difference is https:// instead of http://
If the site is http and you type https, something somewhere checks the site’s non-existent security certificate and says evil deceptive site and doesn’t post the picture.
WUWT needs to allow http images to post.
yep…figured that out
The same moment, from a different perspective – FORMING a different perspective!
The body language of Merkel and Trudeau (pleading, arguing) against Japan’s Abe and America’s Trump card (not buying the sales pressure pitch!).
Actually Trudeau is out of the photo behind Trump. The person pleading, arguing is Macron. I love how Abe is mirroring Trump.
Note how Bolton is the one talking.
Reminds me of the scene in the Khan Star Trek episode where Spock argues with Khan while Kirk sits back and observes for weaknesses…
I think he is saying “I am not your bank anymore. Get out of my basement and stand on your own damned feet.”
And, a few minutes later, Trump is instructing Merkel, Abe – and everyone else! – is listening carefully.
Postures change, and the photographs selected from the hundreds available are always very instructive. ( Perhaps Merkel can no longer hear well?)
Put it in perspective – Merkel’s native language is German, her second language is Russian. Here she has to make sense of infantile blustering in English… Now imagine Trump listening to Kim Il Jung ranting in Korean – how brilliant would he look then?
BTW – I like the idea of being able to edit posts, I hate have to click “read more”. I do find the layout less readable aside from that.
“Here she has to make sense of infantile blustering in English”
Trump is *so* underestimated. 🙂
Haven’t seen the “edit button” yet. What does it look like, and when and for how long does it appear? I would have liked to correct my blooper above (replacing “Il Jung” with ” Jong-un”.
More disturbing in my experience of the new website is the glacial pace of connection. My browser is often in danger of timing out … Am I the only one with this experience? I access the forum by clicking on the link for the article displayed in my gmail feed.
OK, I’ve now seen the word “edit” and it seems to work (although not on the first try, that only invited me to “add to the flow”. Second try worked.
On the glacial subject, I’ve also found downloading the page (I like to keep a copy of the discussions I post to) just as slow. I believe this page took more than a minute to download 700KB, on on previous attempts to save a page, the browser timed out.
I think it’s amazing…….the EU is trying so hard to give us something that’s good for us…and can’t understand why we don’t want it
snark
It should be obvious to everyone….who benefits from these tariffs
Im happy. but I really want to know more about the attacks that led to the move. just idle curiosity
I didn’t realize that you could edit. Time Stamp next to the name would be nice. And the “Read More” link isn’t a user friendly feature.
I haven’t tried to post an image or link yet, I assume I can do both if I work at figuring out how it’s done.
I”m going to click “Post Comment” now and look for the edit button.
Oh! How nice. Let’s try an image
http://oi68.tinypic.com/wck4lc.jpg
and a link:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
Maybe HTML will work for an image:
didn’t work – so I (we) need to know how to post images (-:
Maybe it only works for photo images.
I believe WordPress requires the image file_id end with a recognized 3-character image file type: .gif, .jpg, .img, etc
Subscribe section is not working.
I think it’s just fine. Agree with the comment about would rather not need to click to see an entire longer comment but that’s no biggie.
It is all good.
Just need to figure out the work-arounds.
Anything that slows down my commenting might be considered a feature 🙂
It might be useful to have a second category of ‘Recent Posts’ for longer term items that are important/serious but which don’t get enough hits to keep near the top of the page? Perhaps a link to ‘Important major stories’ or similar?
It is nice. I wonder if the total number of likes and not likes on a post could be kept track of instead of the net amount?
Hello Anthony. Works for me, no complaints. I like the fact you can edit a comment to correct mistakes and typos.
The biggest irritation for me is the location of the name of the poster. Is it above the comment or below? It is not obvious. I’m sure I will start remembering after a while, but it seems certain to confuse many less-regular visitors and lead to comments being directed at the wrong person. Internet discussions being what they are, the resultant misunderstandings seem likely to lead to more unnecessary disagreements and arguments.
More trivially, I’ve had continuing non-appearance of comments after they have been successfully submitted: they only appear when I come back later. Sometimes hours later. This seems to happen on different machines, both using Windows, but using both Chrome and Firefox browsers. The problem may have settled down now, but I can’t say for sure because I’ve stopped visiting as often to see if they posted successfully.
It would be nice to place the grey line above the name but I don’t think Anthony has control of that.
I have to say overall this is the best climate site.
I like it. I am still trying to figure out the function buttons below the comment box. Much more feature rich for certain. Thanks for doing what you do Anthony.
First, thanks for the many efforts to improve.
Second, to nitpick (and I know you said you can’t change some things, but no nitpicking is complete without everything included, so don’t think I ignored what was said in that regard):
(1) I still cannot get an image from my drop box to post and embed — the URL prefix is automatically https– I’ve tried using the whole extension of a drop box link — I tried cutting off the end so that only .jpg would be there — I’ve tried the trick where you replace the end of the extension with raw=1 — I’ve tried using image tags with all the above variations — and still the image just won’t post and embed.
(2) The blockquote text is a wimpy size — I mean, what’s the point of creating that nice color rectangle to highlight text, when the text size itself within the rectangle has been DIMINISHED?
(3) Yeah, the order-of-posting thing that you cannot do anything about.
(4) Yeah, the font size of embedded comments thing that you cannot do anything about.
(5) Loving the edit feature, where I can post a draft, see the screw ups IN the draft AFTER actually posting it, and then being able to kick myself to make it right. Looks like there’s a limit of three tries, before you can’t edit anymore — is that correct?
Okay, that’s it for now.
Nevermind, you tried that https item. Comment redacted 😉
Edit, However you might try opening the image in a browser so it is full screen and try that link or right click and open image in new tab?
Why won’t my image embed?
Here’s the reason: A lot of these “images” are not actually images – i.e., they are really links to web pages, not a specific file. Try whatever your browser has for “open link in new window/tab” on Robert’s “comment image” above. You end up on a web page that drags in a whole bunch of other things, not just a JPEG file. Which WordPress (rightly) rejects – that is a very big security hole.
Your url *looks* to be OK, but in practice it is specifying a whole DropBox page. that sort of thing will never display. You need a clean url straight to the .jpg itself, and not a web page generated by the hosting website. I looked around that page but I did not find any way to grab the clean .jpg url. Usually there is a “share” button or something similar for this purpose, but I did not see one.
Anybody handy with DropBox want to jump in?
I used to use TinyPic but that one dropped dead for a while, although it seems OK now. But others are having trouble with it.
I currently use PostImage, and it is working well. Postimage apparently had some hosting problems a while back, and after that the urls changed. All my saved links to my images were broken, but with a little thought and url editing they were recoverable.
PostImage now seems to be working fine, so no problem.
If you use PostImage, upload your graph, then hit the “share” button, and copy the direct url to the .jpg
Dropbox hides all that. only way is to copy image somewhere else and post a link to that..
TonyL – June 9, 2018 7:05 pm
Tony, and others, ….. I don’t know about DropBoxes, ….. but ….
Sometimes, and I say sometimes, iffen you place your “cursor” on the “image” that is imbedded in/on the per se DropBox “site” and the cursor “arrow” turns to a “pointing finger”, ….. then “click-it” and the image will upload and then you can copy its “url” (direct link).
Recent changes to Google “Images” has made it tuff to copy “image links” for posting on other sites.
Tried exactly that while investigating DropBox. That capability is *not* available there.
Yep, can’t load that as it has additional baggage from drop box. It is not an image there, just a file you use their service to view. Try uploading the item to an image hosting service and it will work. I don’t use many, but Imgur works for me. Good Luck.
est
Well, crap, … I’m dead in the water, as far as images go. No more pics from me, I guess.
Hi, I need help! Does anyone know where to get data on variations in the earths received gravitational field due to the orbits of all the planets our moon and sun? It seems to me possible that an increase in received gravity could drive an increase in the thermohaline circulation and low cloud formation due to this affect – http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~thompson/161/tidalbulge.gif. ie an increase in the vector of the force of gravity from the poles to the earths center. This could make no sense as my knowledge of physics is from a LONG time ago! Any help/ comment appreciated
The above is the sort of comment that would benefit from appearing in the Tips & Notes section, if only it still allowed such comments to be visible to all.
check out this clip? anyone any idea if its correct? https://www.sciencealert.com/watch-here-s-what-physics-teachers-get-wrong-about-tides
Anthony(!), i recall once that you mentioned that you were going to find a way to keep relatively important posts at the top of the page for a longer time. Any chance that you might still do that? It’s a shame that some of these technical posts that your contributors work so diligently on disappear so quickly. (hate to see such wonderful posts getting the same billing as a post about bill nye’s ties)…
I voted “It’s mostly OK, some niggles remain.”
How many of the “niggles” are inherent to the new system or to where I am on the learning curve of its ins and outs, I don’t know.
It’s a big improvement.
A “Help” or “What’s New” with would be good. (At least some tips such as “click on the “Read more” if it appears at the end of a comment.)
How many people can’t deduce that “Read more” is meant to be clicked on?
I expect there will be big changes to my Guide (and on the Test page ) once things settle down. See the nav bars. Click on the buttons. 🙂
😎 I meant to click on “Read more” to see the proper formatting for that comment.
(Of course since UPDATE 1 says “Read more” has been disabled, not a problem anymore.)
Two little issues: (1) the way sub-comments get smaller font, and (2) how the information above and below a comment takes up too much space overall, using too big font too.
I see no entries in Tips and Notes
Yes, just a submission form. The old way they all went on the page, and as they accumulated, the page loaded slower and slower, and for some never finished. This new submission form solves that.
But it’s pleasant to read what others have posted, especially since some of them call for a response containing links to further information. If there were a way for the system to somehow purge all three-months-old material at the start of each month, the need to manually purge would no longer exist, nor would long loading times. But I suppose this new “skin” doesn’t allow such micro-level control.
The (non-Anthony) WUWT page on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/groups/wattsupwiththat/ could be commandeered as a Tips & Notes repository.