New Year, new blog software.
You’ll notice the new preview function for comments, the AddThis button for distributing our content to your favorite social media sites, and various updates to the plugins and functionality you won’t notice at all.
This is always a work in progress, so feel free to comment on the blog as a whole, anything we’re missing, things that work well (or don’t), and perhaps how we might organise content differently in ways that could be more effective. (Note that comments from other threads discussing these issues were moved here).
Thanks for sticking with us, and a happy new year to you all.
Unforced Variations and especially the Bore Hole are great.
Since a moved comment leaves behind no trace of where it went, newcomers may assume they got caught in spam filters or were censored. It might be nice to have a brief “Comment policy” somewhere that explains this, especially for newcomers who weren’t around for the discussion. I think it can be fairly simple, but Greenfyre’s Dunce Corner has some good thoughts as well.
[Response: There is: “Comment Policy” – gavin]
Pedantry: in the comment policy, it should be “hominem”, not “hominen”.
[Response: Indeed it should. – gavin]
re: #151
Oops, yes, but you might consider visibly putting it on the top menu.
What does it mean, if I click “Say it!” for my comment, & the comment (immediately) disappears altogether?
(Is it really gone? in moderation? if in moderation, should I see a “your comment is awaiting moderation” message?)
Bug report.
I submitted a comment, from the Popup window. It disappeared altogether.
I submitted another one, also from the Popup window, asking how I should interpret this disappearance (perhaps it was just awaiting moderation?) This one too disappeared altogether, along w/ appearance of a “you got the ReCaptcha wrong” message.
Dear RealClimate webmaster – if I get the ReCapcha wrong, please don’t punish me by deleting my entire comment thus (if I’ve forgotten to save it elsewhere) making me type it in anew.
xing my fingers…
Suggestions –
1. Have a standing link on the sidebar, to a “Suggestions” thread.
2. Also on the sidebar, endorse SkepticalScience as a resource for the layman. (Right now it’s in the list under “other opinions”, but the visitor’s not likely to take that as a ringing endorsement.)
Look at it from the newcomer’s perspective – here a bunch of us are recommending SkepticalScience as an all-purpose debunkery, but how is the newcomer to know that it’s a reputable and particularly valuable site – one which they *should* be checking first?
Right now, there are *no* cues that’d let them know that. But your site has cues, people can grasp that RealClimate’s a good resource since y’all are “Top Scientists”; so if you made it abundantly & blatantly obvious that SkepticalScience was part of your Network of Trust, it’d help considerably, and (I think) it’d be un-game-able by the antiscience game theorists.
Gavin, recaptcha are just making it harder to beat using OCR. The outlining appears to be a new distortion they have added recently.
I imagine it’s almost impossible to reverse an edge detection algorithm applied selectively. The human brain is quite clever that way.
[moved, OT]