Hey all—my name’s Lee, and I run the server side of Space City Weather (and The Eyewall, too!). Today we’re changing how comments work on both sites.
We’re moving from WordPress’ built-in commenting system to a new discussion platform called Discourse. The goal is to make it easier for us to moderate conversations, highlight thoughtful contributions, and cut down on off-topic noise. (For the longer version, see the “Start here: What is all this?! Answers within!” post on our new Discourse instance.)
What does this mean for everyone?
Starting today, instead of leaving comments directly beneath posts on SCW and The Eyewall, readers will follow a link to a dedicated discussion thread on our new Discourse forum. That thread will serve as the home for all conversation related to that day’s forecast post. The most recent replies from the thread—right now we’re showing 20, but that number might change—will automatically appear at the bottom of the forecast post, in the same place comments have always lived.
If you want to comment, follow the link down below that says either “Start the discussion…” or “Continue the discussion…”, which will take you directly to the daily post’s discussion thread. If you haven’t created an account yet, you’ll be prompted to sign up. Once you’re signed in, you can comment as usual!
It’s still early days here and we’ll be continually tuning how Discourse integrates with Space City Weather and The Eyewall. Some things might be slightly broken at first, but we’ll do our best to stomp on any issues as soon as they’re spotted. Voice any concerns in the Forum Feedback category on Discourse, and we’ll look into them.
Thanks for sticking with us, and whether you’re a newcomer or someone who’s been around long enough to know exactly when Katy should evacuate, welcome to the new commenting system!
I know our new commenting system may be a shock to the change-averse, but I bet you’ll come to like it. That’s because I’m a convert, after being dragged kicking/screaming to it on another site.
I’m a paying subscriber to Jared Newman’s Advisorator newsletter, and for a long time those who ponied up the bucks for his work got access to a community hosted on Slack, the popular collaboration/communication tool. I love Slack, so when Jared said he was adding a Discourse forum after his readers indicated they preferred that, I was annoyed. I was a pretty frequent contributor there (I also guest-write some newsletters when Jared takes time off) so I worried how the change would impact the community.
I needn’t have. It has been an excellent addition to the Advisorator community. Discourse - not to be confused with Discord, another popular forum platform – is very friendly and gives its users a lot of options. It also makes it much easier for moderators to ensure things stay civil and on-topic without being heavy handed. As Lee has mentioned before, trolls and sock puppets were becoming a problem on SCW and The Eyewall, and Discourse makes it easier to deal with them.
It also gives you abilities you’ve likely always wanted on the comments – formatting, links, even the ability to post images (which will come in handy during weather events!). I found I also posted more frequently there - to the point that I needed to consciously back off, it was addictive!
Anyway, please give this a try, take some time to explore the interface. Be sure and read Lee’s pinned posts, which serve as an excellent introduction to how things will work around here.
And as always, thanks for being a part of the SCW/Eyewall community.
(Also, apologies if anyone gets their very first post flagged as spam—I’m watching and will undo it immediately if it happens. We’re still tuning the automatic spam detection, and it’s particularly sensitive to a reader’s very first post!)
I didn’t see anything in the “Start Here” post about the 24-hour comment window. Is that a standard feature, and is it going to be the policy going forward? I had planned on making a super insightful comment on the Q&A post but it slipped my mind until today.
Obviously, everyone is devastated to be denied my observation that while the monthly temperature averages may not be lower this summer, there have been enough intermittent pleasant days that I have maintained a steady trickle of sweet 100s tomatoes since April compared with previous years where fruiting typically stops in early July. (For those who don’t know, tomato production declines at daytime temps above 85 degrees, and they will stop setting fruit entirely when temps exceed 95 degrees Fahrenheit.) With average nighttime lows increasing, it seems like might be more effective to compare the standard deviations or perhaps medians and first and third quartile values when comparing seasons between years in the future, as they might be more congruent with people’s lived experience.
For now, it’s going to be the policy because that’s how the Wordpress comment threads worked, but we’re totally open to change! The 24-hour limitation was primarily to prevent abuse and weird stuff cropping up in old threads that we wouldn’t see, and we’ve implemented it here simply in the interests of not changing too many things at once.
@eric and @Matt and @dwight are the ones who will make the call, ultimately, but we’re interested in doing what serves the community best. If you guys want threads to stay open longer (maybe 30 days?), now that we actually have some decent anti-spam tools, then that’s on the table!
We are still tinkering with the settings for comments, but we have a lot more flexibility. For now we probably will stick with a 24-hour period. And using standard deviations is an excellent suggestion.
Semi-happy to try this new comment process.