- JoNova - https://www.joannenova.com.au -

Guide for commenting

First time posters: If you are polite, non repetitive, and genuinely interested in the topic, we’d love to hear from you, especially if you have a different view. All open minded, genuine comments and questions are welcome. (And no, you don’t need to read this page,  just type something in the comment box…)

Quickstart for beginners:

  1. Scroll to the bottom of most pages OR Click the word “REPLY” under the name of the person you want to reply too.
  2. Fill in your name (or pseudonym) and leave a real email – which we won’t publish, but may use to get in touch with you if we need to.
  3. Write a polite comment in the big blank box
  4. If you want emails of all comments on that thread to go to you, tick the box next to this at the bottom of the comment field: ” .” Be aware you may get 200 emails.
  5. Click “POST Comment”

1We welcome your comments and ask for:

Politeness (please) 😉

If your comment disappears, email support AT joannenova.com.au, and ask the brilliant helpful volunteer moderators fish your comment out of the spam filter.

 

Intermediate Guide

How to lose the right to post comments here:

Repeated failures of logic (ad homs, argument from authority) and a dishonest tactic of demanding answers to your questions without providing answers to ours, will get you on the moderated list sooner or later. The fastest way to lose your freedom to comment, is with ad hominem arguments.

FAQ

  1. I don’t like the monster face! How do I put a better image next to my comment?    (See Gravatars)
  2. How do I report an offensive comment?    Email support AT joannenova.com.au (Replace the “AT” with “@”).

AD homine…

On this page:

FAQ Comment Buttons │  Code

Like & Dislike buttonsWho  reads this blog?

Numbered pointsLinksQuotes Images

Your picture or icon (Gravatar)

Privacy

 


 

Comments

Think of comments as being a book club or a town hall. If you wouldn’t say that to someone’s face in a packed room, – is it worth saying at all?

Like a book club, if a person is superficially polite but dominates discussion, persistently pushes their view, doesn’t read the posts, and interrupts boorishly, or goes off topic regularly, they will be uninvited. People who take up 10% of the conversation are held to higher standards than people who make one comment in one hundred. Repetition is rude. One polite line said 100 times is pollution.

1. Real names get respect. Real people post more carefully than anonymous pseudonyms (something to do with having friends, family and an employer maybe?). Anonymous comments that attack real people deserve to be razed.

2. Stay on topic at the top:  Please don’t post unrelated material at #1-#10 especially.

3. Short comments are better and faster to approve. 200 words is good. 400,”maybe”. Longer comments have to be really good.

4. Please don’t abuse the “reply” function to hijack a subthread with unrelated material. Those comments may be deleted, and all the replies will fall into deep space.

5. Vulgar obnoxious language may get stuck in the filter forever (unless it’s incredibly entertaining or illuminating. Mostly swearing isn’t.)

6. Quotes: please quote people carefully. Please keep these quotes short.  See the html code to do blockquotes.

Real names get more respect

7. Spelling. People who abuse spelling in order to get comments past the moderation filter do not impress us. The jargon like “Baxxine” and “clot shot” gets onerous to decode, and is unscientific.  “Death-shot” is not a medical term.

8. Punctuation matters. It’s banal, but it is easier to read, which is the point, yeah?

9. No advertising: People who post links without any content at all are assumed to be advertisers, not part of a conversation. People don’t sit at the book club and say h.t.t.p.s.backslash.backslash…  (but outside links are very welcome if they support a point).

10. No lists of links with no content. Anyone can google ‘a term’ and cut n paste 10 links. Please save us the time of reading a 3,000 word page to find one point.

11. Libel or Defamation: If you get attacked in an unfair way, or see something like this, please email me joanne AT Joannenova.com.au or support AT joannenova.com.au.

12. There is a helpful list of false arguments and fallacies to avoid here.

Top Commenters

Advanced Notes for regular commenters

How to use comments formatting buttons


I’ve put buttons on the comments box.

These are the buttons (subject to change) and what they do.

buttons for comments

  1. Write your comment, then highlight, say the word “bold” (or whatever) and click the “b” button. The button will add the code to make the word bold for you. This is what I do.
  2. If somehow you know in advance (I never do) what you want bolded before your type, you can click the button b then type bold, then click the button b (which will have changed to look like “/b” meaning it is waiting for you to finish the bold part you write.
  3. Test what is written by clicking PREVIEW (at the bottom) before you click “submit”.

These buttons insert the html code you can see below. I’m not 100% sure they work  for everyone so lets test them on this thread. To bold the word “bold” in this sentence you need code like this:

Make this word <b>bold</b>,  or  make this word  <em>bold</em>. (Both types of tags work).

That sentence will display as  “Make this word bold,  or make this word bold“. Instead of writing those tags in front and behind your comments, you can use the buttons to make it faster. There are two ways to use the buttons, or you can just hand-write code in as below (sure 😉 ).

Here’s what you see in the window except the code is not red (it would be useful if it was).

Image: Comment window

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Code to format comments

Layout, links and images make your comments easier to read and more informative. You can cut and paste these lines into your comments.

Numbered points code (generates numbers in a list automatically):

<ol>
<li>”point1″</li>
<li>”point 2″</li>
<li>”point 3″</li>
</ol>

Quotes: <blockquote> author: “quote here” </blockquote>

Images: <img src=”http://www.address_of_image” style=”width: 600px; height: 450px;”/>

Links: <a href=”….”> Link subject</a>

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To add a custom Gravatar (a picture or icon on your comments)

If you sign up here it all happens automatically. You need to use the same email address that you’ve used to post comments here and all the comments from that email will appear (inc retrospectively) with your photo.

Then you can log in to the Gravatar site and change the image any time you like. But be aware any other sites you post on that have gravatars will also display the photo. The gravatar site stores them for wide use.

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The Like & Dislike Buttons (Thumbs up and Thumbs down)

These buttons at the bottom of each comment record simple clicks of “approve” or “disapprove”. Please click “like” when someone writes something that really appeals to you, especially those commentors who have done research or written a particularly inspiring comment. It highlights the most useful comments, and also gives people some indication of how many people are reading the thread.

Please save the dislike button for comments that are rude, threatening, or illogical, not just for comments by people you may disagree with. It’s also very appropriate for “vaporware” comments that don’t add anything to the debate, especially if people make claims without backing anything up (and even more so when it’s a serial offender).

Thumbs Up Not working or greyed out for you?

It may be because the system recognises you as the author of the comment or if you have already voted.

The Thumbs up program tries to stop duplicate votes and to stop people from voting on their own comments.

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Who reads this site?

Around 12,000 people a day read the site from all over the world — that’s at least 160,000 unique visitors every month of the year.  It includes people who are Professors of University science faculties, doctors, some top ranking climate researchers, we have an ex-radiosonde (or rather, dropsonde) expert, high school teachers, farmers, geologists and people who are curious about science.

For first time posters: click here.

Think about whether you’d say it if they were in the same room.

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Privacy and Rules and Legal policies change from time to time (without warning).

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