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Author Topic: Thanks for setting up the forum  (Read 47955 times)

Juan C. García

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Re: Thanks for setting up the forum
« Reply #50 on: July 28, 2015, 02:38:54 PM »
for the first time, on July 2015 seems that it will reach the 1 million page views in one month!

You may want to check out July 2014.

congratulations for the great Forum success anyway

Woww! You are right. Seems that this year we will have a new record on July, but the 1 million mark was established last year.
Which is the best answer to Sep-2012 ASI lost (compared to 1979-2000)?
50% [NSIDC Extent] or
73% [PIOMAS Volume]

Volume is harder to measure than extent, but 3-dimensional space is real, 2D's hide ~50% thickness gone.
-> IPCC/NSIDC trends [based on extent] underestimate the real speed of ASI lost.

crandles

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Re: Thanks for setting up the forum
« Reply #51 on: July 29, 2015, 04:20:44 PM »
Yep, Now reached a new record with more than 2 days spare:

Page views:
July 15 1038947 on 29th July 2015
July 14 1038032

A-Team

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Re: Thanks for setting up the forum
« Reply #52 on: November 08, 2015, 08:11:43 PM »
Per suggestion of Neven, I have moved my posts on forum visitation promotion over here.


Reply #1123 on: November 07, 2015, 03:07:23 PM »

Quote
other channels are ok, we may reach a broader audience?
Good idea. Google search does a poor job on our forums, just reports plain text so makes us look like hackers on a private IRC. We need to fix that or mirror completely onto open .net or .com   Going back six months and looking at hits, we are not getting nearly as much outreach as we could be.

http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=stats  forum statistics center

I noticed in your first youtube, there was no link into your forum pages on that glacier?

Have you set up a dedicated youtube channel for Greenland glaciers? That would be them all together for viewing related.

Twitter is capable of showing small animations but do you know the maximal or recommended pixel width and height sizes? Supported file formats?

You are welcome to re-use or re-purpose any or all of my posts. Just link back to forum though. Best to use tinyurl.com to shorten links.

Reply #1130 on: November 07, 2015, 08:11:50 PM »
inviting scientists to participate. Few did

The thing to do might be invite known outreach-inclined scientists to submit signed guest pieces to the appropriate forums. For example it would be very timely to invite commentary -- or even host a round-table -- on the Zwally paper on Antarctica mass balance. We have a forum going already to put it in.

There are lots of scientists who work in this area just itching for a more dignified space and better message control than they get from newspaper quotes but want it one-off with no ongoing commitment.

Here I envision Neven as chief dignitary issuing the email invitation and if interest is expressed, passing them off to a specific forum editor (here AbruptSLR) who in turn might pass off a submission to a graphics, copy-editor and blog-htmler for forum-compatible formatting. This way the scientist need not register for the site nor learn arcane rules of blog syntax.

Invitations would not actually involve to extra work for Neven but originate from a forum editor. I would be willing to draw up an email template (bait) that might engage a typical scientist. The key thing there is exhibiting some depth in the subject and a specific focus of interest.

It might make sense to offer an honorarium (100 euros?) as it is work to write these pieces and we do have an agenda in getting good content and more traffic. For that though, they should agree to answer questions (maximum of 3) that registered members might have after reading the guest piece.

    let you (A-Team) do the invitation to a new thread exploring ways to get the message out to a wider audience?

No way, José. I have not kept up with social media at all. Nor the latest tricks for getting noticed by Google search.
 

 Reply #1127 on: November 07, 2015, 05:04:36 PM »
Maybe a separate forum to discuss/promote forum visibility?

I also wonder how to get more card-carrying climate scientists to use the site to post news. Right now we just have two. Separate forum? Member questions allowed? Separately moderated (screened for tedious, argumentative, unworthy)? They do not have a lot of time to waste on dumb questions and disputes with know-it-alls. At the same time, they don't have a common area right now other than a few scattered twitter sites, personal blogs, skeptical science etc. Registration is a barrier for a lot of people.

The Jakobshavn thread is getting 161241/1124 = 143 views per post (averaging back to start-up on March 23, 2013). Even rescaling for growth over the years, this only gets bumped to 295 views per post currently. How many views for 'Chasing Ice' at youTube? The interest is out there but linking to forum followup is not.

3.3  953305 views Oct 2015
2.5  718974 views Oct 2014
1.0  291574 views Oct 2013

Reply #1133 on: November 07, 2015, 09:13:48 PM »

every 'Certificate Authority' in the world has been multiply compromised

Right. And if "Leave it in the Ground" ever picks up steam, they will pick up everyone posting here and put them in Yuma Territorial Prison for the duration of global warming.

they can't even see the graphics w/o registration

The very first thing to fix, be that here on WordPress or mirroring the best stuff on a .net

Good to distinguish between activism-type forums, news forums, science journal news forums and content creation. There is a lot of copy/paste going around but somewhere somehow someone actually has to research substantive content in the first place. Or if not that, at least add value. And that is the real key to returning, engaged, better informed visitation.

I am primarily on the value-added side. Once in a while I put up some worthwhile content. This fall, I have plans to kick some serious Petermann butt. Beyond that, I have firm commitments far into the future:

Reply #1140
 
how many gig of image and video are on this site now, anyway ? i'm trying to figger how much storage for a mirror. I might be able to help. But perhaps take this to a separate thread, rather than add to this one ?


    Yes, somewhere in the The forum category, perhaps here. Dungeonmaster probably knows
    https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,13.msg58608.html#msg58608


That looks like as good a place as any. Let's move the non-Jakobshavn thread over there and delete here.

A mirror would be great. Something plain that worked for google search and also linked back here. We have quite a bit of eye candy in the animations that could catch people's interest. However more clicks doesn't bring more (any) ad revenue, relatively few people want more in depth climate change, more registrants brings more trolls.

The gigs will add up. There could be issues in the graphics between true file width x height and what the forumware does with them.

What about that archive service (personal wayback machine), what does that do on these pages? I tried it on this very page ... wow, it seems to work right out of the box (3rd link below). Allows .zip download too.

http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,154.msg65822.html

https://archive.is/

https://archive.is/IxK6k

Another idea: instead of watching paint dry in the off-season (PIOMAS), how about Neven doing an annual round robin on highlights from the forums? That would put the better links and animations out on the higher visibility Arctic Sea Ice to entice people to come into the forums.

Neven

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Re: Thanks for setting up the forum
« Reply #53 on: November 08, 2015, 10:26:38 PM »
Thanks for moving your comments, A-Team.

Three things:

1) The security certificate. Dungeonmaster explained the problem to me a while ago (I had forgotten about it, but just checked the e-mail). It would only work if hosted on a private server, which would be much slower, more work, etc.  Maybe there's a solution, but DM is a busy guy in real life.

If I'd had to do it again, I'd leave the forum under http only, and forget about https, but it is supposed to be safer wrt privacy and malware etc.

2) People having to become members to see the attached images. This is generally a good way for getting members, so I don't think I'm going to change that. Seeing is registering.  ;)

3)  A-Team's proposal:

Quote
Another idea: instead of watching paint dry in the off-season (PIOMAS), how about Neven doing an annual round robin on highlights from the forums? That would put the better links and animations out on the higher visibility Arctic Sea Ice to entice people to come into the forums.

A good idea in principle, but just as on the ASIB there is less happening here during the freezing season (except perhaps for the work done in the glacier threads). Either way, I'm planning on doing one or two (bi-monthly) winter analyses, comparing different maps and graphs, just like I did on a monthly basis during summer this year. I will probably link to the ASIF then, as I do as much as I can during summer.

I think the advertising on the ASIB has worked too well, as traffic has decreased markedly. This could also be caused by the slower melting seasons since 2012, and my less frequent posting (also because the ASIF takes up more time).  :) 8)

Let me repeat that if any of the Glacier Guys feel they have something to share, like a story about how they create all those coll images, the ASIB is at their disposal. But if not, that's cool too, of course. I think the Jakobshavn thread is one of the best on the Forum, and it's bound to get a lot more views in the future.
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E. Smith

Neven

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Re: Thanks for setting up the forum
« Reply #54 on: November 09, 2015, 09:27:01 AM »
Some more info on the security certificate. The hosting company can't do much, but Dungeonmaster might try something else, as soon as he has the time (I told him not to rush, as it's the freezing season anyway).
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E. Smith

A-Team

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Re: Thanks for setting up the forum
« Reply #55 on: November 09, 2015, 10:55:51 AM »
I tested a second way of mirroring the site in a way allowing scientists -- they won't register -- to see the graphics. First of all, they aren't tempted in the slightest by nasty results at google search say with 'Jakobshavn calving'.

And who is going to visit a mysterious IRC chat channel where visitors are blocked from the eye candy? They don't even know there is any. Maybe pick up a virus instead. Scientists don't have time for this.

The problem is, google search is how people find stuff on the internet.

This 2nd method of mirroring is very easy, simply 'Save Page As ... --> 'Web Page, html only' out of the Firefox File menu. The saved file then displays correctly in Safari, Chrome and Firefox. As with https://archive.is/IxK6k, it does a nice job of capturing graphics and animations while throwing away all the blogware features such as Modify and Reply.

Please note anyone can do archival or browser-based mirroring without asking permission since WordPress utilizes very simple HTML 2.0 (or less). There is no basically no way to control or limit information once a forum goes live on the internet.

I believe firewalling images really hurts exposure and visitation. For example, we did a great job reporting on the mega calving event at Jakobshavn but no one re-posted our imagery or linked to the forum. Registration is for people who are motivated to participate (comment or make submissions). Joining a private club just to get internet access? A lot of people won't do it, they see hassles and risks in doing that.

It would take about 15 minutes to manually capture the 23 pages of the Jakobshavn forum and re-post to Espen's hypothetical .net or .com site. However who would be watching for page 24 and updating the mirror?

For mirroring all the Greenland + Antarctic forums, it might be barely feasible to do the big catch-up manually but for all the forums, this requires industrial strength robotic crawling -- and periodic re-crawling -- of all the pages in all the forums.

If Espen goes this route, it might make sense to mirror only when the forum originator requests it (often Espen himself). I would also suggest starting small on 2-3 pages from 2-3 forums to see if it does indeed draw traffic. I expect a huge impact because after google search crawls the mirror, it will offer attractive returns for subject matter as well as images.

Neven

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Re: Thanks for setting up the forum
« Reply #56 on: November 09, 2015, 11:56:03 AM »
Quote
I believe firewalling images really hurts exposure and visitation. For example, we did a great job reporting on the mega calving event at Jakobshavn but no one re-posted our imagery or linked to the forum. Registration is for people who are motivated to participate (comment or make submissions). Joining a private club just to get internet access? A lot of people won't do it, they see hassles and risks in doing that.

Okay, you've got a good point there. I'll discuss it with DM.
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E. Smith

A-Team

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Re: Thanks for setting up the forum
« Reply #57 on: November 09, 2015, 04:43:47 PM »
Quote
firewalling images ...  I'll discuss it with DM.
Thx! It would be great if we could solve the cert and image access issues. I would be happy to pay the annual cert fee if one is needed, per Ghoti.

If Espen and others can remember on twitter and youtube always to link to the source forum (http:// for now, tinyurl ok), that is still a huge deal for top place in Google searches (ie the number of outside pages linking in to the top terms of the forum url). I would not be surprised to see traffic double or triple from very little effort.

What about some revenue ads: ice cube trays, beer coolers, walk-in freezers, linux penguin, ice axes, Inuit trinkets? 8)

Meanwhile I discovered 3 curious things that could be useful for people wanting either offline access to their favorite forum, all the forum pages on one page as text for browser text searching, or all the images on one page to facilitate finding.

I did Petermann which has only 7 forum pages (341 posts). Why? Because I'm planning to post there next and had forgotten who'd already said what when with which graphics (especially in my own posts).

After downloading from Firefox as described above, I simply opened all the pages as text, concatenated them with no editing, saved as .html and lo and behold it all displayed perfectly including animations as one long page. (Graphics still requires being online or having everything locally cached.)

Then I copied that over to a text editor in plain mode to delete all the images while retaining text. By playing around grepping tabs and carriage returns, it was easily converted to an Excel file with one post per line and various columns of garbage that could be deleted. Then I could sort on post number to put it in reverse chronological order, most recent first and delete the rows where people went off-topic.

To get it working without caching files or being online, the only change is to download all the resources initially and pool in a single folder with the concatenated html.

I haven't finished removing blogware trash below but it's very handy to have all the separate forum pages on one page in top-down order. It's also possibly to display the first few lines of each post and thumbnails for all the graphics...
« Last Edit: November 09, 2015, 05:15:50 PM by A-Team »

Neven

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Re: Thanks for setting up the forum
« Reply #58 on: November 11, 2015, 12:49:49 AM »
Quote
firewalling images ...  I'll discuss it with DM.
Thx! It would be great if we could solve the cert and image access issues. I would be happy to pay the annual cert fee if one is needed, per Ghoti.

Image access is something I'll discuss with DM (he has more forum experience than I do), but he's away from home atm.

The security certificate would be on me, but the question is whether DM can find a workaround.
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A-Team

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Re: Thanks for setting up the forum
« Reply #59 on: November 11, 2015, 01:45:11 AM »
I was up on Google Images this morning and lo and behold there was an ice stratigraphy graphic that had been posted on a forum and when I clicked on its 'visit page' expecting the worst, it opened perfectly as http:// to the forum page. I don't know whether gif animations are included in image search but think not.

Here it is hard to say whether it somehow recognized me as a registrant even though I deleted all cookies and block some 2000 trackers and widgets.

Look at all the tracking crap being forced on internet users just to see a simple mirror of a plain text government weather forecast.
 

Advertising                                      Privacy
998 trackers: blocking all                       19 trackers: blocking all
 
Analytics
338 trackers: blocking all                   
 
Beacons                                            Widgets
411 trackers: blocking all                     299 trackers: blocking all
« Last Edit: November 11, 2015, 01:16:05 PM by A-Team »

Neven

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Re: Thanks for setting up the forum
« Reply #60 on: November 11, 2015, 10:02:10 AM »
I think it depends on whether the image is attached via the forum or whether it's a link to an image on another site (imageshack, picasa, etc).
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A-Team

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Re: Thanks for setting up the forum
« Reply #61 on: November 13, 2015, 12:05:56 PM »
I noticed on the big Zachariae story that lead author Jeremie Mouginot had made a gif animation out of the static Landsat time series in the article's supplemental and emailed it around to journalists in conjunction with publication. Andrea Thompson made good use of it in her Climate Central coverage.

We weren't included on the cc. Why not? -- the Zachariae forum is hands-down the best and most comprehensive up-to-date source of information on this glacier on the entire internet. Again, it's these barriers to traffic (cert, registration, google search blockage, image hoarding) that puts the forum beneath the radar.

It's also true we're not a newspaper and that most people are satisfied with fairly light news coverage and don't aspire to engagement with daily forum details on Zachariae (or any other subject in climate science). Just saying, the potential readership may be limited, but the site is a block of ice not yet at full flotation.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/northeast-greenland-glacier-melt-19673
11_12_15_Andrea_CC_Zachariaeglacier.gif file name of the Landsat animation


Espen

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Re: Thanks for setting up the forum
« Reply #62 on: November 13, 2015, 08:35:11 PM »
Yes science is A Cruel World, and unfortunately the politicians are aware of this fact, that is the best excuse politicians have not to listen!
Have a ice day!

ivica

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Re: Thanks for setting up the forum
« Reply #63 on: August 29, 2016, 07:28:21 PM »
I'm here because I've trust not only in Neven, Fred also.
If you are on twitter, facebook, ... - you trust in who?

N00bi-Wan

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Thank you Neven
« Reply #64 on: December 01, 2016, 12:03:31 AM »
Thank you Neven!

Thank you to be and to remain yourself online here: You are an outstanding webforum creator and supervisor (and I know what I'm talking about for having being a mod and an admin of an international, multilingual forum [with 20,000+ members today]).

I'm a registered member lurker of this forum since the first of July 2013. And since then, thanks to the wonderful top-notch contributors you've managed to attract, I've learned a lot -and continue to learn, almost everyday- about the Arctic and Antarctic cryozones, and their AGW-driven evolutions. And also a lot about their associated present, and possibly future, consequences.

Let us be well!

AbruptSLR

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Re: Thanks for setting up the forum
« Reply #65 on: December 01, 2016, 06:36:41 PM »
An article about our fearless leader entitled: "He created a beloved blog about the melting Arctic. But it got harder and harder to write".

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/11/30/he-created-a-beloved-blog-about-the-melting-arctic-but-it-got-harder-and-harder-to-write/?utm_term=.5ed72e3bcb56

Extract: "Curlin insists the sabbatical isn’t necessarily permanent. His green house (a way to “walk the walk,” he writes) will be complete in a year — it helps that he received 17 thousand euros in donations from readers. The house doesn’t merely generate as much energy as his family uses — it actually produces more from its solar panels than they need, Curlin says. On the blog, he says another future objective will be to be able to grow half of all of his family’s food.
So it’s not that he’s depressed and giving up, he emphasizes — quite the contrary. It’s that he wants to be more active offline, not just busy online.

In the meantime, Curlin notes that the busy Arctic Sea Ice Forum is still open, and says that he’ll still provide monthly updates on a dataset called “PIOMAS,” which charts the thickness of Arctic ice, rather than merely its area. The problem isn’t just that ice is covering less and less of the Arctic ocean, after all, but that the ice that remains is growing thinner, meaning it is less likely to hold together throughout the course of the summer or in the face of storms and large waves.

In the meantime, many of Curlin’s fans are awaiting his return.

“I’m sorry to see him taking a break and hope that he’ll resume the blog again,” said Walt Meier, a sea ice expert with NASA. “I think it’s a loss to the general public and to the scientific community.”"
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