The process of upgrading Skeptical Science rolls on. As I've been procrastinating updating the navigation bar for months, I've now converted the navigation links to text. It doesn't look as pretty as the old graphical version but it's much easier to edit now so I have no excuse for not updating it. To make room, the About Us and Contact Us links have been relegated to the footer. New navigation links include Translations, the iPhone app and a reminder of how you can support Skeptical Science.
I've also revamped the Recent Comments page and added it to the navigation bar. The link to this page was buried away deep in the left margin, only visible to those logged in. But this page has become more important of late with more discussion across a range of topics. Some people post off-topic comments on new threads for fear that a new comment on an old thread won't get noticed. Rest assured, they do get noticed. The Comments page is to ensure even old discussion threads get noticed if you post a new comment.
Thanks to Tom Dayton who suggested making Recent Comments more prominent as well as a number of other changes to improve the page (yeah, thanks for all that extra work, Tom :-). One of the other suggestions was that any comments listed on Recent Comments link directly to that comment in its discussion thread. It wasn't as easy as it sounds - it involved working out how many comments preceded that comment in order to calculate the page number if there were more than 50 comments... well, anyway, enough whinging, it's all sorted.
As there's so much discussion on Skeptical Science, I've been very grateful to have the help of a number of moderators who ensure the comments all adhere to our Comments Policy. It's thanks to them that the quality of discussion here is generally very high (IMHO). I've programmed the site so moderators can now post direct responses to comments. My direct responses are displayed as green boxes directly below the comment. Moderator responses are in blue boxes below the comment. Generally, moderator responses are to point off-topic comments to the relevant page.
Lastly, Skeptical Science is now being translated into Thai. Many thanks to translator Anond Snidvongs from the Climate Change Knowledge Management Center (an initiative of Thailand's Ministry of Science and Technology). If anyone is interested in translating Skeptical Science into other languages, don't hesitate to contact me.
Posted by John Cook on Thursday, 13 May, 2010
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