Arguments
Skeptical Science Housekeeping - December 2020
Posted on 24 December 2020 by BaerbelW
Before the year 2020 comes to a close, we'd like to make you aware of a few visible changes applied to our homepage since we published this type of blog post in April. Compared to this earlier blog post, the changes mentioned here are smaller in nature but especially the first one could prove to be quite useful.
New option to suggest updates for rebuttals
We fairly regurlarly receive emails via our contact form pointing out things like broken links or missing images in rebuttals. Sometimes emails mention suggested updates for a given rebuttal. As it's sometimes difficult to keep track of these types of suggestions, we've now created a Google form to collect this feedback in a more organized way. To make it as easy as possible for you to provide feedback on the rebuttal you just read, you'll now find the link to the form in a new section below each rebuttal.
Simply click on the link and you'll be taken to the form which has the rebuttal's URL already prefilled as well as your SkS username if you had been logged in when filling it out. If the field is empty please provide your name as it is a required field. You don't need to specify an email-address but if you do, it'll obviously help us to contact you in case of questions or to provide feedback about your suggestions.
Updated share buttons
The share buttons hadn't been updated in a while so we used the opportunity when we added the button for MeWe to also grab the latest versions for the other platforms we have a presence on. Speaking of MeWe: have you checked our page there yet?
Complete list of blog posts for authors
Up until very recently, only a certain number of blog posts written by a Skeptical Science author were listed on the author's profile page. With this change, all of the author's published blog posts are now listed on the page grouped by year.
Preventing image width from breaking the page layout
You'll most likely have noticed every once in a while that the page layout didn't properly behave and that for example the header image started to duplicate where the right-hand margin should have been. This was often caused by uploaded images not respecting the maximum width for the page. A fix now ensures that the maximum allowed width for displayed images is not exceeded.
New error messages
Last but not least, something we hope you'll not encounter (too) often on our homepage: errors like "page not found" or - a lot worse! - "internal server error". But as we all know s**t happens and in case it does, Cranky Uncle will let you know!
Last but not least, let's give credit where credit is due: none of these updates would have happened without the tireless work provided by Collin in the SkS boilerroom!
Yay Collin!
It's a little hard to fully describe how transformative Collin has been for our site code. In any case we wouldn't be able to use Collin's preferred adjectives to faithfully echo his reactions, as he was scraping away at layers of hasty additions glued on by various cowboys over the years.
I like the paragraph you wrote on the Skeptical Science page at MeWe:
How to break an irony loop: has anybody else noticed that even as we read yet another op-ed or news article detailing how messed up and anti-social Facebook is that the only way of sharing such articles on social media is via the usual suspects, including Facebook? Obviously, if nobody knows there are alternatives then we're stuck circling that drain in perpetuity. Among other improvements to Skeptical Science we're happy to break that pattern and hope others will "follow" (hah-hah) by adding a "share" button for MeWe.
I should add that I also like the way articles are displayed on the MeWe site. The Skeptical Science team has obviously put a lot of thought into your MeWe page. Thanks!