Two ideas came in last week as a result of the discussion on the glossary.
One
was from regular commentator Ian Tresman. His suggestion is that the glossary should be a wiki and not a PDF download. I do actually
already have a wiki - although it has had little use because no one seemed to follow links to it when I used it.
However, what do people think?
Or, would it simply be better if the glossary was a separate page on the blog with each definition linked to that rather than being in the rather less familiar wiki format?
And talking of the blog,
the other comment came from another commentator also, coincidentally, called Ian. He pointed out three things:
- The blog is hard to search.
- It looks a bit archaic (my interpretation of his words: I can be rude about it and he was not)
- Both could be improved to advantage.
My guess is the search function could be improved but there are real issues that mean it may never work that well:
- There are over 20,000 posts on here.
- There are also more than 200,000 comments.
- Finding anything is not necessarily that easy without a very precise search.
- With odd exceptions, most posts I write are written as reactions to events and are not big theory or positioning pieces.
So, it's not easy to find a precise description of
modern monetary theory, for example, on this blog precisely because that is not what it was ever meant to provide.
The glossary is meant to address this, at least in part, and I think it will. There will be an entry for MMT, for example, and these things could develop over time.
But this only tackles one issue. So:
- Does the blog design need updating to look like those designed in 2023?
- Does the search function need to improve?
- Would a section on key issues - longer than glossary entries - be valuable?
I have to say I dislike hate highly visual modern websites where menus are hard to find and content is hidden from view behind flash graphics (not that I am being opinionated here) but my adviser on this issue (otherwise known as my elder son) says I should ask what other people think because I may not be right (and he thinks that's the best way to tell me).
Any thoughts?
I like the blog as it is, but don’t know what it would look like if updated. I like that it is written as a reaction to events – you invariably express how I feel about the events but with added expertise and theoretical grounding. I occasionally search for something I’ve seen recently on the blog to be better able to convince one of my sceptical friends about the logic of MMT. Both these examples are really about failings of mine, not the blog, as I do not put in the necessary work to properly internalise the basics. So I think a glossary would definitely be worth the effort but changing the blog, probably not. I turn to it first thing every morning before looking at the paper! Keep up the good work.
Thanks
And noted
I really like the blog as it is. Though this might not be relevant to the possible changes under discussion – I really appreciate the font size – it’s just right for me – even with varifocals I struggle to read small print.
I like the way you write in response to current news stories and events. There is an over-arching view of how the world is – and how it ought to be – that is shared by contributors – reading it gives me hope in these grim times we find ourselves in.
Thank you
I like the Blog because it is presented for the written word, and I would like it to stay that way; a haven of (usually) civilised, literate opinion.
I find the comment boxes awkward when correcting, which is why so often my comments end up in old gruniad territory; spewed out in incomprehensible sentences. I could say the boxes are too small; but the truth is the problem is me; my comments are too long, with too many subordinate clauses for blog comments.
The search weakness is correctly observed. I find that the Blogs, and debates that have resonance for me, I tend to save and drop into a file I keep for the purpose; but easier searching would be an advance.
I do not care for the wiki idea, but again that is just me. There is too much “stuff” out there; too many Apps, too much of everything. Your laptop or phone becomes filled with junk you rarely use.
Noted
I dislike hate highly visual modern websites where menus are hard to find and content is hidden from view behind flash graphics too. I accept it may be an age thing.
For the rest, the thing I find most frustrating is finding new comments on a post, without going over the whole thing. I don’t know how you can improve that without losing the thread structure. However that doesn’t always work – sometimes there is an option to ‘reply’ to a comment, and sometimes not.
Ultimately, what matters most is that it keeps going. Please.
Noted
I like your blog’s clean, simple, old fashioned design. But then I like DiamondGeezer’s blog, whose design has robustly remained the same for more than two decades. Modern is isn’t, by choice. https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/
Another comparison: David Allen Green’s blog is relatively new and also clean and simple, focusing more on the words that the visual whizz-bangs. https://davidallengreen.com/
But I was a young fogey and I am becoming an old fogey so perhaps you need to ask the kids what they want!
I’ve never had much of a problem searching for previous blog content. At a push, Google (or another search engine of your choice) can help.
I am afraid the problem with your wiki is that it is not open to editing (by anyone apart from you, as far as I can see, or I’ve missed it) so it is effectively a dead end. I don’t know if you have enough of a community here to keep out the trolls if it was fully open to public editing, but you could allow editing by preapproved registered editors. But that may become more of a distraction than a support to your work.
Thanks
Agreed re the wiki – it is not a wiki. It just sort of looks like one
Great idea to link glossary to the blog. Wiki idea is an extra step removed and think less people would actively check it out.
I tend to agree with that
I am really not up to speed on website design, but I agree with you Richard about key menu items becoming lost behind flashy graphics.
surely graphics should be designed to help point to things not to obscure them. Even some big energy companies etc suffer from this.
If someone could point to a ‘top three’ examples – might help.
There is a simplicity to this blog which is very attractive, but it is also down to the quality of the issues posed which is down to its creator – you. The subject matter here trumps everything really for me.
However, moving on from that, you need to consider the value of the blog and what it generates to debate and the the generation of new ideas. My view would be to keep the contribution side to the presentation as it is now (maybe change the colour or something) but as already alluded, link it more formally in the background to some of your output – pdfs of your books, papers, academy work, video work.
Basically there is a lot of superb information here as well emotion and I think you should be looking at how this blog might be curated in the future? The easier that is made, the more likely the curation.
Whatever happens, the extremely useful heterodoxy here should not be lost.
As ever I am a free rider on your hard work, but that is my view such that it is.
I would also say that one of the things that distinguishes this blog is that it is more than just a better economic and financial logic, because there is also a strong dose of spiritual morality running through it.
Is there space that should be made for that, the sources of that (your Quaker roots)? Maybe that is more personal, but if that morality comes from a religious source it needs to be acknowledged because really, there is spiritual failure in this country at the moment from business ethics to how we are treating people. I think if Jesus was alive today, he’d be reading your blog quite frankly.
Well, that might be going a bit far
It’s not in Aramaic for a start, and that is likely what he spoke.
But your point is an interesting one
It has never crossed my mind that the design needed changing – but then I am fairly archaic as well. It is uncluttered and focussed on the content which is what I appreciate.
I am glad I am not alone in this
I think it would be cleaned a little – but not much
Agree absolutely on the desirability of keeping a clean, minimalist style, but as others have hinted maybe that’s the opinion of a particular demographic. The essential first step is to be absolutely clear who your target audience is: I would also guess that it mostly comprises people who value content quality way above presentation style. Personally I value the ability to “speed read” your writing, and return to it when I need to digest it more slowly. I get very wound up about websites where it’s hard to find the substance.
Links to the glossary sounds a great idea. I imagine that a wiki would be more work for someone (you?) because the essence of a wiki is reader participation – which implies having a moderator making sure there are no silly, or mischievous – additions.
I think I am already moving against a wiki
I like it as it is, and so does my 20 year old autistic grandson. He shows me something on the Guardian website, or on Youtube, so we look up something similar on here. He can read this easily, and I can explain ideas to him. I spent five years home tutoring him as he couldn’t cope with all the distractions at high school.
He is taking an English exam today, and needs to know about bullet points, etc., for reports, so we use this blog as examples. It’s called functional English.
I know he’s not your normal reader, not a normal 20 year old, but if you change this blog you might lose a young reader.
By the way, he’s very good at spotting your mistakes, and deciding what you meant to put, spelling, grammar, punctuation, even though it might just be a typing error.
I don’t have any problem with your search facility, either, providing I just use single word searches, e.g., Hunt rather than Jeremy Hunt.
Thanks
And good luck to him today
1) The design looks fine, people are here to read economics or politics, not art.
2) Perhaps an advanced search function visually akin to archive’s? (https://archive.org/advancedsearch.php) – ie So you could search by name, keywords and dates for example. Or a mouseover effect for similar. In my opinion, one thing which could benefit ease of use would be a tag system for each page (ie posts on interest rates would be tagged as such), but that would likely be time-consuming to implement fully.
3) Absolutely
Thanks
Noted
The Guardian uses something like that
I am not sure how easy it is to reproduce but there may be am WordPress plugin
Google Advanced search is not too bad if all your blog pages are static ie. not produced dynamically from a database
You have to fill out site or domain: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk
and use the filters/qualifiers
https://www.google.com/advanced_search
Some scripting that prefills/uses google advanced_search filters eg.
allintext: “Pilgrim Slight Return says” site:https://www.taxresearch.org.uk
brings up 29 pages of comments from “Pilgrim Slight Return”
allintext: “Pilgrim Slight Return says” site:https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2022
brings up 5 pages of comments from Pilgrim Slight Return in 2022 blog
Thanks
I’m sure your tech guy would be familiar, but here is a page on how to add Google Site search to your site.
https://wpengine.co.uk/resources/how-to-add-google-search-in-a-wordpress-site/
Thanks
Thanks.
Something else I forgot to say is that I share your articles on so many Facebook sites, particularly political ones, and it is just so easy to do that. Lots of other all-singing, all-dancing sites are so difficult to share, I’d hate to lose this facility.
It won’t be going anywhere
Read and contribute now; will still do so under any design you adopt. So, my views are irrelevant…. listen to your son, not me.
Having said that, including a glossary on the sight would be good.
That is now the direction of travel
The content here is the strength and it’s presented in a manner easily accessible to the eye. Is it as accessible to search engines? I’m not sure because, alas, I can’t remember how to measure these things now… I remember when I was doing Search Engine Optimisation I was asked by a client to have a look at the site of a friend of hers which recently tanked in the search engines. It had, she informed me, recently been rewritten too, in javascript as opposed to the plain HTML it had been designed in before. A few minutes observation revealed that the links to all the internal pages had been rewritten in javascript too, which had the unfortunate consequence of making them invisible to Google’s indexing bots, which in those long ago days could follow html links ok but javascript links not at all. As far as it was concerned then, those links and so those hundreds of internal pages didn’t exist. Thus this unfortunate lady had gone, in Google’s view of the online world, from having a site with hundreds of pages of informed and relevant information to having a one-page site which on its own was of little value to searchers. The site was on that basis punished by being lowered to the point of obscurity in Google’s rankings where before it had been, rightly, prominent for related search terms. Having her site rewritten had cost her 5 grand, I remember her wailing, and now it couldn’t be found in a Google search. I mention all this to make the point that there are pitfalls for the unwary and these things do need to be considered before any doing over of the site. I think it’s ok as it is, to be clear. if it ain’t broke etc.
Good point
I will be doing nothing so radical
What I find very handy on other sites are “Next article” and “Previous article” link buttons at the end of the comments section.
Really?
I can never remember using them
But noted
I like them too. Professor John Robertson if Talking Up Scotland game uses them on his site too and I follow him and yourself regularly
I am another who sees no problem with the current website when it comes to ease of finding and reading intelligent and thought-provoking commentaries on current economic affairs.
However there is one thing I would like, though I don’t know how it would be achieved. The majority of blogs are (not intending to be offensive) somewhat ephemeral, for example this one, or comments on a political statement that will be forgetten next week. A few though are of much more lasting usefulness, I think of your in-depth accounts of MMT and the usefulness of the way of political thinking it promotes about government spending and taxation, or the way the Bank of England is structured and the non-obvious features of reserve accounts, or the real nature of and indeed importance to the economy of the “national debt”. Those are good enough to sometimes remember months later and want to re-read to refresh understanding – but I at least find them difficult to locate amongst everything else. All the obvious search terms are found in very many other blog posts, since they underpin your commentary on almost everything. Maybe some sort of tagging would solve the problem, but that may well not be as easy as it sounds.
Noted
I get this
What I would really like is for people to send me the articles they think of this sort so that I can assemble a list
That would really be appreciated
Either on here or via richard.murphy@taxresearch.org.uk
I think the simplicity, cleanliness and lack of distracting graphics- especially when reading the blog on the small screen of a mobile phone – is part of its appeal. It also means it is quick to load, and to come back to. It is refreshing to come to a website where the focus is on the substance, not the bs around the edges. But maybe that’s the bias of the long term reader resistant to change. 🙁
Vis a vis the search facility. I find the majority of the people I talk to about searching for information don’t know about Bolean searching. Your site seems to respond well to it. Eg if I am looking for blogs about Scottish currency which don’t mention the SNP:
+Scottish +currency -SNP
It produces results which give the first 2 parameters but not the 3rd.
Maybe adding a “how to search” hint to the glossary would help others more easily find the results they are looking for.
Good idea….
There are a lot turning up I am going to be looking at
Yes that’s why we had children
IT help and advice
If you could the ability to edit comments after posting would be helpful
I do not think that is possible
I always recommend writing them off the blog and copying and pasting them in
I write all my longer entries like that and I can edit
That is very sound advice; but when you are in a hurry, time presses ……. and you feel impelled to comment quickly ….. it all falls apart ,,,,,,,,,,, (sighs).
Sorry
I agree about writing contributions off-blog (e.g. using Word) and copying and pasting it into the blog’s “Reply” box when ready . I started doing this ages ago – I suspect in an earlier iteration of the blog (pre-Wordpress?) – which was clunkier than it is now and still find that the processes of proof-reading and editing are easier and quicker . There are other benefits like:
• You can import symbols, diacritical markings, numbers, bullet points (but not bold, italic or coloured fonts, underlining etc).
• You can have both the blog and the off-blog document on the screen at the same time, which saves time and makes search/verification/copying of bog data simple, quick and accurate.
• You don’t lose your response if you goof in the submission process, which can happen especially when tired; it’s all still on the off-blog application.
Re the blog presentation, the current choices of colours and formats are very simple and clear. The blog’s reputation is down to its serious and detailed content. Use of “whizz-bang” formatting is more about-catching the eye than about content and might attract more trolls. The Glossary proposal will be an undoubted aid to all – newbies and regulars alike – but the ease of cross-linking between bond and glossary when reading a blog article is critical.
Thanks
The last is noted
1. The blog design is fine, content is king.
2. I’m webmaster of Lobster Magazine, The Journal of Politics, Parapolitics, & History. https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/
It has 2300 pages including PDFs, and uses searchwp. I think readers here will also find it interesting. (shameless plug)
Since you are WordPress-based, there are several plugins like this that you could try to improve matters. Most have a demo available. Other search plugins are here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/search/ some of which offer advanced searching.
3. Your existing Wiki could follow a similar design as your blog, and be signposted in the main menu and sidebar.
4. And there are a handful of WordPress glossary plugins, and I think that some of them will automatically create subtle links from your blog posts to your glossary definitions, see https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/glossary/
The right plugin should allow search people to search either blog posts, glossary entries, or both, and do phrase searching, must-have words, and excluded words.
Many thanks
I am creating a limited agenda for change
There is much to look at.
You need someone to do this for you I think, it’s so complex and you’d be having to learn a new field realistically. You don’t have time. Choosing wisely is going to be critical here.
I have a professional adviser on this – I will not be doing it
Ian, I think it would be helpful if you could make some specific suggestions here.
A good search function would be great but everything else is fine. Clear, easy to read, just scroll down.
And you can’t beat your content and the regular knowledgeable contributors.
Thanks
I have no strong complaint about the website in its current format. I wish you were set up to accept donations in USD. Out of vanity I entered my name into your search bar hoping to see my comments over the years. All that was returned was the one time you mentioned my name in a post! You probably won’t get better search results without retroactively tagging all posts a la Naked Capitalism.
All posts are tagged…..
But I am not sure if that would really help
Basic design seems fine to me , and there have already been comments about the search facility and its problems. The issue I’d like to raise is that when someone makes a post, only one reply can be made directly to that post. You can then reply to the reply, and reply to the reply to the reply etc etc, but you can’t reply to the original post once someone has already made a reply to it. Hope this makes sense. Could this facility be provided?
Really?
Is that true?
@jeff: this is a second reply to your initial comment. The “reply” button is still there.
That said , at some level of indenting, three or four I think, you can’t reply to a reply, but instead as a workaround can reply to the comment before. Shrug. It still works, more or less.
Just testing to see if jeff’s ‘issue’ is correct.
It looks so far as though I’m directly ‘replying’ to his post but I suspect that my post might not come up below his as a ‘reply’.
Like most other commenters I think the blog is fine as it is but the search facility is frustrating. A permanent note on how best to exploit it would be useful if it can’t actually be changed.
It would also be helpful if there was a facility to go directly to new comments, it would save a lot of scrolling where there are lots of responses, but it’s not crucial, just desirable.
PS, ticking ‘notify me of followup comments’ can result in a clogged up inbox…
Noted
And the last is true – think how many I get just to make sure they are going through
I agree it would be good if it were possible to select or highlight comments posted after a specified time and date.
I look forward to the addition of a glossary. I wonder if it would be possible for the key words to be highlighted in the body of blog posts so that clicking on them would call up the relevant explanation.
Like most of the respondents on this subject, I follow the blog for the stimulating and informative contents and the current layout works well for me.
Those links would depend on finding software to do that…..
This is my attempted reply to Jeff Lucas, following your own reply, asking if his remark was true. If it works, then it will demonstrate that it is possible to leave multiple replies to an original reply post.
Thanks for the “test” posts. I am replying to my first post. I now see that there is a grey sidebar starting on the LHS of my first post ( with a feint horizontal line just above my name which separates off my post) and which “contains ” all the direct to me replies, and that replies to replies are nested in grey windows within that sidebar. So I now see how it works, and that shows I was wrong. Apologies. But I don’t see a reply button to reply to Richards second post, on 7th at 10.37. So it looks like , as Andrew says, replies to replies are limited.
I will be discussing this later this week
I can’t speak yo where it breaks down, but there is a point somewhere in the nesting where the ‘reply to replies’ breaks down; then it becomes confusing who is replying to whom, or what.
I agree with that
I am not sure WordPress had this blog’s audience in mind when designing the software. I am not sure we can change this.
As mentioned by others, it’s possible to search the site with another search engine. For example, if you type the following into Google search you get a ton of results all from the Tax Research site:
site:https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/ modern monetary theory MMT
I also like the simplicity of the current design and abhor the modern type of webpage with semi-autonomously scrolling graphics that take an age to get past and can’t be hurried. I’d leave it as it is because the simplicity is good for access on speed-limited connections and it must be good for accessibility for partially sighted people too.
I haven’t used the search facility but an alternative to improving it might be a page of topic headings which leads to respective pages linked atricles ? Or something ?
Anyway, thanks for all you do and for keeping us in the picture for what is for me a field rather distant from my own,
Thanks
And that topic list is already on the right hand side…..
I just checked and I see you are right. I’d not noticed the Categories etc drop-down boxes and having just had them pointed out to me, may I humbly suggest they be highlighted in some way, maybe by having them display several of the first few categories and having the drop-down facility display the rest ? That would make it more obvious what they are to people like me who just skim stuff rather than properly reading it :blush:.
This is in my discussion list for a meeting with Andy who does the tech for this site on Friday
I’m one of those partially-sighted people (actually legally blind) and you’re right about the accessibility. I much prefer the clear and simple style of this blog as it is and find it very accessible.
The flashy graphical flim-flam I see on many websites nowadays is distracting at best. At worst, it can render a site completely unreadable for me.
I have reasonable site and most such sites baffle and any me
I would only like to say:
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Less is more
Avoid style over substance