OSNews

I have been a fan of OSNews for quite sometime; in the process submitting over 50 articles under different names. Now you have actually given an incentive to register with the site.

Sounds interesting; you could get a lot more subscribers.

Good work.

I've never used your forum, but I would probably use this. Of course I haven't had time to take part in comment discussion in some time, but I think I would use this.

On top of all this, how about allowing blog post voting, and when a post passes a certain threshold it's subject is concatenated onto the main page. Take a look at www.arstechnica.com with the journals to see what I'm talking about, though the backend would be very much different.

Oh, the one problem with this replacing the forum is that it doesn't really leave a channel to ask for help. I don't know if the current forum is used much for this, but that's one of the big strengths of forums, in my estimation. Maybe a simple phpbb help forum would still be in order. It wouldn't take all that much oversight if you promote responsible and high posters to mods often enough. Look at linuxforums.org, they do it well.

Looking more and more like /.

I'm not saying that to be insulting though.

I personally couldn't care for that feature. I don't think you'll find many people hoping for it either.

That's what we all want.

Need To say More?

It seems like this is another move towards slashdot...
Not that having similar features would be bad, just that being like slashdot would be bad..

I've already got a blog, so I'm not sure I'd be interested. Never much liked blogs with a lot of entries anyway; always preferred a small number of good entries.

"So my questions to you, dear readers, are: would you use this?"

Yes I would. I'd talk about my fav OS(es), mainly Kanotix, and I'd complain because no anonymous posting nor profanities/flamebaiting from registered users should be allowed.

Whatever voting system there is, it should have auditing this time around.

And users should have to identify who they work for so there is less bias and less comment warfare.

"Most of all, we'd like to know whether this is functionality you'd be interested in using"

I doubt I'll use it, but I still have a suggestion. If you are going to implement comments, you should add an option that notifies the article "owner" about new comments. Preferably a choice between getting an email per comment or a mail at user defined intervals.

If the rating thingy would be implemented, I'd certainly use it occasionally. Otherwise I'm sure there would be just too many postings for any interesting discussion to happen on a single one. It would also add value to the website if interesting journal entries would appear on it.

In any case I can't see how this could _not_ be extremely popular, just like it is on practically every other website that offers a journal feature. I sometimes have missed something like this (slashdot scares me), as I don't really want to write often enough to justify a real blog.

I sure wouldn't. Not like there isn't already more blogs out there than people could possibly read in a lifetime. What would be useful feature to me? The ability to filter by article type - ie, I'd like not see Amiga, PDA, and other articles. Also, disallow any comments with 'M$', 'Windoze', LinSux, etc ... get rid of the 12yolds, please.

I have been working on a "10 things I would change about linux" paper for a while, but I wasn't sure what I would do with it. I don't want to post just in a forum, because I would like a more professional presentation of my ideas. I also don't want to host it myself, because I don't have the bandwidth or the traffic. So if you had a good hybrid article/forum system I think I would definately post it here.

Kernel trap has an identical implementation... guess what. I never check people's pages... I only skim the main stories... But this is just me. maybe someone else finds it attractive. However, even the second version is harder for me to navigate. In my opinion has more useless clutter. If it becomes even more cluttered and hard to understand the site navigation I'll look for news somewhere else.

Take a page from craigs list, simple (maybe a bit ugly) but damn easy to understand.

As if it weren't bad enough that for some inexplicable reason, OSNews has posted links to OSViews, OSNews would then make it extremely easy to have as many things posted that were as crappy or worse?

Things are bad enough for quality and lack of review many times already, and I don't see how this would help improve the quality of material (on average) linked to/posted on here.

k5 has a neat thing going, where users vote for an article to make the front page or not. comments, blogs... done a lot of places. but you could host interesting articles and posts also. i'd worry about it getting saturated with stupid opinions though. unless, of course, articles had to be voted in. And probably keep them separate. this site is so clean and up to date that I use it to find all my os news first. clean and informative... with intelligent user base, that is what makes osnews.com. just don't loose that.

I'd like to see you implement post threading. With popular articles it becomes to hard to keep track of all the "RE: posts", as they can show up a page removed from the comment their referring to.
I always take time to look at the Comment section before reading the article. You have alot of smart people who show up here to share their ideas and reading the different opinions allows me to see the different sides of the issue.
Threading would allow a place for an interesting opinion to start, get talked about and when finished a place to end.
People will also be more inclined to share their thoughts if they know their posts will be placed within a thread and not end up randomly mixed amongst unrelated posts.

I like OSNews in general, it's easy to see what's new, commenting stories is easy, and it even looks good. I just haven't had any reason to register, but if posting of my ideas was done, and it worked well, I probably would register. I think it sounds like an interesting idea and would allow people to more easily create some constructive discussions.
-WereCat

I'm not sure if this is a good idea. I suppose it'll generate too much noise, and not so much "content" really. If someone is seriously interested in posting his ideas/articles he already has a blog by himself.

100% ACK
It's a PITA to discuss sth. without!

I currently use Tomboy for writing up all my little ideas I get from time to time. I think this forum would be a better place.

I'm not that great with writing so I'd probably wan't to update the article from time to time depending on how the discussion goes. This will ofcourse outdate the discussion so it would be great to be able to delete/hide unrelated and outdated comments.


About the threading thing, I think it is better like it is now. It's easy to see new comments and/or pause and resume reading. Alternatives would be to have some AJAX implemented popupwindow on hover that will show a show summary of relies in a threaded fashon. If threading is a must then I think some GUI element that highlight important changes wihtout the need to go through the whole discussion is needed.


While I'm ranting I could just as well put this little bit here too: Seeing how the moderation voting system has worked so far I'd say that a range from -5 to 5 is to much. I think -1 to 3 is a better range with the current usage.

And become like every news website ?
look, no one cares of ppl stories. they are blogs. if people want a blog, they make one. why have one on osnews ? they already have one on /. or whatever else. Having one on osnews is then just for the hype.
Usefullness ? I think zero.

threaded comments ? man, you need them. Like kuro5hin.org is not bad.
but keep the rest as it is or make something DIFFERENT.
Maybe a mix of a planet like thing but you select articles, so people can participate or something.
But honestly, another slashdot, thanks no thanks. No need.

On each post's byline, you can put a link to one of the poster's blogs, chosen at random amonst all those blogs whose categories match the category of the current story.

And yes, we could use threading.

And we could also use being able to edit posts (amonst >>> amongst). Oops.

So instead of having a regular news posting prompting an argument about Linux being ready for the desktop, or Vista being bloated vapourware, we can have several hundred of them occuring at once.

If this where to happen, I would need some kind of guide as to who was actually worth reading. No offence to anyone, but we're just a bunch of people with opinions, and we've all got them.

How about moderating a daily discussion. Users can submit their 'blog', which can be vetted, then posted by a moderator for the community to have a discussion. This could be anything from the communicative implications of mouse pointers turning into an hourglass to represent being busy (especially when compared to GEM's bee), to a history on the CLI.

Either way, users can post an opinion, and the community can respond. This way, we will have one thing worth reading, instead of many things that should be ignored.

I view the whole blogging fad as web pollution.

I hate the implementation you posted Ethyrial, it's like Slashdot's...I'd prefer something like IMDB's thread view. I don't want to click again and again to read things.

If you'll derive some measure of entertainment from implementing the functionality, you already have reason to consider it. I'm sure that some people will make use of the journal functionality. The obvious advantage that it has over a more general-purpose journal is that it's more closely coupled with OSNews and the content it provides. Plus it gives people that like to routinely restate the same arguments for every story slightly-related to one of their favorite subjects an easy way of elaborating at great length in one place. There's also the user-centered news filter aspect, where people that like the links provided by a user can easily take suggestions about what to read, without having to have all of the news on the front page.

The site techreport.com that the above poster Ethyriel has pointed out is a great example of a clean and clear threaded posting site. If the original post that has drawn interest can be clicked on and at the same time bring up within a one page view all subsequent replies then you will end up with the same view that OSNEWS viewer are used to.
Also of interest about this site is the use of a darker backgound with a lighter font face. Looks great.
This articles titled red lettered request for feedback is also getting close to the end of the page , you may want to move it back to the top to get a fair view of our view on these ideas.

I don't want to seem like a luddite but from my perspective there is nothing wrong with your current format it has the advantages of:

1. Targeted news
2. Opportunity for discussion on the news stories (like this)
3. A range of forums where ad hoc discussion can take place.

This is a great resource that I look at every day (perhaps I need to get a life) and get much information and pleasure from. I vote to leave it as it is.

Regards,
Peter

so basically version 3 is to go rip-off every feature that slashdot has and hope that someday this site will have anywhere close to slashdot's relevance.

This site is way to heavily censored and moderated for such a feature to even make sense.

I would definately use this blog system. As a system developer, I get a finger in every pie (server administrator, coder, designer) at my company, which leaves me with a lot of experience (and short on spare time). This system would be perfect for writing down some experiences with a technology, a rant or just an exitement over a newfound project.

We're waiting.
Carl