As you may have noticed by now, we've introduced a little something called 'page 2' (look to your right). We added this feature because we felt we needed a way to 'tier' the news we publish on OSNews, because a regular (and valid) complaint has been that people felt that interesting, one-of-a-kind items were being drowned out by run-of-the-mill items like software releases, short distribution reviews, and so on. Read on for a little more insight into this one.
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Member since:
2006-02-21
To me it now looks that the "interesting, one-of-a-kind items" are relegated to the sidebar, displayed in smaller size (and title only), while "run-of-the-mill items" get the prominent placement in the center of the page, with introductory text, bigger icon on the side, etc. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
And am I the only one that is almost blind to the stuff in sidebars? Good thing these stories still show up in rss.
Member since:2006-07-01
Yes, keep the unique stories on the left, and have the software updates on the right. Otherwise you may as well just add another 10 items to the news display instead.
Why your at it, get rid of the other sidebar stuff and allow people to have the sidebar items display articles for particular categories of news: Google, Mac OS etc.
Edited 2008-11-06 12:39 UTC
Member since:
2005-11-10
Taking the current home page, here's the personal adjustments I would make as far as categorisation:
Move from Page 1 to Page 2
"Introducing Page Two"
(Reason: Meta)
"ReactOS 0.3.7 Released"
(Reason: Summary contains no feature details)
"Opera CEO: Mini Never Submitted to Apple"
(Reason: Gossip)
"Gruber: Opera Never Submitted Mini to Apple"
(Reason: Gossip)
Move from Page 2 to Page 1
"Benchmarks: Mac OS X 10.5 vs. Ubuntu 8.10"
(Reason: Independent Research)
"Lotus Symphony 1.2, Now with Mac OS X Support" (Maybe)
(Reason: Mac OS X support is a major, notable, feature difference)
Member since:2005-07-08
Good points (like we can see from your comment score too). Done that way, Page 2 could be a very good idea.
On the other hand, in real life it might often be rather difficult to consider what is minor news only or only a gossip etc. - and thus maybe resulting in yet new row of complaints from some active readers... But everything has its pros and cons.
Personally I see Page 2 as a good way to improve the quality of this site.
Member since:2005-07-24
Personally, I've always just ignored the stories I wasn't interested in, and read the ones I was. It's not like we have so many stories flying through here that it's hard to keep up.
I've observed that the complainers about content either just like to complain, or have an agenda. (i.e. suppress news about Ub^H^Ha distro they don't like.)
To me, "Page 2" seems like an organizational layer devoted to painting the bike-shed.
Edited 2008-11-09 19:39 UTC
Member since:2005-07-08
Yeah, sadly that seems to be the case all too often, and it gets quite irritating too. But that's not the whole issue.
Let's take the Fedora wallpaper news as an example. I was one of the people who asked if the news was worth publishing - but certainly not because I wouldn't like Fedora (Fedora is one of my favorite Linux distributions), nor because of the joy of complaining for complaining's sake.
There are many news that may not be worth putting on the front page while maybe still worth publishing.
Putting only major news on front pages works very well for newspapers and magazines, so why wouldn't it work here on OSnews (or on other news sites in general) too?
Edited 2008-11-09 20:00 UTC
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2006-03-14
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Member since:
2005-07-18
Like others, the Page 2 should be more common items: news blurbs or announcements that are little more than links to other stories without much depth in and of themselves. While the left side contains the more beefy items.
That, or simply keep everything to the left and tag the rarer beefy items to show up on Page 2 as well as on the Left. This way, people can see items as they appear and then glance over to see if more important items which may have floated off the Left side since they last visited were tagged.
Of course, this raises an important question: what parameters define a story as worthy of being tagged for notice?
Member since:
2006-02-08
I'm not so sure about the idea for the important/relevent items going on page 1 and one-off blurbs to page 2.
Granted the proposal will make the important articles assessible, but may have a net effect of lowering the readership (and associated discussion) of the "one-offs" by a significant amount.
All said, I think I'm slightly leaning towards supporting the current "new" implementation for longer-lived article on page 2.
Member since:
2005-06-29
Just create and preference to combine Page 1 and Page 2 for anyone who wants to see everything in the front page...
...but besides choices, the "b-sides" thing could be well used... but I would probably put some more details about each news... maybe the first 30-50 words... at least as a tooltip...
Member since:2005-07-28
I second this. I really don't think OSNews gets enough articles to warrant a side bar, although some people may like the tiered news (ie: Page2).
I find it annoying to look through headlines on the left and would rather have it all on the main page as it was before.
Member since:2005-07-08
Maybe as tooltips? But other than that, space on a web site front page page tends to be a rather scarce resource. But you can see the teasers for page 2 news too if you just click on the OSnews Page 2 title.
I wonder if it could be made more clear that the title OSnews Page 2 is really a link to "Page 2", in other words all those Page 2 news?