OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/20497/Introducing_Page_2 Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2010, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:29:39 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com which is more important then? http://osnews.com/thread?336469 http://osnews.com/thread?336469 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. Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (edmnc) Comments RE: which is more important then? http://osnews.com/thread?336475 http://osnews.com/thread?336475 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 Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Coxy) Comments Comment by Kroc http://osnews.com/thread?336476 http://osnews.com/thread?336476 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) Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments One URL for all news items? http://osnews.com/thread?336478 http://osnews.com/thread?336478 Could we please get one page for all news items as well as a osnews.com/all URL or similar?

Jim Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jimaz) Comments Suggestion for the front page http://osnews.com/thread?336482 http://osnews.com/thread?336482 Maybe keep the page 2 stories along with the main stories on the front page, but instead of displaying the teaser - just show the title of the story instead. This way they won't be stuffed into a sidebox. Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (-APT-) Comments excellent http://osnews.com/thread?336497 http://osnews.com/thread?336497 I am glad you are working it out. I think its a great alternative, we just need to work out the kinks. Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (slashdev) Comments How does this affect RSS? http://osnews.com/thread?336507 http://osnews.com/thread?336507 How does this affect RSS? Will there be two separate feeds, plus one combined feed? (I'd prefer the combined feed myself). RSS is how I consume OSNews. I rarely visit the main page. Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (CaptainN-) Comments I like the overall concept http://osnews.com/thread?336519 http://osnews.com/thread?336519 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? Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ressev) Comments Clutter vs. relevancy http://osnews.com/thread?336538 http://osnews.com/thread?336538 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. Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (flav2000) Comments RE: How does this affect RSS? http://osnews.com/thread?336541 http://osnews.com/thread?336541 Agreed. I rarely visit the OSnews home page. The RSS feed is what matters to me. I hope I still get it all through RSS. Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anon9) Comments RE[2]: How does this affect RSS? http://osnews.com/thread?336544 http://osnews.com/thread?336544
Agreed. I rarely visit the OSnews home page. The RSS feed is what matters to me. I hope I still get it all through RSS.


The normal RSS feed displays all the news. Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments b-sides and user preferences. http://osnews.com/thread?336555 http://osnews.com/thread?336555 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... Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JrezIN) Comments RE: b-sides and user preferences. http://osnews.com/thread?336618 http://osnews.com/thread?336618 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. Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nemith) Comments RE: b-sides and user preferences. http://osnews.com/thread?336730 http://osnews.com/thread?336730
but I would probably put some more details about each news... maybe the first 30-50 words... at least as a tooltip...

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? Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (irbis) Comments RE: Comment by Kroc http://osnews.com/thread?336732 http://osnews.com/thread?336732 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. Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (irbis) Comments RE[2]: Comment by Kroc http://osnews.com/thread?336735 http://osnews.com/thread?336735
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...

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 Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments RE[3]: Comment by Kroc http://osnews.com/thread?336738 http://osnews.com/thread?336738
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.)

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 Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (irbis) Comments