Accessibility vs. access August 23, 2011 4:35 PM Subscribe
Nieman Lab mentions MeFi in an an article about the importance of content curation.
Other curators like Dan Colman at Open Culture, Andy Baio of Waxy and the human engine behind MetaFilter do this constantly, by bringing to light fascinating text, image and video from the web’s obscure corners and contextualizing it for a general-interest audience.So this human engine, it grinds up users and spits out moderating I assume?
posted by 2bucksplus at 4:41 PM on August 23, 2011 [1 favorite]
Great to see Nieman Lab working on something other than those stupid sports paintings.
posted by box at 4:45 PM on August 23, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by box at 4:45 PM on August 23, 2011 [2 favorites]
The thesis of the article rings true to me:
The relationship between ease of access and motivation seems to be inversely proportional because, as the sheer volume of information that becomes available and accessible to us increases, we become increasingly paralyzed to actually access all but the most prominent of it — prominent by way of media coverage, prominent by way of peer recommendation, prominent by way of alignment with our existing interests.posted by Paragon at 4:49 PM on August 23, 2011
This human engine: it vibrates? If so, try checking your timing or your harmonic balancer.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:51 PM on August 23, 2011
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:51 PM on August 23, 2011
The human engine pollutes too much.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 4:55 PM on August 23, 2011
posted by furiousxgeorge at 4:55 PM on August 23, 2011
"curation" is the new blogging.
posted by GuyZero at 5:06 PM on August 23, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by GuyZero at 5:06 PM on August 23, 2011 [1 favorite]
Interesting that all the examples it uses as examples of quality are human engine driven, whether individuals or groupmind.
Automated sharing hasn't yet been able to well up the interesting out of the pool of everything which is the internet. It requires a person (or people) involved to truly do the filtering on a meta level which brings the quality to the fore.
There is hope for the future. The machines won't be done with us entirely until they can also find the melody hidden in the white noise, and decide it is indeed a hummable tune.
posted by hippybear at 5:07 PM on August 23, 2011 [3 favorites]
Automated sharing hasn't yet been able to well up the interesting out of the pool of everything which is the internet. It requires a person (or people) involved to truly do the filtering on a meta level which brings the quality to the fore.
There is hope for the future. The machines won't be done with us entirely until they can also find the melody hidden in the white noise, and decide it is indeed a hummable tune.
posted by hippybear at 5:07 PM on August 23, 2011 [3 favorites]
Glad they're branching out from charging people $250 for their chocolate chip cookie recipe.
posted by kinetic at 5:45 PM on August 23, 2011 [6 favorites]
posted by kinetic at 5:45 PM on August 23, 2011 [6 favorites]
So what does the human engine run on apart from donuts and unicorns?
posted by arcticseal at 5:58 PM on August 23, 2011
posted by arcticseal at 5:58 PM on August 23, 2011
Nieman Journalism Lab is yet another interesting website which has just totally screwed itself with a pretty but annoying redesign, moving from a 'blog' approach with lots of recent articles on the front page to a 'magazine' cover look with bugger all content but lots of tweeting crap. I wonder if they'll do a study of how their page views have tumbled in a month or two.
posted by joannemullen at 5:59 PM on August 23, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by joannemullen at 5:59 PM on August 23, 2011 [2 favorites]
Better a "human engine behind MetaFilter" than a human centipede behind MetaFilter.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 6:01 PM on August 23, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 6:01 PM on August 23, 2011 [3 favorites]
Never put salt in the human engine's eye.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 6:03 PM on August 23, 2011
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 6:03 PM on August 23, 2011
I agree with joannemullen *shudder*, the design is annoying, but an aside all the same.
posted by Elmore at 6:04 PM on August 23, 2011
posted by Elmore at 6:04 PM on August 23, 2011
IRFH!
posted by babbyʼ); Drop table users; -- at 6:15 PM on August 23, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by babbyʼ); Drop table users; -- at 6:15 PM on August 23, 2011 [1 favorite]
"Sorry I'm late, I was busy curating material on the internet."
posted by Brian B. at 6:20 PM on August 23, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by Brian B. at 6:20 PM on August 23, 2011 [2 favorites]
No worries, I was curating your mom.
posted by babbyʼ); Drop table users; -- at 6:23 PM on August 23, 2011
posted by babbyʼ); Drop table users; -- at 6:23 PM on August 23, 2011
It's really true if you look at how the "here is my stuff" model has shifted. Used to be you'd have a website that you designed and maintaned yourself. Then you moved to hosted solution stuff like blogger and whatnot so the emphasis was on your content, not so much your design or technical chops. Now it's all tumbling and retweeting and the facebook hot potato which really is much more of a curatorial approach to content.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:26 PM on August 23, 2011 [7 favorites]
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:26 PM on August 23, 2011 [7 favorites]
i think i can i think i can
posted by flabdablet at 6:39 PM on August 23, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by flabdablet at 6:39 PM on August 23, 2011 [1 favorite]
Then you moved to hosted solution stuff like blogger and whatnot so the emphasis was on your content, not so much your design or technical chops. Now it's all tumbling and retweeting and the facebook hot potato which really is much more of a curatorial approach to content.
YEAH, SCREW THOSE BLOGGER JERKS FOR RUINING THE INTERNET
[user was banned for this comment]
posted by Sys Rq at 6:39 PM on August 23, 2011
YEAH, SCREW THOSE BLOGGER JERKS FOR RUINING THE INTERNET
[user was banned for this comment]
posted by Sys Rq at 6:39 PM on August 23, 2011
*adds 'Curator' to CV*
posted by dg at 6:59 PM on August 23, 2011 [4 favorites]
posted by dg at 6:59 PM on August 23, 2011 [4 favorites]
Knowledge is not a lean-back process; it’s a lean-forward activity.
Did the author steal this? If not, I dig it.
posted by Glinn at 7:19 PM on August 23, 2011
Did the author steal this? If not, I dig it.
posted by Glinn at 7:19 PM on August 23, 2011
Man, I am so tired of seeing the word curate. Everything's curated now and that fad can't end soon enough.
posted by 6550 at 7:22 PM on August 23, 2011 [4 favorites]
posted by 6550 at 7:22 PM on August 23, 2011 [4 favorites]
It's really true if you look at how the "here is my stuff" model has shifted. Used to be you'd have a website that you designed and maintaned yourself. Then you moved to hosted solution stuff like blogger and whatnot so the emphasis was on your content, not so much your design or technical chops. Now it's all tumbling and retweeting and the facebook hot potato which really is much more of a curatorial approach to content.
And interestingly enough, one of the first to move out of blogging is moving back in, leaving the microstuff,
Earlier today I told everybody on Twitter and Facebook, that I’m leaving Twitter and Facebook.
Why?
Because Facebook and Twitter are too easy. Keeping up a decent blog that people actually want to take the time to read, that’s much harder. And it’s the hard stuff that pays off in the end.
Besides, even if they’re very good at hiding the fact, over on Twitter and Facebook, it’s not your content, it’s their content.
The content on your blog, however, belongs to you, and you alone. People come to your online home, to hear what you have to say, not to hear what everybody else has to say. This sense of personal sovereignty is important.
posted by infini at 7:22 PM on August 23, 2011 [1 favorite]
And interestingly enough, one of the first to move out of blogging is moving back in, leaving the microstuff,
Earlier today I told everybody on Twitter and Facebook, that I’m leaving Twitter and Facebook.
Why?
Because Facebook and Twitter are too easy. Keeping up a decent blog that people actually want to take the time to read, that’s much harder. And it’s the hard stuff that pays off in the end.
Besides, even if they’re very good at hiding the fact, over on Twitter and Facebook, it’s not your content, it’s their content.
The content on your blog, however, belongs to you, and you alone. People come to your online home, to hear what you have to say, not to hear what everybody else has to say. This sense of personal sovereignty is important.
posted by infini at 7:22 PM on August 23, 2011 [1 favorite]
Better a "human engine behind MetaFilter" than a human centipede behind MetaFilter.
Maybe. But better, much much better, a human centipede behind Metafilter than a human centipede in front of Metafilter.
posted by grobstein at 7:26 PM on August 23, 2011
Maybe. But better, much much better, a human centipede behind Metafilter than a human centipede in front of Metafilter.
posted by grobstein at 7:26 PM on August 23, 2011
Pfft. What early 1900s Egyptian prankster photoshopped in a baby donkey to camel parents?
posted by Glinn at 7:27 PM on August 23, 2011
posted by Glinn at 7:27 PM on August 23, 2011
"human engine" is all fun and games until you realize you're in a China Miéville novel.
posted by Zed at 9:14 PM on August 23, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by Zed at 9:14 PM on August 23, 2011 [2 favorites]
Nieman Journalism Lab is yet another interesting website which has just totally screwed itself with a pretty but annoying redesign, moving from a 'blog' approach with lots of recent articles on the front page to a 'magazine' cover look with bugger all content but lots of tweeting crap. I wonder if they'll do a study of how their page views have tumbled in a month or two.
I am still seething with nerd fury over the shit-awful Tom's Hardware front page 'redesign'. I know hardware sites are supposed to be ugly -- that engineer anti-aesthetic and all -- but my god, what a mess. I am especially pissed because I gave them constant feedback in their forums threads, as did many others, about what they were doing wrong and right as they went through iterations, and all was summarily ignored, and ARG.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:05 PM on August 23, 2011
I am still seething with nerd fury over the shit-awful Tom's Hardware front page 'redesign'. I know hardware sites are supposed to be ugly -- that engineer anti-aesthetic and all -- but my god, what a mess. I am especially pissed because I gave them constant feedback in their forums threads, as did many others, about what they were doing wrong and right as they went through iterations, and all was summarily ignored, and ARG.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:05 PM on August 23, 2011
Maybe. But better, much much better, a human centipede behind Metafilter than a human centipede in front of Metafilter.
it's called the infodump
posted by mannequito at 10:54 PM on August 23, 2011
it's called the infodump
posted by mannequito at 10:54 PM on August 23, 2011
which really is much more of a curatorial approach to content.
True. It is also a more passive and consumption-centric approach.
posted by fake at 11:07 PM on August 23, 2011
True. It is also a more passive and consumption-centric approach.
posted by fake at 11:07 PM on August 23, 2011
Is this where I say that what sets MetaFilter apart from the rest of the web is the quality of the curation (moderated and community policed)? Too bad one can't FPP it
posted by infini at 11:15 PM on August 23, 2011
posted by infini at 11:15 PM on August 23, 2011
True. It is also a more passive and consumption-centric approach.
Agreed. I think the argument is that remixing is the same as, if not better than, creating original content and that cool-hunting is more of an important skill than composition or erudition. Not agreeing, just saying that's the argument.
I feel that as mediums like the web (which is so ubiquitous as to hardly even be a medium really) get more and more full of everyone, we realize that many people are generally passive and creative along fairly narrow spectrums only. They're fine picking a theme from a set of themes instead of learning the tools to create their own, for example. I've always been confused by this, but then a lot of things confuse me.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:29 PM on August 23, 2011 [1 favorite]
Agreed. I think the argument is that remixing is the same as, if not better than, creating original content and that cool-hunting is more of an important skill than composition or erudition. Not agreeing, just saying that's the argument.
I feel that as mediums like the web (which is so ubiquitous as to hardly even be a medium really) get more and more full of everyone, we realize that many people are generally passive and creative along fairly narrow spectrums only. They're fine picking a theme from a set of themes instead of learning the tools to create their own, for example. I've always been confused by this, but then a lot of things confuse me.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:29 PM on August 23, 2011 [1 favorite]
Parts of it are very good.
posted by flabdablet at 11:40 PM on August 23, 2011
posted by flabdablet at 11:40 PM on August 23, 2011
I like seeing bits of metafilter in other places
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 12:04 AM on August 24, 2011
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 12:04 AM on August 24, 2011
Baffling may perhaps be a more appropriate word than confusing.
posted by infini at 12:28 AM on August 24, 2011
posted by infini at 12:28 AM on August 24, 2011
Yeah, that feels accurate to me, if a bit depressing. It sorta vaguely brings up a couple ghosts of things I'm not real excited about.
One is the whole tendency of curation toward "knowing better" - sort of like the first part of this comment. Curation is a process of exclusivity - exclusion over creation. Rather like the way some people lord their superior musical taste over others. This, not that. It gets so wrapped up in individual identity, it makes everything personal.
The other is the way that curators (in the Art sense) are usually excluded (by convention or social contract) from being creative in the same way as the creators of the work they organize. Hopefully things won't go that way. Of course there are exceptions, but I am just too damned heavily biased toward creation to feel good about having more selectors and less selection-makers.
I realize how vague and unformed this is even as I reach for the "Post Comment" button. SO: I have and enjoy and deeply benefit from a lot of people and tumblrs and feeds and hand-picked stores, so please, don't get me wrong. Curation is a good thing and more people taking a more considered approach to consumption is not wrong.
posted by fake at 12:30 AM on August 24, 2011
One is the whole tendency of curation toward "knowing better" - sort of like the first part of this comment. Curation is a process of exclusivity - exclusion over creation. Rather like the way some people lord their superior musical taste over others. This, not that. It gets so wrapped up in individual identity, it makes everything personal.
The other is the way that curators (in the Art sense) are usually excluded (by convention or social contract) from being creative in the same way as the creators of the work they organize. Hopefully things won't go that way. Of course there are exceptions, but I am just too damned heavily biased toward creation to feel good about having more selectors and less selection-makers.
I realize how vague and unformed this is even as I reach for the "Post Comment" button. SO: I have and enjoy and deeply benefit from a lot of people and tumblrs and feeds and hand-picked stores, so please, don't get me wrong. Curation is a good thing and more people taking a more considered approach to consumption is not wrong.
posted by fake at 12:30 AM on August 24, 2011
I think you people are all missing the point: "curation" means "curing" things. But "curing" is also a process that is done to ham or other cold meats by the addition of sugar, salt or nitrates. That's why jessamyn is so SWEET, but cortex is SALTY - like a salty sea dog. And vacapinta works at NITE, like a nitrate. You see? So basically MeFi works because the mods rub their flavoursome bodies all up and down the master screen at MetaFilter Headquarters and this PRESERVES our comments so they can be eaten at a later date or even shipped around the country and consumed without fear of poisoning. That's why MeFi is hosted on a SERVER, because we are all CONSERVES. I myself am actually a tasty onion relish, and I bet you would just like to unscrew my tight little lid and dip your water cracker into my juicy innards, wouldn't you? GOD you people disgust me.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 1:48 AM on August 24, 2011 [4 favorites]
posted by the quidnunc kid at 1:48 AM on August 24, 2011 [4 favorites]
must be jelly 'cause jam don't shake like that
posted by taz at 2:17 AM on August 24, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by taz at 2:17 AM on August 24, 2011 [1 favorite]
i don't think you're ready for this jelly
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:27 AM on August 24, 2011
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:27 AM on August 24, 2011
Everything's curated now and that fad can't end soon enough.
Metafilter: A curated egg.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:49 AM on August 24, 2011
Metafilter: A curated egg.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:49 AM on August 24, 2011
Hey joannemullen, elmore, and anyone else interested: I run Nieman Lab. (Thanks for the link reenum!) MeFi reader since the beginning. I'd love to know what you don't like about the redesign -- and I really mean that, because there's plenty of opportunity to make it better. Is it mainly the loss of reverse chronological?
posted by crabwalk at 4:27 AM on August 24, 2011 [4 favorites]
posted by crabwalk at 4:27 AM on August 24, 2011 [4 favorites]
"bringing to light fascinating text, image and video from the web’s obscure corners and contextualizing it for a general-interest audience."
I love this description of what MeFi (the blue) does. I've always felt FPP writing was like writing short magazine blurbs, and this is why - the contextualizing and the general-interest.
posted by Miko at 4:46 AM on August 24, 2011 [1 favorite]
I love this description of what MeFi (the blue) does. I've always felt FPP writing was like writing short magazine blurbs, and this is why - the contextualizing and the general-interest.
posted by Miko at 4:46 AM on August 24, 2011 [1 favorite]
So what is up with these pictures, linked to in said article? I would say they are faked / hand colored / crappy copy pasta. Why do they look like that?
posted by rebent at 6:21 AM on August 24, 2011
posted by rebent at 6:21 AM on August 24, 2011
I'm totally listing my occupation as "curiosity sherpa" on my next business cards.
posted by Madamina at 6:49 AM on August 24, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Madamina at 6:49 AM on August 24, 2011 [1 favorite]
Why do they look like that?
Because they're black-and-white slides that have been hand-tinted (somewhat crudely). It was somewhat popular back in the day.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 6:54 AM on August 24, 2011
Because they're black-and-white slides that have been hand-tinted (somewhat crudely). It was somewhat popular back in the day.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 6:54 AM on August 24, 2011
Yes, it's mainly the loss of the reverse chronological format, crabwalk.
Look this alternative version of your new page and think why it's my new bookmark for your site.
When I go to a site I want to see new material arranged in a clear, logical order with a minimum of clutter getting in the way. Your new front page seems designed to frustrate me, and anyone like me, in that endevour as there's no clear order for anything. Meanwhile you're wasting the lower half the page on crappy nonsensical tweets I woudn't read in a thousand years.
The redesign looks pretty for the first five seconds but after that it's unusable. Form should follow function, which is one of Metafilter's strengths. It looks at first glance as outdated as a 1980s floppy disc drive but it still works because it efficiently presents new material at a glance with the minimum of distraction.
posted by joannemullen at 6:59 AM on August 24, 2011
Look this alternative version of your new page and think why it's my new bookmark for your site.
When I go to a site I want to see new material arranged in a clear, logical order with a minimum of clutter getting in the way. Your new front page seems designed to frustrate me, and anyone like me, in that endevour as there's no clear order for anything. Meanwhile you're wasting the lower half the page on crappy nonsensical tweets I woudn't read in a thousand years.
The redesign looks pretty for the first five seconds but after that it's unusable. Form should follow function, which is one of Metafilter's strengths. It looks at first glance as outdated as a 1980s floppy disc drive but it still works because it efficiently presents new material at a glance with the minimum of distraction.
posted by joannemullen at 6:59 AM on August 24, 2011
Is it mainly the loss of reverse chronological?
I'm in agreement with joannemullen; it's the loss of any kind of direction once you've reached the bottom of the front page.
It's clear on arrival that there are further recent articles linked in the sidebar, but if you've just gone straight into the cover article, those get lost above the fold. You have to scroll back up the page past all the sidebar-junk to find those links, by which time your eyes are probably just going to go straight up to the top menu, and you might guess that everything else is in the archives (fourth link, too, which makes it seem like the archive is a backwater of the site). And the archives are just a calendar view where you can go into a particular month's articles. Which is fine if this is a magazine-format site that's published monthly, but a pretty cumbersome way of trying to find an article you spotted a couple of weeks back and meant to read later.
Reverse-chronological order is perfect when you're publishing stuff frequently. By all means draw attention to the latest article or three by giving them more screen-space, but you shoot yourself in the foot when you bury all your older content.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 7:06 AM on August 24, 2011
I'm in agreement with joannemullen; it's the loss of any kind of direction once you've reached the bottom of the front page.
It's clear on arrival that there are further recent articles linked in the sidebar, but if you've just gone straight into the cover article, those get lost above the fold. You have to scroll back up the page past all the sidebar-junk to find those links, by which time your eyes are probably just going to go straight up to the top menu, and you might guess that everything else is in the archives (fourth link, too, which makes it seem like the archive is a backwater of the site). And the archives are just a calendar view where you can go into a particular month's articles. Which is fine if this is a magazine-format site that's published monthly, but a pretty cumbersome way of trying to find an article you spotted a couple of weeks back and meant to read later.
Reverse-chronological order is perfect when you're publishing stuff frequently. By all means draw attention to the latest article or three by giving them more screen-space, but you shoot yourself in the foot when you bury all your older content.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 7:06 AM on August 24, 2011
My apologies - I seem to have been under the impression that the linked page was the main page of the site. Nevertheless, my point about older content being largely buried stands.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 7:08 AM on August 24, 2011
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 7:08 AM on August 24, 2011
"General interest" makes us sound common. I think I prefer "for a select audience".
posted by doctor_negative at 8:05 AM on August 24, 2011
posted by doctor_negative at 8:05 AM on August 24, 2011
Let me share some of my thinking about it. You're free to agree or disagree, of course. For what it's worth, the two days since the redesign have been around 20-30% above average on pageviews, even though we've been light on posting because our academic year started Monday. But August is a weird time, so who knows.
We'd had a straight, reverse-chron blog-style front page for 2.5 years (since launch). There were a few problems with it that I was trying to solve.
- We are an extremely social-media-driven site, traffic-wise. Only 7-10% of visits start on the home page. We have 60K Twitter followers, our stuff gets retweeted a ton, our daily email newsletter does well, Facebook, RSS, etc. So we had a high bounce rate -- people coming in by clicking a link somewhere, then bouncing back. So part of the front page idea was to make it more of a destination.
- For those people who did come to the home page, the reverse-chron format (which featured a healthy 2-3 graf excerpt of each post before the jump, very bloggy) pushed content even a day old down several screenfuls. We post on average three reported pieces a day, plus a link roundup. The blog format meant that something 48 hours old would be so far down the page that no one would ever see it. (Or click on it, which we could show via analytics.) Plus, the last post of the day is the link roundup post, so that meant all evening/overnight and all weekend the top post on the front page wasn't original content.
- At the same time, most of what we do (not all but most) could have a pretty decent shelf life. The Maria Popova piece this thread is about is an example -- it should have more than a few hours to be prominent.
The thing is, we didn't get rid of reverse chronological. The top 8 stories on the home page are still the 8 most recent, in order. The one exception is the featured-art slot in the left col, which is for the one of the last 8 that has the best art. But other than that, the most recent story is the top of the middle column, the one with the biggest headline, and then as more stories get posted, the stories drift down the middle column (to smaller headlines with art) and then to the right col (to smaller headlines and no art). Then the next nine most recent posts are in the three cols below the fold, again in order. All we changed is that we removed the date tag on anything that's more than 24 hours old (the green bar). So if something is really fresh (posted in the last day), that's made clear. Everything on the page is from the last week or so. What we don't do is slap on a date that distinguishes between a 3-day-old post and a 6-day-old post. Because I don't think that really matters, and you can tell the order just fine -- fresher stuff is bigger and higher, older stuff is lower and smaller.
The benefit, I think at least, is that now the 8 most recent stories are all now linked and promoted in the top screenful of the page. Before, the 8th most recent story was 10 page-downs away from the top (and that's on my 27" monitor, many more page-downs on a laptop).
joannemullen, you're wrong to say we're "wasting the lower half the page on crappy nonsensical tweets I woudn't read in a thousand years." The section you're talking about, Fuego, is 379px high on a 2769px high page (at the moment). That's 7% of the page. I'm sorry you don't like it, but we've heard from a ton of people who do. If you find the site "unusable," I hope you'll keep using the Wire version of it -- but I'm curious, do you feel the same way about, well, every other news site on the Internet? Because I can't think of a major news site that locks its design into your requirements.
Anyway, I'm sorry you don't like it -- we've gotten a lot more positive feedback than negative (actually the ratio's been surprisingly positive to me -- I don't like sudden redesigns either, and I know they always take some time to get used to). I just wanted to give you an idea what my thinking was behind it, which again you're of course free to think is stupid.
posted by crabwalk at 11:33 AM on August 24, 2011 [2 favorites]
We'd had a straight, reverse-chron blog-style front page for 2.5 years (since launch). There were a few problems with it that I was trying to solve.
- We are an extremely social-media-driven site, traffic-wise. Only 7-10% of visits start on the home page. We have 60K Twitter followers, our stuff gets retweeted a ton, our daily email newsletter does well, Facebook, RSS, etc. So we had a high bounce rate -- people coming in by clicking a link somewhere, then bouncing back. So part of the front page idea was to make it more of a destination.
- For those people who did come to the home page, the reverse-chron format (which featured a healthy 2-3 graf excerpt of each post before the jump, very bloggy) pushed content even a day old down several screenfuls. We post on average three reported pieces a day, plus a link roundup. The blog format meant that something 48 hours old would be so far down the page that no one would ever see it. (Or click on it, which we could show via analytics.) Plus, the last post of the day is the link roundup post, so that meant all evening/overnight and all weekend the top post on the front page wasn't original content.
- At the same time, most of what we do (not all but most) could have a pretty decent shelf life. The Maria Popova piece this thread is about is an example -- it should have more than a few hours to be prominent.
The thing is, we didn't get rid of reverse chronological. The top 8 stories on the home page are still the 8 most recent, in order. The one exception is the featured-art slot in the left col, which is for the one of the last 8 that has the best art. But other than that, the most recent story is the top of the middle column, the one with the biggest headline, and then as more stories get posted, the stories drift down the middle column (to smaller headlines with art) and then to the right col (to smaller headlines and no art). Then the next nine most recent posts are in the three cols below the fold, again in order. All we changed is that we removed the date tag on anything that's more than 24 hours old (the green bar). So if something is really fresh (posted in the last day), that's made clear. Everything on the page is from the last week or so. What we don't do is slap on a date that distinguishes between a 3-day-old post and a 6-day-old post. Because I don't think that really matters, and you can tell the order just fine -- fresher stuff is bigger and higher, older stuff is lower and smaller.
The benefit, I think at least, is that now the 8 most recent stories are all now linked and promoted in the top screenful of the page. Before, the 8th most recent story was 10 page-downs away from the top (and that's on my 27" monitor, many more page-downs on a laptop).
joannemullen, you're wrong to say we're "wasting the lower half the page on crappy nonsensical tweets I woudn't read in a thousand years." The section you're talking about, Fuego, is 379px high on a 2769px high page (at the moment). That's 7% of the page. I'm sorry you don't like it, but we've heard from a ton of people who do. If you find the site "unusable," I hope you'll keep using the Wire version of it -- but I'm curious, do you feel the same way about, well, every other news site on the Internet? Because I can't think of a major news site that locks its design into your requirements.
Anyway, I'm sorry you don't like it -- we've gotten a lot more positive feedback than negative (actually the ratio's been surprisingly positive to me -- I don't like sudden redesigns either, and I know they always take some time to get used to). I just wanted to give you an idea what my thinking was behind it, which again you're of course free to think is stupid.
posted by crabwalk at 11:33 AM on August 24, 2011 [2 favorites]
Someone who simply shares a link to a beautiful illuminated manuscript from the 13th century might grab your ephemeral attention for a fleeting moment of visual delight, but someone who shares that manuscript in the context of how it relates to today’s ideals and challenges of publishing, to our shared understanding of creative labor and the changing value systems of authorship, will help integrate this archival item with your existing knowledge and interests, bridging your curiosity with your motivations to truly engage with the content.
Thanks, but I'll settle for the fleeting moment of visual delight.
posted by verstegan at 8:49 AM on August 26, 2011
Thanks, but I'll settle for the fleeting moment of visual delight.
posted by verstegan at 8:49 AM on August 26, 2011
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posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:41 PM on August 23, 2011 [5 favorites]