Web News Site Upgrades
Two local news web sites recently went through transitions. Both the Times- Standard and Santa Rosa Press- Democrat seemed to upgrade their sites within days of each other.
I'm finally getting used to the Press- Democrat's new format. It is a bit less cluttered, although I'm still having to look a little harder to find the items I normally read.
The Times- Standard seems to have gotten rid of the slide out windows telling you what other stories you might be interested in- an annoying feature at best. At least I haven't noticed them the last couple days. Maybe they forgot to add them? I hope not. Nobody should miss them.
They have yet to add a section for letters to the editor, although you can get to them through the Opinion links at the top of the page. I suppose that's not too big of a deal. Despite the letters page supposedly being one of the most highly read in any paper, we don't seem to get many letters in the Times- Standard for some reason.
They still have that lame Today's Promotion tab type thing at the bottom of the page. That, and the occasional ads that pop up when you click on a link. I'd like to see them go, too, but understand they're desperate for advertising revenue. I wonder if they actually make any money from them?
One thing I wish both papers would do is dump the Facebook format for comments. I find FB comments format both annoying and awkward. I'd prefer they use Disqus comments as the Sacramento Bee and Lost Coast Outpost use. Disqus allows you to subscribe and unsubscribe to comment threads, something I'm not sure Facebook allows anymore.
Maybe FB still allows you to follow comments? It has a Follow Comment link you can click on, but it stopped working for me. I found it very useful when I'd make a comment on a story in the T-S or SR- PD and get a notified when someone replies to my comment. All of the sudden it stopped working and I can't find a way to get it started again. Disqus still works right so I'd prefer they all use Disqus for that reason alone.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 7:53 AM
10 comments
10 Comments:
"Disqus allows you to subscribe and unsubscribe to comment threads, something I'm not sure Facebook allows anymore."
I personally do not like Facebook, which I feel is a huge case of TMI, and one is no longer anonymous, making people more reluctant into really speaking their mind.
Though anonymity can be a double edged sword, it can get conversation going faster and longer.
"Henchman Of Justice" says,
FACEBOOK is used by the crony local media people because:
1) There is a national phenomina with FACEBOOK
2) FACEBOOK TYPES generally are not the type of people Times Standard wants to shut-off or shiut-out (these kind of people are yappers, self-righteous types)
3) The socio-political involved don't use FACEBOOK like the dumbed-down non-socio-political involved, thereby creating a scenario to not allow the HOJ's of the community to comment (just a simialr tactic like the LOCO makeing a seperate set-of-rules to divide people up into the "you are allowed to speak, you are not")
Silly stuff, but true to form,
HOJ
I'm not a big fan of Facebook, myself, although I'll admit to checking my FB page multiple times a day if only because I get feeds from various web sites I'm interested in. Reason magazine, for example.
As far as any difference between comments made by FB vs. Disqus users, I've never noticed any difference.
I do miss getting notifications to changes or comments made to anything I post to various news stories. I'm not sure why mine stopped. I might recall, although I'm not sure, that they stopped after I clicked on something to unfollow a thread I was tired of. Maybe it stopped everything? I've checked my FB preference over and over. I even Liked pages of those newspapers, thinking maybe I'd start getting notices if I Liked the page.
Nope, and there doesn't seem to be any way of getting FB to help. I sent them a message through their Help site and never received a response.
Never had a problem with Disqus.
Facebook solves the 'anonymous' problem. This is appropriate for a newspaper, which is a written record of our time, and SHOULD require that the comments there are made by real people. The same standard that their letters-to-the-editor should be held to. Disqus is fine for blogs where the more free-wheeling conversations appropriately take place.
I understand the problem you're referring to, Rose, but I just haven't seen much of it. The Sacramento Bee web site has some heated comments at times, but any real bad ones are removed by staff.
Besides, someone could always open up a phony FB account to troll the comments sections.
I'm having a problem with the new T-S format. I use Firefox. When I access the T-S, a tab shows up indicating I've reached the site, but absolutely NO content appears. It's just a blank window, except for the title of the tab. Any suggestions?
It works for me and I use Firefox. You might have to let it load for a bit. Seems to start out funny with the banner ads coming up first for me. It could be you have your browser pop up settings different than mine.
"Facebook solves the 'anonymous' problem. This is appropriate for a newspaper, which is a written record of our time, and SHOULD require that the comments there are made by real people. The same standard that their letters-to-the-editor should be held to. Disqus is fine for blogs where the more free-wheeling conversations appropriately take place."
I feel it's more like the TS staff became lazy in monitoring their online comment section, and wanted a more G rated atmosphere. Once the move to FB was made, the comments dropped considerably in number and tone. Since I won't subscribe to FB, this effectively shuts me out of numerous conversations. I like the anonymous atmosphere, since if one makes an out of place comment, or one that the village doesn't like, then one is labeled as their "idiot" which can take years to undo, especially in Smalltown Saturday Night Eureka.
Found the Firefox problem: I had an add-on that blocks Javascript. When I turned it off, the T-S pages ill load. So evidently the T_S now requires Javascript to load any content. Interestingly, if I turn off Javascript after the page load, I can still read the page. But it must be on to load a new page.
My browser froze up on today's My Word column. Got one of those error messages about some flash player or some such that wasn't working right. After a few minutes I was still able to read the page.
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