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A quick LWN update
It's been a while since we've run one of these update articles, which is
generally a good thing. We'd rather be talking about what is going on in
the Linux community than ourselves. But every now and then somebody asks
for an update, so here goes...
The subscription count remains, more or less, level. We went through the expiration of all the six-month subscriptions that people took out back at the beginning in reasonably good form, which is a good thing. But the rate of growth at this point is very low. We've begun to increase traffic with some careful, targetted advertising (mostly on Google for the moment) with some results. More needs to be done, however. The subscription level is still not at the level it needs to reach for LWN to be a long-term stable operation. Advertising on the LWN site has been a little higher through the last few months. We would like to encourage everybody to remember the LWN text ad system, however. It is an effective and inexpensive way to get your message out to the Linux community and support LWN at the same time. It is worth noting that it has now been one year since LWN switched over to the new site code and format. There were a lot of complaints at the time, but our readers appear to have gotten used to the new way of doing things. The new code has significantly reduced the effort it takes to put LWN together every week, has enabled the formation of a strong (and opinionated) community of commenters, and, of course, has let us set up the whole subscription system. We believe it was worth it, even if there are still a lot of rough edges in need of smoothing. Thanks, as always, for supporting LWN. (Log in to post comments)
A quick LWN update Posted Jun 5, 2003 3:04 UTC (Thu) by mark (guest, #1921) [Link] I wish that it was easier to read comments!That is all.
Reading comments Posted Jun 5, 2003 12:44 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Talk to us...what is the problem with reading comments that you would like to see fixed? Let us know how we can change the system, and we'll at least put it on the ToDo list...
Reading comments Posted Jun 5, 2003 13:30 UTC (Thu) by utoddl (subscriber, #1232) [Link] Well, two things come to mind.First, if you added, for example, an id="comment.1.2.3" attribute to the existing comments' <div> tags (meaning in this case "the 3rd reply to the 2nd reply to the 1st comment"), then each comment could have it's own URL. That way I could send a note to my bos that says "Hey, I posted a really clever comment on LWN; check out http://lwn.net/Articles/35049/#comment.1.1.1 to see what I said about you." Second, if you did the above, then the "Comments (27 posted)" link at the bottom of an article could point directly to, say, "http://lwn.net/Articles/34740/#comment.1". After all, I probably just read the article, so why should I have to scroll down through it to get to the first comment. If you followed this scheme, I wouldn't have to scroll.
Reading comments Posted Jun 5, 2003 14:59 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] FWIW, each comment does already have its own URL; comments are proper content items like everything else on the site. Your comment, for example, can be found at this URL.The other item (not having to scroll down to comments) has come up before. It's on the list, and shouldn't be all that hard to do.
Reading comments Posted Jun 5, 2003 18:58 UTC (Thu) by utoddl (subscriber, #1232) [Link] FWIW, each comment does already have its own URL; comments are proper content items like everything else on the site.I figured that out eventually. Actually, in my example above, http://lwn.net/Articles/35049/#comment.1.1.1 hits itself! Go figure. I just liked the dot notation because it shows where things are in relation to other comments, but <div id="#comment.35049"> would certainly work just as well. Anyway, it'll be nice to have that facility working. Maybe when you get a slow news week soon... ...or when you open the source and one of us has a slow day. That's how this Open Source stuff is supposed to work, right? :-)
Reading comments Posted Jun 5, 2003 19:02 UTC (Thu) by utoddl (subscriber, #1232) [Link] (Well, no, it hits its parent, i.e. your comment. Still...)
Reading comments Posted Jun 6, 2003 9:39 UTC (Fri) by jdthood (guest, #4157) [Link] It would be useful if the weekly edition offered aneditorial selection of comments posted to the article during the week. Although I find the noise level here to be lower than on other sites, I would still like to have the choice of reading only the most interesting and on-topic comments. This would increase the value of the newssite for busy readers. If you don't have the time for this, perhaps you could set up a simple moderation system. Second, I would really like to receive (by e-mail) comments
Reading comments Posted Jun 6, 2003 17:12 UTC (Fri) by edgewood (subscriber, #1123) [Link] I'd like to have the number of comments encoded in the Comments link. For example:
<a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/34693/?numcomments=14">
That way my browser do the work of figuring out whether there are new comments: if there aren't, the link will show up in the "link followed" style.
Reading comments Posted Jun 6, 2003 17:19 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Others have suggested encoding the number of comments. It could be done, and is on the list.There is one feature of the LWN site that we've never publicised, but which might be handy for people wanting to see new comments: http://lwn.net/Comments/ is a simple, time-sorted display of the most recent posts. Basic, but, perhaps, better than nothing.
Comments on comments Posted Jun 5, 2003 13:02 UTC (Thu) by alspnost (subscriber, #2763) [Link] I also have a suggestion regarding comments. It might be an idea to have a consistent link for comments on each article. Currently, there are two variations of course: xxxxxxxx <link to full story> xxxxxxxx or xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx It's a small point, but this causes minor confusion when scanning through a list of articles, eg on the front / daily page. It might be better to _always_ have a comments link - at the bottom right, say - of each article or news item. Then you always know where to click for comments, and where to click for the fully story / external article, regardless of where the link to the latter is. Does this make sense? Otherwise, LWN is excellent as always, and I hope more people come to discover this fact ;-)
A quick LWN update Posted Jun 5, 2003 13:12 UTC (Thu) by ordonnateur (subscriber, #6652) [Link] The problem with the comments is that when clicking on the comment link at the bottom of a piece the page redisplays from the top again; so I have to scroll down through everything I've already read.
A quick LWN update Posted Jun 5, 2003 17:24 UTC (Thu) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link] I tend to be up late and read the weekly edition within an hour of when it's posted, useually there are only a few comments on items (but sometimes quite a few), if I read the comments and then come back later to see what else has been posted on an issue I am particularly interested in it's not easy to tell which comments are new and which ones are old.
A quick LWN update Posted Jun 6, 2003 1:05 UTC (Fri) by chad.netzer (subscriber, #4257) [Link] Same here. I usually miss the comments because I read it so early. It'd be nice to get an optional digest of the comments on, say, Monday. Even a note just saying how many new comments for what article, since last I read.
one-way comments Posted Jun 9, 2003 0:05 UTC (Mon) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] It works in converse too. I tend to read LWN late, which means that I get to see everyone else's comments, but there's little point in my leaving a comment myself, since the audience has already been by.I believe the best solution, as has been suggested before, is to have LWN include the most interesting comments, or paraphrase them, in the next weekly edition. Sometimes a comment alleges an error in the LWN article or fills in a significant missing detail. Readers of the article want to know about that stuff, regardless of what time of the week they read the article.
comment counts Posted Jun 11, 2003 19:32 UTC (Wed) by pflugstad (subscriber, #224) [Link] KernelTrap (http://kerneltrap.com) keeps track of your login and what comments you've seen, and indicates when you come back if there are new comments in one of the articles or not, and if you go look, marks the new ones with '*'. I find this *really* useful, and I wish LWN'd do the same thing.
A quick LWN update Posted Jun 5, 2003 14:31 UTC (Thu) by ken (subscriber, #625) [Link] Could not the low numbers of new users be explained that it is far from obvious what this site is about if a user only gets the lwn.net url.What you need is a good front page that makes it crystal clear what it is about. That is the weekley stuff not the daily links. That page should be hidden from subscribed users since we already know that.
A quick LWN update Posted Jun 5, 2003 19:30 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link] IMHO, the target audience is more likely to a) prefer things as they are and b) notneed an explanation of what "Linux Weekly News" means. [ looks at home page ] Gee! It doesn't *say* that anymore. Hmmm, Jon... maybe this fellow has a point; though a slightly different one than I think he thinks he does... :-)
A quick LWN update Posted Jun 5, 2003 16:41 UTC (Thu) by mklatsky (guest, #2196) [Link] Overall, however- the best written, sober writing around. That is what keeps me coming back.
A quick LWN update Posted Jun 7, 2003 0:30 UTC (Sat) by neofax (guest, #4624) [Link] Does anyone know when the Weekly Edition is going to be emailed out to subscribed members? This would be a bonus to people that do not have that much time to sit on the net and read through the whole edition.
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