Comments and suggestions for the "New LWN"

Posted Jun 7, 2002 19:15 UTC (Fri) by DeletedUser1653 ((unknown), #1653)
Parent article: The new LWN.net site

I'm not sure what to make of the complaints about color changes - The colors are the same as I've always seen them, at least viewing from the "one big page" point of view. No problems with "salmon" here - it's always been that color for me. Is this some evil CSS-induced effect that I didn't see because I still use Netscape 4.x?

I do have a gripe about font sizes, though. The previous layout was compact and to the point, while the new version of the site blows up font sizes WAY too much, particularly in the item headlines - these were small and unobtrusive before, marked by their background color rather than their size. That worked *much* better. I find I want a bigger screen on which to view the new layout (to see more), despite the fact that I have a 1280x1024 17" LCD screen. The new layout must be very painful for those with lower res screens like laptop users stuck at 10x7 or even 8x6.

Finally, I'm not sure I like the comments idea at all. I fear that the Letters section, which has been of fairly consistently high quality, will suffer as a result, and that the comments areas will succumb to the tragedy of the commons here just as they have everywhere else. One thing I really liked about the Letters section was that it tended to focus discussion on topics and points that were of importance and general interest to the community at large - I'm afraid that won't happen with the new LWN comments mechanism, which is just Slashdot redux. (My own personal feeling is that Slashdot has become nearly useless, with a signal/noise ratio trending to zero. Compare Slashdot discussions of three or four years ago with today's and you'll see what I mean. The average intelligence of posters has fallen dramatically, and none of the moderation techniques tried have worked.)

So, here's a suggestion for a compromise that might work well: Since Letters *will* be written about things of interest and import, it might be best to limit comments to Letters rather than stories or news items themselves. This will serve to provide at least some focus on particular topic areas, although I still fear the eruption of brutal flamewars, from which LWN has been mercifully immune under its traditional structure.

Thanks for trying to improve, but wahtever you do, don't turn into Slashdot - that would be a great loss for all of us!

P.S.: The non-wrapping text entry box is a *really BAD idea* - it's impossible to see what you write in a constructive way. This one's easy to fix. Please do.