Some news from LWN

#1

Post by gghh » Thu, Aug 04, 2016, 9:35 AM UTC

Re: Some news from LWN

#2

Post by d33 » Thu, Aug 04, 2016, 10:24 AM UTC

One thing that comes to my mind is that perhaps refreshing their website look-and-feel would get them some new readers...

Re: Some news from LWN

#3

Post by grabcocque » Thu, Aug 04, 2016, 10:25 AM UTC

I stopped subscribing.

The thing is, the Glory Days when kernel development was a scary, exciting wild west are lone gone.

By necessity, the Linux kernel is now a part of the tech firmament and development is necessarily not as sexy as it used to be. So it's gonna be tough to get people to pay to read about it.

Re: Some news from LWN

#4

Post by bflesch » Thu, Aug 04, 2016, 10:33 AM UTC

I've never been a subscriber of this page and I don't think I am their real target audience. But I'm a professional programmer and I have been using Linux for around 15 years.

I must say that this website comes across as very unprofessional due to the total lack of any design elements which would make it more easy to consume the content (spacing, choice of font). Also it seems like they don't use CSS to enhance the site's UX at all. If you look at the mobile site, they have some sort of dropdown to show the menu, which is then also way too small to properly click on. Issues like this are allover the site: Tables without any proper spacing / borders, mixing centered and left-aligned content with no reason, etc.

For me it just feels clunky and even though the information they aggregate seems to have some value for others, the presentation is just way off.

Re: Some news from LWN

#5

Post by ersii » Thu, Aug 04, 2016, 10:37 AM UTC

I really like LWN and I subscribe - although the Kernel Development part is usually way above my head and my interest level.

If you perhaps not enjoy LWN enough to subscribe - at least consider if you have any friends that might be interested or persuade them to subscribe - if they're already readers.

Re: Some news from LWN

#6

Post by espadrine » Thu, Aug 04, 2016, 10:38 AM UTC

d33 wrote: post #2

One thing that comes to my mind is that perhaps refreshing their website look-and-feel would get them some new readers...

Be honest: if you had not written this comment, would you have subscribed in six months if they started looking like Medium 2.0?

Re: Some news from LWN

#7

Post by bflesch » Thu, Aug 04, 2016, 10:38 AM UTC

bflesch wrote: post #4

I've never been a subscriber of this page and I don't think I am their real target audience. But I'm a professional programmer and I have been using Linux for around 15 years. I must say that this website comes across as very unprofessional due to the total lack of any design elements which would make it more easy to consume the content (spacing, choice of font). Also it seems like they don't use CSS to enhance the s…

For the person downvoting me: Let's look at the article's comments. It is so hard to actually follow the conversation between the users. The article's title is repeated multiple times and has a red background.

Underneath each comment's title is a full-height line with a font stating the UTC timestamp, and in the next line we can finally read the actual comment.

I can't be the first person to criticise those issues, and from the fact that they haven't changed it already I think they actually don't care about these kind of things.

Re: Some news from LWN

#8

Post by distances » Thu, Aug 04, 2016, 10:42 AM UTC

d33 wrote: post #2

One thing that comes to my mind is that perhaps refreshing their website look-and-feel would get them some new readers...

There recently was a site update that improved functionality on mobile devices. Weirdly though there were a couple of regressions at the same time:

1) The front page for logged in users changed to a less useful one-column layout, so now I always browse the site not logged in.

2) Previously the current and previous weekly editions were nicely visible in the sidebar. That isn't there any more. As a result I read much less of the actual articles, as they just don't catch my eye. I mostly just check the front page news column now.

Anyway, I hope all the best for LWN, as the content is of very high quality indeed.

Re: Some news from LWN

#9

Post by pubby » Thu, Aug 04, 2016, 10:48 AM UTC

bflesch wrote: post #4

I've never been a subscriber of this page and I don't think I am their real target audience. But I'm a professional programmer and I have been using Linux for around 15 years. I must say that this website comes across as very unprofessional due to the total lack of any design elements which would make it more easy to consume the content (spacing, choice of font). Also it seems like they don't use CSS to enhance the s…

> this website comes across as very unprofessional due to the total lack of any design elements

Really? I've always viewed plain HTML sites in the complete opposite way. They tend to have really good, well thought-out content. There's no filler or clickbait with them.

Re: Some news from LWN

#10

Post by CrLf » Thu, Aug 04, 2016, 10:53 AM UTC

grabcocque wrote: post #3

I stopped subscribing. The thing is, the Glory Days when kernel development was a scary, exciting wild west are lone gone. By necessity, the Linux kernel is now a part of the tech firmament and development is necessarily not as sexy as it used to be. So it's gonna be tough to get people to pay to read about it.

I don't think kernel development is any less scary now than it used to be. It's just as scary, people just don't care to know the gory details anymore. Such systems-level knowledge is seen as much less valuable now in the age of javascript frameworks that don't last longer than a month and silver bullets that everyone talks about but few are actually using for "production" scenarios worthy of that name.

It just mirrors internet culture as a whole. Easy to consume information, show off and fashion.