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Some news from LWN

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Re: Some news from LWN

#131

Post by notatoad »

dublinben wrote: post #128
Analemma_ wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LWN articles are paywalled, but subscribers can generate public "subscriber links", which are the ones that get shared to HN. This is such a double-edged sword: it's great for visibility, but as you've shown, it means people can read your content for a long time and never even know that subscriptions are available. That trend only gets stronger as more people go through aggregators like HN/Reddit. Hopefully "pledge d…

They could make it significantly more clear that you are viewing a free preview, provided by the subscriber who shared it with you. It seems like a lost opportunity for conversions to omit this from the page.

They do exactly that on their paid content. This article is a free public post, not a subscriber link, so no message.

For example, https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/695910/61948e743f7054ec/

Re: Some news from LWN

#132

Post by mherdeg »

roryokane wrote: post #129
mherdeg wrote: post #52

There is no "Subscribe" link anywhere in the text of this article or on the web page that hosts it ( http://lwn.net/Articles/696017/ ). I was able to find the link from the front page, but it's kind of hidden -- https://lwn.net/subscribe/Info which says "Get started! The first step is to log into LWN. If you do not yet have an account, please create one now; otherwise, please log in to continue:". Which seems like a…

There is a link to subscribe within the article body; it's just named "subscription" instead of "subscribe": > LWN is, of course, a [subscription]-supported operation. But I agree that's it's not a strong call for action, and that it's hard to search for if you overlooked that sentence.

Thanks! I missed this — I read the whole article, somehow missed that [subscription] was a hyperlink, then re-read the article and searched for the verb "subscribe".

Re: Some news from LWN

#133

Post by umbs »

Analemma_ wrote: post #118
tlrobinson wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the years of occasionally reading LWN articles I've never noticed, or at least internalized, that LWN is subscription supported. Not saying they should introduce annoying "subscribe now!" modals, but they definitely could sell it a little harder.

LWN articles are paywalled, but subscribers can generate public "subscriber links", which are the ones that get shared to HN. This is such a double-edged sword: it's great for visibility, but as you've shown, it means people can read your content for a long time and never even know that subscriptions are available. That trend only gets stronger as more people go through aggregators like HN/Reddit. Hopefully "pledge d…

"LWN articles are paywalled"

It is paywalled for a short period (2 weeks??). After that, everyone can read their articles for free.

Re: Some news from LWN

#134

Post by kentonv »

mherdeg wrote: post #52

There is no "Subscribe" link anywhere in the text of this article or on the web page that hosts it ( http://lwn.net/Articles/696017/ ). I was able to find the link from the front page, but it's kind of hidden -- https://lwn.net/subscribe/Info which says "Get started! The first step is to log into LWN. If you do not yet have an account, please create one now; otherwise, please log in to continue:". Which seems like a…

Another problem is that when you subscribe, you choose a number of months for your subscription to last. The maximum you can choose in 24. I just now discovered that my subscription had lapsed. If I had the option to subscribe permanently, I would choose to do so.

I assume this is some sort of principled stand designed to avoid skimming money from people who no longer use their subscriptions but are too lazy to cancel... but it probably means LWN is failing to accept money from a lot of people who would be very happy to be paying.

Re: Some news from LWN

#135

Post by digi_owl »

rleigh wrote: post #74
ckastner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, LWN is more than just about Linux kernel development. I find it a useful aggregator of information of note from the F/OSS world. For example, as of right now, most of the articles on the front page aren't about kernel development: distro security updates, LibreOffice, Firefox, GnuPG, ...

This is very true, but I am increasingly wanting something a bit less Linux-centric for all the major categories it covers, which also includes the BSDs and other platforms. There's also an increasingly unhealthy echo chamber regarding "the desktop" if you read the comments, which largely mirrors subscribers' corporate/project affiliations, and that's one of the reasons I no longer subscribe or read it too frequently…

Yeah i keep seeing a small set of names from the same org and corporations pop up again and again, trying to defend where the Linux "desktop" is moving.

Re: Some news from LWN

#136

Post by [deleted] »

josteink wrote: post #112
Svenskunganka wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't really have to make it look "current" to make it better. I think a good example is antirez blog: http://antirez.com/latest/0 It's clean, very simple and renders fine in everything, even mobile. No distracting content, proper font and font spacing.

And has terrible contrast on the main page content's text making it hard to read if you have poor eyesight, poor light conditions or a poor monitor. This would probably fail a basic Universal Accessibility test based on that alone.

[deleted]

Re: Some news from LWN

#137

Post by elihu »

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 think kernel development is a lot slower and more incremental than it used to be, which is probably a good thing. However, back in the "wild west" days we had some very good books that explained in detail how the kernel works. Now, if someone wants to get started in kernel development, I wouldn't even know what book to recommend; all the good ones I know of haven't been updated in a decade.

I think this is perhaps an overlooked aspect of Linux's success; at a critical time, they had LWN and good documentation that made it easy for new developers to understand what's going on and start contributing. I don't know any other open source project that is as accessible to new developers as the kernel was in the early 2000's.

Re: Some news from LWN

#138

Post by ris »

LWN produce some of the highest quality articles around - well worth a subscription. Something I think may harm their subscription rate is how quickly they release articles to non-subscribers (1 week after publication?). This makes it easy for non-subscribers to justify not going for the subscription because "some weeks I don't get time to read LWN until a week late anyway". I think it could easily be stretched to a couple of weeks IMHO. Especially as the "subscriber link" mechanism is in place for articles readers would like to share.

Re: Some news from LWN

#139

Post by vacri »

zeveb wrote: post #84
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…

In fairness, I see your point, and it's not a bad one. I do appreciate the fact that LWN works in any browser, and doesn't require JavaScript to function. I wouldn't say that it comes across as unprofessional, though — rather the opposite. To me, LWN appears to be professional: no-frills, focused on substance over form.

LWN's primary audience is also people who communicate professionally via mailing lists. They just don't go for flashy sites, and prefer stability and consistency to whizz-bang prettiness - which is why there's an article warning folks to expect some changes and describing the reason why.

But the kicker is, whether or not someone thinks the site looks professional, it's a subscriber-based service that's been running for nearly two decades, that has hardcore professionals subscribing to it. It's not FOTM.

Re: Some news from LWN

#140

Post by vacri »

allendoerfer wrote: post #58

Okay, let's fix this, here are some suggestions they could think about: - Improve the design a bit. Carefully, you do not want to piss of old subscribers. - Improve the conversion rate. There is a middle ground between newsletter modals and burying the method to subscribe. - Introduce a few new products. As far as I can see, at the moment it is just "in depth news for OSS, especially kernel hackers". Maybe they could…

>"Invite a new subscriber to get this badge."

Which would then have to be displayed, which would be more visual spam for no good reason, which would piss off the core users.

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