Stop Pagination Now • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#31

Post by jjjjjosh » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 7:38 AM UTC

joshuarrrr wrote: post #18

0r3jq4a0j wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it didn't improve their revenues, they wouldn't be doing it. I can assure you that this is absolutely not the case. If you look at Plotz's comment, it's exactly what most editors will say: Pages that run too long can irritate readers. We run stories of 2,000, 4,000, even 6,000 words, and to run that much text down a single page can daunt and depress a reader. So pagination can make pages seem more welcoming, more…

I'll ignore your general disdain for writers and editors, and point out that not all readers want the same thing. I've pushed for non-paginated articles at my publication, but I admit that I'm not always happy with the result, and we do hear reader complaints about not being able to orient themselves in an article like this: http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/the-cosmolog... (hopefully a wider content-we…

Re: hybrid pagination, I like the idea - but that particular implementation was a little wonky for me. Since the reading area was taller than my browser window, so I scrolled down to read the whole "page" and then had to scroll back up to continue reading. And since it seems to scroll based on scroll events from the browser, I wound up scrolling back to the first "page" in the article while trying to do that and the whole thing winds up being kind of a bummer.

I think a potentially nice implementation of this idea would be more like reading on a Kindle - text is broken into screen-sized chunks, and then there are low friction ways to go forward and backward "chunks".

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#32

Post by joshuarrrr » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 7:45 AM UTC

0r3jq4a0j wrote: post #28

joshuarrrr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll ignore your general disdain for writers and editors, and point out that not all readers want the same thing. I've pushed for non-paginated articles at my publication, but I admit that I'm not always happy with the result, and we do hear reader complaints about not being able to orient themselves in an article like this: http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/the-cosmolog... (hopefully a wider content-we…

your general disdain for writers and editors It's completely justified. For example: show me where in Poltz's long career as a writer and editor that he secretly squeezed in the years of UX, design, and development experience that qualifies him to make a statement about designing user interfaces. The problem is that editors simply don't believe there is special expertise here or that it requires anything beyond their…

Agree completely with font size and column-width critiques, both of which are addressed in an upcoming redesign. And, for that matter, I've always had issue with Slate's UX and design choices.

>The fact is that editors simply don't believe there is special expertise here.

I agree that UX and design are often neglected when traditional publishers work in digital mediums. But I find it odd that you can appreciate the experience that leads to good UX and design but not the editorial and reporting experience that leads to good copy.

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#33

Post by ollysb » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 7:55 AM UTC

djloche wrote: post #10

>"Pagination persists because splitting a single-page article into two pages can, in theory, yield twice as many opportunities to display ads—though in practice it doesn’t because lots of readers never bother to click past the first page." As much as I hate it and would love to think that pagination is just a publication pipedream, it's not. Some online publications have spent (and will spend if they're interested in…

What's the difference between showing adverts on the next page or adverts further down the same page? They could continue all the way to the bottom of the page. Not that I want to see this but it would be an improvement on paged articles.

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#34

Post by pre » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 7:58 AM UTC

What I don't really understand is how pagination gives more ad impressions in a way that simply adding more adverts into the text in a long page doesn't.

If the goal is more ads, why not just put more ads on longer pages?

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#35

Post by 0r3jq4a0j » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 7:59 AM UTC

joshuarrrr wrote: post #32

0r3jq4a0j wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your general disdain for writers and editors It's completely justified. For example: show me where in Poltz's long career as a writer and editor that he secretly squeezed in the years of UX, design, and development experience that qualifies him to make a statement about designing user interfaces. The problem is that editors simply don't believe there is special expertise here or that it requires anything beyond their…

Agree completely with font size and column-width critiques, both of which are addressed in an upcoming redesign. And, for that matter, I've always had issue with Slate's UX and design choices. >The fact is that editors simply don't believe there is special expertise here. I agree that UX and design are often neglected when traditional publishers work in digital mediums. But I find it odd that you can appreciate the e…

not the editorial and reporting experience that leads to good copy

Writing, content strategy, curation, copywriting, etc are obviously all important skills. However, being an editor does not remotely qualify someone to run a multimillion dollar business, design software, dictate engineering decisions, etc. Unfortunately, the industry is structured such that they are doing exactly that.

Is it any surprise that slate's division is operating at a loss? It's the norm in a broken industry.

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#36

Post by macchina » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 7:59 AM UTC

While I hate pagination, the mortal sin of click harvesting is the "slideshow." Nothing gets my blood boiling like a Top 100 list embedded in a clickthrough slideshow.

For regular articles, I use the Autopager extension for Firefox.

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#37

Post by franze » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 8:03 AM UTC

duopixel wrote: post #26

franze wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the A/B test of one of my clients (in the b2c vertical) showed (for their site with their users) that people clicked more pages (which was kinda expected), and stayed longer on the website overall - with pagination (instead of endless scrolling).

Wouldn't it be possible that the time lost paginating accounts for the longer stay?

some other metrics (we call them "item views") went up as well.

but it must be said: users of that site special, they actually want to find something, so they are (mostly) not casual users.

i remember a case a few years back on a travel site where we had a different experience, time on site went up after we ditched pagination (but that site also had horrible page load time, so every page view was a great opportunity to leave the site, so well, it's all interconnected)

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#38

Post by gizzlon » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 8:03 AM UTC

djloche wrote: post #10

>"Pagination persists because splitting a single-page article into two pages can, in theory, yield twice as many opportunities to display ads—though in practice it doesn’t because lots of readers never bother to click past the first page." As much as I hate it and would love to think that pagination is just a publication pipedream, it's not. Some online publications have spent (and will spend if they're interested in…

Well, it's optimized to make the amount of money short term. This kind of testing doesn't tell you what the reader thinks of your site, which is kind-of the OP point.

The user might click through to all the pages, but obtain a general disdain for your site. Not saying that pagination enough to make users hate a site, but for me, personally, it doesn't exactly help.

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#39

Post by gizzlon » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 8:07 AM UTC

bobsy wrote: post #22

As soon as I hit a page with multiple pages I almost always lose interest and immediately leave. I can read down a single page. However when I see an article with 6 pages I am like ... ... sod that. Its not so much the reading. Its the slow page loading which gets me down. If people did pagination right with ajax preloading the next page then I would be happy. 99% of sites do not do this. Instead their sites are slow…

Use something like readability or open all the pages in background tabs (ctrl-click) before you get to the end of page 1.

I almost never read long articles to the end, unless I've added them to readability. If I can't open them in the background so they're loaded when I want them, I usually don't bother

Re: Stop Pagination Now

#40

Post by gizzlon » Wed, Oct 03, 2012, 8:10 AM UTC

pre wrote: post #34

What I don't really understand is how pagination gives more ad impressions in a way that simply adding more adverts into the text in a long page doesn't. If the goal is more ads, why not just put more ads on longer pages?

Maybe they pay to have their add on the top of the page? So adds further down would pay less?? Just guessing here..