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Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

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Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

#101

Post by bell-cot »

While Vulture Classic's (the old style's) sardonic 'tude was not always implemented well, it was a very welcome alternative to the mainstream's Sisyphean treadmill of "$VendorName $ProductName $NewVersionNumber Is New And Improved Yet Again!". Their 'tude let you at least pretend that their journalists weren't sock puppets for the industry heavyweights, and the headlines certainly made reading the news a bit more fun.

Looking for some upside - Vulture Classic was pretty alcoholic and misogynistic - two features which I found rather unattractive.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

#102

Post by donpott »

diodesign wrote: post #47

Hello, I'm Chris Williams, the editor of The Register. Maybe I can answer some of these Qs. > what caused this transformation? All things have to evolve and move with the times. As you've said, we were known, for example, for "intentionally-obscure headlines." Guess what, that works for some people - and it was fun - but it was holding us back reaching many more people, not just from the headline tone but also aggreg…

Hi Chris,

OP here. Just wanted to say thanks a million for taking he time and sharing your insightful reply. I don't have any original/interesting points to make, so I'll let the other commenters follow-up.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

#103

Post by donpott »

noAnswer wrote: post #82
KennyBlanken wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As you've said, we were known, for example, for "intentionally-obscure headlines." Guess what, that works for some people - and it was fun - but it was holding us back reaching many more people, not just from the headline tone but also aggregation and sharing. And I want our original, technical, and best coverage seen by as many folks as possible. This is like being a curry shop known for having intensely flavorful…

OP literally left despise them having "intense curry".

OP here. I think it's an apt metaphor. To expand/clarify, I would say that the spiciness of the curry was at the same time hard work (ie. having to parse the headlines, for example) and the main reason I went to this restaurant (it made it unique, it was a differentiator). I would visit it occasionally for a treat (or whenever a big event happened in Tech, although I'm mixing my metaphors now), but not as something one does every day.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

#104

Post by donpott »

jasonlotito wrote: post #44
donpott wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean that the "old" style didn't make it commercially viable, and the "new" one does? I would disagree. At least before I would visit it intermittently whenever I remembered it existed. Now I have zero interest in ever visiting it again.

You disagree, but even you admit that the old style was something you rarely, if ever, visited. So, when they try to determine what their users enjoy, what you enjoy won't get counted as much. > Now I have zero interest in ever visiting it again. You barely had any interest in visiting in the first place. You don't build a commercially viable product by catering to people who routinely do not use you. You can disagre…

That's a fair point. I'm finding the thread interesting because it has helped divorce my personal experience from (some of) the english-speaking tech community at large.

For me, a theme that's arising is that the previous style was pretty polarising, but at the same time it was a differentiator. Now, it's neither of those.

It appears that this works better for them commercially, too; so more power to them.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

#105

Post by tejtm »

LetMeInNowMate wrote: post #83
diodesign wrote: post #47

Hello, I'm Chris Williams, the editor of The Register. Maybe I can answer some of these Qs. > what caused this transformation? All things have to evolve and move with the times. As you've said, we were known, for example, for "intentionally-obscure headlines." Guess what, that works for some people - and it was fun - but it was holding us back reaching many more people, not just from the headline tone but also aggreg…

> but it was holding us back reaching many more people, Christ mate! Long term El-Reg reader here. The pure Blightly, homegrown, sarcastic piss taking tone is why I read the Reg, and so do many others. Selling out to some bland US-corporate bullshit WILL loose you readers. And BTW, can we have the 'Paris' icon back? Please.

Exactly, as a Murcan, how else could I have learned to whinge about trick-cyclists? you know with a setting, ala old.reddit, you could double down and get those things that need getting said out of the way for your neutered newsletter.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

#106

Post by anthk »

alisonatwork wrote: post #70
diodesign wrote: post #47

Hello, I'm Chris Williams, the editor of The Register. Maybe I can answer some of these Qs. > what caused this transformation? All things have to evolve and move with the times. As you've said, we were known, for example, for "intentionally-obscure headlines." Guess what, that works for some people - and it was fun - but it was holding us back reaching many more people, not just from the headline tone but also aggreg…

Thank you for responding to this topic, although what you're saying does disappoint me. I've been an on-and-off Reg reader since the Slashdot days, and I loved the style. But, like many UK media outlets in the past few years, there seems to be a push to "globalize" the product - most notably by replacing .co.uk domains with .com, but also in reducing the cynicism and irreverence that used to make UK media worth readi…

Spaniard here. Back in the day we had Slashdot (most IT/science educated guys in Spain can at least read English because of obvious requeriments on academia) and a Spanish analogue, Barrapunto (same meaning, slash/bar and punto/dot/point). A literal clone, with quality comments and lots of folks teaching and learning at. Later, a Digg clone appeared, Menéame (lit. "shake me"), a Digg clone to share/aggregate news.

But the sad thing it's Barrapunto is not more since a decade (they plugged the servers down a few years ago) and Meneame took its position, and politic arguments took over the "geeky" environment.

I miss these days, I could learn geeky and tech stuff in both languages and chat with geniouses daily. Reddit did the same for Slashdot, ok, but you kept Slashdot on.

Here, in the Spanish world (not even the whole Hispanic world across th pond) the legacy tech sites are dead, even for the Usenet es.* and esp.* (for latam hiers) . You have Slashdot at least, Ars Technica, Usenet, IRC and even Fido/Dovenet.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

#107

Post by LetMeInNowMate »

runxel wrote: post #48
bxparks wrote: post #9

Funny enough, I stopped reading the Register after a few attempts because I disliked its headlines and tone. "To each his own" I guess.

Funny enough, as a person whose native language is not English, The Register always went above my head. I knew it was meant to be snarky or funny, but it always left me stumbling and I never was quite sure if not the whole page was just an elaborate shitjoke.

As a Brit: Can I suggest this is not because your native language isn't English.... but is beacuse you are unfamiliar with our rather sly sense of humour?

Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

#108

Post by silasdavis »

anthk wrote: post #106
alisonatwork wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for responding to this topic, although what you're saying does disappoint me. I've been an on-and-off Reg reader since the Slashdot days, and I loved the style. But, like many UK media outlets in the past few years, there seems to be a push to "globalize" the product - most notably by replacing .co.uk domains with .com, but also in reducing the cynicism and irreverence that used to make UK media worth readi…

Spaniard here. Back in the day we had Slashdot (most IT/science educated guys in Spain can at least read English because of obvious requeriments on academia) and a Spanish analogue, Barrapunto (same meaning, slash/bar and punto/dot/point). A literal clone, with quality comments and lots of folks teaching and learning at. Later, a Digg clone appeared, Menéame (lit. "shake me"), a Digg clone to share/aggregate news. Bu…

Classic missing the punto HN side comment (sorry), but as a británico learning Spanish I thought it would be good to try and learn the Spanish keyboard layout. Barra punto is horribly hard to type. I keep having to switch when I want to run something in CWD. I do appreciate the dedicated jamón key though.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

#109

Post by gumby »

In 20 years el Reg has had several, well incarnations is too strong a word, but let's just say its nature has evolved. I think this is is pretty much the nature of any organization. The Lester Haines era (https://www.theregister.com/2016/06/16/lester_haines_obituar... ) was quite good -- I think his presence must have inspired others to creativity and lunacy in their prose. Orlowski was really really good but you can't do the same thing forever.

FWIW, lately I feel like it's been on an uptick.

Let's compare it to google which had a burst of activity and even inspiration at first and then lost its way after Schmidt stopped being CEO. OK, El Reg isn't one of the largest corporations in the world (well, at least they won't admit it and hide it well) but on this dimension I think it's done better than Google.

Re: Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

#110

Post by nottorp »

runxel wrote: post #48
bxparks wrote: post #9

Funny enough, I stopped reading the Register after a few attempts because I disliked its headlines and tone. "To each his own" I guess.

Funny enough, as a person whose native language is not English, The Register always went above my head. I knew it was meant to be snarky or funny, but it always left me stumbling and I never was quite sure if not the whole page was just an elaborate shitjoke.

As a non native speaker who has watched everything Monty Python and read everything Adams and Pratchett (in English, i mean they're translatable but it's a HARD job), I loved the old El Reg.

When they changed tone i just thought they got bought out and gave up.

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