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Some news from LWN

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Re: Some news from LWN

#71

Post by filereaper »

Most people here are commenting about the look and feel of LWN, I really don't have any complaints about the UI/UX so far, I don't expect to read LWN on my mobile phone.

I think the main reason of the drop in readership is firstly kernel development is very involved and detailed, LWN mostly reflects the kernel mailing list and associated events and tech talks.

I guess what I find most difficult as an outsider of the kernel community, is trying to keep up. Jonathan Corbet is doing and extraordinary job summarizing the activities of the kernel community in LWN. But the kernel doesn't maintain any main "Epics" that we have in software traditional development, so take for example fair scheduling. AFAIK, the kernel community does not decide to tackle fair scheduling on the next release of kernel, ie 4.7. Then say power management in 4.8 etc...

LWN ends up with a smattering of various articles under common themes like "Kernel", "Security" etc...

LWN has in the past explained long running topics like scheduling when key updates are happening and I commend them for that.

None of the above is a negative reflection on the kernel community or LWN in how they operate but it feels kinda hard to keep up and stay vested.

Anyways just a few thoughts, will renew membership now.

Re: Some news from LWN

#72

Post by hehheh »

c22 wrote: post #61
jasonkester wrote: post #32

One minor idea. If you're an organization defined by a mystery three letter acronym, do people a favor and define it somewhere. Since it's not in this post or on the lwn.net homepage, here's the LWN faq: http://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn Notice that it's seven printed pages full of questions that somebody familiar with the thing might want to know. But nowhere does it tell you what "LWN" stands for. If you want people to sub…

CNN.com doesn't tell you what their acronym means either.

It's spelled out in the footer: "® 2016 Cable News Network."

Re: Some news from LWN

#73

Post by allendoerfer »

rilut wrote: post #64
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…

> - Improve the design a bit. Carefully, you do not want to piss of old subscribers. I simply tried to change the font-family to Segoe UI (or whatever your OS' font) in Developer Tools, and it looks more interesting than Times New Roman

I think they should improve the general information architecture. Make content more discoverable. Categories, tags, overview pages, or just a better layout of the home page, which is not only date-based.

Essentially increasing the visitor time for new visitors, then increasing the recurring visitors, then increasing the sign ups.

Re: Some news from LWN

#74

Post by rleigh »

ckastner wrote: post #13
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.

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.

Re: Some news from LWN

#75

Post by lukeschlather »

pluma wrote: post #40
hueving wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you mean subjectively. "it's not in the format I'm accustomed to" is not objective in any way.

No, objectively. Unless you're saying it's intended to emphasize the metadata over the content. I'm talking about factors that are measurably detrimental to readability -- not fashion. Visual emphasis isn't new, it's been around for centuries -- it's not just a fad. There is plenty of introductory material on visual emphasis around, not just covering emphasis in textual media, e.g.: http://daphne.palomar.edu/design/e…

It doesn't emphasize the metadata over the content - they are equal peers.

Most techniques for making metadata less emphasized make the metadata objectively less readable. I like having the metadata there. I like being able to read it. I have no trouble reading the text (because it's a decent size and the layout handles zooming without issue.)

Re: Some news from LWN

#76

Post by [deleted] »

hehheh wrote: post #70
sotojuan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time someone says a website should update their look people think they mean it should look like Medium and be brigaded by design school freshmen who'll make the page weigh 900gb. I don't know what the original commenter meant, but the text could be a bit bigger and the line lengths and spacing controlled. The comment metadata could be shortened and humanized, though the audience may find it useful. There's some…

You created a strawman argument (y'all want it to be 900gb!) and then counter it yourself with some reasonable suggestions that others here have made as well.

[deleted]

Re: Some news from LWN

#77

Post by csense »

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…

> design elements which would make it more easy to consume the content

For me, "design elements" tend to make content harder to consume.

> it just feels clunky

Pages that load megabytes of JavaScript to display kilobytes of text feel clunky. The modern trend toward large icons, large fonts, wide margins, and slow response times because everything has to go through JS/XHR makes websites that keep with today's design fads feel like toys, while websites that present information without a ton of JS and CSS baggage feel like tools.

I feel like design fads are partly a clever marketing ploy to keep web designers in business -- "it doesn't look modern" shouldn't be a justification to plop down the big bucks to redesign a perfectly functioning website every 3-5 years, but it is.

Re: Some news from LWN

#78

Post by nekopa »

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…

IMHO, I think they should be really careful regarding your last point - marketing tactics.

Gamification, i.e. badges, I don't think would go over too well with their subscriber demographic. I think something like a free month, a free public share of a link (I don't know LWN very well, but I do remember reading articles there which say that some member sponsored the article to make it public) or a bundle of $RELEVANT_TO_YOUR_INTERESTS white papers may work better.

Otherwise I think you make some very solid points, especially trying to find out how to subscribe was much harder than it should be...

Re: Some news from LWN

#79

Post by zeveb »

randac wrote: post #60
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…

At least they tell you the price before making you create a login! I ran into this gem recently: https://www.flograppling.com/signup?next=/

> https://www.flograppling.com/signup?next=/

What an odd name. Flog rappeling? Flo grappling? Eff log rap pling?

/me loads page

Ah, door #2.

Re: Some news from LWN

#80

Post by zeveb »

1_2__3 wrote: post #54
pasiaj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare LWN and Hacker News. Both are very simple, but the comment section of Hacker News has an emphasis on content, and metadata is showed in a very simple and toned down way. ("7 minutes ago" vs TIMESTAMP). On LWN there is unnecessary and redundant metadata accentuated! Everything on HN is clearly thought out, and almost nothing on LWN is.

Some of us vastly prefer a time stamp to an utterly useless relative measurement displayed.

> Some of us vastly prefer a time stamp to an utterly useless relative measurement displayed.

Ditto. Maybe I loaded the page yesterday. What does '1 hour ago' mean? Was it updated by JavaScript? Is it an hour from now, or from yesterday, or what?

Give me a timestamp, and I know.

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