Saturday, August 27, 2005
Readers first
...is not an attitude that always seems to be widely held at Wikinews.
If we do not put our readers first and foremost, and provide them with the best possible experience (and, obviously and of utmost importance, lots of quality content), what's the point?
Some seem to view Wikinews as some sort of technology playground rather than an attempt to improve upon the mainstream media and provide free content. The whole Portal: namespace issue is just such a thing: a few people have an overwhelming, all-consuming desire to prefix region and topic page titles with "Portal:". They have their justifications, I have my doubts. Note the fundemental difference in approaches - my concerns are purely with how it would effect readers, while the proponents are concerned with vague concepts which may only be of interest to editors - if anyone at all, in fact.
Some of this is down to the mind-set of the proponents, particulary the teenagers. It's manifested not just here but in failures such as the "Wikinews Network". D.P. Smith wrote an excellent mail on this subject, which was very insightful, and well worth reading in full. In particulary though, to quote:
"A common characteristic of that age is a total inability to let
things go and not sweat the small stuff. Every tiny rejection is
fought tooth and nail, not for personal reasons of course, but
because of The Principle Of The Thing."
If we do not put our readers first and foremost, and provide them with the best possible experience (and, obviously and of utmost importance, lots of quality content), what's the point?
Some seem to view Wikinews as some sort of technology playground rather than an attempt to improve upon the mainstream media and provide free content. The whole Portal: namespace issue is just such a thing: a few people have an overwhelming, all-consuming desire to prefix region and topic page titles with "Portal:". They have their justifications, I have my doubts. Note the fundemental difference in approaches - my concerns are purely with how it would effect readers, while the proponents are concerned with vague concepts which may only be of interest to editors - if anyone at all, in fact.
Some of this is down to the mind-set of the proponents, particulary the teenagers. It's manifested not just here but in failures such as the "Wikinews Network". D.P. Smith wrote an excellent mail on this subject, which was very insightful, and well worth reading in full. In particulary though, to quote:
"A common characteristic of that age is a total inability to let
things go and not sweat the small stuff. Every tiny rejection is
fought tooth and nail, not for personal reasons of course, but
because of The Principle Of The Thing."
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Say Less/Write More
It takes me about 15 minutes to write a news article (admittedly only a few paragraphs, but usually quite comprehensive and always fully sourced). Yet I probably spend an hour or two on Wikinews each day.
I should probably spend less time fiddling and discussing and rather more time producing real hard content - news articles. This is Wikinews, after all!
I should probably spend less time fiddling and discussing and rather more time producing real hard content - news articles. This is Wikinews, after all!
Monday, August 08, 2005
Goodbye Firefox, hello Opera!
You may have noticed the little Opera advert over on the right. It's there because I've switched from Firefox to Opera, and my internet experience is considerably better for it :-).
Now, I've been using Firefox since summer 2003, when it was Firebird 0.6.1, and back then it was simply the best browser around - much better than IE - and I'd been using it ever since.
However, this spring, Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's Q&A chief, made a series of slurs against the Opera web browser. As these went on (becoming more and more unfair), I decided to give Opera a spin to see if what he was saying was true. I was sure I'd try and it leave it.
Well, I installed and started Opera and I've never opened Firefox again. The difference in the quality of the code is simply stunning, but that's the difference between hobbyists (open source/free software) and professionals (proprietary software). You get what you pay for, I guess.
I must say, I don't miss Firefox's constant security alerts, which inevitable mean downloading the whole 4.7MB file and then re-installing. Nor do I miss the gigantic memory leak, which lead to versions since 1.0 crashing every few days (Opera runs for weeks between restarts). The memory leak also caused my 256MB system to page and hence thrash its disk horribly - I really don't miss that, and nor does my harddrive!
Opera is also better designed. Blake Ross might be a whizz programmer but he his only, what, 20, and that shows. Firefox has much better design choices than Mozilla, but Opera is better again. I can drag and drop tabs, force everything to open in one window, it remembers what tabs I had open between sessions... all without having to install a myriad of extensions, many of which were rather flaky. Those are, btw, all things Ross and Ben Goodger chose not to implement, despite heavy pressure to do so in the Mozillazine forums (a place I quickly bored of when it was clear the developers had no intentions of listening to our pleas). Yet Opera also has preferences that are, if anything, easier to navigate and understand.
Firefox is undoubtedly "hip", "trendy" and "cool". But let's get one thing straight: it's also crap.
Now, I've been using Firefox since summer 2003, when it was Firebird 0.6.1, and back then it was simply the best browser around - much better than IE - and I'd been using it ever since.
However, this spring, Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's Q&A chief, made a series of slurs against the Opera web browser. As these went on (becoming more and more unfair), I decided to give Opera a spin to see if what he was saying was true. I was sure I'd try and it leave it.
Well, I installed and started Opera and I've never opened Firefox again. The difference in the quality of the code is simply stunning, but that's the difference between hobbyists (open source/free software) and professionals (proprietary software). You get what you pay for, I guess.
I must say, I don't miss Firefox's constant security alerts, which inevitable mean downloading the whole 4.7MB file and then re-installing. Nor do I miss the gigantic memory leak, which lead to versions since 1.0 crashing every few days (Opera runs for weeks between restarts). The memory leak also caused my 256MB system to page and hence thrash its disk horribly - I really don't miss that, and nor does my harddrive!
Opera is also better designed. Blake Ross might be a whizz programmer but he his only, what, 20, and that shows. Firefox has much better design choices than Mozilla, but Opera is better again. I can drag and drop tabs, force everything to open in one window, it remembers what tabs I had open between sessions... all without having to install a myriad of extensions, many of which were rather flaky. Those are, btw, all things Ross and Ben Goodger chose not to implement, despite heavy pressure to do so in the Mozillazine forums (a place I quickly bored of when it was clear the developers had no intentions of listening to our pleas). Yet Opera also has preferences that are, if anything, easier to navigate and understand.
Firefox is undoubtedly "hip", "trendy" and "cool". But let's get one thing straight: it's also crap.
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Scoop
Last night, Wikinews scooped most of the world's press. Who says we're no better than anyone else?
When I sat down to write about the trapped Russian minisub, AFP, Reuters etc were all reporting that the submarine had been taken under tow by the Russian navy, after a report to that effect had been made on Russian TV.
However, I thought I'd better check what the Russian press agencies were saying themselves. And what do you know? The sub wasn't under tow, but in fact is trapped by a 60t anchor.
The Western press agencies were totally unaware of this, and Wikinews brought this news to the world outside Russia before anyone else.
When I sat down to write about the trapped Russian minisub, AFP, Reuters etc were all reporting that the submarine had been taken under tow by the Russian navy, after a report to that effect had been made on Russian TV.
However, I thought I'd better check what the Russian press agencies were saying themselves. And what do you know? The sub wasn't under tow, but in fact is trapped by a 60t anchor.
The Western press agencies were totally unaware of this, and Wikinews brought this news to the world outside Russia before anyone else.
