Slashdot Mirror
News Sites Getting to Know You
The Online Journalism Review has a story about more and more news sites requiring registration. Has assorted facts and figures, including how much sites' traffic dropped when registration was required. Even though a fair percentage of people just make up the data they are asked to provide, I'd guess that as a statistical measure it's probably pretty accurate - many people would tell the truth without caring that they're being tracked.
As a general matter, Slashdot's policy on linking to registration-required websites goes something like this:
The New York Times is okay, because they've got a lot of high-quality stories and they were essentially grandfathered in;
Other registration-required sites are not okay, and we won't post stories linking to them.
Kind of a shame, because the LA Times has some good content too, and we've posted lot of links to them in the past, before they went registration-required. Oh well.
I think its part of the advertising black magic that websites use to woo advertisers.
"We have over 100,000 registered users, that's X impressions of your Flash ad!"
"Wow, according to this list Bill Gates checks your site 459 times a day!"
"Yeah, well, zdnet.com is his favorite...."
Little known information about registration: Actually, Slashdot has only 10 readers. They each have 55,000 accounts.
Regarding your sig: Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Austin
Is it difficult to program idiots? They don't have much memory or CPU power.
Of course, if all people enter their correct gender 50% of the time, then the gender statistics should by roughly accurate. :P
"I live in Asia but I read the nytimes nearly daily."
We know. You've accumulated a total subversive index of 173.
But don't worry; we only send the men in trenchcoats after you if your rolling average goes over 60; the highest *your* rolling monthly average has ever gotten is 23, on May 17, 2002.
Since your demographic information indicates that you are not employed as a teacher, there's no need to worry about a high quarterly rolling average landing you in a reeducation camp, but for your own sake, I'd really recommend reading fewer articles on labor unions, until after Monday.
-- Terry
This is the address I always use:
1030 W Addison
Chicago, IL 60613