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.
Surely everyone uses variants of the cyberpunk login (Which sadly no longer works on WSJ online like it did for so many years -- but I'm sure one of the variants still does)? Or slashdot/slashdot? I mean, I have entire fake personalities I use for just these occasions. Link away! most /.ers know better than to give email addresses that are used for anything but spamcatchers.
Traffic dropping is a no-brainer: registration requires a bit more than click-and-drool, so that rules AOLers out, but I'd wager only a small percentage of the total drop is due to people concerned about privacy.
Which is a shame, but such is life.
Feed inaccurate data to the collectors, and have fun.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
They wouldn't care about your name, but your age and location would be pretty important for them. Age, for example, would help them decide whether to run ads for Stridex or for Geritol. Same idea with location, though probably to a lesser extent.
My view is that if you want to view their content, you should play by their rules. If you don't want to play, then look for that news article somewhere else. Too many people are still spoiled by the free for all days of the Internet...
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
"The New York Times on the Web has required registration since the site launched in January 1996. The Times has topped 10 million active registered users."
....6 million came from Slashdot articles and 2 million came from people that re-registered after blasting their stored passwords in Internet Explorer.
Actually, they get a lot of mostly-accurate data. I've participated in the development of more than a a few sites that had some form of registration - either for community sites or for sites where you get extra stuff if you provide a bit of personal info. The amount of legit info you get is much greater than the number of "booger@nose.net" addresses that show up.
Fact is, most people are one, or some of:
On the plus side, most sites don't seem to do much with the data they have, but that won't last.
It's unfortunate, but the vast majority of people don't realize the commercial trends they're enabling when they give in to this kind of thing. I'm facing the day when I have to start telling clients "it's a great idea to get people's addresses and then email them as much crap as you can" because it will be good business sense.
God, I hate that phrase. Probably time for me to get into landscaping.
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
I think to encourage using sites that dont require registration, slashdot should begin rejecting any submissions that link to sites that do. Normally there is a mirror to a site that does not require registration anyway, and it would make reading slashdot stories alot easier. I personally do not visit any nytimes stories posted on slashdot, I ignore them as if they are not there.
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