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.
iF these websites arent interested in me personally, then they do not require my name and my address right ? They just want to identify usage patterns as per their statement. Well a fake name and fake address enables them to do just that. what do they care what I am named and where I stay and what my age is ? :D
Well, for things like /. , where there's a lot of "people power" in terms of mod'ing comments and the like, I can see why its useful.
But why (and I'm not complaining, I just don't understand) does NYTimes.com require it to read their stories? Marketing research? I have a hard time believing online registrations are doing them anything worthwhile (given how many times *I've* BS'ed a seemingly useless registration) in terms of research.
We just need more sites like this one...
--
http://www.aikiweb.com - AikiWeb Aikido Information
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
I take a similar policy - Don't read the LA Times anymore (and I used to be a LA times Company Town junkie), and their marketing department can go screw themselves. I'll go to my local library if I want to look up the current news, and that way, they won't even be able to track how many hits they get! Idiots.
"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.
...have the mods create a uname/pw combination included in each relevant linked story and let the general /. population use those?
News sites got to make a buck somehow. Seems to me that registration is a reasonable way to do it. Remember (unlike some other sites I know of) they have large staffs of *gasp* reporters.
-Sean
No obligatory link to NY Times? People are starting to get lazy ;)
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
I wonder if sites like /. will ever go that way (charging a subscription fee). Currently my other favorite site kuro5hin offers a voluntary subscription service that offers extra (useless?) features that a free account doesn't have. I have been happy to see that /. has not gone in a similar direction but I wonder if it is inevitable.
/. has but is it really that expensive to run a site like that? I guess the NYT is much more concerned about turning a profit.
I have a site and it is extremely cheap to run ($10/month on my friends server). I know my site doesn't have the bandwidth consumption or content that a site like the New York Times or
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
i've never read the NY times, although i have seen a daily publication (which isn't necessarily the norm in Canada) and it is HUGE. /. has posted a more than the average number of articles that were taken from the NYT.
/. and bothers to read the articles won't bow to the registration info, so what is the point of censuring other sites?
I have also noticed that over the last month or two
The problem that i see with the statement that they accept posts from NYT but not from other news sources that require reg is that the registration is seen as an issue for everyone but NYT.
So why should the New York Times receive any favouritism in this respect??
You said it yourself, anyone who knows what these statistics can be used for will use fake information. I would say that anyone who reads
It simply looks to me to be a bias towards NYT, and as far as i've seen over the last month or so, the number of NYT articles posted points to this reality...
IAN
It's not just on the fact of registration -- does it really matter if all they ask is your gender and age for example? It's just anonymous stats in that case, which imho really doesn't do any harm. If it starts to ask about phone numbers, etc, then yeah, I'm angry and will stop visiting the site as I will protect my privacy.
Karma whorin' since 1999
Personal information is worth so much these days.
Open up your sunday paper and look at all the great bargins you can get. Cd's for $14.99 with a $5 instant rebate and a $10 mail in rebate. Do you really think they are giving you the cd's for the price of the tax only? No. They are gonna sell the information you send them to get your rebate. And that information will be 100% correct.
Cool.
I can have one of my dozen or so phony-info Passport accounts manage my dozen or so phony news site logins!
Next Please...
Lots of robots don't even request /robots.txt, but proceed to download and index stories.
Requiring registration is more than 10 times as effective in stopping robots, as /robots.txt is.
Note that the NYTimes and other sites often allow backdoor entry with referers. For example, one of my favorite news portals is MyNewsFirst.com. When you click on a NYTimes story listed there, you don't have to register, because it sends either a "passthrough referer", or an extra query string certificate (e.g. &partner=mynewsfirst), which bypasses the registration requirement.
I'm just glad most RealCities newspapers aren't doing it yet, since they provide geographically diverse news.
I have absolutely no problem with registration. Especially if the site is free. It's reasonable to give demographic information, geographic information and possibly what industry you are in, nothing more.
As I wrote in my article, Web Communities and the Art of Making Money gathering basic demographic information is vital for obtaining the highest possible advertising rates. For low to medium traffic sites, having a good handle on your reader demographics makes the difference whether your ad rates are high or low. To me, there are very good reasons for demanding a demographic survey right at the very start. Sure, it pisses off a few technologically illiterate readers, but the prospect of free content should be enticement enough.
The problem is that individuals want to keep their personal information private. Many will simply lie about personal information (and really, if a newpaper site is asking for your phone number, that is way too much).
The other problem is the tedious nature of those marketing surveys that some of these registration forms require. Plan to buy a car in the next year? Do you spend over $1000 a year on computer stuff? Do you go on cruises? That sort of crap, besides being irrelevant and none of these site's business, are extremely tedious to fill out. And sometimes it's easy to overlook a radio box you were supposed to uncheck about whether you want to receive regular emails about great new offers.
The next problem is protecting your email address. Only an idiot would give a real or a regularly used email address.
The final problem is linkability. For less web-savvy people, they are unwilling to pursue a link on your weblog if it references a registration-required site. I know for example, some of my international friends would never register for the New York Times site even if the article is great.
That's a problem, but if it gives these media sites a better margin for breaking even, so be it.
Robert Nagle, Austin, Texas
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
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.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
[please register to read this comment]
complex
p.s. exactly how you go about registering is an exercise left up to the reader.
Try a search in Yahoo News. Half the links will be from NYT, and the ones that are old enough to be "archived" (arbitrary designation for some number of days of ripeness) will cost you a squeezy $2.50 to read.
$2.50 to read a sorry newspaper article?
No.
I had no problem registering with the NY Times web site. It was easy, and required no verification.
I read it every day. Until I clicked an article a coupla weeks ago, and was directed to an ad which I was supposed to watch before being re-directed to the story (ala Salon). That did it. I'm never going there again. Washington Post is my mainstream news site now... no enforced ad views and no registration.
I don't know why, but anonymous registration does not bother me, but forcing me to read a fucking ad does it to me.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Because I don't want them contacting me. If I go to a news site, I go there for the news. I don't have to type my phone number into a newspaper dispensing machine to get a newspaper, and if they asked me to, you can bet it wouldn't be the right number. As a consumer, _I_ choose when to initiate a business transaction.
Those are the reasons I refuse to register with acurate information. When I go to a site to try to read a news article, and they ask for me to register before doing so, I find this extremely annoying because it can take up to 3 times longer to register (either with real or fake information) than it would take to simply read the article. Those are the reasons why I consider registration to be bad.
When sites are like slashdot, and permit either anonymous or registered access with value added (such as configurability), I have no problem, and will remain anonymous unless I regularly visit the site. When sites require registration before I can access the information, those sites are likely to lose my eyes going to their site, and the companies that run them are less likely to receive any purchases from me in the future because my first thought of them will be "Oh yes, they were annoying."
One of these days, someone is going to do a study and discover that corporations that make potential customers happy make a bigger profit. Until then, we will continue to see such things.
I don't like site registration, probably for an amalgam of reasons similar to the majority of /. readers - I don't like giving out personal info, I don't like getting spam, and it's a hassle to maintain registrations and logins. The latter can be solved by technology in five billion ways, but it's still a nuisance, and unless it's really special content, I'm not going to bother. I have a NY Times login out there somewhere, but damned if I can remember what it is, or what email address I used. And, yes, all the info I entered was bogus.
I do have a handful of registrations on sites that I consider worth it, and that I trust. I'm very careful about who gets my email address (only a few sites that send mailouts - use.perl, slashdot, freshmeat, o'reilly) and I get maybe five spams a week, usually from people who obviously got it from whois. Not much I can do about that.
However, I also don't have a problem with sites that require registration. I understand their reasons for it. At the moment, I tell clients (I'm a web developer and consultant) that they're better off not collecting personal info, and much better off not sending random spam to people who sign up. What really sucks is that may have to change someday soon.
The reasons are very straight forward - first, sites need to make money. Whether by being able to tell advertisers where their impressions are going or outright selling email addresses to SpamCo., if it's viable, I have a responsibility to tell them about it. (Although things haven't gotten to the point yet where I haven't been able to look a client in the eye and tell them spamming will kill them, thank $diety). Second, users don't care. They don't value their privacy, they don't understand why personal data is personal, and some of them honestly think it's a fair trade.
What I'm hoping is that enough people get online fast enough, and enough of them understand why privacy is important, and enough of them care, that they won't register with just any site that asks for your address and what car they own. Sounds sort of like the Drake equation. (I'm optimistic on both counts).
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
Little known information about registration: Actually, Slashdot has only 10 readers. They each have 55,000 accounts.
"As a general matter, Slashdot's policy on linking to
[BIG
HUGE
AD]
registration-required websites goes something like this:"
I'm so glad you guys aren't linking to sites which require registration. Such freedom-fighters against the commercialization of the internet, you guys are.
Regarding your sig: Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Austin
Is it difficult to program idiots? They don't have much memory or CPU power.
The reason they are starting to require registration is simple. They need to make money and they haven't figured out how to do it yet. Ad revenues have collasped in this economy. Their product is their news reporting and they were giving it away for free. Now, would you rather pay for the news (as you used to for a newspaper) or just give them a little demographic information instead? If you are really paranoid you can give them bogus information except for a valid email. What does this cost you but a little time to fill out a form?
One other thing I should point out. If you do decide to register for the LA Times or the Chicago Tribune you can use this user id at both sites. Once the rest of the Tribune Company sites (7 or more papers) require registration you will be able to use it at those sites as well.
One last note, and I am somewhat biased here, but so are you. Saying that you will continue to post NYT stories, but not LA Times stories is hypocritical! Post the news that is interesting. If you are going to post any registration required stories I would post ones from the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, Sun Sentinel, Orlando Sentinel, Daily Press, and other Tribune Company newspapers. This way slashdot readers will only have to register once for many sources of information.
One final thing. Someone asked how hard it could be to create/maintain one of these sites. Let me say this, it is hard. The functionality and traffic of some of these sites dwarfs that of slashdot. Just think of some of the features they provide. Of the top of my head, stories, ads, polls, quizzes, contests, streaming media, customization, registration, newsletters, and much more. Not to mention continuous updates throughout the day of breaking stories along with relevant photos, stories, and other information. This is a lot of work and requires many highly technical people along with many researchers, writers, and producers.
Ok, enough rambling. Nobody will read this anyway because it's anonymous. Oh well, I feel better at leats.
I have absolutely no problem with registration. Especially if the site is free. It's reasonable to give demographic information, geographic information and possibly what industry you are in, nothing more.
I don't mind giving them whatever information they want, except for my name, address, and phone number. I'm willing to tell them which city I live in and give a rough approximation of my postal code. If they want an e-mail address, I use one of my spam-bait accounts. I once made the mistake of giving my real e-mail to a site with an opt-out policy. At least I gave a fake name, so that helps with the spam filter.
For newspaper registration, I'll even fill out those boring forms on whether I intend to buy a car in the next year and such. The way I see it, we are very lucky that newspapers are willing to offer their content for free, especially to out-of-state readers. If they want to show me targeted advertising, I'm perfectly willing to help out... as long as I don't get extra spam, junk mail, or telephone solicitations.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
While you may trust the <NEWSPAPER_NAME>'s editorial integrity, you should not assume that it applies the same standards to data the corporation releases about its own performance. The people releasing that information often have nothing to do with the editorial staff, though they would like to use your "trust" to sell you ad space/subscriptions/registration data/etc.
Even if the news sites could be certain that their registration info was accurate, I still wouldn't believe a word they say about their user numbers/demographics.
For instance, this quote from Dallasnews's Eric Christensen is blatantly untrue:
He's claiming that 70% of the site's traffic remained after registration right away, and that eventually it all came back. Not a single person stopped using the site because of the registration system. If you'll believe that one I'm sure he's got a Web site to sell you, too...I live in Asia but I read the nytimes nearly daily. I don't see any problem with registration - it seems like an eminently reasonable trade to give some demographic information in exchange for free access to a great paper. Is it reasonable to expect something for nothing?
"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
Do they allow the indexing of the content by web spiders?
Are we going to get search engines polluted with "hits" for which registration is required in order to view the pages?
If so, how long before we have browsers that pretend they are spiders?
How long before search engines are mostly useless without a Microsoft Passport so you can follow the links search engines return, without explicit sign-on?
-- Terry
My personal favorite is to fill in the email address as the domain your regestering on for example "webmaster@nytimes.com" or "support@nytimes.com". I figured early on that they would block these with filters, so then i started feeding each company an address from another company.
What really gets me is the verification systems. Obviously most of these programmers just left school and insist on varifying _every_ field. Who cares if my zip code is the wrong number of digits? since the only code i know is "90210" thats what im going to put if you ask me again!
I cant wait for the new Parabellum and SSSCA technologies to come out, then i can have my details burnt onto my motherboard and automatically sent to every site i vist. Also, it will be good news for the sites since i will have to have the correct information in by law, as it will be taken from my passport, and documents (required for purchasing a new machine in 2005) lol
If the sites really want my data so that it can help them tailor the site, then they should ask specific, impersonal questions and make it damn quick.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
For the L.A. Times, and other second-rate newspapers, listen up, you're NOT the New York Times. Don't kid yourself, your "product" is not that valuable. Maybe if you spent more money on reporters and less on nose candy for the marketing department, you would have a first-rate newspaper.
I do like the idea of polluting their demographics. Maybe I will register and show them how important the 97-year old Eskimo demographic is.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
That being said, if they ASK nicely for information about me in order to better service my needs, (Or some such), and give me an opportunity to voluntarily fill out an information form, then perhaps I'll do this. After all, I want my local news source to know what region and issues most affect me when they deliver their information.
But to make it a forced, no-option requirement? Well, guess what? I'll not be buying that company's product, because I consider that just plain rude.
Frankly, in this day and age of totalitarian authorities looming large, it's just plain stupid to broadcast your likes, dislikes, political views, etc., through what you consume, when you consume and how you consume. For instance. .
Drink Jolt Cola? Live night-owl hours? Buy computer parts and Kraft Dinner? Don't buy diapers or tampons for dependants?
Well, guess what? You just profiled yourself. A check on credit, recent travel, phone records, web pages most often visited. . . Well, buddy, that sort of track record may well have you being percieved as a 'low grade threat' in an increasingly paranoid society, and you can count on being bookmarked.
Psych profiling is a refined art. Heaven forbid, should you rate better than a 50% chance of ever actually thinking of doing anything which might threaten the Homeland. . . Well, I wouldn't want to be in your shoes in five year's time when the white vans start making their collections. .
-Fantastic Lad --18 months and counting 'till total ecconomic collapse of the U.S. Have you got your canned food and hunting rifle?.
is mis-information better than no information ?
I have 15 safeway discount cards in various names with various phone numbers, all false. I register daily with the NY Times and several other publications via a random login generator that fills in all the fields in their DB with BS. If you can't avoid a login, fill up the companies DB with BS.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
My problem of late with reg sites is that more and more are getting away with privacy-invasive crap, not because of me, but because they can afford to lose my business since everyone else is an idiot.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
If everyone did this, they might soon realize that such annoying requirements were counterproductive.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
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
Just like you posted a lot of links to NY Times before they went registration-required? Oh wait...you still post a lot of links to them.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
I don't mind registering with a well-behaved site. I like the convenience of login cookies for personalized sites I use all the time. But witness the difference in style:
I've been registered with the NYTimes site for over 5 years now. Why? Because all they wanted for registration was a basic email address and to set a cookie. I have NOT ONCE received a "special offer" from a partner, nor been inconvenienced by the NYT site in any way. (Well, it did once lose my cookie, but when I wrote to complain, a HUMAN answered and told me how to fix it. Seems the server had lost my password, so I needed to reset that.)
OTOH, I recently went to the LATimes site, intending to register so I could use more of it... and was confronted by a form that wanted lots of personal information, AND by an agreement telling me that my personal data would be "shared" with their "partners" (which I took to mean mostly upscale spammers). Consequently I decided NOT to register with the LATimes site, and wrote them explaining why. No response.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
It is highly irresponsible for Slashdot to use inconsequencial political choices to dictate who you will link to. The Los Angeles Times is universally recognized as the West Coast's only newspaper of record. The New York Times is the world's newspaper of record. The only acceptable reason to reject The Wall Street Journal is that they require payment for online reading, for most articles. But the register-only sites are the best news sources in the world and you only drag Slashdot further and further into a netherworld of popular standards rather than respected standards of professional journalism.
In recent weeks I have written six articles for madison.indymedia.org, the local chapter of the Independent Media Center. IMC is "a collective of media activists involved in radio, television, publishing, and much more." As someone on here pointed out, they have a strong left/radical "bias," which is the direct opposite of what's on CNN/Faux News. (And rapidly the rest of the mainstream media. [insert rant here])
The biggest difference is not the "spin" of many of its reports, but the fact that it is run and written by people who want to become the media, be the media. It's a really freaking cool thing, if you ask me. It's got old school punk music's DIY attitude, and unlike so much mainstream media, it will actually tell you what's going on. (Compare the coverage of the recent U.S. Conference of Mayors here in Madison if you need proof.)
Yes, some people within it have the "obligatory" anti-corporate attitude, but really, this is real news made by real people. It's good. Check it out!
-- haaz.
Here's a few other sites...
I see The Economist occasionally linked from Slashdot -- the Economist is partially owned by FT, and provides deep articles about a broad array of news items. Lots of it is economics/foreign policy, but they've got a lengthy tech survey every few months, and cover tech news occasionally. No reg required, but to view all of the articles you need to subscribe/pay money (free with print subscription -- excellent value). The Economist and the New York Times are the best news sources that I know.
Thankfully, Slashdot posts few time/newsweek/usnwr drivel -- this falls into the same catagory as ABC, CBS, NBC -- for people that don't really like to read hard news/want to be entertained more than informed.
The SF Chronicle used to have some good local/silicon valley stories from time to time. The web version is more infotainment than the print one, though. I haven't seen a slashdot link to there in a while either -- maybe it has gone downhill (haven't read it since I moved away).
The Christian Science Monitor used to be OK as well -- haven't looked at it in years...
there is no thing
what else could you want?
No. You get to read it.
Not the whole archive.
The one article.
For 90 days.
--Blair