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.
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
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.
...have the mods create a uname/pw combination included in each relevant linked story and let the general /. population use those?
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
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.
But their may be better ways to go about collecting customer data. Creating an optional registration format would significantly cut down on bad data. Even if Michael believes "many people would tell the truth without caring that they're being tracked" I know plenty of people that fill out bogus information for required registration sites. If registration is optional you also get the added bonus of directly tracking those users who are willing to put forth an effort for your site. A valuable commodity. On the other hand, it may not be fiscally viable to cater to users who aren't willing to put forth any effort for your site.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
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
My view is that if you want to view their content, you should play by their rules.
My view is that if they want me to enter my personal data, they should play by my rules.
And my rules say they should consider themselves lucky if I fill in gender correctly even half the time.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
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
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/
I actually have a hotmail account that I use exclusively when I think that giving an account address out will invite spam. The account gets a lot of spam. :)
Here's a fancy trick you can use if you have your own domain: Set up the domain's email so that mail sent to undefined addresses is forwarded to you. Then, when a site like this wants an email address, give them something like latimes@yourdomain.com. This way, they'll be able to contact you, they won't have your real email address, you will not have spent any more effort than you would had you given them your real email address, you'll be able to shut down the address if they spam it, and you will also be able to tell if they sell your address (if you start getting pr0n spam at latimes@yourdomain.com, that's a sign).
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...