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
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.
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 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