Slashdot Mirror
Information Obesity
Roland Piquepaille writes "How many phone calls, emails, voicemails, memos or stories do you have to go through every day? Probably more than last year. And probably too much. This article from the Sydney Morning Herald looks at this problem of information overload and how to deal with it. Here is a quick and not well-known fact: Website content management author Gerry McGovern says that something like 70 per cent of most websites goes unread. Despite that, when putting content on the web, "rarely do we ask the question: is anybody interested in reading that?" Good point. Check this column for a summary if you don't have time -- and who has? -- to read the original article."
We're not the only one reading the articles?
But seriously, what's not of interest to some people may be exactly what one individual is searching for. I know I've found obscure information only available on a page or two in all of Google, and I know people have come to my sites on some pretty strange search terms.
It's interesting that this subject was brought up in an article that wasn't worth the bits it was printed on.
In that vein, though, I think that the number of times you have to say RTFA here demonstrates just how much people filter when they're immersed in this much information. I know it definitely applies to me.
Who has time to read the article? I have to put up another webpage about my cat!
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
that 70% of all wesites now are blogs
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
when putting content on the web, "rarely do we ask the question: is anybody interested in reading that?"
Is anybody really intersted in this?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
i am a comment you will never, ever read
if you are reading this, then you have entered the ironic realm of self-referential commentary
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I am getting far less voice mail and email than this time last year. I think it is becuase we laid off a lot of the middle people. As a developer, I constantly have to answer questions from marketing types who really have nothing better to do then write a 50 page spec, of which 2 paragraphs describes what the system does... and those two paragraphs were cut/pasted from an email from me.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
Website content management author Gerry McGovern says that something like 70 per cent of most websites goes unread
And something like 65% of all statistics are made up? To say 70% of most websites is a very broad statement and really needs narrowing of scope. And does he state anywhere how he came up with this figure? Any journal articles, documents outlining his research, etc?
Looking at the massive amount of blogs, personal sites, and other sites that hold little interest to those outside a set few, what about the percentage of websites that are read at all?
OK, so most people don't read every last word on every website that they visit. Big deal.
I don't read every last word in my morning paper and I certainly don't watch everything on TV.
But I do appreciate having the choice of being able to read what I want in my paper, or watching TV when I want. Similarly, I do appreciate being able to go to a website and pull information that's useful to me, when it's useful to me, regardless of how often it's been accessed in the past.
For example, I recently was putting an older hard disk drive in a PC, simply to see if it still worked reliably. If it did then I was going to keep it around for emergencies or perhaps donate it to someone else, if it didn't then I was going to recycle it.
Unfortunately, this drive didn't have its master/slave jumper settings, or even acceptable CHS (cylinder, heads and sectors) values on it, and the accompanying documentation had long since disappeared.
All I had to do to get the information that I needed was drill down to the relevant page of the manufacturer's website and, voila, I had the drive up and running within minutes.
Now, I can't imagine that there are many people who've looked at the same web page in the last year or two (after all, this was "only" a 540MB hard disk drive), but having that web page there where the information could easily be found made sense both for the manufacturer and for me.
The manufacturer spent next to nothing putting that information there where it could be found (and no doubt saved a lot of money that it would otherwise have spent on technical support calls) and I got what I wanted too, almost instantaneously. A win-win situation all around.
Now, why would the manufacturer care about how often the page has been accessed? It it somehow hurting it's bottom line to have that page sitting on a server somewhere? I don't think so.
Much as I loathe the phrase "information wants to be free", sometimes it does.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
First of all, it's hard to know what websites are going to "take off". Did the guys at homestarrunner.com expect the kind of response they got? Not initially, that's for sure.
Second, not every website is MEANT for lots of activity. I have a homepage, and it's meant for small traffic from people I know. It's probably low traffic enough to be counted as one of those sites that goes "unread", but it serves the purpose that I intended it for.
There's no denying that the web has plenty of bad abuses of HTML. (Many of which would be erased if Geocities and other sites would just clean out their inactive accounts). But it's not hard to avoid such sites and move on.
As one who cannot afford all the new masturbatory gadgets that come out, I often wonder how much they actually contribute to productivity, rather than further encumbering their users.
Sure we can pull some odd-ball statistic saying that 70% of web content isn't read, but is it the same 70% for all people? Of course not.
/. is without worth.
Your average internet user doesn't read slashdot, and doesn't care about slashdot news material. But that doesn't mean that
The same goes for just about any website. I don't need to read a website describing someone's two week ordeal that it took to get a salt-water fishtank in proper condition. I don't have fish, I might never have fish, but if I ever needed anecdotal advice it would now be there for the consideration.
The Internet is such a beautiful thing because of its high availability of information. As such, of course not all of it will be relavant to all people at all times. Frankly, I'm surprised the percentage is that low. I'd estimate that I view about one to two percent of web content at most.
Um, if you post your URL here on slashdot, I would guess you will get a lot more hits.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
But my parents always told me I was just information big-boned.
I knew I should have spent more time exercising and less time reading newspapers.
What diffrence does it make if no one ever reads it? Hard drive space is cheap, it's not like there is a 'limit' to the web.
Just having the information out there for someone to search and make use of is a benifit. Unless some harm can come from it, It should be online for someone who might need it to find it.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
A good example would be to ask how many people read the text anywhere on slashdo tbut main articles. I know I ignore everything else including the text to the right and left sides of the main screen.
I do security
I wonder what percent of people will scroll over that without reading it.
E-enema.
haha i kill me. Mod this down appropriately now.
Too Bad /. can also be labeled a "blog."
/.? Hell no, but it serves it's purpose, and that's why I do it. I also post photographs I take with some of the cameras I make. Is this content "worth" anything to you? Probably not. UNless you want to see pinhole photography.
blogs != crap
While I agree that most of the "blogs" out there are of little or no use - some are important to a small group of people. I have a blog, and my family and close friends read and post to it. Will it ever be
Don't be so quick to judge.
Please email all complaints to root@127.0.0.1 and the issue will be dealt with in due time.
That's exactly the point I came on here to make. It is impossible for the private Webmaster (and probably commercial Webmasters) to know what information might be useful.
I have an eclectic mix of information on my personal Web site. I doubt very many people would be interested in everything I post, but my Web site offers information found nowhere else on the Web that I know is of interest to several people. Several people have expressed interest and appreciation in the copy of Bagster's "History of English Translations and Translators" that I have on my site, and others have said they have enjoyed my story about my Navy experiences. Maybe someone else would be interested in my college class (Advanced Lasers) report on dye lasers? But, what is most relevant to the question of posting only interesting information would probably be my autobiography, which necessarily contains arcane details of limited appeal.
In matters of research, it is impossible to predict what little bit of information might make all the difference to a single reader. As someone who does a fair amount of research, more information generally is better than less, provided that the information is organized for rapid searching. I rarely need an entire document (the longer, the less-likely), but I often need some brief bit of information that often is not included in any article.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
Ok, so perhaps 70 percent of all content goes unread. It's still good to have it there. Even if the site's navigation controls are terrible, even if the site is poorly organized, even if it's not updated very frequently...
The information can still be Googled.
The fact that Google and other search engines index by content rather than by title, author, or whatever, means that when someone does go to look up a particular piece of information, if there's something relevant on your site, they'll find it there. If you think about it, this is the ultimate indexing system. Microsoft has been trying to make this work in Windows for nearly a decade (remember the abomination called 'Find Fast' - not to mention their latest attempt, WinFS?) and failing miserably. Google handles it with all manner of grace and speed.
So go ahead, put up that content. Put up as much content as you like. Someday, it's going to be just the thing somebody needs to read, and when they need it, they'll find it on your site.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I don't know about the rest of you, but I only read comments ranged 4-5, and MAYBE 3 if it's a slow day. the rest of those comments go ignored, and bloating the /. database.
if only people would check to see if someone had already posted the same thing, stay on topic, not flame, and once again ask 'does anyone want to read this'?
I my self am breaking a few of those rules right now. I know this same comment has already been posted, and I know most of you don't care about it, AND... my bet is it doesn't break 3.
no comment
Simply put:
:)
- Producing good quality material takes time and patience.
- People have always cranked out "information' that really isn't. The forms may have become different (e.g. powerpoint slides with spiffy animations) but the real substance is more often lost.
+ Couple this with an uncontrolled profit motives and the situation is even more appalling (as an example, just recall how many "technical" presentations are just sales pitches in disguise).
- The abuse is much more rampant today as the good stuff is increasingly drowned out by the ever rising noise level.
enough said
Im sure a much higher percent of books in libraries goes unread. It is not a bad thing. We hoard information because it is never certain when it will be usefull. There are tons of books from ancient grece that we can't find now because no one kept copies. we only knoe they existed because they are referenced in other books we did keep. tons of scholars would kill to get their hands on those books that are now lost.
Google News
Game Rankings
GameTab
I think sites like these are the future of info dissemination. I don't have the time to check out the separate game review and movie review watering holes. I have my local paper bookmarked, and BBC News, but all other news comes from Google. So on down the list. These meta-sites save a buttload of time and research.
When I do my online shopping, I always look for customer ratings. Now, I don't have to. Instead of the opinions of fifty average joes, I have the opinions of fifty paid professionals. Now, before you come at me and say that those reviewers might be paid to say something good, I can say from experience that bought opinions aren't as prevalent as you think and least come without a slew of spelling and grammar mistakes.
It's the wave of the future, like it or not. ve3d.com is fast becoming the unofficial hub of gaming news, despite the fact that you could fit its in-house content in a thimble and their admins' lack of journalistic ability is exposed on a daily basis.
And honestly, how many of you have /. as your primary info source? It's great, don't get me wrong, but it's another example of a meta-site...one where many people don't even take the time to RTFA. Content is not king once you realize the threshold of human consumption. You just end up bowling people over with sound and fury.
I don't have a cell phone, pager, or use IM, but I'm still overloaded by email. I have my primary email, my site registration email, my new primary since the old primary's shot through with spam, my work email, a website email, an alias for that website email...Then there are stock tickers, weather reports, sports scores, online banking...
I think, however, that the worst element is spam. Not just unsolicited email, but telemarketing calls, junk mail, door-to-door, etc. Then there are TV commercials, radio commercials, print media commercials. It's advertising that kills. Something like 80% of all email in the US is unsolicited. How many dinners have you completed without a sales call? How many days have you gone without another credit card in the mail? Yadda, yadda, yadda, and I wonder how many even read this far.
Another day in the office, which, according to one recent study, consists of handling 46 phone calls, 25 emails, 16 voicemails, 23 items of post, eight inter-office memos, 16 faxes and nine mobile phone calls.
Of the 46 phone calls, 45 of them are personal.
Of the 25 emails, 24 of them are FW: FW: FW chains from friends that don't know any better.
Of the 16 voicemails, 15 of them are from the wife trying to find out whether you'd like steak or fish for dinner.
Of the 23 items of post, 22 of them are renewal notices for "Free" copies of InfoWorld or some such sludge.
Of the eight inter-office memos, 7 of them are from the "CEO to all employees" type, telling you to save money by not using so many staples.
16 faxes? Who still uses fax?
9 mobile calls? It's your girl on the side letting you know that the EPT just tested pink.
-jerdenn