Dear Rupert: Before Putting Up A Paywall, It Helps To Have Your Staff Check The HTML
from the just-a-suggestion dept
As you know by now, Rupert Murdoch's The Times (of London) has kicked off its paywall experiment, with an editor there claiming that news publications that don't put up a paywall will go out of business. Perhaps. We shall see... but in the meantime, Rupert might want to find people who understand HTML before he turned on the paywall. Reader Craig sent over a link to a Times Online story that tries to get people to go to the new paywalled site "for full coverage, pictures and video from the Middle East." The only problem? The link is broken. I took a screenshot with my mouse over the link, and you can see that rather than a proper link, the link doubles up on the http at the beginning: http://http://www.thetimes.co.uk/etc....Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: html, links, paywall, rupert murdoch, the times
Companies: news corp.
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
noscript
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: noscript
What does this code do? What are the inputs and what are the outputs? Where does the information go.
Now of course, we all know that it's simply external stuff for twitter and gathering your information to sell to advertisers, but the question is also: what information?
And would you not visit TechDirt if you knew what was being collected? Market inefficiencies get introduced when you hide information from consumers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: noscript
Oh well.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: noscript
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: noscript
I just started using an ad blocker here because the IBM (I think it was them) ads kept expanding into the page and were annoying.
This had happened a couple of months earlier and I had sent a message to TechDirt complaining about them (it may have been Dell at the time). I actually got a message back apologizing for the annoying ads noting that they had gotten a number of complaints and as soon as they realized what was happening, they pulled the ads.
I'm not sure I had a point, but they seem (to me at least) to care more about their community and readers and their advertisers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Someone forgot a colon after the http
I cannot understand how and why they would be typing full URLs by hand. Obviously, the http://www.thetimes.co.uk/ part is a constant.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Someone forgot a colon after the http
More to the point, however, why would a staff-member be checking the links? Before deploying a web site like that, you must first try a test version. One of the tests you must do is to have spider go through the site and make sure all your paylinks work. None of this, entering story URLs or checking their validity is a job for a human.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Someone forgot a colon after the http
Did it really take you 2 posts to make no point whatsoever?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
This story
This pay wall thing will sort it's self out in time, I wont castigate anyone who whats to try and charge for online news.
If people perceive value they might pay.
Of curse I recall when people were bent at having to sign up to read on line content and the birth of bug me not came about from that.
As a classical liberal myself (Libertarian) I say go for it.
But hell even Microsoft has made the http://http// mistake.
This nener nener stuff is a bit on the small side.
I myself have been petty and small, but I try to do better, sometimes, once in a while, on occasion.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: This story
That's the point. If the people who wrote the link don't even bother to test the link, what does that say about their fact checking? I know those are two different departments (probably), but most people don't. The perceived value has just dropped.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I'm Not A Vindictive Guy
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I'm Not A Vindictive Guy
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No brainer
Maybe die hard Times readers may cough up the cash but in the long run I think this will only serve to damage the Times' market share.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Who cares?
It certainly has nothing to do with their paywall attempt, and so trying to link this trivial mistake with that one is just silly. I suggest you focus on real issues, rather than hunting for issues where there aren't any.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Who cares?
While there are certainly weightier topics discussed on TechDirt, the bad link is a fair topic. From the TD post: "On top of this, it really highlights the pure annoyance factor that The Times has created for everyone." Sure, it's a mistake anyone can make, but the bad link highlites the unintended consequences of adding artificial layers between your readers and your content. Not to mention how a silly mistake like this negatively affects the perception of the site's professionalism.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Who cares?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Who cares?
You must have an extraordinarily low threshold for "damnation". By any reasonably definition, the post wasn't damnation, just note about a minor issue that highlighted a much larger one.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Who cares?
As for "undisguised pleasure at seeing other people fail", that's pretty rich coming from someone who tries to do that in every post he makes here. Funny thing is, I don't think I've seen you point out a place where Mike has actually failed, even though you say he does on every article.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Who cares?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Who cares?
You'll also note that Mike admits to putting up dead links as well. Funny that. Do you even read the articles, or do you just latch onto the closest thing to whine about?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Who cares?
You, of course, explain that that's just an engineering mistake: the engineers forgot to assemble the doors in time for the unveiling, but you assure people that the finished product will have doors.
Do you think people will be impressed? They might. But first impressions are hard to shake off. People will remember you and your product for that failure and, unless your product is REALLY good, it will fail.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Who cares?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
This has more to do with the craptacular journalistic abilities by "professional" reporters not proof-reading their propaganda before sending it off the masses. I know on my hobby sites where I publish items to a news feed, I preview, and check the links before publishing... But to headline the article about Paywalls, seems like bob was right and this is more of sour grapes-grasping at any little mistake made.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bad news
My point is everyone has the news and everyone competes to give the news and the advertising is supposed to pay for it. So in a competitive market like that it is obvious I want my news for free. If the newspapers won't give it to me then I go to zahipedia.com and stream any of the cable or other worldwide news stations. Newspapers have an over-inflated sense of worth. I used to use a newspaper to find an apartment, get a job and I still do use the local newspaper to achieve that. The problem is these big news operations think they should control stuff just because they are so big and they forget that they are a local service.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
wasnt this the same that reported hackers for hire
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It pissed me off...
First of all, I came to read the initial article from Google News, so I arrived at the first site. I never even connected the site and ol' Rupert and his stupid farking paywall. There was simply a link that offered more information and detail, which I clicked and got a 404 Not Found error. Okay, it happens, but after I poked around for a minute, I figured out the problem, and off I went. It was at that point that I realized I just did all this only to slam face-first into Rupert's Wall(TM). My point was that the original link promised me something without even letting me know that I would have to sign up for more. It was then that I realised OH SHIT...Times Online UK...Rupert's Wall(TM)!
All of you who have degraded this conversation into nothing more than "Oh it's a typo, get over it" can go and pound sand. The whole point is that a big business just created a problem for a potential customer and that should not happen in this day and age. Had it been someone else who knew nothing about HTML at all, the Times Online wouldn't even have had a chance to get someone to sign up.
So here's a big media company that says a paywall is the way to go; that is their prerogative, but if they don't get customers due to their own fark-ups, and they don't even realize it, they will come out swinging against some other straw man blaming him for their failure.
If you are going to build a business model and staunchly resist looking at new ways of offering access and scarcities, then you better do the fundamentals correctly.
Neener-neener, my ass. It pissed me off...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
you too can do better for your readers
Is it too much to ask that you make a little effort to indent "re:" posts? Seriously. Every comment is left-aligned, providing absolutely no visual cue as to which comment a responder is referring to.
Very bloody annoying.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: you too can do better for your readers
It's an option. At the top of each comment thread there's an option for "threaded" or "flattened." You can also set that in your user preferences.
Very bloody annoying.
Sorry that's not clear. Will look to make it clearer.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: you too can do better for your readers
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Paydirt
[ link to this | view in chronology ]