Regarding the Absence of News and News System Developments

[REVENGE]

Dear InsanelyMac visitors:

 

As you may have noticed, news stories on the Front Page have been dwindling in the past three weeks even though new news continues to be posted almost daily in the Front Page News forum. Sorry for the inconvenience, but recently there has been a major change in the way Front Page News is processed. News is now submitted via a small "Submit News" button near the top right side on the white bar and is only "posted" to the Front Page pending review from an administrator. In addition, as the news system is now separated from the IPB forum system, news stores posted in the FPN subforum will no longer be transferred to the Front Page, and the discussion of news stories will now take place via a comment system on the Front Page itself.

 

It certainly feels as if this change came about invisibly to both regular members and the news team, and as we continued to write and post news stories uninformed of the new process, our posts began to gather dust unread in the Front Page News forum, while the Front Page itself remained devoid of new news stories for weeks on end. As soon as we learned of our mistake, we attempted to "break the silence" of Front Page News and submitted our stories via the new system; however, as this change has fundamentally altered our well established peer review and editing system [we no longer have it ], our newly submitted news has not been posted to the Front Page in as timely a manner as we, the news team, or you, the readers, approve of.

 

I apologize on behalf of InsanelyMac's news team for our oversight regarding the changes to the system, and again for the recent slowdown in news submissions. Please keep in mind, that the staff has been working tirelessly to improve your InsanelyMac experience, and there will be many hits/misses during the process [anyone remember the "new logo" we had for a while? ]. Regardless of the bumpy road ahead, we all believe that standing still is unacceptable, and continuing to move forward and evolve is the way to go. We need you, as members of this community, to provide us with a guiding light by providing feedback and suggestions for improvement. After all, this site would be nothing without you, those who are as equally "insane about Mac" as we are.

 

-REVENGE

[Numberzz]

haha i kept it, but i think, as well as other people will, that the absence of news is not such a big thing to get upset about, but thanks for letting us know, i was(and still am) about the whole news thing

[Dwight F]

Just for clarification, would the button trigger real flames? Or is it not quite as cool a feature as it sounds?

Thanks for the clarification on the news. I was wondering what was up the the mismatch, wasn't sure if that was SNAFU or something new.

[simon360]

I was starting to wonder about that, thanks for clearing it up. At least things have been sorted now.

[Mebster]

The separation of the front page and Front Page News and Rumors forum I'm hoping is temporary.

 

Also the commenting system on the front page news is annoying. Difficult to follow and read.

 

Submission of news by readers, pending review

I like this idea (and have made use of it) but at the moment the reviewing process takes way too long. My article took like two days (I think) to get posted. And that way after I PMed the Admins.

 

Maybe it should be a system where it's originally posted in Reader News and then if it's passed by Admins then it moves to the front page and Front Page News and Rumors.

[REVENGE]

The separation of the front page and Front Page News and Rumors forum I'm hoping is temporary.

 

Also the commenting system on the front page news is annoying. Difficult to follow and read.

 

Submission of news by readers, pending review

I like this idea (and have made use of it) but at the moment the reviewing process takes way too long. My article took like two days (I think) to get posted. And that way after I PMed the Admins.

 

Maybe it should be a system where it's originally posted in Reader News and then if it's passed by Admins then it moves to the front page and Front Page News and Rumors.

 

AcePlayer, I feel your pain, we are dealing with this problems ourselves. I expect that soon we will set up News Team members as news editors and moderators, so the submission process should improve dramatically then.

[mifki]

flame the author would be good, considering most of the new news i have seen is total and utter rubbish .

 

Maybe a small idea to steal off digg, is to have a user vote system (not like the meaningless stars), where any user can post news front page, but the other users can digg or bury it down to the reader news section or up to top place on front page news

[Mebster]

Seems it's back to the way it was before. Yayyy.

[REVENGE]

Indeed, and if you check the front page, you'll see that there's a plethora of news from weeks past that hasn't appeared.

[Colonel Ingus]

flame the author would be good

Flaming under any conditions is immature and unproductive. Plus it's very 'UN-Mac' like and would probably attract the wrong crowd. Let the peecee forums flame each other. And correct me if I'm wrong but I thought people were concerned about the lack of people posting news here. If you allowed members to flame the OP then people would not want to post any more news at all (except for maybe the 12 year olds who would get a rise from the act of flaming). Having said all of that it wouldn't matter to me much, as I would just stop posting news, probably even stop reading it from this particular site. Over the years we've been an admin to over a dozen major sites and we can see this train coming down the tracks. More than anything I think allowing flaming would be just be a pain in the ass for the admins/mods, as they would be the ones having to deal with the mess I think the news team is really professional, and other than the occasional lack of news, I think everything is fine just as it is

[sandmanfvrga]

I picked flaming, but I really think "feedback" should be used, not flaming. We need to say "that was not needed". With NO feedback, then the news team doesn't know what we don't want to see. I also like, and I think it has changed, the news is now back in the forums. Kick ass.

[REVENGE]

Because sometimes flamemail is fun to read.

[Smoke]

wtf rant here.. why/how can i make the forums act/look like they used too.. clicking on every {censored} reply for a topic SUCKS...

[Sabr]

wtf rant here.. why/how can i make the forums act/look like they used too.. clicking on every {censored} reply for a topic SUCKS...

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=61579

[mifki]

what i meant by flame, was what sandmanfrvga said. Like, that was not needed, or that was a crappy story.

[Colonel Ingus]

Like, that was not needed, or that was a crappy story.

Yes but both of those are purely subjective. One mans ceiling is another mans floor. Plus when you criticize someone for something (which is basically all that flaming is) then those people that are trying to help this site by posting news - they will not want to deal with be criticized and will stop helping this site (because they'll feel unappreciated). No matter how you look at it, flaming is a pandoras box. If this site used vB software then there is a hack that had a button that readers could click on, saying thank you or bad thread. Then there'd be one list under the last post saying "The following people didn't like this thread" Or "the following people loved this thread". In other words it's kind of like a poll (in a different form) to the thread, which isn't flaming, but rather just listing peoples opinions. That would be one way to handle it...

[REVENGE]

what i meant by flame, was what sandmanfrvga said. Like, that was not needed, or that was a crappy story.

 

Yes, but it's more entertaining when you write it as derrogatory, insulting, and substantially less comprehensible rants isn't it?

 

 

Ok whatever, but I've been guessing that it is a good idea to allow users to write directly to their editors regarding any mistakes/misinformation/bullshiit that manifests in their stories.

[A Nonny Moose]

Well, since you've specifically mentioned flaming:

 

You're all a bunch of poopy-heads.