This morning Computerworld.dk re-launched itself in a total shift away from the classical “newspaper on the web”-layout towards an RSS/list presentation of articles, sorted with the newest first. No “top-stories”, no sections, no differentiating between columns, editorial blogposts and classical articles.
On Kim Elmoses mediahack-blog online editor at computerworld Dan Jensen states: “readers don’t care about our prioritization of the articles. They want an overview, and the ability to make fast choises”.
I’m not sure I agree with Dan – I actually think readers like prioritization very much. Digg.com and reddit.com (which seems to be some kind of rolemodels to computerworld) prioritises big time – based on the ratings given by the readers. But on todays version of computerworld you can’t find any ratings mechanisms. This might still be up their sleeves, however.
But even if they do implement ratings, and uses this for prioritizing, I do think I would still like the editors to be involved as well. You know: making sure a story, which the editors thinks is the best, doesn’t just fall down the drain because the users, that just happened to be at the site at the time the story broke, for some reason didn’t find it interesting enough for them to vote it to the top. These users might be wrong!
Look to Netscape.com – which relaunched itself this summer as a usergenerated news-site (list, ratings, digg.com concept) – did some of this: in the top of the site you have 5 “editors picks” stories.
Perhaps I’m just oldfashioned – and I’m sure looking forward to follow the development of Computerworld.dk in the weeks to come!
Via Mediahack
Update at 13:25: After a few more glimpses of the new computerworld design, I find that I’m not entirely fair in the above:
1. There actually are editors picks in the new Computerworld (as the screendump above also shows!). At 10:30 this morning the editors highlighted three stories in a box, presented as all other articles, and therefore moving downwards the list.
2. There acutally is an differentiating between columns, editorial blogposts and classical articles. Columns, blogposts and the like are all labelled “column”, “blog” etc. What I meant was: exept from this, they’re all presented side by side in the list.
3. Sections are not abandonned. They’re just not as clearly visible as hitherto. Click the “Computerworld overview” button in the top, and a whole sitemap expands.
Very facinating design. And I’m really very curious to see how it works out, with all these elements in play. The readers will tell!