Thursday, July 10, 2008

Gates of Vienna News Feed, Phase II

Yesterday I floated the idea of a news feed for tips that I don’t have time to use. I received generally positive feedback from readers, but a significant number said that they would prefer that the news items not interrupt the flow of posts on our main page. Unfortunately, I’m unable to create something on the sidebar without having to rebuild the template every time — I don’t have the web development skills required for it.

Customer satisfaction is important to us, so I devised a compromise. Every evening I’ll create a set of news items based on the tips I don’t use, but I’ll write them to a static page with a permanent link. I made an icon for the sidebar which links to Gates of Vienna News Feed, and I’ll update it every evening unless circumstances interfere.

Also, if I have time, I’ll put up a brief post every evening to point you to interesting things to be found on the news feed page. For instance, tonight you can find:
- - - - - - - - -
  • Muammar Qaddafi’s opposition to EuroMed
  • Black holes are racist
  • The release of some of the American children from the “Taliban madrassa” in Pakistan
  • Jihad in China
  • Germany moves to give the vote to toddlers
  • France and Libya sign a nuclear cooperation agreement
  • And much, much more!

See the news feed for everything.

You’ll have to return here to comment — there are no comment facilities at the news feed page. This is a Stone Age operation.

9 comments:

Conservative Swede said...

In addition to the news feed, I'd like to inform you that Pamela Geller has posted today about Lawrence Auster's tone deaf attacks on Spencer (including a comment from Fjordman).
Spencer vs Auster: Smoke out the Imposters, I say

And I have expanded more upon this. There's the comparison between Lawrence Auster and Charles Johnson and more.
Pamela and Fjordman weigh in on Auster

And don't miss my post about Auster's flabbergasting Islam apologism!!!
Auster's moral dilemma

Anonymous said...

Not only did Pamela post about Lawrence Auster, but she linked to my blog as well. I was very honoured.

Now, about this news feed: will the previous day's news stay up when the current day's news is up too? For example, tomorrow night will only the news from July 11 be on that web page, or will news from July 10 be below it? I hope that made some sort of sense...

Baron Bodissey said...

Natalie --

No, as of right now, the news feed page will be overwritten each time.

Perhaps I can elaborate it to keep a week's worth of news tips, with the most recent at the top. But that will take a little bit of doing...

Conservative Swede said...

Well Baron, that's a pity really if these news items won't be kept for the record. Consider that these are items that almost made it to become an article. Also, the comments that people make will not be understood, after a day/week, because the news items will be gone.

I guess this is about people scrolling down the main page and not wanting it there [I never do that myself because I always come in through govcomments.blogspot.com. There's a list of all the latest article at the end of that page.]

Isn't the simple solution to post as normal blog posts, but cutting with a "Read further" after a few lines? Maybe just a list of the bullets and then a "-------".

Henrik R Clausen said...

Permit me a little plug on the subject:

EuropeNews is specialized in following the news, and there the items are permanent. We have 12,000+ articles by now, still counting.

We have a daily newsletter, too.

Baron Bodissey said...

CS --

Yes, it's because some people want the news feed available, but not to interrupt the main page.

And I already limited the number of items to 4, and then a "read further" for everything else.

Other possibilities.

I could make a week's worth of news items stay there, with the old ones dropping off the bottom and the new ones appearing on the top.

I can also revert to my original schema, with a post on the main page every evening.

Or I could drop the whole idea!

Conservative Swede said...

Baron,

As far as I'm concerned you could have the "read further" right after the title!

Having this as normal blog posts beats everything else, because every other solution means messing up the situation for commenting. I know how you feel about discontinuity in the Internet records, so don't work too hard on the current solution because when you see it in practice, and how it creates discontinuity for the comments, you will find it unacceptable and throw it away.

Keep it as normal blog posts, just as before. Easy and best. And when I wrote "Maybe just a list of the bullets and then a -------.", I was referring to this:

# Muammar Qaddafi’s opposition to EuroMed
# Black holes are racist
# The release of some of the American children from the “Taliban madrassa” in Pakistan
# Jihad in China
# Germany moves to give the vote to toddlers
# France and Libya sign a nuclear cooperation agreement

If people still think that this is horribly interrupting to the main page, then cut with a "read further" right after the title.

Baron Bodissey said...

Swede, I think you've probably got the best idea here. That will also be the easiest for me.

Conservative Swede said...

That will also be the easiest for me.

Sounds perfect :-)

I would even put the post description "This is a news feed, that has been generated, bla bla bla" right after the "------", in order to keep the text on the main page at a minimum. Just the bullets. People will learn very soon how it goes. And the title "news feed" and then the bullets, is really self-explicatory as it is.