A complaint.......

[ARROW]

I'll try to put this delicately, so as to not offend.

I understand that the site is branching into all manner of news genres, toys, games, comics, entertainment, and reaching that info can be done a couple of different ways.

I notice that Bespin Refugee has the task of posting notices of new items in the various pages on the forums, and that those posts contain just links to the news items.

I also notice that some of these news items can simply be accessed via the links on the sidebars.

 

Now, here's the beef:

 

As a creature of habit, I'm often intrigued by the headlines on these news items, and I click on them while browsing the forum index. Of course that takes me to the post with the link to the news page, but its the roundabout route. I then click on the link and wait for the new window to open, the page to load etc.

The entertainment items often do not appear in the sidebar, so the only way to get to them is the "long route".

 

Needless to say, I use the sidebar links to get to the stuff mentioned there, but find it a pain in the puffy posterior to access the other items.

 

 

My suggestion/request is this: would it be possible to have a brief quote.........a couple of the lead sentences quoted from the articles to give us "lazy" readers a snippet of the article so we don't have to actually visit the news pages if we are not immediately intrigued?

 

Yea, I know that sounds horribly lazy, but I'm one of those dinosaurs using dial-up, and page load times can be long for me ( 30-60 seconds on a bad day) and the links just kill the fun of browsing the site.

My request is NOT for the whole article to be quoted, just a teaser snippet, and a "if you'd like to read more, please visit the link" and then the link itself.

Obviously, Bespin Refugee's task is to get us to LOOK at those news items, otherwise he'd not be posting those notices in the forums.

 

The alternative is to add the entertainment and other news items to the sidebar so we can direct link to them.

 

Going the round-about way to get to that stuff is just......irritating.

 

Thanks.

[ARROW]

You will probably have to wait for Jay or Bespin to reply for an official answer, but I belive that the ultimate goal of those top forums is to link all the sites and get people to visit the main pages of each. So the only suggestion I could give to help you out is to load a couple of the main pages in a window as you browse the forums to avoid taking the long route. The main pages are;

 

Toys: www.toynewsi.com

Entertainment: www.enewsi.com

Games: www.GameNewsI.com

Anime: www.AnimeNewsI.com

Comics: www.comicnewsi.com

 

If I recall correctly all news used to be posted on the sidebar, but then people complained about other media venues being featured on a toy site, which is why things changed.

 

Ah well, I guess its down to a choice to either ignore those headlines or take the longer way to view them.

Part and parcel of the site expanding way beyond its original mandates I guess.

If the format works for whatever reasons, don't mind my fussing--do what works for you.

[Guest Mike]

I get all my news from threads in the Transformers forums. We're always 3 steps ahead of the main page :P

[Snow_Serpent]

Totally agree with Arrow's post. That and how the news often lags behind the actual discussion in the forums.

[JayC]

Well the main problem is you kinda of have it backwards IMO. The way it is supposed to work and the purpose of these boards even when it was just toys was that you go to the site and read the news first, and then come to the forums and discuss it, and though we have looked for ways and will continue to do so to deliver those headlines more readliy to you, I don't really understand why you come to a news website, and dont check the news????

 

Also to address the lag of news on the main page compared to message board news. First mesage board news is a hodge bodge of rumors, made up bs, and sometimes legit news. I think people often take the bs and made up rumors as legit news, which is unfortuneate and a drawback to getting your news that way. I know everyone is an insider and knows whats going on before even the toy companies do, but this often leads to confusion and people getting upset when they finally discovered something isnt true. We try to keep the news on the TNI's main page as factual as possible. Are we always going to be the first to break every headline??? No, but in the end I don't think you can find a more complete covering of all the pop culture news that goes on out there which is what the orginal goal of these sites always was. To provide a complete and comprehensive resource to collectors.

 

Second I put to you that a lot of the legit news doesnt appear on the message boards first, its just you all don't bother to check the sites news, you wait till someone posts a link on the boards to somewhere. I've often seen where we have broken news and then someone on the boards will be like where is that, obviously not having checked the the sites for the news.

 

So anyway to address the specific question, we are looking at additional ways to bring headlines to the news stories like have the JI newsfeed in the star wars section and the tformers newsfeed in the Transformer section, but to be perfectly frank I want you out looking at all the news on the sites, not sitting here on the message boards hoping somone posts the news here for you to read.

[ARROW]

JayC--

 

Yea, you've kind of caught me on this.........see I come to the site for the forums. Mea Culpa.

Honestly, I bypass all the other stuff and open up the page right on the forum index, the only time I see the news is in the sidebars or on the headlines.

I guess I see the site as more of a "forums" site that a news site, which its evolved into.

 

I know, I know.......that must frustrate you guys that put a ton of work into the news material, when some schmuck like whines because he's not using the site in the intended way. I'm a creature of habit so I've blithely gone along and viewed the site in a backwards way.

 

 

I'll try changing my approach a bit here and see what comes of it.

Thanks for the reply.