While we like to see new readers discovering our blogs and joining the discussion, a good “flaming” like the one Gideon Rachman’s blog received this week raises again the vexed issue of comment moderation. Some of the less offensive comments on his musings about the possibility of a world government include:
and my personal favourite,
“RETARTED“
So what is the FT’s approach to comments on articles from readers? Continue reading "Comments and the flaming dilemma"
As of midday our redesigned homepages, including a new Middle East page, are now live.
We’re very pleased to see the hard work of many people realised, but this is only the first step of much deeper and wider-ranging changes to the entire site that are also well under way.
We’d like to hear your feedback. You are welcome to comment on this blog of course, but to help us analyse the responses, please use our survey - it’s quite short!
Here are some of the results from Monday, when readers were looking at the JPG of the new layout rather than the live page -
‘Overall, how would you rate the new design?’
82.4 per cent rated it ‘very good’ or ‘good’, with 5.2 per cent neutral.
‘It’s easy to find what I’m looking for’
70.8 chose ’strongly agree’ or ‘agree’; 17.2 per cent were neutral (many commented it was too early to tell)
‘The new homepage makes it easy to get briefed quickly on the day’s top stories and related comment’
79.9 per cent chose ’strongly agree’ or ‘agree’; 9.4 per cent were neutral.
Some of the most memorable comments we’ve seen so far…
‘A gay Guardian‘ (from a comment on Roy Greenslade’s blog)
‘Blogalicious‘ (Gawker)
And the rather poetic ‘Yoghurt with blackberries’ (from one of our survey participants)
Update: Had some confusion with date stamps and time references on this post - the new homepages went live midday Tuesday, in case you’re wondering.
In addition to the home pages and Alphaville/Long Room, we’ve also changed the look of the blogs on FT.com today. The functionality is unchanged but, as with the rest of the site, there’s further development going on that will be rolled out over the coming weeks and months.
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