December 13, 2007
Tags and New Views!
Two pretty big new changes are being rolled out to Torontoist over the next few days. Changes are good!
Tags!
Instead of being confined to narrow categories, every post is now tagged with specific tags––things that help you find specific kinds of posts (say, all of our Panoramaist posts) or browse broader categories easily (say, all of our music posts). Very soon, our categories will all be converted into tags save for a few overarching categories that everything posted on Torontoist will fit into.
Tags run along the bottom of each and every post (see above), and if you're signed in with a commenter account, you can add your own. Please don't abuse this privilege––we're giving it a test drive to see how well it works.
Different Views!
In the top right corner of the site, there is a big thing that says "Full View" (or "Summary View") and a link beside it that says "Change This." Click "Change This" and you can choose from several other views––full, which displays Torontoist's content in full on the front page as it always has; summary, which reduces all our posts after the top three to an excerpt; and favourite, which displays only our top-commented and top-recommended posts.
All unregistered, unsigned-in users will default to the "summary" view, though you can easily change your preferences––signed-in or not––by choosing another option. Doing so will set a delicious cookie on your computer that'll keep that preference stored.
We hope that you like both of these changes! Please be sure to let us know if you're having any problems whatsoever.
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I get my Torontoist through Google Reader. I'll be pretty pissed if I'm only getting abbreviated stories as a result of this. Please tell me that won't happen.
I recall on more than one occassion reading editors comments on Torontoist that boasted about choosing not to "click whore" by posting teasers with links to full stories. I guess the bosses in NYC have changed all that, eh? And for many good reasons beyond increasing pageviews.
quest: You only have to change your view once and it will stick and continue to display Torontoist articles as always, but Gothamist has found that a lot of readers prefer summary view as a quick way to see what's new or what's worth reading at a glance (hence the small thumbnails), which is also the reason for the Favourites view. The intention is to improve the reader experience, not degrade it, which is also why the way tags are used has changed.
"Click-whoring" for pageviews is when sites have a short article, with only a sentence or two (or even just a photo credit) after a totally unnecessary "continue reading" link, or when sites split an article into a bunch of Next > Next > Next links. Torontoist articles are still split as before, with a break only if the article is too long to display on the front page (which keeps people from scrolling down to read articles beneath).
McKingford: no, it should not affect RSS feeds at all.
And quest: as Marc pointed out, we're not forcing the change down anyone's throat––you have the option to view Torontoist's content in full with only two clicks. (It's the view I prefer, so I'll certainly be sticking with it.)
Hey guys,
For some reason Torontoist isn't displaying the 'Full View, change this' option at the top of the page. The other -ists are fine, but when I navigate back to Torontist it disappears. Thoughts?
The feature was (very temporarily) disabled and should be back in a second!
Tags are temporarily (kind of) disabled.
By the way––tags added to a post are not anonymous. While it's one thing to voice your dissent in the comments, doing so by adding tags to a post is not appropriate, and we won't hesitate to disable people's user accounts who do so. The ability to add tags is supposed to be a benefit for users, not a way for them to tell us off.
"The ability to add tags is supposed to be a benefit for users, not a way for them to tell us off"
LOL. That didn't take long. Perhaps only writers should be able to add tags.
So you got this new comment policy so you wouldn't have to waste your days reading each comments and deliberating whether it offended the frail sensibilities of the readership (or more likely, the editorship), presumably so you could spend more time searching for enlightening public art on the underside of grain elevators or other evocative momentos of the past, and then put in a tag program which requires you to monitor and edit the tags if they offend the same delicate sensibilities? I believe we call that a glutton for punishment.
New York calls the shots here; they aren't gluttons so much as dancing puppets. Amirite?