New SFgate makeover is total rending SF Chronicle website useless

[Thad Floryan]

It's apparently a beta that I might have randomly got
sucked into and it's nearly impossible to navigate and
I expressed my feelings in the "Feedback" to them re:

http://www.sfgate.com/

At least their new HTML 5 crapola sort-of works versus
the absolute total garbage and braindead web site for the
San Hoser Mockery, er, Murky, er, Mercury News:

http://www.mercurynews.com/

Sigh. :-(

Looks like I'll only be viewing non-USA news web sites
from this point on (e.g., BBC, Reuters, Al Jazeera,
Jerusalem Post, Japan Times, Pravda, Russia Today, Asia
Times, China Daily, People Daily, Shanghai Daily,
Telegraph UK) and occasionally Washington Post.

SFgate should just belly-up and be done with it especially
after their once-great commenting system was replaced with
the hot steaming pig shit Viafora by ganga-smoking Canadian
assholes.

Thad

[David Kaye]

Post by Thad Floryan
It's apparently a beta that I might have randomly got
sucked into and it's nearly impossible to navigate and
http://www.sfgate.com/

I wrote to them twice and suggested that they emulate the two most visited
sites on the web: Wikipedia and Google and notice that these are both the
essence of simplicity. Even Google News (news.google.com) is clutter-free
and PACKED with info.

I see SFGate going where it's going for two reasons: (1) they want to make
the pages more readable on tablets and phones, and (2) they want to
remonetize past articles by keeping links to them on their new "infinite"
home page. In theory, you could keep scrolling down and eventually you'd
reach "Hello World".

As for myself, I've stopped using SFGate and Yahoo News because of the
infinite home pages and the fact that so many Yahoo links are to
automatically-loading video. I don't knowingly visit any ABC-TV website
because of the instant video, as well.

These are the news sites I visit now, due to their extensive coverage and
their simplicity:
http://www.reuters.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://news.google.com/
http://www.voanews.com/




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[Thad Floryan]

Post by David Kaye

Post by Thad Floryan
It's apparently a beta that I might have randomly got
sucked into and it's nearly impossible to navigate and
http://www.sfgate.com/

I wrote to them twice and suggested that they emulate the two most visited
sites on the web: Wikipedia and Google and notice that these are both the
essence of simplicity. Even Google News (news.google.com) is clutter-free
and PACKED with info.
I see SFGate going where it's going for two reasons: (1) they want to make
the pages more readable on tablets and phones, and (2) they want to
remonetize past articles by keeping links to them on their new "infinite"
home page. In theory, you could keep scrolling down and eventually you'd
reach "Hello World".

Hi David,

"Sometime" Thursday they reverted to the previous web interface but
most articles' links are presently totally bogus and lead nowhere
that is useful -- that is, the links don't point to the articles.

Post by David Kaye
As for myself, I've stopped using SFGate and Yahoo News because of the
infinite home pages

Yahoo has also removed over 50% of the functionality for
Yahoo group owners and moderators with their garbage NEO
HTML crap which cannot display message archives in any sane
manner and there are still 1000s of problems with NEO after
it infected Yahoo Groups one year ago on August 18, 2013.

Yahoo Group stats have dropped dramatically among the 70+
groups to which I'm subscribed and monitor.

Post by David Kaye
and the fact that so many Yahoo links are to
automatically-loading video.

SFgate begin doing that, too, and someone here mentioned
the Flashblock 1.5.17 Firefox plugin which stopped that
nonsense. My thanks again to whomever cited that plugin.

Speaking of Firefox, the clowns at Mozilla have outdone
themselves junking-up Firefox so badly it's now on a rapid
and downwards path and losing market share RAPIDLY. By this
time next year its market share will likely be 1% or less.

Fortunately there's Pale Moon built from modified Firefox
source code that eliminates all the new Firefox crap and
especially the Australis hot steaming pile of pig poop to
again provide a sane interface. All Firefox plugins I've
tested work fine with Pale Moon which is available here:

http://www.palemoon.org/

The Mozilla clowns can go pound sand -- they clearly have
no understanding of what's happening in the world and they
don't understand what their users want in a browser as can
be seen with Firefox itself and the Mozilla Newsletters I
receive. As I wrote elsewhere recently:

" [...]
" This means undoing some of the obviously stupid changes that have
" been made lately, fixing the long-standing performance and memory
" consumption issues, and probably discarding those contributors
" who have been responsible for harming Firefox so badly these past
" few years.
"
" In other words, heads should roll and the wrong people have left
" Mozilla recently. What's left? Ganga-smoking knuckle-dragging
" slack-jawed LOL'ing and fecebook using cretins, morons and the
" so-called software "enginerrs" (sic) who have *NO* concept of
" what design and engineering really mean?
" [...]

Post by David Kaye
I don't knowingly visit any ABC-TV website
because of the instant video, as well.
These are the news sites I visit now, due to their extensive coverage and
http://www.reuters.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://news.google.com/
http://www.voanews.com/

As I wrote previously, I like the BBC, too, along with a
number of Asian websites which, interestingly, don't seem
to censor the news as much as the USA's news "services" do.

Thad

[David Kaye]

Post by Thad Floryan
Yahoo Group stats have dropped dramatically among the 70+
groups to which I'm subscribed and monitor.

I use Yahoo Groups as I always have, as a mailing list. What I like about
it is that unlike most other "group" sites, someone can subscribe to it
using any email address, and they don't have to have any kind of Yahoo
account. The subscribe and unsubscribe link addresses work very well and
fast. I ignore the web interface entirely.

What's more, Yahoo puts a list of subscribe, unsubscribe, and admin links at
the bottom of every message that is sent. I add a footer to mine saying,
"The SF Games list is maintained automatically..." and tell them to do the
subscribing, unsubscribing, and address changes themselves. I do have it
set to block newbies from posting until I approve their content. After I
get several posts from them that pertain to the subject matter, then I allow
them unmoderated access. This makes it extremely easy to moderate a mailing
list of hundreds of folks and keeps the spam at bay, too.

On the SF Games web page I simply have a subscribe link that sends an email
to the the magic subscribe address. Here's how I do it (the email link is
about halfway down the page): http://www.sfgames.org/




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[Thad Floryan]

Post by David Kaye

Post by Thad Floryan
Yahoo Group stats have dropped dramatically among the 70+
groups to which I'm subscribed and monitor.

I use Yahoo Groups as I always have, as a mailing list. What I like about
it is that unlike most other "group" sites, someone can subscribe to it
using any email address, and they don't have to have any kind of Yahoo
account. The subscribe and unsubscribe link addresses work very well and
fast. I ignore the web interface entirely.

Hi David,

So how do you manage and moderate the group as owner? That and other
capabilities are available only through the web interface though the
approval of a single message can be achieved via email which I do since
I really don't want to login to Yahoo for anything.

Your group is likely not affected by NEO which has trashed everything
for technical groups sych as astronomy, computer, machining, operating
systems, photography and many other related and similar topics.

There are multiple issues (over 1000 still unfixed since August 2013
when NEO infected Yahoo groups on 18 August 2013) which now render
Yahoo Groups nearly useless as a venue for technical forums.

Besides the Group owner and moderator web interface in which over
50% of the functionality has been removed, one very serious issue
concerns the message archives which are now still unreadable per
examples I posted here previously -- all contiguous tabs/spaces
are reduced to just one which totally destroys charts, tables and
similar methods for presenting technical information. A simple
example I posted before; this table:

An exabyte is a big number:

Byte (8 bits): 1 byte
Kilobyte: 1,000 bytes
Megabyte: 1,000,000 bytes
Gigabyte: 1,000,000,000 bytes
Terabyte: 1,000,000,000,000 bytes
Petabyte: 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
=>Exabyte: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Zettabyte: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Yottabyte: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes

and the list goes on to Xenottabyte, Shilentnobyte, and, finally,
Domegemegrottebyte, respectively.

is displayed by NEO in an insane proportional font as (real example):

An exabyte is a big number:

Byte (8 bits): 1 byte
Kilobyte: 1,000 bytes
Megabyte: 1,000,000 bytes
Gigabyte: 1,000,000,000 bytes
Terabyte: 1,000,000,000,000 bytes
Petabyte: 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
=>Exabyte: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Zettabyte: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Yottabyte: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes

and the list goes on to Xenottabyte, Shilentnobyte, and, finally,
Domegemegrottebyte, respectively.

Imagine what NEO does to programming language and script source code
examples -- it renders them unreadable and affects a LOT of groups.

A correspondent in the UK who's a member of the Yahoo linux group (of
which I'm one of the 3 owners) literally stumbled upon a Yahoo bug
that revealed how we could download and extract message archives and
move them elsewhere away from Yahoo as we abandon everything Yahoo,
and the discovery shows that the raw message archives are formatted
as they were originally and it's only the dumbshit H1B-Visa types of
Yahoo with their phony degrees and total incompetence that cannot show
the messages in their original form. So, Marissa Meyer can go pound
sand for the rest of her miserable life as Yahoo group members migrate
to a different venue (and definitely *NOT* Google Groups).

This announcement reveals the clown who directed NEO development as
Product Leader of Yahoo Groups:

http://yahoogroups.tumblr.com/post/75580353805/your-group-homepage-photo-is-back

and looking here:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/aravindsampath

we see *ZERO* experience with HTML 5, and his web UI (User Interface), web UX
(User eXperience) and website design is clearly misstated -- in other words,
incompetent and unsuitable for the task of overseeing Yahoo Groups.

Post by David Kaye
[...]
What's more, Yahoo puts a list of subscribe, unsubscribe, and admin links at
the bottom of every message that is sent. I add a footer to mine saying,
"The SF Games list is maintained automatically..." and tell them to do the
subscribing, unsubscribing, and address changes themselves. I do have it
set to block newbies from posting until I approve their content. After I
get several posts from them that pertain to the subject matter, then I allow
them unmoderated access.

How do YOU do that without the NEO group management web interface? Changing
a user from moderated to unmoderated cannot be done via email AFAIK and many
group owners and moderators have discussed that issue in private email.

You probably weren't aware (given the nature of your group) of the capabilities
available to owners and moderators pre-NEO that are and still are important for
the moderation of technical forums that are missing in the NEO interface.

BTW, back to the SFgate issue, it appears they've fixed most of the broken
links after reverting back to the prior web interface.

Thad

[Keith Keller]

Post by Thad Floryan
So how do you manage and moderate the group as owner? That and other
capabilities are available only through the web interface though the
approval of a single message can be achieved via email which I do since
I really don't want to login to Yahoo for anything.
Your group is likely not affected by NEO which has trashed everything
for technical groups sych as astronomy, computer, machining, operating
systems, photography and many other related and similar topics.

Why would certain groups be affected but not others? That seems a bit
odd to me (though this is Yahoo, so I wouldn't put anything past them).

Post by Thad Floryan
A correspondent in the UK who's a member of the Yahoo linux group (of
which I'm one of the 3 owners) literally stumbled upon a Yahoo bug
that revealed how we could download and extract message archives and
move them elsewhere away from Yahoo as we abandon everything Yahoo,
and the discovery shows that the raw message archives are formatted
as they were originally and it's only the dumbshit H1B-Visa types of
Yahoo with their phony degrees and total incompetence that cannot show
the messages in their original form. So, Marissa Meyer can go pound
sand for the rest of her miserable life as Yahoo group members migrate
to a different venue (and definitely *NOT* Google Groups).

If you have a decent hosting provider you might be able to run your own
GNU Mailman instance (the generic you, including but not limited to Thad
you). It's not exactly a state of the art UI, but it's eminently
usable. Lots of technical lists are backed by Mailman.

Post by Thad Floryan
BTW, back to the SFgate issue, it appears they've fixed most of the broken
links after reverting back to the prior web interface.

According to my wife, who saw what you referred to, that strange site
was labelled as a beta, and was taken down fairly quickly, followed by a
survey (in which she answered that it was a steaming pile of crap). But
you can still see something similar to what was described, as it's been
their POS mobile site for a while now:

http://m.sfgate.com/

Even if you disregard the size of the images (which may be an artifact
of attempting to format for mobile, or may just be a crappy site) the
site is still a disaster. What are some good candidates for local news
stories? In the past I've sometimes tried KTVU, but I've found they
don't do a lot of local San Francisco politics (my main interest in
sfgate).

--keith

[Thad Floryan]

Post by Keith Keller

Post by Thad Floryan
So how do you manage and moderate the group as owner? That and other
capabilities are available only through the web interface though the
approval of a single message can be achieved via email which I do since
I really don't want to login to Yahoo for anything.
Your group is likely not affected by NEO which has trashed everything
for technical groups sych as astronomy, computer, machining, operating
systems, photography and many other related and similar topics.

Why would certain groups be affected but not others? That seems a bit
odd to me (though this is Yahoo, so I wouldn't put anything past them).

Hi Keith,

David's group is a gaming group. I doubt they use the messages archives
for anything; I know the 'gamers_for_life' group to which I belong sure
doesn't.

Contrast that with, for example, the linux group where 1000s of scripts
and code examples used to be constantly referenced by new members since
the archives contain technically valuable material and now, due to the
NEO infection, the message archives are essentially unreadable. The guy
in the UK and I have personally downloaded the entire archives which are
still in mbox form and exist as they were originally formatted and now
we're looking for a public place to put them where Yahoo, who illegally
claims ownership, can't touch them. I'm still downloading message
archives from some 50 astronomy, computer, operating system, machining,
photography, and other groups so the material won't be lost at Yahoo
who doesn't seem to appreciate the value of the message archives to
technical group members.

Post by Keith Keller

Post by Thad Floryan
A correspondent in the UK who's a member of the Yahoo linux group (of
which I'm one of the 3 owners) literally stumbled upon a Yahoo bug
that revealed how we could download and extract message archives and
move them elsewhere away from Yahoo as we abandon everything Yahoo,
and the discovery shows that the raw message archives are formatted
as they were originally and it's only the dumbshit H1B-Visa types of
Yahoo with their phony degrees and total incompetence that cannot show
the messages in their original form. So, Marissa Meyer can go pound
sand for the rest of her miserable life as Yahoo group members migrate
to a different venue (and definitely *NOT* Google Groups).

If you have a decent hosting provider you might be able to run your own
GNU Mailman instance (the generic you, including but not limited to Thad
you). It's not exactly a state of the art UI, but it's eminently
usable. Lots of technical lists are backed by Mailman.

We may use the same scheme setup by John Levine for the comp.dcom.telecom
group in 1981 which co-uses mailist lists and Usenet. The comp.dcom.telecom
archives are here:

http://telecom-digest.org/
aka
http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/

Post by Keith Keller

Post by Thad Floryan
BTW, back to the SFgate issue, it appears they've fixed most of the broken
links after reverting back to the prior web interface.

According to my wife, who saw what you referred to, that strange site
was labelled as a beta, and was taken down fairly quickly, followed by a
survey (in which she answered that it was a steaming pile of crap). But
you can still see something similar to what was described, as it's been
http://m.sfgate.com/

Interesting! Your wife answered their survey the same as I did! :-)

Perhaps we all should arrange for a dinner to celebrate when SFGate finally
bellies-up. Removing their world-class commenting system and replacing it
with the POS named ViaFoura from some incompetent Canadians was the first
*major* sign of the pending decline of SFGate. Which is a shame. SFGate
had Alana Nguyen as their IT and website guru, she was EXTREMELY competent,
and we'd sometimes exchange ideas to better the experience at SFGate. She
must not be there any longer.

This is sort of similar to what's happening at Mozilla with Firefox now as
its market is constantly declining and may reach close to 0 this time next
year due to not understanding the needs of browser users. The wrong people
have been forced-out and/or a leaving Mozilla leaving behind, as I wrote
previously, the knuckle-dragging, slack-jawed LOL'ing fecebook-using morons
who cannot code their way out of a wet paper bag.

Post by Keith Keller
Even if you disregard the size of the images (which may be an artifact
of attempting to format for mobile, or may just be a crappy site) the
site is still a disaster. What are some good candidates for local news
stories? In the past I've sometimes tried KTVU, but I've found they
don't do a lot of local San Francisco politics (my main interest in
sfgate).

There's the SF Examiner http://www.sfexaminer.com/ which is decent.

Most if not all communities use[d] the "patch" system:

http://patch.com/

but there seems to be some issues; Google "patch news sites" for more
info. There used to be one 'patch' site for every community on the
San Francisco Peninsula and also many places around the USA. I haven't
followed them recently, but they usually would have local reports in
every community and have pictures and stuff on their websites that no
other newspaper site would have -- important if one wants the real scoop
and pictures that SFgate, SJMN, Oakland Tribube, et al would never run.

Thad

[Thad Floryan]

Post by Thad Floryan
[...]
http://patch.com/
but there seems to be some issues; Google "patch news sites" for more
info. There used to be one 'patch' site for every community on the
San Francisco Peninsula and also many places around the USA. I haven't
followed them recently, but they usually would have local reports in
every community and have pictures and stuff on their websites that no
other newspaper site would have -- important if one wants the real scoop
and pictures that SFgate, SJMN, Oakland Tribune, et al would never run.

Patch info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_Media

This is a dead link now:

http://www.patch.com/about

They're *NOT* gone; see these current for-today pages:

http://patch.com/california/losaltos more cougars spotted!

http://patch.com/california/mountainview

http://patch.com/california/paloalto

http://patch.com/california/cupertino

http://patch.com/california/redwoodcity-woodside

http://patch.com/california/sanmateo

http://patch.com/california/southsanfrancisco

but I couldn't find one for San Francisco or Sunnyvale.

Google patch followed by a city name to find a Patch site

Thad

[David Kaye]

Post by Thad Floryan
but I couldn't find one for San Francisco or Sunnyvale.

I don't remember there ever being a Patch site for SF; I believe their
intent all along was to concentrate on under-served communities.




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[Keith Keller]

Post by Thad Floryan
David's group is a gaming group. I doubt they use the messages archives
for anything; I know the 'gamers_for_life' group to which I belong sure
doesn't.

Okay, so you're not actually saying that they aren't affected; rather,
you're saying that they wouldn't have noticed a problem.

Post by Thad Floryan
There's the SF Examiner http://www.sfexaminer.com/ which is decent.

Hmm. I was a bit skeptical before, judging from the quality of their
print newspaper. But OTOH it's not like the Chronicle is a whole lot
better. I'll have to give the Ex site a closer look.

--keith

[Thad Floryan]

Post by Keith Keller

Post by Thad Floryan
David's group is a gaming group. I doubt they use the messages archives
for anything; I know the 'gamers_for_life' group to which I belong sure
doesn't.

Okay, so you're not actually saying that they aren't affected; rather,
you're saying that they wouldn't have noticed a problem.

Hi Keith,

Yes! The way you stated it is precisely what I "should" have written. :-)

Thank you!

Post by Keith Keller

Post by Thad Floryan
There's the SF Examiner http://www.sfexaminer.com/ which is decent.

Hmm. I was a bit skeptical before, judging from the quality of their
print newspaper. But OTOH it's not like the Chronicle is a whole lot
better. I'll have to give the Ex site a closer look.

There's also this site: http://www.sfweekly.com/ which I just re-found
after seeing one of my most favorite articles in my news archives:

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/foodie/2011/01/why_everyone_at_trader_joes_hates_you.php

That article describes precisely the problem I saw when I worked in The
Crossroads 3-building complex in San Mateo (at Hwy 92 and 101) with a Trader
Joes right across the street 100 yards from my office, and that I also see at
the TJ in the San Antonio Plaza in Mountain View whenever I shop in that complex,
and that I also now see at the TJ at 1/4 mile from my home in Los Altos in the
Foothill Crossing shopping center located at the carfax[1] of Grant Road, Vineyard
Avenue, Foothill Expressway, and Homestead Road with traffic lights every 50 yards
due to the alleged traffic danger -- idiots; I've lived here since 1966 and we
NEVER needed that many traffic lights before Trader Joes infected the neighborhood
a few years ago:

Friendly advice: approach any Trader Joe store with extreme caution and be ready to
run like hell given all the distracted drivers texting and circling the parking lot
at high speed just so they park right next to a Trader Joe's front door even if
they're not qualified to park in a handicapped spot. I'm not kidding. I have seen
so many accidents within 150-200 feet of the three TJs I observed over the years
that I wonder why any city allows TJ to build a facility in their city.

It goes without saying that I avoid any TJ like the plague because I value my life.

Thad

[1] carfax: the intersection of 4 or more roads. Definition from "Mrs. Byrne's
Dictionary", Library of Congress Card. No 70-188020, ISBN 0-8216-0203-9, on
page 40. Book (C) 1974 Josefa Heifetz, daughter of Jascha Heifetz:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jascha_Heifetz world-renowned violinist

and the book has 6000 of the weirdest words in the English language noting I
often read dictionaries for fun increasing my vocabulary to improve writing.

[Keith Keller]

Post by Thad Floryan
There's also this site: http://www.sfweekly.com/ which I just re-found

Well, if we're hitting the weeklies, there's always the Bay Guardian.

http://www.sfbg.com/

I often read their endorsements as an alternative to the Chronicle's,
but sometimes their articles go a bit off the deep end.

Post by Thad Floryan
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/foodie/2011/01/why_everyone_at_trader_joes_hates_you.php

"If you want to see the skinny white bitches in yoga pants turn ghetto
in 5 seconds flat, just try it."

I want to see this.

--keith

[David Kaye]

Post by Keith Keller
Hmm. I was a bit skeptical before, judging from the quality of their
print newspaper. But OTOH it's not like the Chronicle is a whole lot
better. I'll have to give the Ex site a closer look.
--keith

Since the SF Examiner was bought by the same folks who now own the Bay
Guardian, SF Weekly, and the Bay Area Reporter, it seems they've been
concentrating on their news gathering. I often find better coverage of SF
in the Ex than in the Chron.

By the way, www.sfexaminer.com and www.examiner.com are no longer the same
company! When Phillip Anschutz (rightwing union-buster) bought the Examiner
and its website from the Fang family, he fired nearly all the staff and
turned the thing into no-pay blogs in SF, DC, and a couple other places. He
then sold off the print Examiner and the website sfexaminer.com to its
present owners, but kept examiner.com as the umbrella for his bloggin
empire. Apparently he wants to be another Arianna Huffington (who also
didn't pay her bloggers, even when she sold the company for $300 million).




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[David Kaye]

Post by Keith Keller
Why would certain groups be affected but not others? That seems a bit
odd to me (though this is Yahoo, so I wouldn't put anything past them).

You're assuming that everything is done on one server using one software
version. Most of these companies roll out a new software version on some
percentage of their user base so that they can check for bugs before rolling
it out across all users. Sometimes this can take weeks as the developers
wait for bug reports to accumulate.

I haven't investigated Yahoo Groups, but Yahoo Mail has a couple different
web interfaces the user can use, as well as IMAP and POP3. I'm assuming
that Yahoo Groups NEO wasn't rolled out all at once. Now, when I'm on the
Groups web page I do see a "NEO" directory in the tree, so I guess it's
using NEO, but I haven't spent the time to investigate; it works for me, I
get it for free, and that's all I care about.




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[David Kaye]

Post by Thad Floryan
So how do you manage and moderate the group as owner? That and other
capabilities are available only through the web interface though the
approval of a single message can be achieved via email which I do since
I really don't want to login to Yahoo for anything.

When someone wants to join the list I get a message from Yahoo offering both
a link to the moderator's web page and an email link as well. Here's an
example:

== start of quoted stuff ==

To approve or reject this pending membership using the web,
please go here:
https://groups.yahoo.com/group/sfgames/members?group=pending


To approve this membership using email, reply to this message.

To reject this membership using email, forward this message to

sfgames-rejectsub-(characters representing the request)@yahoogroups.com

== end of quoted stuff ==


I also get a similar kind of message to accept or reject a post. I can't
remember whether the email option allows me to edit the post, since I
haven't had to do that in many months.




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[Bhairitu]

Post by David Kaye

Post by Thad Floryan
Yahoo Group stats have dropped dramatically among the 70+
groups to which I'm subscribed and monitor.

I use Yahoo Groups as I always have, as a mailing list. What I like about
it is that unlike most other "group" sites, someone can subscribe to it
using any email address, and they don't have to have any kind of Yahoo
account. The subscribe and unsubscribe link addresses work very well and
fast. I ignore the web interface entirely.
What's more, Yahoo puts a list of subscribe, unsubscribe, and admin links at
the bottom of every message that is sent. I add a footer to mine saying,
"The SF Games list is maintained automatically..." and tell them to do the
subscribing, unsubscribing, and address changes themselves. I do have it
set to block newbies from posting until I approve their content. After I
get several posts from them that pertain to the subject matter, then I allow
them unmoderated access. This makes it extremely easy to moderate a mailing
list of hundreds of folks and keeps the spam at bay, too.
On the SF Games web page I simply have a subscribe link that sends an email
to the the magic subscribe address. Here's how I do it (the email link is
about halfway down the page): http://www.sfgames.org/

Yeah, I've always used Yahoo Groups via email. I look at one Group when
I'm out and about via my Android phone using the Chrome browser (Firefox
seemed to have some problems with NEO). It's very clean that way.

NEO is of course "mobile first" and most likely implemented by 20
somethings who lack experience and probably supervision to design it
right or by foreign programmers alien to our culture.

[John Slade]

Post by David Kaye

Post by Thad Floryan
It's apparently a beta that I might have randomly got
sucked into and it's nearly impossible to navigate and
http://www.sfgate.com/

I wrote to them twice and suggested that they emulate the two most visited
sites on the web: Wikipedia and Google and notice that these are both the
essence of simplicity. Even Google News (news.google.com) is clutter-free
and PACKED with info.

Good luck. I made the same suggestion to the operators of
Gamespot. Apparently there is a trend to design full web pages
you view from a computer to the web pages that are supposed to
be viewed on a mobile device. Gamespot is a prime example. It
used to have the information easily found now it's like a mobile
device and is very annoying. The web sites visitations went down
a lot when they changed it. I suggested they emulate Google but
it will fall on deaf ears unless so many people get frustrated
with it they just plain stop visiting. These days it seems
designers and owners don't want to give the people what they
like, instead they want to tell you what you SHOULD like.

John



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This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
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Post by David Kaye
These are the news sites I visit now, due to their extensive coverage and
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://news.google.com/

I use the Google News Widget on Android to open to a bunch of other sites,
but several of them are subscription only, which makes it kind of a useless
link. I mentioned that in feedback to the google app folks.

I get a daily email from nytimes, and I read the suggested articles.
A while ago, I started getting warnings that I had read "2 of your 10 free
articles this month", etc, until it hit 10, and the warning went away for
the rest of the month.

I've been toying with the NYTimes app, and I like it, but I have a running
conversation with someone in the subscription department about the prices
being _just_too_high_. It's $3.75/week for a smartphone, and $5/week for a
tablet. Some of the versions are Apple only. There's a cheaper opinion app,
no news articles.

I see no logic in the price difference between smartphone and tablet, which
look identical to me, on a 7" tablet.

[Travis James]

Post by d***@84.usenet.us.com

Post by David Kaye
These are the news sites I visit now, due to their extensive coverage and
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://news.google.com/

I get a daily email from nytimes, and I read the suggested articles.
A while ago, I started getting warnings that I had read "2 of your 10 free
articles this month", etc, until it hit 10, and the warning went away for
the rest of the month.

Odd that the warning just went away. I have been hit by and blocked by
the 10th article. If that happens, the easy workaround is to reload the
link in private mode on your browser (verified on Chrome, I assume works
on other browsers).

[David Kaye]

Odd that the warning just went away. I have been hit by and blocked by the
10th article. If that happens, the easy workaround is to reload the link
in private mode on your browser (verified on Chrome, I assume works on
other browsers).

If I see a pay-walled article I copy the title of the article and do a
Google or Dogpile search on it. Chances are it's already been repeated
verbatim elsewhere.




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This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
http://www.avast.com

[b***@MIX.COM]

Post by Thad Floryan
It's apparently a beta that I might have randomly got
sucked into and it's nearly impossible to navigate and
http://www.sfgate.com/

If you want to see how truly ugly a web site can become -

http://www.latimes.com/

This used to be one of the most easy to read sites on the
planet. Now it has the permanent wide, black list of crap
on the left side, a barely visble font color for article
text, et cetera. "Feedback" does no good. It takes more
than a month to get a non-response.

Billy Y..

[s***@gmail.com]

Post by Thad Floryan
It's apparently a beta that I might have randomly got
sucked into and it's nearly impossible to navigate and
http://www.sfgate.com/

One window of regular sfgate chews up a half-gig of memory, and 25% of
my CPU. I have to kill it and start it over.

Post by Thad Floryan
http://www.mercurynews.com/
Sigh. :-(
Looks like I'll only be viewing non-USA news web sites
from this point on (e.g., BBC, Reuters, Al Jazeera,
Jerusalem Post, Japan Times, Pravda, Russia Today, Asia
Times, China Daily, People Daily, Shanghai Daily,
Telegraph UK) and occasionally Washington Post.
SFgate should just belly-up and be done with it especially
after their once-great commenting system was replaced with
the hot steaming pig shit Viafora by ganga-smoking Canadian
assholes.

Their moderators are relentless. If you type anything unsuitable
for high tea with the Queen, it's gone.

[Keith Keller]

Post by Thad Floryan
It's apparently a beta that I might have randomly got
sucked into and it's nearly impossible to navigate and
http://www.sfgate.com/

I was just offered the new beta of the sfgate site. Here's what I wrote
in my feedback, after literally 5 seconds of looking at the front page.

"The new site is one of the worst web sites I have seen in 20 years. I
would stop visiting sfgate altogether if this design were adopted."

I honestly mean that literally--it was indeed one of the worst web sites
I have ever seen! The only way a working site could be worse (400 and
500 errors are of course the worst) would be if the only method of
interaction is Flash (which I've also seen; I never return to those
either).

Whoever came up with the new design should be fired and banned from ever
authoring web content ever again. And whoever approved the design
should be promoted to a position where they have no decision making
power.

--keith

[d***@bell.net]

Post by Thad Floryan
It's apparently a beta that I might have randomly got
sucked into and it's nearly impossible to navigate and
http://www.sfgate.com/
At least their new HTML 5 crapola sort-of works versus
the absolute total garbage and braindead web site for the
http://www.mercurynews.com/
Sigh. :-(
Looks like I'll only be viewing non-USA news web sites
from this point on (e.g., BBC, Reuters, Al Jazeera,
Jerusalem Post, Japan Times, Pravda, Russia Today, Asia
Times, China Daily, People Daily, Shanghai Daily,
Telegraph UK) and occasionally Washington Post.
SFgate should just belly-up and be done with it especially
after their once-great commenting system was replaced with
the hot steaming pig shit Viafora by ganga-smoking Canadian
assholes.
Thad

I am a Canadian, and thoroughly agree with you! Viafoura STINKS!

[David Kaye]

Post by d***@bell.net
I am a Canadian, and thoroughly agree with you! Viafoura STINKS!

Things that don't produce revenue are often farmed out because companies
want to spend as little money as they can on them. I'm still trying to
figure out why the Chron runs both the Chron and SFGate websites.

[poldy]

Post by d***@bell.net

Post by Thad Floryan
It's apparently a beta that I might have randomly got
sucked into and it's nearly impossible to navigate and
http://www.sfgate.com/
At least their new HTML 5 crapola sort-of works versus
the absolute total garbage and braindead web site for the
http://www.mercurynews.com/
Sigh. :-(
Looks like I'll only be viewing non-USA news web sites
from this point on (e.g., BBC, Reuters, Al Jazeera,
Jerusalem Post, Japan Times, Pravda, Russia Today, Asia
Times, China Daily, People Daily, Shanghai Daily,
Telegraph UK) and occasionally Washington Post.
SFgate should just belly-up and be done with it especially
after their once-great commenting system was replaced with
the hot steaming pig shit Viafora by ganga-smoking Canadian
assholes.
Thad

I am a Canadian, and thoroughly agree with you! Viafoura STINKS!

Is there anything worth reading on The Gate? I used to subscribe to the
Chronicle back in the day but with newspapers declining ...

Of course, we used to watch local TV news too, including for sports
coverage.