Slate’s podcasts are amazing, have a huge listenership and is consistently growing in content volume. Ad free podcasts alone were enough to justify my Slate Plus membership.
I can barely stand to read Salon any more, I used to read their advice column (Cary Tennis) not because he ever had any actual advice, but the comments were very interesting to read. Going WAY back years ago, it was a lovely place with lots of long interesting articles…Now Salon is one step up from a tabloid!
- “Shocking thing that is going to happen to you and no one can stop it.”
- “Latest made up lie spread by bible biters.”
- “How this woman got that 3 liter coke bottle up there and how it changed her life.”
I much prefer Slate, though that isn’t saying much. I do love Dear Prudie, and the comments are NOT all by trolls, but often just branch off into hilarious side conversations. The problems sent in are either ridiculously shocking (the ‘Twin-cest’) or mundane wedding etiquette. At least the Slate articles are short.
Definitely not for Salon, which used to have a very good .mobi version that they totally eliminated. The new site is not designed to look especially good on mobile.
Slate, hard to say. The comments do not work well on mobile (at least not Windows Phone). It is a decent site on mobile overall, but I can’t remember the old being worse…
I think making them more mobile/tablet-friendly was ostensibly part of the rationale, but I don’t think it’s overcynical to conclude that a more primary reason was to maximize the amount of advertising space and add as many social media widgets as possible. They display okay on my phone, but are very slow and chuggy and stripped down, feature-wise. Salon finally figured out how to make comments viewable on their mobile site, something that’s still not possible on Slate’s, at least not with my iPhone.
Just to clarify, when I complained about trolls I was referring to the letters themselves, a large number of which sound like bad fiction. The comment section can be a lot more entertaining.
Slate’s comments are difficult to view even on a desktop. Livefyre seems capriciously awful.
Other complaints about Salon:
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They have an automatic refresh on the home page that is annoying as ****! You’ll be scrolling down, looking at what to read, and it will refresh and you’ll have to find your place again. Idiotic.
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They don’t keep articles in chronological order on the homepage. Newer articles at first appear at the top, but then they get mixed down into older stuff rather soon, making it difficult to keep track of what you have and haven’t read. Combine this with the refresh function mentioned above for extra annoyance.
And one other complaint about Slate.com: They’ve always had a dickish, snarky tone to their articles, such as the “You’re Doing It Wrong” series. I don’t feel that the contumely is justified by the quality of the articles.
I don’t recall this from more than a year ago. But perhaps they’ve always had that quality, and just recently crossed the line for me. But it’s irritating now!
Oh, and by the way, if you aren’t reading Slate because of the redesign, you can use this pageinstead, which is much better. Then you can not read it for the content instead.
Helpful, thanks!
I’ve been starting at the “Full Slate” as well. But yesterday afternoon it switched to a “blurb” format for me: A couple paragraphs per article and only a few articles per page. Thankfully this morning it’s back to headline style. I hope this doesn’t bode yet another awful redesign.
What is the matter with web designers in general? So many bad, awful website downgrades.