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    seeyaMax Read
    1/12/15 8:04am

    Guh, there will be so many gray comments now.

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      Max Readseeya
      1/12/15 8:08am

      I don't want to make promises, but my prediction is actually that there will be fewer—with less stuff being posted to the front page, I have a sense that each section will have a smaller and more dedicated commenting community, with more recognizable names and more followed commenters. I might be wrong! But that's the optimist's view.

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      seeyaMax Read
      1/12/15 8:11am

      I appreciate your optimism, but there was a comment on Defamer last week that had nearly 50 likes and was still gray until I came along.

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    papercatsMax Read
    1/12/15 7:46am

    Seems promising.

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      Max Readpapercats
      1/12/15 7:49am

      Check back at the end of the day!

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      Sharticlespapercats
      1/12/15 7:58am

      Calm before the storm.

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    Shut Up!Max Read
    1/12/15 7:40am

    The concept sounds promising but will comments in the new sub-blogs be relegated back to the greys?

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      NewYorkCynicShut Up!
      1/12/15 7:43am

      That was my immediate thought too.

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      Max ReadShut Up!
      1/12/15 7:47am

      Each blog carries its own follow list, so commenters who are followed on Gawker proper might not be followed on, e.g. Defamer and certainly won't be followed on the new blogs. All the writers will be keeping an eye out for good regular commenters to populate the follow lists of the sub-blogs; let me know after a few weeks if it seems like some blogs' comments sections are wasting away.

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    Arctic16Max Read
    1/12/15 9:44am

    What makes Gawker fun to read is the comments and the commenters, at least for me. The regulars and the burners that infest every controversial post is what really makes the blog for me. I can get snarky/funny/incisive news and posts anywhere. Hell, I usually see most news items on twitter before they even sniff the Gawker front page.

    While I get that this will, I don't know, drive more page clicks? Compartmentalize the content? whatever business benefit is driving this change, it's also going to, again, divide and segregate the commenting. It's an old complaint, and you guys know it well, but having entire subblogs filled with all-grey threads is just absolutely awful. The gold here is the comments, not so much the content (sorry), and this is going to once again start us back at square 1 when it comes to reading and writing comments.

    I'm tired of hearing Gawker writers telling us how they're going to keep an eye out for good comments to bring people out of the greys and make everything better and build nice, little isolated commenting communities. That's not how it works. Everyone gets stuck in the greys and for every regular commenter writing good content in the comments, it seems there's another 3 blatant trolls who somehow are in the black all the time. Look at Defamer now. It's just greys on greys on greys. And last time we were told authors would be looking out for good stuff in order to rebuild the follow list. If it hasn't happened before, why would we think it will be different this time?

    It's really become such a recurring event that it's not even funny to joke anymore about Gawker changing its structure.

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      fernetbroncoArctic16
      1/12/15 10:52am

      The gold here is the comments

      Awww, you're welcome!

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      rswearingArctic16
      1/12/15 10:53am

      Agreed. The system of promoting out of the grey is not working. I've had my posts starred by four or five different Gawker staff at different times, and every time I think "well good, I'm finally out of the greys" but nope. Just for that post.

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    J.K. TrotterMax Read
    1/12/15 5:24pm

    Is there an actual timeline for the TKTK/Justice/Internet/NewsFeed logos? They’re really painful to look at, especially on mobile. So that I’m not just whining, let me suggest an alternative. I think something like the logo-scheme seen below would work well. Maybe we could try it out on TKTK?

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      Max ReadJ.K. Trotter
      1/12/15 5:29pm

      We have to come up with names first! Be patient.

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      J.K. TrotterMax Read
      1/12/15 5:34pm

      Bolded for emphasis:

      [9:48 AM] keenan: then who has the final say

      [9:48 AM] Leah: not you

      [9:49 AM] Max Read: me

      [9:49 AM] Max Read: :)

      [9:49 AM] Max Read: im going to wait and sleep on it for many nights and then choose something no one, not even me, likes

      You know what TKTK should do, though.

      We should do a cool new logo each day, like Google does—but the joke actually makes sense!

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    MeFailEnglishThatsUnpossibleMax Read
    1/12/15 7:57am

    What does this mean for you?


    A lot more work.
    For instance, I check Gawker/DSPN/Jez frequently, and then Kotaku/io9/Sploid maybe once every 2 days. I also love ATL Redline, but since most of its stories don't get crossposted I check it every few weeks. I have feared that Redline may get dumped because it seems kinda quiet over there as far as interactions go. Yet I also hit up places like Arstechnica, and let's just say at least 15 other websites pretty regularly, to keep up with content. So basically for someone like me, I would be adding the task of checking each individual subblog to catch many of the same stories that would have normally made one of the frontpages of The big Gawker Blogs. I get it, those who don't visit daily will miss a story unless they travel over 2 pages back.

    But my issue is this. A newspaper is simple to page through and scan for stories. MUCH easier than Kinja on a mobile device. The spazzy loading of stories and rearranging and then loading an ad means that I often click a story only to have it be totally different than I wanted because I didn't allow 8 seconds for kinja to finish "loading" the page of that blog. Now if I have to go and slog through 10 more "main" pages of these subblogs and wait 6x longer than my bandwidth is happy to travel at because kinjalepsy, I will not be visiting too often anymore.

    Perhaps there is a 2015 internet trick, that my 2009/Still Firefoxing skill level has yet to spend 45 minutes tinkering to discover, that allows me to create a specialized feed where I can replicate the Mainpage somehow, but not have to do it by following a bunch of writers, as I kinda don't notice who writes what unless it is HamNo channeling Taibbi. I just like my better than Google News Gawker mainpages that give me the everythings with minimal reminders that Kinja is alive. I'll read the memo and look around, but erggg... Perhaps others will become me, in that they will have abt 5 subblogs they will now hit up rather than one. I just feel like I will now have to visit 15 pages to get the Cosmopolitan variety of info that helps me be a good trivia teammate and subject matter grasper. Thx. I believe in you.

    p.s. still waiting on a Humor themed subblog that I vote be named "Guffaw"

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      Max ReadMeFailEnglishThatsUnpossible
      1/12/15 8:01am

      I'm told that sometime this year we're going to be rolling out more robust personalization tools—ideally, so that you can sign into Kinja on your mobile device and be presented with the latest stories from the blogs, authors, and/or tags that you follow, without having to check each individually. Obviously I don't have a date for that, or a guarantee that it'll work exactly like that, but you should know it's a problem we're aware of and trying to fix.

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      It takes a nation of millions to elect the corruptMeFailEnglishThatsUnpossible
      1/12/15 8:03am

      "The spazzy loading of stories and rearranging and then loading an ad means that I often click a story only to have it be totally different than I wanted because I didn't allow 8 seconds for kinja to finish "loading" the page of that blog."

      THIS x 10000

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    Freddie DeBoerMax Read
    1/12/15 9:16am

    So I take it you'll be referring to those subs as "Gawker Internet," "Gawker Justice," etc? I think that would be the smartest from the standpoint of building awareness and increasing the audience for them. Then again, I don't know anything about the internet, so what do I know.

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      Max ReadFreddie DeBoer
      1/12/15 9:39am

      For now we will. We have names kicking around for some of them that we'll roll out over the next month or so. I'm trying to boil the water while the frog is in the pot, so to speak.

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      NefertittiesMax Read
      1/12/15 9:50am

      Max: Why did you let Jacob Clifton go, yet you're still keeping Morning After? He was everything I thought you would have wanted for that blog...

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    PyroMax Read
    1/12/15 8:25am

    So, after hitting refresh like 50 times today - and only coming by this post after hitting ctrl+f5 and then quickly hitting this post - which then promptly disappeared? No jokes - this is my current Gawker front page:

    I am hoping the newsfeed will be generous enough for South African viewers such as myself...

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      Max ReadPyro
      1/12/15 8:28am

      That's bizarre—I'll send an email to bugs and see if we can figure out what happened.

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      CatpainBlackudderPyro
      1/12/15 8:30am

      Yep same here. I'm in the UK myself.

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    Cherith CutestoryMax Read
    1/12/15 9:16am

    Please don't do this.

    I hardly ever complain about changes here. But why make the site more difficult to read? Why make it harder to find stories? Why make it so the comment sections for interesting stories are just non-existent?

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      Max ReadCherith Cutestory
      1/12/15 9:40am

      What will be more difficult to read? Think of it this way: The Gawker.com you like is now just http://newsfeed.gawker.com.

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      1llamarampageCherith Cutestory
      1/12/15 9:43am

      The only theory I've come up with (since the "Why are you Doing This?" portion of the post does not give a satisfactory answer - seriously, "risks we want them to take"? Traffic will fall but whatever to that?) is that having us all click through 1,000 sub-sections to find new content means more pay-per-click advertising revenue through Gawker's (very minimal) advertising.

      I spend a lot of time on Gawker during the day (my job is Not Challenging) and let me tell you, I am THRILLED to fucking death that now instead of my usual Jezebel-Gawker-i09-Sploid half-hourly rotation, I'm now going to have to do Jezebel-bullshit subcategory with cutesy name 1-bullshit subcategory with cutesy name 2-times infinity, when most of the time it's going to be me clicking on things that haven't updated in like 2 days.

      My only hope is that this experiment crashes hard so at least the other Gawker franchises won't follow suit.

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    SharticlesMax Read
    1/12/15 7:47am

    "http://newsfeed.gawker.com, where the imaginatively named Gawker Newsfeed will deliver to you everything being posted to every subblog."

    Sweet baby Jesus, the master feed. Plug me in.

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      Billy RuffianSharticles
      1/12/15 9:25am

      I'm not really browsing Gawker if I don't have at least 24 open tabs.

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      EnzanBilly Ruffian
      1/12/15 9:35am

      Only 24? Rookie.

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