Is it possible to add updates to existing front page stories vs creating new ones?

[Rogifan]

Using iPhone battery/throttling story as an example: Apple reduced the price for battery replacements and said it would go into effect mid January. Then we got word that supposedly the price would take effect immediately. Then we hear Apple will replace the battery regardless of what their diagnostic check says. Those were all separate front page stories. Is it possible to just have one story and update it as things change? What is the policy for creating a new story vs updating an existing one?

 

[Paddle1]

I'd rather have an up to date story than have to go through outdated info in most cases. Plus updates are easier to miss without scrolling back.

 

[Bart Kela]

Is it possible to just have one story and update it as things change? What is the policy for creating a new story vs updating an existing one?

One problem with this is that the comments may no longer be relevant/accurate once the story is changed.

Let's use a non-technology example:

Let's say at the beginning of the NFL season, an article is written about the Green Bay Packers and their Week 1 victory over the Seattle Seahawks. Lots of comments about both teams, their players, the game, etc. After Week 2, the article is updated to reflect the Week 2 loss to the Atlanta Falcons, with only a minor reference to the Seattle game. Now people comment on the Week 2 teams, players, game, etc. and the comments from the Week 1 game seem out of place. By week 17, the comments are a jumbled mess. While the topic might be the Green Bay Packers, the fundamental statement of the article has changed from GB defeats SEA 17-9 to GB loses to ATL 23-34.

Returning back to the MacRumors forum and other technology Q&A forums.

You can see the confusion in some forum postings where the original post is edited and some comments end up being puzzling because they refer to something that wasn't in the revised post.

Also, other sites may refer to any given article. If the original article is edited, it may render the link/reference incorrect.

Issuing minor corrections is considered acceptable but not changing the topic of a published work.

 

[Rogifan]

I'd rather have an up to date story than have to go through outdated info in most cases. Plus updates are easier to miss without scrolling back.

Couldn’t the updated story be bumped to the top?
[doublepost=1515333327][/doublepost]

One problem with this is that the comments may no longer be relevant/accurate once the story is changed.

Let's use a non-technology example:

Let's say at the beginning of the NFL season, an article is written about the Green Bay Packers and their Week 1 victory over the Seattle Seahawks. Lots of comments about both teams, their players, the game, etc. After Week 2, the article is updated to reflect the Week 2 loss to the Atlanta Falcons, with only a minor reference to the Seattle game. Now people comment on the Week 2 teams, players, game, etc. and the comments from the Week 1 game seem out of place. By week 17, the comments are a jumbled mess. While the topic might be the Green Bay Packers, the fundamental statement of the article has changed from GB defeats SEA 17-9 to GB loses to ATL 23-34.

Returning back to the MacRumors forum and other technology Q&A forums.

You can see the confusion in some forum postings where the original post is edited and some comments end up being puzzling because they refer to something that wasn't in the revised post.

Also, other sites may refer to any given article. If the original article is edited, it may render the link/reference incorrect.

Issuing minor corrections is considered acceptable but not changing the topic of a published work.

This is a valid point. My issue is what ends up happening is you have 3, 4, 5 news articles about the same subject and each one has 500 or 1000 comments and most of the comments are just rehashes of each other. So you wade through hundreds of comments bashing Apple to find anything worthwhile.

To me there are 3 parts to this story: what’s happening, Apple’s response and lawsuits filed. Do we need a separate news story every time a new lawsuit is filed? Did we need separate stories for Apple changing the battery replacement price to $29, making it effective immediately and replace batteries regardless of what the diagnostic test says. I get the feeling all the separate & new stories are more about driving traffic and generating more page views than anything else. The latest story on the front page about another lawsuit (which doesn’t really have any new information other than it’s another lawsuit) has close to 700 comments, most of which are not about that specific lawsuit. Had it just been added as an update to one of the existing lawsuit stories would it have generated an additional 700 comments. Probably not.

 

[Bart Kela]

Couldn’t the updated story be bumped to the top?
I get the feeling all the separate & new stories are more about driving traffic and generating more page views than anything else.

That's what publishing is about: page views.

Whether you're writing about the Kardashians for some gossip site, lawsuits against Megacorp for Forbes magazine, or a dead trees cookbook that you hope will go to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, it's about page views.

You should know this by now.

Remember, no one is pointing a gun at your head and telling you to read all these stories. If they don't appeal to you, don't read them.

No one can please everyone all the time. You are free to go elsewhere (like AppleInsider) if you prefer the way others handle their own content.

 

[C DM]

That's what publishing is about: page views.

Whether you're writing about the Kardashians for some gossip site, lawsuits against Megacorp for Forbes magazine, or a dead trees cookbook that you hope will go to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, it's about page views.

You should know this by now.

Remember, no one is pointing a gun at your head and telling you to read all these stories. If they don't appeal to you, don't read them.

No one can please everyone all the time. You are free to go elsewhere (like AppleInsider) if you prefer the way others handle their own content.

Seems like you might have missed OP's reasoning in the previous reply. Unless with that you are basically just saying that it all doesn't really matter because of the whole page view aspect of it.

 

[Bart Kela]

That's what I'm saying.

 

[Rogifan]

Ugh another front page story about this. Seriously how many threads do we need for people to bash Apple over this?

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...d-deception-and-planned-obsolescence.2099844/

 

[rafark]

That's not how it Works. This site uses the forums as its comments engine, so for each Macrumors blog post there is one thread to discuss the post. You don't merge blog posts, that's not how journalism works.

 

[Bart Kela]

Ugh another front page story about this.

You still don't get it, do you?

We have been over this topic before.

If you don't like MacRumors' editorial policies, go find another Apple news/rumors site. Maybe you would feel more at home at AppleInsider.

Or go start your own Apple rumors/news site.

 

[maflynn]

Ugh another front page story about this. Seriously how many threads do we need for people to bash Apple over this?

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...d-deception-and-planned-obsolescence.2099844/

Are you upset that the story is negative towards apple, or that its multiple articles over the same overall issue?

I'm assuming given the title of the thread its the latter. Given that, I'd say here's my opinion. Its a new story on the topic and while I'm not an editor nor do I have any say in how the content is organized, I can see how much it makes sense to create a new story vs. updating an existing one.

1. Continually adding to a story, becomes a confusing mess especially when members are responding to one version and then another person is commenting to an updated version.
2. Economical, Lets cut to the chase, Macrumors needs to make money to produce these stories. There's nothing wrong with the concept, and its less likely to generate revenue if they're updating a single article.
3. It's a different topic on an issue. I'm not sure why you'd want to see different articles combined. Consider college football; last night was the national championship (a given topic), yet on ESPN, we have a number of articles on that game, providing various aspects, the players and coaches given plays etc. Makes sense. It would be a confusing mess to combine all those into a single article that was describing the game.
4. Length of the article, how long is too long? Combining multiple articles into one updated mega-news thread would be unwieldy and too long. People will be unwilling to continually scroll through a wall of text to see updates.

The advantage about seeing multiple articles is you as a member or reader have say over which news story and thread you choose to participate.

 

[Rogifan]

Are you upset that the story is negative towards apple, or that its multiple articles over the same overall issue?

I'm assuming given the title of the thread its the latter. Given that, I'd say here's my opinion. Its a new story on the topic and while I'm not an editor nor do I have any say in how the content is organized, I can see how much it makes sense to create a new story vs. updating an existing one.

1. Continually adding to a story, becomes a confusing mess especially when members are responding to one version and then another person is commenting to an updated version.
2. Economical, Lets cut to the chase, Macrumors needs to make money to produce these stories. There's nothing wrong with the concept, and its less likely to generate revenue if they're updating a single article.
3. It's a different topic on an issue. I'm not sure why you'd want to see different articles combined. Consider college football; last night was the national championship (a given topic), yet on ESPN, we have a number of articles on that game, providing various aspects, the players and coaches given plays etc. Makes sense. It would be a confusing mess to combine all those into a single article that was describing the game.
4. Length of the article, how long is too long? Combining multiple articles into one updated mega-news thread would be unwieldy and too long. People will be unwilling to continually scroll through a wall of text to see updates.

The advantage about seeing multiple articles is you as a member or reader have say over which news story and thread you choose to participate.

My point is about multiple articles about the same issue that seem to generate the same comments over and over again. As far as your #1 if I saw that there was an update to a story I would naturally assume the most recent comments would reflect the update while earlier comments would not. I don’t think that’s difficult to follow. For #3, I’m not suggesting combining different topics. I’m not suggesting one story that covers everything. But do we need a new story every time another lawsuit is filed? I know that the real answer is #2. More stories generate more comments which generate more page views. But I do wish sites would think of better ways than beating an issue to death.

 

[belvdr]

The solution is simple: if you see comments, articles, etc that are repetitive, move on. I tend to do that a lot, and not just here.

 

[OllyW]

As far as your #1 if I saw that there was an update to a story I would naturally assume the most recent comments would reflect the update while earlier comments would not. I don’t think that’s difficult to follow.

In my experience, many members don't even bother to read the first post of a thread and just respond to the thread title and the most recent replies. A lot of articles do get updates added to the original story but the responses tend to carry on oblivious to the new information.