Suggestion: Distraction Free Front Page (ignored tags)

[longofest]

Given that I used to be an Editor here during the more formative days of the site, I know the struggle that the editorial staff go through when there is an abundance of news about a particular topic. It happens a lot when there is a lot of iPhone or iPad news - you start getting people asking "wait - I thought this was MACrumors? Give me news about the Mac!" Blah Blah Blah. You can't please everyone, but there is news to share and so you do your duty to inform. In the end, the line has always ended up being "hey - we're just here to deliver the news. Feel free to skip over stories that you don't like."

That line always worked for me on the technical stuff and the occasional PRSI-related article on the front page until recently, where we have had post after post about regarding the saga of Apple's legal fight with the US government. The volume of posts per day dedicated to the topic is probably fair given the magnitude of the issue, but honestly the whole topic is quite irritating to me. But, instead of just whining about it, I'm going to suggest a solution.

Suggestion: "Distraction Free Front Page"
I'd like to propose a "Distraction Free Front Page" - a front page where you can selectively "ignore" certain post tags. I suck at making mock-ups, but imagine the attached done by someone with more skill From what I gather, this wouldn't be terribly difficult to implement, it wouldn't hurt site revenue, and it would solve long-standing whining about content, as it would make the experience a bit more customizable as long as the staff does a good job about tagging stories consistently, which they honestly should be anyways from the standpoint of users being able to use "roundups" efficiently.

So, there's my feedback.

 

[arn]

We could consider doing this, but it probably won't be at the top of the list right away. I get that people complain when there's too much of one story. But these are usually short lived and pretty soon we'll have people complaining about iPhone 7 rumors.

And, let's say you block Privacy and Encryption... and then 2 months down the line, there's some major security issue with Mac/iOS that exposes your data... you still want it blocked?

That said, we are working on something else that might help a little -- which might let you opt into topics you want to follow closer -- but it's not ready yet.

arn

 

[longofest]

well, it ends up being up to the user and up to you guys what tags are employed and what tags are picked to be ignored. If this issue got its own tag (it doesnt look like it has yet), like "AppleFBI2016", then a user could ignore just it without having to ignore all privacy/encryption articles that might not have to do with the case.

thanks for the consideration bud!