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> There is something very strange in the WWW, when a self-taught amateur like me can make a site that is better than the New York Times Would love to see somet

> There is something very strange in the WWW, when a self-taught amateur like me can make a site that is better than the New York Times Would love to see something that does everything the NYTimes does that is clearly and obviously "better."

leephillips 6y ago
Easy: take the front page and remove every headline and introductory paragraph that, for some reason that boggles my mind, is repeated, sometimes more than once, sometimes more than twice, on various areas of the enormous page. Now you have a page with the same information that is lighter and easier to find things on. And less stupid. Another example: sometimes there is a stock ticker near the top of the front page, and the number of digits it displays changes as the ticks go by. But they did it wrong, and when this happens the entire layout jumps. I learned how not to make this kind of mistake near the beginning of my self-education in amateur web design.
- mcrittenden 6y ago
  I think the core mismatch here is that you are optimizing for experience and NYT, as a business, is optimizing for revenue. Those two things often do not overlap. I can virtually guarantee you that NYT has spent thousands upon thousands of hours optimizing and multi-variant testing their headline display to maximize conversion. In other words, if they followed your advice, they would be leaving money on the table. As for your stock ticker display bug, keep in mind that NYT likely employs hundreds of developers and dozens of teams each owning various pieces of the website. Bugs will make it to production, so it's a matter of prioritization. I'd be shocked if they weren't already aware of that bug. It's probably lower on some specific team's backlog than a bunch of stuff that will be more valuable for the company in terms of revenue.
  - leephillips 6y ago
    You are making my point for me: “you are optimizing for experience and NYT, as a business, is optimizing for revenue.” That is simply an attempt to explain away the bad experience of reading the Times. The explanation is probably correct. But by offering explanations for why the site is bad, you are implicitly agreeing that it is bad.
    - mcrittenden 6y ago
      I wouldn't call it "bad". I'd say it's not perfect, and rightly so, because perfection would be lower ROI than some other things their developers could be doing.

leephillips 6y ago

Easy: take the front page and remove every headline and introductory paragraph that, for some reason that boggles my mind, is repeated, sometimes more than once, sometimes more than twice, on various areas of the enormous page. Now you have a page with the same information that is lighter and easier to find things on. And less stupid. Another example: sometimes there is a stock ticker near the top of the front page, and the number of digits it displays changes as the ticks go by. But they did it wrong, and when this happens the entire layout jumps. I learned how not to make this kind of mistake near the beginning of my self-education in amateur web design.

mcrittenden 6y ago
I think the core mismatch here is that you are optimizing for experience and NYT, as a business, is optimizing for revenue. Those two things often do not overlap. I can virtually guarantee you that NYT has spent thousands upon thousands of hours optimizing and multi-variant testing their headline display to maximize conversion. In other words, if they followed your advice, they would be leaving money on the table. As for your stock ticker display bug, keep in mind that NYT likely employs hundreds of developers and dozens of teams each owning various pieces of the website. Bugs will make it to production, so it's a matter of prioritization. I'd be shocked if they weren't already aware of that bug. It's probably lower on some specific team's backlog than a bunch of stuff that will be more valuable for the company in terms of revenue.
- leephillips 6y ago
  You are making my point for me: “you are optimizing for experience and NYT, as a business, is optimizing for revenue.” That is simply an attempt to explain away the bad experience of reading the Times. The explanation is probably correct. But by offering explanations for why the site is bad, you are implicitly agreeing that it is bad.
  - mcrittenden 6y ago
    I wouldn't call it "bad". I'd say it's not perfect, and rightly so, because perfection would be lower ROI than some other things their developers could be doing.