Is the Integration of PhysOrg.com Links a Bug or Intentional Feature?

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Is the recent appearance of PhysOrg.com links in mid-thread a bug or a feature?
 
Physics news on Phys.org

Discussion

We are proud to have entered in a content sharing partnership with PhysOrg.Com

They will be delivering relevant news stories to PF. There are 14 forums that will receive unique stories and the rest draw from a general science pool. IE biology gets biology stories. In return we are sending PhysOrg.Com links to some of our discussions. We are confident this is a win-win. :smile:
 
It's now working properly in Opera. It was showing just the logo with no links and occasionally stretching the box for the logo all the way down the page.
 
I think this is a big mistake. It is quite annoying to see a post under an initial thread in the Physics sections about family planning... It is intrusive that it appears as a post in a thread with absolutely no relevant information. I hope it does not stay in its current implementation.
 
Norman said:
I think this is a big mistake. It is quite annoying to see a post under an initial thread in the Physics sections about family planning... It is intrusive that it appears as a post in a thread with absolutely no relevant information. I hope it does not stay in its current implementation.

Thank you for your opinion. We will continue to tweak things in order to optimize usefulness.

update: all physics forums now show physics news stories
 
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The placement of those posts is not suitable in several of the boards. A better placement may be at the top of some of the boards or forum sections.
 
symbolipoint said:
The placement of those posts is not suitable in several of the boards. A better placement may be at the top of some of the boards or forum sections.

Can you further explain what you mean by "not suitable"?
 
Norman said:
I think this is a big mistake. It is quite annoying to see a post under an initial thread in the Physics sections about family planning... It is intrusive that it appears as a post in a thread with absolutely no relevant information. I hope it does not stay in its current implementation.

It took me less than half a day to get used to it; it's very easy to distinguish the links from a normal post once you get used to them. In any case, I don't know what Greg feels like doing, but it would be trivially easy to change the border or background color or something if people are that easily confused about it.
 
If it helps Greg pay the bills, I'm for it. I too found it pretty easy to get used to, and it's always in the same place (after 1st post of a thread).
 
Redbelly98 said:
If it helps Greg pay the bills, I'm for it.

I agree. Also, in a week's time, it'll be as if it's always been there.
 
I was confused the first couple of times because it looked like people had signatures with advertisements.
 
Redbelly98 said:
If it helps Greg pay the bills, I'm for it. I too found it pretty easy to get used to, and it's always in the same place (after 1st post of a thread).

They aren't ads :smile: News stories from a partner site.

Borg said:
I was confused the first couple of times because it looked like people had signatures with advertisements.

I will look into ways of distinguishing them better. But at the same time I don't want it distracting.
 
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It weirded me out the first couple of times, since I thought that some unnamed used had sneaked in spam. Now I'm used to it, and I think that it's a great idea.
Scientific American, now this. What the hell's next; are we going into partnership with NASA?
 
I support PF and Greg in all their decisions :!)
Let's try it before deciding whether it was a good decision.
 
I have to say that I'm starting to like it. Some of the articles in the links are darned interesting. The one about Smart Power Grid security was an eye-opener!
 
https://www.physicsforums.com/misc/physorg1.gif
This is how their logo looks in my firefox. Should it be cut like this?
 
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dlgoff said:
https://www.physicsforums.com/misc/physorg1.gif
This is how their logo looks in my firefox. Should it be cut like this?

yes, it's from the website
 
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Greg Bernhardt said:
I will look into ways of distinguishing them better. But at the same time I don't want it distracting.

I was thinking something like this, perhaps:

http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/5497/phys.jpg
 
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Greg Bernhardt said:
yes, it's from the website
Okay I see. But on their site they have the "PHYSORG.Com" below the cut.
 
Here's a link to the actual logo, as extracted from their CSS stylesheet:

http://www.physorg.com/tmpl/default/img/logo.gif
 
could you make an option to disable it? perhaps it could be a gold-member feature.
 
I would prefer it to be located outside of the stream of the thread. The current position is distracting. I propose it be prominent, but plainly distinct from the thread of actual discussion. Here's my suggestion:
physorglayout.JPG


Cheers -- sylas
 
Greg Bernhardt said:
In return we are sending PhysOrg.Com links to some of our discussions. We are confident this is a win-win. :smile:

I hope we don't get the kind of comments they get in their articles with that...
 
Thanks, Greg. I'd rather see it once than not at all, but I'd rather see it not at all over zillions of times. As it stands today, it's like a pesky kid tugging at your sleeve saying, "Have you read this article yet? How about now? How about now?"
 
sylas said:
I would prefer it to be located outside of the stream of the thread. The current position is distracting. I propose it be prominent, but plainly distinct from the thread of actual discussion. Here's my suggestion:
physorglayout.JPG


Cheers -- sylas

In my opinion it would be better at the bottom of the page. So that you can easily read a new thread without scrolling down if the post is short. It would also be noticed at the bottom anyway so I think it's a good place to it.
 
I'm still in the grumble-mumble stage about this..