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

[Vanadium 50]

Is the recent appearance of PhysOrg.com links in mid-thread a bug or a feature?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

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.

 

[mgb_phys]

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.

 

[Norman]

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.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

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

 

[symbolipoint]

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.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

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"?

 

[dx]

I too feel it is a strange place to put it.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Gold members forget there are ads at the top of the forums

 

[negitron]

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.

 

[Redbelly98]

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).

 

[phyzmatix]

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.

 

[Borg]

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

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

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 News stories from a partner site.

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.

 

[Danger]

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?

 

[humanino]

I support PF and Greg in all their decisions :!)
Let's try it before deciding whether it was a good decision.

 

[berkeman]

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!

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I should also mention the feeds are updated every hour.

 

[dlgoff]

https://www.physicsforums.com/misc/physorg1.gif
This is how their logo looks in my firefox. Should it be cut like this?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

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

 

[negitron]

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

 

[dlgoff]

yes, it's from the website

Okay I see. But on their site they have the "PHYSORG.Com" below the cut.

 

[negitron]

Here's a link to the actual logo, as extracted from their CSS stylesheet:

http://www.physorg.com/tmpl/default/img/logo.gif

 

[qntty]

could you make an option to disable it? perhaps it could be a gold-member feature.

 

[sylas]

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:

Cheers -- sylas

 

[GDogg]

In return we are sending PhysOrg.Com links to some of our discussions. We are confident this is a win-win.

I hope we don't get the kind of comments they get in their articles with that...

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

could you make an option to disable it? perhaps it could be a gold-member feature.

I will be adding a "hide" option next week.

 

[Vanadium 50]

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?"

 

[fluidistic]

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:

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.

 

[arildno]

I'm still in the grumble-mumble stage about this..