Sorry I haven't posted any links in half a week

[conuly]

I've had a lot going on, and most of it boring :)

Quick question: When I post a story to, like, "ISIS has captured this town" or "29 people killed in Mali" (made up headlines, I haven't even read the news all weekend!), people hardly ever click on them. So says Bitly, anyway. Is this because nobody finds those stories interesting, or just because they figure the headline gives them all the information they need right there? If it's mostly the former, I'll start just shoving it over onto Reddit rather than boring all youse guys with it, but if it's the latter, I won't.

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When China’s rural parents leave to work in cities, “left-behind children” fall to crime and truancy. Why isn’t the country doing more about it?

After court-martial, this Marine cites religious freedom in her continued legal fight

California’s Homeless Find a Quiet Place

5 Despicable Right-Wing Moments this Week You Might Not Have Heard About

Here’s how badly we’re getting ripped off by our mobile phone providers

Adults Love the Four-Day School Week. Is It Good for the Kids?

The best way to eliminate the gender pay gap? Ban salary negotiations.

Appeals Court Eviscerates Notre Dame’s Objections to Contraception Accommodation

What Australian slang has given the world

When the Rapist Doesn’t See It as Rape

The Weirdest, Saddest, Most Disturbing Battle Yet in the War Over Circumcision

The amazing, surprising, Africa-driven demographic future of the Earth, in 9 charts

Semiliquid battery competitive with both Li-ion batteries and supercapacitors

Maddow Blasts Law Requiring Aurora Shooting Victim's Parents To Pay Gun Manufacturers

Researcher who exploits bug in Starbucks gift cards gets rebuke, not love

Nobody ever handed me anything on a plate

Islamic State burned a woman alive for not engaging in an ‘extreme’ sex act, U.N. official says

Sixty-seven years after the Arab-Israeli War, 3,000 Palestinians remain forgotten and stateless in rural Egypt.

Comments

[the_rck]

I tend not to click on most of your links because I'm afraid that more details will just depress me more. I want to know, but I also don't, if that makes sense. I do like seeing the headlines.

[conuly]

That makes perfect sense.

[crystalpyramid]

I usually only click one or two for time reasons, and the ones that jump out at me are usually the ones where I already know some of the context. There's a lot of depressing international stuff I haven't been following at all. I should be, but time is finite.

[conuly]

I don't think time is finite, actually. Time just keeps going on. Our ability to use it is finite, though.

/pedantic

[crystalpyramid]

You are, of course correct. Time is (hopefully) infinite, but I am finite. (:

[redbird]

Some of each, and also sometimes I've already seen the story linked by someone else whose journal I happen to have gotten to sooner, so if anyone has a record of my following the link, it'll be the other blogger.

[conuly]

Yeah, if I wait too long I end up going "Should I even still post this? It's been a day, but what if nobody's seen it? Argh!"

[siderea]

Some because of my tolerance for man's inhumanity to man is maxed out, and some because I've already seen it.

I have a slightly weird reading pattern. You get a lot of your links from Metafilter, and I read Metafilter as my coffee read when I wake up. But I'm reading on my Palm, and can't click through many of the links (to HTTPS sites, to videos, to sites too dependent on JS). I tend to read DW in the evening, and recognize links as, "oh, right, I'd been going to read that this morning" and click through.

[conuly]

I do like Metafilter.

So no objection to seeing the headlines, you just don't particularly care to read the whole story sometimes?

[siderea]

Right, no objections at all.

[zhelana]

Sometimes I think the headline gives me all the info. Also, there are certain things I avoid, like ISIS, becaus I just can't handle reading them.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

hem all the information they need right there? If it's mostly the former, I'll start just shoving it over onto Reddit rather than boring all youse guys with it

Please! Most of your war links are just the same story over and over with names and numbers changed. Other subjects are such negative, depressing/angering stuff that I'm skimming faster and faster looking for anything interesting. How about adding up how many negatives get clicked vs the few positives, and how things at the bottom of a page don't get clicked, because people scroll on past the bottom of the list.

[conuly]

Actually, other than the war ones (I find the subject interesting, at least, though we can't all agree on that), the depressing ones do seem to get the most clicks. There are occasional outliers (articles from Cracked.com always do well, whether they're obviously depressing or obviously not), but, generally that seems to be the case.

For example, this one about decoding bird calls and how different species of birds communicate with each other and other animals definitely is interesting and not at all depressing - and it got two clicks. Ditto for the one about the man who builds houses with water. And while it's not all that interesting, I still expected more than four clicks on the one about the girl scouts accepting transgender girls, but my guess is people had already seen that elsewhere.

However, the piece on how faith healing kills children got eight clicks, the one about families of Aurora victims having to pay gun manufacturers got five - which doesn't sound that impressive, but it's been up only a few hours during a largely dead part of the day on a holiday - and this one about kids going to prison got eight clicks, and I didn't expect that either. (I'm continually surprised at what people do and don't click on, here and elsewhere.)

But you tell me. What would you click on?

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

What I was complaining about was having the negative and positive mixed together. Negative below the cut is great.

I like to see your headlines about fresh new positive stuff where neither the content nor the emotional/political spin is predictable. Stuff like the bird song thing is nice and new and apparently non-political, so I like seeing it on your list.

Clicking on anything is rare for me. And commenting at another site is usually too much work so I comment on your entry instead! Usually to disagree with something.

Duh. I guess I'm not a good target audience, sorry.

[conuly]

Don't worry about it! I figured you, uh, felt strongly about it.

I can't promise everything unhappy-making is going to end up below the cut. Lots of the things I'm interested in - and that other people read - is current events, and a lot of that is negative. Wars and rumors of wars and all that. But I don't want to drive people to tears either :)

Right now it's a work in progress. I don't want to end up shoving stuff behind a cut that lots of people would be interested in (but they can't be bothered to look), so it's going to take some time before I get a feel for what can safely be shoved and what should stay out in the open.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Just read this.

Thanks for the cut. I still feel like exiting sooner. I wish it would be easy to put the remaining negative+emotional just above the cut. Then you might not even need the cut. I'm going to test something, brb.

[conuly]

I might try that, that's not a bad idea. I'm focusing on largely putting the more boring links under the cut, as there's a huge overlap there between boring and sad-making.

[rachelkachel]

The latter (headline tells as much of the story as I'm interested in). The ones I'm most likely to click are the sciency stories where I'm interested in the details.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I deliberately don't click on stories about bad things happening in Asia and Africa, because there is nothing at all I can do about any of those bad things.

[conuly]

A fair perspective, but the question is now "does seeing the headlines bug you or do you appreciate it or do you not care either way?"

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Oh, I appreciate seeing them; I don't want to pretend those things aren't happening, or don't matter - and I do click on some of the links for that very reason.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

I already follow the news (well, obviously, given work) so I skim past anything which is... 'mainstream'. So I appreciate the matter-of-fact headlines for helping me weed out what I already know about.

What I like your links for are the quirky or interesting articles about things I wouldn't otherwise know about.