Many of you have already noticed our new Newswire layout, which now lets you scroll through 20 Newswire articles on one screen. From a purely editorial perspective, it gives us the opportunity to present casual readers with more content that might attract their interest. But when it comes to our more active daily readers, we recognize that not everybody loves this new layout (yet). We’ve learned from experience that any change can be upsetting, and we’ve already heard from some of you that you don’t like the new format. All we can ask is that you give it some time, and give our hard-working tech team the chance to iron out a few lingering kinks.
As you’ve also no doubt seen, the Newswire comments no longer appear automatically, but rather appear in a fly-out box to the right after clicking the “comments” button, which you’ll find at the top and bottom of every article. This function allows you to see both comments and the article at the same time—though if you’d prefer to just have the comments on your screen, clicking the arrows in the upper right of the comment box will expand it.
We recognize that changing the format of comments (always controversial) is frustrating to our dedicated commenting community. We also know that currently some are having other issues—like a lag time when loading user avatars, or problems with the mobile version—that are aggravating that frustration. Again, all we can ask is that you give it some time to get those lingering issues sorted, and for you to adjust to the idea of Newswire comments appearing on the side of the screen, as opposed to the bottom of it. (And if you’re one of those commenters who doesn’t like to read the articles at all, now you have a button that allows you to do just that!)
Whatever you may believe, a lot of thought goes into decisions like this, both from a business and a tech perspective, and we appreciate that so many of you care enough to comment and email us about it. Rest assured, we don’t make these decisions lightly. And while we know the necessity for change (and the birthing pains that go with it) sometimes vexes them, we love our commenting community, which is still the best on the internet—in any format.