[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?
Asking here because I think there is probably a lot of overlap and
maybe some knowledgeable insiders. I used to visit The Register
almost every day up until a few years ago. Back then, it was famous
for its punny headlines, tongue-in-cheek reporting style, and all
in all being a self-identified IT tabloid. I visited it again a
week or two ago, and it seems to have dropped the humourous tone
and intentionally-obscure headlines, to become just one more samey
IT news page. Does anybody know what caused this transformation?
Has it been acquired by a conglomerate or something? The nearest
thing I've found is that its original Chief Editor left in May
2019...
Author : donpott
Score : 184 points
Date : 2022-09-09 13:15 UTC (9 hours ago)
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > Does anybody know what caused this transformation?
|
| Maybe this?
|
| > I used to visit The Register almost every day up until a few
| years ago.
|
| Years of not going
|
| > I visited it again a week or two ago,
| donpott wrote:
| Do you mean that the "old" style didn't make it commercially
| viable, and the "new" one does?
|
| I would disagree. At least before I would visit it
| intermittently whenever I remembered it existed. Now I have
| zero interest in ever visiting it again.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| You disagree, but even you admit that the old style was
| something you rarely, if ever, visited. So, when they try to
| determine what their users enjoy, what you enjoy won't get
| counted as much.
|
| > Now I have zero interest in ever visiting it again.
|
| You barely had any interest in visiting in the first place.
| You don't build a commercially viable product by catering to
| people who routinely do not use you.
|
| You can disagree, but again, you didn't visit for years at a
| time, so it doesn't matter.
| donpott wrote:
| That's a fair point. I'm finding the thread interesting
| because it has helped divorce my personal experience from
| (some of) the english-speaking tech community at large.
|
| For me, a theme that's arising is that the previous style
| was pretty polarising, but at the same time it was a
| differentiator. Now, it's neither of those.
|
| It appears that this works better for them commercially,
| too; so more power to them.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| I used to visit it everyday from the early 2000's, but I don't
| think I have really visited in the last 3-4 years. I can't put a
| finger on it, but the writing and then subsequently the comments
| (which were always fun) kinda started falling off.
|
| I still have it in my bookmark bar, but as I still cant get the
| favicon to load properly in Firefox, I forget to click on it :)
| josefresco wrote:
| Same here. Used to be a daily for me, then for some reason I
| dropped it and completely forgot about it until this post.
| Maybe around the time Digg imploded? I'm not sure.
| speedbird wrote:
| Same. Used to really like some of the old stuff, like Lewis's,
| but these days I only visit if an item is linked from here.
| Angostura wrote:
| Ah, Lewis' old diatribes about how climate change was trash.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Example of the previous editorial style:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20190410065314/https://www.there...
| antisthenes wrote:
| Bland tabloid then, and bland tabloid now. What changed?
|
| I really don't see much of a difference
| xtracto wrote:
| I don't know... for me, who read it in the mid 2000s it was
| kind of like reading the "Big Issue" or the "Metro" in the
| UK: Sometimes I wanted to read low thinking tabloid funny
| news. The Register was great for that. Nowadays it is Yet
| Another Technology Website.
| taffronaut wrote:
| That's a real contrast. The current site is a shadow of its
| former self. The new stuff doesn't even seem to be paid-for
| placement - just lame outsourced copy.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Everything, good or bad, regresses to the mean.
| BurnerBouy wrote:
| An actual example of the previous editorial style:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20050428082501/http://www.thereg...
| diodesign wrote:
| Hello, I'm Chris Williams, the editor of The Register. Maybe I
| can answer some of these Qs.
|
| > what caused this transformation?
|
| All things have to evolve and move with the times. As you've
| said, we were known, for example, for "intentionally-obscure
| headlines." Guess what, that works for some people - and it was
| fun - but it was holding us back reaching many more people, not
| just from the headline tone but also aggregation and sharing. And
| I want our original, technical, and best coverage seen by as many
| folks as possible.
|
| The Reg has been going for 20+ years. We have to keep up with
| what people want. And yes, some people liked the 2010s era, some
| missed the 2000s era, but also many more thought we weren't
| taking journalism seriously. We do take it seriously (we don't
| take ourselves too seriously) and I'd hate for headlines to hold
| that back.
|
| What's really changed is that we've styled the main headlines to
| be more accessible in every way, and still keep our sardonic,
| informed voice in stories and sub-headlines. We have a mix of
| core IT stories; software and open source; where life meets tech;
| science; and more, written in a way that gives our tech readers a
| voice.
|
| If you haven't read us in a while, then yes, we've changed
| visibly. If you've been reading us for more than a year or two,
| the change will have been fairly gradual as we tune our headlines
| to match what people expect from an irreverent technical title.
|
| > Has it been acquired by a conglomerate?
|
| No, it's still independently owned, with owners who give
| editorial free rein. It's documented in UK Companies House.
|
| > its original Chief Editor left in May 2019
|
| No, you're thinking of an executive editor who left around then,
| who wasn't in a management position (think editor-at-large).
|
| C.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Can you share with us how this is working? Are you indeed
| seeing a wider audience? I don't visit as much as I used to (I
| checked just now and wasn't pulled in), but if you're able to
| better put bread on your tables for the changes, then I get it.
| I'd be curious if you'd be willing to share any candid
| observations of what you've seen since drifting these changes
| in.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _All things have to evolve and move with the times._
|
| This makes sense. Somewhere I have an old hacker t-shirt that
| says _Evolve or die_ that supports the mantra.
|
| If I could make one feature request of ElReg it would be that
| the system used by your editors puts a hard cap on article
| descriptions to 80 characters so I do not have to do creative
| editorializing of the links when I submit them here. At times I
| find it very difficult to submit a link and have it still make
| sense.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Another victim of SEO requirements :(
|
| Punny headlines unfortunately are terrible for targeting
| keywords
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Exactly, that's why s-engine monopolies are bad. People don't
| see it, but it is a big step towards giving fellatio to a
| machine. If you want to be unique you will suffer, because
| the shitty search engine that has monopoly over the market
| governs what will get a green light and what won't. And as
| the years pass more and more the faceless, intangible corpo
| backed machine bullshit will govern our lives.
| ghaff wrote:
| You can compensate somewhat in the metadata but you still
| need to convince people to click and it's very easy to cross
| the line from clever but clear to punny and obscure. I
| imagine that if I looked through the current issue of The
| Economist, I'd find some clever headlines but it would still
| be pretty clear what the stories were about.
|
| This isn't a new thing. When I was an industry analyst we
| also liked to do clever stuff in titles which at least one
| editor pushed back on. However, we were mostly a fully
| paywalled subscription so it was less of a consideration in
| our case.
| LetMeInNowMate wrote:
| > but it was holding us back reaching many more people,
|
| Christ mate! Long term El-Reg reader here.
|
| The pure Blightly, homegrown, sarcastic piss taking tone is
| _why_ I read the Reg, and so do many others. Selling out to
| some bland US-corporate bullshit WILL loose you readers.
|
| And BTW, can we have the 'Paris' icon back? Please.
| tejtm wrote:
| Exactly, as a Murcan, how else could I have learned to whinge
| about trick-cyclists? you know with a setting, ala
| old.reddit, you could double down and get those things that
| need getting said out of the way for your neutered
| newsletter.
| rdxm wrote:
| 2ringtest wrote:
| The Register used to be for dicks, now it's actually good. So
| well done Chris!
| jahnu wrote:
| I stopped reading it years ago when it started getting
| gratuitously contrarian. After this reply from Chris I'm
| going to give it another go now.
| trelane wrote:
| Now its just for Tom and Harry?
| jachee wrote:
| Sure, but also Jane.
| hateful wrote:
| I am seeing a parallel here to the article posted yesterday
| about how everything is measured by engagement:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32765002
|
| As a product, I would think that you would survive by finding a
| niche and expanding it. But these changes seem to try to
| compete for engagement rather than serve the niche.
|
| Yes, you expand your business and make more money - but I would
| also think that the competition would be more fierce as a trade
| off.
|
| Kind of wish it could be a setting "sarcasm on".
|
| It's also very similar to how by a bands second or third album
| (after they hit it big) - they end up changing their sound
| (often sounding like every other band in the process) - because
| they go on tour and then they tailor their music to what makes
| the crown react more.
| xtracto wrote:
| This is so interesting, I used to read The Register back in the
| mid 2000s. I learned about it by stories posted to /. and later
| loved the headers, it is what attracted my attention. For one
| reason or another I stopped reading it and a couple of months
| ago I stumbled upon an article and remembered I liked it quite
| a lot.
|
| Now I understand why it has not captured my attention in these
| last years: I checked the homepage and the titles are pretty
| vanilla, they don't read tongue in cheek not witty, which is
| something I liked. Nothing wrong with that, I assume the
| standard editorial style attracts a broader audience.
| riedel wrote:
| I think it is good that independent media outlets transition
| rather than die. I liked the old days better, but I truly admit
| that ppl like me that came once in a while (mostly to get a
| totally different view in a very concrete news item) wouldn't
| pay your bills. For me the the tone was the USP: it signalled
| clearly independence from the copy and paste rest. Probably
| today you could achieve sth very similar with a language model,
| so you were probably wise to abandon it, before all other news
| site would have looked like yours. Still some how I believe
| that this could have been the better reality.
| oxfordmale wrote:
| The problem now is that you take journalism serious and it has
| just become yet another boring website. A lot of articles also
| read like advertisements in disguise.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Same thing happened with Engadget and Gizmodo. Used to
| absolutely love reading them on a daily basis, product
| reviews were always super technical and a bit off the wall,
| it had that hackaday-type vibe.
|
| Now they are a spammy lowest-common-denominator pop culture
| "tech news" and cell phone reviews.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| For what it's worth, El Reg is still a daily visit for me (I
| think I've probably done so, for 20 years), and I've been known
| to fly in and sprinkle drops of Holy Pee (in the comments
| section -I don't do any authoring of content), from time to
| time.
|
| I like that it (still, despite the insinuation) is a RedTop in
| spirit, and I am generally quite impressed by the technical
| level of its staff.
|
| I do like that you have given Dabbsy and Simon a good home.
| Thanks for that.
|
| Just one drop in the ocean of data, but I'm glad you guys are
| around.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| Dabbsy's gone, unfortunately. Not sure what went on there,
| but I suspect he wasn't "serious" enough. He's still at
| Autosave is for Wimps though:
|
| https://autosaveisforwimps.substack.com
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Aw, that's sad. I enjoyed his SFTW stuff.
| donpott wrote:
| Hi Chris,
|
| OP here. Just wanted to say thanks a million for taking he time
| and sharing your insightful reply. I don't have any
| original/interesting points to make, so I'll let the other
| commenters follow-up.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| Thank you for responding to this topic, although what you're
| saying does disappoint me. I've been an on-and-off Reg reader
| since the Slashdot days, and I loved the style. But, like many
| UK media outlets in the past few years, there seems to be a
| push to "globalize" the product - most notably by replacing
| .co.uk domains with .com, but also in reducing the cynicism and
| irreverence that used to make UK media worth reading even for
| people who weren't living in the UK. Nowadays I'm finding it's
| getting hard to distinguish British outlets from American
| outlets a lot of the time - presumably because everyone needs
| to optimize their content to suit the lowest-common-denominator
| algorithms of US-owned tech giants. I can't really blame you
| for following suit, but it does contribute to the overall
| homogenization of the media, in my opinion.
| anthk wrote:
| Spaniard here. Back in the day we had Slashdot (most
| IT/science educated guys in Spain can at least read English
| because of obvious requeriments on academia) and a Spanish
| analogue, Barrapunto (same meaning, slash/bar and
| punto/dot/point). A literal clone, with quality comments and
| lots of folks teaching and learning at. Later, a Digg clone
| appeared, Meneame (lit. "shake me"), a Digg clone to
| share/aggregate news.
|
| But the sad thing it's Barrapunto is not more since a decade
| (they plugged the servers down a few years ago) and Meneame
| took its position, and politic arguments took over the
| "geeky" environment.
|
| I miss these days, I could learn geeky and tech stuff in both
| languages and chat with geniouses daily. Reddit did the same
| for Slashdot, ok, but you kept Slashdot on.
|
| Here, in the Spanish world (not even the whole Hispanic world
| across th pond) the legacy tech sites are dead, even for the
| Usenet es.* and esp.* (for latam hiers) . You have Slashdot
| at least, Ars Technica, Usenet, IRC and even Fido/Dovenet.
| silasdavis wrote:
| Classic missing the punto HN side comment (sorry), but as a
| britanico learning Spanish I thought it would be good to
| try and learn the Spanish keyboard layout. Barra punto is
| horribly hard to type. I keep having to switch when I want
| to run something in CWD. I do appreciate the dedicated
| jamon key though.
| Bakary wrote:
| As someone who needs to cycle between multiple languages
| I fully recommend the use of the "US international"
| layout in this scenario
| marttt wrote:
| ".. like many UK media outlets in the past few years, there
| seems to be a push to "globalize" the product .. also in
| reducing the cynicism and irreverence that used to make UK
| media worth reading even for people who weren't living in the
| UK."
|
| Isn't this actually a more general cultural shift. On the
| societal level, or on the level of the entire developed
| world. It often feels like people are simply tired of
| cynicism these days.
|
| Being a trained journalist, I have observed something similar
| in my own country: former witty, extremely-clever-but-cynical
| outlets have changed to a more neutral style in recent years.
| I do think this is an obvious win for journalism, or at least
| for investigative reporting. They can possibly dig a little
| deeper this way. More focus on the hard work of bringing
| serious problems to light, less focus on crafting mean
| headlines.
|
| Also, as a side note, I'd say it is actually much easier to
| write a "cynical" headline as compared to one that is not
| mean, but still playful and multi-layered. IMO cynicism is
| mostly a low-hanging fruit; which is why this is such a
| common "closet addiction" in many newsrooms.
| caeril wrote:
| > as we tune our headlines to match what people expect from an
| irreverent technical title.
|
| Except you're not irreverent at all anymore. You're basically
| Ars and CNET. Why on earth you'd abandon your readership to
| attract people who already read Ars, and are unlikely to move,
| is beyond me.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| I'm sure you're doing whats best for the organization. The
| changes took away from what made you unique, fun and
| independent.
| [deleted]
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Thanks for sharing Chris.
|
| Sounds basically like you were left with:
|
| "To Assimilate or To Differentiate? That is The [Business]
| Question."
|
| (to misquote another great British writer)
| gerdesj wrote:
| I've been a British reader of el Reg for roughly 20 years.
| Please do remember where you came from and how your brand came
| to differentiate itself.
|
| You have aggressively used the word "folks" without a license
| 8)
|
| el Reg has always had a tone and attitude all of its own. Let's
| face it the forums are pretty functionally crap and yet it sort
| of works.
|
| Mess with the format at your peril - make the forums/comments
| work effectively ... that would be nice.
|
| I have no idea why you insist on calling it "the Reg", it's
| currently "el Reg" due to the Spanish influence unless you can
| do better ...
|
| Do you remember say "Eadon"? or a Canadian bloke with a
| decently potty mouth (Trev).
| bubblematrix wrote:
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > As you've said, we were known, for example, for
| "intentionally-obscure headlines." Guess what, that works for
| some people - and it was fun - but it was holding us back
| reaching many more people, not just from the headline tone but
| also aggregation and sharing. And I want our original,
| technical, and best coverage seen by as many folks as possible.
|
| This is like being a curry shop known for having intensely
| flavorful but spicy curry - thus having dedicated fans who
| enjoy that flavor - and toning it down in flavor and spice
| because you want to have more general appeal. Now nobody thinks
| of you as "that shop with the intense curry" but just one of
| many curry shops.
|
| Now you're just like every other shitty tech news website and
| competing for the same generic eyeballs who will read a story
| from you that happens to appear in google news and never come
| back.
| noAnswer wrote:
| OP literally left despise them having "intense curry".
| donpott wrote:
| OP here. I think it's an apt metaphor. To expand/clarify, I
| would say that the spiciness of the curry was at the same
| time hard work (ie. having to parse the headlines, for
| example) and the main reason I went to this restaurant (it
| made it unique, it was a differentiator). I would visit it
| occasionally for a treat (or whenever a big event happened
| in Tech, although I'm mixing my metaphors now), but not as
| something one does every day.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| But it's just the headlines allegedly, not the rest of the
| writing, at least.
| gumby wrote:
| In 20 years el Reg has had several, well incarnations is too
| strong a word, but let's just say its nature has evolved. I think
| this is is pretty much the nature of any organization. The Lester
| Haines era
| (https://www.theregister.com/2016/06/16/lester_haines_obituar...
| ) was quite good -- I think his presence must have inspired
| others to creativity and lunacy in their prose. Orlowski was
| really really good but you can't do the same thing forever.
|
| FWIW, lately I feel like it's been on an uptick.
|
| Let's compare it to google which had a burst of activity and even
| inspiration at first and then lost its way after Schmidt stopped
| being CEO. OK, El Reg isn't one of the largest corporations in
| the world (well, at least they won't admit it and hide it well)
| but on this dimension I think it's done better than Google.
| Andwalle wrote:
| What happened to ZDNEt is the question isn't it?
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| I was never a fan of the Register's IMO smug, smart-alec English
| IT guy "voice".
| Bakary wrote:
| There's so much American-centric content in the anglo internet
| that literally anything else is most welcome
| secondcoming wrote:
| It hasn't been the same since around the time Andrew Orlowski
| left.
|
| The politics (identity and anti-Trump reddit-style) stuff crept
| in too, especially from its San Fran office, but you could
| obviously just choose to ignore those articles. It's not
| something I want from a tech site though.
|
| It's a shame, ElReg and Slashdot used be my go-to site for tech
| content.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Mike Magee was co founder of the Register and established its
| style. He left in 2001, and the Register has been declining ever
| since.
| chasil wrote:
| I believe he then started the inquirer.net which ran for
| another decade.
|
| I remember them occasionally featuring a fragment of a poem by
| Alexander Pope: "Damn with faint praise, assent
| with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to
| sneer."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damning_with_faint_praise
| rozab wrote:
| To see this gloriously realised, check out CGP Grey's
| description of Pope's feud with Thomas Hearne. Linking the
| full video because it's a masterpiece
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEV9qoup2mQ
| krmboya wrote:
| Declining since 2001! That must be such a glacial decline
| Justin_K wrote:
| I really felt that when Larry the janitor left in 1998 is when
| the decline started.
| csa wrote:
| I miss Larry. Backbone of the org.
| bell-cot wrote:
| While Vulture Classic's (the old style's) sardonic 'tude was not
| always implemented well, it was a very welcome alternative to the
| mainstream's Sisyphean treadmill of "$VendorName $ProductName
| $NewVersionNumber Is New And Improved Yet Again!". Their 'tude
| let you at least pretend that their journalists weren't sock
| puppets for the industry heavyweights, and the headlines
| certainly made reading the news a bit more fun.
|
| Looking for some upside - Vulture Classic was pretty alcoholic
| and misogynistic - two features which I found rather
| unattractive.
| cesaref wrote:
| It certainly had an unconventional approach, which was considered
| a tabloid style (similar to the 'red top' newspapers in the UK,
| the sun, the mirror etc)
|
| I believe Mike Magee who was one of the founders was responsible
| for this, and he was involved until he fell out with the
| direction it was going in the early 2000s, and went on to form
| The Inquirer, which was a similar publication (although long
| gone).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Magee_(journalist)
|
| I guess over time The Register has morphed to try and be taken
| more seriously (in I imagine a rather competitive market), it
| hides it's original tagline - biting the hand that feeds IT
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Not sure, but my theory is that Google SEO had to do with it
| after Google tried to remove false or misleading headlines around
| the election and afterwards. At the time (and still somewhat
| now), satire was/is often quite lost on Google. This presumably
| hurt ad revenues.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| I agree, El Reg is a shadow of its former self.
|
| There has been a decline in quality with obvious errors caused by
| poor research or rushed publishing. There has been an increase in
| sponsored copy, and also a marked hardening of its already
| notorious Apple bashing.
|
| There have also been a number of occasions where they've simply
| missed reporting on important topics altogether.
|
| Also on their forums, there has been a decline in quality of
| contributions. For a while it still used to be worth going to El
| Reg just to read the forums, but even that is becoming
| increasingly pointless.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| No-longer "biting the hand that feeds IT".
| donaldihunter wrote:
| It still has this slogan in the page footer.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Yeap, I agree. I've been reading technological news from El Reg
| since around 2000 and their writing style has changed a lot, it's
| not as humorous as it used to be.
|
| Once of the only reasons to visit them nowadays is for the BOFH
| (new episode every Friday):
| https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/bofh/
| r6752366a wrote:
| Verity Stob was my reason for visiting:
| https://www.theregister.com/Author/Verity-Stob/
| hn_go_brrrrr wrote:
| BOFH hasn't been every week since the mid-00s. I wish it were!
| trelane wrote:
| Eh, there's only so much of that to be had. At some point, it
| becomes formulaic.
| gandalfian wrote:
| Weirder is what happened to its successor theinquirer.net? It was
| bought and then erased. Who does that? Was it a copyright thing?
|
| Otherwise theregister hit that brief window between professional
| magazine publishing and every teenager with a phone becoming a
| tech blogger, the brief window when website publishing was cheap
| but not yet overcrowded.
| dylan604 wrote:
| if someone's website was "stealing" traffic from your website,
| then purchasing the offending site and shutting it down would
| be business move to eliminate competition.
| adrianwaj wrote:
| I think you may be right. TheInquirer's shutdown screen in
| 2019 mentioned that it started in 2006, when really it
| started in 2001. So whoever shut it down was either ignorant
| of how/when it began or they wanted to mislead about the
| early days.
|
| See here:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200331234933/https://www.thein.
| ..
|
| https://i.imgur.com/hqh9aTe.jpg (shutdown screen)
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20010405023100/http://www.theinq.
| .. (2001)
| return_to_monke wrote:
| If we are on the topic, could someone suggest some sites with a
| similar style and topic?
| Andwalle wrote:
| Andrew Orlowski! He writes for the Daily Telegraph, which is the
| UKs equivalent of Fox News. Everything is uphill from there
| Veen wrote:
| The Telegraph is nothing like Fox News, except insofar as it is
| a center-right publication. The tone, quality, and perspective
| are utterly different.
| jen20 wrote:
| The Sun is the UK equivalent of Fox News.
| BurnerBouy wrote:
| You've never the Telegraph
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Didn't they make some grand announcement about shutting down a
| few years ago?
|
| I can see how someone might not allow that to happen and then
| just milk the thing.
| diodesign wrote:
| You're probably thinking of TheInquirer.net, which was founded
| by a co-founder of The Register, and shut down in the past few
| years.
|
| C.
| NGRhodes wrote:
| They had a great formula. Used to get some good scoop, a humorous
| spin whilst having a decent level of factual accuracy. Sadly,
| they now need to compete with social media and memes, the newer
| generations of internet user treat websites as a secondary source
| of news and entertainment.
| rvbissell wrote:
| So their solution to that shift in their market is to become
| more stodgy?
| sn0w_monkie wrote:
| Churnalism as an industry is very broken sadly T_T. Advertisers
| want to see engagement and the easiest way to do that is to suck
| up to Google SEO and pump more articles on the daily. Original
| and accurate reporting is expensive to produce. Only the biggest
| publishers or ones that are well funded can afford to do this. So
| in order to get the reader's eyeballs and clicks, the guys in the
| middle and bottom tiers have to crank out news and end up
| rehashing what has already been broken by bigger orgs. That's why
| The Register mostly looks like any other mediocre tech site now.
| I know someone who used to be a reporter and they got tired of
| having to rewrite stories for little pay.
| BMc2020 wrote:
| digg dot com, metafilter dot com, reddit dot com, craigslist dot
| com - all still around but I no longer go to them because they
| have changed so much.
| DanAtC wrote:
| Fark still feels about the same
| standyro wrote:
| It's not 2006 anymore
| rnd0 wrote:
| Sadly, no it is not.
| johnklos wrote:
| I noticed the change right around the time they stopped having a
| distinct landing page for "theregister.co.uk", which I preferred
| because of their slightly more provincial bent, and instead
| started redirecting everyone, everywhere to "theregister.com".
|
| It's sad, because much of its appeal was precisely how different
| they were from common IT coverage that was and still is mostly
| written for non-IT types.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Those punny headlines have been annoying me.
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| Sad to see it turn this way.
|
| Now if we want to tounge-in-cheek tech humour, we are left with.
| . . techdirt.com?
| randombits0 wrote:
| I still have the vulture t-shirt with the tag line, "Biting the
| hand that feeds IT!".
|
| For me the FQDN will always be www.theregister.co.uk.
| bxparks wrote:
| Funny enough, I stopped reading the Register after a few attempts
| because I disliked its headlines and tone. "To each his own" I
| guess.
| runxel wrote:
| Funny enough, as a person whose native language is not English,
| The Register always went above my head. I knew it was meant to
| be snarky or funny, but it always left me stumbling and I never
| was quite sure if not the whole page was just an elaborate
| shitjoke.
| nottorp wrote:
| As a non native speaker who has watched everything Monty
| Python and read everything Adams and Pratchett (in English, i
| mean they're translatable but it's a HARD job), I loved the
| old El Reg.
|
| When they changed tone i just thought they got bought out and
| gave up.
| LetMeInNowMate wrote:
| As a Brit: Can I suggest this is not because your native
| language isn't English.... but is beacuse you are unfamiliar
| with our rather sly sense of humour?
| rwmj wrote:
| You have to see it in the context of British tabloids (mass-
| readership, low-brow newspapers), especially of the 80s and
| 90s. The Register was emulating this style of irreverant
| journalism. For example have a look at some _Sun_ headlines:
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3654446.stm
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| Yeah, that's exactly why I never really got into the site; I
| got the joke, it just seemed weirdly awkward and off-putting,
| like having a coworker who talks like a pirate all day, every
| day. It's funny at first, but it drives you crazy after a
| while.
| asddubs wrote:
| if they do it long and consistently enough i think i would
| oscillate between finding it funny and driving me crazy
| ghaff wrote:
| And particularly if you were on the receiving end of a
| bit of excessive snark you sort of ended up having to
| talk people down that it's just The Reg being The Reg.
| And, of course, if you follow that style, you _will_
| overdo it not infrequently. I could name a few people on
| Twitter like that.
|
| It can be funny but it can also get in the way of serious
| points you want to make.
| rseech01 wrote:
| The Register used to be required reading for BOFH. More oriented
| to folks in the UK, but I used to enjoy this series. If you have
| some time to kill check out some of the articles.
| jacooper wrote:
| Personally I have just discovered the Register this year, and I
| like them a lot.
|
| I have seen how the old style was, yes it different, but I
| wouldn't say its a run of the mill IT website.
|
| Its reporting is pretty good, and they have good opinion pieces,
| like intel optane possible revolution for IT(1), tracking
| obfuscation by big tech (2) and safari WebKit limiting mobile web
| (3) articles.
|
| 1.
| https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/01/optane_intel_cancella...
|
| 2. https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/23/opinion_column/
|
| 3.
| https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/06/big_techs_big_privacy...
|
| There are other website like InfoWorld, which produced articles
| like how docker broke in half, however their website is annoying,
| and in general less focus on FOSS/Linux.
|
| https://www.infoworld.com/article/3632142/how-docker-broke-i...
| lproven wrote:
| Thank you for including one of my pieces in there!
| kitd wrote:
| The reporting is fine. The commenters do my head in tho
| lproven wrote:
| Don't worry -- that goes for the writers, too. ;-)
| franze wrote:
| SEO happened
| GGSec wrote:
| InCityDreams wrote:
| "It's crept back onto my lists recently"
|
| Wrists (line 1), or you did actually mean 'lists'?
|
| ...given the '....suicide headlines'.
|
| ?
| LorenDB wrote:
| When I saw this, I thought "probably about the changing of the
| header to black instead of red" (presumably due to Queen
| Elizabeth's death?).
| JaceLightning wrote:
| Huh. Never heard of There Gister.com before
| crackercrews wrote:
| Maybe you'd recognize the original domain, There Gister.co.uk?
| JaceLightning wrote:
| Ahh a that's probably it
| iso1631 wrote:
| Oh, interesting, I might have to start reading it. I used to read
| it back in the late 90s and early 00s but the tabloid style put
| me off
|
| (I assume this is the .com is the same as theregister.co.uk --
| the place that bought BOFH etc)
| oxff wrote:
| It is like reading articles made by language model.
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