Reader changed?
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@Daniel – I misfire and publish comments early all the time too.
I’ll pass that over to the folks. With the “View Original” box, you can bypass it to go directly to the post by clicking the timestamp (the clock in the bottom-left with how long has passed since it was published), or, if the post has more text, the “X more words” text.
Cheers!
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Kraftbj
You asked for details. Its the added step to see a carefully crafted website bothers me the most, “view original” is not solution. The pop-up is an unnecessary step save it for mobile readers, on a full sized computer it is an aggravation.
Thank you
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@rakmilphotography – Thanks for the feedback. We tried to find a middle ground with using the “X more words” and the timestamp as ways to click directly through to the post from the initial list view without another step.
We are playing a balancing act between bloggers who didn’t want the full content displayed in the initial list view (and having it either not count as a view, or count as a view without real meaning behind it—if someone is just scrolling through their list, for example) and readers who like/comment (as a measure of engaged readership) more directly within the Reader, according to usage data.
Thanks again.
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Karftbj
The problem is how do people know what to click on and why should they have to click on anything. I want people to visit my blog and having to click twice to do so is obviously discouraging people.
Thanks
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So this is the first time I’d seen this clarification:
As @apeatling noted here, views in Reader do count towards blog views (assuming the viewer clicks to open the full blog view or clicks the timestamp to go to your blog).
(Emphasis mine.)
See, when I read staff stating that “views in Reader do count towards blog views”, I interpreted that to mean “views *in* the Reader”, ie, people reading the posts in the new popup box, which is now the default method by which the Reader presents the blog post.
People who are clicking to open the full blog view, or clicking the timestamp, in order to go to the blog, are not views *in* the Reader; they’re views in the *blog*. They just got *referred* from the Reader.
Thus, the default behavior of the Reader intercepts what used to be a blog view, and turns it into a WordPress view.
Not classy, WordPress.
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@gaudetetheology – By the “full blog view”, they mean folks who have clicked on the title that has loaded the “popup” version (that includes the full post content, comments, etc) or clicking on the timestamp, which loads the actual blog itself. The first set are still in the Reader and are counted in your stats.
We do this, instead of counting the “list” view itself as bloggers indicated generally they would not like the behavior as it would overcount people who had subscribed to their sites and had just skimmed over them while viewing their list of new posts in the reader.
We’re not trying to take views for ourselves; rather, give the best indication of a real person actually reading your post.
I would wish you a happy Gaudate Sunday, in celebration of your blog’s title, but, alas, I’m a week off :-) Merry Christmas!
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Kraftbj
Precisely the problem, either you let people see everything without visiting or you count on people to a) make the extra effort to visit your blog or b) know the secret sauce to skip the pop-up. Not sure this makes sense to many people and it has certainly not been explained why this is better. -
@rakmilphotography – You can disable the ability for folks to see everything by changing your the “For each article in a feed, show” setting on your Settings->Reading page to “Summary”. The full post content will not display, in that case, in the Reader.
The usage stats indicate that comments, likes, and views have increased, overall, since the change has been made. The idea being that it is easier for readers to consume more content, helping to drive more folks to your content and to engage with it (via likes, comments, reblogs, etc).
I understand that everyone doesn’t want the full content in the Reader (or any other RSS reader, since we’re using the same feed that is externally used by other RSS readers as well), so the Setting->Reading settings are respected both internally with our Reader and for other RSS readers.
Thanks for your thoughts as always.
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Kraftbj
I want to understand. My choice is a) show my entire blog giving no-one on wordpress or RSS a reason to visit, or b) show part of my blog and force my viewers to click more than had to to get to my site. So I have been following B and my stats have fallen off. I am still not sure how it is “easier to consume content, helping to drive more people to your content.” Hoping this is clear. Before the change people wanted to see my full post they made one click and bing there they were, now its two clicks unless you know about hitting the date or word count. I do not wish to sound or be contentious, I just do not understand. Thanks for responding and listening and hopefully taking another crack at convincing me that I am wrong.
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@Rakmilphotography – I think you made it pretty clear and this is the same frustration that I believe has been expressed since the viewer changes were made. You mentioned two clicks, although not being as savy as most. I used to read from my ipad and iphone as well as my notebook and find it usually took me at least 3 clicks as I seem to forget the ‘proper’ way to read and end up clicking on the Title and end up with a worthless preview. I just read less now.
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Thanks graypoet. I think we also need ask how it is WordPress sees this as leading to more traffic to our website, because that seems to be the view and they would have the stats, mine show otherwise.
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I don’t think this is a matter of either one of us being right or wrong, but different approaches. We’re looking at an aggregate set of data and, if overall the upward movement of stats flatlines or decreases, we’ll reassess and continue to iterate.
Since the “big” change that started this thread, we’ve released a number of different changed versions with minor tweaks—some directly in response to feedback here in this thread (adding back “more words”, having the timestamp and “more words” link directly back to the original site, etc) and others based on data trends.
In the end, all of us want the same thing, I think—an frictionless experience to posting new content for authors with a frictionless reading experience for readers.
Even if, in the end, things don’t change, I do sincerely want to thank you for continuing to share your thoughts and frustrations.
With that, I’m going on holiday for the week now, so Staff response here will be delayed :-). Merry Christmas and/or a pleasant end to 2013!
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I think my New Year’s resolution will be not to post on this any longer. All I can say is, being an IT professional, if my programmers had as many excuses and no more fixes them this has shown, they be looking for a job. Maybe 2014 will bring you some insight, but so far the reader changes still suck.
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Please do check how the tags are working. It’s choosing the tag for a post in an arbitrary manner which possibly may not be the best tag for the most.
Further I noticed the post only shows up at the reader only for the tag which is arbitrarily selected and not for all the tags for which it has been posted.
If changes can’t be done then atleast this information should be passed to all the bloggers so that they would tag their post in with just one tag which is best suited for the post.
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Hi Gaurab,
Can you send me a link to a post that isn’t appearing in all tags? While the tag that’s being displayed is being looked at, it should still appear in all tagged categories within the Reader (assuming you’re using under 15 total tags and categories on any given post per http://en.support.wordpress.com/topics and the blog isn’t marked as mature).
Cheers!
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Hi kraftbj,
If you can check this post for example. I always keep the tags less than 15.The problem with the choice of tag is that as I try to post daily, I use the tag POSTADAY in most of my posts and as I was looking back at my last few posts, all of them was showing Postaday tag in the reader irrespective of being photography or writing. Thanks for the reply.
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Hi,
With that particular post, it is over 15. Both the categories and tags are combined and are counted as part of the 15 limit. When under 15, posts will show in the Reader both under the tags and categories assigned to the post, hence the combined limit.
Thanks!
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