One of my favorite comments I get from PR people, journalists, other publishers, et cetera is that they can’t believe the community we have here. That’s what the Internet used to be about, but too many publications got sold to people who didn’t understand that a site like this can only thrive with readers who care. It’s why so many of our peers look at the quality and number of comments we have and express some mix of shock, envy, and disbelief.
This is a good week for media in general, because we celebrate the fifth anniversary of Defector. While this site may have formed under different circumstances and with slightly different goals, the success of Defector was encouraging to those of us who felt there had to be a way back to websites that didn’t suck.
In his celebration post, Tom Ley (who was the one who encouraged us to do a Velour tier, btw) wrote that he wants people to think of it like opening a bar that “welcomes patrons into a place where they might have a few laughs, learn a few things, and pass the time a little more pleasantly than they otherwise would.”
This feels right to me. I want this place to be a fun place to “pass the time a little more pleasantly” than you otherwise might. At the same time, I think we all have an ambition to grow this place and make it more than it is right now.
To that end, we’ve made two strategic hires:
- Brian Silvestro, our new News Editor, who is already making a huge difference when it comes to keeping us up-to-date on what’s happening.
- Griffin Riley, our Video Manager, who is continuing to expand our video offerings.
These last two weeks we’ve experimented with increasing our daily production a bit, while also improving or adding some site features (Night Panel, Glovebox). We’ll also be replacing the current Consent Management Platform (CMP) that a few of you didn’t like with one that should work a little better and be a little less intrusive.
The site’s looked great to me this week, but I’m curious what everyone else thinks. How are we doing? How are you doing? What could we do better? What should we do more of?
Photo: Ford
The sign-in process on this website is literally the worst I have encountered.
Click on the Sign-In link at the top.Get taken to a separate page to type in your email.Go to your email to wait for the code or sign-in link.Go back to the browser to finish the sign-in process.To make matters worse, try following a link here from another source (e.g., a news aggregator like Feedly). You follow the link here, and then, when you go through the whole awful sign-in process, do you see the article you were looking for? No–it takes you to The Autopian‘s front page, and then you have to dig through to find the article that caught your eye to begin with.
Love the content (and, oddly, I don’t have any issues with load speed), but the mechanics of this website for members are enough to prevent me from renewing my membership.