Rethinking And Refreshing Techdirt’s Weekend Posts: We Want Your Feedback
from the working-for-the-weekend dept
For many years now we’ve had two regular posts that come out on the weekends: our This Week In Techdirt History posts on Saturdays, and our Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week posts on Sundays. Sometimes we switch it up a little bit, replacing the history post with a special promotion or (as will be happening again soon!) with our Winner Spotlight posts for our annual public domain game jam.
This has been rolling along smoothly and we don’t plan any major changes, but we occasionally discuss whether there are tweaks we should make, and since I’m on vacation this week (and thus not around to write today’s comments post) we thought it would be a good time to check in with our readers and find out what you think.
In general, the weekend posts don’t get a lot of traffic, though that’s never been our reason for doing them anyway: they are for our community of commenters and long-time readers who we know appreciate them. Nevertheless, the relatively small audience for these posts is why we try not to expend too much time and effort creating them every week, as we’re all very busy around here and there are always a lot of projects on the go!
So with that in mind, we want to know: do folks like these posts? Is there stuff we can do to improve or refresh them going forward? Is there something else entirely you’d like to see as a weekly feature? Sound off in the comments, and we’ll be discussing the possibilities over the coming weeks.
There’s one change that we’ve already talked about and will likely be rolling out after the upcoming run of game jam winner spotlight posts: since Techdirt’s history has grown so long, and since frankly nobody wants to be repeatedly confronted with the fact that 2021 is already five years behind us, we’re going to ditch the “five years ago” section in the history round-ups and instead look at posts from ten, fifteen, and twenty years ago. Next year when we celebrate our 30th birthday, we might even change that up again to ten, twenty, and thirty year sections. Reaching further back just seems more fun and interesting than reminiscing on the recent past.
Also on the history posts, there’s a question I’d love some reader feedback on: is the “paragraph format” with a brief summary of some posts from the week worth keeping? Or would it be just as good (perhaps better) to go with just a bullet-list of selected headlines? Or something else?
As for the comments posts, these are our longest-running and most important tradition, as we’ve always valued our community of commenters and we want to highlight your contributions. However, as you know if you read them every week, lately it’s often been a struggle to populate the “funny” side of the list, and admittedly the quality of the Editor’s Choice selections can vary a lot, as it depends on how much time we (and especially I) have had to follow and engage in the comments on a given week.
So again we want your feedback: should anything change about the comment posts? Should we pivot away from Editor’s Choice and instead feature the top three winners-by-vote in each section (maybe retaining a single Editor’s Choice comment on each side, or just one for the week?) And how should we handle it when it’s a slow commenting week and there just aren’t enough highly-voted comments to make a post? (On especially slow weeks on the funny side, sometimes the “winners” are really just the chance recipients of a trickle of idle votes, and not really comments that make any sense to feature).
There’s also a similar question about the comments posts as there was about the history posts: is the brief written summary (in which I try to explain the context of a comment if and when it’s absolutely necessary to understand the comment itself) worthwhile? Or would a more dry bullet list that simply quotes and links to the winning comments and their authors suffice, leaving readers to go check out the full context as they wish?
Beyond these specific questions, we’re open to any and all thoughts on how the weekend posts should change (if they should change at all) and suggestions about anything else you might like to see. We’re not in a rush to make any changes, but it’s worth getting the conversation started. Let us know in the comments. (And if any suggestions are especially popular and get lots of votes, maybe they’ll turn up in next week’s winning comments post!)
Comments on “Rethinking And Refreshing Techdirt’s Weekend Posts: We Want Your Feedback”
I really like the “history” posts and I love the idea of going back 20 years. I think the paragraph format works well because it gives the links some much needed context.
Personally I would like to see a “you may have missed” style post. I don’t always have time to read the site every day and if I’m really busy I may not get to it all week. A round-up highlighting the articles that got the most engagement during the week would be really useful.
But otherwise keep doing what you’re doing and ignore the haters!
Re:
well, your sincere opinion is fine but not really helpful, because you are in the “small readership” minority group that likes the weekend history posts.
The key issue is why the vast majority of TD audience ignores that weekend stuff.
The answer should be obvious to objective neutral observers, and is already indirectly stated in the primary post here.
Re: Re: If it's so obvious...
… perhaps you would like to enlighten the rest of the class?
Re: Re:
I’d say it’s two key issues:
That said, I’m not sure what the look-back posts could be replaced with, or even if they should be replaced.
I quite like the comments post. I don’t have much opportunity to participate in the comments, and highlighting the insightful adding and funny quips reinforces the original story or provides a nice break from the recent horror of news.
As far as content, do what makes sense for voting on funny, because I know the choices as slim lately. You don’t need to be mechanical about it.
“We Want Your Feedback” Are you sure about that?…
Feedback
Personally, I never read the history posts. The present is so screwed up that I don’t find being reminded of the past to be helpful at all.
I always read the Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week. It’s one of my favorite things about the site.
One thing that has always bothered me (just a little) is that someone commenting on a Monday post has almost a week to gather votes while someone posting on a Friday only has a day or two. I wonder if that makes it more likely for people to post early in the week.
My £0.02
I never read the Saturday ‘history’ posts. Having lived through the whole period and read Techdirt for a lot of it I don’t personally feel the need to be reminded of it myself. I’m not objecting to them, but I wouldn’t miss these at all.
I do enjoy the Sunday ‘Comment review’ posts, since I don’t follow the comments very much during the week. I’d be quite happy if you dropped categories that don’t reach some minimum standard though, that’s just the nature of random selection that is life.
I enjoyed it when the Sunday posts started, but the last few years I don’t find myself actually reading them.
The weekend
As an avid Techdirt reader, I really do despise the lack of articles on the weekend. When a quiet weekend lines up with a public holiday, I absolutely despair — it feels like falling into a news void just when I most want something thoughtful to read. I’d love to see the weekend posts refreshed or expanded so there’s still something to dig into during those stretches.
I asked co pilot to do this for me
My thoughts on the subject of weekend posts.
I am grateful for the weekly review of whimsy and wisdom within the comments to cap off the week. Like AJ, I feel somewhat ambivalent about the summary of historical posts, though I admit I have (at times) gone down the rabbit hole of using the historical information to explore the past.
I don’t read the history as much anymore just because I’ve been reading Techdirt for longer than the history posts. But it’s conceptually a good idea to keep a perspective. I think my initial interest in Techdirt was copyright discussions since the IP industries were so much more litigious and capable of being abusive back then.
The comment reviews are useful. I don’t read all the comments on everyone article, so it’s nice to see what I might have missed.
For both, I’d prefer a list rather than a paragraph.
I don’t know that everyone would find it interesting or if the effort to curate them would be too time- and effort-consuming, but I’d be curious to see statistics on the comments that get voted the highest.
I didn’t follow tech issues as closely 10-15 years ago so i quite enjoy reading the history section. It’s a nice reminder that some issues never really change and that there’s always some panic going on about something new. Plus the general history is nice to follow.
I think I’d prefer the current format over a bullet list as i feel the current format would be a bit more interesting to read.
The funniest/most insightful post absolutely needs to stay as it encourages positive and well thought out comments to drown out all the trolling and spam.
Ambivalent about history, please keep comments if the week
I never read the history post. It reminds me that I’m old.
I desperately love the comment of the week posts. They often direct me to a post or conversation that I would otherwise have skipped.
I appreciate the human editing for this, but if you need to simplify it to keep the feature I understand.
I don’t particularly care for any of the regular weekend posts but that doesn’t mean you need to put something there. Enjoy your weekend, writers. The tech will still be dirty on Monday.
I’ve lurked here for several years. I find news and intelligent opinions that don’t come up in my other feeds. Even before *waves hand* all of this, I considered it my “bad news” site. And, again, it’s because you cover the things other sites don’t. So, I almost never look at the Saturday history postings. I feel no need to be depressed about the past, too.
Also, I rarely stray off your home page to go down the rabbit hole of comments. So, I very much enjoy the Sunday comment posts. You do get some excellent comments, and I’m glad you’re highlighting the best for me.
The format of the comments roundup works well for me. I occasionally feel cheated when one comment wins in multiple categories and I get one fewer comment than I’m expecting. (Similar for last Sunday in the year: Yes, I get the year’s best, but I don’t see the week’s best.) And, yes, I am aware of the implied entitlement of feeling cheated that I’m not getting as much for free as I expect. I absolutely would not have mentioned it if you hadn’t asked for opinions.
I love comparing current events to the history posts, and occasionally going back and being reminded of some quite funny ones.
History no, comments yes
I don’t even look at the history posts, so I have no input on it.
I like the funniest & most insightful. If there is no editor’s choice for a category, just omit it rather than trying to dig something up. The current format is fine.
Please do keep the ‘Editor’s Pick’ comments.
The popular vote is exactly that — the popular vote. Comments that garner votes in the moment are not necessarily the most insightful.
Also, I doubt that every story receives equal attention from the readers (certainly not from myself) and so very good comments may easily be missed because few readers actually read them. I have found myself visiting an overlooked story (or revisiting a barely skimmed story) based on the Sunday overview.
The history recapitulation is invaluable; it’s easy to forget what happened (and in some cases how long ago), and without knowledge of history we have no guide into the future. I think it’d be better presented as a list — and maybe that format would make it possible to write a script to scrape TD’s internal archives and generate (most of) it automatically.
The insightful/funny comments of the week are entertaining but there are only a few times a year that I find myself doing a cut-and-paste to save one of them. I suppose that could be because I set a pretty high bar that a comment has to clear before it’s worth that effort, or it could be that not many of the comments resonate with me. In either case, I think reducing the workload on TD staff by shrinking this might be a good idea — how about making it monthly instead of weekly.
Let me note in passing that one of the things that TD does that is highly useful is that all articles have the date in the URL as well as almost all of the headline. This is highly useful when trying to find something from 14 years ago. (I have a very large number of posts collected in a bookmark file.) I’d like to see a lot of other sites adopt the same semantic/syntactic convention: it’s simple and useful.
I wouldn’t mind seeing stories on the weekend with a different subject matter than the ones during the week, or humorous/feel good stories on the same topics. Something to break up the normal “Look how Trump and company, and our government are fucking up the world” stuff. The funniest/most insightful post is a great start.
i find the history posts useful and important. We (generally as a culture – i certainly cannot speak for all individuals and items) already forget what happened last week.
If you want to ditch the posts, you can merely automate a sidebar feature to pull up whatever happened on a date or in a week in n years-ago increments.
As for Sunday comment-fest, perhaps the Editor’s Picks can bee more freeform loosey-goosey in whatis chosen, without sticking to quantity or “place”. Format is fine bulleted or whatever for comments (or history).
Happy vacation! Thanks for the weekend posts.
I use an RSS feed to never miss an article on this site. But what may be my most favorite is the Sunday comments summary. Just knowing what funny quips people have managed to fire off, or the responses to the resident trolls, are the best of the week. While all your posts make me angry at my fellow hoomans, what brings me up by the end is the comments.
Haven’t read the historical posts though. I have little desire to rehash the past. Doesn’t mean stop, but I will continue to ignore them just fine if they keep coming up. I’m sure some people like them, they just aren’t for me.
I still remember the one (or was that two?) time I managed to get onto the comments of the week. The one I managed to get on was about youtube vids being forced to “like and subscribe!” beg for attention.
Keep the Sunday feature
Please keep the Sunday Insightful/Funny comments feature. I always read it and look forward to it, especially the funny comments.
I rarely read the Saturday history column. If you got rid of it, I wouldn’t notice. But I’ll defer to other readers who might like to read about the history of things.
A simple list of “headlines this date x years ago” would be enough as far as that goes for me, but I only very occasionally check the history posts out. As-is they’re too scattershot and contextless for my taste.
Though I know it would probably be much more work, petsonally I’d rather have more targeted history pieces.
An article that follows the thread of one specific topic over time, i.e. what company x has been doing, or how technology x has been adopted/abandoned, or how legislation/suits over x have been developing.
I greatly appreciate it when the writers include some of that into their articles, the “…and that’s how we got to this point:” kind of thing.
Weekend posts
Hi, I‘m not interssted in the historical texts for the weekend, I d rather prefer to read a long piece in depth explaining stuff in a broader, more detailed and basic way.
weekend posts
The comments post is my favorite post of the week. I always look forward to reading it on Monday mornings. I would give even more editorial discretion so that they can pick out a topic that was hotly debated, or something that went way off topic but was still interesting, or just that the editor found something hilarious just because they are weird. If posts are slow, then maybe pick one specific article from that week and highlight how people reacted to it. It is a bit more work, but the analysis could be fun.
The this week in techdirt history – I don’t think I’ve ever even opened one of those, so no real opinion on it.
History and Comments Intertwined
I’ve read the Saturday history articles on occasion but, personally, they don’t pique my interest. This, however, is not a reason to stop it.
On the other side, the Funny/Insightful Comments is gold. I simply don’t have time to read through everything but absolutely love to read what others thought. The Sunday synopsis perfect for me.
When you said, “…lately it’s often been a struggle to populate the “funny” side of the list…” it struck me that this is, in fact, historically important and deserves to be recorded…somehow.
Comments
I too enjoy the comments posts. I think the editor should have some leeway in the amount of comments listed. If the voting is slow there could be fewer listed and if there are really great comments there may be more Editor’s Choice entries. That last already happens sometimes, I feel.
As for paragraph or list: I don’t think it matters very much. Choose the one that gives you the most weekend for yourself. : )
Re:
Seconded.
I just check in every weekend for public domain gaming
Last year was the same thing. I just check in each weekend to see if the winners are noticed yet. Would it be possible to just use each weekend to highlight a media (game, movie or book) inspired from a public domain property. No deep coverage nor competition required. It doesn’t even have to be recent. I would certainly check in.
Having fun
You can’t have fun on the weak days, but you can on the weakened.
I love the funniest/insightful comments of the week post on Sundays!
I always read the Sunday comments post. The history post not much since I became an avid reader.
When I first started in 2013ish I would read the history posts and realized how much I missed because I wasn’t paying attention to the news previously.
I recommend maybe changing the frequency of the history posts to once a month or even less often. But dont get rid of them entirely. It is helpful to have snapshots and reminders about the past.
Similar to other people, I only occasionally read the history posts. I remember most of that stuff, and it makes me feel old. However, I still find it interesting the weeks I do read it. I think simplifying the format is a good compromise for the labor spent.
As someone who mostly reads TechDirt via RSS, I don’t actually see the comments that often. The weekly roundup gives me a glimpse into the conversation I mostly stay out of. People do say very insightful things in the comments here. And I often at least chuckle at the funny stuff.
Another person mentioned keeping the unfunny weeks as a record of the times. I appreciate that thought a lot. I think funny comments are important in dark times, but it is also important to know when the times were too dark for us all.
I guess I’m in the minority here… I actually really like reading the history posts. I haven’t been reading Techdirt regularly as long as other people here have, so it’s interesting to see the headlines of the past.
And while I applaud the winner highlights for the Public Domain Jam, I rarely read them and just wait for the history posts to return. I’ve just never been interested in the contest, but I know other people like it. And I really would miss the history posts if they went away completely.
I also like the comment posts. It’s nice to see other people’s remarks on what’s going on. I wouldn’t change anything about those posts.
The weekend comments roundup is great. Techdirt is better for it, not just because we get to see the best comments every week, but also because it’s a motivation for people to post great comments. I sometimes think of something funny to say about a story, only because I think it will have a chance of making it into the roundup (and sometimes it does). I suspect there are other regulars who do so similarly.
I’m another one in the “I don’t read the history but I do read the best posts roundup” tally.
Only problem with the best posts is that often they’re kind of a “you had to be there” sort of thing and they don’t work as well when taken out of context. You do a fine job of explaining the context, Leigh, it’s just that sometimes an off-the-cuff joke doesn’t work as well when you tell people about it after the fact.
Re:
Links are hard.
I want to read the history posts. TD articles are mostly fuel on the the fire of outrage. 5-10 years later the outrage is gone. Please try adjusting how the history posts are picked to increase weekend engagement time. I’m relatively new here so the history post is a great way to learn about y’all. The insightful/funny post is another great way to learn what Mike or the editors or writers of TD find interesting.
Some ideas: 1. Save a good news article for Saturday. Iceland Foods giving up is a good example. 2. Pick a comment and respond when there’s one worth responding to. 3-5 paragraphs max and rotate writers. 3. Save the Propublica articles for the weekend. 4. Republish an opinion piece you like. Example tying 1-4 together, we are often commenting about why aren’t people working for the DOJ being locked up for failing to comply with court orders. https://calmatters.org/commentary/2026/02/california-judges-threats-trump-newsom/ says theres a code of conduct preventing federal judges from doing that.
Since there wasn’t a funny comment this week I recomend this episode of Strong Message Here where host Armando Iannucci and guest Hugo Rifkind talk about the laughable things politicians have said recently https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/m002s3dv
For insightful I submit that we have a republican president with a low approval rating, it was only a matter of time before he started a war. It also explains why he was driving the price of oil so low we were about to see US production slow and layoffs happen because it wasn’t profitable enough.
Finally, a big congratulations on inspiring an episode of This American Life. I swear I was listening to TD articles being read out loud. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/give-a-little-whistle
I like the weekend posts.
The Insightful / Funny post reports I read all the way through.
The things reminding me of how old I am I skim, but I find interesting because I either realize things seem trivial, or unchanging.
While I see all of your articles in my RSS feed, I rarely check in with the comments or comment myself. So many of the articles these days leave me depressed, but that’s largely due to the state of my country. It means that once I’ve gotten the general gist f a particular article, even as it continues with more detail, I have to turn away. I appreciate the information but feel that you are preaching to the choir and not converting any of the people that need to be converted.