links for 2008-05-31

"If you’re going to give me a tool, let me use the tool. Take advantage of the fact that users are humans–they want to communicate and take part. Let them! Are you treating your users like chimps?".

"Man walks into a pub. 'Hey, I've just not been mugged,' he says. 'That's amazing, ' a bloke at the bar says as he puts his pint down. 'I didn't strangle my wife today'. 'You two are weird,' said a third bloke. He was a journalist". Great opening stanza.

"If you want to have an impact, then conduct the work in the light of business objectives: increasing revenue, or cutting costs, or improving usage or conversion rates or pageviews or something that helps pay the bills."

Good points in the comments from Jemima and Emily, but as ever nearly everybody approaches this debate as if The Telegraph, Guardian and BBC are not now part of a media ecosystem where actually Google is the biggest and totally unregulated player.

From the comments: "I have long since given up reading CiF, not because of the opinions but because the tone of many contributors is so unpleasant. I like a good no-holds-barred pub debate, but not one where I feel that someone is going to glass me."

"Surely the crucial point is how are these blogs in general - particular posts, individual comments and the overall feel of them - are impacting on the credibility of that newspaper?"

That is useful, some different screengrabs to the tired old set I always trot out in presentations about content links and site taxonomy getting out of hand ;-)