September 27, 2007 at 8:29 am
I really like the idea of choosing what threads we want shown in the newsletter. I'm not sure how easy that is to put in place, but I'd like that option most in the end.
September 27, 2007 at 8:30 am
Your changes and alternatives to instead RSS stream the forums make sense.
I only read the the direct hyperlinks in the "In this Issue" section, namely:
Featured Articles, Editorial, and Featured Script. Sometimes the "Question of the Day"
It would be nice if up in the "In this issue" section you included the 1 sentence blub reached by the first hyperlink. Then you could have the "In this issue" link hop directly to the web server.
For "users need help" section layout you propose, maybe you could change it to an HTML table, one row per category, and supplement the list with stats in columns to the right: counts of activity, ie, new user requests, number of answers to yesterdays user questions, questions with no replies after x days by expertise, with a hyperlink to the orphans, etc. For advertisers, use the "users need help" table to add a column with hyperlinks to advertisers that became agreed upon solutions to a prior user questions in the subject area. Then you could sell to some other vendor sponsors (and redgate) very targeted links to specific problems that fit their solutions.
I think this would could all fit nicely in a one page newsletter email.
By the way, yours is the only email newsletter I currently subscribe to because it is focused without alot of fluff.
September 27, 2007 at 8:45 am
Thanks for the feedback and one more item for thought.
Two newsletters would take time. We've got a few bugs and this is a somewhat larger change. Moving to RSS or the "Since my Last Visit" would be easy.
A good point on lowering forum traffic. We'll definitely have to debate that.
If we go to the top 10 or 20, what's the top? Most posts, most posts recently, most reads, any other thoughts?
September 27, 2007 at 8:53 am
I, for one, don't usually read any of those. I think they could be removed.
September 27, 2007 at 8:58 am
I find the threads in the newsletter rather interesting, but personally I have discovered I generally just don't have time to pursue things that are merely "interesting." I have to be more focused. So omitting them won't bother me.
Often they are not very readable anyway, because of extending past the right-hand margin of my screen, and the horizontal scrolling gets very old, very quickly. I do wish you could fix that problem on a permanent basis and make the HTML conform to the window size.
September 27, 2007 at 8:58 am
I'll admit that I'll generally (7/10) skim over the latest Forum posts to see what's going on. I kind of liked when it was only the first post that got into the list, though. If I'm interested, I can check out future replies by subscribing to the topic. If not, then it won't show up next time.
I kind of like a snippet of text as well, though I can see the argument against that. A well-formed subject should tell you what you need to know. Subjects like "Please Help!! URGENT!!" just don't cause us to look at the posts unless we've got an abundance of free time.
Overall, I like the newsletter layout - putting the Script of the Day towards the top is cool. Only issue to keep in mind might be the width. For some reason, the width today put the newsletter in such a format that it was off-screen and I had to scroll left/right to read the entire text. (GMail - Firefox - Windows XP)
I like the RSS idea, but will generally only use that for forums that I really want to keep up with - I actually need to take the time to do that soon. I've been delaying for a little bit. 🙂
As for ads - that's your choice. I know that they have their place, though I'll generally ignore them. I don't generally follow up on the ads, mostly because they tend to be for products that I'll have trouble getting approved into the budget, no matter how cool.
-Pete
September 27, 2007 at 9:02 am
Another quick thought -- It would be nice to give unsolved problems wider publicity. In the absence of a "solved" indicator on the forum database, you could include in the newsletter those threads which have the fewest replies. Not perfect but those might tend to be unsolved.
September 27, 2007 at 9:04 am
Steve,
First, the newsletters are my window into SqlServerCentral. I always read the editorial, read the question of the day (I don't try to answer it) and the answer from the previous day and scan the "Users that need help" section and look at ones that look interesting. I do appreciate the having the first part of the discussion listed with the topic. It helps me to know which ones to look at.
When I first started getting the SSC NL, I was overwhelmed by the amount of information and requested a weekly one instead of daily. There are times when I get behind (vacation, actually doing work, etc.) and my scanning becomes more selective. I have learned about things that I would have no clue about otherwise and it has made me a better professional.
I don't go to the SSC web site on a regular basis, maybe because it takes so much time for the newsletter. (I do occasionally go to the web site to search for information.) If there were not links to threads from the newsletter I may stop looking at it and start going to the website directly. Maybe links to the forums themselves would be of use in the newletter. I like the idea of the number of new threads and number of active threads per forum. Perhaps numbers for the last 24 hours or last 7 days would be of value especially if there is a link to the forum with the threads listed (last 24 hr, etc.)
I had no clue what RSS was so I went and looked at your article on "RSS Everywhere". http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/SQLServerCentral.com/61167/
I don't think I'm interested yet.
I appreciate you trying to accomodate to users preferences. Thanks for being there for the Sql Server community.
Steve
September 27, 2007 at 11:08 am
Grant Fritchey (9/27/2007)
If I'm reading it correctly, that last image is the new newsletter? I kind of liked having the little tease sentence of what each article is about. It gave me just a bit more information than the title to decide if I wanted to go on and read it.
I mostly just stick to the featured articles and the editorial so I agree with Grant. I would also like to have at least the beginning paragraph of the editorial so I can see if I want to read the whole thing or not.
[font="Tahoma"]Bryant E. Byrd, BSSE MCDBA MCAD[/font]
Business Intelligence Administrator
MSBI Administration Blog
September 27, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Bring back code of the day.
Terry
September 27, 2007 at 1:43 pm
TDuffy (9/27/2007)
Bring back code of the day.Terry
That was in the most recent newsletter I received - just in the middle (before the forum posts) instead of at the end where it was in the past.
-Pete
September 27, 2007 at 5:44 pm
My vote: (a) I don't mind losing the user questions given how accessible they are; (b) I don't mind the ads given that I want you guys to keep on going 😉 -
BUT (c) I would hate to see the little descriptive blurb on the feature articles go away. Often an article that I wouldn't have clicked on appeals because of the bit of text that helps me realize what it's all about!!! One response here says you'll get more click throughs to see if the article is really what people want, but I think chances are better that people rushed for time will be missing good articles!!
A compromise might be a longer article title that's more descriptive???
Overall though, I think what you've all done and continue to do is amazing - I recommend your site to everyone I know who lives in the 'sql' world. A heartfelt thanks!!
October 1, 2007 at 6:04 am
I agree with Mattie. Please can we go back to the old way of having threads only appear on the newsletter once. That way readers don't have to keep going back to the same thread, and you get to keep the size of the newsletter down.
Thanks
John
October 1, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Sounds good to me - I must confess I usually don't scroll all the way down there, anyway. :ermm:
October 2, 2007 at 4:11 pm
I generally agree with the changes, with one exception: please include the "teaser" sentences about the articles, it helps with determining what the article is really about.
Love the new website look, too.
Cheers!
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