Question time: Monitor editors respond

A: We'll have a mix -- shorter and more immediate articles and blog posts as events unfold, standard length articles of the sort that were in the print daily, and articles that will have appeared in our weekly edition that will eventually make their way onto CSMonitor.com or into our archives.

Losing your place
Q: It all sounds very positive to me. I like to check out the online edition daily, and I also love to read the International Weekly edition at the kitchen table, so US readers may be just catching up with the excellent balance already offered to overseas readers. What I don’t like about online is that you can “lose your place,” i.e., when you venture forth into one article, it’s not always so easy to get back to where you were so that you can check other articles that may have caught your eye before your foray. We in Australia are looking forward to seeing what changes might be coming our way. Keep up the good work everyone. We love it.

A: Thanks for the kind words. You probably know these basic techniques (so please forgive me if this isn't what you are referring to): You can bookmark the page you are on to go back to it later. Or you can open new pages in new windows by setting your preferences. Or you can navigate back by going up to "history." When we develop an application for the Kindle, which we hope to have a little later this year, you'd have the ability to save your place, since the Kindle is made for reading as opposed to browsing.

Advertisements
Q: It would be very helpful if advertisements were labeled as such. Often it’s not clear.

A: Standard practice in both print and on the Web is to let advertisements distinguish themselves from editorial content by placement and design. In the infrequent cases where the ad could be confused with editorial content, we do label them. But it is a judgment call, and we might not be meeting the standards you have in mind. If you see a specific one that you think is confusing, take a screen shot and e-mail it to us.

Updating the news
Q: What time of day do you expect to upload new lead stories on the home page? Also, will there be one per day, like the print version, or will it be event-driven… sometimes more than one a day, sometimes the same one for more than a day? Perhaps if I keep reading/watching I’ll figure it out!

A: Our aim is to update the home page every half hour. That doesn't mean every story will change, but it does mean there will be something fresh on the site quite often to reward your return visit. It's a little difficult for us to meet that standard right now because our technology is in transition. By early May, we should be updating more frequently.

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