Separate News Articles into their Own Section

 Foreigner:

They are biased too, since basically all of them are about the South Korean industry. 

Now that you mention it, I see it. xD Guess at some point I just didn't pay close attention to them anymore. 

 Foreigner:

If they really want to add a news section to the home page, they can also create a Twitter account to share the news and then add a widget to the website. 

Exactly. There are so many ways by now to implement something like this into a website. It doesn't need to cover half of a webpage. 

Voted- I agree  bc there is loads of these Types of Articles & they are kicking out all the Editorials people have worked hard on, from the homepage after a couple of hours. It can be discouraging, for people to write articles bc they might think whats the point.
 
I also think these articles Saying X& Y are in talks for a drama are just copied/Translated from another page, Least you can do is add your own spin on things, like the writers opinion on whatever is being written about idk

What do you guys think about the newest update that separates the articles into Popular, Recent, and Editorial (which includes only Editorial and Drama Recaps)? Do you like it or not?

 Cho Na:

What do you guys think about the newest update that separates the articles into Popular, Recent, and Editorial (which includes only Editorial and Drama Recaps)? Do you like it or not?

Actually I don't like it. The setting is on "Popular" and I just checked, under Popular there's only one Editorial. All others (plus the ones on the top) are News, so you can still clearly say the amount of news compared to Editorials is insanely high. Sure I can click on Editorial, but how many people do that? I'm a reader who gets interested by the title but since barely any editorial ever shows up on the main page it's hard for me these days to actually find them. The ratio is off. For one editorial article we got 10 news articles so of course the others get buried. That's why I think as long as the attitude of said news articles writers does not change and the way MDL runners/admins deal with it, the situation won't change. 

 Hwayi:

I don't know. I had assumed that the short news articles would be gotten rid of with this update. And when I mean get rid of, I mean like in their own little place in a corner and not in the rotation on the front page. This is a step up, I guess since you can choose editorials but honestly, it would be better if the main page would be devoted to purely editorials. I'm happy that they didn't ignore this issue tho! 

Anyhoo, what I realized tho, is that it's not even short news articles that are the problem. It's the writers themselves. Hopefully, admins will talk to them. 

PS: It's not just one article writer anymore. There are two.  I hadn't realized this due to the fact that all the articles sounded like the same writer to me. 

Agreed. News shouldn't be in the center, but that's where they are right now. A news ticker widget on the site with rotation would be fine with me. It would gather attention from those who are interested but could as easily be ignored from those who aren't. 

And yes that's the conclusion I came to as well. I don't care much about those news articles, don't read them. What I really think is a problem is

1. The unreasonable amount of them being published per day

2. Them burying editorials

3. when editors are occupied with the news articles so much that editing/checking editorials is delayed because of this (not sure if that's a real exisiting issue so if anyone knows more, I'd like to ask for their opinion here) 

Yeah I noticed. There's also one who's asking for the second time if they can write news articles 

https://mydramalist.com/discussions/community-tasks/29624-mdl-writers-article-ideas-discussion?pid=1631957&page=75#p1631957

It's not against them, but I wish someone would tell them clearly No because we already have an issue connected to such articles, another one writing news articles will only worsen the situation. 

 allekseu:

The new article panel is simply far too long. Even worse, it is overloaded with information that should not be there in the first place. What is even the point of this? I am not on Dispatch.

I just tried to read this article but had to give up. It's hurting how many times lo_ve uses the same phrase "He also shared/stated" Literally 5 times in 7 sentences. Why is something with such poor quality published?! Come on, it's so easy to find alternatives for this if you're willing. This proves that the user does not even try to write good, informative articles. The purpose is to spam the front page and they do it successfully. Why are the admins only watching the problem but not stopping the user. 

I'd like to mention repeatedly, the problem is not news articles in general, nor how long news articles are. 

The problem is the massive amount of news articles that are being published and therefore pushing away editorials, the trivial informations that do not need an article in the first place and the user itself who obviously does this out of fun and questionable motives considering the poor writing (copying from other sources) and spamming. 

Also again, nothing important was stated in the article, it couldn't be more trivial. The actor just announced he will get married, something that was known before since the marriage was only postponed due to Covid-19! For god's sake, write an article when the guy is married not one month ahead. That's so pointless. 

 allekseu:

I do not wish for MyDramaList to be the first on news, I wish for it to be pertinent, informative and reliable on what it delivers.

Amen. The main page looks like a tabloid by now. All articles are news, not one editorial is there. 

I really wanted to submit my next article soon but now I see it's useless. It will only be buried under this load of **** anyway and honestly, I put way too much love and effort in it to watch it being treated like this. For now MDL is not a place where I'm willing to contribute, I might even cancel my donations because I do not wish to support a page that favors one user over the interests of so many. 

I beg the admins to take actions that truly change something for the better. 

Well...i don't read much articles, only the one which catch my eye or someone promote them to me personally, so as a friend help i'm checking it and give it some love...but yeah, tons of news, bombarding me are meh..i have feeds/likes on almost all "gossipy" asian sites, i don't need another one at MDL. Unless it's AMAZINGLY IMPORTANT. But another info about pregnancy or wedding...pffff...i would like another solid article, than news. And yeah, it's also good point from @Minne8 and i agree - the disproportion in terms of countries is really striking: / and you get the impression that only in Korea or sometimes in Japan, someone is getting married, giving birth or doing something at all: /

I think the problem is that there's a misconception regarding the word "Popular" as used on the front page. The articles being showcased there aren't technically the most popular, but the ones trending (meaning, they get there because someone commented on the article recently). What I mean is that trending and popular are two different things and aren't interchangeable.

Naturally, "news" articles as of now are trending. How can they not? They are essentially a fast read which allows users to quickly drop a comment. Editorials, on the other hand, tend to be longer and require more of the users' attention. 

So my new suggestions based on the changes would be as follows:

1. Change the Editorial Tab to be the landing one of the page. 
   •  Editorials are the gems of MDL since they are unique to the site --unlike the news which can be found elsewhere (especially if they come from the same source). So show some love to the editorials by giving the new articles a chance to be found by the average user upon arrival (like it used to be before).
2. Change the algorithm so that the Popular tab shows a list of articles with many hearts (likes), comments, and/or views. That way it really becomes a list of the most popular articles. 
3. Add a trending tab to find the articles that have the most recent user-engagement. 
4. There's enough space now to perhaps also add tabs for articles related to China, Japan, Thailand, etc. so those interested in non-K-Drama-centric content can quickly find them.
5. If news articles are here to stay (which it seems they are), you really need some major quality control and basic rules. 
   • Have the writer put in a fresh perspective on the news so that the piece becomes unique to MDL (the news should reflect some effort in the writing, at the very least). 
   • If not, force them to at least do the decent thing and link the source they are copying. After all, they are essentially reaping the benefits of someone else's labor. But, to be honest, without a fresh perspective the news are simply echoes of someone else.
   • Avoid writing speculative articles that do not benefit anyone. "Actor A in talks to maybe appear on Drama C" is, frankly, irrelevant. And, as already mentioned here, breeds misconceptions and confusion.

Now, we can wish for change all we want but at the end of the day, the one thing we have the power to do is to stop writing editorials for this website to make our disappointment be known. It's the equivalent of "voting with your wallet", but in this case, you're voting by refusing to provide work for a website that no longer values it.  

However, that is only my opinion (and my decision). At the end of the day, we will all do what feels right to us.