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Why not annotate full article?


Jonny Wang

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I'm new to reading newsinchinese.com and had a quick question. Why, in most cases, is just the intro to an article annotated rather than the whole thing? I like the website, but seems it would be even better if the whole articles (which don't tend to be very long) were annotated. :roll:

--JW

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I did, and mostly I get a page with a picture of a girl waterskiing. Eventually though, I realized there was a link *below* that picture in *tiny* print telling me the full article was ready for viewing. So, my bad! I now understand how to get the whole article.

But, why the heck no put this link *above* the waterskiing girl, so it'll definitely be visible in everyone's browser without having to scroll down? Seems more logical to me. Or get rid of the extra link altogether?

Just a thought.

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Yes, that's what happened to me too when I clicked 'More'. I did click the link, still I cannot get the whole article. I've been tried several time, and eventually gave upon it.

:cry:

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Hmmm... never knew that people had this problem, although I guess having a HUGE photo and microscopic link telling people their article is ready is a bit of a bad call usability-wise. The reason we have the interstitial page is basically to help fill the time while the software grabs the remote page and annotates it.

The system works by grabbing and annotating the Xinhua RSS feed... which is why only a snippet is annotated to start. When someone requests annotating the full article, the software attempts to do a screen-scrape of the article on the Xinhua server. Most of the time this works. Sometimes either (1) Xinhua has moved the article, or (2) the article is in some funky format, and so the scripts don't work as expected. This is usually what happens when errors get reported....

Working on a new interface that will simplify and unify a couple of the things that are running on the server (vocab, annotation, newsinchinese). Will attempt to improve on this there....

It's not a great fallback, but if anyone ever has a problem getting the full annotated copy to load and really wants to read the original Chinese piece, it's always possible to clicking through "Source" instead of "More". This will load the original article on the Xinhua server assuming it hasn't been moved....

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I'm guessing they're using a lower screen resolution, maybe 800x600 or something, than normal. Putting the link topside might not help many people, but I guess there are all types of configurations out there.

And the extra page, while maybe unnecessary adds character to the whole system. It's a cool something extra, although I think the waterskiier has been in place for a bit too long now, no? :D

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