doodledee

I had planned to write more about the video game thing below but I got too fed-up to continue when I went to the Star Tribune's website to find the article about the lady who bought the game for her kid and I discovered that they no longer maintain links to articles older than 3 weeks. Instead, they 'archive' the article to a section called - get this - the "pay archives" where they make you - get this - "pay" to "read the story".

That is so lame. Here are some reasons:

(AM@Strib = Attention Morons @ The Star Tribune)

1. Last time I checked, the web sometimes involves linking to things. When the Strib decides it's time to archive content to the pay area, they change the story's URL, breaking any inbound links in the process. AM@Strinb: That is stupid. If you want to put your crappy video game violence story behind the checkout counter, that's fine, but at least keep the link the same. Hey, maybe it's just me, but it seems like you'd want to keep the click momentum going instead of making somebody re-search to find the article.
2. Oh yeah, then there's search. The Strib's searching function is probably the worst of any major news site on the internet. It's horrifically bad. Like would-have-been-bad-in-1996 bad. Here's an example. I remembered that the lady in the video game story I was looking for was a vice principal so I went to google news and searched "halo 2 vice principal" and OMG only one result and it's exactly the article I was looking for it's like effing magic oh no wait it's not it's like effing duh that's that way it's supposed to be. When the link turned out to be bad, I tried to find it using the Strib's search service, using the same search parameters and shocker!, no results. So I dumb it down and just try "halo 2" whereupon it brings back a list of results including Gordon Miklethun's obituary at number 5 (run-over by Warthog). Oh, and the story I was looking for wasn't even listed. AM@Strib: No one is going to pay for something they can't find. And I went to your site and all I found was a bullshit "pay archive" and a broken search engine.
3. As much as they keep pretending to be, the Strib is not the NYTimes (the original pay-for-archives newspaper site). Free registration requirements, totally unreasonable commie editorial writers, and now a pay archive? AM@Strib: stop pretending.
4. $2.75 for an article?! Ha! That is awesome! AM@Strib: Ha!

That's all. I'm not sure what drove the decision. It's bad for their site. It's bad for the web community. It's just plain ol' bad and I hope the change it.