Something is Broken on Examiner.com - Writers in Uproar
UPDATE 08/24/2010: Quote and link to Examiner.com writer claiming he got suspended after complaining.
When the news broke last week that Examiner.com had launched their website on Drupal 7 it took the Drupal community by storm as well as surprise. This was big news, it is a top 500 website and have over 42,000 writers contributing content to it.
Something is Not Working
Initially all reports where positive about that the launch had been successful. Now though, it seems like everything isn't that rosy after all. Today I have had an email conversation with one of the contributing writers on the site that paints a completely different picture, listing numerous big problems.
Some of the problems my source points out are:
- Visitors feels lost and can't find what they are looking for.
- New articles takes up to 6 hours or more before they are published. This is due to that they are still using the old publishing tool. New content then has to be migrated to the new Drupal based site. For breaking stories this is simply not good.
- The whole site is buggy and unstable.
- People can't get to the publishing tool or reach support.
- Some columns have not been migrated blocking the writers from publishing.
- Some writers can't access their old content, but they can find it searching on Google with specific keywords.
- Article and author URLs are redirected to 404 pages or other authors.
- Pictures, videos, slideshows and articles have lost essential relationship links.
- Comments to old articles have not been migrated.
Many of the above problems where apparently known before the launch during the beta period.
My post about the launch also received this comment today:
You techno geeks may be impressed by this "gutsy" move, but have you actually looked at the new Examiner.com? It doesn't work. It has more bugs than a hive and the writers' hard work has been ruined. The people who work for the site are furious. Examiner launched this monstrosity of an "upgrade" knowing there were problems and they didn't care. Now everyone else is paying for it.
Massive Traffic Drop
That something is wrong is being confirmed when looking at the statistics before and after the launch of the new site. These stats comes from Quantcast.
This graph shows the number of daily visits to the site. Just days before it had over a million visits, then you can see a sharp drop right after the August 13 launch. Yesterday it had 527,000 visits, less than half compared to the 1.1 million it had in the beginning of August.
Looking at the page views graph shows an even deeper traffic drop. Yesterdays 1.1 million is just a third of the 3.2 million page views it had in the beginning of August.
Loss of Income for Writers
The massive loss in traffic transforms into loss of income for the writers. When readers can't easily find articles and then get tired of seeing 404 (Page not found) pages they will simply go somewhere else. That's the nature of the Internet.
Threats to Writers
The writers are of course not happy with losing income and all the other problems, and they have complained about it. My source reveals that Examiner.com is giving complainers a hard time, cutting their pay or not acting on their support tickets. The source even claims that one writer has got their Examiner status terminated after complaining about this in a forum (I am working on getting this confirmed).
UPDATE: J Craig Canada, Santa Cruz County Drug Policy Examiner, claims on his blog (scroll down to find it on the page) that he was suspended after complaining about the new platform:
My complaints about my vandalized articles and the inability to properly edit and preview edits when composing an article resulted in my “suspension”. My response? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Content published on the Examiner.com is done so under a shared copyright between the author and the site. If a writer gets his or hers Examiner status terminated, the site gets to keep the content while the author loses all future income from it.
Questions to Examiner.com
Examiner.com has been notified about this story and asked to comment on it as well as answering these questions:
- Why did Examiner.com opt to launch on Drupal 7 this early?
- Why was the new Examiner.com pushed out before it was ready?
- What are you doing to fix these problems?
- Have writers that have complained got their status terminated, lost pay or not got responses to their support tickets?
As and when I receive a response I will either update this story or publish a follow up.
How this Affects Drupal
About a month ago Steve Parks, Drupal Radar, published the article When The Merde Hits The Fan... It was about the France.fr website, how it went down after just one day and how that affects the Drupal reputation. The story highlighted how an agency with limited Drupal skills had managed to almost do everything wrong when developing the site.
One question Steve asked was:
How can Drupal protect its name when any agency can claim to be 'Drupal specialists'?
This is a problem for open source since anyone can use the software and do almost anything they want with it. A company selling proprietary software can control their ecosystem. Their license agreements and partner programs stipulate what versions can be sold to end users.
Customers can often find a page on those companies websites listing partners. They have programs for partners to get certified having a certain level of skills and so on. The closest thing we have to this in the Drupal ecosystem is probably Acquias partner programs.
These companies often use arguments pointing out lack of central support and certifications against open source and it works. Yes, open source is gaining momentum in the enterprise world, but there is still a lot of work left to do before this kind of FUD stops working.
In the case of the Examiner.com we have another situation. They opted to launch their site on Drupal 7, a version that is not released or even available in a beta version yet. No one in the Drupal community recommends Drupal 7 to be used for production sites.
Still, if this story escalates it will affect Drupal negatively. My source for example says:
Examiner's writers can't afford to hang in, or wait until the dust settles. Early adopter or not, right now I wouldn't put Drupal on one of my private websites if someone paid me to install it.
Examiner.com has 40-50,000 writers experiencing these problems right now. The waste majority of them are not IT people or have the knowledge to understand why these problems exists. What they do know is that the new site is built on something called Drupal and it is not working.
How can the Drupal community, and the Drupal Association in particular, avoid that situations like what is going on with Examiner.com and France.fr gives Drupal bad PR? Is this even possible to avoid for an open source product?
Drupal is gaining momentum on the market and quickly becoming the benchmark for others to reach for. End users are asking for Drupal in their RFI's more and more often. How can it be avoided that agencies without the right skills claiming they are Drupal specialists when they are not?
Can someone introduce a Drupal Certification? If so, who will control and administrate it?
Can the Drupal trademark policy be used to get better control of this?
If you are a writer for the Examiner please feel free to contact me using the contact form. I am very interested to hear more about your experience with their new platform.
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Comments
Markos (not verified)
Sat, 08/21/2010 - 17:24
Re: Something is Broken on Examiner.com - Writers in Uproar
It was very strange that a site of such proportions opted to migrate on a CMS that is not yet stable... I don't know about the harm it coulod do, any bad experience is always bad for any kind of product. This can be said for badly designed sites, too.
For a site that has been rebuilt this month I can say that I'm not impressed with the design.
I'm preparing a little project (with big expectations) and drupal 6 was my choice but I must admit that I don't like its content administration - the drupal 7 backend is much nicer. Probably I'm going to build the site on drupal 7 and hope that by the time of publishing the site, a stable release will be out.
A general consideration on the content administration of drupal (prior to version 7, I hope) is that it's ok for site developers and designers used to work with drupal but not so friendly with authors and other web users not familiar with the concept. (I must say that wordpress or modx backends are more user friendly)
Anyway, finger up for the effort on Drupal 7, hope that problems at Examiner.com will be solved. I'm not familiar with the Acquia partner program or any other possible "Drupal partner" programs, it could be a good way to protect clients from developers willing to rush in such unpleasant situations - or not ?!? this is a hard process to manage or control. At the end, the world market is a playground where one day you win the other you loose. Maybee some authors from Examiner.com will run away from Drupal, on the other hand many others will join the drupal comunity - and this is what keeps the evolution on.
Donna Gundle-Krieg (not verified)
Sun, 08/22/2010 - 15:06
Re: Something is Broken on Examiner.com - Writers in Uproar
After two years writing at Examiner, I finally gave up. I told them I wanted to delete all of my stories and they immediately blocked me out. It doesn't matter, because if I republish the stories on my own personal site, they show up sooner on google.
There were many problems about Examiner in addition to this new rollout. However, the problems are all definitely related to the fact that they don't care at all about their writers. They don't even care about the long term "top writers," who have now been through a half dozen managers (who are all thrown under the bus after awhile)
I was asked to participate in "analyzing" the new website before it was launched. They wanted their "top writers" to feel that their input was valuable. However, it was such a piece of crap that I wrote them telling them I don't think any of it should be used. Obviously my input didn't mean a thing.
It's a shame because I loved it so much at first and worked hard as heck to build my traffic. However, their responses to me about my concerns varied between lame and non-existent so I am DONE!
Wade (not verified)
Mon, 08/23/2010 - 04:20
Re: Something is Broken on Examiner.com - Writers in Uproar
SOMETHING is broken? How about all these things, courtesy of Examiner's "Known Issues":
=====> The following issues are Under Repair.
Issue - Description - Date - Reported - Status - Notes
The main page article carousel is missing some images on some editions - August 15, 2010, Under Repair
Examiners who have published a large number of articles may not see them all on their title pages - August 15, 2010, Under Repair
Friends and Family article notification email has broken links within it - August 15, 2010, Under Repair
Articles shared on Stumbleupon, Facebook and Reddit do not appear with thumbnail photo. - August 14, 2010, Under Repair
Clicking on "Next Page" from article index page may result in error saying "The specified file /tmp/filesmf6An could not be copied." - August 14, 2010, Under Repair
Comments have a profanity filter that is filtering comments without profanity - August 14, 2010, Under Repair
Examiner pages with new titles are displaying old titles - August 14, 2010, Under Repair
Related articles are not migrating to new site - August 14, 2010, Under Repair
Comments are showing up inconsistently; Some comments may not show. Some deleted comments may reappear - August 13, 2010, Under Repair
Pagination disappearing from Examiner home pages (intermittent) - August 13, 2010, Under Repair. This issue affected the visitor's ability to page through an Examiner's home page (index page).
Creating articles with the advanced editor can cause formatting issues on your article - August 13, 2010, Under Repair. Some article types cause more issues then others
New Examiner titles can take up to 72 hours to propagate - August 13, 2010, Under Repair
Changing your main image after publishing your article doesn't work - August 13, 2010, Under Repair
Uploaded pictures will crop from the middle. So if you have a tall image the top and bottom will be cut off. - August 13, 2010, Under Repair
Some pages have formatting issues such as extra spaces between paragraphs and weird characters - August 13, 2010, Under Repair
Articles "Saved as Unpublished" are appearing intermittently as published - August 13, 2010, Under Repair
Updating Examiner profiles may not work - August 13, 2010, Under Repair
"Share this" feature is not working - August 13, 2010, Under Repair
Some images are not appearing in articles or appearing with poor formatting - August 13, 2010, Under Repair
Some Examiner profiles and pages are not working; they are bringing up our 404 page - August 13, 2010, 75 percent resolved
Edits may take more than 15 minutes to migrate to the live site - August 12, 2010, Under Repair
Unpublished articles previously published are intermittently being unpublished in 2.0 - August 12, 2010, Under Repair
Direct links to slide shows are not working - August 12,2010, Under Repair
Multi-titled Examiners' slide show images may link to wrong slide show - August 12, 2010, Under Repair
Link lists will only migrate with the most recent 10 links - August 12, 2010, Under Repair. Additional links can be added under recommended links
Google analytics and other embedded HTML and tracking code may show up on article pages - August 12, 2010, Under Repair. Make sure not to embed any unusual HTML in any more articles published on the old Pub Tool
Articles with more than one photo will automatically create a slide show - August 12, 2010. Feature - Actually, this one's by design. The new layout of the site requires this approach, and results in a cleaner, more optimal user experience.
The preview option will result in a 404 error page until the article is live on the site - August 12, 2010, Under Repair
Video size and placement will vary depending on the size of the video and article content - August 12, 2010, Under Repair
Intermittently, thumbnail images won't show up with articles on an Examiner's index page - August 12, 2010, Under Repair
Examiner & Member activities may not appear in their profiles - August 12, 2010, Under Repair
Embedded videos in new articles will not appear on the live site - August 12, 2010, Under Repair
Articles in Examiner University are not currently working - August 12, 2010, Under Repair
A user logged into Facebook and Examiner.com may encounter the page repeatedly refreshing - August 12, 2010, Under Repair
Kevin (not verified)
Tue, 08/24/2010 - 15:47
Re: Something is Broken on Examiner.com - Writers in Uproar
This isn't a Drupal problem but an implementation problem. They should not have used Drupal 7 either. Not yet.
thomas
Tue, 08/24/2010 - 16:01
Re: Something is Broken on Examiner.com - Writers in Uproar
Hi Kevin,
I agree, and I do point that out in several places. As well as in the follow up post.
/thomas
Michael (not verified)
Wed, 07/20/2011 - 03:50
Re: Something is Broken on Examiner.com - Writers in Uproar
I hate to comment on an old thread, but I agree wholeheartedly that this was a major, major implementation problem. In fact, as a Drupal developer, I can visualize immediately the reasons for, and solutions to, the majority of the items "under repair." I find it incomprehensible that they would have left that site out of the barn in that condition.
Drupal 7, although many of the modules have not been ported from 6, is a stable platform if done correctly. Note: if done correctly.
I am beside myself, that something like this can be blamed on the platform when it is clearly a problem between the computer and keyboard.
Jane (not verified)
Wed, 08/25/2010 - 02:13
Re: Something is Broken on Examiner.com - Writers in Uproar
Yes, Examiner has always been rushing to grow grow grow at the expense of quality, and they make constant changes that sabotage writer income. Their management has turned over so many times and the current management is clueless and overworked. There is no reason that they should have launched this webite with how many dozens of known issues.
I think part of the reason their traffic is down is that many writers like me have finally had enough.
Andy C (not verified)
Fri, 08/27/2010 - 15:35
Re: Something is Broken on Examiner.com - Writers in Uproar
Interesting story. It's not entirely clear to me whether Drupal 7alpha7, RC1 or beta will be able to seamlessly upgrade content from alpha6.
That's not a problem for my sandpit with 12 nodes but it might be for The Examiner.
thomas
Fri, 08/27/2010 - 16:20
Re: Something is Broken on Examiner.com - Writers in Uproar
Hi Andy,
Alpha to alpha is not supported by Drupal. If it works it works. See Drupal 7 for Production Websites Part 1: Drupal 7 Core for more info.
/thomas
Willi Gutmann (not verified)
Thu, 10/14/2010 - 20:54
Re: Something is Broken on Examiner.com - Writers in Uproar
Examiner down to 16,500 “active writers” in USA and Canada
http://bit.ly/NewsWreck
UPDATE (10/12/10): Examiner.com CEO Rick Blair responded :
We actually have had more than 62,000 total Examiners contribute on our site since we launched in 2008; we still actively communicate with more than 55,000, which is what that number is based on. Currently we have an average of about 60 percent that have actively contributed in the past 90 days. We use that time frame in monitoring engagement to take into account our daily publishing frequency is always fluctuating – as some titles like sports are seasonal, others like music are dependent upon new information or movement, for example.
””“Our 30-day average reflects this oscillation, as we range between 30 to 40 percent active in that time frame. ”“”“
30% of 55,000 = 16, 500 and that comes from the CEO of Examiner
Allyson (not verified)
Fri, 11/12/2010 - 16:51
Re: Something is Broken on Examiner.com - Writers in Uproar
Novemeber 11 2010 Examiner.com writers cannot log into the site unless they agree to a new contract. The new contract is even more biased toward the examiner and states very clearly that examiner owns your content and they may resell it and not pay you. Additionally the new contract states that if you re-write articles on another site you must list examiner.com as a source. I believe this is a new clause...I thought that examiner only requested to be the first site your article was published on and after that they didnt care what if you re-published or re-used the article. Many examiners are also upset because they have realized that after being urged to post slideshows, they find that their photos now belong to the website and are available for other examiners to use. The new contract also states that examiners must promote their own content.
Anonymous (not verified)
Fri, 11/12/2010 - 21:08
Re: Something is Broken on Examiner.com - Writers in Uproar
Reading this makes me so glad that I gave Examiner up a few months ago after years of trying to make a go of it. It is not a place for professional writers, as they do not treat their writers as professional. In fact, they do not care about their writers at all.
The website has become all about quantity and not quality, that's for sure. I am now finding that others who are looking for writing professionals consider experience at Examiner to be a huge negative.