I’ve been wondering why Firefox 3 doesn’t have that cool little RSS subscription button in its address bar anymore. It used to be there. Now it’s gone. A quick search for rss address bar firefox 3 brought up a link to the Firefox support site. There another Firefox user had posted an obscenity-laced version of the same question I had. And the question yielded this reply from Limi:

“Because the RSS button is the least clicked button in our UI. When you want to use it, you know that you want to use it, so we don’t need to show it all the time. It’s still available, but in the bookmarks menu instead. Unfortunately, most people don’t use RSS. I am a big RSS user myself, but I’m in the minority. — Alexander Limi, Firefox UX Team “

Brevity. Politeness in a response to rudeness. And… facts. (Alexander: if that whole “working at Google/Mozilla/creating your own internationally known open-source CMS thing doesn’t work out for ya, you’ve got a job in my imaginary newsroom anytime.)

1. Unlike too many newsrooms I’ve seen, Mozilla appears to be making user-interface decisions based on … well, data about the users’ experience. If you’re making decisions in your newsroom based on an editor’s war stories, a designer’s favorite color palette, or even an expert’s advice, then stop. Use smart guesses for decisions that can be easily reversed, but base your big decisions only on cold, hard, relevant, current data.

2. Note the empathy. “Brother, I’m with you on the RSS thing. But you and I are weirdos and/or not everyone is as smart as us. So, we do things for them.” I tell my students that newswriting isn’t about self expression; it’s about selfless express. Same with user experience.

3. This should be point 1. But this is a real response, from a real person, with a real name, and with some level of authority and responsibility. This isn’t from the “Department of People Who Deal With User Complaints”. So I trust it, and am more likely to trust the brand.

4. No whining. There’s no “You get the dadgum browser for free, so eat your vegetables and like it. “There’s no deleting the obscenity from the original question. No scolding. Just a factual, brief and polite response. And all of those things increase my trust in Limi. He’s a social Big Boy and that causes me to presume that he is a Big Boy in his work product as well.

If comments aren’t working on your news site, following Limi’s formula will start you back on the path to success.

And speaking of filters …

Google Releases Universal Search for Gmail, Docs and Sites I won’t be happy until it can find my keys and documentation of my that December 2003 expense report that accounting still hasn’t pushed through.

The future of UI Is VUI the new GUI?

Verizon Plans to Bring Live TV Streaming to the iPad The future of news is all about getting the right information to the right people at the right time.

FINDING THE MEDIATED CITY Durn, there’s a lot of words in this post. But whatever a mediated city is, I think journalists need to be at the center of creating it.

Auto-Tweeting Your Way to Spamsville Yup. Twitter’s about conversation. Not something you automate.

Broadcast Viewer Average Age: 51 Is it the device or the content that young folks don’t like?

The Web is not dead, but many wish it so
Too many words for me to sound them all out, but Steve Yelvington looks like he might have smart thoughts about the inflammatory Wired article.

It’s still about the journalism, not the CMS I will be so glad when people feel like they no longer have to build their own CMS. Can’t everyone just use Drupal, the most awesomest CMS that is way better than anything else and is used by all the cool kids? The partisanship just has to stop.

The Web Design Community Offers Advice To Beginners Quickly saw a line that I might turn into a t-shirt for class. “Google before you ask.”

Statelight: Transparency in a Box, Pt. 2 I’m generally skeptical of anything in a box. They are usually operated with a turnkey and are bought at a one-stop-shop. But Statline’s good people. And the Good Lord knows we need more transparency at the state level.

Gannett Goes Hyperlocal With HighSchoolSports.net Wanna oust your local incumbent news organization? Publish a database of local crime, gossip about the schools and the scores and video from high school sports.

A fresh look at reporting skills Looks like Mindy McAdams has a good conversation going over at her blog. Need to stop in and check it out.

And finally a handful of posts that always draw my attention — ones that start with a number or an interrogative:

5 Useful Facebook Trend and Search Services

5 Questions with John Byrne of BusinessWeek, Fast Company, and Now, C-Change Media

10 Ways to Make Video a More Interactive Experience

NPR Listening By The Numbers—And The Platform

How Training Citizen Journalists Made a Difference

How Metadata Can Eliminate the Need for Pay Walls

But this challenge isn’t unique to political leaders, it’s also one that journalists must meet and a gesture on which they are following through even less.

Hooked on the promise of the free advertising inventory generated by online comments, more and more newspaper Web sites are deploying  some type of online discussion technology.  What they aren’t deploying is the kind of human  resources that are needed to foster and develop online conversations. Why do most comments on news articles follow Godwin’s Law? Because there is little or no authentic conversational leaders. There is no human being making connections between people and ideas and, um, fact.

Just look at this recent survey of online journalists in North Carolina — online community management ranked as the skill that these editorial staffers said was least important to their jobs.

Here are my quick thoughts on how news organizations should begin to approach online comments.

• One Page: Building Community

The other One Page guides from this series can be found here.