Useless headlines

[hotshu]

Why does Hughesnet open with a series of suggested news stories, but when the user clicks on them, he is informed "page not found"?  If you are not providing access to these stories, why feature them?  This problem has escalated dramatically in just the past few days!

[maratsade]

What page or pages are these?  I've clicked on random news items on http://myhughesnet.hughesnet.com/ and all of them work. 

[maratsade]

I checked the ones you PMd me, and you’re right, they’re dead. I think it has to do with the news feed, which is provided by someone else and not HughesNet. I’m not sure if HughesNet can do anything about this, but the reps will be back on Monday and they may be able to do something, like contact their provider.

[GabeU]

I just tried a bunch and they all worked.  If they aren't, it's most likely that the address of the story changed or something of that nature.  I believe the stories are put on the page by an automated system, so it's likely that the problem is at the source rather than HughesNet.  

[maratsade]

I found one of the stories by going to the source, so I imagine it's possible that the source changed the URL and that the feed was trying to pull from the old URL.  Not sure if HN can do anything about that. 

[MarkJFine]

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@maratsade wrote:

I found one of the stories by going to the source, so I imagine it's possible that the source changed the URL and that the feed was trying to pull from the old URL.  Not sure if HN can do anything about that. 

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That happens a lot: The news aggregator scans a site, picks up a new post, adds the headline and URL to their RSS feed, which gets used to build the page that you see. Original news source decides to change the headline (typo, error, etc.) without keeping the URL the same (sometimes its automatically changed), and the aggregator doesnt pick up the change or new URL. You end up with a busted link appearing on the page. Oversimplifying the process, but that's basically it.

Happens to the site I work on with NewsNow all the time.

[maratsade]

This  must be exactly what happened when the OP was trying to access specific stories.  I only followed up on one of the titles s/he PMd me and ended up finding it by going to the source publication, but I bet the same happened to the others.   

Am I right in thinking Hughesnet can't do much, if anything at all, about this? 

[MarkJFine]

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@maratsade wrote:

Am I right in thinking Hughesnet can't do much, if anything at all, about this? 

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Absolutely nothing, because they have no control over the content of the RSS feeding the page, coming from the news aggregator. All comes down to the info that comes from the aggegrator's automated agents, scanning the web sites.

[chiquita]

been a hughes customer for many years and have noticed a decided decline in the content of the news ticker  

most of what is presented would be better suited for People magazine

do we subscribers have any way to influence this content?

[maratsade]

The company doesn't have control over the content of the newsfeed.  Not sure if they'd get any better stuff with other newsfeeds, but my guess is, it's unlikely.  

The way you can influence content is to select something else as your home page. It doesn't  have to be Hughesnet at all. You can select Google or anything else at all. 

*I am not a Hughesnet employee or representative. This is a customer-to-customer tech support community, and I am a customer.

[debbie.jean.bro]

Hi @chiquita!
I agree. I've never used HN as my homepage, but MS Edge does the same thing--all Hollywood gossip and click-bait.
Thus, my homepage is BBC News. If you want news to come up as your homepage, you can choose from the American usual suspects, i.e. NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, CNN, etc., or go to virtually any news provider in the world.