The Australian 4+

News function is fine but shoddy work in some areas

App is very useful in terms of rolling news coverage and accessibility. It lets itself down however with some of the “subsidiary” areas such as mind games. Since the last update I can no longer access my daily rituals of crosswords and quizzes on the app, and have to go online which sort of defeats the purpose. Far to often these pages are not updated either, so you reach for the crossword over breakfast and it’s an old one. Small issue maybe, but enough to sour the experience. Forgivable if content was free, but when you pay a subscription, that’s pretty ordinary.

Comments section problem

The app provides a real point of difference to a printed version of the paper as it allows comments. The ability to read what other readers think and if you want make a comment takes this publication from a simple news paper to a much more community immersive experience. That in itself is reason to subscribe to the digital edition. The app has improved from a year ago and is now is usable. Thanks for that. The weak link in this digital edition however is the moderation of the comments. It is absolutely woeful. Even a complimentary post can be rejected because the moderator obviously doesn’t understand any nuance of the post. The comments by necessity, not to be rejected by the moderators have to be bland, vanilla, not thought provoking and boring. The moderators have certainly trained me to produce comments lacking any strength or insight. It is a shame because the comments are one of the great things about a digital edition of a paper. I am amazed when a reader slips a really good comment past the low threshold of moderator concern. The very thing that differentiates the digital edition from the paper version is being destroyed by moderation which is in some cases simply ridiculous. I hope they introduce AI soon to moderate the comments. At least it would be consistent and would not reject comments that are obviously very very conservative.

Developer Response ,

Hi, please try logging out and in again and the issue should be resolved. Apologies for the inconvenience. If that does not work please email tausappfeedback@news.com.au.
Rgds, the Australian

Link subscription to comments

Obviously something has changed with your app or with the Australian newspaper. I can no longer use the comments to reply to any of your articles if you’ve changed something would you like to tell all your readers or you may lose them? I don’t know how to link my subscription to comments so that means I can’t use the app on my iPhone In addition I tried on the desktop and the function doesn’t work at all. Ie I can’t reply I’m your comments section I’ve noticed this in the last few days Would somebody. suggest a solution And in addition, your NEWSPAPER has gone mad in that every article I tried to There are ads. Ads on top ads on the side ads in between paragraphs . Ads under the article It’s a very unpleasant experience to try and read the article in your Saturday AUSTRALIAN. I ended up turning off the computer. WHAT IS GOING WRONG WITH THIS PAPER??

Whoever is in charge of your layout, please let them know that whatever changes they’ve made the papers going backwards and quality
Quite a few weeks ago, somebody changed their comment section where you actually write in your comment. It’s not as good as it was retrograde move on the part of the designer I would say.
However, I can live with it, but I can’t live with the fact that every time I press the reply button to write in to the paper in regards to an article it doesn’t work