(Reposted with a more-appropriate title.)

I'm not a big fan of internet video in general - it's not yet something that the web is really good at. But I can sympathize with your reasons for starting Slate V. It lets your writers/correspondents/persona​lities become more than just a name on the page, it lets you do more things with stories about video content, it's a "step forward" in an industry that values "steps forward" regardless of actual usefulness.

I've even dropped in a few times to watch your features. Not bad, well-produced, reasonably in-depth in an NPR sorta way... but then I'm sorta an NPR guy so that rubs me the right way.

It's been occasionally annoying when the headline story at Slate was a SlateV piece, and I wasn't somewhere that I could watch, but it's only fair that the video wing gets top billing sometimes, particularly when it generates a worthy piece.

But today, with the placement of the actual video content on the Slate front page ... you've gone way out of bounds. Opening up a siteand getting a highish-quality video streamed automatically is bad front page design. Streaming sound automatically is just plain intolerable. It makes the Slate site: a) Not Safe For Work (where the boss at the next desk is going to *know* that you're goofing off) b) interfere with my WinAmp playback (now playing: Wolves in the Throne Room - a nice tipoff from your music editor whose name I forget for the moment) c) REALLY REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING - as in I'm going to stop coming back here if this continues. Just like I did with the Forbes site, which even puts audio ads on story pages. And NASCAR.com, though they seem to have ditched the auditory abuse in favor of multiple pop-unders.

"So turn off the sound before you come here." Yeah, right. You're not that special, that I'm going to go out of my way to compensate for your problems.

That the involuntary audio begins with a commercial is beyond the pale, but at the same time mostly irrelevant - audio of any sort on the front page is going to drive me away.

-Ked