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In the below image, you can see two posts in The Overflow Blog. One of these is a written blog post, and the other is a podcast episode.

Currently, all content in the Blog has the pencil icon. I've found it confusing at times where I come across an interesting topic but cannot listen to a podcast at the time or read a transcript.

I feel like it would be clearer if the podcasts have a microphone icon, and articles/writeups could keep the pencil icon.

Overflow Blog Icons

(For reference, the podcast episode is "The evolution of full stack engineers".)

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  • 25
    There was a point in time where different types of entries had different icons. Would certainly be nice to have more appropriate icons so we can avoid clicking on ones that usually have no good content.
    – Kevin B
    Commented Sep 10 at 21:59
  • 31
    Indicating the actual content of the blog would ruin the click-through-rate. Which is a big no-no for the company. /s
    – Lino
    Commented Sep 11 at 10:31
  • 39
    Wait, there are non-podcast blog posts? I stopped clicking on them cause every time I did it was a podcast..
    – Magnie Mozios
    Commented Sep 11 at 14:07
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    @Lino isn't engagement also an important metric? I stopped clicking on the blogs because I'm tired of finding podcast episodes instead of articles, but if they had an icon that showed what the content of the blog was going to be, they might get more real engagement on their articles. It might also reveal how popular the podcast actually is as well.
    – MusicDev
    Commented Sep 11 at 19:27
  • 5
    FWIW I've never found either to be of much interest, or even useful, so changing icons would doubtfully change engagement beyond an initial "oh, what's this new icon... oh, same old crap... ignore". Since this change doesn't really affect me I suppose I'm not really against it, meh, it might be helpful to someone.
    – Drew Reese
    Commented Sep 11 at 21:43
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    UX remark, if this ever gets implemented: microphone and pencil look quite similar. Opting for e.g. loudspeaker and pencil would probably make them more distinguishable.
    – Mo_
    Commented Sep 12 at 5:57
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    I don't use SO blog and you don't give us examples, but I am guessing, if podcasts have no text to read, they may have title prefix "Podcast: " or something, rather than icons. @Lino, what's the point of click ratio if page is immediately closed? They should indicate type of content if there is a blog entry without text. Making vlog for videos (alog for audios?) is an option.
    – Sinatr
    Commented Sep 12 at 11:52
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    Personally I think the pencil should go away, it's typically used (in my experience) to indicate the option to edit. But either way I highly agree on the indication that an article ISN'T a podcast. I rarely (if ever) listen to those, but I'll read a blog post. I've stopped clicking them because 99% of the time it kept going to podcasts which I rarely have the opportunity/desire to listen to.
    – gilliduck
    Commented Sep 12 at 12:56
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    It would be nice if the blog sat in a box of its own and not together with the meta hot/featured posts. Then I could ad block the blog but still see the meta posts, which would be nice.
    – Lundin
    Commented Sep 13 at 9:00
  • 2
    @Mo_ I was picturing an icon like this: 🎙️
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Commented Sep 13 at 13:05
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    While we're fantasizing about UX improvements it would also be nice to differentiate the blog posts from native advertising posts
    – Connor
    Commented Sep 13 at 18:54
  • @Connor that used to be a feature too, it'd display "sponsored" underneath it.
    – Kevin B
    Commented Sep 16 at 20:23

1 Answer 1

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Yes.

I actually don't care if it's an icon change or some other kind of indicator, but there needs to be a way to differentiate text content from podcasts.

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