THE MONARCHY: some people love it, some people . . . not so much. Having its jubilee cake and eating it, Guardian.co.uklast weekend resurrected the "Republican?" homepage button it pioneered last year during its enthusiastic coverage of the royal wedding.

Click “Republican?” and all links to such items as Duchess of Cambridge-themed fashion galleries, analyses of the culinary quality of the Buckingham Palace picnic hampers and articles explaining why the queen is the best human being who has ever lived will magically disappear.

Click “Royalist?” if you later decide you want to keep up to date with Prince Philip’s bladder infection, or that the assorted jubilee fripperies are tolerable after all. Technically speaking, there’s no reason why news sites don’t adopt split personalities more often: Olympics agnostics and people with Leaving Certificate allergies, for example, might appreciate some mercy, while Irish news sites not bound by a dutiful instinct to inform people about national affairs could have made the “Mehferendum” tag their own.

On the one hand, it all risks ending up part of the ever- decreasing circle of news, where unfocused browsing is old-fashioned and the only headlines people ever see are ones they have, paradoxically, previously indicated that they want to see.

On the other hand, it’s a fun way for news sites to go all kitchen-sink on a story, yet acknowledge that not everyone wants to come along for the ride.