Slashdot Mirror
Interview: CmdrTaco and Hemos Tell All
1) Development issues
by dr_labrat
What important changes do you plan on making to the whole discussion thing?
Isn't it about time the moderation abuses and "first posters" are addressed?
Will we ever be able to moderate or score the articles themselves?
CmdrTaco:
I'm toying with removing anonymous moderation, but I'm concerned about the moderation becoming the topic instead of the topic. Maybe that's good.
I'm also looking into the idea of spinning off discussions repeatedly marked as 'offtopic' into a "Related Threads" sorta thing. Mainly I'm trying to encourage people to stay on topic, but also to allow people who want to move offtopic to be able to do so... but without cluttering up Slashdot for those who want things more ordered.
I also would like an internal messaging system so that the system can send users notes. This would be really useful so that the system could alert users that a comment they wrote had been replied to. Or maybe that they have just been meta moderated. And it would be fun for message passing too.
A lot of the other changes are backend: Optimizations to make it easier for us to post stories more efficiently. Right now we have 4 to 6 people working in the middle of the day, and we need better communication to make that work better.
- Isn't it about time the moderation abuses and "first posters" are addressed?
I think they are being addressed. Try reading at Score:2 and see how many first posts you see. Even at Score:0, the vast majority of First Post comments are caught minutes after they are posted. Moderation abuses happen, but they usually are caught.
- Will we ever be able to moderate or score the articles themselves?
I've been trying to figure out a clean way to generate a composite rating for articles, but it's tricky. I mean, what do I weigh into such a metric? It has to include traffic, comments posted, and average rating of posts, as well as some sort of rating of the Slashdot story itself. And then in the end, what do we have? "This story was a 6, but that story was a 9?" I don't think that it would really help.
Whenever I think about adding a feature I try to think about the problem it is trying to solve. I don't think this solves a problem. What would you use this new metric for? Setting your user preferences to say "I only want to read stories with a metric of 5?" That seems pretty pathetic since these numbers would have great fluctuation.
In the end, such a metric would be neat only to settle curiosity. I don't know if it would be useful so I don't know if its worth the work.
Wordy way of saying that I'll probably do something like that at some point, but since its only for curiosity, I don't see it ending up on the front burner for awhile.
Hemos:
We've been talking about a variety of issues - one of the things that's been tossed around is creating a system to let people know that their comments have been replied to. This would be an interesting addition, as I think it would promote longer discussions.
One of other areas that's been suggested is giving a way to look at how much comments have been moderated without having to look at the comments, like a scoring index or something. That'd be an interesting touch, if nothing else, to see how controversial particular comments are.
- Isn't it about time the moderation abuses and "first posters" are addressed?
I think that the revoking of auto-long comment bonus has done substantial work on that. My general feeling is that logging in and reading the comments at Threshold 1 goes a long way towards helping to sift out the abuse comments.
- Will we ever be able to moderate or score the articles themselves?
That's an interesting concept, but one that's difficult to implement. What do you take into account? Comments? Click-thrus to read the comments? Rating the story itself? And should the author be rated as well? Morever, what point does this accomplish? The same as reading comments, in that you don't read some below a certain level? But I don't agree that comments and stories are the same thing - I think that sometimes stories that wouldn't get much as much traffic, and thus a lower metric, should still get attention from readers.
So, long way of saying, yes, something could/will be done, but it's difficult to decide what exactly "it" is.
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2) Editorial Independence
by JordanH
Other media take steps to separate the Editorial from the business functions so as to maintain Editorial Independence.
What will Andover be doing to make sure we can continue to trust that Slashdot Editorial policy is not in thrall to advertisers' concerns?
Hemos:
Well, early on we had a couple struggles with that particular issue, but since they were settled things have been wonderful. They understand that we've got the vision for the site, and that if we compromise our vision Slashdot will suffer. They don't want Slashdot to suffer because it would hurt the amount of banner ads that can be sold on the site, plus the fact that they're simply being moral human beings.
Morever, we had a really good lawyer who worked with us on the deal. We've created a contractual situation to run things as we always have. Frankly, I don't like dealing with advertisers - even though I sold the banner ads for a while. It's not because I don't like selling the banner ads, but the notion of compromising is one that makes me squeamish inside.
I also get a huge amount of flame mail if anyone thinks we're compromising. Considering asbestos is hard to get your hands on these days, for my own self-protection I'll avoid it at all costs.
Closing: Basically, you need to trust us. You also need to tell us if you think it's happening. I don't think it will because of both Rob's and my non-desire for it, as well as, honestly, Andover's really good and sharp people, who actually have an understanding of Slashdot.
CmdrTaco:
Take our word for it? Part of the Slashdot contract with Andover guaranteed that Hemos & I would be given editorial control over Slashdot. Our editorial independance is very important... I had to explain this one a few times in the early days at Andover when sales folks would try to get me to post stories for advertisers. Once I explained the concept of integrity they backed off.
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3) Slash 0.4
by kuro5hin
For a long time now, those who want to use and improve the slashdot code have been wondering, and waiting, and hoping for the much promised 0.4 tarball. Many of them have in fact become quite irate about the lag between code releases, the lack of a CVS server, and the overall appearance that the slashdot gang doesn't practice what it preaches ("release early, release often"). How would you respond to these criticisms, and do you intend to change the development practices in any way in the future?
CmdrTaco:
I get a nice flamey email about once a week from some ass who calls me a hypocrite and slams me for not getting out a new release. My usual response is to tell them that I delay the release by 24 hours each time someone asks me when a new Slash tarball will be out.
Seriously, there are only 3 people who really know how much work a source release for this is: CowboyNeal, Patrick and Me. And the three of us have been working on a lot of stuff. As I write this, we are bugfixing and documenting and preparing for a source release. There is a private CVS server that one day soon will be publicly read only.
This isn't like other projects: it has been custom fit to our hardware and to our needs. It doesn't have install scripts or help or even comments in the code. We're just too busy to play tech support helping dozens of people compile mod_perl and tune Apache. We've decided to squash the bugs and make a clean release rather than rush it.
It's really easy for someone to complain that I didn't release a new version of the source code every week. Its also easy to forget that in the last 6 months we've doubled in traffic and we've had to optimize our code and hardware to handle that. A new source release is secondary: Our job is running Slashdot. We want to release new versions of Slash, but it is a definite second priority to keeping Slashdot moving.
Finally, it's coming soon. It'll be out when its finished. And if you ask me again I'll postpone it again.
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4) Meta-Moderation
by Royster
How well is Meta-Moderation working? What pergentage of Meta-Mods are unfair? Do you think that it has improved Moderation on /.?
Hemos:
I still meta-moderate on occasion, although the percentage of time that I do it has been dropping off. Why? Because in the beginning I was rating at least a few unfairs in every screenful, but at this point the percentage of unfairs I rate has really dropped off. I think that's a credit to the readers, really. We had huge numbers of people going through and rating the moderators, and we eliminated quite a number of moderators. The number of fairs is well north of the 90% range.
CmdrTaco:
Informally I've gone in and meta moderated myself several times over the last few months and found the percentage of bad moderations dropping. When I started, every page of 10 M2 moderations I loaded had a couple of unfairs on it. These days I can occasionally load a page and get only fair moderations. I definitely think M2 has improved Slashdot.
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5) Critical Person Insurance
by jsm2
How crucial are the two of you to Andover's vision of /.? Do you have a clause like Charles Schultz' that says that nobody else can edit slashdot? What happens if the whole thing stops being fun for you (as it very well might)? Do Andover suck in the loss, or do we get introduced to "Scrappy-Doo and SuperGeek, the ALL NEW slashdot crew"? Has Andover.net taken out critical person insurance on you in case something dreeadful happens? Could they, in principle, fire your asses, or force you to resign on matter of principle?
CmdrTaco:
Our contract says we're staying at Andover for quite awhile, and I'm cool with that. I spent 2 years tailoring a job to be exactly what I wanted to do, and now Andover pays me every other week to continue doing it. As long as I'm involved with Slashdot, I have creative control. And they can't fire us without 'just cause'. And we have a good lawyer! So I'm not really concerned about that.
Hemos:
Well, as I said before, we've got a really nice contract. Rob and I are both on contract with Andover for quite some time yet - it's over 2 years that we are going to be there. Frankly, both of us really like it here and wouldn't want to go anywhere else. Our jobs involve doing what we love to do. As for the insurance question - yes. That's under control.
Like I was saying above, Andover recognizes how critical we and our vision of Slashdot are to Slashdot itself, and that makes for a good working situation. That, and we can only be fired for just cause, which as far as I can figure means that I need to be convicted of a felony, shoot Rob, or reshape Slashdot into an interpretative dance site.
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6) One for all those grrls out there...
by kimflournoy
After going back and reading the archives from After Y2K, I have only one question, which I'm sure many of the women around here would like the answer to as well:
When will we finally see the "Men of /." pinup calendar at Think Geek?
Hemos:
I think the black-market calender has already surfaced on eBay. If I remember correctly, that's the shaved-and-baby-oil calender. The other, the one with the motorcycle picture, has been sighted as far as Beta Teugue and as close as 7-11.
CmdrTaco:
Just as soon as someone decides to start randomly gimping my face onto pictures of the hunks from Baywatch or something. Quite frankly, my real body ain't quite pinup-worthy, but with a little doctoring I could be super hunky.
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7) Personal life?
by Mark A. Storer
I guess this is a question for both of you:
How's life in meatspace?
Lets just lay all technical issues aside for a moment. I want to know Who You Are, as people, not webmasters.
We have a pretty good idea of the comings and goings of your professional lives, but what about your friends, family, and groupies?
Mmmm... groupies.
CmdrTaco:
Thats a big question for a little interview, isn't it?
I think anyone who reads Slashdot (or who has read Slashdot since Chips and Dips) has a really good idea of what I'm into: Linux, Hacking, Movies. CmdrTaco.Net shows a lot of my art. I'm into ceramics. I spend my free time with my girlfriend, who also is a homebody. I watch South Park and the Simpsons and the X-Files. I obsessively play my guitar whenever I possibly can (and drive hemos nuts: I keep my Les Paul in the office and play it far too loud whenever possible). I don't leave the house very often (I've put 2,200 miles on my car in the last 6 months) except to go to the airport for conferences. Most of my friends live here at the geek compound too.
Hemos:
Frankly, I've had the best year of my life. Slashdot's been doing really well, which makes me happy. I'm going to be getting married in June (24th, for all you wedding present purchasers. :)) and have moved comfortably into psuedo-parenthood of my fiancee's daughter.
At some point in the next six months I'll probably be moving. There's a couple of places in mind right now, one East, in the Boston area, while Ann Arbor, MI is also a contender.
Besides my recent housefire, I've had a really good year. I work with some of my closest friends, and have had more time recently go out hiking and spend time in the room-with-blue-ceiling. I think I'll be taking a vacation sometime in the next few months and may not even bring a computer.
Plus, Moby released "Play" which is one of the best albums ever.
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8) What About the Slashdot Story Submission Queue?
by nullspace
I think it would be interesting to be able to view the story submission queue. That is, what type of stories are being submitted, which stories are being rejected and why, and other interesting trivia. Would you allow users to be able to view this queue, and if not, why?
Hemos:
One comment: Having us write rejections is probably impossible. I've tried to do the math, but considering the sheer amount of submissions we get, the people-power to write the rejection reasons won't work. Perhaps as a drop-down box, but still - we're dealing with hundreds per day.
CmdrTaco:
This is in the FAQ dammit! I don't wanna answer it again! Thats what the FAQ is FOR! AAAAGGHHH!
Seriously, there are a lot of reasons that it would make sense to do this. Unfortunately there are a lot of reasons not to do this too. The reason is abuse. If you saw some of the crap that gets submitted, you'd understand. Besides that, I don't want the submissions bin to be littered with noise like "First Post" and "Meept". We're already really busy sifting through 300 odd submissions each day, and we don't need it to be a game.
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9)What happened to browser and os stats?
by John Ratke
There used to be a slashdot page where we could see the daily hit count by browser and OS. While sometimes depressing (2/3's browsing from Windows!), it was very interesting. Is there any chance we will see this again? Is this now information that you feel you need to keep private for some reason? What about the number of registered slashdot users? Could we find that out?
CmdrTaco:
I stopped logging it. I could stick it back in someday, but since I wasn't logging browser info, I couldn't generate those numbers. Maybe we'll do that again someday. Its fun trivia if nothing less.
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10)DeCSS
by Col. Klink (retired)
The DVDCA named /. as a John Doe in the DeCSS case. Will you guys be personally fighting this battle, or letting others? Will you be donating $ to EFF to help fight this battle?
Hemos:
We aren't personally fighting this. Because the case is based in Santa Clara, and Rob starts gibbering whenever he's taken outside, we won't be doing shuttle commuting to the hearings. Chris DiBona has been keeping an eye on it, and Andover's lawyers are obviously interested in what's going on. I think because of our corporate involvement in it, we won't be contributing money to the EFF, but will be using our own resources to help in the fight.
I think after the upcoming Jan. 14 hearing we'll take stock of where things are then, and if the situation is such that we need to get personally involved, than by all means.
CmdrTaco:
I don't really know what we're gonna do quite yet. As it stands, I really don't think they have much of a case: the First Amendment gives us freedom of speech. It means we can talk about things. It means we can share information. And it means that simply talking about a piece of code is no more illegal then talking about how you feel about Chechnya or how your Senator voted on something.
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11) One Definitive Day
by Effugas
It seems like whenever we embark on some crazy job, there ends up being one day we always remember, one set of circumstances that we could never have experienced without beginning that journey but never have predicted in advance.
Since the creation and subsequent explosion of Slashdot, what one day stands out in your mind as the most randomly odd of them all?
CmdrTaco:
I can't pick just one. Here are the most critical:
1. The day Mozilla's Open Source announcement hit. Many people were crediting Slashdot along with ESR for the big news. It was definitely a defining moment, and a major publicity thing. We doubled our traffic in the following weeks. That was when the mainstream media started skimming Slashdot for story ideas.
2. The day I quit my "Real" job and started work on Slashdot full time. I was freaked out for a week.
3. The night I changed the moderation system from 20-odd people to 500 people with a single database query. I knew that it was a major step towards creating a scalable system to encourage group discussion.
Hemos:
I think there's a few times that really stand out:
-One of them is the Hellmouth series. The post-Columbine writing really brought an outpouring of writing and people to Slashdot, as well as a lot of attention from the outside world.
-The Mozilla Story was one of our first stories that really got a lot of the outside world interested in Slashdot and what we were doing. This was probably our first stepping stone to building what we've currently got.
-Comments. The day that comments really started is when this whole sense of community really developed. Without comments, this interview wouldn't exist, and this site would not be what it is today.
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12) More "News for Nerds" Please...
by djohnsto
While others have commented on the degrading S/N ratio of the user comments, I would like to bring attention to the degrading S/N ratio of the stories.
I believe Slashdot got much of its "mature" geek following back when most of the headlines were apolotical in nature. A couple years ago, the biggest threads were generated while discussing new microarchitectures, physical limits of the lithography process, the size of the universe, and other *real* high-tech news.
Since the stories were less subject to political debate, the S/N ratio was good. Now, the only "tech" stories are about nanotech (thanks hemos!) or the Aibo.
With Andover.net now owning Slashdot, am I just SOL? I know that most of the stories are going to be Linux/GPL/Open Source related, and that's fine. But please, Please, *PLEASE*, don't forget that many of your readers are well educated, and would like to spend time thinking about something new and exciting in the tech world rather than reading 500 posts ending with M$ $ucks...
Hemos:
Thanks for the nanotech props. I love my nanites, as everyone well knows. It's a hard question to answer, though. I guess I think that there's stories that go up that I wouldn't really want to be on there. That's been an on-going struggle to define what we want to appear and what we don't want to appear. Remember, as well, that we are limited by what people submit to us, so we're choosing from that bin. We've been trying to do less on the main page, and more in the sections - like YRO, Apache, BSD, and now a Science section.
I'm open to suggestions as to how to keep that up - and please, submit all the stuff that you think is good signal - but remember that it might be someone else's noise.
CmdrTaco:
I don't think what we've posted has significantly changed in the last few years... I think that what happens is that each person only remembers the stories that mattered most to them. The brain has a fuzzy compression algorithm... so the thing that you remembered as being the best on Slashdot was microarchitecture and lithography... but I get email from other people complaining that we should post less of that sort of stuff and more about Linux "Like it used to be" when Slashdot never was just about Linux... they apparently are just remembering the Linux stories with more clarity.
The facts are that we post what people submit. If nothing cool happens in an area, then nothing gets posted. If nobody submits when something cool happens, well, then it won't get posted.
But when the sun sets, we've posted 10 to 15 stories that we think are interesting and we hope you do too. We've done this 8000 times (I've posted over four thousand stories alone!) in the last 2.5 years. Sometimes they're all good. Sometimes there are a few that aren't so hot. Other times so much cool stuff happened that we just couldn't squeeze it all in. But in a year, you're only going to remember the stories that hit you the hardest.
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Tomorrow: Steve Wozniak answers.
Shouldn't the text at the bottom of this page say "Tomorrow: Steve Wozniak answers?"
With such a crappy attitude
like that, My respect for CmdrTaco disappeared.
he actually had your respect? he's nothing but a two-faced prick.
Release the code and set a policy - sorry no direct tech support with $$$. Isn't that where the money is in open source ? Tech Support.
I have a feeling that someone is afraid that Slashdot customer base is fragil. Some "college student" might start an alternate to Slashdot with better Journalism or cater to smaller niche interests and steal market share.
At any rate they will release the code someday for the same reasons every corporation is considereing or experimenting with Open Source. If they don't, someone will develop a Open Source alternative and "slash" their proprietary advantage.
There are plenty of other software groups out there that are doing the same damn thing. It's Rob's code, and this is Rob's site. Don't like it? Find some place else to haunt, wanker.
If you're so hot for your own slashdot ripoff and JUST CAN'T WAIT for Rob, then go install Squishdot and stop griping. Sheesh.
You call yourself 'FascDot', you continually bitch and moan about Slashdot's comments, stories and EVERYTHING, and yet you still hang out here. Why? Do you like bitching publicly? Are you looking for an audience or something? You're the biggest whiner on this site.
I think you are exaggerating for effect, since I do not think 19 out of every 20 posts carry some form of anti-MS sentiment, but it is there, and it is something alot of Slashdot readers have in common. A general affection for Linux is also something alot of Slashdot readers, but not all, have in common. When these things are taken into account, these things you have observed might be expected. This is the environment that exists and I really would not expect it to change for you, no matter how old you think it's getting (especially since you are an AC, like myself). The most important thing, I think, is for posters with criticisms to be diplomatic. If you are not, people will discount and complain about your opinion rather than be swayed by it. It is a lesson many on Slashdot need to learn, and they probably will in time. Have the happiest day possible, your friend, AC
I get sick everytime there is Slashdot article "oh uh xyz Corp is not doing Open Source right".
It would be like an organization for racial equality hiring only member from a specific race or ethnic group.
You say in your interview you are soon going to have a "read-only" cvs server to post slash on. Doesn't it seem odd that a site that stands for open source to many people, won't let users contribute code? I think that the messaging system for replies to Comments is a great idea, and I would really love to help implement it, but...
He seems alright from what I've read, but what a jerk for not releasing the /. code and making up excuses about it...
Another site that comes to mind with the same attitude on releasing their backend code is freshmeat. Go figure.
Dickweed. God's teeth man, get some balls!
ok, please stop with the annoying bitches about 'i want the source code. and your not being very open source.'
what would you rahter have:
slow slashdot with many tarball releases.
-or-
fast slashdot with very few releases.
i find it disappointing how people always have something to bitch about.
This is the same redundant, trolling, flamebaiting drivel that you've posted offtopic to ever fucking thread for weeks. Either use your name and show us real code to do whatever the fuck you're talking about, or else blow it out your ass. We're tired of seeing your same old shit every place we look.
This is the same redundant, trolling, flamebaiting drivel that you've posted offtopic to ever fucking thread for weeks. Either use your name and show us real code to do whatever the fuck you're talking about, or else blow it out your ass. We're tired of seeing your same old shit every place we look.
It can be a fine line between open source and giving your baby away.
Moderate this up!!! This is a hilarious insight into the hypocrisy that pervades both the users and administrators of Slashdot. If any other company/organization doesn't release source, such as [Insert large corporation here], Slashdotters go nuts and flame away. But to dare to criticize CmdrTaco's "I'm too busy to make the source understandable to your simple minds, so I'll only release an obselete version" policy??? Instant "flamebait" or "troll" moderation.
"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;
Words without thoughts never to heaven go."
_Hamlet_, Act 3, Scene 4, 102-103
It doesn't matter whether the Slashdot code is placed under the GPL. This is server-side stuff: CGI programs and whatnot. Even if the GPL were applied, they wouldn't have to give away the source changes. They are not distributing it! Plus they can do a lot more with a non-GPL'd version.
It's almost incomprehensible to me that this got marked as a troll. I mean, jeez, anything that is not 110% in line with The Dogma (even humorously so) is perceived as a troll? This is the kind of thinking that drove me away from the Linux community in the first place, 2 years ago. :(
When can the readership expect Roblimo to be out of the Slashdot editorial process?
Here are the accusations:
1. This guy will post anything.
2. He's almost always got some psuedo whitty thing to say.
3. He's a groupie goodness sakes.
4. He's not nearly hip enough to be on the slashdot editorial team.
5. We're all really quite jealous of him, and we think we're much better qualified than he is...
First, in any open-source project, only managing the source, the patches and the bug-fixes submitted is a lot of work. You don't get any work done yourself, only managing the incoming stuff.
The thing to realize is that Slashdot itself is like an open-source project: people download the code (stories), submit patches (more stories, comments), and the people running this have to sift through all that and apply the relevant bug-free patches (good stories, moderation).
Opening the code in a public CVS would mean another level of patches and mangement for CmdrTaco, Hemos and al. Like they said, the code is tailored for their setup, has no easy grip handles to play with, and has bugs. Thus a CVS would bring a on-slaught of patches.
So let's cut them some slack. Once the code is in a CVS, it will be there for good. (right? right???? )
You're in a twisting maze of patches, all different.
who the hell mark this as a troll?!?
that was second funniest thing i read today only behind the matrix spoof in the quickies.
hahaha...Now Malda will ban you for life. What an ass.
Quite frankly, if I were to re-do Slash, i'd certainly start with a clean slate for starters. And definetly not GPL it, just so it doesn't end up running this site... Just as his license reads "you must use my logo" mine would read "this may not be used by the following people and entities." But besides that, it'd be GPL'ed.... kinda like the license around here.
Linus releases whole kernels faster than rob can get a source release out... And he handles 15 megs of source rather than 0.3's 65k....
No... Slashdot and Andover are just about on the same plane as LinuxOne, so far as business legitamacy goes. And as far as holding up the opensource ideals? forget it...
And yes... I come here... i read... participate... and complain... that's the wonder of a free society.
A) Yes. You can set your threshold to anything you like while moderating. I always throught this was wrong and there should be a mechanism to only make your points useable at -1.
B) Many moderators, myself included (shame on me) just don't bother to read AC posts at all. Why? I'm not sure. It does have a lot to do with the grits/portman/first post thing but IMO its more that since moderators have to be logged-in users, we tend to pay more attention to our fellow logged-in users since we choose to be non-anonymous and identify with others who make the same choice.
I'm sure this seems stupid, but it's human nature, and we're only human afterall.
If you've ever looked at the Slashdot code itself, you'd know why they don't release it. It needs to be *completely* thrown out and rebuilt from scratch. This isn't the fault of Rob or Perl or anything else. It's the fault of shipping the prototype. This needs serious design work and careful coding. It's just a hack on a hack right now. I'm not trying to insult anyone. I'm a professional perl programmers. I've got 50,000-line systems in production use for mission-critical enterprise-wide applications, all in perl, with oracle and cgi tie-ins. It's not that it can't be done. It just has be designed. Never ship a prototype. Always rewrite twice.
It's not clear what should be server side, what client side. NNTP would help.
Here's a cluepon: learn to spell.
Many people have mentioned PHPlib and phpslash as alternatives to slash. Another option is the newly formed DOINS system. There is some GPLed code already up at their anonymous CVS site that is there for the grabbing and using and hacking on.
The huge software industry we enjoy today is due in no small part to the HATED microsoft. I like how everyone says "blah blah LIES, CORRUPTION, INFERNAL COMPUTATIONS blah blah is what microsoft is built upon" and then they don't give any concrete examples. You think microsoft is bad? Hardly, their business practices are child's play compared to the likes of Standard Oil and Carnegie Steel. And what about Intel? Their business practices are just as bad, if not worse, than Microsoft's, yet on Slashdot, they're still heralded as "a good company". I just want one of you linux Zealots to admit it's a holy war. (BTW: I like linux, i've used linux, but since I'm a gamer, it's not really an OS I can use) --AC
The huge software industry we enjoy today is due in no small part to the HATED microsoft. I like how everyone says "blah blah LIES, CORRUPTION, INFERNAL COMPUTATIONS blah blah is what microsoft is built upon" and then they don't give any concrete examples. You think microsoft is bad? Hardly, their business practices are child's play compared to the likes of Standard Oil and Carnegie Steel.
And what about Intel?
Their business practices are just as bad, if not worse, than Microsoft's, yet on Slashdot, they're still heralded as "a good company".
I just want one of you linux Zealots to admit it's a holy war.
(BTW: I like linux, i've used linux, but since I'm a gamer, it's not really an OS I can use)
--AC
- with the current set up, many banner ads. While I'm sure most Slashdotters are smart enough to install junkbuster, there's still a lot of money to go around to Andover, Rob, Hemos and da crew. Sorry if this is sounding too negative, I mean I guess they have to make money somehow (how else would the do it without banner ads?)
- with the current set up, we have this moderation mess. All decent protocols (IRC, NNTP, email) allow filtering, etc. to be done client-side. For example, I tend to find grits-down-my-pants and Natalie-Portman-guy funny, while I find Signal 11 and whores quite annoying. I'd like to be able to sort by "Lowest Score First", but with the current set up, this is actually impossible. Given the client some control would be nice
- NNTP doesn't have support for moderation (or karma -- thank God). Some people would like to sort by highest score first; I'd like to sort by lowest score first; this is all impossible unless you have support for moderation points
I suppose they could make some new protocol similar to NNTP, but then you get the yet-another-protocol problem (try to count how many protocols have been made that just combine UNIX talk and FTP).Randm side note: The day I left my last job, I reformatted the HDD before I left. That must've thrown the manager for a loop. :)
Another point -- why are Windows users attacked on /.? This isn't just a Linux message board, even if Rob was included in Linux Journal's list of people to watch in Y2K. Windows users are not just the people the "dummies books" were written for. Gamers can't dump Windows because it's the most-used current gaming OS, and developers can't dump Windows because of the sheer number of other Windows users (a dev just starting out without good rep will not make a living only coding for UNIX clients). And countless others, including myself, realize that to run a succesful busness today, you have to at least dual-boot, because what can you do on a Linux box if your PHB client sends you an Excel file? Give the M$ minions a break. Everyone already knows that Windows is about as stable as nitroglycerin. Get over it. Stop whining about Windows crashing and go do what Linus did: write your own fscking OS!
- The_Messenger, posting as AC, from a Win95 box in DC (cool, i'm an AC in DC... AC/DC? bad pun, I know, but I do try.)
Could we please have an option to disable the animated GIFs? It makes Slashdot unreadable for those of us with ADD.
Looks like it's time to get ourselves a new slashdot.... backspacedotcom.net, anybody?
Please add a file upload button for posting comments. That way we could edit the posting in our favorite htm editor in a private file. Typing into a diminuitive textarea widget is absolutely pessimal.
Could we please have a tag so that we can choose our own font sizes and colours and faces?
Also, I'd like to be able to retrieve all postings by a given user, not just the last fifty.
Thank you.
Could we please have a way to CC ourselves so we can keep a copy of our postings? Maybe we should be able to CC the person we're replying to, too, but that's a different matter.
Why will the CVS server only be publicly readable? Why not writable? This IS Open Source, right? Or are we going to Opaque Source?
Socialism only works with nigh-constant propagandizing. If you read anything by Karl Marx you will find out that he explains the actions of the Open Source community exactly. Go ahead and flame, Linux-lovers, but it is a fact. You can say you hate socialism and just love Open Source, but you can't deny that Karl Marx laid down all of these practices years ago and that the community follows them to a T.
Just wondering when you'll see that Katz is yankin' you all around by the penis.
If you have a private messaging system on your site, why haven't you posted the source code so the Slashdot guys can steal it?
I invite you to tell me how video games are not "real games". I play Quake with real people all the time. At least I assume they are real people. I suppose technically it could be a bunch of AIs, that come from the CRAZY A.I. SOURCE, but I think I'm playing with real people.
I play scrabble, charades, chess, checkers, I don't play monopoly because it's idiotic. I play Trivial Pursuit. But I also play Quake 3: Arena, Unreal Tournament, Homeworld, Age of Empires 2, Starcraft... what's wrong with that?
I'll freely admit that I haven't been part of any organization since 1976. Of course, I was born in 1978 so....
And the term gamer has come to mean someone who plays video games in a big way. It's time for you to come to the 90s with the rest of us.
What a pair of self-righteous prigs. I've only been reading /. for about a year, so I'd like to ask if they have always been this arrogant or if it's just the Andover money going to their heads.
All this shit about moderating and meta-moderating and karma points and brownie points sucks. I always read at -1 because I don't want to miss the funniest posts just because some Taco butt kisser has moderated them down.
Don't you guys see - they're trying to "rate" you just like the doorman at some exclusive disco deciding who is cool enough to come in.
Slashdot is not fast at all. I usually have to wait a minute for the page to render after the banner appears. Perhaps this is the power of Linux at work?
What damage can your karma suffer other than 3 points? And what is the advantage to hoarding your karma other than you eventually get a +1 bonus? And if you're making worthy comments wouldn't that just bounce back if you lost it? Personally I don't agree with you that mailbombing is the way to go, but it is an interesting proposition.
Posted AC b/c I don't have an account.
The Slashdot gang are getting paid a LOT of money for what they do here. Yeah, open source is a great idea, but giving away a product with the value of Slashdot is like the farmer giving away the farm. It all comes down to dollars and cents. Andover paid a lot of money to own Slashdot. They are in it to make money. Yes, they are into Open Source, but would they want to give away the code to their best asset? I wouldn't think so. In my opinion, it is the software that drives Slashdot that makes it a worthwhile place to visit. Most of the stories are taken from other web sites, so the real value lies in discussion and comments - the part the software provides. (Don't get me wrong, I do find value in the stories that the editors select, but 90%+ are from external sources, so Slashdot as a web site doesn't have a lot of news you can't read elsewhere.) Think along these lines: Every other news site out there is a potential or actual competitor for Slashdot. If Slashdot makes its best asset to everyone else, it wouldn't be too long before someone does them one better. Also, if I was an investor in Andover stock, I don't think I'd like the idea that the company I invested in was giving away the companies critical business edge. Of course, this is my opinion, but the way I see it, I wouldn't ever expect to see a reasonably good Slash release EVER again. Brian (bteeter@mgfairfax.rr.com)
I would just point out that he not only didn't whine,( and his question was picked as one of the elite to be answered), he didn't express any anti-LINUX or pro-MS sentiments at all.
Sheesh.
FOR GOD'S SAKE - GIVE ME KARMA.
AND LETS HAVE THE CRAPPY PERL SOURCE CODE, TOO.
Uh, no. Slashdot is not people. Soylent Green is people.
>> I have looked at various hosting places and ?>> they don't exactly do anything of this nature >> cheaply. I hope it's not bad to toot my own horn, but the company I work for has at least one client that I know of running the slashdot code and our only hosting plan is $9.95/month. It's at http://www.phpwebhosting.com/ All linux, with php3 and mysql included with every account. Again, I don't mean to self-promote(this is the first post I've every put our url up in) but it does seem relevant. -Jack
>> I have looked at various hosting places and ?>> they don't exactly do anything of this nature >> cheaply.
I hope it's not bad to toot my own horn, but the
company I work for has at least one client that
I know of running the slashdot code and our
only hosting plan is $9.95/month.
It's at http://www.phpwebhosting.com/
All linux, with php3 and mysql included with
every account.
Again, I don't mean to self-promote(this is the
first post I've every put our url up in) but
it does seem relevant.
-Jack
hahahha "less-than-perfect server-design?!?!"
try "Fischer-Price My First MySQL Project"
but it works anyway. most of the time.
>What an ass.
Who? Malda?
Talk about idiot moderators...
Linux is completely nonstandard. Look at how shitty its dot-two conformance is.
They should post some of the stuff out of Science News, the weekly. It has some bits online.
Well, Gnumeric can read an Excel file!
BASTARDS HAVE BOTHERED TO GIVE
UPDATE, OR SOMETHING ELSE TO SHOW THEM THEY
DID THE RIGHT THING?
I've been trying to make sense out of some of these arguments about Open Source software, but I can't. How does declaring a project or program as "Open Source" dictate the release schedule the developers have to follow?
Yes, or you think Andover.Net isn't who BOUGHT the whole site? If they don't want to see X here, they'll certainly talk to the /. guys to don't announce it. Unfortunatelly it's happening a lot since the acquisition.
Alright guys.. maybe you should read up on exactly how MySQL *is* licensed. If you just want to use it to run your slashdot site, EVEN if it's commercial, you are not required to purchase a license. The only time when you must purchase a license is if you are wanting to sell *access* to the MySQL server.. like if you are a web hosting company and you want to be able to offer MySQL access to your customers for like $9.95/mo (refer to the phpwebhosting.com posts).
We use MySQL here where I work, and it is only used in the dynamic creation of web sites, therefor we were not required to purchase a license (we did anyway, just to support MySQL). So this really is a non-issue.
ftp> site chmod 644 test.php3
under AIX. Is Windows' ftp client really so broken that it can't change file permissions at all?
AC
Face it, people will grab the source and look for ANY little bugs in it they can find to use it to break slashdot. Security through obscurity isn't good, but if you don't have the time to clean up your code then closed source is better than letting everyone in the world poke their nose into your buggy source code.
To the moderators who keep on marking posts like this down,
GET A CLUE
Obviously if multiple people liked it enough to mark it up then you will get hosed in Meta Moderation. I Meta Moderate almost every day. There is a good chance I'll mark your moderation as unfair myself.
Instead of trying to knock down posts you don't like spend you points on finding interesting ones. I almost never mark those as unfair.
Winblowz doesn't have permissions. It's a libertine nincompoop.
Siwwy Twoll! Twigs is for squibs!
Incredible.You are using the fact that /. has evolved into something great and brought profit to cmdrTaco and Hemos to con them into doing what YOU (or everyone) wants them to do.
There's a new Slashdot-like site (or "Mini-Slashdot" as the author puts it) at www.guidelight.f2s.com, built in PHP. The guy claims he will release the source soon.
MRR
With Andover.net now owning Slashdot, am I just SOL? I know that most of the stories are going to be Linux/GPL/Open Source related, and that's fine. But please, Please, *PLEASE*, don't forget that many of your readers are well educated, and would like to spend time thinking about something new and exciting in the tech world rather than reading 500 posts ending with M$ $ucks...
I totaly agree. We should see more science on slashdot. I think everyone in the science community that read slashdot should start posting more stories.
I was reading ALL those massive comments and something stroke me. Being a relative new /. reader, I have been amazed at the amount of people complaining and whining and moaning and bitching about the /. crew. When I was at the end of the comments, I found this one. I TOTALLY AGREE WITH THIS COMMENT. Whoever doesn't, as was mentioned by that comment, the door is here.
Since the GPL is already hypocritical, two wrongs might make a right.
There are no GPL violations: code is not being distributed!
It's just not very good code. It needs a groundup rewrite. The only code that *I* don't release is the stuff I'm embarrassed by. Stop beating on Rob. He's probably ashamed at how lame the code is. We've all written lame code. For God's sake, man, it was a prototype that grew a hundred heads and escaped!
It doesn't matter whether it's GPL'd. Can't you get that through your pointy little head? It's not being distributed. It's benig used. THEY DO NOT HAVE TO GIVE YOU THEIR FUCKING CODE! As for "extra restriction", that's not an issue either. They are allowed to modify the GPL to apply it to their own software.
And don't you know how to use tools? Just run it through spell or ispell to find most typos. Of course, spelling errors are missed, but that's what your brain is for. You didn't misplace that, did you?
Spelling is easy. Typing is hard. :-(
BTW, you misspelled "manually".
That dude makes a lot of sense...
Nuff said
Learning Perl, 2nd Edition
nsa.gov? I'll take that :-) Actually, I would reccomend simply going with one of the slashdot clones, squishdot I think is one, and contributing whatever you have to that. Or, dare I say it-FORK off of the old code. IIRC that's why the GPV^hL (I guess GNU is good after all) preserves that right.
/. workalike out there. Perhaps it's time to look in that direction, folks.
Please note I'm making assumptions here, that above said programs are released under the GPL. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Also go do a search on Freshmeat.orgy for "slashdot". I seem to remember more than one
Just try sending him a suggestion or two and find out for yourself. There's no need to be polite when you've got a million dollar web site to run.
That's 10 Hail Richards and 4 Our Viruses.
Ok "Simon". You've had your fun now. Go back in your closet and whip your pud to the framed picture of Bill. Having a Micro$oft apologist on Slashdot is like having a neo-Nazi attend a Holocaust surviors' meeting...
you are the Luser. take your MS propaganda and go somewhere else...
you are the Luser. take your MS propaganda and go somewhere else...
Seems to be the other posters who are posting the propaganda...
I got one for anyone who can answer it...
CUCHIFRITOS
Does anyone know what these things are? I've seen several signs in restaurant windows here in Orlando, but I want to know if they're actually good before stopping in to eat some...
Strange I can hear somebody saying : What , open up windows source code ? Do you know how stupid the users are ? The same guys who have made Linux a hit !!!!!!
I don't think that people are thinking quite of the same thing about article moderation, as this interview suggests. I think it would be best if every logged in user could moderate articles up or down, except that they couldn't be deligated to -1 land. A voting system would be an interesting metric, eg: I though this article was 5 - excellent, 4 - great, 3 - ok, 2 - so-so, 1 - bad, 0 - really bad. Logged in users could browse at whatever rating they wanted.
Just a thought.
"Of course, the last sentence of your post speaks for itself and proves my point!"
That was a
STOP THE HYPE TRUTH MUST BE TOLD HERE !!!
Anti-trust law was created because of them. Standard oil sold oil at less than cost until other companies died off, then jacked prices up. (one example)
When I moderate I always have my setting at -1, nested (saves all that clicking and waiting when following threads), oldest first. I always moderate up, never down. I specifically seek out deeply nested or badly moderated comments.
- The_Messenger, AC in DC
(Hey, now that Sun has fscked up Java, they'll need to make their money *somewhere*. I wanted to them keep it with the standards committee, dammit!)
If Microsoft were, ahem, really looking to dominate the market, they'd release UNIX versions of MS Office. But that will never happen, because that would mean that using another OS is acceptable to Master Bill.
And about the Linux comment, I *know* we have Linux. And it is Good. My point to people was stop complaining about Windows, and write your own OS if you think you're so special. :) Thank god for Linux...
- The_Messenger, AC in DC
1) ImageVue comes with Windows 98. It does simple photo editing, it scans too.
2) You can shift + right click on a file to get the open with menu that will let you open a file with any applicatoin or simply reassociate it.
3) You and your dad must be a couple of dumb fucks if it took you 3 hours to do what I can in about 2 minutes.
The most popular open source web site on the Internet saying open source is to much trouble.
FUCKING CLASSIC.
Why don't all you whiny "rob sux cause he won't give us the source" wannabes just get off your butts and write your own? THESE TWO OWE YOU NOTHING. They are NOT selling the code in any way, shape or form. If they were your "but it's supposed to be GPL" might hold some water but as it stands, you are looking for a handout so YOU don't have to DO anything. You make me sick to my stomach. These two provide a forum and YOU waste picking nits because YOU don't get "the code" handed to you on a platter. If I was the slashdot boys, you'd never see the code, as I would license it under the "this is not for the lazy snivellers" license, just like the "moron-free" license we developed some time back. feh, feh. Idiots.
the best game of all
PostgreSQL may have more features, but for many uses, it's simply too slow.
By feeding this MS Troll, you are simply encouraging it to hang around and post more of it's moronic nonsense. Ignore the trolls. Let the moderators put them down to -1 where they belong.
please be so kind as to shut your cunt hole.
E-mail? is that the best way to go.
/. more than once a day, and rarely reply to my replies in a timely manor.
I guess it should be in user preferences, since some who post a lot may not want this feature, but I would prefer to get and ICQ message.
Your comment "blah blah" has been repied to.
sent as a url to your comment.
I agree that this would provoke longer discussions and could be a VERY good thing for Slashdot. I know personally that I don't read
If they wanted help, they'd free their software.
People who only release "finished" code don't want to share the burden of finishing it. In other words, they aren't part of an open source community.
God, no, this place is slow enough (why did it start being down all the time immediately after they added the redundant machines?) without millions of ispells running loose on their boxes... mozilla, on the other hand, desperately needs that spell checker.
If you are reluctant to fix bugs, you don't want it Open, you just want it *cheap*.
I don't think a /. magazine would be good.
Firstly, print media are local (US editions, Canadian, UK, French editions? I've still left out most people).
I agree with the above response about how out of date it would be.
There is competition, though less since Byte went digital only.
If you said comic, then maybe. I'm really sad Don Martin died recently.
In a comic you'd have to figure out which of the -1 posts were funny, which were libelous, and which were trash, because some of them are funny, not always intentionally.
Yes, unfortunately Taco and Hemos (taco especially) have become OBSCENELY hypocritical about the slashdot source. I dont think cmdrtaco actually understands the benefits of open source. If this were the case, he wouldnt have such a piss poor attitude about it, and he woulnd't say things like "everytime someone asks me for the tarball, I will delay the release another 24 hours". With such a crappy attitude like that, My respect for CmdrTaco disappeared.
Why would /. become a "MicroSoft(sic) mouthpiece" if it ceased to be a cistern of slander, innuendo, and lies about that companie's products?
It would be simple enough for the truth to leak in once in awhile. In case you hadn't heard it, most of what Microsoft produces does work pretty well.
It is only by *recognizing* the problems with Linux that it can be improved. In the short term it may well be more fun to switch off your mind and mouth rubbish about your ONE TRUE O.S., but ultimately you are doing the cause of Linux a disservice.
Use PostgreSQL. It's better, and OpenSource. But what's the point here? Why only use GPL stuff in the server if you still support Opera, Photogenics, and other commercial stuff?
Yeah man, drop the chalupa.
So, basically, the score is this: there's a lot of Slashdot readers who think Taco/Hemos are hypocritical assholes for whatever reason (not enough "News For Nerds", no source code release, whatever.) Taco/Hemos seem to be tiring of all the criticism and are starting to adopt what these people see as an "it's our site, screw you guys" attitude.
Folks, if you're so pissed off at Slashdot, why do you keep reading it?
No, really. There was a time when Slashdot was the only game in town, but that was long ago. There are other places you can get just about everything that Slashdot provides, except for Taco/Hemos/etc.'s particular slant on things, which is exactly what you seem to be railing against.
If you really don't like Slashdot and you're tired of complaining and not seeing any results, why not take your business elsewhere? Take those valuable ad impressions and inflate someone else's ad banner stats.
Face it, kids: Slashdot doesn't owe you anything (unless you own ANDN stock, and I wouldn't count on a dividend, ever.) It's their site, they can do with it as they please. They can continue their moderation system, no matter how abusive you think it is. They can keep their site source to themselves if they want to. If you don't like this, don't patronize them. Go somewhere else with an attitude that better suits your needs.
[Yes, I fully expect this to be moderated down to -1 (Flamebait, Troll, Irrelevant, Off-Topic, MEEPT!, Gnulix, Natalie Portman, Grits, SEX WITH JAR JAR, Whatever). So be it.]
Hail Richard, bereft of social grace.
The fnord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst antibusinessmen,
And blessed is the fruit of thy doom, the GPV.
Holy Richard, lover of poverty,
Pray for us coders now,
And at the hour of our disemployment.
Anonymous
PLEASE*, don't forget that many of your readers are well educated, and would like to spend time thinking about something new and exciting in the tech world rather than reading 500 posts ending with M$ $ucks...
Amen to that. Of course, it's more like 95% of the posts on here are anti-MS from every single angle. It's getting real old, especially how it creeps into almost EVERY single story, and for some reason they get moderated up, and constructive criticism about Linux gets moderated down to "troll"
since i'm not a moderator and have never seen how it works, thought i might throw this out to the crowd...
do moderators get to use their moderation points when they have their threshold set > 0?
the reason i ask is that it seems that there are fewer and fewer comments from AC's getting moderated up. is this a result of less interesting AC comments, or because moderators aren't seeing them because of all the hot grits? i think it would be a shame if ACs were (effectively) eliminated in this way (or any way for that matter. i like being able to post as AC. but if no one will ever see it, than what's the point?)
OK. I can see why you'd want, but that has no bearing on what's submitted, or what news is being made.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
Great - numbers one-four we've done before, five is old news, we've not done 6-8, and the rest we've posted before.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
That's the point I was trying to make about the sections - there's stuff in there that doesn't appear on the main page.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
irc.slashnet.org
#slashdot
I'm on it right now.
- Robin
That's something like I originally intended to do, but 1) I didn't want to attract people to my site solely for free email, 2) the abuse control / administrative tasks would be a nightmare, and 3) it'd put a significant load on the machine (which, right now, is pulling double duty as a SlashNET server)
If we go by that reasoning, then Slashdot would be better off as a newsgroup, as web sites aren't the ideal tool to do public messages.
I don't think you understand my primary intention for the feature.. Originally, it was only able to store notes from the "System" (telling you that someone replied to one of your comments, sending admins error messages, etc.) It was then expanded to be able to do user-to-user communications. It was designed to integrate seamlessly with the site, making it possible to fire off a quick memo to a user, or in the case of the admins, a list of users within seconds. For thoughts that don't quite warrant sending off e-mail.
It's been invaluable as a communications tool. And if Slashdot gets it, it'll give me yet another way to bother CowboyNeal. :)
A private messaging system would be neat. That's one of the features I implemented at osonline.org, and it's been a nice tool for interacting with others on the site.
But when are they gonna release the source-code for their backend?
<g>
...j
squishdot.org is where you can find squishdot.
Haven't used it, but heard good things.
...j
at least that way we can look at the code and figure out why its slow. then speed it up and everyones happy. its called practising what you preach.
The comment you quote reads to me exactly the way it reads to you. I agree that it's better to release software when it's ready, but, well, none of the (small) bits of open source software on my Web pages are ready; I realised in the end that I'd never get around to making them so. If someone else wants to, they're welcome. If the Slash source were to be released, a project aimed at making it more generally useble would certainly spring up around it.
But why am I writing this? Just by trying to reason about the issue further, I've delayed the release by another day.
I don't despise you, Taco and Hemos, but I certainly despise that kind of sentiment. You must really think that we're all children - worse, that we're all *your* children. But Slashdot is much more a creation of its community than of its editors, and the community deserves better. I can't say how much this saddens me.
--
Xenu loves you!
Not all issues revolve around money. Issues of ideals, of hypocrisy, and of betrayal of trust can arise entirely outside the context of money. If you have to see all of life in pounds sterling and pence, though, remember that Rob is selling our eyeballs to make a living now.
--
Xenu loves you!
also would like an internal messaging system so that the system can send users notes. This would be really useful so that the system could alert users that a comment they wrote had been replied to.
Note that Slashdot currently has a feature that makes this reasonably easy, although it's a "pull" rather than a "push" system. Although the page deprecates itself, the list of one's comments available if you go to 'User Info' -- most immediately by clicking on your user name in tiny type on the front page -- also counts the responses. I check it periodically for responses to my postings.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
"Ever been repeatedly asked the same questions over, and over, and over again? If you were tech supporting some luser who called you three times a day asking which mouse button to use, and you taped a BIG sign to his monitor that said "USE THE LEFT MOUSE BUTTON", and he still called you, how would you behave? :) "
Yea...you grin, bear it and tell them again. It's called being a professional.
You have drinks later and then bitch about the id10t.
I've already got some code, some ideas, a domain and a machine. If you (or anyone else) want to get in touch with me I'd love to hear from you. My ideas are far more community based, and I think it'd be great. I've been trying to work on it forever, but I keep losing intrest because I'm the only one doing anything with it.
Exactly. I don't understand what sort of weird open source dimension Rob lives in. I've never seen a new release with that worked on anyone but the creator's system. There are many projects that I've watched that when they started didn't even have makefiles. Rob really doesn't seem to understand the benefits of opensource. I'm sure there's many of us out there that can figure out his code no matter what he claims. He's just being extremely arrogant
I know that this is a bit off topic, but I just had an idea - after reading Cmdr Taco's response to this question.
/. staff from the business of attracting or selling banner space - by some type of contract or certified ISO procedure or something. Their charter would still be to bring in revenue for the parent organization (or perish financially), but they will not be responsible in any way for content. Only advertising.
/. (or other news organizations), as "unbiased". Such a certified rating system would improve the credibility of such organizations - and perhaps other news outlets would follow suit. This might not be technologically possible for printed news - possibly for broadcast news, and definately for web-accessed news.
Now, what if slashdot could have a separate ad placement agency, to book advertisers, and link their banner ads to the site blindly through code, in such a way that the editors do not know or care WHO advertises on the site. This separate ad agency would be legally bound to isolate the other
Then there could be some journalistic review authority that could certify
When it can be proved and certified that a news source's staff is not beholden to the wishes of an advertiser (other than, "put my ad in front of as many eyes as possible"), wouldn't that remove the horrible media bias we see throughout the journalism industry today? Sure, you'd still have your megacorp-owned news network, which would still serve it's own diverse corporate interests with bias, but they'd have to compete with the certified unbiased news agencies. . .
Or, I could be on drugs.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I would, personally, like to see newer Slash code appear in the code directory. To this end, I would like to openly offer my time and computer resources for any and all development and/or testing and/or technical support that the Slashdot crew are having trouble doing, due to other commitments.
This is not, repeat -NOT- a request or demand for a fresh Slash release, now or at any other time. It -IS-, however, a sincere offer, in the hope that the folks at Slashdot can concentrate on the work that they -want- to be doing, rather than spending time on maintenance work, installer candy and other side issues.
I hope this offer will be considered, whether or not it's accepted, at least for the sake of the sanity of CmdrTaco and Hemos. You're good people, and don't deserve to be pestered/flamed for having lives, doing real work, and not cheerily diving into mindless trivia every time someone starts World War III over the perceived slowness of something or other.
Now for the other issues. The moderation of subjects. Hmmm. I can see the point that the stories would be too much in flux to be useful to the readers, but I also agree that it might give a good indication of what people want to those submitting stories and to those selecting stories to post.
My view would be, instead of simply extending the current moderation idea, it might be useful to have some kind of binary switch - enjoy or not enjoy, which never got displayed to the general user, but which updated a page only visible to the editors. The editors could then see the current tallies for each story and each subject area, and get a feel for which direction Slashdot readers are generally in.
Lastly, as for some kind of feedback on when people reply to posts, most of that information exists already on the User page. All you'd really need, to get basic feedback, is simply record what the values were the last time you visited the page, and display the difference.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
--
--
--
How about an "Article Overflow" page where stories that just didn't quite make the main page get sent to. These stories could be graded/moderated by the readership and possibly moved to the main page if enough interest is generated. I think there are many articles that we geeks would be interested in that are not being posted to the main page. Obviously, you can't post every story to the main page, but it seems that there are many stories that are submitted and not being posted. I might or might not be interested in reading about them, but please let me decide. :-)
Otherwise, great job on all fronts. Keep up the fantastic work and thanks for allowing us the opportunity to post our ideas and critques.
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
- gee there would be a lot of dead coders out there...most of the
- best coders follow the maxim,
Software in the Open Source movement must be BETTER than the commercial stuff in the "coding style and comments"'...I dont write the code to be read...', but seriously, I suggest you read the following slashdot article on 'extreme programming'.
extreme programming can be seen as a response to tight deadlines and also evolving software. I guess the question I would ask , is this a result of developing for the web?.
links:
http://slashdot.org/books/99/12/21/097256.shtml
http://finger.planetquake.com/plan.asp?userid=joh
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
No, there is not a user consensus for a Slashdot where articles are posted based on moderation in a queue.
Some of us read Slashdot to a large extent because of the editorial bias.
It might be interesting to see a separate site (maybe a ``queue.slashdot.org'' or so?) which displays articles based on how well moderated they are out of a queue. It's a cool concept. It would be great to see it done as an offshoot of Shashdot, to take advantage of the quantity of submissions. Just please don't hasten the demise of the existing Slashdot by replacing it with an all-moderated version!
I have to hand it ALL the slashdot gang for creating something truly unique: a community around a website. Sure, we've used BBSes and usenet, but I don't believe anyone has so successfully built a community using the web. Huzzah and kudos!
There's *a lot* of bitching here about the slow release of the next slashdot tarball. That's really unfortunate. Rob has already posted some code. You are welcome to fork the project.
Slashdot inspired me to rewrite and rework my tired old website into a weblog. Oddly enough, it too uses mysql and mod_perl. There is a great deal of customization that goes into creating your own "look and feel". Both slashdot and my code were designed to solve our *particular* problems. Aside from being examples of Perl code, you might be better served by looking a general web UI solutions that separate form from functionality. Like Zope or Mason. These are far better places to start than to rework code that was never designed to meet general problems.
Although I have GPL my code and even gotten a few people to use it, I realize that while what I have works for me, it's a better community service to show folks the Better Way. But hell, hack whatever you'd like (naked). :-)
I just thought I'd mention that it is already possible to track replies to your comments by going to the preferences->user.info page.
That's what I use but it requires an extra page load. What I'd like is a Slashbox with that information. I wrote to CowboyNeal about it but never heard back. Do other people think this would be useful?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Open Source programs like ANY OTHER PROGRAMS are buggy. Open Source is supposed to fix that. If what you guys are saying is true, and open source is not about creating bug-free software, then open source is a waste of time and will never work. BTW, how is this redundant since it was the 10th post and I didn't see anyone else state that before me. Wonderful moderators.
But the linux kernel gets RELEASED. When was the last time slash was released. It's about doing things in a timely manner.
Tar up the damn directory and throw it somewhere. It takes 10 minutes of someones time. Don't give me this bullshit that noone at Andover has 10 minutes.
We've decided to squash the bugs and make a clean release rather than rush it.
Isn't this one of the MAIN reasons Open Source is supposed to be so good?
Let the community fix the bugs. Obviously if it's good enough to serve the number of pages you do a day, it's good enough for Joe Schmoe to run it on his server.
-Hypocricy
Nobody's talking about having a "right" to the Slashdot code. Nobody's talking about legally enforcing that fictitious right, or about being ethically wronged by Rob.
..."
Rob has a right to keep his code closed source, to pick his nose in public, or to post a "Racist Rant of the Week" on the front page. Just because he has a right to do it doesn't mean it's a good idea.
We're not asking for bug-free code, commented code, or even ready to release code. And it's not even like OSS coders are depending on a Slash release; there are other slash-like codebases out there, just a year or more less advanced. All we're asking is "tar czf slash.tar.gz
And the "hypocrisy" claim, albeit extreme, is important here. Nobody is begging Yahoo, DejaNews, or ZDNet to release their CGI code. But the fact that Slashdot, the most popular open source friendly site on the net, isn't releasing source code? It's just a bit annoying.
Imagine if, after the initial release of buggy, lobotomized Communicator code, Netscape had announced that they changed their minds, and were going to release all future Navigator work under a closed source only. Well, that would be their right, and it would be much more reasonable for Netscape than for Slashdot to stop releasing source... but do you not think that everyone here, including the editors, would be outraged and disappointed? Imagine if after AOL (read: Andover) made its purchases, Netscape under new management never released another line of code?
Granted, we all trust Rob's good intentions, but if those intentions are to wait until they have well-commented, perfectly designed, autoconfigured portable code to release... then anyone still expecting that release is just deluding themselves.
Slash 0.2 is used in quite a lot of places. Undoubtedly they had to modify quite a lot to get their own layout, adapt it to a different database, whatever.
The same will have to happen if somebody uses slash 0.4. Seen this way, a bit bugginess and a *load of loose ends doesn't hurt much. Besides: how many loose ends are there? Slashdot is working at the moment and has been for the past months. And splendidly! Ergo: 0.4 is ready for use.
For sure it isn't ready for a configure-make-make install cycle, but it works! And I dearly understand the 'put your deeds where your mouth is'-like utterings that spring to life all around this channel.
greetings,
Reinout
Reinout van Rees
I've never been a .sig before. Thanks for my 1.0 E -20 seconds of fame! :)
But of course the way you frame the sig, in that context, it reminds me of a sig that I saw: "Help eliminate and abolish redundancy!!!"
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
"Since this is a written medium, it's often hard to detect someone's 'tone' by what they're typing. Ever piss someone off because they misinterptreted something you emailed them? Without all of the vocal intonations, it's easy to have the meaning lost in this medium."
:) emoticon to tell you that they're not really serious if they say something harsh, and he didn't. I'm not attacking him further, just saying that those were my impressions
:) "
:)
This is totally true. My post is just my reactions to the article, but you're right about the fact that you can't tell with the written word. Usually, people use the
"Ever been repeatedly asked the same questions over, and over, and over again? If you were tech
supporting some luser who called you three times a day asking which mouse button to use, and you taped a BIG sign to his monitor that said "USE THE LEFT MOUSE BUTTON", and he still called you, how
would you behave?
Sure, I can relate to that feeling, I just don't think it applies in this situation for several reasons:
1.) It was posted later on that indeed that is NOT a FAQ.
2.) It obviously must be worth answering, because since it was asked of him, it means that it was probably moderated to 5 and enough people thought it was interesting enough to warrant asking Rob about it.
3.) When Rob in this case acts pissy at being asked the same thing several times, he's not being rude to some random luser that asked a FAQ, he's being rude to everyone simulateously on slashdot. Usually there's a higher threshold for people before they'll act that way towards however many THOUSAND people are on slashdot
4.) Hemos seems to have restrained himself like a regular human all through the interview so it's hard for me to think that it's not possible for someone else.
Again, I claim no factual content at all to that, just my impressions.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Is it just me or is CmdrTaco sometimes act like a real ass?
I know this is definately going to be an unpopular opinion, but I really think that sometimes he just acts like an ass for its own sake. I can understand getting frustrated with script kiddies and first posters and the natalie portman statuette mafia etc. etc. etc. but his tone just seems so short and contentious when he writes things sometimes.
Maybe I'm picking nits. But when I see Hemos answer the questions, even when he's probably answered the same thing 10,000 times, he at least answers it graciously. From malda, you get things like "If you ask me again, I'll delay it 24 more hours" (which for me translates to, "If you ask me this question, I'll purposely do something to spite you that isn't productive for either of us") and also the moaning about the fact that somebody asked a FAQ. People ask FAQs all the time, but only elitist flamers from USENET seem to jump all over people who ask FAQs.
I can understand being strung out or busy or even flat out annoyed at the readers of slashdot, but there's no reason to not be at least a little bit gracious or patient with an interview that he decided to submit to himself. I've never met EITHER hemos or cmdrtaco in person, but I just get the feeling that hemos is probably more laid back and personable.
These are only my opinions, hate them as much as you want. (Which I'm sure plenty of you will take me up on)
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Shouldn't that be Wozniak? Just checking.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
What I'd like is for every comment to have three radio buttons:
( ) Good
( ) Okay
( ) Bad
and to start with, none of them would be selected (ie the choice is 'undefined'). Then you can click on them as you are reading Slashdot normally.
The choices you make wouldn't be used for moderation in the usual way, but rather to help Slashdot decide which comments you want to see in future. For example, you may like comments by a particular author, or dislike comments containing the words 'Beowulf'. Obviously some heuristics are needed here to try and work out general patterns - but see below.
Then the default scoring of comments would be based on the average preferences of Slashdot as a whole. Scores for an individual user would be determined from that user's own preferences, but also from what other users have selected as 'good' or 'bad'. If Slashdot finds that my opinion is consistently disagreeing with the opinion of some other reader, then it could stop taking that reader's views into account when scoring articles for me. Likewise, there could be other readers whose idea of a good comment I usually share. So there is no need for meta-moderation - each user has their own idea of who is a good moderator.
This could get hairy on the inside - trying to evolve a good system for working out what people like - but it couldn't be any worse than just taking the average opinion of Slashdot as a whole, as the current system does. And I think the interface to the reader is ideal - or at least much better than three separate pages for reading, moderation and meta-moderation.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I think you should ask for your money back.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I don't think you can accuse Rob of hypocrisy - he's never said that all software should be publicly released the moment it is written. Still less so when it isn't finished yet. There are plenty of free software projects (XFree86 for one, and of course all the FSF stuff) that make individual releases some time apart.
As for betrayal of trust, did Rob promise that he would release 0.4 by a certain date?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
"Or maybe it just isn't ready for realease? "
Neither was mozilla, but that doesn't keep Slashdot from trumpeting about it whenever anything mildly newsworthy comes along.
I think that it's at least slightly hypocritical for Rob to herald the virtues of open source, or to have his webpage as a forum lauding open source, without having the balls to practice what he preaches.
no. an older version of the Slashdot code is there. There's a big difference...
You might want to read my comment again.
I agree that a site built on Slashdot's code can be about anything you want. I was, however, referring to Slashdot. Which is CmdrTaco's webpage. And is a forum that champions open source development.
URL: http://www.whatis.com/slashdot_effect.htm
So, all along, Rob has been bullying Hemos into letting him take the credit! Of course, Whatis.com could be confused, but... let's face it... what are the chances of that happening?
--
- Problems:
- no accountability
- no reward
- no visible effect
- easy to abuse
- time/benifits ratio too low...
Well those are just my opinions on it. For all I know I could be abnormal..."Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Now, I'm all for people's right to do what they want. And if they don't want to release, well, there's nothing we can do abut that. But in this case, the attitude is one of such deep and abiding rectal-cranial inversion that it still never fails to piss me off, as it's pissed off and alienated the rest of the potential development comunity as well.
I get a nice flamey email about once a week from some ass who calls me a hypocrite and slams me for not getting out a new release.
Does that maybe tell you something? Maybe some of those "asses" have a point. I know you also regularly get reminders which are not in the least "flamey" and which merely seek to point out that you are, in fact, giving a big fuck you to the very community and ideals that support you.
You know what the first thing I would do if I had the code is? Write an install script. We're not as dumb as you think, Rob. There are many people out here who can understand even YOUR terrible code.
Basically, the above poster said it. Grow up. Get your head out of your ass and look around. You're not important because people read your website. Start acting like you believe what you preach. And fuck you, too.
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
The problem with reading in Newest order is that you miss out on the redundancy part. I think that's also why some of the redundant articles get submitted, because people are reading in newest order as well. I'd like a version where you didn't get the comments you already read. Maybe just some sort of read/unread indicator like news. Otherwise, it's tough to wade through the list on the third or fourth pass through. It's far more useful to have moderation early but it would be useful to look at "new" comments on previously moderated threads.
He can just ignore them, and call the people asking for help "asses", can't he?
Just like he does now, with those who ask for the source code...
Eh, who says that OpenSource means "release only something that is finished"? Is there someone like RMS, ESR or Bruce Perens claiming that you have to release finished products? I don't think so.
Would you consider Linux "finished", for example? No? Well, it's "more finished" now than it was when it was released, isn't it? And, hey -- isn't all this talk about the benefits of open source based on the theory that Linux is "more finished" now than it was when it was released, because it was released?
Where do you think Linux would be now, if it hadn't been released back when it was a lot "less finished"?
No, on the contrary -- it is your attitude that looks like it belongs more to a pay me, pay me, pay me closed-source software vendor than it belongs to the Open Source movement.
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
Well, it sure doesn't need hypocrites who won't release their source, either.
What's so "Open Source community" about not releasing your source???
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
Has BSI been bought by Andover or has just /. been purchased? I guess my main question is, does Andover own Everything and Everything 2?
---
---
"To know recursion, you must first know recursion."
I'm really glad Rob said this.
For those of you who don't know, Temple Hoff is running a mailing list called Slash-help: the Slash Code Support Group. This is for anyone who is trying to take the 0.3 release of the code and make it work on their own server.
The list has been a little slow for the past couple of months now. But, it's gotten more lively in the past week or so, because many of the people who have made postings critical of Rob and Jeff here today have been refining their arguments.
It's sort of funny that people are complaining about the delays associated with a 0.4 release because these same people would be complaining loudly if 0.4 were out now and the main Slashdot site was suffering repeated outages.
Another thing that seems to be getting lost is that releasing a new version of the code in an OpenSource project is a two edged sword. Sure, you can put out a partially functional application -- some would say that's a good description of 0.3. But, if they put 0.4 out in an incomplete state, and people responded with fixes for problems, many would complain about the speed at which changes were incorporated into the CVS tree.
I've invested a lot of time modifying 0.3 to work in a different environment. It's been one of the best learning experience I've had in years. I recommend it highly to anyone who is really interested in how a content management system works. A lot of the techniques they use in 0.3 are available elsewhere, in systems like Vignette and Interwoven. The only thing is that they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement.
When 0.4 is released, we will evaluate it and probably incorporate some of its features into what we are doing. Most people who have some real investment in the Slashdot architecture will have to do that also.
If you are sitting out there observing this, trying to figure out who's right, ask yourself this question: Do the people who are shouting the loudest for releasing the latest source have anything invested in understanding, operating, and enhancing the Slash environment? If not, have they seriously evaluated what is available, or do they come from the "Boycott {insert evil capitalist enterprise name here}!" School of Idealism?
You are entitled to any opinion about this process that you want to assert. But, I guarantee that 0.4 will have as many support issues as 0.3, if not more. It's going to be more complicated. Regardless of how many people are involved in the enhancement process, it will be some time before you can install and operate this in anything close to a turn-key fashion.
At the end of the day, I come from the school that believes in an author's right to determine the circumstances underwhich he releases his code. If Rob and Jeff want to go slowly, that is their right and we ought to respect that. And, the fact that there has been a long gap between the 0.3 and 0.4 releases does not suddenly make the Slash engine a Closed Source product.
--
Dave Aiello
-- Dave Aiello
So for about 2-3 years now slashdot has been my main source of news in my life(yeah, so what, the rest of my life is pretty skewed too). No Hemos has to go and maention Moby too, as a major bright spot in his year. Which might possibly be one of the best releases of new music in years.
Slashdot, Nanotech, Moby OH My!
Even leaving aside the ethical and legal questions some of these practices raise, these practices hurt competion and create a climate were even competitors with superior technology have severe difficulties making inroads into the market. The end result is that we are forced (or at least heavily influenced) to use, and pay for, software that may not be the best or even wanted in the first place. I hesitate to start yet another MS flame war, but I'm getting tired of people whining about being "forced" to use Microsoft products. Yes, most name-brand computers have Windoze preinstalled, and yes that sucks if you don't plan on using it. But there's a simple reason for that: that's what most people want. In spite of its technical inferiority and clunky interface, Windoze is the best choice for most customers. Software compatibility, familiar interface, painless installation and configuration, and cheap hardware is more important to most users and the PHB's that pay for their machines. Linux has made fine inroads into the market, and at this point there are a number of vendors selling computers without the Windoze "tax." I suggest Linux users buy one of those and get over it. But Linux simply is not a superior product when it comes to general office tasks, and it is not suprising that it has not taken over the universe. It is not the result of MS's "anticompetitive practices." It is a result of them having a superior product from the perspective of the vast majority of their customers. Whether their exclusive liscencing is illegal is a legal issue, and is being addressed in the court of law. I suggest Linux users deal with that, and move on to beating Windoze bloatware on the merits of the free alternatives, not whining about "unfair competition."
OK, let's try this again. "HTML formatted" obviously wasn't what I wanted.
Even leaving aside the ethical and legal questions some of these practices raise, these practices hurt competion and create a climate were even competitors with superior technology have severe difficulties making inroads into the market. The end result is that we are forced (or at least heavily influenced) to use, and pay for, software that may not be the best or even wanted in the first place.
I hesitate to start yet another MS flame war, but I'm getting tired of people whining about being "forced" to use Microsoft products. Yes, most name-brand computers have Windoze preinstalled, and yes that sucks if you don't plan on using it. But there's a simple reason for that: that's what most people want. In spite of its technical inferiority and clunky interface, Windoze is the best choice for most customers. Software compatibility, familiar interface, painless installation and configuration, and cheap hardware is more important to most users and the PHB's that pay for their machines.
Linux has made fine inroads into the market, and at this point there are a number of vendors selling computers without the Windoze "tax." I suggest Linux users buy one of those and get over it. But Linux simply is not a superior product when it comes to general office tasks, and it is not suprising that it has not taken over the universe. It is not the result of MS's "anticompetitive practices." It is a result of them having a superior product from the perspective of the vast majority of their customers.
Whether their exclusive liscencing is illegal is a legal issue, and is being addressed in the court of law. I suggest Linux users deal with that, and move on to beating Windoze bloatware on the merits of the free alternatives, not whining about "unfair competition."
What did Standard Oil and Carnegie Steel do that was bad?
Three words: Get a Mac. :)
Yes, that's flamebait. Moderate me down if you must.
Standard oil sold oil at less than cost until other companies died off, then jacked prices up.
Do you have evidence for this?
By the time I saw the atriclte to post questions, it was already off the main page.
/. Monthly is something we will se in the coming future? If so, I want to be the first to sign up.
Have you every thought about a monthly Slashdot magazine? Have editorials, some of the funnier UF comics, and stories that don't quite fit in the space for an article. Could also have a "geek jobs" section for people looking for linux/open source programmers and other interesting jobs. Not to mention a good source of ad revenue. Think of the $$ from a cross-promotional webiste/print campaign =)
Think a
Every post from a logged-in user begins its life with 60 points. Anonymous starts at 50pts.
Every moderator can moderate every post, so say one moderator thinks an anonymous post sucks and gives the post a rating of 5pts. This would make it (50+5)/2 = 28pts. The next moderator also thinks it sucks but not so much, so he gives it 30pts. (50+5+30)/3 = 28pts. Another moderator like doesn't like the post, but really likes the guy's .sigs and decides to score up this post by assigning it 90pts. (50+5+30+90)/4 = 44. As more moderators "vote" on a post, the better an overall picture of a post's worth.
Users can set their threshhold to 05% if they want to see everything.
It seems like the Right Way, to me.
Work is for people who lack the imagination to play.
If someone wants to rate every single comment, I say why not. Theirs is only one voice in 500. I'll only rate the comments I feel deserve my attention, as will you. But this way, you don't have all the moderator points getting used up in the first fifteen minutes after a story is posted. I think this "running average" system would allow ratings to better reflect the genuine worth of a post.
Work is for people who lack the imagination to play.
Live with it. /. isn't likely to become a MicroSoft mouth piece any time soon.
/. is a News for Nerds site, and face it, most of us who have been frequenting this site over the last couple of years have been alienated by MS and have grown to love Linux and Unix in general.
If you don't like it you can always get your news from a MS friendly site, while the rest of us don't have that choice.
just my $.02 worth.
From what I've seen, it's not so much that Microsoft's products are inferior. Most of the time they work fine, or at least par for the industry.
:)
The problem that a lot of people have with Microsoft is their monopolistic business practices. Even leaving aside the ethical and legal questions some of these practices raise, these practices hurt competion and create a climate were even competitors with superior technology have severe difficulties making inroads into the market. The end result is that we are forced (or at least heavily influenced) to use, and pay for, software that may not be the best or even wanted in the first place.
The other problem people (esp. geeks) have with Microsoft is that their software is not designed primarily for power users, so that programmers, hackers, and all other kinds of computer-knowledgeable people run into artificial constraints on what they can do with Microsoft's software, and that is frustrating
I'm sorry, but I do not think that this answer is BS. This is not your web site, so if you want to have a special news site of your own that has user moderation of the submitted articles then go ahead and start one and see if it gets more popular than Slashdot. If for some reason it does, then come back here and say "Told ya so."
But for now, Slashdot is still controlled by CmdTaco and Hemos and I don't think they're going to leave any time soon which means that there won't be moderation of story submissions.
I personally agree with CmdTaco and Hemos because I don't know about you, but I am not the Slashdot Man, I actually spend most of my day working and take a break here and there to check Slashdot to see if any interesting stories have popped up. If the users were allowed to moderate the stories being posted that would cause a large abundance of stories going through the main page causing the amount of time I can spend reading each story to decrease, also causing the amount of interesting conversation on the stories to decrease.
I think that moderation of the stories would decrease my reading pleasure of Slashdot and force me to go find some other new site to get my daily fix from.
I think you need to figure out the difference of something being "bigger than Rob Malda now" and something that you would have if you ran your own cute little Slashdot copycat. This is the original and they are waaaaaaay ahead of any other "open journalism"
My hat goes off to the Slashdot crew!
"Everybody knows the moon's made of cheese," Wallace.
AHEM!! I was trying to block that painful period from my memory, in an effort to believe that /. was the same as it always was. No you've made all the hurt come back...
-BrentOH Man!! You mean there used to be pro MS stories on /.? The Insanity. How could that be? Oh, wait a minute, what was the last pro-MS story posted on /.?
-BrentArno Penzias (Nobel Prize winner for radio astronomy) said something, in a speech a couple years ago that I saw on CSPAN, that is relevant to Slashdot.
For most of human history, the ability to REMEMBER confered the greatest advantage. But now, it is so easy to store information, Penzias said, that the ability to FORGET has become more valuable. To cope with information overload, one must learn to SKIM and discard what is trivial while staying alert to what is significant.
Boy, the Slashdot reader has a great opportunity to practice that!
When I moderate, I read all the comments and elevate the good stuff from 0 to 1. It's always in there, and I always wish I had more points to award. I often wish I could give some comments two points to bring them to more people's attention.
I find that comments with high ratings are only rarely superior. And all the complaints about moderation suggest to me that a lot of readers are not adept at skimming for pearls. The moderation system can help, but ultimately you have develop the ability to discard the crap yourself if you want find much signal in the noise.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. -Albert Einstein
Moderation relates to comments posted IN RESPONSE to stories. Most moderation is used to either moderate down off topic posts, or moderate up insightfull posts as they relate to the story.
:) If I ran slashdot, it would have more stories about Pink Floyd, GNOME, Pole Vaulting, and the US's out of control government. I'll bet my view of a perfect slashdot isn't yours, just as your's isn't mine.
However the stories posted are (rightfully) chosen by the owners of the site.
You weak attempt to classify me as an elitist does little to advance you position, as I consider myself one of the unwashed masses
This is all irrelvant anyway, since the people who put in all the time, effort and money still run it.
I come here because I like most of the same stuff they do, not because I have this ego trip where I feel slashdot must conform to my view. It seems too many people here feel like slashdot has some kind of obligation to cater to their wants.
My point is, Slashdot is whatever Rob wants it to be. Sure it's elitist, but he did all the work and made this place, if you don't like what's here, then leave. Make your on site. Go to usenet and experience real free speach. I for one do not want this to become usenet.
Finkployd
Opening up the source code is an offtopic issue.
Really? Funny, I could have sworn that was one of the questions asked of Rob and Jeff in the interview which this discussion is in response to. Funny that, huh?
Since you appearently don't have the time to read the interview, I assume you don't have time to read the comment I first responded to.
The origional poster used phrases like "give slashdot to the people" and suggested that Rob and Co. give the site up to be completly run by the people. I have nothing against story moderation (as you take offense to), I'm simply saying that the creators of the site should retain control over it. I'd be pretty pissed if people went to my webpage and demanded they have control over what I put on it.
Let me give you am example of what I am worried about. Let's assume that some MS Windows user group (there are MANY more Windows user than any other os) decided to take over slashdot. They come in and all submit and moderate Windows stories up and "poof" no more slashdot as we know it. Now it's ZDNet with less graphics. Sure it's far fetched, but why should the entire site be handed over everyone, what has everyone done to deserve the right to run the show around here.
If we want to have articals that are posted ranked by moderaters, that is fine. However I don't want to see the entire article process given away. I like the way it works now. Most others do to. It's just a vocal, greedy few who feel THEY should be running slashdot.
Finkployd
Dude, I don't get you...
/. to the masses, it will ruin it. Are you aware how stupid the masses are? These are the people that make Jerry Springer a hit. If /. is given to everyone to run, it will quickly sink to the lowest common denominator, as people who have never had anything to do with it, will take over.
/. for a very long time now, and I enjoy the way it is (as do most of us here, or we would not be here). I don't want joe blow to come in and say what he thinks should be posted, then it WILL change. If you think the public needs a discussion forum, then make one, but leave /. alone. I an many others like it. If you don't like it and the stories posted here, perhaps you shouldn't be here.
Rob and co. built this site up from nothing, put in all the work, all the money (at first), and are only lately recieivng the rewards of their work. So why on earth do you think it's it's time for them to "give it up"? How could that make sense?
If you give
I have been reading
Finkployd
Right on! Moderators...moderate that one up!
Hey buddy... Go here. You'll see that, indeed, Rob kind of has himself backed into a corner on this one... it says right there, in plain english, that the codes been GPLed with an additional restiction (link back)... That, plus in the READ ME, it request money if you don't use the link.... sounds like thats an actual violation of the GPL, doesn't it...
After all the wondering around here of which company (hmmm... Corel?) is going to be the one that finally violates the GPL and goes to court over it... It's laughable that perhaps Slashdot/Andover is the most easy target... Where's RMS when we need him?
That's so 100% Hypocritical... People scream at apple for using the words Open-Source in relation to OS-X, when in fact they HAVE open sourced the kernel and a few services of their OS... yet they defend Rob, when he's commited himself to so much more, yet accomplishes so much less...
Oh... and I wonder how much longer that FAQ'll be there.... hurry up!
but I think soon, once I get enough accounts set up, I'm going to make it a point to send at least one email a day to Rob requesting the source code to his open source advocacy site.... I encourage you all to do the same... Only two things can happen - we get the source soon, or we hopelessly delay it until mid-2068, due to his stupid "delay by another 24 hour rule"...
:)
posted via anonymizer for fear of karmatic reprisals by the powers that be.
As an side here's something that may prove interesting: Since comments aren't removed if they slander(etc) people, as this *might* force /. to be liable for ALL such comments... Could it be that Slashdot is liable for the stories they post if they don't post all of them?
Try this on for size:
Slashdot posts a story about a company which is negatively portrayed. Story is later discovered to be false. Company sues SlashDot for (fill in blank here).
I'm not a lawyer nor a Newspaper guy, but what are the responsibilities of news outlets to report the truth? I know tabloids get sued all the time, and /. isn't exactly a tabloid, but it DOES have a habit of posting articles based on rumors. What happens when one day some company gets pissed off, and decides to really do something about it? Any thoughts?
Basic law for journalists is actually pretty easy - if you say something is a rumor, you're pretty much in the clear. If you attribute a statement, and can back up that attribution, the person making the statement is liable, not you. If you say "alleged" a lot, you're safe. There are subtleties to all this, but that's the basics.
Let's take LinuxOne as an example - people have been saying they're a scam on and off slashdot. Look at how CmdrTaco presented a fairly negative leadoff in December. There's not a whole lot to file a libel suit in that article: CEO's questionable past is an opinion, with a reference, and the behavior of the corporate web-server is an easily checkable and provable fact. Andover's lawyers may be a bit nervous over the GPL violations, since that's an allegation which has not been proven in court (yet), and a judge may find that something worth going to trial over.
Not putting in that magic word "alleged" is a pretty big journalistic no-no, and yes, the Slashdot gang probably would be liable if those GPL violations aren't found to be violations.
there was a mention of moderating articles.. cdmrtaco said he was having trouble trying to figure out the basis on which the numbers should be based.
i would like to suggest something slightly different: attatch a "karma" rating to articles on the main page, consisting of one point for each act of moderation (negative -or- positive) that occurs in that discussion. That would just give us some idea what it means that something as been marked 'interesting' within that article; i mean, some articles will obviously get marked much more than others, and stories that are more or less flamebait will probably get enough moderation committed within them that you shouldn't pay as much attention to a score:5 there as to a score:5 in an article almost nobody read. This would probably only work if available as an option you had to turn on, butit would be rather interesting to some of us, i think.
also it would probably be cool if you'd make a "karma is visible to other users" option in the Prefs, instead of just hiding it outright.. but i can't think of any particularly good reasons why this should happen so i won't go into it.
sorry i didn't post this at the questions session; i had forgotten about it at the time.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I'm going to say this sooner or later, so this is as good a place as any. This doesn't have all that much to do with the comment here as with a good portion of the responses to the interview taken as a whole.
/. crew, because they won't behave the way you demand that they do. And tell me, how many dollars and how many hours of your time have you actually contributed to making /., Slash code or other aspects of this function according to your desires?
Geez, you people are a bunch of whiners. All this talk about hypocrisy and backsliding by Rob and the other
. . .
(still waiting)
. . .
I thought so.
You know, here's a free clue: If you don't like it here, start your own. CmdrTaco has kindly provided at least a pile of code (though it may not be compeletely current) so you don't even have to start from scratch.
Go ahead, we're waiting.
--------
Bill Gates Is My Evil Twin.
You don't get it, according to the stock market we have contributed millions. How much do you think they can make off ads. How do you think those ads are paid for? Maybe by our eyes grazing them (or the junkbuster denied logo...).
You call it whining and I call it consumer demand, we are far beyond the days of a couple kids writing shit while they weren't in class. They made millions off of our eyes.
Yes but I'm sure that is so long as Rob and Jeff work for Andover. They are nowhere near the top, Andover bought slashdot, they own it. Remember how they mentioned that they could only be fired for just cause? That's all Andover would need if Rob and Jeff no longer were beneficial.
Remember this next time you sign a contract, management will eventually try to fuck you, the best you can do is see it coming.
The question is "What's 'best'?" My best isn't going to be your best. So who decides?
My opinion is that Hemos et al has the right idea to not even try to open this can of worms.
-C
I'm toying with removing anonymous moderation, but I'm concerned about the moderation becoming the topic instead of the topic. Maybe that's good.
Good that you're concerned, or good that moderation is becoming the topic?
Maybe it's just me, but I'm already getting tired of the amount of blather about the moderation of individual messages:
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
I feel that you have skirted an important point that was included in the original threads that addressed the release of Slashdot source code. Specifically, which license will you be using to release your code and what is your reasoning for choosing that license?
bnf
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I can see both sides of this coin, and I think I may have an idea that would work, and possibly appease both sides.
/. backend works (although if .4 was released....), but I'm sure it would not be difficult to put the submissions in a backend text file, or something similar. This way, anybody who wanted to, could start "quedot.org" or whatever, and post the stories they want to see posted. Even if they don't post the stories, they can still access the stories.
Rob doesn't want to post the ugly stupid submissions that he gets, but the people still want to see them. Now, I'm not sure how the
Of course, seeing as Rob has a seat on the board of andover, he has a legal obligation to do what is in the best interest of the shareholders, so this may not be possible (because someone else would get the pageviews)....any comments?
Juiced? Or Not?
I'm with konstant on this one.
Every time the issue of making the submission queue visible comes up, Rob says that we don't want to see it because there's an awful lot of crap. This is a really good argument for story moderation (not comments on the stories - just moderating them). Then the crap settles to the bottom. Rob and company don't have to filter the queue based on scores; if they just SORT by score it should make their lives easier.
Maybe the queue should only be visible to users with moderation points? I don't really understand the comment
I don't want the submissions bin to be littered with noise like "First Post" and "Meept".
Why would it be? If visibility of the queue induces people to seek attention by submitting garbage stories, then decreasing the visibility should take care of it. Who would post a "Hot Grits" story if they and most of their friends couldn't see it? Especially if there was no possiblility for comments on it?
Rob can do whatever the hell he wants - I'm just arguing that his reasons given don't make sense. I don't see how story moderation could possibly make his job any harder.
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
Actually it translates to "Stop fucking bugging me about it, I got work to do"
Calm down, take a deep breath, and go fuck yourself. Sorry, but I had to revert to that. That last comment ya left was a little to harsh. Plus I don't appreciate someone with a hair up his ass about something deciding how someone's comment was anti-whateverthehellyourepresent, in this case opensource, and then bashing everything with a big wooden club.
I guess the point is, part of being a (slashdot) nerd/geek/etc is having a sense of humor and the wisdom to not attack someone before a minute amount of brain activity.
Please, chill. He's not bashing open source and you're venting onto the one and only cmdrtaco.Oh and before I go... I/we DO care about comments, I/we DO NOT *only* care about learning from his successes and failures, forget about the global programmer community as far as you refer to it, focus on THE community, not one specific sect, and promote openness and freedom for all people, not just 'your' people.
~endrant~This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
*sniff* Taco with a girlfriend and Hemos getting married? *sob* My little geeks are all grown up!
I disagree: the people who submit stories are not necessarily the same as those who moderate comments (and could also moderate stories). In order to be allowed to moderate, you have to "earn" your moderator status. There is no such thing for submitting stories.
The moderators are selected among the people who have posted interesting comments (OK, the karma thing has some flaws, but the general idea is good). The moderators are supposed to have a good judgement, or at least to have some sensible opinions. But there is no "filter" for submitting stories, so I don't think that the number of submissions is a good metric to judge if a story will be appreciated by the /. readers.
Let's take an example: a link to a story about Micro$oft is submitted by 50 AC's (or registered users with low karma). Another story, more technical and less controversial, is submitted by two or three users. If I had the opportunity to moderate the stories and if the second one is really interesting, then I would probably give it a +1 and ignore the first story. On the other hand, if you only judge a story based on the number of people who submitted it (or later, on the number of replies), then you would always select the first one and maybe the second one would never be posted.
That's why I think that allowing the moderators to rate the stories as well as the comments would be an interesting addition to /.
Another interesting addition would be to rate comments and stories on different criteria and to allow readers to filter the comments based on the criteria that are important to them, and not only on the total score. I would start with three critaria:
- technical content. Is the comment "interesting" or "insightful" from a technical point of view? Does it give link to other sources of information or does it contain good explanations for the topic being discussed?
- good advocacy. Does the comment do a good job at promoting Linux, nanotech or any other thing that nerds might be interested in? The comment might not contain many technical facts but contain enough good ideas or state things in a clear way so that you would rate it as "interesting" in the current system.
- humour. Is it funny? Are you ROTFL after reading the comment?
The current system covers these criteria, but as a reader your are only able to filter the comments based on their total score. I have seen several old-timers onNow that I think about it, a fourth criterion could be "on-topicness". An article can be off-topic but still contain interesting ideas. Some people like to read such articles, some others don't. By giving the appropriate weight to this criterion in the comment filter, then every reader would be able to select what he wants to see.
-Raphaël
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
-- H. L. Mencken
This will probably get moderated down, but who cares.
The whining around here has reached a level I have not found since I was last in 1st grade. Everybody has a better way of doing it, a bitch about this, a whine about that. It's really simple.
- Releasing source code. The software's #1 purpose is to run slashdot. This is a business, they are employed by a company, and the #1 goal is the keep slashdot running, and to tweak the code as needed. Everything else is secondary. There are good business reasons for not releasing it yet. Security being one. And everyone getting bent out of shape about the tech support comment. Everyones answer was A) We're smarter then that, and B) dont' do the mod_perl / apache support. He doesn't care about the 20% that don't need support, he cares about the 80% that do, and would ask. Not doing the support is easy, wading thru the stupid email is not.
Moderating suggestions. We have that already. The stories that get submitted more get higher posting ratios. Less submissions, less priority. Turning it over to the masses completely would ruin that whole thing. You came here for thier viewpoints, if you don't like that method anymore, theres the door. Run your own site.
It's real simple people. If you don't like it, do it yourself the way you think it should be done. Write your own software, open your own site, do it your way. But, remember, they built it, and they have a RIGHT, yes, a friggen RIGHT, to do it thier way.
So, Grow Up, quit yer whining, or get the hell out.
Now, let the killing of this post by this who it addresses begin.
I really want to see an improved version of the Slashdot code released as well. Not because of any kind of Open Source ideology, but because slash is simply the premier discussion software available. No other programmers have implemented discussion software with article submission features, moderation, meta-moderation, karma, and polls. I want to use some of this code for my own sites and my own development. I want to see PHPSlash pick up some of the newer features of slash.
The open source availability of version 0.4 has been promised for many months now, but unfortunately that release appears to be getting dimmer and dimmer. This is frustrating considering the way the rest of the Slashdot community trumpets the ideals of Open Source software. The way requests for the source code are blown off is doubly frustrating.
Ryan
You're correct: MySQL does not use a GPL license. But its license is "free enough" for me. According to the MySQL manual, "For normal internal use, MySQL generally costs nothing. You do not have to pay us if you do not want to. A license is required if: You sell the MySQL server directly or as a part of another product or service; You charge for installing and maintaining a MySQL server at some client site; You include MySQL in a distribution that is non redistributable and you charge for some part of that distribution."
This seems fair enough: they don't want you to profit directly from their code, without them earning a little something as well. Otherwise, they let you use it without charge, even to host commercial sites. That seems more than reasonable. Furthermore, access to the source code is freely available and distributable.
How exactly does one actually cheaply create a slashdot site. I have looked at various hosting places and they don't exactly do anything of this nature cheaply.
My personal website (Space-Dye.com) is hosted with Hurricane Electric, a hosting provider in San Jose, CA. Their servers are fast, their connection is fast (direct connection to MAE-West), and their technical support is excellent. They offer Perl, PHP and MySQL access to all accounts, which start at only $9.95 per month. I've set up a couple of database-driven applications on my website, and they seem to work great.
Ryan
I just thought I'd mention that it is already possible to track replies to your comments by going to the preferences->user.info page.
This works quite well except that it isn't directly accessable from the little numpbacked navigation aid on the upper left corner. If you guys would add a link to the user page there, that would make getting to replies very easy.
A lot of people are screaming because they get a whopping 5 spam messages a week. How much requests for help do you think CmdrTaco and Hemos would get, even if they don't respond to them?
But there's more. Look for instance at the infamous Matt Wright. He made a whole bunch of free CGI programs. They aren't supported. So, even if patches are made, they aren't merged back in. There are problems with the programs. The Usenet group comp.lang.perl.misc, a group that doesn't deal with CGI, and where Matt Wright doesn't post, gets several messages *daily* regarding his programs. Even now, for programs that were written years ago. His programs might have helped a few, but they caused headaches for many people - including people that not even use the programs. And it didn't do much good for Matt's name either.
I think people who don't want release their code before it's finished shouldn't. And I don't think the Open Source community needs people with a gimme, gimme, gimme attitude.
-- Abigail
That of course would not solve the problem. The most important reason the first 50 get moderated more is that the first 50 have been there longer. If a moderator comes in, and there are only 30 posts yet, all (s)he can do is moderate those 30 posts. And unlike even the crappiest newsreader, slashdot doesn't keep track which comments you have already seen, so it really discourages someone from visiting a thread for a second time.
You want a useful moderation scheme? Use Usenet and a NoCem client.
-- Abigail
12) More "News for Nerds" Please...
If you like more tech news
Check out http://sunsite.auc.dk/FreakTech/
The last headlines is
* Powerline Area Network
* Personal aircraft
* 140 gigabytes CDROM
* Molecular-based logic gates
* 10 Gbps optical though air.
* Magnetic spacecraft propulsion
* Ferroelectric Optical Storage
* Microflown
* IEC fusion
* Magnetic RAM
* Rotary rocket
* Phaser device
* Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata(QCA)
* Impulse Radio
* Motor Shatters Torque Ceilings
As they stated, their lawyers secured complete control of the content and ideas for Rob and Jeff. You can't go over their heads, because they are the top of the food chain.
Content? Ideas? I dunno about all of that. What I know is that they have the wrong idea about how customer service works. See, if you want to make money at this sort of thing, you go with what the customer wants whether it's right or wrong
I used to know some sort of saying about the customer, but I can't seem to remember it...
What I see from this interview is that Rob and Jeff have failed to understand what their buyout means: they aren't doing us all a favor now.
See, now they're providing a service. They're getting paid to do it. And their customers (the people like me and you that hit the page 400 billion times a day) are clamoring for certain features.
Is it time to go over their heads and talk to Andover?
Jemal
.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
Opening up the source code is an offtopic issue.
Finkployd asserted that moderation of articles
wouldn't work because, in his opinion, the
low-brow Jerry-Springer-loving masses don't have
the brains to properly evaluate the articles'
merits. (I replied that the comment moderation
system relies on the wisdom of those low-brow
masses, and that ironically the trailer trash
had ranked M{s|r}. Ployd's comments highly.) This
has nothing to do with the release of source code,
as you discuss, or with whether I should "go off
and start my own site", as Fink discusses. The
issue at hand is whether the Great Unwashed are
mentally fit to rank the articles themselves; by
their ability to properly rank replies to the
articles, they have demonstrated this mental
fitness.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
(Score:4)
Gee, Finkployd, those faceless nabobs seem to like what you write. Appealing to the lowest common denominator, were we?
The current system of moderation and metamoderation encourages thoughtful posting and ranking. There is no reason (your elitist fear of the Great Unwashed aside) to think that the same could not be applied to story postings.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
It's not the funniest thing I've ever seen, but it ain't bad.
Greg
... don't you read ESR's article about Netscape's then possible open-sourcing of Navigator?
The whole point of the "bazaar" method of development is to attempt to defeat the "mithical man-month" of development by collecting contributions from as many developers as possible
And the Mozilla fisaco from that point forward shows that everything taught in The Mythical Man Month holds true, even for open source projects.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Somebody hand the man some moderation points.
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I went to school in MI and these rocked. Favorite: "We know the rules euchre." Man, no kidding.
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Offtopic=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=1, Informative=1, Underrated=1
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So....the reason you aren't releasing the source code is because you haven't "cleaned it up", made it portable and don't have time to be in tech support?
In other words, you don't have time to manage a "Cathedral Building Process". Hello! That's what open source is supposed to fix.
Just tar the main directory recursively and put a link on the main page. Pretty soon all will be well.
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"but that has no bearing on what's submitted,"
Not directly. But people submit things they think Slashdot might be interested in. And what do they think Slashdot will be interested in? Things similar to what they already see here.
"or what news is being made."
Are you saying you post all the news there is? No, you post the stuff you (and we) are interested in. How do you know what stuff that is? Feedback. How do you get that feedback? Polls/moderation/rating. Whatever you call it, I want to be able to "formally" tell the editors what I think of a story/topic/article.
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"What would you use [story moderation] for?"
So the editors know how much the users like this topic. Sort of a "more articles like this" rating.
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Show me the code!
All of you who are whining about no Slashcode being released, or who are whining about it not being "published" -- let's see some Perl. The 0.3 tarball is out there. So download it and hack already.
I see a lot of whining but I don't see any patches....
--
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
Not many. Companies can't really get an injunction against media - that's "preemptive" (not sure of exact term), if person x says you abuse children, they can say "[You] accused of child abuse" and you have no recourse. After all, they did not say you abused children but that you were accused thereof. Which is factually correct.
Then again, Michael Crichton explains it much more succinctly in Airframe. ;-)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
This sounds like the perfect opportunity to thank you guys for what you've done.
Slashdot stands out in my eyes, and I'm sure in the eyes of many others, as a site that shows what the 'net can do when used properly.
Lots of free web-page hosts like to call themselves communities, but that's a farce. Slashdot is a community. Like all communities it has its problems: unruly neighbors shouting "First Post" at the crack of dawn, pompous fools who talk because they like the sounds of their own voices, and of course the neighbors who seem nice, but whose opinions are simply wrong! (*grin*). But it's also got the best parts of a community, some celebrities living just around the corner who will come over for a bbq, skilled neighbors who will come help you fix your lawnmower, and buddies who love to get together and cheer on the home team.
As a place to spend/waste time, it's nearly impossible to top Slashdot. If you're really busy, you can skip it one day (theoretically speaking of course) and still catch the news in "older stuff". If you're really bored, you can lower your threshold, follow all the links, and contribute. While you can do a lot of the same things with other sites, It's hard to top Slashdot in how easy it is to get what you want out of the site.
So thanks to you guys and to everyone else who has made Slashdot what it is. And let's hope things only get better from here. Thanks, and congratulations.
A rating system on the articles would let you get a drift of what articles we like...and which ones went over like a lead balloon.
I think the filtering has helped some (I for one don't care what happens to Amiga or Apple... I'm glad you do... but I don't) but it would be nice to click on something and say "Yes! This was the most important article of my otherwise useless life!"
Or just rating them on a scale of one to ten would be fine.
I also agree with one of the questions about "more Tech news" i.e. lithography, and the wonders of new gee whiz stuff.
I've watched news.com go from being a tech site to a site devoted to the tech industries business (i.e. who bought who this week, and who's being sued) and consequently no actual TECH news is reported anymore.
I'm not suggesting that Slashdot is headed that way, but I have noticed that the proportions of stories has changed.
Otherwise you guys are doing great!
*A)bort, R)etry, I)nfluence with large hammer.*
Someone buy this man a beer! ... I am too lazy, busy, piss poor to do so right now... hah
I think there was one or two back when Microsoft was trying to create an open standard for Instant messageing, and keep AOL from owning it all.
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Its not that hard, I usualy write my longer comments in MS-word beacuse of the realtime spellchecker. I have to manualy edit out the 'special' quotation mark characters though. :(
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Actualy, I'd say roblimo is one of the *best* slashdot posters, I'm not sure I actualy dissagree with you though, since your post could be interpreted as sarcastic in tone.
Really, Roblimo corrects his storys when he makes mistakes, without a "it wasn't my fault" tone. And he doublechecks his storys more then the others do.
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
"Many moderators, myself included (shame on me) just don't bother to read AC posts at all. Why? I'm not sure. "
Good point. I sometimes look at AC posts when moderating, but usually end up moderating up logged-in users.
I don't know if this has been discussed before, but what about:
A) Locked moderators into -1 threshold (as discussed above)
B) Make the poster invisible to moderators so they can't tell who is logged in or not.
C) Also, make the post score invisible. All too often I find posts moderated too far up simply because someone else thought it was a good idea. While meta-moderation helps and should continue, this would also decrease the odds of a post being "over" moderated.
Points B and C would also help eliminate the "super" posts. For example, when John Carmack posts something, it's almost always boosted to a +5. That's fine, because usually he only posts to articles involving id software and what he says initially is (usually) of high importance or meaning. Now, say someone replies to his post, and John C. replies to that post. All too often I've seen this "reply-to-a-reply-to-a-reply" moderated up to a +5, when really it has little significance and is only a follow-up to what someone else had.
Just my $0.02 y'all.
One of the things I'd love to see in future versions of Slashdot is the ability to not only set a minimum comment score, but a maximum score as well. This would allow for easy filtering of comments based on their scores (maybe I've got moderator points to use and want to see only the posts below 2? Or only the ones 1-3?) With the increasing size of the story discussions it's becoming really hard to visually filter these things out.
Another niceity [sic?] would be the ability to zap your own posts to -1 or lower if you either realize you screwed up the post or changed your mind about what you said. This should be an irreversable action.
On the subject of not being able to effectively make money off of an NNTP interface to slashdot... One obvious solution comes to mind and that is to charge a minimal amount for that access while keeping the web interface free. I for one would be willing to pay a moderate (say $15-30) yearly fee to access slashdot via NNTP.
And finally, it would be nice to be able to have two different sets of defaults - one for when you're not a moderator and one for when you are. For example, my web browswer chokes on all the drop down lists in big stories so it's nice to set the number of stories per page kinda low, lower my comment threshold, etc but for normal slashdotting, I prefer different settings.
To misquote Churchill, never has an operating system (FreeBSD) used by so many been administered by so few. - NetCraft
People ask FAQs all the time, but only elitist flamers from USENET seem to jump all over people who ask FAQs.
;-( Will ISP's provide an introductory text to new users about what rules one should stick to or at least give some links to corresponding sites? Not bloody likely... Look Ma, the Internet!
'Jump all over' is not really what happened here. I also have experienced quite an increase of unrelated postings or FAQ's in Usenet, compared to the good ol' days... I think it's a form of politeness to read an FAQ list if there is one before you start posting to that forum. Unfortunately, new users don't learn this anymore. All you need is an AOL CD-ROM and there you go...
Hemos - First of all congratulations, a good relationship is a hard thing to find. Are you registered anywhere? You could probably get some good net-booty if you do, I hear thousands of geeks read this 'site ;-)
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I share the feeling that Slashdot is a true community with real people. I think it is a great way to waste time (I check slashdot at least 3 or 4 times a day while at work because they never have anything for me to do and I have time to kill). And I was wondering if there should/could be some kind of real-time chat on slashdot for people who are just hanging out, or maybe w/channels per story for live discussion rather than just comments. Keep up the good work guys.
No - it's not like that, simply because all the people in New York would be made to look at a statue with a clown nose day after day. No one forces us to read this site, day after day, reloading every 10 minutes to wait for a new story.
That is the difference. The 'guys' can do what they want with this site - and we really have no right to demand anything from them, as we are but visitors to their vision.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
How did this get scored 'flamebait'??
/. crew. We should be thanking them for the work they do, day after day, enriching our work/school/whatever days and giving us a community we can say we're proud to be a part of.
Is it because the author posted a comment that was contrary to the popular one right now - namely bashing the
Instead, people continue to trash them.
To quote Homer, of Simpson, 'For Shame, for shame'
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
It is interesting to see a /. founder get flammed all to hell for acting like Bill Gates. He kinda asked for this time I think.
Personally I've programmed a long time. When programmers make statements to the effect of "it's too specialized for other people to look at" it means something. When you see programmers saying "if you ask for the code again I'll delay it more", there is a problem. I've seen this many times before and I think the other readers have as well.
This isn't really an open source vs closed source issue. This is really an attitude problem. People talk like this all the time, but when they do I make sure I don't have to work with them. Seriously, have you taken the time to wonder why people send all those flames? Or maybe that, God forbid, the flammers might have a point?
If you're not going to post the source then don't. It's your source and your choice. However, make sure you check the righteous indignation at the door.
You are among programmers who have been there and done that already. Whether it's Bill Gates or anyone else saying it, we are not fooled by this.
I'm confused. You want only the moderators to see the submission queue?
That actually sounds reasonable to me. It might be helpful to CmdrTaco and Hemos. However, there would be lots of room for abuse. (A moderator copying the list of stories and posting them somewhere to start a gripe session.)
Murphy's law - "Anything that can go wrong, will." (Actually, this is Finagle's law, which in itself shows that Finagle
The most important reason the first 50 get moderated more is that the first 50 have been there longer.
Yes, that, and there is a natural tendancy to revisit a story only so many times. Who wants to wade through 210 posts one more time just on the off chance that a good post came in late?
-Roger
if Rob counts all the flame he's getting in this list of comments.
/. are helping Open Source a great deal. I'd say possibly more than the source for this site will...
I can only say one thing: "Freedom". Rob can do whatever the fsck he feels like with code he wrote. And that doesn't preclude him from being good for Open Source.
Maybe you complainers should consider that all the articles posted on
Breace.
As I read through the comments, I begin to release how much slashdot has evolved. I use to see it as being owned by CmdrTaco and Hemos, but from the comments, I can sure tell, it is owned by us. :) they own the source, the servers. But we are slashdot. We own it. A lot of people seem very angry because the code has't been posted, and angry with various other things. I hope the slashdot crew realizes that slashdot is no longer there, but ours. That here opinion doesn't count any more, but ours. That they get paid to do it. Therefore, to keep as many people as happy possible, they should do what people want the most, so if 70% of slashdot wants AC gone, no matter its advantage, AC has to go. This is no longer a hobby for you guys, it is business. I am sure you definitely don't want to be hearing tomorrow, "Boycott Slashdot!". Good luck.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Don't assume that mozilla is a good representation of all Open-Source projects. Have you forgotten all the biggies ? I'm talking about those litle things, you know, Linux, Apache, Samba... They're all Open Source .....
...
Yes, I know I ramble and my spelling isn't quite up to scratch. If you wish to complain,
... don't you read ESR's article about Netscape's then possible open-sourcing of Navigator?
...
The whole point of the "bazaar" method of development is to attempt to defeat the "mithical man-month" of development by collecting contributions from as many developers as possible.
If you really wish to develop and debug your source, publish the damn thing! Remember: you don't *have* to integrate what you don't want back into the source. Linus doesn't
...
Yes, I know I ramble and my spelling isn't quite up to scratch. If you wish to complain,
i doubt they will, but i'd love to see the stories anyway. hey rob -- how bout opening up the input queues ?
An attempt at logical follow-through...
Readable submissions queue - bad thing (FAQ & rant just now).
Story ratings by readers - bad thing (reasons given just now).
"More "News for Nerds" Please..." (item 12)
Okay, so you're posting 10-15 stories a day, which is a nice amount.
But what about allowing more through, just split by ratings?
You get what, 300 submissions a day - a lot are duplicates, a lot are noise, but I might just be interested in some of the rest that slips through. At the moment, I have no facility to say 'please, let me read it ALL! I want my Slashdot fix! I keep refreshing and nothing happens!' (I believe this is the real sentiment behind the desire to read the submissions queue - we're all obsessive about not missing anything :)
The sections have helped a lot with this, but aren't quite there in my opinion. I think there's an easier way.
Now, what if instead of Accept or Reject you had Accept (ratings 1-5) and Reject. The top rating posts could be kept to 10-15/day, and users could set a threshold.
Actually, ratings 1-5 is a little excessive. Just two would be sufficient (and cause less argument).
As I see it, it should be a relatively easy arrangement to implement. A possible additional feature would be to have a story promoted to the upper rating if it became particularly active, but that's not essential.
In fact, it's the same system paper media has had for years - a front page, and the rest of the paper.
Penny for your thoughts?
Martin
I would be interested in the stories that almost make it. I'm sure that they see some stories and debate whether or not to post it, then decide, nah, and dump it. We need a bin that CT and H can place stories that are on the edge to be posted, then let the readers decide if it is good enough. Or better yet, just place ALL the stories in this bin and the ones that get moderated up become the headlines. When I say "all", I mean all the ones that Hemos and CT decide are good enough. They can filter out the multiple submissions and the "tricks", and the "see my page" links. But place all unique stories into the bin.
:-)
Only let the logged in users vote, and only vote once per article. And again, only allow comments to the ones that "make it". I think that if Rob and gang put out the larger list of stories, we can have the users decide what gets in and what doesn't. Even if you see a story you like that doesn't get in, at least you can look at it yourself, but you just can't comment.
Please do this
Thanks.
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
I think it would be interesting to be able to view the story submission queue. That is, what type of stories are being submitted
...
/. is REALLY serious about free speech, then why are posting rights only given to 3 people? Just a question. :)
/. to be liable for ALL such comments... Could it be that Slashdot is liable for the stories they post if they don't post all of them?
/. isn't exactly a tabloid, but it DOES have a habit of posting articles based on rumors. What happens when one day some company gets pissed off, and decides to really do something about it? Any thoughts?
Issue #1
What about allowing everyone to read the Queue? Instead of having a small group of people posting stories, everyone just reads the queue. We already have a pretty good system for rating comments, why not just apply it to the articles in the queue as well?
Stories could be rated the same as comments:
Anonymous Coward = 0
Logged In = 1
In addition to saving CmdrTaco & Co. buckets of time from not having to constantly post articles, it has the added advantage of allowing all stories to be posted.
If the community likes a story it gets moderated up, if not, down. This way people can scan the highlights at 3 or 4, or can troll for everything at 0.
Also, if
Issue #2
As an side here's something that may prove interesting: Since comments aren't removed if they slander(etc) people, as this *might* force
Try this on for size:
Slashdot posts a story about a company which is negatively portrayed. Story is later discovered to be false. Company sues SlashDot for (fill in blank here).
I'm not a lawyer nor a Newspaper guy, but what are the responsibilities of news outlets to report the truth? I know tabloids get sued all the time, and
Neil..............
I used to have a cool sig.
I wish moderators would moderate stuff like this up as "funny." I think that's the only way posts like this can be sufficiently mocked.
Job Well Done That was a good insight into /. /. Can we consider the fact that people may head to andover only because of /. or are people finding /. by going to andover?
I read an earlier post about using Andover as a spill-over for stories that do not make it on
Once again well done. Gotta love HOPE.
Jimiz
Congrats Hemos, that's a tough row to hoe.
Now who am I going to setup my sister-in-law with, she needs a good geeky guy.
Oh yeah, is there going to be a web cam of the Hemos wedding?
George
I always get my moderation points at stupid times...like on quickies, or on some other frivolous topic.
Could moderator-candidates just be assigned a bag of points on a renewable basis to use? I hate reading through all the controversial/good articles and not being able to moderate, yet get my moderation points when all there is to moderate is first post and grits.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Umm, in case you didn't know, Tom Christianson is one of the perl gods.
Couldn't someone set this up themselves as a service to the Slashdot community? At least until they follow through. As long as only one NNTP server was mirroring slashdot, the affect on slashdot would be minimal.
NNTP blows too. What would be really great, and only those who've used it would understand, is VAXnotes. (a.k.a. Notes, VMSnotes, DECnotes) Lotus Notes came from Len Kawell who, when he worked at DEC, did "Notes" which begat VAXnotes.
.vs. "seen" entries, moderation, etc..
(Len did something like it prior to DEC, I think at the University of Illinois on the Plato system I think. Steve Lionel will correct me if I'm wrong)
"Notes" as it was called in DEC, is great. It's still in use, now in Compaq. Keypad navigation, the concept of "unseen"
I miss it every time I go to follow up on a conversation on Slashdot and have to re-read drivel.
We had all this stuff back in 1984!
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
I don't think what we've posted has significantly changed in the last few years... I think that what happens is that each person only remembers the stories that mattered most to them. The brain has a fuzzy compression algorithm... so the thing that you remembered as being the best on Slashdot was microarchitecture and lithography... but I get email from other people complaining that we should post less of that sort of stuff and more about Linux "Like it used to be" when Slashdot never was just about Linux... they apparently are just remembering the Linux stories with more clarity.
Uhhh...getting dizzy...wait... it's becoming clear now...yes, you're right...maybe slashdot hasn't changed...I see it all now...yes, I must have just forgotten all those pro-MS stories, that's all...and only remembered the Linux stories. I see it now..Slashdot never was just about Linux...thank you for clearing that up for us, Mr. Malda.
I would do anything for a spell check button as an optional part of the Preview process.
But what about those of us who use poor spelling to judge others as careless or unintelligent?
Lynnaea
The principle of aggrandizement is the fundamental law of every government. - Frederick the Great
This is very easy to do. If we had more up-to-date source, I would happily do it myself and give it to them. Actually, as soon as we have it, I shall.
--tom
The computer *is* the game
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re: More "News for Nerds" Please... (Score:7, Brilliant)
by Hemos (hemos@slashdot.org) on Thursday January 06, @05:08PM EDT
(User Info) http://hemos.net
Recently disturbed by News for Nerds thread, but inspired by Tolkien, I wrote this:
Simply Brilliant, eh? I can't wait to see my score. I think it gets a 7![ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re: More "News for Nerds" Please... (Score:3, Funny)
by Tom Christiansen (tchrist@perl.com) on on Thursday January 06, @05:15PM EDT
(User Info) http://language.perl.com/
Sure, Hemos, rig it so you get a 7. Sheesh! That's what happens when *you* have the source code. :-)
Translates to Fuck you and your open source ideals
/., but I don't support flamers who don't do some elementary research.
This is gratuitous and unnecessary. If you read the SLASH page, it's not xPL'd code. CT makes it plain that you're welcome to use SLASH, but it's his to develop. He doesn't seem adverse to the idea of opening SLASH, but I can't blame him for not wanting to. Not wanting to open SLASH is not equal to not supporting Open Source! Moderator(s) should rate this as flamebait and move on. I support Open Source, I support
We're through being cool! Eliminate the ninnies and the twits! -Devo
I missed this in the FAQ, thank you for pointing it out. It doesn't realy change my basic point, though. Rob is the primary developer, and he can control release timing to his liking. I don't see people screaming bloody blue murder when Linus Torvalds makes decisions regarding Linux releases. It also doesn't excuse the original posters abuse of Rob. You may have a valid point regarding Rob's use of the GPL (I haven't read the GPL, so I don't know for sure), but that still doesn't relate your comments back to Rob's release timing, which was what flame-boy was going off about. He's pissed about the fact that Rob has decided to put his commitment to the site and his contract with Andover over releasing the new source version. Since it's /. and not SLASH that Andover's paying for, I can't blame him. In regard to your comment comparing open-sourcing OS X and SLASH, I believe you are comparing apples (pun unintended) and oranges. OS X is going to have a major impact upon Apple's user community, and Apple's decision to open-source will spur development of OS X in a (hopefully) positive direction. SLASH is an application with a limited market, and while /. has had an impact on the user community, I can't say that those defending Rob (including myself) are being hypocritical. Hypocrisy in this case would be Rob saying "I believe in open source, but SLASH will never be open source, because it's mine." That's not happened. May I make a suggestion? Rob's statement in the interview (and the code page) was , at least to me, obviously a joke. Take it that way. I'm sure that Rob, like other developers, has enough pride in his work to want to make sure it's as good as possible before releasing it.
We're through being cool! Eliminate the ninnies and the twits! -Devo
May I ask you to expand upon that statement?
We're through being cool! Eliminate the ninnies and the twits! -Devo
I have been reading these types of posts all the way down the page now and I have to reply. Rob and Hemos have time and time again stated that this is NOT a Linux advocacy site. It is NOT an open-source rally site. It is a "News for Nerds" site. If a large percentage of what matters to nerds happens to concern open source then so be it. There are probably many geeks out there who 1) don't use linux, 2) don't care for open source, or 3) care about open source but don't like GPL (or other OS licences)
CmdrTaco's source code is a priviledge not a right. Where is the uproar that Carmack has only just recently released the source to Quake 1. Quake II came out 2 years ago. Rob's attitude, while not winning anything for Mr. Congeniality, is understood after being yapped at time in and time out.
Remember that the main reason you are here is for the news, not the code. If Rob shut the site down for a week or four to bang out the source code to it, I think a lot of people would be pissed off. More than those who are pissed off that the code isn't released yet. The code is his baby right now. Let him bring it to a level that he feels comfortable with before letting others have a whack at it.
From the tone of previous comments, it seems that CmdrTaco has managed to piss of a lot of people with his hypocritical stance on releasing the code for slashdot. I wonder if this interview will come back to haunt them. The slashdot gang used to garner nothing but love from you guys. Is the tide turning now? Are Rob and Hemos taking their patrons for granted? Time will tell.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
Blah, blah, blah.
Whine, whine, whine.
Bitch, bitch, bitch.
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
You get the idea. If you you are so upset by the fact that Rob hasn't released the code why don't you stop reading Slashdot? I know, it is a crazy idea, but it just might work!!!!
Keep in mind it IS their site (content control anyway) and they can do whatever they want with it
That's a bit like the guy who built the Statue of Liberty saying, "It's my statue. I'll sculpt a giant clown nose on her if I want to". Sure, that's technically true, but it would be so much more impressive if the original creator would recognize that his creation has grown beyond the original scope and that it's time to let go.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Rob on the issue of a "Story Submission Queue":
/.'s evolution, then it will only be because its users want it so.
This is in the FAQ dammit! I don't wanna answer it again! Thats what the FAQ is FOR! AAAAGGHHH!
Seriously, there are a lot of reasons that it would make sense to do this. Unfortunately there are a lot of reasons not to do this too. The reason is abuse. If you saw some of the crap that gets submitted, you'd understand. Besides that, I don't want the submissions bin to be littered with noise like "First Post" and "Meept". We're already really busy sifting through 300 odd submissions each day, and we don't need it to be a game.
Sorry Rob, but that is a weak excuse at best, and I think the incessant clamoring for this feature from slashdotters suggests there is a consensus on the user side that you should at least respect, even if Robert Malda doesn't agree.
A story queue would be a form of Moderation extended to the posted topics. Now, moderation has its critics. There are people who evidently are lashed into a fury by the notion that Linux Rulez! is prominent at +5 and their comment about FreeBSD or whatever is buried at -3. But all in all, I can't think of another method that allows me to browse both the Insightful cream of the crop when I want something somber AND Naked and Petrified when I want something funny, but also allows each user to hide those posts if they find them uninteresting.
Story moderation would have a major effect upon the slashdot model, one I think that you and probably Andover fear in your secret heart of hearts. It would remove you from editorial control of your baby. C'mon Rob, admit that this prospect makes you uneasy.
But hell, you say yourself that you are drowned in submissions. And we all know that your team of five (or two or six or whatever) can never produce news that is as timely as the dozens of staffers at CNN. So why not distribute the process of filtering? Why not live up to the inspiration you had when designing post moderation?
You argue, essentially, that we "don't really know what we want". That, if we were to see the garbage posts that make it into your box, we woudl be horrified and/or disgusted with slashdot. So fine, delete the ones that are obvious SPAM or clearly misdirected. But let us have the helm. Post the rest of them to the submission queue.
If I don't want to see Hot Grits, I browse at 2. If I didn't want to see SPAM that makes it into the submission queue, I would do the same thing. But the fact is, while you retain control of this site editorially, you are stifling its full potential. We will always have the uneasy fear that you or Andover is pulling strings and filtering out stories that don't fit your personal biases. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I'm sure you're doing this.
Yes, story moderation might mean that Slashdot drifts away from its obvious pandering to Linux "revolutionaries" that I'm sure brings in a great deal of advertising revunue. Yes, you might not be able to recognize it in a few years. But this is bigger than Rob Malda now. If that is the path of
It's time to let go, Rob...
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
However, do we want the people with enough free time on their hands to rate every comment from 0 to 100 to be the most influential moderators?
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Don't "force" the moderators to do anything. A moderator can choose to turn off scores, and choose to see newest comments first, or whatever, if he thinks that will make him a better moderator.
However, forcing those options to be on would make moderator status seem like a punishment. I can see people spending all their moderation points at once just so they can get back to reading comments the way they choose.
I personally read all the comments when moderating even though they're still in the order I like. And I tend not to moderate up posts that are already at 3 or 4.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
So what if someone gets moderation points and goes through moderating every post that's, say, pro-KDE, as 5 percent? They're never going to run out of points, so nothing would stop them.
It's not like meta-moderation would be very easy to do if there's 100 possible effects of moderation, instead of 2. "Hmm, they gave this a 74%, but I think it deserves an 80%. Unfair."
Also, everyone would moderate on a different scale. 70% would mean "good" to some people (because it's higher than 60%), but "bad" to others (perceiving it as a grading system, where 70% is a C minus)
Amazon.com's reviews are an example of what happens when people are allowed to rate on a scale like that. People are asked to rate books on a scale of 1 to 5. They want their rating to have as much influence as possible, so the majority of the ratings are either 1 or 5. The same thing would happen here. If you like a comment that's at 78% and you think it should be at 85%, do you give it 85%? No, you give it 100% and let the averaging take care of it.
The end result would be basically the same as the moderation system we have now, except that the numbers would be extremely weird, and controversial comments would be screwed - two opposing moderations currently cancel each other out, while in your proposed system they would average to a 50%, dragging them down toward the level of an anonymous coward.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
"or to have his webpage as a forum lauding open source"
Grr, just because you release source doesn't mean you are "lauding open source."
This site becomes whatever people make of it because of the comments. I could take the source and make a pro-ms site out of it, or whatever. And there's nothing they can do about it, really (hack the machine, maybe), once the source is out.
bye
Dan
"And is a forum that champions open source development."
Okay, well, how exactly, does a news page, with stories 90% of the time submitted by users, actually gets biased one way or another without the users getting biased.
It's possible, and I know it's happening. So, I guess it's just a moot point anyway. But we can make slashdot change. I mean there wouldn't be moderation if it weren't for the Grits and First post types . . . imagine what a slew of "others" could do (people who actually don't hate MS, for example).
Anyway . . .
Dan
There should be no need for licensing.
Chalupa is an actual word in Mexican Spanish that names an actual food. IIRC, it is a food very similar to what Taco Bell sells under the same name.
(Darn it, I'd better disclaim.) I'm not Mexican, I don't work for Taco Bell, yadda, yadda...;)
Am I the only one who noticed that the "really good lawyers" in question have a webpage promoting the following type of services?
/. is getting sued by auto-scanning DeCSS lawyers, isn't it? ;-)
In addition, we provide business and entertainment clients with comprehensive Internet monitoring, investigation and legal services in the detection and enforcement of unauthorized use of trademarks, brand names, movie, television and music properties and other intellectual property assets in cyberspace.
We have developed and refined sophisticated software that permits daily search, but unlike many simple monitoring services, Baker & Hostetler is able to respond immediately to identified copyright and trademark infringement-delivering, for example, cease-and-desist letters by e-mail, fax, postal service or by hand, as the client directs.
Pretty ironic, given that
--LP
I think it'd be cool to see something like this:
a checkbox for a user to self-acknowledge an off-topic post; the post stays in the original article forum but is also copied to a separate "area" where all followups to that post are added. This provides a "voluntary" offtopic redirector. While truly offtopic posts should go elsewhere (and will continue to be moderated down), this is useful if the poster wants to recognize that followups are better suited outside the main discussion tree without requiring the system to moderate him down.
add a moderation feature such that if one (or two?) moderators moderate the post as "offtopic", all follups are redirected to a separate area as above. (The post shows up in both places, but the followups only in the second area.) This is a "moderation-based" offtopic redirector. Useful for insuring that offtopic threads don't pollute the forum. Metamoderation prevents abuses.
Interesting?
--LP
No that's not what I meant - but that's a really good idea :)
:)
I just think that we should have moderators rank stories ALREADY POSTED or have all users rank them like is done on segfault. Nothing complex
OFTC: By the community, for the community
Two ways I see this as being practical (as cmdrtaco and hemos both, imho, are taking the wrong approach):
1) Moderators may use their mod-points to moderate the stories (and possibly the stories could be listed in order of score, much like comments, configurable et al.)
OR
2) Have segfault-style story ratings, which work quite effectively. You read the story and have a How do you rate this story? [Funny, Stupid, Brilliant] and the average and total are shown after you rate it.
Either takes a fair bit of code though - unless the slashdot-poll engine is used.
OFTC: By the community, for the community
I think what you mean is that it would LOWER the signal-to-noise ratio. Just a nitpick, especially needed since more and more people make this mistake nowadays.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
I just got this in my mail...
>Subject: Top 50 slogans for Michigan 2000 Tourism Campaign...
1. The one that looks like a mitten, you moron.
2. Where used cars from Florida bring top dollar.
3. No hurricanes here.
4. The orange colored barrel State.
5. Stop and see the Giant Man-eating Clam on the trip north.
6. So close to Canada you can hardly tell the difference.
7. We know the rules to euchre.
8. Got fudge?
9. Two Mystery Spots. No waiting.
10. Yes, the Porcupines are real mountains.
11. Soda? We say pop here, buddy.
12. The Midwestern "M" state without a wrestler forgovernor.
13. No riots since '67.
14. More than just boarded-up auto plants.
15. Casino fever - catch it.
16. Home of Kalkaska dirt, our state soil.
17. Sandy beaches without severe undertow.
18. Happiness is a warm pasty.
19. Imagine an island where horse manure still litters the streets.
20. Water enough for any drought.
21. Visit Hell and Climax.
22. Birthplace of Meijer Thrifty Acres.
23. Where Ontario is a shortcut to New York.
24. Just a serial killer away from enacting capital punishment.
25. Gerald Ford slept here.
26. It's called snow. Get used to it.
27. Where the names of high-toned suburbs needlessly end with "e."
28. Deer processing available here.
29. Fewer toothless women than Indiana.
30. Once a swamp unfit for habitation.
31. Try eating corn flakes without us.
32. Inbreeding: It's what's for dinner.
33. Big on flannel.
34. It's not the heat. It's the humidity.
35. Smoked fish sold here.
36. Good people with camping trailers.
37. Where else can a family of twelve live in a single trailer?
38. Uncle Ted rules.
39. No toll roads and proud of it.
40. Who you calling a hick?
41. Our biggest bridge makes yours look puny.
42. Nearly went to war with Ohio once and will do it again if they pull any funny stuff.
43. Land of snow machines and bass boats.
44. #@?@* mosquitoes.
45. We know a place where wooden shoes are always in style.
46. Where lousy teams get new stadiums.
47. Consider Amway.
48. Speed limit back up to 70, so move it.
49. The Red Wings State.
50. Winter: The best seven months of the year!
I had to explain this one a few times in the early days at Andover when sales folks would try to get me to post stories for advertisers. Once I explained the concept of integrity they backed off.
.."
Enter "Rob Malda teaches Ethics"
Rob: "Ok. If you see an old woman waitng to cross the street, you
Sales man 1: "Try to sell her new glasses, or a hearing aid?"
Rob: "No."
Sales man 2: "Ahh, you sell her son life insurance, and then push her into traffic for him."
Rob: "Aw, jeez. No!"
Sales man 3: "I'm stumped."
Rob: "You help her across the street."
Sales man 2: "You mean, for free?"
Rob: "Yes!. Ethics is about helping people for no tangible reward. It's good for your karma. Integrity means you stick by your beliefs, and don't lie to falsely increase your karma or another's perception of you."
Sales man 3: "Does this mean you won't post that story about Win2k? I mean, they drove a dumptruck full of money up to Andover.net headquaters.. We'd really like to keep it."
Rob: "Perhaps I haven't made this clear...."
And so on, all through the night. The good Rob talked with the Sales man, teaching each what is right....
---
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
If you stopped waiting for Rob to busy himself putting together a proper release (which won't happen soon, as the slashdot crew and their popularity are their own bottleneck), you'd have implemented those features by now.
Stop complaining that people won't push you around in a wheelchair when your legs aren't broken. You'll get less frustrated. So he decided to not release the code -- it's his imperative (he could even change the licence, as he's the copyright owner).
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I feel Slashdot is moving towards a full linux/bsd coverage, and farther away from News for Nerds. Nerds arent just sysadmins or computer jockeys, although a lot of us are. I think there should be more articles on a much broader range. Im thinking of examples, but not much is coming to mind;
/. posts you see a lot more varied ideas and opinions, it'd be a great thing.
Hardware: reviews possibly? The story can be "New GeForce card comes out, we think its hot like Nat Portman!" and people can give their opinions of it. I really hate reading regular reviews, because its one person speaking. In
Geek stuff: space, x10, robots, etc
More personality: Im not sure what I mean.. heh, I dunno slashdot used to be a lot more fun to read, now its all drivel poured through the almighty PHB-boring-filter (pointy haired boss, dilbert, eg "equalize the subsequences of your performance review..")
Anyway I think slashdot is still great and stuff, but IPOs and copywright protection arent really a nerd thing, unless youre a stock broker. Im speaking for myself and my friends when I say *all* except maybe 3 of slashdot's readers are under 19, and frankly not giving a fsck about business is what we're good at.
[w00t@freaky.bish]# rm
I lived in Holland from the age of 3 to 18 and now live in Ann Arbor. They don't even compare. The best thing to do in Holland is the Star Theatre. Although I love Boston, give Ann Arbor a boost and relocate here.
Regarding story submissions. I know I've heard Rob and co. complain about how many submissions there are, and the large amount of just crap stories among other things, so that's where my idea comes from. Perhaps they could pick a group of about 20 trusted people to 'rank' incoming submissions, based on quality and relevance and whatever else, so the people who really post the stories have less noise to browse through to find the real stories.
This isn't like having the story queue public. Only those 20 people have access. I don't think this would affect us much, but it would make the crew's job a lot easier in finding which stories to actually accept.
so, thats my idea.
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
72656B636148206C72655020726568746F6E41207473754A
When I first heard about "Geeks In Space" I was really excited because I thought it would be a cool way to hear about all of the other cool stuff you guys read about but can't put up on the front page because you don't have either enough time or enough space for it. Instead what I found was what felt to me like a text-to-speech of the front page with some creative editing and interesting soundbites. But /. is here so that I can read it. So why confront the same issues and news blurbs in the same depth in audio? Why not use "Geeks In Space" to step outside of the regular bounds of slashdot so that it's actually something that readers haven't already heard about? I can understand the difficulty in the logistics of showing readers all of the submissions, but it's pretty obvious from this turnout that we have a lot of curiousity in the ain't-it-too-bad-this-didn't-make-it-to-the-front- page-dept.
The problem with doing that would be the fact that users are constinately sending in things they have already posted or have been on every other site in the past week. Even at geeknews.net we get a ton of stuff that /. posts up before we can. If they were to do an overflow page like you are talking about, people would try to abuse it by writting up some fake story about how this page, such and such tell you have to trick AMD K-6 3 processors to SMP, and in all actuallity it will be a page that loads thousands of pop ads for porn, other pages and get rich schemes. So the whole overflow idea would become something that is not suitable for the "family" enviroment in which Slashdot has established. If i'm wrong - correct me - Don't bash....
-Ellis of Geeknews.com
You guys said:
"It doesn't have install scripts or help or even comments in the code."
Anybody that develops any kind of software that does anything useful _and_ does not comment it so that should the original developer drop dead someone else might be able to understand it is either a young dumbass with no mature development skills or and old dumbass that should know better. The excuses "We're in a big hurry!" or "I'll comment the code later after it works right" are not acceptable.
Software in the Open Source movement must be BETTER than the commercial stuff in the "coding style and comments" category, because the source will ultimately be inspected by both friends and foes of the Open Source movement alike. If the source looks like spaghetti code shit, it makes the reality of Open Source software start to look like spaghetti code shit.
I shit you not.
Check out AbiWord.
Ok here's a little bit of trivia for you. What database does slashdot use for its' engine? Well I guess I kind of let the cat out of the bag in the subject: mysql. Last time I checked it was a little less than full GPL. Dosn this put a little damper on being able to do many of the really interesting things in an free an open manner anyway?
How exactly does one actually cheaply create a slashdot site. I have looked at various hosting places and they don't exactly do anything of this nature cheaply. And as far as a I can tell doing it yourself would be hard as well. Can anyone tell me what would be the cheapest option to creating a site with the existing slash code in a reasonable way.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Considering the insanities in US trademark, copyright, and patent systems, I wouldn't be surprised if Taco Bell could trademark "chalupa". In fact, if they patented the chalupa, it would be no more severe an abuse than those we've already seen.
Also, if /. is REALLY serious about free speech, then why are posting rights only given to 3 people? Just a question. :)
Slashdot isn't a soapbox, it's "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters". We come to read all the interesting stuff rather than having to trawl all around the web to find it. Those "3 people" pass on stuff that they think will be interesting to their peers. If you want to follow some political agenda then I'm sure there are other web sites out there more suited to you.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Alternatively if moderators make a point of always reading with "Newest first" set, that would help.
Frequently Unanswered Questions :>
... so we could @ least discuss "old" SLASH ?
*hands padded glove to Hemos to pat himself on the back with*
/. banner views, but damn, that nearly made me wince.
Jeez, man, he just posted an interesting link related to part of the post. I understand that people visiting that site may take away from some of the
Deosyne
You must be talking about that place over on East Colonial, next to the theater in that shopping center across from Fashion Square Mall. They've had that damn word in the window for a couple years now, yet I've never heard anyone mention a Cuchifrito when talking about Mexican munchies.
:)
Great, I can see the Road Warrior-esque future now: "Look out! Its CmdrChalupa and the Cuchifritos!" Erm, sorry.
Deosyne
I thought that that was the premise for the "Quickies" that pop up every once in a while. The stuff that _is_ interesting, but just doesn't warrant an entire article. Personally, I look forward to these.
I agree it would be neat to see all the articles submitted, but that just doesn't sound like it would be easy to do. I mean, I'm sure picking the best articles is hard enough, never mind having to pick the 2nd best articles and so on.
Although having a list of ALL articles submitted would probably help stop multiple submissions, I doubt most people would want to dredge through the list just to see if their article has been submitted.
-growing old is inevitable, growing up is optional
1) Rateing Articles:
How about for a simple idea... just put a meter
on each article...bunch of radio buttons to
"Rate How muh you liked this article".
The idea not being as much of use in moderation
of articles but just for yourselves to gauge
what the community likes to see. More of a
simple feedback mechanism than anything else.
2) Source Code:
Most websites don't release their code...hell I
love that your even trying to do it. Its a
great idea. If some people don't like that you
take too long doing it, that is their problem
uite litterally. I think people need to realize
that they have no "right" to see your code.
(if you were in the buisness of writting and
distributing software, I could see an argument for
a right of the users to see the code, I would
even argue in favor of it, but your not)
3) I would like to see the ability for a person,
within reasonable amount of time, to moderate
down their own posts without penalty. That way
if a person realizes after they post that
something is offtopic, they can go and moderate
themselves down.
Perhaps once something is marked offtopic..have
all replies to it autmatically marked offtopic
unless moderated up (without penalty to the
repliers). that way they can still discuss
without bothering others too much.
3) I like the idea of forums where people can
take offtopic discussion and discuss it outside
of the article. Perhaps have a way for an author
of a message to "replace" his own posts into
one of these forums to get it out of the way
of others.
4) Private messages
great idea and could foster longer discussions.
Personally, I check users.pl daily to see if any
replies to my messages were posted, so that I
can continue discussion. However after the
article is a day or two old, it is highly
rare to see a new reply. (happend recently
though)
Could be coupled with idea of mine #3. If a
poster "re-places" his post, it could be initally
"copied" (or "linked") into the forum...then
all repliers sent a message that would lalow them
to do the same to their replies...if all (or most)
say ok...then have the whole thread moved over
and removed from the original articles posts
(maybe a simple pointer added)
thats it...comments?
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I hear people bitching about this on both sides of the argument. Can someone please enlighten us all as to why source code takes so much work to release, especially if that code is just being given away as opposed to released for development.
I think that the main reason programmers are usually so reluctant to release their "bleeding edge" code is pride. Writing software is every bit as much a purely intellectual endeavor as writing literature, and consequently, putting it out for the public to see is in a very real sense putting your entire intellect out for display. It can be a bit nerve wracking, to say the least.
I've had my first personal experience with this recently, and even though it was only two small scripts intended for use by a very limited audience at my local ISP, I can tell you it brings out every bit of insecurity one has to know that it's inevitable that some more (or even worse -- less) experienced coder will find and point out at least a few really silly and elementary mistakes in your code.
Doing open-source really does require some guts.
Alright, I'm still wondering what you guys think about a Slashdot TV show.
We could even get Linus to do an editorial every once and a while.
Click here to read too much about my personal life
I like the idea of being able to see the articles that are in the queue to be posted. Would it be possible to put the articles in the queue and let readers vote on which ones they would like to see? This might save the /. crew time in deciding which articles to toss and which ones to post.
I am not a programmer, let alone an open-source programmer.
But why not release the source code? It might not help them at all, ever. But it would help the community. The Slashdot community is made up of programmers and people who would like the code to use on their own website. People who also preach and practice the virtues of open source software.
"This would be more a hinderance than a help to Slashdot, increasing their maintenance."
Am I missing something? Can't they just ignore the patches and the changes?
From what I can see, the people asking for the source to be released want it either to use for themselves or out of curiosity/hack/improve factor. They seem to require nothing more than the code itself. I have a hard time understanding why CmdrTaco and Hemos just don't release the code as it is. It would silence the critics and it wouldn't hurt or effect Slashdot anymore than they let it effect Slashdot.
Honestly, CmdrTaco's response that people asking him about the source delay the release by 24 hours makes me think that he is pretty touchy about releasing the source. Why not just do it?
I guess in the end, I just don't understand why it takes all this work and preparation to allow them to let people have access to the CVS server, as read only.
I hear people bitching about this on both sides of the argument. Can someone please enlighten us all as to why source code takes so much work to release, especially if that code is just being given away as opposed to released for development.
"CT makes it plain that you're welcome to use SLASH, but it's his to develop."
This is exactly what I don't get. And judging by the other posts, I'm not the only one. It is his to develop right now. It will be his to develop after he releases the source code.
Besides, CT gives lip service to being open source, and has a near GPL license. Why don't we have a recent version of the source?
I was reading one story where the consensus was "the /. author got taken by a hoax". Within the next few days there was a story that accidentally rehashed something very old, another (consensus belief) hoax, and one that has ALREADY been reported and dealt with.
So the basis for story rating I wanted to see was the opinion by very-high-karma users on whether a story was (1) very old, (2) Duplicate of something already discussed to death, (3) probable hoax.
If we have down-moderation, we need grounds for up-moderation to even out the occasional outlier ratings by someone whose opinions do not match the consensus. The only reason I can think of to up-moderate in the case I'm discussing is "Story was unreasonably downed. It is *TOO* new and valid.
Summary: I want story moderation to down-check particular types of unwanted stories.
This is just why there should be choices like
How about it?
this is NOT a Linux advocacy site. It is NOT an open-source rally site. It is a "News for Nerds" site.
Perhaps Andover lied on their SEC filing then?
From the filing
Our Business: Andover.Net is the leading Linux/Open Source destination on the Internet.
More from the filing Our network includes:
LINUX/OPEN SOURCE
- Slashdot
This is probably more about Andover now than CmdrTaco. Despite what Andover's EMPLOYEES might be saying or have said in the past.. Their stock holders have a right to expect Andover to adhere to what they claim to believe in.
And on a side note... Andover's stock is down nearly six and a half percent today... Part of a steady decline. If I were Andover, I would be seriously worried about my employees making statements which reflect as badly on the company as Taco's statements today do. Calling their users (hello stockholders) "asses" when they request that the company live up to their SEC filing.
Taco is obviously now just a paid code monkey in the grand scheme of things. Complaining to him does about as much good as complaining to the tech support guy at RoadRunner.
In closing and in relation to my above statement I must apologize for my original post. I see now that I'm complaining to the wrong person. I must complain to his boss(es), the stockholders, if I expect any progress on the situation. Which I suggest anyone with an interest in this company do.
They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen
Fish! LipHo
re: the Slashdot source: Finally, it's coming soon. It'll be out when its finished. And if you ask me again I'll postpone it again.
Translates to Fuck you and your open source ideals
Taco, I for one think you are giving us the big fuck you with this one. I/we do not care about comments.. I/we do not care about slop. I/we only care about learning from your successes (and failures) and further improving the global programmer community as a whole.
We are a technical group. Do you honestly think that the lack of comments and the addition of platform specific code is going to hamper our ability to understand it as a whole and use it to benefit both the programmer community and slashdot? I'm offended.
From the comments/questions posted it is quite obvious that people are demanding you release the source. People are seeing that Slashdot is NOT about OpenSource!
Being too busy, lazy, whatever is a piss poor excuse. Your sucess is a direct result of you getting hte Slashdotters hyped up over a site which preaches OpenSource, Linux and "news for nerds" but you choose to shit on our ideals.
It's good enough for us to want to come here. Not good enough for you now that you have us here? I for one say "FUCK YOU TOO!"
They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen
Fish! LipHo
Metering with radio buttons is a good idea, but how about the ability to select with a slider. Then simply user a generated image showing an old analogue display entitled Signal/Noise.
It could just be campy enough to work. :)
20 very odd people :-)
(Sorry, I couldn't resist)
Bill, a lot of people want to know when we can expect Windows 2000.
Seriously, there are only 3 people who really know how much work a source release for this is: Linus, Woz, and Me. And the three of us have been working on a lot of stuff. As I write this, Microsoft employees are bugfixing and documenting and preparing for a release.
Why the delay, Bill?
This isn't like other projects: it has been custom fit to our hardware and to our needs. It doesn't have install scripts or help or even comments in the code. We're just too busy to play tech support helping dozens of people. We've decided to squash the bugs and make a clean release rather than rush it.
Why does it take so long to patch bugs in Windows?
It's really easy for someone to complain that I didn't release a new version of Windows every week. Its also easy to forget that in the last 6 months we've doubled in traffic and we've had to optimize our code and hardware to handle that. A new release is secondary: Our job is making money. We want to release new versions of Windows, but it is a definite second priority to making money.
So when can we expect Windows 2000 on the store shelves?
It's coming soon. It'll be out when its finished. And if you ask me again I'll postpone it again.
No Zen is good zen
Well, what I do is open it up in StarOffice. If they send me a
I use both Linux and Windows machines as workstations in a newspaper environment, with Linux as the server. All the proprietary junk (Pagemaker files, etc.) takes place on the Mac. We use RTF as our standard file format, but SO can handle most anything people drag in from home on a floppy.
Lastly, why would I write my own OS? I already have Linux! I stopped most of my complaints about Windows when I stopped using it, but unfortunately I still have to support it.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
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"People ask FAQs all the time". - David Allen
Folks, if you're so pissed off at Slashdot, why do you keep reading it?
Because people is the stuff this site is made up of. We don't read what's in here because of the editors. Even the articles themselves are not that important when compared to the warmth (sometimes heat) contained in discussions like this one. We seek information and knowledge, of course, but there are many folks here who know each other for some time, even if only through this very channel, and this is the kind of thing we are not willing to leave behind. We may disagree, we may flame each other sometimes, but we like the presence of other human beings, so as to exchange points of view and wishes. Check ou your tagline/footnote, it's pure Slashdot! This site has a culture.Did I answer your question?
Now, the source code part. If they don't release the code, they are in their right. I've never seen even the old version, but it must be sheer spaghetti, for they don't come up with a reasonable explanation why not to release it. One can understand that, they are understaffed and things there seem to be made in a hurry, right? Rob himself used the comunity analogy. It is like a mayor asking everyone to keep the city clean, just to litter around when no one is looking.
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"People ask FAQs all the time". - David Allen
uh.. the slasdot source is available at
http://slashdot.org/code.shtml
It came to me last night - will CmdrTaco be changing his name to CmdrChalupa anytime soon? Is there Taco Bell licensing in progress now?
Well?
- Iodine
printf("Why have a signature?");
I understand both sides of the issue. It is Rob's code. No law says he has to release it. But, out of respect for the community in which he has become such an icon, he could at least be honest about it. If the code is heading for a close source, then say so. If it is truely going for open source, give us a target date. We have heard 'soon' since mid-1999 at least.
Odviously, Rob, you are taking a bit of flack for this, and you must see that inflamatory remarks like the '24 delay' comment don't help the situation, though I understand your frustration.
I also understand that you probably won't give us an target, but you may find yourself catching a bit less flack if you give us a bit more than just an undefined 'soon'. Give us a plan with some meat. Will it be released under a standard GNU? A modified GNU? Will we have to link to Andover as well as Slashdot? What features will be included and what won't (moderation, PGP keys, karma, etc.) in the initial 0.4 release? Give us some positive discussion on the topic instead of just voicing you frustration.
Here is some info on slashcode help and alternative code bases:
The slash-help mailing list is here. This list discusses the original slashcode 0.3, as well as non-Malda flavors of slash and the pro's and con's of each.
A forked version of the 0.3 code is availible here.
PHPSlash is being developed independently of the Malda crew. It can be had here.
A Zope version called Squishdot is also availible.
DOINS is also an alternative slashcode base, though I've not worked with it personally.
I've seen some comments about slashsites not giving credit to Rob and Co. Please remember that these other versions of the code exist and are completely seperate. So, just because a site looks like slashdot doesn't mean its using Rob's code. That said, most of the non-0.3/0.2 sites are run by fans of Slashdot and so have links to it. Squishdot for example.
"He who sacrifices beauty for efficiency gets what he deserves." - Bernard Mickey Wrangler a.k.a. the Woodpecker