Self-Adaptive Websites

Masem sent in a link to a NYTimes story (free blah blah required. Why is the Times so lame that they don't realize that hundreds of people are registered with my address?) on self adaptive websites. It talks about us, Everything2 (which IMHO is among the best examples of the genre out there, but since I helped create it, I'm biased ;) and of course the recently announced (and Slashcode Based) suck/feed Slashclone, Plastic. I found at least one mistake, but besides that, its not a bad piece, although it probably isn't saying anything that a regular Slashdot reader doesn't know already.

Comments

Also mentions Themestream

[Robotech_Master]

The article also mentions Themestream, a site which has earned me a good bit of money (and enabled me to make a couple hundred buck donation to help keep Nausicaa.net going). Too bad it's now only paying two cents per hit...
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I hate being proven right like this :-)

[nellardo]

At my last salaried job, a now-dead start-up called Novix Media, I told them to simply use Slash for the first release of their big twenty-something-site-that-never-was.

Of course, top management, which included typical old-media folks like Michael Berman (the man who brought us George magazine along with the late John-John), insisted on paying a consulting firm millions of dollars instead.

So I showed them what it could do. I brought in my old Sony VAIO Superslim laptop, a creaky old machine with all of 32 MB of RAM and a 200MHz Pentium (I'd wiped the drive and installed SuSE after one too many lock-ups by WinDoze). Mind you, the "executive assistants" had better machines. Of course, it ran Slash like a champ.

That convinced them enough to buy a modest Linux server, but they still went to Vancouver on a boondoggle to talk to a consulting firm (see the scathing article by Will Leitch in Ironminds for more on that - thank the goddess Will didn't see fit to mention me by name :-) which they then decided wasn't worth the time. So they staff up, but still don't deploy.... They wanted to look at Oracle and Vignette.... which would have done most of what Slash and a CVS server would do at a hundred times the cost (no, not infinite - I'm counting staff time to install Slash and CVS :-)

Go figure. Maybe I should propose a panel at the O'Reilly convention on the cluelessness of management, except of course it would be preaching to the choir.....

I did not think...

[SquadBoy]

I would ever see the day when Hemos would be called Mr. Bates by someone. That was just plain scary. Other than that although wrong in a couple of details (I have seen some things *far* below 0 it was a pretty good introduction. Also why is it that /. won't put this link on the front page?

Is this the future of sites/engines?

[ocelotbob]

In order to soothe my occasional karma-whoring tendancies, a link to the reg free, all pages at once, the way Bob intended version of the article:

http://partners.nytimes.com/2001/01/18/technology/ 18SELF.html?pagewanted=all

Regarding the topic, though, is this truly the way the web is going to become, with semi-intelligent linking, bringing relevant topics to the forefront and allowing the irrelevant to wither in obscurity? If so, this is a mixed blessing. It's good, because obviously you can search for something rather quickly, getting what you need and getting outta there. However, it's also bad because those little sidetracks most searching takes you on can lead you to other topics that you've never heard of that are interesting in their own right.

Re:Reward

[Erasmus Darwin]

What is more ego gratifiing than a bunch of your peers (or moderators, they're better than the rest of us:) telling us that out comment was good/funny/on-topic? If it wasn't a reward then there wouldn't be people karma-whoring, [...]

At the risk of sounding naively optimistic, I find the greatest ego gratification is when a sincere comment that represents my thoughts on an issue gets recognition (either in the form of positive moderation or in the form of interesting replies, even if those replies disagree with my position). I just don't see the point of recognition for spouting meaningless rhetoric for attention -- there's no thrill from people appreciating the fact that you can parrot the standard party lines.

Personally, I've always pegged rhetoric karma whoring (not to be confused with the gratuitous research karma whoring, which generally does result in some useful links to related pages) as more of a "look at me" ploy, not unlike some of the motivations behind trolling. It doesn't hurt that the karma/moderation system provides a nice high score effect. But appreciation for being called "Insightful", when you know you've just repackaged some standard /. speech? I just don't see it.

Moderators

[OlympicSponsor]

I also note that having a high rating does NOT automatically admit one into the (supposedly) sacred realm of Moderator-hood. My Karma hasn't dipped below 47 in at least 6 months, but I've never been a moderator (with this account).

I was on a two month hiatus (internet access down while company moved, then idiot provider couldn't hook us back up) and during that I time I notice that meta-moderation has apparently gone away, too.

And while we're on the topic: Karma Kaps are just wrong. The ONLY incentive I used to have (as FascDot) was an ever growing (IIRC I was above 600) karma. Now that it's practically impossible to lose a +2 bonus and it's long been actually impossible to rise above the noise around here, I've found myself at Kuro5hin more and more (despite the stupid name and incomprehensible "sections" layout).
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MailOne

The self adapting workplace.

[Dissenter]

We NEED to find a way to port slashcode to my office.

Cube warriors are assigned karma points based on how funny their spamed e-mail jokes really are. When a cube warrior has a high enough karma they are given moderator points that they can use to rate up and down a management decision.

Let's take a look at what might happen.

Boss: "I think we need to start doing more useless time reporting."
Random Cube Warrior: "I'm afraid I'm going to have to moderate you down sir."

Boss: "Let's use a Linux based Webserver."
Random Cube Warrior: "Great idea sir! I give you a +1"
Random Troll: "But I can't use Linux"
Random Cube Warrior: "Shut up troll. Flamebait."

Yes yes this could work!!!! Who's with me?

Dissenter

Re:Slashdot moderation

[singularity]

[Forewarning: It has been a while since I looked over the slash code.]

I beleive the article has it wrong. Anyone with a positive karma has just as good a chance to moderate as someone with a 537 karma. The entire Slashdot community continues to choose their "community leaders," rather than a self-selecting group of elite overlords with a +1 ability.

What you also fail to mention is the "protest" contingent. These are people that post somewhat informative posts in order to get a positive karma. They are then able to moderate and meta-moderate. But since the believe that the moderation system sucks, they moderate incorrectly (and mainly meta-moderate incorrectly, since there are no checks on that). Using the system to corrupt the system.

I do believe that Slashdot has a serious problem with people simply copying-and-pasting the original article, and then getting a (5, Informative) instead of a (-1, Redundant).

I believe that minority voices are often moderated down. A pro-MS, anti-Linux argument, even if 100% correct, will often be moderated down to join the Hot Grits comments.

Yes, Slashdot is self-adaptive, but to a certain pro-Linux community. As a Mac user myself, it is always distressing to see a *factually incorrect* anti-Apple comment get moderated up. Yes, meta-moderation should take care of this, but that is entirely dependant upon the meta-moderator seeing the mistake.

Would a "self-adaptive" community be better served by people knowledgable in the field in question moderating? If someone knows a lot about Gnome, but not a lot about BSD, would it not be better to limit him/her to moderating Gnome and related articles?

I sent in a request that any meta-moderation with more than say 7 "Unfairs" would be flagged for CmdrTaco (or other) to look at... That is most probably a "Rebel" trying to disrupt the system...

As with any GPL project, I suppose that the Slasdot-type communities are a work in progress...

[I am downloading the Slash code right now to check on moderation selection, as well as punishment/reward for good/bad moderation]

Re:Is www.Plastic.com a GPL violation?

[SquadBoy]

That would be a misunderstanding of the GPL. I'm not going to link to all the discussions on this topic here on /. mostly because I'm too lazy to search for them right now. But in any case. If you read the GPL you only need to distrubute your code if you distrubute a binary. Now you show me where I get a binary if I visit /. or plastic.com. I don't I get content that was created using the code. They are not sending me a copy of slashcode or even allowing me to one therefore they do not need to mention the GPL or make the code downloadable. According to your logic every website that is hosted on a Linux box or with Apache would have to have a link to download Linux or Apache and a copy of the GPL on it. That is clearly not true and it is clearly not true that using slashcode means that they have to make any modifications public they only have to make them public if they distrubute the modifications and in fact they don't even have to make them public then but rather only give the source (Which since this is Perl is a rather odd concept since by default if you have a Perl program you have the source) to any one who they choose to give a copy a too. OF course this has the effect of making it public but that is a side effect. Maybe before you start going on about the GPL you should try to read and understand it.

Does Anyone Else See the Irony?

[Tesser]

So the NY Times has enough sense to realize that self-adaptive sites are good, and therefore writes up a nice little story about it, but then posts this information on a site that is as far from that model as one can get?

Somehow that amuses me...

Slashdot moderation

[Metal Machine Music]

Slashdot members who receive high ratings also earn special privileges: their posts start out at a higher rating than usual, and they are more likely to be chosen as a moderator in the future.

"This last privilege is a brilliant example of metafeedback at work," said Steven Johnson, the author of the forthcoming book "Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software" (Scribner, 2001) and a vice president of Automatic Media, Plastic.com's parent company.

"It's the ratings snake devouring its own tail," Mr. Johnson said. "Moderators rate posts, and those ratings are used to select future moderators." The most impressive aspect of the Slashdot system, Mr. Johnson said, is that it not only encourages high quality in submissions to the site, but it also sets up an environment where community leaders can naturally rise to the top.

I quote a passage I think is interesting, highlighting the most dubious part.

I think what's happened here is that people have gone "Oh goodie, we've got to right about the 'Online Community', and try to fit their conclusions to what's out there".

What really happens is:

(a) Comedians become moderators (funny posts do well)
(b) Those who post crap stolen off the linked site become moderators (informative)
(c) Those who conform to the majority opinion do well (insightful)
(d) Trolls thrive

High quality is not encouraged - in fact those who become moderators are those:

(a) with nothing (like myself) better to do than to post their opinions (which won't change a jot) to a website
(b) do so so much that they become moderators