Slashdot Mirror
Suck Stops Sucking
An anonymous submitter sends in: "Salon is reporting Automatic Media has run out of money, and Feed and Suck will be closing up shop. Sad news, especially for such high profile, established sites. What will you do on Wednesdays without Filler? Plastic will remain open, serving up some user generated content, which is apparently the cheapest way to operate on the net."
I don't understand why everyone is sad to see Suck go. Suck was truly awful; it attempted to be so ironically self-deprecating as to make itself immune to criticism. A classic adolescent trick. I'm surprised, frankly, that it lasted so long, and am very glad to see it gone forever.
This is Tim Cavanaugh.
Re: intmainvoid on the irony of Suck's dying after cheering for banner ads. As the author of both the pieces in question, I stand by that argument. The only irony is that in the six months that Automatic handled Suck's ad sales, the sales force sold NO ads whatsoever, not one. Using Suck circa 2001 as an example of the death of banner ads is like using Stevie Wonder as proof that musicians have no hand-eye coordination. When we had a real ad sales team (at both Lycos and Wired Digital), we raked in enough money to turn a modest profit on our operation, and had click-through rates of a whopping 5-8% - sometimes. Anyway, the point of my articles was not to use ourselves as an example, but to demonstrate that Jason McCabe Calacanis (who should look to his own house - The Silicon Alley Reporter these days is thin enough to hang on the toilet paper roll where it belongs) is one of the bigger horse's asses ever to catch the eye of the New York media.
Re: Have Blue on Suck's failure to strive for the Katzian ideal of total interactivity. We're still getting a solid 20k to 25k unique users a day. I know it's popular to dis "professional" writers in favor of those kind souls who post for free. I say when you pay people you get a) a much better caliber of talent, and b) a much higher level of effort from the writer. And given the anti-profit bent of many of the posts here, I have to ask: What's worse - having your readers do all the writing for free, or following the Biblical injunction that a workman is worthy of his wage?
Re: The many posters who object to the very notion of a for-profit content site. Move to fucking Cuba if you don't like it. We paid our writers more than anybody else on the web has ever offered (maybe Slate paid more, but they don't have to pay their own way), and we got the best writers in America as a result: I'd challenge anybody to read any given Suck article and not come away with at least one or two original insights, funny lines, or just memorable ball-breaking. And by any measure I think you'd have to concede we put out the best cartoons the Web has ever seen. We did all that while keeping overhead low enough to break even for a good part of our history.
Re: Various on Suck's trolling and flame-baiting Canadians. I happen to know that the guy who wrote our first anti-Canada piece is the real deal, a man who honestly despises Canada and hates Canadians. Make of that what you will; he was speaking his mind, not looking for a reaction. I see the Grub guy is still sore about Richard Shirk and his pseudonymous trolling. Richard was an 18-year-old intern who did his utmost to promote our fine product, and I still appreciate his efforts. Last time I looked at the Grub guy's site it had a warning about how it was a humor site, then a totally vicious and unfunny screed against some other Canadian he didn't like. I say the Grub guy needs anger management, not better-humored readers.
Re: Our various detractors and medical examiners here and elsewhere. As the Reverend Dr. Parr said, "Now that the old lion is dead, every ass thinks he may kick at him." Suck is comatose for a variety of reasons, the main one being that Automatic Media launched in the middle of a shitstorm. But after six years of publication, it's a little late in the game to be saying we failed because we didn't match your definition of what a site should be. Because staying alive, on a for-profit basis, for six years, while paying a good rate to some of the best writers in the world and putting out great content five days a week, is in fact a great success. And if we can manage to resurrect Suck for a Rocky VI-style return, that'll just be another triumph. In the meantime, we have that extensive archive of more than a thousand articles, and I invite everybody to read and enjoy as many of them as you can.
Re: Slashdot taking up the slack and the many nice condolences here and elsewhere. Thank you and good luck. We're still trying to find the right sugar daddy who can recognize a valuable property and take a chance on it. Unfortunately those folks are in short supply these days.
yr pal,
tim
Those that pay their own way, who else? ;)
Plastic.com?!?!?!? Please spare us. Plastic.com, apart from being fugly, is a lame imitation of metafilter, kuro5hin, half-empty, and a host of other similar but better sites that pre-date it.
Please let plastic.com die in peace.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Suck was an artifact of the time when media was transforming from Old Media to New Media, as Katz would put it ::dodges thrown vegetables::. It took advantage of all the Internet could do for content presentation, but it was strictly one-way and didn't offer anything new in the actual content (besides a sarcastic and irreverent tone, which is not exactly unique these days).
User-generated content really is getting more interested than content created by "professionals". Slashdot itself is one of the prime examples: Many articles combine a large body of original content with the comments posted by everyone, to create a totally new way of processing ideas.
Suck was simply a concept whose time had past.
I for one will mourn the passing of suck.com. It was an excellent site, with an original approach. Its biting sarcasm and ironic editorial viewpoint was something I enjoyed, and enjoyed for a good long time.
I have seen some posts that say they 'just didn't get' the articles and the truth is I felt the same about some of them, others it seemed were just not to be 'gotten'. Nonetheless taking a break and reading some Suck was a good way to unwind.
Besides, there is just something wholesome about drug addicted woodland animals.
Thanks Suck.
Right now one of the /. readers (grub) is trolling /. to get hits to his own webpage.
bah! Like I get paid for hits. :)
I was being ironic. I actually found your comment to make perfect sense, it was just so easy to take a shot at it I had to. :)
Yep, thanks for clarifying. Some people take things at face value.
Trolling is a art,
A while back one of the suck.com writers (Richard Shirk) was trolling usenet to get hits to suck.com stories he had written.
He'd post using fictitious names and mail addresses to target newsgroups claiming to be outraged about a story he read on suck.com.
Full story (with links to the usenet posts) available on my webpage
Trolling is a art,
Plastic gets readers from Wired News , too.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Seriously. I mean, it's sad that these (and others) couldn't live out their dream life writing biting commentary, but, I have a hard time with people whining about it. It's a return to the 'net before the boom, where people *gasp* donated their FREE TIME and DIDN'T GET REIMBURSED for it!!!! (y'remember those days?)
People who live to write will write, those who live to web will web. In the old, "pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered" theory, there'll be some pain as we return to the old ways, but hey.
And, if no one had noticed, we've developed a few distributed computing models (freenet comes to mind) that can share the content-serving side of a serverload across multiple systems (cached nearby for your convenience!) that will eschew the old days of us slashdotting, well, Slashdot.
The fun's not over, it's just back to it's regular timespot at 5p-9a
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
This is a really strange thing to see - Plastic is powered by Slash, isn't it?
--
--
Rare Window - free your photos
You make a very good point when you say, "Maybe what's needed are moderation systems that better encourage, um, moderation." If I'd had (or could have bought) mod-points, I'd have rated your comment "Insightful," but I don't, so I'm going to post this semi-off-topic rant instead.
/. moderation-land if Cmdrtaco suddenly began selling mod-points along with giving them away. Things are not perfect here NOW (that's what meta-mod is for, though). Perhaps meta-mods on a user that indicated abuse could result in higher prices for future mod points sold to that user? Should insightful/funny commenters get discounts on mod-points? Should meta-mod -- if done correctly, whatever that is -- lead to discounts? I don't know how it would all work, but I'd like folks to think about the way we treat free vs not-free things. For me (I'm cheap) not free encourages moderation, in the "thrift" sense of the word. I treat free things more like they're worth less (but not worthless). Oh well, rant over.
The question is, how do "we" get there from here? Moderation of the kind we both seek requires that one value what's being used to moderate things. I consider mod-points a short-lived currency, and a potential revenue stream that has been unfortunately-ignored by sites like this one. Slashdot may not need an additional revenue stream, but other sites need both better moderation and a way to support themselves if they're going to take on the "mainstream" media like AOL/Time-Warner.
Take it from me, if you mint a currency, you should NOT constantly give it away. You need to sell it! (Insert blatant self-interest and total-greed disclaimer here. I want them to sell mod points for -- among other things -- e-gold. OTOH, I offer to give the stuff away below! Go figure.) I have a way that they could easily do this. Because e-gold payments are instant and "pushed," and irrevocable, it's unlikely that script-kiddies with credit-card fraud programs would be able to attack the system as they would if payments were delayed and "pulled."
Still, it's also likely that things would not be perfect in
JMR
PS
I will reiterate my offer of 10 grams of e-gold to anyone who hacks the slashcode to make this easy for site-owners to do, along with my offer to click a bit to programmers for free so you can test it (just send me an account number). Surprisingly-few of you have taken me up on this offer, so far. Thanks for listening.
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
They sucked anyway. oh the puns, the puns!
How we know is more important than what we know.
has no concept of vowels or good humour.. must be an american.
How we know is more important than what we know.
other than you being so geographically challenged that you think it is only the British isles that know how to spell, what makes you think I'm a limey? Assumption.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Certainly they could still keep the site going if they have the initiative, and heart to do. While many companies go under which in this revolving door business is common place, it can't be that hard for those writers to continue with their own stories for the site.
Surely there is someone who'd be willing to provide them with the webspace to do so, and if they can't find one have them seriously contact me and I'll put up the space and bandwidth for them, with no strings attached.
FYI it sucks (no I'm not trying to be a smart ass) to see some cool companies go under, but many sites with great content can still survive if they strive for it. It's be done plenty of times, and those sites who do nothing are nothing more than losers for not trying. Many need to learn about management when it comes to finance since many of the dot com'ers are inexperienced when it comes to business, but there's always a time to get the ball rolling in the right direction.
Oh well offer stands if anyone from suck reads this I'm hoping you'd have a clue on how to get in touch with me should you be able to obtain the domain, and want to continue, the space is yours no charge. To anyone else thinking about me dishing up some space... Maybe maybe not depends if I like you and your content
Want Root?
Trés insightful. On Plastic.com, you'd have been moderated up to 5: GENIUS for an off-the-cuff cheapshot like that.
Which would be a more efficient way of proving some of my prior arguments about the readership / POV are true.
If there was such a thing as true there.
...too much variation in POV leads to dialogue that is itself uncompelling to most. It helps, when people are discussing a particular subject, if they speak the same basic language. If they don't even share a language with which they can have the discussion, then it can border on incoherent. I think sometimes that diversity itself causes incoherence in conversation. This can be flavorful, but certainly is as likely to be exhausting.
It is the difference in some respects to watching "Politically Incorrect" on television, versus the "Capital Gang" or "MacLaughlin Group".
On "Politically Incorrect", the subject matter covers a broader range of material (encompassing art, politics, entertainment, media, etc.). The participants come from those same categories- a rock star here, a political reporter there, a talk show host here, a special interest group lackey there. - The dialogue doesn't really pretend to be a dialogue- it is normally a race to see who can produce the funniest joke before the commercial break, with the (ahem) moderator competing against all of the participants. It is often entertaining or infuriating, and almost never substantive. Who watches it? Late night channel surfers who are just looking for something to provide a nominal amount of entertainment.
With "Capital Gang" or "MacLaughlin Group", you have a much more narrow range of participant-diversity. They are political journalists or politicians themselves. They discuss political news, all speaking generally with the same degree of sophistication on political subjects- with the variety coming in their actual political loyalties (some conservative, some liberal, some moderates, some special interest, etc.) - Since they are all political junkies, they tend to be able to move very quickly because they (and their audience) are better informed about the issues, the proponents, the critics, etc.
The audience, rather than being a channel-surfing couch potato, leans more towards an educated, literate, politically-interested sort. The product itself tends to be higher-resolution, and in some respects this would be very offputting to the average viewer of "Politically Incorrect".
I think this is somewhat akin to the difference between a Plastic.com thread and a Slashdot.org thread. Plastic.com subjects cover an enormous range of interests, with discussions themselves mostly being shallow. Slashdot.org stays narrow, and threads have the potential to dig deeper within the narrow range. Which is, IMO, more interesting to read and participate in.
But just IMO.
On a prior thread, the subject of plastic.com came up. In my prior and current opinion, plastic.com doesn't have a long-term future as a viable community. It seems, at least to me, that the operating assumptions regarding the generation of meaningful, tangible value- are inherently flawed.
Plastic.com has mistakenly assumed it could replicate the success of Slashdot simply by repurposing the Slashdot message board system for the purposes of broad-minded subjects mostly related to pop culture, pop technology and pop politics. They have failed to realize that Slashdot's success has come through its specialization. The broader the subject matter, the less compelling the appeal to a broader base of people. The narrower the subject matter, the stronger the potential appeal to a smaller base of people. They are failing because they thought if they focused on broad subjects, that all your base would belong to them. But they ain't CATS. They are on their way to destruction. They have no chance to survive, make their time.
Seriously, though- I think most people who read and participate in Slashdot would agree that there is something of a Slashdot POV that is reinforced through the editorials, through the article selection, through much of the posting activity, etc. While you see a lot of variation in the worldviews of participants (agnostics, christians, atheists, relativists, absolutists, humorists, nihilists, etc.)- the community still has several hundred thousand participants who fit the profile one-way-or-another (in short, they understand at some level the Slashdot narrative, and want to participate in and contribute to it).
What is the Plastic.com POV? There isn't one, really. It isn't created BY a certain specialized community FOR a specialized community. It is a created by a conglomerate of differently-minded interests, lacking in a coherent POV, and it feels like it. Oh sure, it has a sort of ironic, detached postmodern perspective- that is reflected in the cheeky commentary here-and-there, but come on- isn't that the standard TONE of almost web-based content sites these days? Salon, Slate, Wired News, etc.? So how original is that?
Now, Plastic.com will have two less sources funnelling a readership towards its community board. No Feed readers, no Suck readers. Who will it continue to receive readers from? Modern Humorist? (who jokingly noted in a recent press release that they were almost out of the seven-figures in venture capital they raised only a year ago, and could be in trouble?) Netslaves? (who repeatedly asks on their own site if they should discontinue the site itself since their purpose has been satisfied and frankly, Netslaves isn't exactly making anyone richer OR happier?) Inside.com? (who at their PEAK had less than 2000 paying subscribers, as noted by Poynter.org a week ago?)
I don't bear Plastic any ill-will, that isn't why I'm bringing this up. I think the concept is flawed and in time, this will be manifest. But I'd be happy to I was wrong about that.
But, backing up, it begs the question- who in the Internet content business is going to survive?
Jim Romenesko's Media News had a link today to a story in which Slate publisher Scott Moore "was kind of funny, drolly knocking down anybody's ideas about what might make a dollar online... He didn't seem to think any known model will sustain a Web-media company. Because his publication is paid for by Bill Gates, he can afford to be pessimistic."
Truth be told, Moore is wrong. We see that at least The Onion has been able to make a ton of money ($2,000,000 in ad revenues alone last year, for their website only). They also have print advertising in their print publication, and several best-selling books they've released, plus "The Onion" radio news (syndicated for indy & college radio stations, mostly), and have made money optioning articles to Miramax for film development (two to date that I know of).
So, there is a hybrid new media / old media company that is making serious money in content. And, most would agree, they are the best at what they do.
Another content company making money online is Fu----company.com. Founder Pud runs the thing pretty much by himself. He's got a book deal with Simon & Schuster, he's got at least $60,000 a month in subscriber revenues to his unedited gossip / rumours database, he's got some banner advertising (prolly not too special revenue wise), and he's got f'dcompany-branded products he sells on his site (I think I read this may bring in over $100,000 this year, but I'd need to double check).
There are other Internet content players who are surviving, generating revenues and even profits. I don't know of ANY that have done so after raising venture capital. Ironically, the sites that raised capital to fund content are the ones who are dying here, there and all over the shop.
I wish I could think of some more Internet content "pureplays" that seem likely to survive, but I can't off the top of my head.
Where was I going with all this? I don't know. But now that I'm here, I think I'll rest and pretend this was where I was intending to head.
Good luck to the content players still out there, still trying to make something work while remaining independent. I feel obligated to say that after reading that 4 corporate players control over HALF of the public's internet browsing needs or some such nonsense.
All of this speculating has got me depressed. Think I'll go read some old USENET articles and think of a simpler time. A time when it looked like Netscape was going to change the world, when it looked like Microsoft had finally been bested, when Amazon was just selling books and it seemed like the people starting companies left-and-right were doing it because they wanted to make a change in something other than their personal worth.
Is there such a beast? User generated content is the cheap way to go, but the big ticket item is bandwidth. Imagine downloading a mirroring webserver on your broadband PC and volunteering for your favorite websites. Suck.com or whatever would send you a % of the traffic to serve up.
There's a lot of bandwidth out there, the same with wasted cycles but SETI@Home and GIMPS made great use out of idling PCs. You wouldnt even need a couple million contributors like SETI, just a couple hundred could handle a substantial load.
That divides out to about a nickel a person. First of all, to me, it seems like a pretty decent deal to provide entertainment (however intermittent) to a million people for 50 grand. I for one definitely would have paid the, oh, let's see, 60 cents per year to read suck (and then I would've gotten feed for free! whoo hoo!). Maybe even double or triple since not everyone would sign up.
But to an advertiser, that's way over the going rate per impression, isn't it? Even if some of the stories make you click through 4 or 5 times. However, if they'd put more ads thoughout the page, they could dilute the cost to each advertiser. Their ads were always kind of apologetic, in that little frame underneath that we could just squish down if we weren't interested in a new Visa card. Oh well. This really doesn't make me confident for "free" content on the web.
---
I'm very sad about this. Before I found /., suck was far and away my favorite site. I looked forward to Filler every Wednesday, and all the specials. I'll definitely miss Terry's artwork too.
Suck was a great site from the days of "content is king", which I still believe is true, although perhaps user submitted content really is the only way to survive. Sad, sad, sad. I'll miss Feed too, they always made me think, at least a little, which is a very admirable thing for a web drowning in pages and stories that deserve a feature from Something Awful.
Anyways, thanks for all the bile and deprecatory humor suck (including the self deprecatory). It's going to be a lonely net now that Hack and the Fish aren't on it.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Does this mean Slashdot will be hiring some actual writers? People that can generate some real content?
/. be rather boring with actual writers? I mean, people already whine about Katz, and he's as close as I think they've gotten. Slashdot just wouldn't be as much fun if they were professionals. Actually, I wish the originators (CT and H) would post more often. It seems to me that they must take turns every couple days. There will be 4 or 5 stories posted in a row from M or T and every once in a while CT will post something. But maybe they are still having too much fun enjoying their stock cash. Or wives/girlfriends.
Hmm, I thought they meant they were going to add a Slackware box to their arsenal of webservers.
Or maybe they were trying to start a distro war since those create so many pageviews.
But wouldn't
kickin' science like no one else can,
my dick is twice as long as my attention span.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
Who ends up with "suck.com"? Will they auction it off? "sucks.com", the anti-corporate site, should buy it.
For those that haven't yet made Plastic a part of their day- Check the site out now.
It's a Slash-based site very similar to Slashdot, but leaning much more towards political issues. If you're a libertarian (Lower-case 'L' intentional), you'll feel right at home.
signature smigmature
- James
Suck: mozilla is dead !!! Mozilla: no, suck is dead.
True, I read stories I'm only vaguely interested in, if the posters are lively that day. But we still need the original content to spark the discussion. That's the shame of Suck going under.
However, I also agree that the user provided content is often more entertaining. But if everything turns into interlinking weblogs, doesn't everything end up under "meta"?
I hope that sites that are a mix of the two can bridge the gap.
I think there is a place for proffessional writers online. I think we'll see more collaborative journalism and even fiction down the road.
come for the naked robots, stay for the zombies
from the slashdot-vows-to-take-up-slack dept.
Does this mean Slashdot will be hiring some actual writers? People that can generate some real content?
Plastic will remain open, serving up some user generated content, which is apparently the cheapest way to operate on the net."
Oh, nevermind then.
"And like that
It's time the bury the bug-eyed fish in the back yard and give that gun to some fire-arm buy-back program. The barrel, however, is stylish and we can make a wicked-cool chair out of it.
There are, of course, several satire sites that can't go out of business because they never made any money in the first place.
Funny that Slashdot should mention this. If it wasn't for all the articles we submit and the twelve page anti-Katz rants we post, Taco would have been flipping burgers by now. :)
You obviously don't run a weblog for the money, I'm suprised they had "money" at all, one wouldn't think vc would be involved with a weblog, so the only revenue stream is running ads which is about the worst it's ever been on the net. What does one expect out of a weblog if they're in it for the money or can't or don't expect to survive without it. Fact is that the /. crew would probably do this for free because at one time they did and people liked it, hell if it all dropped out tomarrow I wouldn't blink for a second if /. popped up somewhere else and they were again doing things for free.
I think another demographic issue that's at work here is bandwidth. I bet Slashdot's readership is much more likely than Plastic's to have high-bandwidth access. Any site works better when users have fat pipes. So maybe Slashdot is the only site that's really thriving, but with the current bandwidth situation, it may be the one of the only ones that could.
Art At Home