Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Updates
The formkey bug that was wreaking havoc all weekend was fixed. It was a mistake in seeding rand that was causing a small percentage of users to have problems posting. It wasn't a conspiracy designed to thwart anyone, just you. Man it was a pain in the ass. But it was squashed on Sunday (thank god).
Anonymous Coward filtering is now in place. It's not exactly finished, but it'll do for now. Essentially there is now a user preference that sets all AC posts to -1. This has been a very common user request for some time, so turn it on if you like. It's currently off by default. It's only a baby step: eventually there will be more fine-tuned controls for anonymous posts, as well as comment types. For Example: I'd personally like to assign a -2 penalty on any comment rated 'funny' because most of them frankly just aren't funny at all. But humor is far too subjective to say that the moderation is unfair. Anyway, now everyone can decide for themselves. That should happen in the next few weeks.
Last up, I'm gonna talk a little about advertisements and subscriptions. Slashdot continues to grow: our traffic has increased by like 10% in the last few months, and simply selling the banner ads you see on top of each page isn't going to be enough to keep us afloat if we keep growing. And selling banner ads in 2001 is an awful lot harder then it was in 1999.
The change will be a different ad size on the article page. Currently we have the standard banner size on top of all pages, but soon the article pages will instead have those huge square things that you see on CNet or ZD. I know this will be unpopular with many people, myself included, but when we make the switch, we will also have some sort of subscription system where you can pay a fee to disable them honestly. (No I don't know how much yet!)
Just to shut down the conspiracy theorists, nobody is forcing us to make these changes: The navbar. The new ad formats. The subscription system. I could just say 'No' to changes like these. But Slashdot is now four years old ... and I want it to still be here four years from now. I hope you can understand the expensive reality associated with making this site happen every day for a quarter of a million readers.
Now flame me if you feel it necessary. Get it out of your system.
Most slashdotters are advocates about retaining their privacy and personal information. Yet when it comes to other peoples privacy, ie Anonymous Cowards, it's just unacceptable. Those same people want the Anonymous Cowards modded down. Maybe someone posting as an Anonymous Coward has no choice. If they need to post something negative about the company they work at or an opinion they don't want people to know is theirs, then they have to post anonymously.
Things need to work both ways here. Now go ahead and mod me down for "trolling".
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
But instead I'd like to just point out that Slashdot is an amazing accomplishment, and everyone who keeps it running deserves to get paid for it. The only people that will bitch about the (potential) subscription cost are the same ones whose posts I never read anyway.
--Mid
OK, reality has finally hit the last corner of the internet, /.
/. far more then the edotor of any print newspaper.
/. would only get rid of Jon Katz, I'd be really happy. That was not intended as humor. Fortunatly i can just ignore his stories, so I tend to not complain too loudly. I wouldn't complain at all, but I'm sure he's sucking valuable resources from /.
I like slashdot, there I said it. It is like any other news source, and it need to make money. After years of readership, I actually trust the people who run
/. need to get money, and quit frankly I have no problems with putting an ad in a story. hhhm who else does that, let me think, oh yeah every newspaper oin the last 100 years. how many of you flame the newspaper because they dare sell advertising space?
/. has problems, and run stuff I don't like from time to time, but most of the time its interesting.
Pop-up ads I have a problem with. many employers will track that has more surfing.
/. has finally done something I've wanted for years, and I can finally get rid of those darn AC comments.
Now if
Bottom line: Good Job, keep up the good work, can't wait to see how the next four years go!"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I agree that to an extent, we are actually contributing to Slashdot by posting informative, interesting, humorous content. In fact, I posted a suggestion for rewarding good posters.
However, Slashdot is providing a service, namely providing an organized space for this type of communication -- in a form that is informative, interesting and humorous. In many ways, this is more valuable to me than the opinion of one individual, filtered by the opinions of a couple of editors.
The folks at Slashdot deserve to profit from their service. Banner ads are no longer viable. I'll wager ads don't defray the cost of bandwidth -- which probably runs tens of thousands of dollars per month.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
First, thanks for the notification of new features.
Second, thanks for the tips on how to disable them. 8^)
Third, "Slashdot continues to grow: our traffic has increased by like 10% in the last few months, and simply selling the banner ads you see on top of each page isn't going to be enough to keep us afloat if we keep growing."
Doesn't the fact that increased traffic causes you to lose money faster tell you something?
Maybe your objective shouldn't be to keep growing. Maybe it should be to have a quality website. Remember back when you were in college and you wanted a cool site? You had one. Now you've got a semi-clueful corporate site--that's still rare, but nearly as fun as before.
And don't give me a bunch of guff about "who's going to pay for it". If you have no money, you run a smaller site. The quality is still the same.
324006
That said, I'd like to throw in another value added suggestion: a usenet feed of slashdot, so you can sort it, slice and dice it with whatever client or script you choose. The main objection to that has been lack of ad revenue, but now the person is paying, so why not? It might even cut down on bandwidth costs.
Me too. But that was a much smaller Slashdot. Back then there were what? 100 posts a day on a big day? Rob Malda wrote something almost every day, not just once in a while. It was a little club on an Internet that wasn't yet completely commercial.
:)
Heck, KingKurly and I were listening to WHFS (Baltimore/DC radio station) back then, before Jake Einstein sold it and the new corporate owners canned his son, Damien Einstein, because Damien stuttered and they didn't like that even though he was/is one of the greatest alternarock and freeform "I make my own playlist" DJs ever.
I'll be 49 this October 30, and I'm nostaligic about a lot of things, including an Internet where no one really worried too much about making money.
On the other hand, I was listening to the local NPR station this morning and suddenly, there was a familiar voice -- sounded just like Rob Malda -- talking some sort of shit about using giant Lego robots to invade Afghanistan, and I cracked up. The idea of Rob on a national radio show was sort of funny in itself, and having him being taken seriously by an NPR commentator with a smooth voice was even funnier, -2 all the way, you might say.
So things change, in some ways for the better, in other ways not. Yeah, some of us long for the "good old days" of Slashdot or even of Chips 'n Dips, and in some ways I was happier then, too, but in other ways not.
At least we're trying to hold the line on Slashdot ads as best we can in today's overhyped world, and still trying to get the most interesting people we can to interview (I just emailed RIAA Pres Hilary Rosen yet again -- some Slashdot interviews take a *lot* of time & persistence to arrange, you know) and all that. More story submissions, more users, more comments all the time. I suppose that's success. But it's an ever-increasing workload, too.
I think I will stop spouting and go to bed now. It's almost 11:30 p.m. and I've been up and working since 6 a.m. and I'm tired.
- Robin
Pull a napkin out of the holder and write down some numbers. Let's say the servers and bandwidth are $10K a month. Add four employees at $72K/year including benefits and overhead for another $24K. That's $34K of expenses each month. Revenue? Banners are going for about $2 CPM net--if you're lucky--after commissions and fees. Assuming you can sell 16 MILLION page views you can break even for the month.
The OSDN media kit says Slashdot gets 30MM views, so no there's no problem right? Just sell all your ad inventory and you can CLEAR $30K each month after expenses. Bzzt, wrong. The Internet is swimming in ad inventory, you'll have a hard time selling that many banners at a good price. It's a buyer's market, so you either overdeliver to whatever advertisers you can find to please them or "remainder" your ads to a low-cost ad network. Ad networks like Tribal Fusion are offering sites sub-$1 CPMs, and sites are taking it because there's no better offer.
Advertisers are demanding the big obnoxious billboard ads or popups and they're getting it because sites are desperate for money. You can get a net $10 to $20 CPM on some of them! These new ad formats are all that seem to be selling lately. You either get with the program or do without ad revenue.
Some people are talking about how things will get better once the Internet ad market recovers. What makes them think the current prices are too low? Internet page views continue to increase even if the rate is slowing, so we're faced with more ad inventory instead of less. And how can an advertiser justify the price? If I'm selling a gizmo for $20 and buy banner ads on this site, I can expect best case maybe 0.1% click-throughs or one click for every 1000 impressions. If I pay a $4 gross CPM for the ads then it costs me $4 per click-through. Even if one of every 10 people who click through buy something--unusually high in my experience--it costs $40 to get one person to buy a $20 product. I need something more like a $1 CPM for this deal to make any financial sense.
If you don't like my numbers make up your own, but the bottom line is that nothing short of a bug in Microsoft Excel is going make Slashdot look wildly profitable.
I speak from experience here. The site I work on has been through all the money making schemes in the last 18 months--affiliate programs, Paypal/Amazon donation boxes, banner ads, big Cnet-style ads--and none of them work. We're not even covering our very meager expenses.
Next stop, subscriptions?
Slashdot is one of the few web sites I'd actually pay to read. Even if it still had (unobtrusive) ads after pay. Though I'd prefer that there were none if I pay. (Before you have a stroke and capitalize all your letters flaming: you'll note that you pay for Rolling Stone, and you still get ads. You pay for cable TV and you STILL get ads.)
Just like NPR, these people gotta make a living. Putting on the Slashdot show costs money. It's gotta come from somewhere. So we pay for a subscription. Big deal.
A lot of people here spend a lot of energy bitching about what they get for free. They bitch about Linux, They bitch about BSD. They bitch about Slashdot. Frankly, I'm sick of hearing it. I'm grateful for Linux, and being able to get an operating system for free. And I'm grateful for getting as much content (and don't forget slashcode!) and opinion as we get from Slashdot for free.
So basically, when it comes time to pay, I'll pony it up and hope Taco/Hemos/Cowboy Neal/etc. can take a nice vacation.
And if the $20.00 a year is so distasteful to you, you can always read this ad-free page.