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.
...is 500,000 slashdotters clicking the "off" radio button for the OSDN bar -d
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
Last thing.
Those big mid-page ads on CNET are why I don't go there anymore.
You better have a good explanation for why you think that slashdot folks are willing to tolerate them.
You don't have to tolerate them! Taco just said you can buy a subscription and disable them!
And as unpopular as it is to pay for the things, people work on slashdot so we can all have fun reading it. And they have to make money too (god knows their stock ain't worth shit anymore).
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
Every time I click on the X I get logged out... I think they're saying it's the bar or no Slashdot for me. I can take a hint, I'll leave the bar : )
No sig for you.
Give me some nice, tasty preferences in that misc section to tell you what type of ads I'd like to see.
Much like slashboxes, in that none selected will show you the default selection, and some selected will show only those type. Also show the default selection if none of the selected types are showing at that given moment.
I would be very receptive to setting those preferences. I think most other folk around here would too.
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
Now, take a site like Salon, which should have subscriptions. Salon creates its own content - and that's often unique and interesting content, and it requires the investment of a great deal of time and effort from Salon writers, many of whom actually go to work in a building and work all day.
So how much time and effort - or other resources - does Slashdot invest in the daily operations of the site? Very little.
Slashdot's content is entirely community-driven; it's all submitted by the users, for free. What do the editors have to do? Why, the horrible, grueling task of reading through user submissions, choosing a few to post, and relaxing as the site does its thing.
In fact, it seems that the real cost of Slashdot is relatively small: the cost of servers/bandwidth, and a modest salary for the editors and administrators who do this as a full-time job.
IIRC, Slashdot lasted years as Taco and Hemo's only job. This sudden need for money seems to go back to the Andover takeover; it's entirely a business decision. But unlike Salon, this isn't a business venture that requires huge amounts of effort, because the content is provided by users.
So, let me get to my main beef: We already "pay" for the site by submitting content! Should Slashdot be profitting off our article submissions, and our comments? That's why I read the site, not because of the editors. If we keep the Salon analogy, essentially suggesting charging the "writers" rather than paying them. Maybe I should be paid by advertisers for submitting this comment, rather than the site?
Now, if the editors would at least do their jobs well, I might reconsider - but I don't see fact-checking, I don't see anything done to stop all these duplicate stories -- heck, I don't even see spell-checking!
If Slashdot even wants to consider this system, they should have completely open records. Show us all your costs, from servers to salaries, and your profit. Let us know that we're being charged this because of need, and not because of the avarice of a few businessmen over at VA.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
This is a bad option, even if we all agree as to what you can laugh at. "Funny" is the one excuse you have for modding up a post that's really offtopic or trollbait.
One thing that absolutely pisses me off about the CNet and ZDNet ads is that they make the browser unusable and choppy untill you scroll them away. Don't put those there. Use simple images or light-weight animated GIFs.
Use PayPal. You have a solid, reliable reader base of what, half a million users? Create a yearly "pledge" drive similar to NPR stations. Get 1/10th of people to give you $5-50 bucks and you're all set. If you can't even get that, then the "community" doesn't deserve web sites like this.
Ads will kill readership, period. It's sad, but true. And because of the fact that you've given away the code, there are tons of options out there that will fill the void (for a while at least).
I think that users should be able to "pay" for their subscription fees with Karma points instead of cash (or some combination thereof). E.g. each Karma point could be worth 1/10 of the monthly fee.
:-)
Most of the value of slashdot is in the user comments, and I think it is only fair to give a "free ride" to those who contribute the most highly rated content.
Also, people who were bored with sitting at the +50 cap would have a way to reduce their Karma other than resorting to a week-long trolling spree.
Has anyone thought about setting up some donation system? I'm sure a lot of people would choose to give more money to eliminate large annoying banners for everyone then they would just for themselfs. Or if there already is a donation system in place draw more attention to it (I don't know of one, and if people don't know of it they can't donate). Without of course being annoying about it, IMO sites begging for donations on every page is as annoying as ads. Then again, maybe I'm just overestimating peoples generosity.
Speaking of Funny Posts, I'd like to be able to filter out everything but.
Sometimes, I just want to read the posts modded "funny"... Slashdot can be the best source of humor anywhere.
I wish I could filter out all that "Interesting" and "Informative" crap, and make it my own personal humor site.
Something to brighten my day between issues of TheOnion.
Reality has a liberal bias
So here's an idea: mod the ads. Users may voluntarily mod the ads based on how much they think the ads provide any value-add to life.
Miko O'Sullivan
Why not use collaborative filtering in tandem with traditional moderation?
With collaborative filtering, each slashdotter would view posts that were moderated up by other slashdotters who had similar preferences in the past.
There was a great site called moviecritic.com (which unfortunately has since been shut down due to budget limitations) that used collaborative filtering to recommend movies. I found it incredibly useful, and discovered some great movies that I never would have watched otherwise.
With collaborative filtering, stories could also be 'recommended' without forcing the user to rule out entire categories of stories. The beauty of collaborative filtering is that it does not assume anything a priori other than the fact that if two individuals have shared common preferences in the past, they are likely to agree again in the future.
Traditional moderation could be accomplished simply by tallying the votes that each post received.
mmm
p.s. I'd be glad to help build this functionality into slashcode if there is sufficient interest.
Amazing magic tricks
Slashdot doesn't need banner ads or subscriptions. If Taco wants cash all he has to do is start selling karma.. Just think: Karma-whoring with a credit card.
Who here wouldn't pay a few extra bucks for a little more karma?
After that, he could introduce credit-card moderating.. $10 and you can take that pro MSFT comment from +5 all the way down to -2!
Apathy -- The state of numbness of the mind. When you are apathic, you can think.
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
Slash had/has a great opportunity to take advantage of all the geeks consistently coming here.
With a captive audience, why didn't you guys write an auction service, like ebay, or a classifed ad section, for a fee. You have a community of people, you are well known, take advantage of it. You have scalability experience. Over the last 3 years you could have really built something. And ebay has proven this to be the best way to make $$ over the internet.
I doubt ads anymore will help you - good luck. you remind me of netscape. they had millions of people going to their home page daily, and only belatedly realized they could create a portal service like Yahoo. They blew it, and finally died. They would still be huge today if they had woken up.
alex
Subscriptions that eliminate banner ads do not add much value for the purchaser especially in a technically savvy crowd like Slashdot where users that know how to install and configure JunkBuster to get rid of ads abound. For subscriptions to be valuable source of revenue then the people who subscribe must get a considerable amount more than the people who don't to make it worth it. Suggestions I can think of right of the bat
A lot of the ideas are probably unworkable but they are put there to give an idea as to the kind of things that people are more likely to pay for than not.
All of these may seem distasteful but considering that VA Linux probably doesn't have much longer to go I think the Slashdot folks need to take a long hard look at how they're going to keep financing the site if they still want it to exist in four or five years.
Flame Away.
"But then maybe it's just a mad conspiracy theory."
In a way it is a conspiracy. NewsForge exists in large part because of advertiser demand for a "serious" Linux and Open Source news site that would appeal to people who have the power to sign purchase orders, combined with endless reader email asking us to turn Slashdot into more of a news site.
But everyone at OSDN *likes* Slashdot in all its anarchic glory. I've liked it longer than 99% of all current Slashdot users (note my UID), and I don't ever want to see its content change because of corporate pressure.
Hence NewsForge. Think of NewsForge as a trick to get our bosses to leave Slashdot alone instead of trying to turn it into something it was never meant to be.
- Robin "Roblimo" Miller
Editor in Chief, OSDN
Bitching about bandwidth costs? Then please look into stylesheets; you could easily save 35% in bandwidth costs. As the above poster noted, stylesheets are the way to go.
I love Slashdot, and I'm willing to pay for it because I know it costs money to run a website and ads aren't cutting it these days. However, they're basically throwing away the bandwidth they would like us to pay for. The HTML produced by Slash is crap, frankly.
I used HTML Tidy to automatically convert the page to stylesheets as opposed to old-fasioned obsolete HTML formatting tags. The old version of the page was ~230K. The new version of the page, using stylesheets, was ~160K. That's a ~43% bandwith savings, right there, with little effort. If you include images, there's still a 35% reduction in bandwidth.
Also, have the Slash crew explored Apache's on-the-fly zip compression abilities (it's a separate module, I don't know the name)? It eats CPU power, obviously, but HTML can be compressed by 90% or more when zipped. The cost of more web boxen would be more than paid for by the bandwidth savings, I'd wager... especially if Slashdot is getting free hosting from it's parent company.
Bottom line: I'll pay for Slashdot's content, but not for lazy Slashdot coding. If you want us to pay for bandwidth, show us you're using it as efficiently as possible. Because you're not right now. You're like a guy begging for food with a sandwich sticking out of his pocket... I just DON'T wanna hear it. And yes, I know there's other costs associated with running the website besides bandwidth, and the ad market is shit right now.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
I love text ads. I click on ads on Google more than any other website because they are targeted and easy on my eyes. Banners with cycling images make you wait to see what the ad is for.
I'm not sure what the costs of slashdot are that are increasing, but I'm sure that there are effective ways to reduce them. Is it the server load? If you use technologies that are more efficent or pass the processing onto the client ( like XML, XSLT, and CSS ) then it would be less cost to you. Also using text ads would decrease load.
On another note: I think that a better, more streamlined, ad free slashdot would be worth a few cents a day. I suggest if you move to a pay system (which I would love) then use a micropay system. Something like $0.03 per page load. It is the fairest way to go, and would encourage people to start reading slashdot because there wouldn't be a commitment.
The difference is that I pay one reasonable (relatively) fee per month for 50 or so channels.
This is more akin to subscribing to a magazine. I used to subscribe to a lot of magazines. Then I discovered that I actually didn't have the time to get $30 or so of value from each one, instead I was simply skimming most of them. The result was that I greatly reduced the number that I subscribe too.
The same will be true of web sites. If they think the competition was bad before, wait until users have to start making choices about what web sites they have time to get real value from.
Note though, my first post didn't say I wasn't willing to pay for a _reasonable_ subscription and in my opinion that is now more then a few dollars a year to make up for my ad viewing.
My choice here is even easier then the magazines however as I can filter the ads from my end if they aren't reasonable in their pricing.
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
In response to all the bitching about ACs, how about setting up two things:
:)) .. slashdot would be a third party. Since they wouldn't have an email address displayed when posting anonymous, this would allow a user to send them a private message.
/. private message system (which is better than nothing, I'd guess.)
1) Make it so you can post anonymously, but must be logged in. Ie, (like on half-empty) your karma is still affected and there is still an internal link to your post with your account, but nobody knows who you are.
2) Make it so there's an interface in slashcode to contact anonymous individuals (perhaps anonymously as well?
This way ACs who are posting crap will eventually bottom out in karma and post at -1 and have the potential to be flamed on the
--
First, it is said:
"I don't like it any more then many of you, so if you log in, there is an option to disable it."
Then:
"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"
If you COULD have said no, and you HATED the changes, why did you say YES?
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
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?
I finally got around to creating a hosts file like that when I was working at a company that had IE locked down so hard that you couldn't even turn off animated GIFs. I strongly recommend it as a solution, or at least a start. Here's my little collection (Note, it kills almost all CNET images);127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.0.1 active.macromedia.com 127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 m.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ln.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 ads-c.focalink.com 127.0.0.1 adfarm.mediaplex.com 127.0.0.1 js-adex3.flycast.com 127.0.0.1 us.a1.yimg.com 127.0.0.1 ad.iwin.com 127.0.0.1 ads.mindsetnetwork.com 127.0.0.1 a1444.g.akamai.net 127.0.0.1 image.linkexchange.com 127.0.0.1 ads.web.aol.com 127.0.0.1 adremote.pathfinder.com 127.0.0.1 a.r.tv.com 127.0.0.1 adsrv.news.com.au 127.0.0.1 images.ads.fairfax.com.au 127.0.0.1 ads.msn.com 127.0.0.1 ads1.sptimes.com 127.0.0.1 ad.au.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 global.msads.net 127.0.0.1 au.a1.yimg.com 127.0.0.1 ads.x10.com 127.0.0.1 eur.a1.yimg.com 127.0.0.1 utils.mediageneral.com 127.0.0.1 ads.ad-flow.com 127.0.0.1 ads.gamespy.com
It ain't that simple.
You've gotta sell those ads. And that's not so easy, anymore. If you don't sell an ad, serving the page is a cost, not a benefit.
"But wait!" you say. "There's ALWAYS an ad at the top, so they're clearly selling them all!" Nope. You know all those Think Geek ads? And the NewsForge ads? And all the other adds that point to things OSDN owns? Those are all "house" ads that
So, if they're not selling the ads, now, more pageviews just results in more bandwidth costs, not more ad sales.
Seeing everything from modding ads to new payments schemes has been discussed today, I will add my tiny suggestion for improving slashdot.
When I am a moderator, I find the pull-down mod system terrible. I like modding, but I don't want to spend all day on it. What sux is this: I view a story, see a good post and change the pull-down to "interesting". However, I don't want to go aaaaall the way down to click "moderate", because it takes 2-3 seconds of my life for the page to reload - and then I can't find where I got in the text. So I keep reading, just in case I spot another mod worthy post. If I see a sub-thread which isn't expanded, I can't go in there, cuz then the uncached page would forget the post I wanted to mod when I go back. Too often I end up going on a mod rampage, and just mod down trolls, but I would really prefer just to immidiatly vote for a post I saw, without getting disrupted.
Any solutions? You bet! If you check out half-empty, the solution chosen there is simply a small button or link for every vote option. Click on any of them and a little window opens in the background, which handles the modding. It's beautifully simple and solves all the problems mentioned here. It even stimulates modding.
-Kraft
Live and let live
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.