Slashdot Mirror
The SEC and Fake Investment Sites
An anonymous reader sent in: "Our web-based challenge for the day: find the SEC's fake investment sites! The SEC claims to have seeded the web with fake investment sites in order to teach naive web users and investors about the dangers of believing all you read and investing without research. These sites have telltale signs of online investment fraud, and if people manage to overlook or ignore those issues and attempt to invest money, informs them that they have made an unwise decision. The SEC says that these sites are intended to encourage wise investing decisions, or in more casual terms, to attempt to slap fools upside the head with a cluestick before they lose their money in a real scam. It's an interesting use of the web by a government-related agency."
I gave up trying to figure this out years ago, and now content myself to just reading whatever
interesting stuff happens to make it through the filter, and posting an occasional diatribe or two.
The reasoning (or lack there of) behind what stories get accepted or rejected from Slashdot is not actually all that hard to understand. Like anything in PR, it's a crapshoot.
Here are my views (I always submit as AC, due to some particular personal reasons, but have a fairly decent acceptance rate.)
Submitting a story to Slashdot involves creating a mini press release. You are promoting your "version" of the story, so that it gets chosen over all other "versions." Creating an effective press release is frickin' hard. I've seen cases in which a 2-page, double-spaced press release took two-three weeks to produce.
As with any press release, you increase your chances by focusing on certain aspects.
1. Engaging language. You are selling your summary to the editor who reviews it. They probably go through dozens of submissions a day, and yours has to catch their eye and engage their attention.
2. Interesting topic, which could give rise to a ongoing discussion. When looking back on most of my failed submissions, they did not meet #2. If it is interesting, but probably won't create much of a discussion, it is worthless for Slashdot's purposes. This is not a news site, it is a discussion site. Even if you believe it would generate a discussion, posing a jumping off point for that discussion increases your chances.
But still, things will be rejected, as thousands of press releases around the world are thrown into thousands of trash cans every day. Other versions of the same thing may be accepted because the language/discussion points appeal more to the editor who reviews it. This can be a problem at times, because an incorrect and more controversial version which provides a jumping off point for argument will probably be accepted over a summary which is technically correct and dry. But this is not a problem with this site alone--it is a problem throughout the news world. Where do you think that the news sites get some of their incorrect yet controversial information about technical issues? Badly written press releases whose information may be incorrect, but has the "gotcha" factor.
And there's always the editor factor. Maybe editor A couldn't give a damn about the subject and rejected submission A because it didn't interest him. Then submission B comes around a day later and is reviewed by editor B, who loves the information provided. Therefore, B is accepted over A. This too, is not a problem limited to this news site. Once more than one person is involved consistancy goes straight out the window, no matter how hard you strive for it.
Submitting to Slashdot is a crapshoot. There are ways that you can improve your odds, but if your summary is reviewed by an editor who believes it is uninteresting, or believes it will not stimulate discussion, it gets rejected.