Slashdot Mirror
Announcing Slashdot Subscriptions
To understand why the system works like it does, you need to first understand that Slashdot is about to start accepting new ad formats. The large ads that you see on many other sites are coming here. We really don't have an option: these are what advertisers want, and if we don't provide them, we won't be around much longer. But we want to give you an option to see Slashdot without these ads. Second, you need to understand that Slashdot readers fall into a variety of types, and charging the same flat fee just isn't possible.
Slashdot subscriptions will essentially let you buy a thousand pages to be viewed without banner ads. And you will have some flexibility to decide what types of pages (Comments, Articles, The Homepage) you want ads removed from, and what types of pages you just want to see the ads.
The rates are currently set at $5 per 1000 pages. To put this into perspective, $20 (typical magazine subscription) will be enough pages for 82% of our readers to view Slashdot without ads for a year. Another 15% will need to spend $5 a month to accomplish the same thing. 3% of our readers would need to spend more than $5 a month- but they could choose to see ads on comments and in almost every case, still pay around $5 a month. (As an aside, it's also worth noting that more than half of all comment posters fall into this 3%)
We realize that this system is more complex, but Slashdot has a third of a million readers per day with different reading habits, and this is the best way to accomodate everyone fairly.
Currently we only accept payment via paypal. It was simply easy and fast. We intend to offer other options as time permits and readers request.
Eventually we intend to offer additional features to subscribers. Exactly what those plums are remains to be decided: Access to the rejected submissions bin? A 'Gold Star' in your comments header? Karma? (I think that would be hilarious) We really don't know. We'll decide and implement what makes sense as we have time to do it.
We are doing our best to learn from the mistakes made by other sites that have started charging for subscriptions. We won't create subscriber only features that cost more to maintain than they generate. But we do need support from you if we are to continue. So anyway, here's that link again if you forgot it ;)
I still like reading /., though, b/c it's more news for nerds while k5, while it has it's technology and nerd news, also has a lot of political and social discussions. Oh yeah, and k5 also has subscriptions before /. did, but "subscribing" does nothing for you, really, since even if you don't subscribe you don't see any ads. (Although when k5 showed OSDN ads in the past, subscribing hid these banners...)
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
We already use it. It's a noticeable amount of bandwidth that we save, but it's far from half.
Yes, Virginia, there really is a CowboyNeal.
As mentioned in the article, and on the subscription page, we will support other payment methods. Paypal was just quick and easy, and we knew a lot of readers use it anyway.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
This system works well for 82% of Slashdot readers- for them the cost is the same as a typical magazine.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Frankly we doubt that 3% will really pay us at all. Notice the venom posted in this discussion: this comes largely from that very 3%. Its ironic that those who profess to hate us the most also load the most pages ;)
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
dyndns.org has been accepting PayPal for the donations that keep our service running for years, and never had a problem. We've processed hundreds of thousands of dollars through PayPal, and accept more each day, and we've never had a single problem like those described on PayPalWarning.com and other sites. Those problems account for a tiny fraction of all PayPal users, and PayPal is actually improving service to big customers like us, because of these problems - people are getting scared off, and they're trying to keep the big players from running away, too. They'd be very stupid to kill OSDN's account, and they know it.
I'm sorry we don't have a system in place to tell you your activity in advance, but those realtime updates are DB hogs and we don't do them for everyone.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
The do indeed (at least for the uncustomized top page). Try this:
$ telnet slashdot.org 80
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: slashdot.org
Accept-Encoding: gzip
[blank line]
You'll get back a page with Content-Encoding: gzip.
We hope people will give it a try- the system has enough options to let a hardcore two-hundred-page-a-day user chip in $5 a month to suppress ads from Articles and maybe the homepage... but again, this group is by far a minority. 82% of Slashdot readers read 10 or fewer pages a day.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Someday we may in fact give free pages for accepted story submissions. As always, one step at a time.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
NO pop-ups, pop-unders, pop whatever.
NO Flash playing, Java Applet, MID playing ads.
What it will be is the messaging unit ads (the big square ad in center of page) and sometimes, a bigger banner ad where the current banner is. That's it. Still GIF/JPG ads. That's all. And yes, one ad per page.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
I learned a lot when there were still a lot of techs around. And when that was the focus of the stories.
I've submitted a few stories (all but one rejected I think, I never said I was GOOD), and I got my karma honestly, back when I cared to spend time in the threads here. I took the karma hits I deserved, too, for being a fool, or when I voiced my (relatively moderate and reasonable) opinion on given subjects and someone disagreed with me and had mod points that day. I have read your site for a long time, I was ALWAYS reading threads at -1, and I have never used any of your author filters, or anything.
And it isn"t like I can't afford to pay for your services. When OMM had their little "forum naming rights" game I bought two, which is $100, for a site that never even updates. So it's not like I feel like I should be getting the things I value for free. I don't steal with napster or whatever, either.
But now here it is:
- For continuing to allow Jon Katz to post stories to this website...
- For wasting your time half-coding a lameness filter that's yet to work, and would be better off without anyway...
- For using a fucking phone company "buy shit in advance" model...
...you're fired. Clean out your desk, these gentlemen will escort you to your car. Thanks for the GPLd code and the heads up about a bunch of stuff back when I needed a clue. Thanks for defending the anime discussions back when we first started, and eventually branching it off into a whole other website. Thanks for not showing bias against folks at other sites when they clearly called you the enemy (...kuro5hin). Thanks for the moments of clarity when you had people like Clay Shirky or the occasional other good QA post.
I will now join the ranks of your 1000s of former readers who will not come here unless a link is offered specifically, and even then I'll have to think about it. With or without harsh economics, in the end you and yours are no better than IGN, and no one sucks like IGN.
/jpowers/jeep/etc/
-jpowers