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 ;)
Access to the rejected submissions bin?
Yes, please -- with the opportunity to moderate or rank them, so the most interesting rejected submissions float to the top.
If a story gets a very positive ranking, maybe the editorial staff can give it a second thought. And if it goes the way of the troll, nobody is the worse for it.
I think you should reward the people that have high karma by droping the rates, say someone with above a 30 gets $1 off the $5 rate, 40+ gets $2 and if you are maxed out at 50 you should have it for $3 off. That way you can reward the people that really use your site and are not just trolls.
Just My $.02
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?"
I'm not sure about this -- not that I refuse to pay, since I understand the web won't survive on a free-for-all basis forever. What I don't like is the fact that you pay for a number of pageviews, not for a period of time or some other flat rate.
Flat rate pricing has two advantages: simplicity, and comfort. It's simple to say 'Okay, no ads for a year for $x.' No need to count the pages you visit, or wonder if reloads count, or if changing the threshold settings to go from 500 posts to 15 is going to count as an add-free counter item.
Comfort, because I hate nervously watching a meter deplete and trying to optimize my web viewing habits in order to make sure I don't run out. When you say 82% of folks are covered... don't forget that this site caters to the hardcore sorts that participate the most and are likely to fall into the 18% that have to worry. I've never counted my page views, so I can't even tell if I fit that 18%.
And all things considered, I'd rather browse with javascript off and image loading off than worry about depleting my ad-free views. It's less hassle. Which means less profit for you, but that's free market in action... maybe when you add those value-added feature you're thinking about we'll be getting somewhere.
Each unique web page served to me? Or each slashdot story I click on, and all threads then suddenly are included in this page? If every time I hit "refresh" the counter goes down again, I'm going to be in sent to the poorhouse!
Questions:
Considering the number of articles posted here about PayPal fraud, will you accept any payment other than PayPal? Will you accept cash in the mail to ensure anonymity for the paranoid?
The rates are currently set at $5 per 1000 pages.
When we encounter the lameness filter trying to paste code into a comment, does that count as a page view?
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?
May I reccommend the ability to pay to Disable Modbombing?
Good luck guys...
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
The people who run Slashdot are human, just like us, and need money, just like us. It does cost big bucks to put something like this together, and make sure it runs reliably. (I'm sure some long-time users are going to laugh at me for claiming that it does, but - well - it has been for some months now, and they obviously spent a lot doing it).
... but it's still how the world goes round.
And I think the subscription model is actually fair - what it looks like they are doing is, effectively, telling us to run our own personal ads on Slashdot - that is, we're buying their unsold ad inventory and using it to remove ads..
Here's an idea: Subscribers could be allowed to create their own main page out of the accepted and rejected submissions, so they could run their own weblog within Slashdot with their own submissions always approved. Might be a nice ego boost.
Anyway, I certainly want to see Slashdot continue; I'm surprised at all the negative comments. You want to get paid, I want to get paid, and surely Rob et al likewise want to get paid.
It's just how the world goes 'round. It was artfully concealed for a long time
D
you must know how many pages users view. why not put that number in the _Your Info_ section on the _User Info_ page so that people can make informed decisions.
"Shut up brain or ill stab you with a Q-tip" Homer Simpson
My question is, if people start subscribing, would this potentially make ad space on the pages less desirable for the advertisers? Those who subscribe will be those who care enough to spend the money, who have the money to spend (not that $5 is going to kill anybody), and who bother to spend it. If a lot of people subscribe, will the advertisers be left showing ads to people who can't / don't want to spend money? Or are the advertisers going for raw product-recognition building? It would be interesting to see the click-through and purchasing statistics before and after subscriptions, and see what impact it has on the actual effectiveness of the ads.
Why does eveyone whine about having to acutally PAY for something ? How many people here are professionals, and how many are starving college kids ? [And why are some of the professionals ACTING like starving college kids?]
.. $5 isnt a lot of money. Hell. thats going without my daily Star-Crack(tm) coffee addiction once a month. Hell ! its only 1/2 a pinball and i replace like 1 of those a month!
.. cool. I mean .. i read /. almost daily ..so ..
.. they don't spend a lot of time on /. It not gonna scare the casual reader .. the only people i *do* see it bothering are the people 40+ karma ... who post alot, and are actually providing content for free.
.. people come here just as much for the commentary as the articles (and in the case of John Katz or the current report on the newest star wars trailer that is 2 seconds longer than the last one .. maybe MORE for the comments than the articles.)
.. is /. gonna get 'dumb-ed down' ?
sieriously though
For something that adds value
My big fear is what its going to do to the 'constructive' user.
Its not going to scare away trolls
I mean
If a large number of 'interesting' posters stop posting as much
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
The usual spots for me...f ocus.com
Newsforge.org
theregister.co.uk
security
ibm.com/developer
codingstyle.com
It'd be a user option of course, just like all the other filters. You can set a +1 to subscribers. I dunno if everyone would like that, but I would think it would be interesting to see at least.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I'm a big fan of Slashdot, and read it all the time. Given my reading habits (and that I post fairly frequently) I'm positive I fall in at least the top 15% ($5 a month) and pretty sure I'm in the top 3% who would be charged more than $3 a month. I'd love to support Slashdot, but not on these terms.
1. Your heaviest/highest rated posters should get *discounts*, not have to pay extra. Remember, your most interesting content comes from those 3% of your audience -- the ones who actually post.
2. Page views are a *terrible* way of measuring site use. Changing settings (like viewing thresholds), double-checking stories before posting, refreshing a page to see a continuing discussion -- do these count? Can you tell? I don't want to live in fear of wasting my page-views, *especially* if I'm wasting page views by *contributing* content to your site.
3. I'm sorry, but the cost is too high. You have a circulation of 300,000+, and employ fewer than 10 people. You have hardware and bandwidth costs too, but 300,000x$20 = $6 million a year, not counting the 15% who are paying more than that. You can't advocate open source and free software and then overcharge for your website.
So, my suggestions:
1. Flat monthly fee with discounts for annual subscriptions.
2. Karma-based discounts, too, so people have an incentive to post meaningful content, which would boost your signal-to-noise enormously.
3. Lower prices.
This creates the illusion that people are viewing the ads even if they are not. This makes it so you don't have to see the ads, and the sites you like will get advertiser supporting.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
It doesn't matter either way, if we don't click they don't get results either. Impressions for performance like they used to be. So ad blocking or not, if I'm not going to click, I'm not going to clik whether I see the ad or not. So I might as well not see the ads. I'd like to know what advertisers are going to target the /. crowd. A good portion of the banners here are allready well targetted (I will view and sometimes click the current banners), but going to larger ads to try and force clicks on a (arguably) more tech saavy user base, I smell disaster.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
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.
If advertisers would prefer that you post stories about thier products because "that's what the want" would you do it? I should hope not! Give the advertisers a smack across the head and tell them: "We will put text ads, you know, the kind that annoy no one and actually provide enough information for people to click on. The kind that Google uses to stay in business AND keep it's integrity."
NOTE TO SLASHDOT: BIG ADS DO NOT WORK! In fact, they actually do the opposite, which will make your advetisers even MORE desperate, and foolishly request even bigger ads! Use small, text based ads. They work!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
This really is a great comment. It reminds me of back when I used to use CuSeeMe. When it was popular there were lots of people and reflectors. Then Mplayer came along and a lot of the CuSeeMe community left. CuSeeMe became a ghost town. After Mplayer went games only everybody split between Paltalk and SeeSaw. Online communities are very fickle. All it takes is for something better (cheaper, easier, faster) to come along and there will be a mass exodus.
So what you're saying is "We've got 1/3 million users per day and we've got to do what the advertisers want"?
Well, Jesus, how many readers do you need before you start telling the advertisers what they have to do to get on?
If that really is the state of on-line marketing then you'd be better off getting out of it and selling blank discs on street corners because that situation is not stable.
What happens if the advertisers say "Dump the no-ads pages or we walk"?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
We bitch about the **AA all the time here at /. , saying things like "Why do CD's cost me $18 when they cost far less to make?" and listening to the **AA say "But it costs us a lot of money to develop the content and give the artists their fair share". Then we whine about how $.0023 per download is not a "fair share" for the artists, and we go around in circles.
/. team, I'd be more likely to donate directly to a future Taquito's college fund than to subscribe. But that's just me.
Why do we do this? Because we don't REALLY know how much money is involved. We think the **AA is laughing at us all the way to the bank, but they insist there just one download away from poverty. We simply don't know the amounts of money that are involved.
Now, we have the same situation here. Taco and Hemos say "We need more annoying ads to pay the bills, and subscriptions to prevent people from being annoyed by the ads", and all the trolls are saying "How expensive can a web site that just has links to content be to maintain, we supply all the real content...",etc... There are only a handful of people on this planet that really KNOW how much money Slashdot is making. Or not making, as the case may be. As evil as some of us think profit is, the site has to at least break even to stay in business. And the editors have to eat.
Wouldn't it be great if we had a slashbox that told us how much it really cost to run the site from day to day? And how much of our subscription money went to keeping the site up, and how much went to Taco's bachelor party? It's probably impossible, because there are some details that need to be kept confidential. But they've said that open-source software would never work because some things would have to be kept proprietary, and yet it's been proven that it could work in many areas.
This way, when Slashdot raises their rates, the Management can reply by saying "We had no choice, Look at all those red numbers on the Cash-O-Meter!", and we can all see for ourselves what the need is.
Personally, since I have a high tolerance for being annoyed by ads (and even clicked on a few), if I want to improve life for the
- Bandwidth
- Hardware Purchase, Maintence, and Upgrades
- Backups (especially on a site as dynamic as \.)
- Support
- Facilities (Air Conditioning, Power, etc.)
Plus, quite frankly, if the owners of the site want to make a little money on it, I can't really begrudge them that.Recently, I've seen signs that the free-as-in-free-speech software community also expect things to be free-as-in-free-beer. The whole thread about StarOffice started to make y'all come off as a bunch of cheapscapes. Add to that a recent editorial on ZDnet that basically called out the open source community as such, and I think a PR effort is lacking.
Now, one of the major resource of the Open Source community realizes that need a better financial footing. So, they exercise a two-step process: greater ad support, plus the option to opt out by directly contributing. There are basically four responses that can be taken:
- Politely deal with the ads, and accept that it is a payment for the service you enjoy.
- Pay the money.
- Start your own site elsewhere
- Use an ad filter.
Option #1 shows that there is an understanding of the real world that, by and large, is usually lacking here. Option #2 is a step beyond that--that the Open Source community is willing to support what they value. Perhaps if enough sponsorship from readers exists, the ads will die off.Option #3, on the other hand, basically says that, now that you've stopped giving us a handout, we'll take our ball elsewhere. Sorta the attitude that has been taken with Sun. Until someone asks for money, you are the hero of the Open Source Movement, standing shoulder to shoulder with Stallman and Raymond in their battle agains Redmond. Ask for a few bucks for the product you value, and all of the sudden they are evil evil evil!
(A practical problem with option #3 is that you wind up being locust. Fly in and use the resources of a site until they are gone, and then move on, leaving an empty shell behind. Specifically, move from slashdot to, say, dotslash, and eventually, dotslash will need to find funding.)
Option #4 basically says that you are absolutely a cheapscape. You want the service, but don't want to give anything back to support the practical matters (servers, electricity, bandwidth). Perhaps you rationalize it by saying that because you post, you make \. what it is, and therefore shouldn't have to pay, but, lets face it, without the servers, electricity, and bandwidth, there is no \. to post to.
Why should you care about being perceived as cheapscapes? Because it limits the credibility of free-as-in-free-speech. It turns off people who might want to develop for your platform. It basically is a perspective you don't want to be associated with you.
I don't know which way I go, though it will likely be option #1 or 2.
CmdrTaco, I have a question.. Will there be true freedoms for paid users who moderate? I haven't really tracked the "official" policy, but I understand that many high-karma users (including myself) have had their moderation privileges revoked because of some posting or moderating or meta-moderating action they performed. (ie, modding up something controversial the editors didn't like, supporting controversial posters with meta-mods, etc.)
To be honest, I'm not sure at what point I lost my mod priveleges, but I haven't had them for quite some time. Yet I continue to try to post informative or insightful or funny things.
To CmdrTaco... what is your position going to be on revoking mod priveleges to paying subscribers? If I pay, will I be able to freely post and mod and meta-mod like I thought I could before?
I don't happen to know how much we make off ads off the top of my head, but I do know that we only sell a relatively small percent of the 2 million pages we serve each day. Subscriptions are fairly similiar to a tip jar... we're just giving you banner ad free pages instead of a tote bag or whatever ;)
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I don't think is a loss of spirit at all. If I did, I wouldn't have done this. You are not being told you need to pay anything. If you have been looking at Slashdot and filtering the ads here's a reality check: I appreciate your comment, but I don't appreciate you filtering the ads. That's the only way that we've been able to try and pay money. And here's another reality check: No, Slashdot is not profitable. And the reality is that it will probably be single digit percent of people who sign up - at an average of 10 - 20$ per year. That helps, but not that much
And even RMS would say that Freedom *does not* mean being able to read this without seeing ads or something. The FSF makes a lot of money selling their GNU manuals. Advertising is the same thing for us.
That's too bad if you feel this is the loss of innocence or something - I just see it as another option that people can use, and moreover, something that will help to mean we stay around. While other folks may believe freedom means filtered ads, Cable & Wireless and hardware companies demand money for their services, and up until now, ads have been the only way for us to make money. If you do truly believe in freedom, then you must also believe that you must give back to the community - a number of people who have signed up today have said they are still going to see ads - they just wanted to give a few bucks.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
This change will change the whole site dynamics. For the worse, I think, in its current form.
Slashdot offers two main things:
Both of these things rely heavily on "community involvement". Most of the links for the clipping service come from contributions; all the discussion, and all the filtering of the discussion (moderation) comes from the community.
People got rewarded for sending in link suggestions with their name in lights; people got rewarded for good posts with karma; people got rewarded for moderation/meta-moderation with (some) karma. The efforts/rewards were reasonably well balanced to produce the current Slashdot.
Now there's a new factor. Annoying adverts. (I'm assuming they'll be annoying because of the way this is approached, the "we know you won't like this, so here's a way you can buy your way out of it" approach.)
Which changes the whole dynamics of the site. Suddenly people get "charged" for seeing their name in lights (with annoying adverts, or actual money). Suddenly people get "charged" for reading the comments so they can post. Suddenly people get "charged" for reading the comments so they can moderate them. And perhaps people even get "charged" for reading moderations so they can do meta-moderation. Incentives not to do these things. These things which make Slashdot what it is now.
If Slashdot wants to make a major change like this, and not dramatically change the "feel" of Slashdot, then it needs to be made balancing these contributions/rewards. Sending in article links needs to be rewarded; posting good comments needs to be rewarded; doing moderation and meta-moderation needs to be rewarded. In the context of the new change.
Some things Slashdot should consider:
Without these sorts of balancing rewards all the things that make Slashdot good will be discouraged by annoying adverts (persuading people to go elsewhere), or by the knowledge that if you load the comments to contribute/moderate it's going to cost you, so why bother.
I've no problem with contributing to Slashdot, even money if the framework for the contribution is right (the current scheme is not). But all the contributions which make Slashdot what it is need to be recognised in the new framework.
Ewen
Everyone was expounding about the Google analogy today so I thought I would take it a little further. Slashdot already categorizes its articles by content...so smack some sense into your VA salesforce and sale based upon that. Have a couple of links that appear on the side "SPECIFICALLY" related to the article and you have a real winner. I have already taken the first step if I am clicked into an article plus advertisers aren't paying for untargeted. If wanted to get even more specific, search on keywords inside the comments of each user and if they mention something have it pop an unintrusive text link out to the side. There is a load of ways to think about this. Slice and Dice it. Even if you wanted to get creepy those UINs who were not paying for the site begin a collecting ONLY clickthough on articles. I would think in a pretty short time you could gather what they liked to read and serve better targeted ads that way WITHOUT intruding to much into personal privacy.
;), scientist. I LOVE reading explanations in the cryptographic articles. I have nowhere near the comprehension of high-order mathematics but I always know where I can read an intelligent rebuttal to a fluff piece on CNN or Wired and that's right here. Hell give these people a break on pricing...perhaps even bring them into the fold and require them to comment on specific conversations. You trade a subject matter expert's expertise for a free year of Slashdot. It's a real win-win.
One last thing about content moderation...meta moderate for Karma Whoring and allow for moderation of "Good Link of Info". It would keep the karma whoring to a minimum and would also allow you to give breaks on pricing for people who actually take the time to write an informative article. The question becomes should a +5 funny posted early in a conversation be worth as much as an +4 Insightful...my thought is no. We have some damn smart people that read this sight, physicist, lawyers, wannabe lawyers
Rob, you and the boys need to go through this entire article and read some comments. Stay away from the wars of whether or not to do this and focus on those of us who want to help you. I am not adverse to paying just make it worth my while. Slashdot is great right now, but with some tweaks and enhancements its going to get that much better.
HT