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 ;)
It's called junkbuster
Hey, let's get a list of places we can move going.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Slashdot to offer a subscription service.
Imminent Death of the Net Predicted. Film at 11.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Just sell low UIDs. That'll raise you lots of money. Seriously, though, go nuts. Just don't be surprised when every signature links to instructions on using webwasher/adbuster/and so on to block out each and every comment. Or when somebody writes a perl script to grab slashdot every hour, parse out all the ads, and post it somewhere else, like freeslashdot.org or something.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Whatever... all the money is going straight to the wedding pot. Don't let Taco fool you. He just wants to have a good wedding...
Heck, I've gotten enough enjoyment and such from reading Slashdot over the past few years, thats its worth it to me. Just paid my $20.
I have no problem with a subscription based /. (so long as it can still be got for free). I would pay $5 to see ad-free /. I might even pay more. We'll see how long 1000 pages lasts. However, I do not like doing business with PayPal. Please, ditch PayPal and give me an alternative!
Rhapsody in Numbers
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?"
The subscription model is permeating everywhere. It's sad, and disappointing to have to choose to pay a small fee for the hundreds of websites I visit (and fork out literally hundreds upon hundreds of dollars) or to have to sit here and view large obnoxious ads.
Gee, I wonder what I'll do?
Let's try browsing with graphics turned off. *click* Ahh.. better.
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.
I can already see thousands of "free everything" advocates typing angrily away at their keyboards. Running a popular site costs money, and most sites are realizing that ads are not supported. I have come to accept subscriptions as a normal part of better sites these days, although I only actually subscribe to a few of them. As useful as Slashdot is, it'll probably be well worth the while.
Also keep in mind that unlike many subscription sites, Slashdot is not talking about premium content for major articles (like Salon or IGN), only little bonuses for subscribers, which is fair enough. I'll wait until the ads actually start appearing to make up my mind, but let's not flame Slashdot for coming in line with the almost defacto practice that today's Internet economy demands.
Please subscribe to see the more insightful version of th
I wasted thirty precious minutes of my life trying to jump through hoops for them so I could sign up with a Canadian credit card. At the time I was trying to sign up for a PayPal acct. to purchase webhosting. In the end I found a host that didn't require me to pay with fucking paypal. Get the idea?
do not read this line twice.
I can see paying X dollars to surf without ads. A simple flat rate.
But of I have to start thinking "should I hit reload and waste a page view", it will make using Slashdot very awkward.
Time to install junkbuster
After reading about how much PayPal sucks on Slashdot, I don't think I'll be paying for any kind of subscription until there is another option available. PayPal isn't FDIC insured, isn't a real bank, and is being investigated and sued by various states and organizations.. I think I'll wait before handing over my credit card information to a potentially untrustworthy company.
As for the Subscriptions, well, I hope things work out, this could be really good for Slashdot, or really bad. I biggest concern is since I've read that only a small percent of Slashdot readers post and read articles, that means the majority only uses Slashdot as a proxy for news. If the banner ads start to annoy them, they'll start going straight to the new source.. Oh well, only time will tell, Good luck Slashdot team.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
I think what might come of this is a tighter ship splintering off into smaller, private Slashdot sites. For example, not to slag all the people who put thought into their posts, but a private Slashdot just including my friends and others by introduction would be great for me--less traffic, so I could actually read all the posts, and less noise, so I would bother.
Just a few random thoughts... I appreciate what Slashdot has been and hope it doesn't lose its shine.
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
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.
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
...is that under this model, those who contribute to slashdot the most, and make the site what it is, are forced to pay the most.
/. community.
I think there should possibly be a "positive-discussion" discount, where if you post modded-up comments, you get more allowed page views. After all, you are helping the
I see the need for the system, I know you guys need to stay open, and I do understand that people like myself use up a lot of bandwidth on here, but I personally would really like to see some sort of reward for positively contributing to the site.
I agree. I think the world need to change it's attitude about paying for online content/software, you don't pay because you can't steal it or they force you to or you get a whole lot more by putting money into it, you pay because you support people who do cool smart things, like Slashdot. Sort of a "put your money where your mouth is" deal.
IMHO Slashdot deserves a little cash, all. Face it. Open Source doesn't have a whole lot of alliances these days, we need to make the ones we have strong.
spacefem.com
What kind of customer support will slashdot offer? What happens when there's a DOS attack or a slashbug and I can't access the site when I need it? With traditional publications, I have someone's ear to chew when the periodical isn't delivered as promised. What kind of assurances can slashdot give me that I'll get something for my money?
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
Consider that if we all used an effective ad blocker, that'd be the end of adverts as an effective means of funding this site. And that'd mean we all pay, or byebye slash dot.
Or don't you realize that bandwidth doesnt grow on trees.
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.
But it's not clear what motivation this plan is meant to appeal to. Get rid of banners? What do I care? I, and probably most readers, simply filter them out mentally unless they're so unbelievably annoying (X10, Shoot The Monkey) that I stop reading the site. Loading time might be an issue for some sites, but for loading even a moderate Slashdot page, the extra time to load a banner is insignificant noise relative to however trolls have mangaed to screw up the rendering that day. I was on a 28k modem connection at home until recently and banners were a non-issue. And the people who really hate them already block them, although I bet the number who really do that is even smaller than the number who actually bothered to write in about the Microsoft settlement.
If the plan is to get readers to support the site out of altruism they should say that. (Or at least realize it.) But if Rob and Jeff are really trying to provide added value for the price, they need to come up with something better to offer. Or take away something from the free side.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Okay guys. If you're really the libertarian, open source, _fair_use_ folks you claim to be, then make Slashdot the most wildly successful, profitable, FOR FEE site on the net.
You can't tell me you life hasn't been changed (for better or worse) by these guys. $5 a month is a _pittance_. You can't buy LUNCH for $5.
_MY_ 'checks in the mail'
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Slashdot is essentially a portal with a strong community of knowledgeable supporters. In asking what value it contributes, let's ask why you are here? Obviously you found some value in coming here, and so do the rest of us. Slashdot filters out interesting stories and allows us access to a great base of commentators (some not so great :). This is of value to many people, some of which already seem to be willing to pay for it.
I do however see the point of letting high karma people off a little easier, and making non-contributors pay for just reading, which is what I think you're pointing out is a problem. At the same time though, people who participate like Slashdot the most and are most likely to pay, don't you think?
Please subscribe to see the more insightful version of th
I for one completely understand and agree with Slashdot for doing this. After all, we all sneer at those other bandwidth/machine-deficient websites who can't handle the slashdot effect, but we rarely think about the fact that Slashdot has to handle the slashdot effect 24x7. That sort of bandwidth and machine-power cost money, a lot of money. The only way a popular website can recoup its costs are through advertising OR subscriptions. We, the users of slashdot are fortunate enough to at least have the OPTION of which we want. Personally, I'll take advertisements, because quite frankly I actually like and sometimes click on them. Unlike other websites, slashdot advertisements are geared toward me and present me with things I'd like to buy or wish I could buy. I probably won't even filter them, unless they start using popups that are really annoying (never seen a good popup ad).
After This aand a few rather horific stories including payapal being sued by like 13 states for running an unregistered banking business I wonder why they chose payapl?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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%)
It;s the poster who make Slashdot what it is. Your fee setup essentially penalizes those people. Without the posters, Slashdot would have nothing to read!
I'd much prefer a monthly fee subscription setup rather than the $5 per 1000 pages.
...that the annoying ad campaigns don't work and never did? Has anyone told them that bigger, longer ads in the way of the content is the cause of the demise of network broadcast television?
The business model they're operating under isn't in touch with reality and isn't sustainable.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
As an aside, it's also worth noting that more than half of all comment posters fall into this 3%
So you're saying that the very people who make slashdot worth reading are the ones who will have to pay most? Isn't this...backwards?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
You could always keep it on sourceforge, just for the whole irony thing. "How to steal money from OSDN. Hosted by the good folk at...um...OSDN..."
do not read this line twice.
People who want something for nothing are usually the first to bitch and moan when the entity providing that something for nothing is no longer able to survive due to lack of cash flow.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
Am I interested? Sure as hell am.
I hate ads, and Slashdot is only one of three sites whose ads I don't block at this point (because I want to support Slashdot). Interested enough to use Pay pal?
Certainly not.
Hopefully there will be a link on the front page with how to use my real credit card or send a money order before the really intrusive ads that I have to block show up.
You see, I'm not adverse to supporting a site I like -- but if Slashdot only offers a choice between using Paypal and being inundated with huge ads? Freeload I will. And if they start using Flash in their ads? I'll vindictively click reload just for spite.
Unless this is a spec-fucking-tacular troll, what your advertisers want aren't what I want.
Buh-bye.
What about the people from here, you know, the ones that help Slashdot the most by submitting the stories you publish. We get any bonus for that?
What about the people that put in a lot of comments, to make the stories have more depth or meaning? Do we get something besides an insult by a slashdot author to the people that indirectly line his wallet??
I've put a lot of time and effort into slashdot, is that gonna matter at all?? I try to help the site become more than a "regurgitated stories" site, but I have to pay to avoid ads?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Now, I am faced with an ethical question. For over a year I have been using WebWasher to filter out all the ads from the internet (it catches over 99% of them, including popups and cnet style big-ass-in-your-face ads).
:)
Now, slashdot offers a way for me to support their site, but at the same time tells me that their ads are shifting to annoy-ware. So, do I just continue to block the ads, or try a free site or whatever, or do I pay slashdot?
While people think the internet is free, it isn't. SOMEONE pays. In this case, it's the company that controls slashdot. I value having this site up on the net, and I value all the time and effort that has gone into keeping everything running and happy.
I've decided, I'll keep blocking with webwasher but I'll also donate my $5. Think about it, $5 for something you check twice a day is worth the cost of a single lunch.
P.S. I'd love to see some recognition to people who donate though, a little star would be cool and discourage AC's
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!
Some ideas -you should take away the karma cap for those who pay. -you should clearify what counts as a page view (refreshes, checking posts later, checking my settings, etc) -you should give us a "bonus" or priority when posting, since most of the payers will probably not be trolls or 37337 H4X0R5.
mod_gzip works wonders on Slash based sites, so I have no idea why they don't use it here.
The typical Slash home page is about 50K or more. mod_gzip literally gets it down to less than 6K!
It would literally cut their bandwidth costs by more than half!
Of course, they may need another server or two, but it would pay for itself quickly.
are you a free loader if you change channels during commercials?
or don't read the ads on the bus/subway/billboards?
or don't click on the ads? or move your window up so the ad is off the screen? or just ignore them?
are you a freeloader if you use lynx, or don't download images?
to me, it's like with the credit card companies: i don't pay finance charges, but i'm damn glad for the people that do (especially the retards that only make minimum payments) because they support the service for me. until they start doing something to keep me from using their service, i assume they have no problem with "freeloaders".
so save your freeloaders bullshit for 5 years down the road when 1337 d00ds have to steal CC numbers or passwords to get on so they can troll the latest jon katz story, or only read posts from some underground mirror of slashdot built by a subscriber. freeloading is still the de facto standard here, and on the internet in general, for a little while longer.
"Comments are owned by the Poster."
/. worth reading.
/.. I know we don't have a right to the forum that Taco et al are providing for us. We post our thoughts here freely, and get back more ideas than we give, also for free. And if ads, subscriptions or whatever are needed to cover the costs, so be it.
/. would remain a great site.
And the comments are what make
Something feels wrong here. I know it costs a lot of money to run
I think three main things are behind my unease. One is that my cheese is being moved. Secondly, VA/OSDN are for-profit. If subscriptions are successful, and they get more than they need, will the subscriptions be extended? Or will Taco, Hemos, ESR & Larry Augustin pocket the money? Thirdly, the posters are being asked to pay more than the lurkers. Hello? The people that make the site what it is have to pay more than those who merely use it? That seems wrong. If I could trade in 25 of my 50 karma for a hundred page views I think I would. Then I could keep posting witty and insightful comments, and
--
E_NOSIG
yes we all work for free with donated bandwidth and servers. *cough*
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I dunno about pay-per-page on slashdot, but I'd certainly be willing to pay for sourceforge.
If you added something to user info showing us how many pages we've viewed recently, it would help us decide. (And yes, I'm not a paypal fan either...)
If screen-names can now be tied to genuine paid-for products (page views), maybe the login's should be a bit more secure than plain-text. This means no more "You can automatically login by clicking This Link and Bookmarking the resulting page. This is totally insecure, but very convenient." I wouldn't pay anything until some sort of login encryption gets put into use.
I don't know if it is in the plan, but one thing that I would like to see is that if you are doing moderation, it doesn't count against your page views. I know that sometimes I am selected as a moderator (which I am guessing most people are), and during those times I probably do alot more page views (looking for the good comments and such). I think that I would be less likely to spend the effort moderating if I knew that it was counting against me. Or maybe something like 25 free pages for every moderation point used - something where you would gain something through moderation? I doubt I use 25 pages for every points, and it would probably put me ahead a couple.
If Squid+SquidGuard works here, I will send you the work around, CmdrTaco, as a wedding gift...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
While the pay per view option is problably fairer it's not very fun, as you can tell not a lot of people here would want to have to feel like they're counting clicks (regardless of how much a single page costs). In addition even fewer people like the idea of paypal (not to mention the story a few day ago on paypal (once more I'm not the first one to have mentioned this and you also say you were aware of the problem but you still went ahead with it). People also just don't like to pay when they can view for free, the $5/1000 sounds like a nominal enough sum but people are unsure of how many clicks they actually do. I think it would be an idea to tell a person how many "pages" they've viewed somewhere in the preferences, not only do I think it would be something interesting to look at but if people realize how little they click they may figure that the payment is worth it.
By the way, anyone wanna bet the comments reach at least a thousand;)
I stole this Sig
Now look, before we go chopping off Rob's head, perhaps we need to look at this logically:
:-)
1) Slashdot uses A LOT of bandwidth. Bandwith ain't cheap.
2) Traditionally, Slashdot has provided very decent advertising that actually does catch my interest from time to time (IE, ThinkGeek).
3) More stable income for Slashdot would mean more resources for Slashdot to be improved... not to mention just stay around.
4) I agree on PayPal being a poor choice for getting Slashdot paid -- but I have a feeling that PayPal is just a temporary measure until a permanent solution is found.
Not to mention...
The only thing that costs more money than our little hobby is women, and Rob just got hooked by one
On the negative side:
1) I agree that a "per page" system will not work -- a system based on time, not page counters, would be more fair for those who do the most to make Slashdot great.
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
I'd like to suggest that moderation and meta-moderation pages are free. If not, you immediately remove a significant reason for bothering to moderate or meta-moderation. I tend to spend a few minutes a day moderation each day - say 250 days a year. Use up 1/4 of my pages? I don't think so!
If you keep these two functions free, then we can maintain the value added by the community, and people will continue to contribute, because they fill feel that they are benefiting. We currently avoid the tragedy of the commons, because we can all contribute, and all benefit - let's not lose that.
If we want to be even more sophisticated, how about allowing people to trade in a certain amount of karma for a certain number of pages? Maybe 10 karma points = $5? That would encourage people to contribute more intelligently, and add more value.
ok:
Let's say you get past robot security.
Let's say slashdot leaves you alone.
Let's say freeslashdot.org is popular.
Well... freeslashdot is going to get SLAMMED by hits just like slashdot... and not long after freeslashdot is either going to be shut down for not paying their bandwidth fees, or it wont be free for much longer.
Besides, Slashdot has been good to us. The least you can do is look at some extra ad's to keep them in buisness. (or better yet you COULD subscribe)
I would rather be ashes than dust!
Does this sound familiar?
I love Slashdot, I really do, and I know this was inevitable. But it's sad, because it indicates that Slashdot has burned the last of the venture capital and has now slipped into the realms of desparate self delusion.
Please understand that this isn't a troll. I truly want Slashdot to survive, but I can't help but think that the people who will pay up tomorrow are the same people who are already clicking through today. There's no new revenue stream here, there's just a deparate gamble that the ads can get bigger faster than the readership goes elsewhere. There's no evidence to show that this happens. We're fickle bastards, us net users.
Before you mod me or retort, please understand one thing: I'm not talking about you. You are one of the good guys, as evidenced by your finger hovering over the "Moderate" or the "Submit" button. You care about Slashdot. You're one of the ones contributing, one of the ones who will stay after the ads (or the missing images from blocked hosts) take up half the screen. But you're not the problem. The problem are the quarter of a million casual viewers who turn up, get served a small banner or two, then wander off to Tom's Hardware or The Register. And I'm not saying bigger ads will drive them away overnight, just that the announcement of bigger ads mean that Slashdot needs to make more money... and they simply won't make it from the vast majority of casual users. They need to make it from a small hardcore minority, from the posters and the responders and the modders, from you and me.
And much as I love Slashdot, I don't want to end paying for (guesstimate) 0.02% of it. Do you? :(
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
How much do you think it costs to send say 100 gig of data down the pipe? Cmon "Mr.Bandwidth doesn't grow on trees". How much? I'll tell you how much. After the hardware is paid for (which it was in the 90's for the most part) It costs fucking pennies, if that.
I highly recommend you sign up for "Economics 101". If someone puts $1 billion of hardware out there, they expect a RETURN on that $1 billion worth of hardware (if you believe that is evil then please pony up that billion yourself) that at least equates what they could get if they invested it in the general markets (i.e. at least 6%), and that's ignoring that the internet today is VASTLY changed from the infrastructure put in place in "the 90's for the most part" : Want to back up that?). Don't like it? Build your own friggin' system.
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.
I can't complain too much about the subscription, and will probably subscribe. I do have two requests before I do:
Anyway, best of luck with the subscription model. I hope you guys can provide enough value that people want to subscribe. Thanks for a great site!
.sig: file not found
I realize that this is most likely just going to get lost in the noise, but....
/. is going along with the ad companies and their new methods, but with the methods themselves. Is it just me or does "new advertising technology" seem synonymous with "more annoying to the consumer"?
/. Every once and a while there will be something that looks interesting, and it's targetted right at me. And I much prefer *effective* ads than the "lets make it more annoying and in their face to annoy them until the love us and buy shit" ads that are becoming more and more popular. I guess when you can get the 1% return via spam or banner or flash ads, you don't give a fuck right?
/., Rob, Jeff... please try to make sure that as you fill up your page(s) with more and more ads, that you are doing something good, not just bending over and spreading your cheeks for the brainless suits at the ad companies.
I don't have a problem with ads (much). They are a PITA, but a needed evil for the sites on the net to stay around until "free" bandwidth becomes a reality. My problem is not that
I'm not going to pay, just out of principle (yea, I'm a bastard), but I'm not going to block either... yet. When ads start becoming flash animations, or javascript images that float over top of the web page, well, that's the point where I'll either stop reading or start turning on junkbuster, turning off javascript, and disabling plugins. I'm not really going to loose a whole lot am I?
Why don't advertising companies realize that they are just annoying people more and more. I don't like ads and don't click on them simply out of principle, the exception being the thinkgeek ads that get served on
So in conclusion,
Let me first say that there's a lot of belly-aching that has always occured on /. That's a fact of any popular web site.
/. that the editors never bother to respond to. There's the whole moderation suppression conspiracy, questions about mysterious stability problems and other honest issues that people have questions on. However, when people raise them via the only method they can; in a story, they get modded off-topic (and, if you believe what quite a few folks have been saying, occasionally banned from being moderators)
/." post where folks can post questions/comments/concerns and editors will ACTIVELY participate. I know there's a /. topic for this already, but it's been so long since anyone has used it that I plum forgot what it's called.
/. survives or not. As several other folks have pointed out, they've ceased being unique and innovative -- I can get the same information from any number of other web sites who *do* actively interact with their user community.
However, there are also some very good issues and questions that get raised regarding
The only problem is there is no place to post these questions and comments and, even if there was, the editors have shown little to no interest in participating or interacting with the user community at all. Sure, Taco created some obscure discussion thread that few people know about, but I haven't seen any editors participating there.
So, what's our avenue for interactive discussion with the editors? Or are we not worthy of their attention? Sure, they're busy -- we're all busy. That's not an excuse. You could argue that most of the crap that gets posted is nothing more than FUD. OK, fine, but how about some editors telling us, at least once in a while, that it is, in fact, FUD. INTERACT with us, for christ sake. Isn't that what the web is all about?
So, you want me to pony up my $5 per month, start showing more of an interest in the user community. Start some sort of active, weekly "About
Otherwise, I really don't care whether
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
I see the necessity for this, but at the same time, the most positive contributers will end up payong the most. This seems counter productive. Why not do something like reward positive moderation. So, for example, at the end of the month, add up all the moderation points on my comments. If I have a positive balance, credit me with banner-less page views. You'd have to figure out a good "pricing" system, but I think this would be beneficial in (at least) two ways:
1. Positive contributers get rewarded.
2. Everyday users may work towards more positive contribution for reward, resulting in even better content!
Seems like there is no reason not to try this!
"Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the most surely the one wasted." -Sebastian Roch Nicol
Once I can get to https://secure.slashdot.org, pay with a CC, and have my account immediately upgraded, I'll pay most generously.
As a sidenote, page views?? I assume more people are going to be viewing comments flat or nested to reduce the number of clicks, unless the staff decide to make it clear viewing low level comments does not penalize the user one view. Hell, throw metamoderation on the free list. Helping the site out shouldn't subtract a paid view for the user.
Real magazines pay their contributors -- but somehow, I don't expect to see a check from VA Systems if one of my comments is highly rated by the moderators. ;)
You might consider some sort of karma-based subscription service, where you lower prices for those who provide "good" content (as moderated). That way, people have an incentive to post quality material, and they don't feel cheated by paying Taco's web bills. ;) Everybody wins (except the trolls, of course).
I also expect professional journalistic standards from a site I'm paying for. If I'm giving away content, I'm not that concerned about spelling and punctuation -- but if I'm charging people to read what I write, I have editors and such who make sure the content is clean and readable. If Slashdot wants to move beyond amateur status, it needs to act professional.
I have no problem with Slashdot trying to recoup its costs -- but I (and lots of other people) expect value for thier money. Getting rid of ads isn't enough incentive to make me pay for Slashdot.
Good luck guys.
All about me
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
I don't know if this has already been suggested, but surely you could make a lot of cash by selling @slashdot.org email addresses? I'd definitely be willing to pay for one of those!
Will Collins
All of the arguments that the announcers on PBS or public radio pound into your head during pledge week apply to Slashdot as well. It costs money to provide the service. They have some sponsors but that doesn't cover the entire cost of providing the service. You enjoy using the service. How much more do you spend on things that provide less value each month? Once you get past the idea that anything made of electrons should be free, which is pretty ridiculous if you think about it, twenty bucks a year is a laughably small amount for the service provided.
It adds value to your life, or else you'd go do something else, so why not kick in a little something?
Information wants to be $1.98/lb.
In the interest of not selling us a "pig in a poke," why not let users see their own usage statistics? Before they risk their money with PayPal? Even a simple "You view X pages a month/week/day" would be helpful for people to know how much they're going to have to dish out.
-----
Klactovedestene!
Well, not for a few months anyway.
Best Slashdot Co
In the article you say
"As an aside, it's also worth noting that more than half of all comment posters fall into this 3% (that will have to pay more than $5 a month)"
Lets look at what this means...
The people that produce comments worth reading ARE your content... So, you will be charging those people that PRODUCE for you... This seems backwards to me, and if the people that normally comment are turned off, the quality of slashdot will suffer.
I fear that you will just become "another example of how websites can't make money". Noone will ever anlize the fact that you turned away the people that actually made your website worth reading... I certainly am not going to PAY you for the privledge of posting to your website so you can make money off of it.
Turn the concept around the way it SHOULD be. Do something like, "the top 20% highest moderated posters get free access" or something like this. This will, in effect, almost become like a payment to your authors.
But it is probably too late for anyone to read this... There are hundreds of posts already by upset people, and this will just get lost in the noise.
-db
A one week old Grilled American Cheese on White.
Best Slashdot Co
I think it is fine to charge for viewing slashdot free of various advertisements BUT I HATE the idea of micropayment and paying per page. If I pay xyz to have access to slashdot then I don't want to think of how many times I have reloaded the page or to suddenly get full fledged adds after xyz months. A yearly subscription is the simplest and best. If I get a subscription to an advertisement free magazine, no matter how many times I look at it, it will still be free of advertisements. Slashdot should think of itself as an electronic magazine and act the same way.
I miss the Karma Whores.
.org is for non-profits; it seems to me that as soon as you start charging for admission, you're moving into the for-profit sector. Of course, the whole idea of non-profits is a joke to begin with - the CEO of the typical non-profit makes very nearly as much as the CEO of the typical for-profit. The for-profit/non-profit distinction is just an accounting fiction that allows marxists to pretend that they're superior to the rest of us. Nevertheless, the hypocrisy of charging admission to a .org is startling.
.com domain as well. Secondly, I don't see the .org being a part of the name anywhere, certainly not in the logo, nor anywhere on the front page, nor in the headline of this article. Lastly, I'm not sure I see them raking money hand over fist with this scheme, perhaps breaking even or losing less is more likely for as much page views as this site gets.
Well, first of all, they own the
So although your comment is interesting, I do not believe it to be valid.
Please subscribe to see the more insightful version of th
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 is typical of having a large site, offering it for free, yada, yada, yada. Always happens and we've been seeing it happen for a few months now. Seeing it happen on Slashdot is just something that was going to happen as it will everywhere.
However there are two problems to the subscription gig. First there's a huge issue with page views vs page count vs whatever. I can configure my threshold and viewing preferences so that any story I want to read, and complete comments, shows in one pass saving me a page hit but we all know that by the time you get to the bottom of the page and reload it, they'll be 10-100 new comments added and this can go on for several hours (depending on how popular the subject is). Also pages like this one where I'm entering my comment and will preview it and then it gets added, do all those count? I think you guys clearly need to define what is and what isn't counted.
However I don't believe that charging by the page is reasonable for a site like this. You get 300,000+ users so asking for even 10% of them to pay means a return of about $600,000 a year. You've been spinning along for quite some time now without having anyone foot the bill so why is now any different? The gravy train has run out. OSDN execs are saying "We want to make some ROI on this Slashdot thing". And 600K a year can't pay for the hardware? I'm no expert and I don't have the numbers for this site, but I seriously doubt 600K a year wouldn't cover the hardware, bandwidth and staff costs.
liB
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"
How about letting us moderate adds? If I were to subscribe (which I haven't yet...) why not let us moderate adds as well? That way we can have a say in what's targeted at us. Besides if the adds were well targeted I might not even mind leaving them up and running if I was subscribed... provided of course they weren't those huge nasty things :)
You can take as many newspapers as you like?
The "flat rate" refers to the concept of paying a certain amount for something that you can take without limits. Note: Phone companies would looooove to switch away from flat rate. They started making noise about this when people got modems and started using their resources for much, much longer than they used to...
"Metered" means something that has a fixed per-unit cost. Cable tv doesn't count because they aren't giving away things that have a certain cost, they are giving away access to content whose cost has is (relatively speaking) limited. Look at it this way. The cable company doesn't care if you watch TV 24 hours a day, because it doesn't cost them more if you do. They are selling something that doesn't cost them more if you use more. So it's not metered. If you ride in a taxi, it costs them more (gas, etc) to go further, so there's a meter in the cab. Your ride is metered.
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
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.
- 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?
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.
You can't make money giving shit away when it costs you money. Hence, the dot-com crash.
ISPs sell flat rate service and have for years. Yet we have thousands of ISPs still in business. Bzzt, try again.
sulli
RTFJ.
sysadmin skill
server power
storage space
code upkeep cost
bandwidth cost
I remember back when
Amazing magic tricks
Well, we all know the answer to that one now, don't we? It seems everyone seems to be forgetting that Slashdot has ads right now. They're just going to get a little bigger, but content and the free nature of Slashdot isn't changing. However, if you REALLY hate ads, you can pay $5 and get rid of 1,000 of them. Everyone that keeps suggesting $5 for a year seems to forget that they would probably be losing money on that (I'm guessing $5 is the going rate for 1,000 ads on Slashdot, so you guys break even on the deal), which doesn't help anyone out.
I'm not going to pay the money for removing the ads, since after growing up reading newspapers, magazines, watching TV, and seeing billboards everywhere, I'm used to them, and don't pay attention to them anymore. If they start to run popup or pop-under ads, however, then I stop visiting. Don't complain about them giving you the option (not forcing it like Salon) to pay to get rid of ads, though, it's a nice option to have.
Can someone answer me a simple question, though: If ads are blackholed thru my OpenBSD NAT, do those still count as hits for Slashdot? I'm pretty sure they do, but I've never gotten a real answer from someone.
There was a situation a little while back where posts (in the same thread) were all modded down to -1 by the endless points of the employees of slashdot. The exact thread escapes me at the moment, but think about this:
What if those users had active (paid) subscriptions? Now they actually have some stake in things... does slashdot itself have the right to effectively censor them? What kind of rights come with the payment? Can people request a refund if that happens (and is the subscription fee refundable at all)?
Till I see how annoying these new ads are. As it is, I'll probably fork over the cash, but if I don't notice the change...
:)
Ok, I'll STILL fork over the cash. When I get paid in two weeks.
Triv
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.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
Done something like "When we reach 20,000 in pledges, we'll fire Jon Katz."
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 would be willing to continue to view the ads as they are now. Can I get a version with some ads, but not the big square ones? Those that take up half the page, jump spin, and in general ruin a site? Would I get a cheaper rate than people who choose not to view all ads? That's what I'd like to see.
Options, give us options!
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
From: J. Nagle
Over the last few years, I have posted 1700 comments to Slashdot. (Current karma: 162)
I do not authorize the unpaid use of my copyrighted materials on the pay sites of others. Please remove all my previous comments before your site becomes a pay site. Failure to do so will be considered a copyright violation.
John Nagle
Menlo Park, CA
That said, while I don't mean to dismiss the value of comment posters, the percentage of readers that read comments is small. Yes comments draw readers, and keep them coming back. But half of readers don't care! An accepted story submission provides a benefit to hundreds of thousands of Slashdot readers. A Score:3 comment is read by 1/50th of that. So if we decide that an accepted story submission is worth 1000 page views, you would need to post perhaps 50 Score:3 comments to affect the same number of people :)
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I'm not saying we won't do that. I'm saying that "This is how it works for now". We broke things down by perl script. Comment viewing and posting happens in the same script.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I've never understood why ad-supported content providers (particularly radio stations, and now, perhaps, Slashdot) always follow this model:
1) Start out providing good content and very few ads thus becoming popular.
2) Once popular, start playing - or inserting - many more ads, to the point of extreme annoyance.
3) Drive listeners - or readers - away and fade into oblivion.
Why can't these guys just charge MORE for the small number of ads? Why not auction them off to the highest bidder?
-- The reader anything less than completely failing to not misunderstand this sig is cursed.
Except, Slashdot is not becoming a pay site. You're just paying to have ads removed. Only if your comments ended up in a 'subscriber-only' section would your statement be true. Also, by merely posting on Slashdot, you have granted them a limited-use license to store and display your comments as they see fit. (They had a story about it awhile back, when they were wanting to use comments in a book that I don't think every actually came out.)
Just like usenet. If you ever post on a newsgroup, guess what, someone's making money off your post. There are companies that charge for usenet access, so you'd have to send a letter to each and every one of them, as well.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Yes, it's funny how the TANSTAAFL crowd ignores advertising costs. Advertising is the hemoragging wound of capitalism: the only way to compete with advertising is to advertise in response. The net result is higher prices without value, a completely useless sector of the economy, and a lot of cultural pollution.
If it's the former, then make it so that the only people that can post anonymously are paying customers. Sure as hell cancel out the trolls in a hurry. How many people will be willing to pay for the right to be an asshole?
Lowering the number of trolls lowers the garbage on the site. Which lowers bandwidth. Which lowers operating cost. Which lowers the number of ads that the rest of the good guys have to see.
So you end up with three categories of people : anonymous and not paying, for whom the site is read-only. Registered but not paying, who see ads, but can also post as themselves. Registered and paying, who don't see ads and can post either as themselves, or anonymously.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
If half of that 1.5% who will have to pay over $60 a year to access
Sorry but I just don't see how charging people who are content producers as well as the heavy content consumers is going to help the site? Perhaps people should now be paid for each submission posted to the site, after all a good story will increase the views, and thus the revenues incoming to
This is really ironic timing considering the journal I wrote yesterday called Roll your own ad remover. Everyone take a look. I don't agree with ANY subscription based site, simply because I can't afford to pay for all the sites I frequent. I already pay $45/month for high speed internet access. That really is all I can afford to spend on something that is as much entertainment as tool. I don't blame them for doing it, and I'm glad these guys can make a living doing what they enjoy, but it seems to me that /. is doing well. This is (and I'm just speculating) corporate greed, brought about by VA Whatever's desire to increase the bottom line. I doubt Taco had much of a choice. He probably had to fight to get the subscription set up in this way. I know how corporations work, and I've been the brunt of these type desicions before. I just hope /. doesn't suffer because of a management dscision. Then again, I could be wrong, it has happened on occasion. ;-)
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
With 1000+ comments, the chances of this being read with any attention is small. And it is likely to be redundant. But here goes.
With a Slashdot subscription, I had hoped for something a little more. In fact, something even innovative. Instead, it is asking people to pay money to keep what Slashdot is currently like. Even worse, it has metering tied to it. How many times have we seen how popular an unmetered service is, versus a metered one?
GIVE us something for our money. And if you can be a trendsetter and do something new and innovative, all the better.
On this thread!
I know, because I do that with ThinkGeek products all the time: ThinkGeek will advertise a cool product, I'll go to pricescan.com and find the same product for a fraction of the price, so ThinkGeek's advertising actually cost them a sale.
How much do Taco, Katz, Hemos, et. al. make per year? How much is their stock worth?
And what, pray tell, do they actually do to deserve this money?
The content on this site is provided by the READERS and the editors don't know an adverb from a participle. Any news story on this site can be had for FREE elsewhere, EARLIER! The software is open source, undoubtedly most of the people who wrote it never got payed for their efforts.
I like the comments. Many are informative. If there were some way to pay the people who actually provide me with information, I would.
If I were actually buying into a cooperative community, where I had a vote on things, could elect a board of directors, editors, etc. then I would not hesitate. Why should I pay some nerd to do a job they aren't even doing well.
Let me reiterate, it is the community here at slashdot that I appreciate. The editors have been getting more and more on my nerves for years.
I know that it takes money to provide bandwidth. If I had a say in things here, I would pay to be part of this community. But for the same amount of money, I can get a subscription to a print magazine with articles actually written by staff writers as well as pretty pictures and diagrams. Part of slashdot's appeal has always been it's amatuerishness. I think certain geeks heads have gotten too swelled to realize that this isn't a professional operation, it's not a real magazine, it's not even a real web-magazine. It's a discussion forum with links to other news sources. As such, it's not worth paying money for.
If this money went to paying for a professional editor, if some of it went to pay the people who submit stories and comments, if some of it went to pay back people who donated hardware in slashdot's infancy, then I might reconsider. Until then, this is my last post. I won't moderate, I won't metamoderate. I will read slashdot with graphics turned off (not like I'd miss an actual picture or diagram, anyway.) Goodbye, chumps. Sad to be leaving, it's been fun.
But not $5 a month worth.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Slashdotters,
...)
I would pay for NNTP access. Gate the stories and submissions
into a NNTP server. Post comments as threads. Gate postings
via NNTP into the weblog.
NNTP is capable of using login and password validation schemes
and is much easier, more efficient (saving bandwitdth)
than using the Web. Plus, setting up mirror sites is a snap.
I would pay for NNTP access. And don't be afraid of people re-gating stuff,
because they could just as well publish their Web login passwords,
and there aren't many people doing that, are there?
(I've heard freshmeat does it as well
Home Page
/. without ads doesn't help me.
/. for it's own content. i visit it because it's a convenient dumping ground for links to many things i find interesting.
/. is a collection of links to stories on -other- websites who -will- have ads.
i don't read
the forums? hah! those are mind-numbing.
if the ads were intrusive (the page-top banner is thoroughly tuned out on just about every site) then i'd just stop visiting.
try a different model.
subscription didn't work for PCXL and it -had- redeeming self-generated content.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Other people have faced this problem
Before the advent of the World Wide Web, everybody who was anybody in the computer world was on CompuServe. And each CompuServe forum competed for members (and the connection time revenue that the member paid) based on the help, support, community, files, or messaging that it provided. It was--explicitly--pay-for-content. It was precisely the business model that you guys want to adopt.
Savvy forum operators knew the statistics: only 5% of forum members ever posted a comment. And roughly 1% of forum members posted 90% of the comments. The more commments (particularly the more substantive comments), the more forum members there were--95% of whom were "read-only" lurkers. Thus, it paid to encourage people to post comments.
This policy discourages people from posting comments
Think of what you have to do to post a comment:
Are you done? Nope. You'd better hope your comment doesn't get mod'd up--because you'll get "messages" telling you that. Link to that page? (1 hit). You'd better hope you haven't contributed something provocative that produces replies--because you'll have to read each reply (1 hit apiece), and possibly post a response (3 hits per response, see above).
In short, contributing to SlashDot, writing interesting comments, getting mod'd up, and responding to replies now will cost you money. That is, all the things that you (SlashDot) want people to do (desperately need people to do) you are going to charge money for. You're creating disincentives to provide you with content--and that content is what you're trying to sell to subscribers.
What smart forum operators did was to issue "free flags". Each forum contractor got a certain amount of free forum time to award to forum users who helped out in one way or another. There were sysop accounts for people who did administrative things--but there were a lot more free flags for regular forum members who just participated in a lot of conversations. It would make a *lot* of sense for you to do the same thing.
In the ultimate geek world you'd be able to automate a process to identify people making significant contributions. That's what moderation is, after all. But automated processes can be manipulated (i.e. karma whoring)--this probably requires some individual discretion. Identify significant contributors (you can start with high-karma users, but I'm sure you can identify other factors to consider) and grant them free access. You want them posting comments all the time--those are the people whose peers have voted to indicate that their voices should be heard. The very last thing you want to do is get those people contributing less, because each contribution now costs them at least 3 page hits.
Oh, yeah--Paypal?
Be serious. If OSDN and VA Software is on such shaky ground that you can't get a merchant account through CyberCash or someone else, you have serious problems.
> (As an aside, it's also worth noting that more than
> half of all comment posters fall into this 3%)
Stop and think about that, fellow posters. That means comment posters comprise *less than 6%* of slashdot viewers [according to some means of measurement].
What are those other 19 outta 20 people doing? Just reading the articles and surfing to the links? Are they bothering with comments? If so, why are they so interested in reading things but not saying anything?
Seems like you could charge the silent majority, if they're truly surfing the site for content and not merely curious homepage clickers that don't care enough to pay, and still make plenty without bothering to levvy a fee on the people who make the content come proverbially alive.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Nobody with an ounce of sense would rely on a forum like Slashdot - mainly a place for people to bitch about their favorite hot buttons - to be a solid source for news. Hell, the editors can't even spell a great deal of the time, much less recognize proper grammar; hardly the recommendation for any sort of serious news provider. And how many times has slashdot been completely fucked on little things like facts and details?
That said, the fact that Slashdot pretty much just repackages the efforts of other sites when it comes to news means that the $20/year they're thinking about isn't to cover journalistic efforts (there being no such thing) but to allow people to rant on their favorite forum sans ads. That's all it is.
Will it work? I doubt it. As you said, this sort of business model just doesn't cut it on the internet. But hey, if that's what someone wants to do then more power to them. If my refusal to subscribe means that Slashdot goes under or I get booted, well, them's the breaks. I like Slashdot, but not enough to put money down on this horse.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I remember when PC Magazine first came out (in the 80's), it was mostly advertising and that was its primary value. Everyone wanted to know all about the latest hardware and software that you could add on to your PC, and the respective vendors were best qualified to talk about them.
I think the main reason most people despise today's web advertising is that it sucks. It's all about making an impression, and contains little interesting content. These "in your face" ads are also created with the assumption that you really don't want to see them, so they have to force you to look.
This, and Slashdot's new approach, are all horribly misguided. What /. needs to do is play a major role in the production, appearance and categorization of the ads. Make them a resource, not a nuisance. Make them informative, browseable and searchable. Reject products with no real value.
Slashdot should raise the bar for web advertising, not wallow in the mud of its current state.
I suspect if you did the same study today you'd find that advertising actually does more to bring up prices. Companies realized that competing on price was detrimental to them, so they switched to branding as the primary form of advertising.
To see this in it's most obvious form, look at Nike. Their ads don't even mention their shoes. Heck, they don't mention the name. It's just a sort of video art piece with a nike swoosh and maybe "just do it" at the end.
The thing is, people buy Nike, not because the quality is better but because of branding. Thus prices can be raised because people will pay more for what may in fact be an inferior product. That's on top of the fact that price is raised anyhow because they need to spend so much on building their brand through various advertising channels.
When was the last time you saw an ad banner adverising a product being cheaper than the competition? It's rather infrequent, non?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Great job, you guys! I've been waiting for the web to work out good micropay oriented subscription solutions since 1996. I'll gladly pay you my $20 / year, and I hope that you become millionaires -- seriously. If you can make it work, others will learn. And that means less ads for me.
This will probably get lost in the noise, but something I've been thinking about is a "distributed /." Think of it as /. over Freenet. Hell, even use Freenet as a way to distribute bandwidth costs across an entire spectrum of users. This would help the Freenet folks, as well as keep /. alive.
/.
Of course, this would have to be an independent movement, because I'm sure VA Linux (or whatever the hell they're named now) wouldn't want to lose out on a cash cow like
I worked for a company called Thruport and one of our products was a spam^H^H banner-serving program. The long and short of it is that I came out with the realization that Internet advertising is deceptive, futile, and a dead-end.
In such a business, everyone is trying to screw over everyone else. IE, inflate your impressions and click-throughs, track down to geography of users, and place as many banners on a page as humanly possible. I would get calls from irate porn-peddlers and weird clip-art pushers. The second they lost an impression, you would get a call holding whoever was in the room responsible. Nevermind that our sales team sold all sorts of unrealistic promises.
There is wonderful content on the web that simply could not survive without ad revenue. I would love to just use Junkbuster or block images with Mozilla, but I do want my measly page-view to give some $0.000000002 to the kids that make Slashdot possible. I wish Slashdot luck. Its certainly an issue I have no idea how to solve.
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 fail to see why so many people are freaking out over $5/1000 page views. Even at $5/week (thats one pageview EVERY 10 minutes) its not a bad deal.
Yes, everything is the world should be free. But, you know what? The world doesn't work that way. If /. has to have bigger ads to keep the advertisers happy, then so be it. The fact that they are offering a way around the new, bigger ads is commendable.
$5 isn't going to kill you. Besides, its a tax write off (in Canada, anyways)
I don't happen to know how much we make off ads off the top of my head, but I do know that we only sell a relatively small percent of the 2 million pages we serve each day. Subscriptions are fairly similiar to a tip jar... we're just giving you banner ad free pages instead of a tote bag or whatever ;)
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I don't think is a loss of spirit at all. If I did, I wouldn't have done this. You are not being told you need to pay anything. If you have been looking at Slashdot and filtering the ads here's a reality check: I appreciate your comment, but I don't appreciate you filtering the ads. That's the only way that we've been able to try and pay money. And here's another reality check: No, Slashdot is not profitable. And the reality is that it will probably be single digit percent of people who sign up - at an average of 10 - 20$ 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
Distributed would be great. If you could get ISP's to run their own local servers, or even regular people running a peer on their own machine, you could reduce the load on a central server to a huge degree.
After that, you would need to create a protocol that allows people to post messages to their local server, and then make those messages propagate to the other servers all across the land. If you had a simple enough protocol, people could even write their own custom clients, instead of having to use a web browser.
And since everyone is running their own little server, we could allow anyone to post stories; not just the Slashdot Editors.
Hmm, maybe we should start up a project on Sourceforge. I suggest we call it USENET.
-Mike
We the readers/posters are what has created /. -- not Taco and Hemos and the rest.
99.99% of the content of /. is what's posted by the readers.
The little that Taco and Hemos do is to write poorly-formed snippets that headline each article.
The entire substance of /. is written entirely by us, its readers.
And now we get to pay for the privilege of continuing to provide /. with its lifeblood?
I think not.
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
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
I just don't see myself paying /. to put up content I create. There are many publishers out there that will happily take your money to finance their publishing your book -- it's called self-publishing and as any author will tell you, a self-published book is rarely anything more than an ego stroke for a wealthy writer wanna-be. Now the idea sending someone my words, who aggregates them with a bunch of words written by other people who have paid or not, and then paying them to see what I wrote sounds ludicrous. There just isn't enough value added by the intermediate party (slashdot) to justify my dime. If, on the other hand, contributors get paid, like magazine writers, out of the revenues generated in part by their contributions, that's another story.
Why are you willing to *pay* to produce a product that *others* are selling to the advertisers?
Taco and Hemos don't *make* this place happen, you do, as do all posters.
Without us, they're nothing.
Other sites create their content; here, the content is created by the very people who are now going to be charged for the privilege of doing so..
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
I'm all for paying to have a slashdot free of obese ads. I'll probably pay more than average because I do read quite a lot regularly. I think I can live with that. Of course this will only happen once there's a way for me to pay giving my CC number or sending my check to someone I trust (see my sig if you want to know what I mean).
Anyway, I'm a bit concerned about the moderation process. Periodically I do get some moderation points. Sometimes I don't have the time to do anything with them (fortunately they last a few days, so usually I eventually do). But when I do, I pick some current topic I don't really have any need to post on, and start reading to see who's on topic with real contributions. By picking a topic of less interest to me, I think I can be less biased than I would be for some other topic that interests me greatly. But by so doing, I'm reading a lot of comments that I otherwise would never have seen ... page views I otherwise would never have made.
CmdrTaco ... I recommend that moderation be changed slightly as follows. When a user is logged in and has moderation points, it gives them the option to make an election to moderate whatever thread they want to, much like it does now, but via a separate link. Confirm they really want to, and really understand they won't be able to post there. Then that thread can be viewed without ads, without cost, for the first 100 pages viewed. When a moderation point is used, add 100 again to the number that can be viewed on that thread. When all moderation points are used up, let the moderator keep their free ad-free views for that thread so as not to discourage delaying moderation (the moderating should be done because a comment is worthy, not avoided because it might mean the ads come back or the pages have to be paid for again). In other words, up to 500 free views on threads elected for moderating.
While I would pay to access /. ad-free, I would end up not doing any moderating any more if I had to also pay for the moderated pages. I'm not interested in paying to moderate just like I'm not interested in paying to vote for politicians.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
a) First of all, you're paying for ad-free page views. If you can't load a page, seems to me that...surprise!...you wouldn't be charged for one of your ad-free page views.
b) Grow the fuck up. Do you think bandwidth is free? Do you think those really hibby rack-mount servers are free? Do you think that when one of those two fail, CmdrTaco is just gonna sit around, thumb up his ass, waiting for someone else to fix it?
Read CT's above comments: this is like a pledge drive for PBS. Instead of a tote-bag, you get ad-free pages. And remember: if you don't like it -- or Slashdot -- you're always free to fuck the fuck off.
Goddamn, but your comment has made me angry. I'll get modded down for sure, if anyone sees this in this field of 2000+ comments, but I don't care. I'm signing up because I like this goddamned site and I want to know it's going to stay around. I want to know that /. isn't going to sink beneath the waves because of apathy and "Where's my five-nines uptime guarantee?" clueless whining from idiots like yourself. I am honestly quite unable to understand what the fuck why your idiotic demands should seem important to you.
(I'll probably wake up tomorrow and regret how angrily I replied. But I won't regret that $20.
Carousel is a lie!
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
If you only have 1000 page views per $5 are you going to use a view format that forces you to click on links to see nested or long comments or are you just going to setup the comments to display in one huge page? Are you going to have a brief front page with just the stuff that interests you or are you going to double the number of stories and uncheck all of your excluded topics, just so you don't have to click on "older stuff" to see all the stories?
Slashdot has to charge based on how much traffic you cause and it needs to have a nice way of helping you optimise your viewing.
1 simple reading: scan the frontpage for articles of interest and click on those of interest
2 thorough metamoderating: sometimes scan context in metamoderation if the comment can not be evaluated on itself
3 thorough moderating: switch to flat/newest first/threshold 0 to give new comments a chance, reload page (automatically) when moderating
4 writing comments: prewiew your comment at least once, maybe reference older slashdot articles or context of the current article, maybe also write multiple comments per article, especially when discussing.
5 submitting articles: although you only need one or two pages to submit, you will probably be very interested in the subject and comment a lot.
The order is not choosen arbitraryly by me. It is (at least i believe so) ordered according to the number of page accesses needed for these actions per item of interest (article). It is notable that those who contribute the most to
To my understanding the comments are what makes slashdot interesting, to grab the latest news it is sufficient to go to the frontpage and thus view only one page or stand through just one annoying ad, or just go to other sites. Your system makes those activities most expensive (either in adverts the user is exposed to, or in pages he has to pay) that contribute the most to
- do less thorough or no metamoderating
- do less thorough or no moderating
- write less comments and not preview/edit them properly
This will make slashdot a poorer place, moderation will be worse, there will be less comments and less opinions. This will probably happen to some extent anyway, because of people leaving who neither want to pay, nor view adverts. But to charge those most who contribute for their contributions (in moderation and commenting) makes it even worse. I don't think it's far fetched, that manny moderators and commenters will revert to above methods to avoid costs/adverts, and that this will make slashdot less interesting (and thus also drive people away who were interested in the comments, and a well functioning comment system).
So if you must have adverts/subscriptions maybe you shoud try to avoid that effect (maybe by making those pages, that are needed for metamoderation, and especially commenting/previewing free (of fees and of overlarge adverts), maybe also introduce a special free moderation page (one page of newest/threshold zero/flat for an article)). I don't know how much a percentage those accesses make, and how much difference it would make to exclude them from ads/costs. But i think a well functioning comment/moderation system is vital to
--
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks