Slashdot IRC Forum Today

Hemos and I are going to try to answer questions today at 3:00 PM EST, on irc.slashnet.org in #forum. Specifically we're going to try to keep the questions on the subject of subscriptions. There are a lot of misunderstandings about a few things, and we wanna clear them up. We'll post a log in this story after the forum is done. Any questions can be /msged to Questions the bot and forum discussion can be had in #forum.d.

Comments

Re:Ads test

[The Blue Meanie]

I believe that one of the /. editors had a little test of the new ads today.

I saw it, too. Hey, I really enjoy reading Slashdot, and if this is what it takes for them to survive, I'm fine with it. It certainly wasn't as obnoxious as it could have been. And think about it - at least they're going to give you the option of subscribing to make the ads go away. How many sites you visit every day don't give you a choice about it at all?

Pay per page

[mikej]

4 words easily explain why a flat-rate plan will never work for slashdot:

username: cypherpunks
password: cypherpunks

What's to stop someone from signing up with one account and distributing the authentication information to all their friends? Complicated, expensive technical measures I suppose, but that chews away their profit.

I've been thinking about this over the past few days, and I can't think of any way other than per-page that slashdot subscriptions can work. It may very well be that per-page won't work either, in which case we all get a lesson in capitalism.

$12 Flat Rate - MANDATORY

[Knunov]

Forget the tiered approach. It's confusing and silly.

$12 per year, $1 per month, for unlimited access. Cheap, simple and should be profitable.

Even if you keep only 100,000 readers, that's $1.2MN per year. If this scruffy site can't survive on $1.2MN in revenue per year, you have other problems. The easiest remedy to which would be the firing of Jon Katz. Seriously, there is not a single /. reader that comes here specifically for his articles. He is fat. Cut him away and gain instant efficiency.

Knunov

Stick? No! Carrot? Yes!

[Dicky]

I've been reading Slashdot for quite a while now (yes, I've got a low UID - I started reading before UIDs existed). Sure, I refresh a lot, but it's mainly the front page, since so much of the content seems to be uninteresting to me nowadays - I don't know if it's my interests which have changed, or Slashdot's focus, probably a bit of both. I don't post too much any more, partly through dispair at the inanity of much of the content, partly through my growing annoyance with the way the site has been run, and largely because I choose to post in other fora, mainly on two mailing lists which constitute real communities, one a Linux list within my company, the other being the list of my LUG. This site is not a real community, and will never be - it may have been at some point in the past, but it certainly isn't now, as a single-minded (close to) autocracy, where the topics of discussion are chosen by a small, closed group, and staying on-topic and within the acceptable norms are enforced by moderators.

I am frankly disgusted by the lack of professionalism shown by the people running this site - it's okay to be kooky when you're running a site as a spare-time activity, and not too bad when it's free to readers and paid for by advertising. I will not pay to support this site when the actual content (excluding Jon Katz, who simply writes unreadable pap) is all written by users, when the spelling and grammer remain at a childish level, when there is no open-ness in the site. The new ads are annoying enough that I now have the Junkbuster running on my machine at work (and have encouraged my colleagues who read Slashdot to use me as a proxy). I am a natural Slashdot reader, a Unix professional (and yes, I take pride in my work - do the editors here?), affluent and free-spending online, but I only come here because of the content which is supplied by the users.

I will not respond to the stick. I will not subscribe to get rid of ads - I have a technical solution to that problem, so why should I be forced into a financial solution? I'm an engineer - I solve things technically.

I will respond to the carrot. Don't say "subscribe or bad things will happen". Say "subscribe and good things will happen". Some possible examples:

• For foo's sake, hire a real editor, not a Perl hacker who ended up running a web site with 250000 readers, and have everything which goes on the front page run by them first. We all know how readable most Perl is - we need someone who's good at writing English!
• NNTP access. The excuse - and it has only ever been an excuse - for not providing one has been that no-one has worked out how to force ads down people's pipes over NNTP. I'll subscribe, so get no ads, but I want to read over NNTP.
• More real, technical content. Get rid of Katz, and pay someone with a clue to write interesting stuff.
• More open-ness. I want to hear what's going on, what's coming up, what's a problem, what's an unexpected bonus. I want an open discussion forum about the site - not one to constantly attack the 'editors', meaning they enter the discussion on the defensive, but an open discussion. To be honest, I'd like to know what the 'editors' do all day - there are 5-10 story posts a day (plus maybe another 5 in sections with volunteer editors), and I really can't work out how that's a full-time job.
• Early access to stories might be nice, so paying customers get to at least try to avoid the slashdot effect.
• I won't pay using PayPal - I know this has already been covered. I would really prefer not to pay using Dollars - I'm not in the US, and I don't really want to pay commission on my subscription. I reckon that taking Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Pounds Sterling and Euros would cover a very large majority of the Slashdot readership, whould encourage non-US subscriptions (over half the people on the 'net aren't in the USA). I've done a little bit of work for a charity on an on-line donation page, and we can take Dollars, Pounds, Euros are Shekels (it's a Jewish charity...) easily enough.
• I want some status info. Number of subscriptions, number of subscribers (these two are different - think about it), ideally some proper financial info like costs/revenue. I understand that the latter may be hard, but I would really like the other two.

Overall, the two main problems I have are that I refuse, on principle, to respond to the stick, but I'd welcome to carrot, and I'd like to see the staff taking things a little more seriously. Not high-and-mighty serious, but trying to do a professional job serious.

Ad Blocking and Subscriptions

[Dimwit]

I have a real problem with anyone using ad blockers, especially at community sites like Slashdot.

Slashdot agrees to give you content, if you view the ads. If you don't want to view the ads, don't look at the content. Using an ad blocker just screws Slashdot out of their cut.

There seems to be this view of "I shouldn't have to pay for anything, whine whine whine" (and before you say it: I have bought copies of Slackware, RedHat, Debian, FreeBSD, BeOS, several pieces of shareware...) Well, sorry everyone - things actually cost money. And even if they didn't, it's Slashdot's right to charge if they want to.

If you don't like it, fine, but don't go and screw them out of their cut. That *is* theft, whether you admit to it or not.

As for the subscriptions, I would subscribe, but not on a pay-per-view basis. Monthly, fine, yearly, fine, but not pay-per-view. I won't subscribe with that.

But I'll happily view the ads they send me, and keep up my end of the bargain. Remember, the world does not owe you everything for free.

Obviously, your metric's off,

[mckwant]

but the idea isn't bad.

example 1: I post once on a new acct, get a five (net points of four), and bingo, my score is four.

example 2: I post 40 times, have the +1 bonus, so after 10 "5" postings, and the rest unmoderated (net: 30), my score is .75.

Which is more valuable? A weighted average with total points makes a little more sense, but only knows what that might be.

Being free is what makes it good.

[Jus'n]

I've noticed a BIG trend in the post-boom IT industry where those free service providers who rose to the top of their field think that if they start charging, they'll STAY as good as they were. They don't seem to realize that in every single case, they reason they were so popular is that they were free. Take Yahoo! Personals for example. I'll admit it... I had a lot of fun there a few years ago. I met a lot of extremely strange and interesting people through their free service. I've had a very serious girlfriend for the past 3 years now, but I recently poked my head back in there for kicks, to maybe expand my social circle again, and meet some people my g/f and I could hang out with. I posted an ad, and was perplexed at the fact that I got no responses. In the "good old days," I'd get at least 1 a day. Granted, I was single then, and I imagine most people went to Yahoo! Personals to get laid, but still! Then I got hit by a survey (they wanted to know how people liked the new structure) and I discovered that you have to PAY to respond to the ads. Consequence? What used to be a fantastic place to meet psychos and weirdos (and I happen to like weirdos) became a no-man's-land of horny AOL-wannabes where no one connects (and Yahoo! can't be making much money off of it!).

So how does this apply to slashdot? Well, it's great now, because of the, what, 250,000 readers, I'd say a least 1% are contributors, either in stories or in comments. Of those perhaps 25,000, a goodly portion are intelligent, or at least fun to argue with. Also, those perhaps 25,000 community members come up with some very interesting stories to submit, giving us good topics to flame each other about. If Slashdot makes it inconvenient and/or expensive to participate, well, guess what -- participation goes down. Sure, they think slashdot provides such a great service and such great information and they think they can turn a profit off of that, but the proverbial "they" may forget how much of that "provided" value is actually provided by the community which uses slashdot. If the community shrank by 90% (which it probably would if, for example, they REQUIRED subscription), I seriously doubt that slashdot would still hold my interest. Yes, I realize that's not what they're suggesting, but if participation drops by say 33% because they spew ads at non-subscribers, it will have the same effect, to a somewhat lesser degree.

Re:Text ads.

[Kanon]

Have you seen their new text ads? They don't get in the way, don't jump out of the screen screaming at you and most importantly of all have actually been interesting (The ones I've seen so far). I've been clicking them for the curiosity value.

They have a page where anyone can buy their own ($12 for 4000 impressions). http://www.kuro5hin.org/submitad

Now *that's* how it should be done. I hope it works for them.

Re:Ads test

[TheGreek]

Do you really want ads to look like they belong on Slashdot? Take a look at MSNBC. Their ads are huge and ugly yet somehow they belong. Why do they belong? Because we expect a company such as them to try to sell crap to us.

No, they look like they belong on MSNBC because the text wraps around them. They don't just sit out there naked between the story and the comments.

Are you the troll? Or just a leech?

[Chris Burke]

It sounds like you didn't read what he said at all. Or at least you didn't read it with an open mind. Because you certainly didn't grasp what he was saying. I deduce this because you said:

These people don't owe us anything;

No shit. He wasn't saying they -owe- us, he was saying charging a subscription fee which doesn't offer you anything is a stupid business model. The /. subscription service was a missed opportunity to add something truly worth paying for.

The post wasn't about how the subscription service or the ads are heinous acts of evil by an ungrateful /. staff... It was about how you can make a subscription service successful. You do it by making things people want, not by making things they want to get rid of. Because they may not owe us, but we sure as hell don't owe them.

we aren't a "community," we a bunch of freaking bandwidth leeches who sit here and suck down knowledge and commentary all day.

Speak for yourself, Geek In Training. You may be a leech, but I'm not. I'm one of the apparently less than 3000 (acording to Taco) people who contribute to this site. Depending on who you ask what I post may be worth reading or not, but I'm not a crapflooder and I'm not a troll, and I'm not even a karma whore. I and the rest of those 3000 (minus the crapflooders etc) are the ones who make slashdot what it is.

Do you think that if it wasn't for what we're writting here, /. would be mentioned on every tech site in existance? Not a chance. Because without the comments -- the community -- /. would just be a standard news portal like Ars, the Reg, or any others, except very, very shitty.

No, I mean really. Would you tolerate a news portal with as many factual errors, spelling and grammar errors, broken links, and repeats if that was all it was? The Reg has a lot of typos (by the standards of journalism, not /.), but they add good commentary to their news-linkage. What would /. have, if it wasn't for us? I'll give you a hint: We already know, and it was called "Chips and Dips". Do you see VA paying for that?

So we damn well better be a "community", because if we aren't this site isn't shit. If this "community" gets up and leaves, /. will be dead in a week. Sure, sure, Taco has to maintain the code and stuff, all of which I don't have to do... That's why he gets paid for his contributions to /., and I don't. That doesn't make me a leech. It makes me a volunteer.

Now, I'm perfectly happy being a volunteer. It's not like I just figured out that I am one; if I had a problem with it, I would have left a long time ago. But then you- You say you're willing to let yourself be annoyed into paying money for your volunteer work. You're not going to pay because you're getting something you want, but because you're being poked with a pointy stick until you give them $5 so they'll stop for a while. And the clear message you're giving is "if I don't cough up the dough, then you should just increase the size and pointiness of the stick." Well, you, being just a leech, might think that's okay. Maybe you feel guilty for leeching. Maybe you're just the kind of spineless mark salesmen love who'll buy the overpriced TV just to get the salesman off your back. But I, being a volunteer, have a different view: Fuck that.

/. is a great site. But it's great because of the community, as disparate and cantankerous as we are. Taco and co. -- they provide the means, the capability. We use those means to provide the content. That's what makes this site what it is. And you want to talk about owe?

Forget about oweing. I don't owe Taco shit. Frankly, he doesn't owe me anything either. So given this neutral agreement, why the fuck would I pay this man just to stop annoying me? That's right, I wouldn't. I'll block the annoyance with mozilla, maintain the neutral relationship, and keep using /. how I always have.

Value add

[geekoid]

First of all, it would have been nice if you did this at a time when most of your viewers are at work. Nobody like to work on weekends, but this is important enough to set up on weekends. BTW most suscribers will be people who are working.

You need Value add for subscriptions work.
1)suscribers get access to a mirror of the links in the story.
2)The ability to not see posts be non-suscribers, regardless of there rating.
3)Email me when a certian story is posted. I.E. if a NASA story is posted, shoot me an email.
4)put suscribers on there own machine when they connect.
5)Invite suscribers to the wedding ;)