Slashdot IRC Forum

The IRC forum with CmdrTaco and Hemos is now complete, and a log has been posted. They answered quite a few questions about Slashdot's subscription system, bigger ads, and other assorted stuff. Don't miss the question about pop-up ads.

Comments

One possibility

[MadFarmAnimalz]

I missed the forum thanks to work; there's one idea that had crossed my mind. I acknowledge that /. needs cash flow to keep moving, but there may be a way out of subscriptions.

Set up polls to gather non-personal data for marketroids, such as what compiler you use and why, what http server you use and why, etc. I'm cerrtain that with some small measure of headscratching, it would be possible to gather information about the geek community to be worth money to a marketing research concern while at the same time keeping it within geek sensibilities, i.e. no 'what is your bank account number' type questions.

Perhaaps some form of questionnaire to be filled out upon registration, retroactively applicable?

Study us; we're geeks. We buy stuff. Expensive stuff. Servers. Networking gear. We're the bleeding edge consumers, what the marketing people call 'early adopters'.

Just don't try to sell us beer.

Hemos, Taco: You blew it.

[Dan Crash]

I just want to say two things:

First, the notion that "posting is payment enough!" is a troll. Posting doesn't pay the bandwidth bills. I think it's sad that Slashdot has become a victim of its own popularity, but I understand their need to search out new sources of revenue. I'm not even against it.

On the other hand: Sorry Hemos, Taco, but it doesn't sound like you put *any* thought into this subscription plan at all. (Proof: grep the IRC log for "i dunno", see how many times Taco says it.) Shouldn't you guys have thought this out before you implemented the thing? Isn't that the first rule of programming?

And, not to be too pointed, but what about asking us what we want? For a site which prides itself on providing community, I'm profoundly disappointed in the way Slashdot rolled this out.

You had a real chance to change the world here. What is Slashdot supposedly about? Open Source. Imagine if you'd practiced what we all preach: You could've let the Slashdot community propose and moderate the features they most wanted in a subscription service. Like Google, you could have shown all the failing dotcoms that, if you give the customer exactly what they want, you'll be successful where everyone else fails.

You had a chance to lead the way, and you blew it. The current plan seems like -- forgive me - a Microsoft patch. Poorly thought out, badly implemented, causing more problems than it fixes.

You could still do this right, you know. And I'll probably pay a few bucks because I know how much I've enjoyed reading Slashdot. But I can't help feeling like this is the beginning of the end. Here's hoping you pull this together, and thanks for the memories if it turns out you can't.

Re:It's a kind of intellectual arrogance.

[Xerithane]

Absolutely agreed.

The fact that they don't actually have a spreadsheet that they can reference to see revenue and costs is just silly. Yes, it ends in a .org -- but if it employs people (and /. does) you need to get your heads out of your ass and make a fucking business plan.

I'll tell you how to avoid the entire /. ad/subscription mess - run it like a business instead of your after school project. Write a business plan. Do cost projects/analysis -- find out what websites make money. Hell, open up a merchandise store or do some serious bundling with thinkgeek. (More than what is there now)

With how much readership (especially the types of readers) slashdot gets, it's really pathetic that there has not been a sound path to profitability. They have an entire web community rallying around them and they can't even figure out how much money it costs to run slashdot.

And on a side note:
I refuse to subscribe until I am not $rtbl'd and have an apology for receiving that treatment.

Just read the entire IRC log...

[FrozenFrog]

Some observations/questions which I found interesting (TI = Time Index):

TI 15:12 - Someone asks about the costs of running Slashdot. Lots of "it's hard to tell", "hard to calculate", etc from the Slashdot crew. CmdrTaco says they have 12 servers + test boxes and stuff.

TI 15:43 - Again someone asks how much is costs to keep /. going. And again we get "It's not that simple", "There's no easy answer", etc. Hemos mentions 30 servers. Hemos and Taco start throwing out numbers, and seem to agree that it's "about" $1.5 million per year.

TI 16:14 - Someone asks if the money from subscriptions will go to help improve infrastructure, bandwidth, costs, etc. Hemos says the money will go into the OSDN bank account. He then says "But the money for Slashdot is tracked". Taco says "The thing is we don't need *more* we just need to keep what we have".

TI 16:15 - A question is asked about how long /. can keep going at current funding levels, and what happens when the funding runs out. Taco says "I really don't know what happens", "If I were to *guess* I would say VA would sell Slashdot". Hemos says "Basically, VA has 18-24 months, OSDN is near cash flow positive".

TI 17:16 - Someone asks how much bandwidth /. uses per day. Taco responds "12-20 megabits on the main box, probably half that on the images box", "we were spiking at like 35 (megabits) total".

Is it just me, or does it seem profoundly odd to anyone that the people who run Slashdot have no idea how much money it costs? Maybe this is the reason they're in financial trouble? They say that /. is part of OSDN, fine. But in *my* company, I know how much money each separate *division* is costing me, and how much revenue it's bringing in. Isn't OSDN a real business with accountants that figure this stuff out and produce quarterly reports and all that other accounting stuff? And if you're a division/section head, like CmdrTaco and/or Hemos are, I find it very hard to believe they don't know how much money they're spending/taking in.

Slashdot of course has absolutely no obligation to reveal their costs to their users, whether they're subscription based or not. But answering as they did above really makes them look unprofessional IMO. If they don't want to answer, or are prohibited from answering, they should simply state that.

Personally, I won't pay for a subscription. I'll likely install JunkBuster or something similar. As someone posted on another thread, it's *my* right to choose what's displayed on *my* computer, and if I don't want to see ads, I won't. Just like it's the choice of Slashdot to remove itself as a freely accessible site and become completely closed and subscription only based if they want. If that happens, then I have a choice to pay, or not pay and get my news on the multitude of other tech news sites. It's all about choices, as it should be.

So exactly how much DOES it cost to run Slashdot per year? :)

Frog

Re:Subscriptions

[leviramsey]

Maybe subscribers should be able to see a list of advertisers, with a checkbox allowing them to change the policy from default to explicit allow or deny. The frequency with which allowed ads show up could be based on the relative chances of an ad from that advertiser showing up on an unsubscribed user's page (so if ThinkGeek appears on 10% of the pages of a non-subscribed user, then every tenth page-view where an ad would have been supressed has a ThinkGeek ad). Slashdot then gets the best of both worlds, and it's almost a moderation system for ads.

Re:It's a kind of intellectual arrogance.

[Gaccm]

do you think they want to run this as a business? NO WAY. THEY ARE NOT IN THIS FOR THE MONEY BUT FOR THE FUN. The problem is that fun costs money, so they would like heavy slashdot users to donate (this system is MUCH more like a donation system than a subscription system, taco even says that in the article) to help them out. Is that too much to ask? or should they start being like Salon and all the other news sites where you have to pay for the good info? Please tell me which you would rather have.

My favourite Taco comment....

[not_cub]

I joined the IRC channel, and read up to this point, when I left in disgust:
A Score:5 comment, perhaps a few thousand.
The value of comments is questionable.
Considering the percentage of readers who care.

Amazing... Slashdot is composed of two things, the front page, with all the spelling errors and factual mistakes, and the comments pages, with all the user submitted corrections. Now, if you take away the comments pages, you are left with the front page alone, and to me, slashdot becomes almost worthless. With the current levels of fact checking, I could never believe anything posted.

The value of comments is questionable. If the value of comments is less than the cost of transmitting pages to people, then slashdot will ultimately fail, because it will throw money away with every page served. This is true whether the cost is paid by advertising or by paypal. However, the value of the frontpage alone, is a lot less than it is allied with the comments. The value of the frontpage is almost certainly less than the cost of transmitting it.

Taco comments clearly indicate that he does not see this value. That he sees comments.pl, not as an integral and important part of slashdot, but as a burden on bandwidth and processing power. Wake up, Taco: you are not the only person with valuable content contributions to make to slashdot.

As to hemos, he comes across as a guy seriously unable to do his job. If you've ever worked with one, you know what he mean. He does not seem to be contributing at all to helping slashdot stay afloat. He doesn't have any idea of what to do, or what direction to take. Taco seems to be carrying him.

Good luck keeping slashdot going guys, but I doubt you are the people to keep it afloat. It will probably die when the .com cash runs out, maybe before if VA kills it first.

not_cub