Slashdot Mirror
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.
cmdr... seriously... this isn't going to work. mark this redundant right now...
1) paypal
2) tech saavy audience already disables ads
3) why would i pay to view the content i provide??
4) why would i ADVERTISE on a site that allows its biggest fans to block the ads?
this isn't a good idea. period.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
After hearing/SEEING how much slashdot costs, and knowing that I'd like to keep reading slashdot, I decided to change my opinion from waiting until the BFA's become annoying and just to pay the subscription because I want to SUPPORT slashdot.. hell I dont care about the AD's. I dont block 'em but I also can IGNORE the ones I dont want to see.. (THose Thinkgeek ones rock!)
But Slashdot folks do go through a bit trying to make sure that the ads are nonintrusive in that they're not popups and so on.. now THOSE would make you want to run away wouldnt that? and they're not using them STILL even with the subscription thing.. so you have to give them some credit in knowing HOW far to go and NOT going over the line.. so why not support them? 5 bucks isnt that much to pay..
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.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Was slashdot turning a profit before you implemented this annoying advertising/subscription scheme??
If slashdot is in the red then I really can't hate you guys for not paying out of your pockets to keep the site up and running. But I've heard some anecdotal evidence suggesting that slashdot.org is indeed turning a profit. That would mean VA Linux(or whatever they are called now) is taxing the slashdot users to pay for unprofitable ventures elsewhere.
Face it guys: VA has NO CHANCE IN HELL of surviving as a company. Their flagship product, Sourceforge, is a joke. Last I checked, VA's net loss was more than their TOTAL REVENUE. You can't come back from that in a quarter, or even a year. Slashdot will be sold to some other company or spun off or something.
As long as I can hit the monkey and still get $20...
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Slashdot should make comments subscription only.
They could even do away with the need for moderation.
I mean, who wants to pay to crapflood?
--Metrollica
You touches on being able to treat subscribers like Friends/Foes (+1 or -1), but how about the ability to simply ignore a friend/foe or non subscriber???
I want to read at -1, but I also want to not have to look at the crap that Klerck puts out.
Never underestimate the willingness of computer folks to circumvent fees, no matter how small the fee is.
Just in case I missed it:
Do comments display ads by default?
Do I get penalized for viewing them?
And if so, am I paying for that?
Can you explain all this again Taco? Just kidding.
(ducks and runs)
Know what? I put that ad-removing code into my user space... read the IRC log and removed it. Specifically when I read this from Hemos:
"Here's the reality: You block ads. You cost us money. Ultimately, I mean."
This is where you have to stop and think "Hey... if Slashdot DOES go down because of a lack of profits, where will I turn?"
Of course, there are other news places to go to. I visit The Register often. However, Slashdot is, despite any errors in editorials or anything... a truly unique news site. For the years I've been reading, I've been pleased overall. We've all encountered bumps in the road, and that bump in the road for users right now is the ads. Now, of course (which I find it ironic that this comes not long after this, but still) many of you are simply not going to go for the idea of something that was once pratically free and devoid of huge ads to have simply changed on you. You'll cheat the system as much as you can, and for the most part, you'll succeed.
But how much will that accomplish? Realize the plight slashdot apparently is in, and how they need to raise money, somehow. Subscriptions and ads are that way. And while I disagree with a lot of the way they're going to implement them... why not just pick one way, even if you have qualms with it, and just go with it? Put aside your inflammatory, trolling and goatse links for a second and realize that Slashdot is truly a useful resource. If you're going to visit this site, for once prove that it doesn't take sneaky or unethical buisness for something to survive... merely a good product. That is what Slashdot is, and most of you know it: a very good product.
While I personally won't be going for a subscription (16 years old = lack of credit card), I will stomach the ads and probably a lot more if they need it to survive.
Seriously, Slashdot is my homepage and I check it perhaps 10-15 times per day. The stories are sometimes questionable but usually interesting, and the comments are usually blatent stupidity or flamebait, but sometimes though-provoking. I decided I'll just block the BFA's so I don't forget to shoot them $5 on a regular basis, but really the ads don't bother me. This is a part of that whole tip jar using, user community supported, huge media comglomerate free thing that the New Internet was supposed to be all about, whats so terrible about tossing in $5? I guess that seems cheap to me, but then again I tend to use the tip jar for all my favorite sites a couple times a year, never much (because I am a poor college student), but I don't want the sites that I enjoy to disappear. just my quick thoughts-
Seems like a good point by homerj at 16:41 in the chat. Posters give slashdot permission to publish their comments, but it's not a blanket grant. Slashdot can't put the comments in a book and sell the book, for example.
By the same reasoning, wouldn't there be some limits on what slashdot can do to the site and still carry the implied permission by the author? Changing to a for-pay model means that slashdot is now profiting from the site in a way that was not the case when the author posted. Maybe he would not have been willing to use slashdot to publish if he had known that there was money coming in as a pay service, without getting a cut of that money himself.
Seems to me that slashdot may be stepping over the line in charging for content which was submitted with the understanding that it would be published for no charge. Any lawyers care to comment?
I wonder whether CmdrTaco and Hemos really enjoyed the chat. Slashnet was overcrowded by trolls, there were lots of double questions about the ads and subscriptions and I think the Slashdot staff *does* have a mixed feeling on 'going non-free', but they can't go back. According to the logs, already 1,5% of the Slashdot visitors is a paying subscriber. :( I wish him luck nevertheless.
I don't want to sound ungrateful for Slashdot, but some crew change might be welcome too. Slashdot has become a habit - the editors no longer feel obliged to fix half-wrong stories, they don't realize that they piss off a customer with every rejected submission and I think CmdrTaco has rejected *lots* of good ideas tonight. He seems to stick on only no-ads and gold stars, and little extra power for subscribers. Come on Taco, you aren't a suit - some things might not be too easy in Slash (submission of polls, access to the submission queue, a trusted net of paying moderators) but they will prove more robust and much cooler than this ripped-out-of-any-book business model. That's my point: Slashdot gets boring. I hate to see this leading weblog go the same road as so many others.. this is not another troll, Slashdot will be as interesting as it ever was, but the specialty is gone. Hey, we're a community! I liked the chat, but Taco hardly *listened*
Read the IRC Forum. Basically, they indicate that they gave all of this very little thought. They still have no idea of the complications of advertising.
It's a kind of intellectual arrogance. Because they know computer things, nothing else can be difficult.
Bush's education improvements were
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.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
First I was afraid
...
I was very sad
Kept thinking I could never read
a slashdot full of ads
But I had oh so many posts
Smacked down for saying jamie's wrong
I grew strong
I learned how to carry on..
So now there's ads
More of the same
I just logged on to find them here
Between the news and all the flames
I should have changed my fucking hosts
I should have switched my uid
If I had known for just one second
they'd be back to bother me
So off I go - I'm out the door
Just turn around now
'Cause I'm not reading anymore
Weren't you the one who hit me with $rtbl
You think I'm quelled
You think I'd just go to hell --
Oh no, not I
I won't subscribe
As long as I know how to post
I know I'll be alive
I've got all my life to live
I've got all my posts to give
I won't subscribe
I won't subscribe
It took all the strength I had
Not to read this thread
Kept trying hard to ban
slashdot addiction from my head
And I spent oh so many nights
Just posting crap at minus one
Used to be fun
But now I want to cut and run
And you see me at
Another site
I'm not that stupid little user
Reading every night
And so you felt like dropping in
And just expect me to be free
Now I'm saving all my comments
For someone who's loving me
So off I go - I'm out the door
Just turn around now
'Cause I'm not reading anymore
Weren't you the one who hit me with $rtbl
You think I'm quelled
You think I'd just go to hell --
Oh no, not I
I won't subscribe
As long as I know how to post
I know I'll be alive
I've got all my life to live
I've got all my posts to give
I won't subscribe
I won't subscribe
Hey hey...
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I know that Slashdot is now part of a company, so there are probably gobs of legal issues (albeit, very stupid ones) that go against my idea, but, why not put out the finances of Slashdot for everyone to see? This way the users can see what's really going on, and maybe even develop a solution that does not necessarily charging the small lot of people who actually make Slashdot the place to be?
Just my idea . . . after all, this is a community that advocates "open" things.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
just give ACs a -6 bonus in your profile, they'll always end up at -1. (if you haven't checked this out, it's pretty neat: you can give bonuses between -6 and +6 to Friend/Foe/Fan/Freak as well as all comment ratings. it's in the "comments" section of your preferences.)
sulli
RTFJ.
Time to get coding :)
Probably the reason it was ignored was because the exact same question was asked (by the exact same person) and answered earlier in the discussion.
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
I have to do a radio interview at 10 tonight, and eat dinner.
;)
I'd like to watch Junkyard wars w/ kathleen
but I'll keep going for a bit.
Dear lord, I want this man's life. My fiancee won't even watch a movie with me if it has a computer in it. *sigh* Some bastards have all the luck.
Now, to be on topic: I think this could've been handled a bit better. I think people would've been more open to the whole thing, had the term "tip jar" been used from the beginning, instead of "subscription"...
But, what's past is past...
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
A guy walks into the public library one day... Okay, it isn't the public library anymore, they've been privatized for about a decade, but people still call it that. Anyway, the guy walks into the library, and the head librarian walks up to him.
"Welcome to the Infotronobeam(r) Public Library! Our increasing costs means we have to look for new sources of income. Unfortunately the ad posters on the ends of the stacks aren't generating enough, and we have to seek financing from those who use our library."
"Aw, damn," the man says. "You mean you're going to start charging me to borrow books? If you do, I'm just going to leave and go to some other library!"
"No, no," the librarian says, smiling. "You still get as many books as you want for free."
"Um, okay... So what exactly do I have to pay for?"
"Nothing," she says, still smiling. "That is, unless you want me to stop doing... this! WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP!" She draws in a deep breath. "WOOP WOOP WOOP-"
"Stop! Stop!" the man cries. "Okay, what do I have to do to make you not do... that?"
"Oh, it's simple! You just pay five Northamericos, and you can check out a hundred books without any audio accompaniment. You can even choose if you only want certain kinds of books... For example, I could be silent in the Non-Fiction section, but shout WOOP when you go into the Childrens Literature section. It's like a tip jar!"
"Okay... Wait. How is that like a tip jar?"
"You're giving me a tip for my great service!"
"The great service of not screaming incessantly?"
"That's right! So, do you want to put some money in the tip jar?" the librarian asks, holding out the glass jar, shaking it as if in invitation. The few lonely Pentium pieces in the jar rattle. It seems not many have jumped at the opportunity.
"No, I think I'll pass... I just want to check out books."
The librarian gets a stern look on her face as she draws in her breath. "WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP..."
At that point the man remembers he has some earplugs in his pocket. He puts them in his ears, and the woman's screaming dulls down to be almost unnoticeable. Smiling, he goes about looking for a book, with the librarian following, becoming increasingly frustrated. He notices suddenly that everyone else seems to be wearing earplugs as well... He laughs, thinking that the "tip jar" is going to remain pretty empty...
Slashdot.org is essentially a website that links to news stories that in a short period has grown into a large fan base. Everyone in IT knows that it is very diffuclt to put a meal on the table by running a website alone. What cmdrtaco and the rest of the slashdot moderators, admins, and etc should do is run slashdot.org on their spare time after hours and get regular 9 to 5 jobs. They could make more money by getting regular jobs and working on slashdot on their spare time.
They could have moderator time slots where moderators work a rotating schedule to scan the stories for ones that should be posted. The slashcode is essentially complete except for ongoing changes to support the new ad based system. So if they got regular jobs they would make more money, still have ad revenue from the banner ad at the top, and they would put slashcode into maintainence mode. It would cut down on the number of headaches, which is always good.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
And what about a flat payment rate?
I wish you guys had addressed these important issues in your IRC forum. Also, I can't be bothered to read FAQ's, the original article, the entire web log, or anything else pertaining to the questions I'm asking. Please send me a uu-encoded, ROT13'd, PGP'd, and backwards response to all my questions or I'll keep asking them over and over and over...
If you're using a filtering proxy like Junkbuster so that you don't have to see the annoying Java/Flash/blink 10,000 times per second/etc. advertisements on other sites, but there are a few sites (such as slashdot) on which you are willing to view advertising because:
1. You want to support them
2. They've agreed to not have horribly annoying ads
Then it's easy. Just go to the proxy configuration page (Advanced -> Proxies) in a recent version of mozilla. Put ".slashdot.org" in the "No Proxy for" field. Done.
I've had to use this at the office since I can't seem to make junkbuster want to work correctly with our message form or fax gateway.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
I really don't want to sound like a dick. (CmdrTaco & Hemos: I love /. think mostly everything you said is correct) BUT, that said, I find it pretty convenient that no one can mirror slashdot comments because of copyright issues with the poster:
/. mirrors are illegal and we don't like them because they threaten our livelihood?
.02
hemos_ I cannot grant him permission to repost the comments.
CmdrTaco We don't have the right to give people permission to repost comments.
This is a bit like saying that we support things being open and free, *BUT* it is really impossible to make it so because we created the rules so that only we can host them. Why don't you say that
Just my
-Sean
What pop up adds? I don't see any.
:wq
People who refuse to pay are not mainly in the group of people who begrudge the cost; probably most readers would gladly part with the money and are largely fairly well-to-do. Its the administrative overhead and risk that stops us.
The 'overhead' refers to filling out forms, tracking the information, and the charges on my credit card. I hate paperwork. This alone is enough to make me leery of participating.
The risk factor is the true stopper though.
I won't give any personal information to anybody because I have been abused in too many ways; not just internet sites but the world at large. I have been sold on lists to telemarketers. I have been charged on my credit cards by fly-by-nights. I have been outright robbed using paypal. I have been spammed. I have had my personal computer cracked by warez hackers and chinese dissidents. I have been, and am being, stalked by a [literally] psychotic guy from New Jersey. I have had my bank account compromised; my credit card hijacked.
In short, my life has been made a living hell by the simple fact that I have given information out to people who all said they wouldn't let it out.
Thus I believe this is the 'ultimate' reason for the dot com failure; nobody ever solved the problem of easy, fast and trustworthy electronic transactions.
Until that problem is solved, slashdot won't get my money.
Exactly. It's amazing. They are doing very well in an extraordinarily lucrative field, but they don't get the benefits because they don't know how to do business.
Bush's education improvements were
Wow, FAQs, multiple stories, 3 hours of IRC chat, and people still have 50 million questions, and at least half the comments so far are nothing more than whining and/or trolling.
/., I still shake my head in wonder. Geeks who've made money online, and are still making money. Sometimes I wonder if it's just sour grapes from a lot of formerly-employed dot-commers... but let's face it: if Rob was such the uncaring asshole people make him out to be, he would have just sold Slashdot for a big chunk of change. Taco made something cool, made himself at least something of a career out of it, and is STILL DOING IT. Find me more than a handful of people who can claim that over the past 5 years. AND still will take 3 hours to sit on IRC of all the godforsaken holes in the universe to answer the same 5 questions repeatedly.
Lighten up, people! It's a WEBSITE. A good one, one that I happen to find entertaining and informative, but it's still a website. 300,000+ users a day ain't chump change in the bandwidth game. Keeping a system alive to support that with very little downtime is itself quite an accomplishment (think of how many 'big name' sites have themselves been Slashdotted).
I have yet to actually see any of these 'new' ads, and something tells me I'll be ignoring them just as I would any other ad within a week. Don't like them? Cough up some dough. Don't like that? LEAVE. Why exactly do people keep posting 'I will not pay for a message board'? Fine, then go. Just please stop whining about it.
Every time I visit
Oh well, that was rambling enough. Long story short, if you don't like it, make your own. Whining won't make it any better.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Text ads in metafilter are very effective because
1. Not annoying
2. cheap (relatively)
3. interesting
People (ie. users) pay to put text ads on slashdot. You don't have to charge much, given the popularity of slashdot everyone would want to have their ad on it, for they company, they blog, their site or what ever. Text ads generate money through quantity in numbers of advertisers not in money per ad.
You could have people pay for text ads on front page (cost more) or by category. Have it as a slashbox, people who choose to subscribe can close it, while the rest of "us" (Thats include me) can have the ads while skimming through slashdot.
Just make a good payment queue so you can have a diy system.
I was so happy when I heard about the friend/foe system! Finally I could make my -1 browsing experience good! I could read all the stuff that Taco doesn't think I should read just because it's on a subject more interesting than what the article is about, and I could not see Klerk's pathetic attempts to widen the page! It would be slash-bliss!
But NOOOOO. It is useless if you aren't browsing at least at 0. But Klerck gets his ass modded down to -1 right quick, which means the Friend/Foe function is really only useful for making people who don't crapflood but who you don't like go away.
And that's just sad.
The enemies of Democracy are
Remember the Karma Whores? People would compete to see who could come up with the most Karma points for the sheer joy of saying "my score is bigger than yours".
I say let's ressurrect this annoying facet of human nature and turn it to Slashdot's advantage. Why not include a symbol along with each subscriber's comments that represents his/her "devotion" to Slashdot, as measured in US Dollars. (Kind of like the "community supporter" program on EZBoard, and similar "marks of recognition" found on other discussion boards.)
The catch-- these are not earned, they're bought! People could mindlessly compete to see who could get the most impressive widget associated with their name. Hemos could spend hours thinking up new and more interesting associations.
They would give no special privileges, just bragging rights (and revenue for OSDN).
For example:
$10 gets you "open source leech"
$100 gets you "linux bigot"
$1000 gets you "kernel hacker"
$10000 gets you "alpha geek"
$100000 gets you "better than Hemos"
$1000000 gets you "new owner of Slashdot"
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
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
TI 17:16 - Someone asks how much bandwidth
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
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
Great! /. is all about YRO. The BIGGEST one being the right to remain anonymous on-line and your all out to ban or at least mass ignore anonymous users? Why is that? Could it be that people are mostly using anonymity for nefarious purposes. Just like THEY always say? Could it be true? Say it's not so!!!
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Of course, they *can* grant JonKatz the right to reprint them in a book. hypocrisy? nah..
0 1 - just my two bits
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
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
Alterslash is actualy a pretty cool site, now that I've seen it. I don't really see how you guys can go after them for the comments when you said yourself you don't have any rights to them, perhaps you should leave it up to the individual posters to take it up with that site if they have a problem with being reposted.
/.
Of course, the site does give everything the "82%" take from
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The above two posts do definitely explain the processor speed of the machine at my new job.
I believe I will be more efficient if I BYOH.(Bring Your Own Hardware)
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Maybe the answer is this: They've done computers all their lives, and then Slashdot. They have had no time to learn any other area of life, such as business or advertising or marketing or
Bush's education improvements were
Good forum, it made me nostalgic thinking about how the 'net has grown up.
Rather than having the suits go after alterslash, wouldn't a much better outcome be to incorporate the value that is added into the site? I think its damn cool and useful, like kernel traffic and its obviously a fan site. He's not making any money.
If the suits are so uptight then just rip off what's he's doing into slashdot or have him and a few people be editors for stuff.
The logic you used is scarily like what GM and Walmart say when going after fan sites that have their trademark's in the domain name.
Yes, less then half of Slashdot reader click Read More. It's not a typo.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
Unless SlashDot was registered as a non-profit organization, this would probably be seen as gambling by the U.S. Federal government, and many of the state governments. Big no-no.
Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day, but set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I don't mean to insult, but this will probably come across that way. I'm a loyal surfer and certainly appreciate Slashdot as an information source. However ...
...
:)
:)
You say that 10-12 people work on Slashdot as their job, plus support from NetOps (which I'm guessing is third party? Exodus?)
Honestly - I don't get it. What do all these people do? It seems to me that Slashdot isn't run as a business, but instead is still run by a couple of geeky types that had a Fun Idea (TM) that they rode the Dot-Com boom on and don't want to give it up.
The content is submitted by the readers, the moderation is done by the readers...
The application is worked on by the community
Stories are posted by 4 "story type people", but the posts are so frequently duplicates, have misspellings, poor grammar, broken URLs, etc - I can't really believe that anyone puts any serious time into it!
$100-$200k per year of bandwidth at 10mbps? You're getting ** raped **.
12 machines and some test boxes? C'mon. Most readers have that much in their home. Is the setup that poor that it requires that much hands on maintenance?
I'm also guessing that the geeks that founded it aren't able to admin machines, configure routers, etc... since we've all read the stories about all the people that get jerked out of bed when the site goes down.
It seems to me that Slash could run with about 3 employees, provided they had breadth of skill.
Yes, I've done all this before - including the part where you re-evaluate and realize you can do it a LOT cheaper.
Yes, I could be VERY mistaken in my observations and I welcome corrections.
I also have no beef with subscriptions. I'll even consider paying. This is just a tangent.
I'd hate to see Slashdot go away, and it seems a great way to do that would be for VA/Andover to take some serious looks at cost cutting... a lot larger companies have run with less.
1.5 million a month
Hemos said: 1.5 million a YEAR
You gave us permission to display your comment when you clicked save.
Comments are owned by the POSTER, when you click "submit comment" it gives Slashdot the right to show it as well.
I granted you a limited license to use my content without charging people. Prepare to receive a cease and desist letter.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
if you don't like it then don't fucking use it. god damn all these posts about taco not knowing what he's doing or not paying attention to the community. shut up already. its his fucking site. let him do as he pleases and if you don't like it theres always kuro5hin.
ugh
grr argh
-
If you sell 18% of the ad banners that are currently displayed and 23% of readers may purchase a subscription then you're eliminating 23% from the 72% of ad views that are Unpaid. Thus they aren't loosing any ad revenue and are Still collecting the subscription fee. Unfortunately it means fewer freebie ads for animefu and the like for those of us who don't subscribe.
18% * 100 = 18
(72% - 23%)* 100 = 49
18 / (18 + 49) ~= 27%
So if everyone who said they had subscribed and everyone who said they would subscribe (if the banners got annoying enough) then the paid banner rate could hit 27%
This is a win-win situation for a site that isn't selling enough banner ads.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
I wish I had some mod points to throw at you, but this'll do.
I'm glad that an archive of this exists on slashnet.org -- I started logging the IRC session when I saw:
:)
<Questions> elsie asks: are these gonna be popout ads?
<hemos> I WILL GNAW OFF MY OWN GENITALS FIRST
Though I'm not looking forward to popup ads appearing here, I must say that I will enjoy calling Hemos on this one a couple of years down the line.
-Waldo
I duno.... I guess I've been on /. for too long, and I'm jaded.... I know I can psuedo block them for free, but my point is that over the years... this is the one thing I would rather pay for, not the adds, but the idiot block. There is no /. filter that can figure out if a person is a troll, short of adding an AI to the slashcode backend to read post for me, but what is the point then of the moderation system...
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
From what I understand, Slashdot cannot police their users' copyright. They've been granted a non-exclusive license to display the users' comment; as such, if anyone else is posting it, they have no grounds for a suit, as they haven't been wronged (if they had an exclusive license, it'd be another story). Since they have no copyright on the comments, and no exclusive license to reproduce them, they frankly have no standing to bring a suit -- this is the very same reason that GNU insists that all contributed code has its copyright assigned to the FSF, because they don't have legal standing to bring suit in the event of GPL violations unless they're the copyright holders.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Pardon my inability to articulate, the endorphines still occupy my bloodstream. :)
Given the parent posting's author's Slashdot history, I find it very unlikely that he is a troll. I respectfully ask anybody browsing with moderation points to assign his post +1, underrated.
CmdrTaco and Hemos had addressed my question previously (whoever maintained the queue asked it twice) with a somewhat negative view of my suggestions. They believed that there would be prodigious overhead in tracking bandwidth used by person. I don't believe so; you can estimate the amount of bandwidth used by multiplying the number of pageviews by the approximate bandwidth used by each one. I stress that this method could prove inaccurate due to the fact that Slashdot's images are variable in size. (There are ways around this, but they require considerable amounts of overhead themselves.)
I agree with your opinion of a "subscribers only" tree; I would suggest a scheme where everybody would be allowed to view it, but only subscribers given write access.
Thank you (and Taco/Hemos) for your response(s).
Do you like German cars?
IANAL but have an interest in it and Hemos and CmdrTaco don't seem to understand the issues ( or are trying to hide their true intentions ).
Firstly, copyright (unlike trademarks and to a degree patents) doesn't have to be protected to remain in force. Yuo can allow people to abuse yuor copyright to their hearts content and then at a later date sue them for current infringement (not sure about previous infringement, time passing may equal consent to use it).
Secondly, slashdot has no case against alterslash on the grounds of them reusing comments. Slashdot isn't the copyright holder of the comments (according to Taco or Hemos in the log) and so cannot sue alterslash for copyright violation there. Users can sue alterslash but Slashdot can't (for the comments) They probably can't sue for submitted stories either leaving them with only the small additions to the stories on the front page (and the obligitory corrections). So their main premise for the cease and desist is (to put it bluntly) crap and on par with any large company. They aren't using the slashdot logo anywhere so there's no trademare issue there (they'll have a rough time of it with the background image).
Morally what they are doing is dodgy. Legally they may have a few problems but not the ones Taco and Hemos seemed most annoyed about.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
A simple solution would be to put a checkmark next to the +1 and, AC checkboxes that we could click, say, "no reposting", a marker (hidden even) could be placed in the comment header or body signaling that it can't be automatically reposted.
another solution would be for alterslash to collect the usernames of people who would allow their comments to be reposted, this wouldn't work very well (most people wouldn't know about it), but would require no work on your part.
Of course, you're totally within your rights to ask them to shut down based on their copying of your copyrighted data, but the whole "the posters will be pissed off" argument just seems like an excuse to avoid being like the RIAA. But remember, they are going around saying "We need to do this for the artist!" while really they only have their profit motive in mind.
Also, about copyright, you don't have to protect it in every case. That's just trademarks. The film It's A Wonderful Life used to play all the time on different stations at Christmas, then some company discovered that they had the copyright, and now it only plays on NBC. Copyrights, (and patents) can be applied whenever or however you want. Only trademarks need to be protected from entering the common vernacular. Of course, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't really know all the ins and outs of copyright law (and neither are you).
If users have a problem with alterslash printing their comments, just tell 'em to talk to them. It's not your responsibility.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
... that Slashdot is still considering accepting donations even though they're now technically a commercial entity.
Of course, I can see that some people may want to 'donate' without subscribing, but that's still akin to RedHat requesting donations.
Do you like German cars?
Actually he said it occupied a middle ground between a tip jar and a subscription system, he didn't say which side of the middle ground it was on. (It's not more a tip jar then anything else)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I've noticed Rob say a number of times that the biggest thing deterring Slashdot from doing flat-rate subscriptions is the few who load a TON of pages a day, and they can't support that.
Here's the thing: those people will be there whether you have flat rate or not. The only way to keep these people away would be to have Slashdot be closed to the public. Otherwise, a person who would load a ton of times each day will just plain not pay per view.
If these people who load tons are going to be here no matter what... wouldn't you like to get $5 per month from some of them, instead of nothing from any of them?
I don't care if it turns out to be a better deal to do pay-per-view. Maybe I'll get 3 months of viewing out of it. But I'll hate page-pinching every time I read, and the page-pinching will be unavoidable and in the back of my mind all the time. Give me the chance to just have peace of mind.
That's all!
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Your post made no sense at all.
Think about what you want to say and write it out clearly so that people can understand.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Look at the nubers CT is giving out. only 18% of the people who look at slashdot even look at the comments at all
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
/. moderators already work for free. They are drawn from the userbase.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Wouldn't surprise me in the least if the
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
IANAL, so i don't know if you have to act against alterslash, but apparently you'll have to deal with 'em (hopefully this doesn't get messy). Nevertheless, i think, the idea of a digest with a few highranked comments (if it can be automated), as well as their comment statistics are an interesting feature, that is probably easier to implement in slashcode than by pulling comment-snippets from a site anyway. Alterslash may be violating copyrights, but still /. could benefit from their ideas.
--
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead.
OSDN: Here's one -- nine pence.
Slashdot: I'm not dead!
AC: Here -- he says he's not dead!
OSDN: Yes, he is.
Slashdot: I'm not!
AC: He isn't.
OSDN: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
Slashdot: I'm getting better!
OSDN: No, you're not -- you'll be stone dead in a moment.
Slashdot: I don't want to go in the cart!
OSDN: Oh, don't be such a baby.
AC: I can't take him...
OSDN: Oh, do us a favor...
AC: I can't.
OSDN: Well, when is your next round?
AC: Thursday.
Slashdot: I think I'll go for a walk.
OSDN: You're not fooling anyone y'know. Look, isn't there
something you can do?
Slashdot: I feel happy... I feel happy.
[ AC clubs slashdot to death]
OSDN: Ah, thanks very much.
AC: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
Let me get this straight. You want to take an audience that goes to some lengths to not pay for things they like (books, music, movies, software) and you want them to pay for something they love AND gripe about in the same breath? Good luck. Stephen King let 'The Plant' die, so too might Slashdot. Bummer.
For my part I can safely say that ignoring banners on web pages costs me less than $5 a month.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
I've just been reading the IRC log, and I noticed a type of phrase which I have been taught to avoid uttering myself... "I think what users will want more personalized stuff. E.g. gold star based on what people ahve said me"
Some people out there might think.. what is wrong with that? Well, the answer is that this isn't reader research, or really asking the slashdot population in general what they really think. It's the same as someone without and UI design training saying.. "I know what users want, I don't need to get a UI expert in"...
I really think that slashdot ought to put together a proper web survey, not just a silly little poll and some stories where people post comments, a properly survey. Present the options, ask for peoples opinions, find out their views on ad's.. store and analyse the results. Then let make those results public so you have some facts to back up your arguments.
I like slashdot, and given the right subscription package I probably would subscribe, but please survey the readers, find out what would work the best, and present some real figures and reasons rather than the handwaving we've all had so far
If I'm going to pay to become part of a user forum, I want some say / influence over the way I pay / what I can pay for. A properly constructed survey will give you the information you need to make a decent informed choice about subscriptions, I think assuming you know what the readership want / like is a dangerous assumption to make, and if you get it wrong a large number of users will either not subscribe, or just walk away.
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go, because, man, they're gone.
It ain't like 99.
But how I wish it were. The times where you still could make money from everything on the web, it was so easy. Ah well those were the times.
Just want to try and keep things in perspective... or at least keep some view of Taco and Hemo's perspective.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Taco and Hemos and whoever else are not running a company. They run a website and are employees of a company.
Someone in VA Linux has responsibility for Slashdot, knows exactly how much it costs etc. Rob obviously doesn't - but that's not what they pay him to do!
DocSnyder asks: Would it be an idea to offer a subscribers-only webcache for /.ed sites, with links in stories and comments pointing to the cache instead of the hosed target?
CmdrTaco Please read the FAQ.
hemos Copyright issues.
Quick question, have you actually checked up on the copyright issues of this? Or is google, Alexia and the other companies out there violating copyright left, right and centre?
On another note 12 people to run one site??? Christ, what the hell do you do all day? Fire Jon Katz (he writes the most unmittigated twaddle I've ever seen) and immediately reduce your team by half that amount. I totally fail to see, how, with only a dozen or so submissions a day how you really need all those people.
For fucks sake, my company delivers gigabytes of content to a large number of customers with a team of 8 techies, 4 editors and various freelancers. Seems like to me the work per person here is substantially higher that slashdot.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I've been thinking a lot about this. I think they have an enormously broad knowledge of the computer industry. I think they are overwhelmed with the enormous effort necessary in producing Slashdot. Maybe they simply have no time for anything else.
Bush's education improvements were
I "tipped" the maximum amount I would pay to receive Slashdot for a year (if it was a strictly subscription service). I'll see how long I can go ad-free with that amount, it ought to be a very, very, very long time.
Why don't you do the same?
I'm a 2000 man.
One of the questions was about whether there was an archives of the first slashdot page.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://slashdot.org appears to go back as far as 21 Dec 1997, but when I try to view the older pages, I get a blank document. Maybe a temporary glitch? You can see pages from earch 1998, in any case.
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
However, if you view slashdot through an ad blocker, you are costing them in bandwidth, you are costing them in increased load on their servers (which ultimately translated into additional administrative costs, hardware costs, hosting costs, electricity etc.). The marginal cost per page view of a web site (the cost of providing each page view after the first) may be small, but it is certainly real.
A more appropriate analogy would be if you were to view slashdot ad filtered only in the form of cashed copies that you'd gotten from someone viewing the unfiltered pages. In which case there would be no marginal cost for Slashdot if you did it.
I'd be happy to pay once they get up a non-Paypal payment link, even though I couldn't care less whether or not there are ads on the pages.
Would it be annoying to you if Slashdot was shut down because it cost too much money to maintain? If not, then why do you bother coming here? If it would, then how much is it worth to you to keep it around? Because that's what it is about. If it's not worth anything to you, fine, but then you have absolutely no reason to worry about whether Slashdots business plan is worth anything or not. If it is, then pay up. I will.
Piss off. Did you even read my post? I didn't say it wasn't *true*, Duh. All I said was that it was mighty *convenient*. /. could've easily changed this in their posting guidelines.
-Sean
Was that, instead of taking questions one at a time, in the order they came in, our two hosts only answered questions they wanted to answer. At one point, they were ASKING for more questions and rejecting the ones that were coming in. I stayed for the whole thing, waiting for one of my questions to come up. A lot of other people did too.
Respect for CmdrTaco & Hemos has reached on all-time low in my book. I mean, why didn't they just write their own bloody questions like politicians do?
I was looking forward to a real IRC dialog. I was very disappointed.
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
It's not that simple. Of non-paid ads, a lot are likely swaps, which means that for every blocked ad that would have been part of a swap there is one less impression available for other thing, including for sale. Swaps are used for advertizing sites, and thus offsetting marketing expense. If they have to reduce the use of swaps because the number of ads viewed in total drop, then they still have to cover the marketing by actually paying for ads. So the end result is by and large the same whether you are blocking a paid ad or a ads that are part of swaps. In other word: The percentage is likely way higher.
The issue of mirrors has nothing to do with legality. Mirrors are legal. You could mirror slashdot across a thousand sites and there would be no violation of copyright.
The two points that argue against mirrors are a) the mirroring site could alter content in a malicious fashion, making users think the alterations are original material, and b) slashdot would have to share a piece of whatever miniscule ad pie they get with the people hosting the mirror.
But this doesn't change the fact that mirrors are fundamentally legal, simply representing a technical load-bearing solution to a traffic problem.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Computing is a lucrative field. If their technical advertising were more advanced it would be no problem to make money putting informative ads on Slashdot.
Bush's education improvements were
It is my thesis that they aren't making a good profit because technical advertising is so poorly done. The one site, of the ones I know, that fixes some of the abuses of technical advertising is Google, which is making a profit.
Bush's education improvements were