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.
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.
As long as I can hit the monkey and still get $20...
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
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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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...
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...
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.
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.
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
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"
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.
I want to try and find a solution.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
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.
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
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.
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.