Slackware Forums Alive Again!

HappySlacker writes "Looks like the forums from slackware.com that Patrick Volkerding (Slackware's daddy) had to take down because of massive trolling are fully active again after 2 years of hibernation as read-only at userlocal.com." Update: 01/21 19:23 GMT by T : Jeremy from LinuxQuestions.org points out the forums on that site, which is recommended on Slackware's links page.

Comments

Weh

[Dark Lord Seth]

Like this posting on Slashdot would actually help to keep them free of trolls... Do you guys have no shame?

Slackware's forums? Looks like User Local's forums

[arfonrg]

Besides, Linuxpackages.net has kept Slackware forums going the whole time..

Us Slackers now have 2 forums AND a mailing list...

WHOOO HOOOO!!!!

Here's the forums:
http://www.linuxpackages.net/forum/

here come the trolls..

[doowy]

First.. how did this make the front page on slashdot? Is it THAT slow of a news day?

And wouldn't Slackware users just stumble upon it instead of anouncing it to hundreds of thousands of dorks on slashdot who will promptly go trolling there now (especially given that it is apparently newsworthy).

Uhhh..

[doubleyewdee]

I'm sure this won't be a popular commentary... but do the editors here just see submissions related to Linux and hit "approve" before thinking about what they approve? I mean, maybe it's just me, but I think posting this on the front page is an open invitation to all the slashtrolls to go troll somewhere new. Doubly so since these forums already got shut down as a result of trolling beforehand.

Had the editors considered this they might have noticed that not only is Slashdot rife with trolls, but that these trolls would love to go take out a site that is obviously "vulnerable" to their actions. The forums may be read-only now, but if they become rw any time soon they may not last long because of poorly considered decisions like "let's post an open invitation to troll on the slashdot front page."

The thing is, I'm not saying this isn't newsworthy, but sometimes it isn't responsible to print things like this. Especially when you know you're likely to get a bad (bad for others) reaction from your audience.

Think before you approve, guys. Er, end maybe edit once in a while too? ;)

well, I hope they weren't looking for more trolls

[feed_me_cereal]

Announcing to slashdot readers that a forum that was shut-down by trolls is now back in operation is like telling the fry-guys and the hamburgler where the McDonald's truck routes run.

Why don't they use slashdots karma system

[Billly Gates]

Old timers might remember what slashdot was like 2-3 years ago when trolls represented something like %50 the posts here. I almost stopped comming here and many members of my l.u.g. quit comming altogether because of it. First cmd Taco put in bans on individuals with certian nicknames from posting after so many flamebait posts.

Then I remember seeing the same posts over and over again with nicks like "asfdd3456-troll". I guess the trolls liked what the spammers were doing so they actually wrote scripts to generate tens of thousands of "..hot gritz down my pants..and Natalie Portman petrified.." posts with a different name each! Unbelievable.

This became unbearable then cmd Taco put in IP address bans. This was a lifesaver and cut down on the amount of trolls. Of course trolls can still just go to a library and post or spoof an address but it cut down trolling dramatically. Cut it down to half of what it was.

Last trolls began to experiment with page widening with lots of "."'s so an annoying horizontal scroll would be needed to read all the posts. Very very annoying indeed. A few lines of code to slashcode made that problem go away.

Anyway Patrick should use slashcode for his forum or write scripts that are similiar to slashdot's to get rid of the obnoxious trolls and use a karma system. This is the only way to ban them.

/. Math

[tiny69]

Last post before forums were shut down: 12-14-01 13:24

First post after forums became active again: 01-20-03 21:07

Means "2 years of hibernation" on /.

Shrug.

[DarkZero]

The thing is, I'm not saying this isn't newsworthy, but sometimes it isn't responsible to print things like this. Especially when you know you're likely to get a bad (bad for others) reaction from your audience.

This story is like the kindergarten example of the question of responsibility in journalism. Because of Time Magazine, millions of people now know of an excellent rifle to snipe with, a brilliant way to do it from inside the back of a car, and the ratio between sniping range and sniping accuracy. Arguably, anyone that reads Time Magazine or even just watches CNN is now about halfway toward being equipped to kill people from a distance with a sniper rifle. Why is this? Because our lives depended on knowing the exact type of rifle that the DC sniper was using, how much it cost, and where we could get one? Because the ratio between range and accuracy when firing a sniper rifle at a human skull had relevance to our daily lives? Because when we go to the doctor, we might want to have ourselves checked over with a sniper rifle to make sure that we don't have a life-threatening disease? No. It was none of these things. It was just sort of an interesting tidbit of information that some of us felt like knowing because we were curious.

People are bothered by what the /. editors do because they know a lot about the subjects that are being dealt with, like bandwidth costs and trolling. I've noticed, however, that few of them actively complain about the same sort of behavior when it is applied to larger issues. In fact, many of them might even see information on sniper rifles and just think that information wants to be free.

Re:Shrug.

[doubleyewdee]

This story is like the kindergarten example of the question of responsibility in journalism. Because of Time Magazine, millions of people now know of an excellent rifle to snipe with, a brilliant way to do it from inside the back of a car, and the ratio between sniping range and sniping accuracy.

I think there's one key difference that you're missing here, though. Time magazine doesn't have a readerbase with a significant number of serial murderers subscribed to it. Additionally, becoming a sniper isn't much like trolling on the internet. One takes significant amounts of skill, time, and money -- the other just takes a fifteen year old who has decided that "Windoze XP is for fags and I'm going to be a hax0r and terr0r1z3 the intarweb now."

The thing I'm getting at is that Slashdot has a significant group of trolls, flamebaiters, crapflooders, and all the others in its readership and they are always looking for new ways and new places to get noticed for their trolling 'sk1llz'. The editors know this, and the front page story was worded in a way that practically begged these people to go wreak havoc.

If Time magazine knew it had a readerbase which consisted of a large group of gun-toting loonies then it would, indeed, be irresponsible to publish intimate details of murder by sniping. But even that falls short of the example. To make this example really correct Time magazine would need to print an article detailing areas which are deemed 'ripe' for a sniper to attack. I'm not saying they haven't done this, because I'm sure somebody (maybe them) has. I'm just saying that for your analogy that would have been the best way to really make a proper connection, I think.

At any rate... I realize that these days "journalism" and "responsibility" are not very akin, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be. And I think that on a website with a readerbase and editorship that at least feels it is above the common denominator some responsbility ought to be shown.

There's two sides to that...

[BrokenHalo]

then cmd Taco put in IP address bans. This was a lifesaver ...

I've never trolled in my life, but slashcode has blocked my entire netblock (an ISP with a strictly enforced AUP and who would have pulled the plug on any miscreant if asked) for several months now. So despite my karma being "excellent", I can now only post via an anonymous relay. It was a major piss-off that my objections were just ignored.

for your consideration...

[Anonymous Coward]

to the point made by a few about preventing trolls with various methods; while I'm not speaking for patrick v., I can tell you the attitude amoung those of us who have been and will allways be with slackware is that things like the forums should operate on comon sense and self discipline. If they can't operate in this manor, they shouldn't operate at all. This kind of belife is at the core of the slackware mentality. Slackware moves slowly and with great consideration with little thought outside influances. We like it that way.

To the remarks of slackware alive, minority distro etc; slackware may not be the most widely used linux distro, but in my opinion, when all things are considered and stacked up, it's the best distro. Many will argue that different distro's are good for different applications, I fully agree, however, if only one could remain, it would have to be slackware. I'm not alone in this, I KNOW this becuase people tell me all the time it's true. Slackware users typically differ from other linux users in one distinct way...

redhat user: I tried slackware, it was ok, I also tried debian, phatlinux, mandrake and caldera.

slackware user: I installed slackware 5 years ago. debian seems cool and redhat made me angry to use so I gave it up after 3 hours. yeah, really just used slackware.

this is ranting... I'm tired. :)

download slackware. love it. or somthing

Re:Wicked!

[Xpilot]

Slack has always been alive. Slackers aren't as...ehem...vocal as users of other distros but believe me we're alive and kicking.

If you've noticed, Slackware has always been a profitable company. It may not be as big as Redhat or Mandrake, but its got its own share of very loyal users.

Glad to see signs of life

[bindster]

Now that I can see that there are some lights on at Slackware, I'm going to help them polish their distro with some apps/scripts/customizations which would be Slack specific; I hope this development spurs more people to do the same, and also to create a dialogue for those who are seeking to help improve the distro. I know of a couple things that could use some work too... how about that rc.sysvinit which doesn't even work? Maybe replace it with an optional full SVR4 init system, or have the option for a kernel with an compiled boot logo. Perhaps even our own version of a package download tool (tgz-get?). Hopefully this will open the door to all that.

Re:Slackware's forums? Looks like User Local's for

[JimmyGulp]

Don't forget news:alt.os.linux.slackware, and news:alt.os.slakware

But keeping those free of trolls is interesting fun. ;)

Re:Wicked!

[orangesquid]

Actually, Slack is still pretty alive.
True, you may have to understand hard drive partitions and other standard PC terminology to install it, so it may not be for "Joe Schmoe Windows User", but I love the configurability.
It almost does not have thousands upon thousands of packages, turning it into a 6- or 7-CD set that requires buying the more expensive 700MB disks. No, Slack can still fit mostly on one CD-ROM, with a few bits like KDE thrown onto another (who needs KDE/GNOME, besides? Ick.) However, I've never had any package under Slackware not work, and the only library problems I've ever had were with freetype1 conflicting with freetype2 (fixed in 8.0) and all the annoyances of keeping multiple versions of qt around because Trolltech can't keep it's fscking API the same for more than two weeks (sorry, any qt fans), but Slackware has never come with anything "broken", which I'm always grateful for.
Slackware also does not use a dependency system, which is perhaps a good idea at this point given the state of (most of) the competition (is there anything besides apt that doesn't suck?).
Patrick also keeps Slackware-current up to date with security and bugfixes; I have rarely had to wait more than a few days between hearing about a hole and being able to start that service up again. Not as quick as the instant-fixes that paying Red Hat customers enjoy, but absolutely fine for me.
Ack, I'm rambling. Anyway, Slackware is the only of the "original" distros which hasn't succumbed to vast amounts of bloat, and it has never released a new release with lots of broken libraries and such (RedHat 6.0 anyone?). Not only is it alive, but it rocks.
It's a very quality distributiong for the hobbyist, and I don't think it will ever die.

Hmm, after a preview I realize how crappy half this post sounds. Oh well, I'll post it sans karma bonus :)