Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Subscribers Now See The Future
So while subscribers won't see news posted at the last minute before everyone else, most of our stories will be available to them 10-20 minutes before everyone else. This means they can click through and beat the Slashdot Effect.
Another possible feature addition that we're discussing is to allow subscribers to post during this window. We haven't decided if that's a good idea or not. Since subscribers are still subject to all the same restrictions as anyone else in the forums, they could still be moderated into oblivion if they were jerks about it so it's probably not subject to all that much abuse, but this is still something we're only considering. Feel free to discuss it in this forum, or to contact me with opinions.
A couple of notes here:
- Subscribers have a variable on their subscriptions preference page that tells us how many banner ads they wish to "Spend" per day. This number must be at least 10 for you to be eligible to see the Mysterious Future plum. This means that your $5 subscription will last 100 days- or, $15-20 a year.
- You also need to hit the checkbox to disable ads on the Index. Once you hit your Max Pages for the day, you will see ads again, but you will also be eligible for the plum.
- These notes will be clarified on both the subscriptions page and in the FAQ very soon. Your feedback will help us decide how best to explain this since it's not exactly black & white here. Give us a couple weeks and it should all be blazingly obvious from the documentation how everything works.
In closing, this is a new feature and we appreciate all your feedback, both good and bad. We decided to implement this after tons of feedback from you, and we're really excited about it. This is a really great incentive for users to subscribe, but it also can give subscribers a chance to alert us in advance if stories have mistakes in them. We'll likely be expanding this sort of functionality in the future.
Now please go subscribe and help support Slashdot!
Update To clarify the timing. Right now the mysterious future is set to 20 minutes. That number is not a promise tho, since a story posted 11 minutes before "Air time" would be seen slighter later. A story posted 30 minutes in advance will be visible 20 minutes early.
Is that a Subscriber Benefit too?
sulli
RTFJ.
this is too confusing to become successful.
doesnt /. want to be free??
;)
What, me Tweet?
Will this now result in a pre-/. effect? Maybe the subscribers will be nice enough to mirror /.-ed sites on their own sites before the rush, but I'm not holding my breath.
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
No only do you stop getting ads that even the most brain dead ad-blocker could have gotten rid of for free, you also get to be Taco's personal dupe checker! I can't wait to send my money in!
isn't there some sort of ethical problem with this sort of thing?
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
So, since I'm a subscriber, am I actually typing this in the future as well since the title bar is green? It's really red, but I am seeing it green, thus I must be operating in the future! Jeez, and I though Babylon 5 was confusing!
By that I mean, will readers be able to make suggestions, corrections, etc. to the stories? Or, once submitted, the story is "set in stone" and won't be updated?
Also, will someone begin "karma whoring" and mirroring pages and posting links to the mirrors?
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
We'll find that in actuality the links will be slashdotted before the story is posted!
I knew about this yesterday.
This space intentionally left blank.
I posted this tomorrow....
If you see the article hours before most of slashdot readers, I think that yes, this will be a subscriber benefit. For the others a lot of discussions will start half full just when the article is widely available.
Didn't TotalFark already go this route? What's next, Slashdot Photoshop contests? *grin*
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
How about a mysterious phone call or email to the poor sap who's running the webserver that's about to be slashdoted? Then EVERYONE can have the benefit of seeing the story...
;)
Otherwise, I'll sign up, and put a bot on the page that will keep track of what's being posted, mirror it on a free site, and make millions!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Now all the trolls will have incentive to subscribe, so they can do all the variations of 'First Post' before anyone else has a chance... Maybe the idea of keeping posts out until release would be a good idea... Ah well, I'm still broke, so i'm not participating.
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
So while subscribers won't see news posted at the last minute before everyone else, most of our stories will be available to them 10-20 minutes before everyone else. This means they can click through and beat the Slashdot Effect.
your assuming the people who value posting first actually read the article.. thats a pretty rash assumtion
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
But..
Another possible feature addition that we're discussing is to allow subscribers to post during this window. We haven't decided if that's a good idea or not. Since subscribers are still subject to all the same restrictions as anyone else in the forums, they could still be moderated into oblivion if they were jerks about it so it's probably not subject to all that much abuse, but this is still something we're only considering. Feel free to discuss it in this forum, or to contact me with opinions.
I don't think that is a good idea. I think the fact that users can read ahead of time and then they can prepare their posts. This might make better prepared comments.
While I think allowing them to post would be a bit much, this would be nice since I'd be willing to wager that the subscribing members make up a decent chunk of the people that actually read every article in the story before posting, and their number should be small enough that it'll both spread the load on the remote webserver a bit AND would probably have no detrimental effect on the rest of us.
Although it is really, REALLY confusing.
That this is kinda counterproductive.
/. the most, right? Well, you get a subset of the most vigorous /. readers as subscribers... and that serves to null the good effect of beating the /. effect.
/. effect will just start when the red bar appears. Am I missing something?
Subscribers are probably the ones to load
Also, the more subscribers you get, the smaller the benefit is for each subscriber. I would think that before long, the
Do subscribers get input when something goes wrong, or are they, like regulars, just left in the dark?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Ah, so does that mean we're not seeing dupes, we're seeing posts from parallel universes? We can't complain about them, otherwise our parallel selves won't be able to read /.!
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
You need 40 bucks? Will that hold you until payday?
This
Hey, if all the FP trolls^H^H^H^H^H^Hcrapflooders want to subsidize Slashdot for me, I have no problem with that...
Slashdot from Kazaa. Free free free!
Chris
Thats a pretty good idea. I would still think the /. effect would be better suppressed if slashdot would mirror stories, especially if its running off of somebody's mother's DSL connection.
Still, this offering may finally make me a subscriber. And I do like the idea of a subscriber getting to post first. The types of people that would subscribe are probably not the same ones that post the goatse.cx links and such. I'd even go so far as to maybe allow a subscriber another +1 bonus to karma, or maybe allow a subscriber a higher karma cap, or even let a subscribers post get modded to +6... but what do I know...
sites will still get slashdotted then what am I paying for?
This Plum might actually cause me to subscribe.
I don't think that "Early Posting" should be allowed, I fear that it will alenate the non paying members a bit.
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
I needed a little incentive to QUIT READING SLASHDOT. Finally, this is it.
Buh bye!
So now, instead of being four months late reporting a story, now it's four months PLUS a week.
~~~
Click here, you know you wanna!
ergo: they pay you to help you doing your job ?
(just a question : not a flamebait)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
So this means a site could be slashdotted before the future reaches us?
I already see all of Slashdots news in the future!
...Wait...never mind. My system clock is running slow.
Lol, are they for real? Is it April 1rst already?
All your base are belong to us!
I don't value my Karma so much that I need an edge on all the other posters. And for the Slashdot effect, I just wait till it's over. It's not like the news here is so important that a few hours makes a difference.
Now I would subscribe for things like better editing, or story moderation, but this isn't that big of a deal to me.
Subscribers get to be First Post and to filter out the dupes! :-) What a bargain.
OSDN outsources slashdot editing to its subscribers base. These happy few will have the privilege of beta testing dupes, broken links and poor spelling and grammar. They will also be the sole beneficiaries of the prestigious first post award as well as the (somewhat less prestigious) AYBABTU, ISR and Beowulf Cluster awards.
Must find my credit card, quick!
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
After reading the article, I was prepared to just close the link since I have no interest in paying to visit ANY site. Hell, at least I registered with /., I still won't do that for the NYTimes articles that keep getting posted -- I just ignore every single one.
And pay to PARTIALLY disable banners? Very lame. I never see them anyways, since I have gotten so accustomed to ignoring them... It's amazing at how trained you can get at ignoring pretty much all graphics on all sites.
But, to top it off, I read ALL of the comments to this article so far. Not a single good one -- doesn't that hint at something?
Malachi
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
Actually, it would be, and AC's (unless they're logged in, posting anonymously) would be 30 minutes and 100 comments behind.....
I could start reading at zero again.
FWIW, I did subscribe. It wasn't much. I just wanted to get the ads out of the story pages. Banner ads don't bother me. I went back and checked before I posted, and I've still got like 400 out of the 1000 pages left. It's been worth it, I think, and this will just convince me to renew when the time comes.
Otherwise by the time us non-paying plebes get to see the articles, they will be /.ed.
So the future becomes the present and the present becomes the past or some such, and non-paying Slashdot becomes News for Nerds. Stuff that mattered. Or is that Sites that Existed?
My head hurts, wish taco had phrased it differently.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Now instead of just exaggerated comments from the editors, we can have completely fabricated AND exaggerated comments!
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
I've noticed that the shere volume of stories in the past few months has increased, yet the quality of them is kinda variable. ask slashdot hovers around unbearable, but is sometimes good.
Why can't subscribers get a chance to mod stories during this "preview" time, and possibly even keep silly stories and dups from getting posted to the "real" slashdot.
(1) If a story gets pulled, lots of comments could already be posted. This would be pretty annoying if you had spent some time posting.
(2) Moderation is biased torwards early posters, and as such it would provide a disincentive for non-subscribers to post, thereby reducing the amount of discussion. This could be a good thing, since subscribers (hopefully!) provide more worthwhile reading.
Subscribers will get to laugh at dup postings before the unwashed?
Is this a new way to get around the Amazon patent?
"This food is problematic."
There's only like 10 subscribers abd they are all CmdrTaco's family.
You have to PAY to get "First Post" now?! What is this place coming to? SELLOUT!
(as promised)
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Isn't red/green the most common form of color blindness?
- Tal Cohen
I'm a bit ambivilent about the early posting idea, since having an early post is directly related to the number of people likely to see your post, that "privilege" suddenly becomes a paid one. So people who might actually have something worthwhile to contribute suddenly have to become paying members.
But anyway, that is not the point of this post. I just wanted to say that if they do allow early posters, that they should NOT allow these early posts to be anonymous. This should help keep the quality of the early posts up. Maybe even have another modifier that increases any negative moderation by 1, again to try make the privilage of early posting a true privilage and keep abuse down.
But most stories are posted 20-30 minutes before they go live.
-or-
So while subscribers won't see news posted at the last minute before everyone else, most of our stories will be available to them 10-20 minutes before everyone else.
-- jimmycarter
I don't care about reading articles before anyone else(like anyone does it anyways...). Use the money to buy Taco a spellchecker and we've got a deal!
I'm deeply troubled to have payers see stories first. Theres something wrong there. After all, its the readers mostly who submit stories, not the people who get paid.
Then again I know the economy is bad, but this idea might not sound nice to all slashdotters. This has been a very free site for us with very little ads. Slashdot might later increase ads and maybe popups if the economy goes down with the war, to push more geeks to pay.
Ideally, slashdot sort of things should be paid for by taxpayers, grants from the government. Turning this into a business model does not appeal to me. Hey readers! whats the next best thing to slashdot??
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
In a round-about way this is a bit like selling karma (something I think you've avoided).
Good show! Could I purchase 1.25 kg of enlightment please?
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.
Pre-emptive dupe detection and elimination!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
There'd just be 2 varieties of first posts...
FPP: First Paid Post!
and
FUP: First Unpaid Post!
All it takes is a few trolls with some available cash...
Perhaps now there will be a little bit of warning. When you start seeing the first referrals from slashdot on your web server, those are the subscribers -- the advance guard before the real assault.
Ooooh...
I can pay to be the first to hit links to obscure Swedish websites outlining how to develop a communications protocol using radishes and eggplant juice?
I can also have the honor of NOT being irritated by advertising?
Such service...
I can't even fathom how many dupes there are if we're currently seeing those that have been "dupe checked."
It was discovered today by our intrepid reporter adamruck that people that have lots of money can afford things that people that don't have lots of money can't! This, he reported, represented "some sort of ethical problem". We must be able to find a better social system than this, surely!
I must have stumbled onto the Beta version because I see stories all the time and then, wow! a couple days later I see the same story.
You don't know how relieved I am since I just thought something had changed in the Matrix and they were onto me, y'know....
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
...could be to let suscribers vote on stories, suggest spelling mistakes, notice dupes etc. Not only will it attract more suscribers, it will also help raise the quality of slashdot postings.
(yes, i do read k5)
My mom never taught me to sign.
Congratulations Slashdot. You have just become financially liable for the Slashdot Effect.
By having a system with a financial incentive with a major goal being the avoidance of the Slashdot Effect you have now acknowledged it; and are financially reaping rewards for it.
Congrats.
if you pay more, you get more
unfortunate, but true
for healthcare, for the legal system, for media/ information
equality is an illusion
true in life, true in not-real-life internet communities
sad but true
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Quote: "Subscribers now see stories posted on Slashdot from The Mysterious Future!
Okay, share the time machine. Jeez...
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
I saw that /. was offering ad-free browsing for a measily $5. So I went off to paypal and sent in my $5. I read /. rather often, so I didn't have any problem giving them some cash.
/. everyday, I throw away that many pennies a year into those give a penny take a penny jars at all the stores. (When I actually pay cash)
Then I realized that I can limit the usage of my 1000 subscribed points. So if this "subscriber" plan bothers you pay up, then customize the utilization of your 1000 points and you can make them last a damn long time.
If you only spend 1 point a day and you visit
9 out of 10 times my company's news fetcher gets me articles faster than they are slashdotted.
in other news, 1 out of 10 articles it gets me get slashdotted...
if you arent confused, i am.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Here's a great marketing opportunity for someone entrepeneurially-minded:
./ ... Profit!
1. Subscribe to the Mysterious Future via
2. Contact Web site owners and warn them politely of impending future slashdotting
3. Offer to sell them (short-term?) service on a Content Delivery Network
4.
Commercial sites would love this. Academic/government ones probably wouldn't care as much. You could sell them a contract with an existing CDN (Akamai, Mirror-Image, etc.) or build out your own special purpose service, just to handle slashdot-like effects.
-Mark, founder of Clearway Technologies (now owned by Mirror-Image Internet)
This means they can click through and beat the Slashdot Effect.
Something is wrong when a subscription incentive is to see a site before Slashdot launches a distributed denial of service attack against it: That's right, subscribers, click on the link now because we are about to DDoS the site!
It's fairly cheap and it would probably mean that people with something intelligent to say about the article, will actually read all of it and think about what they want to say instead of just pressing "reply" in the hopes of not being bumped to post #132 (#131 is a comment to a "first post" and #133 is a comment to a "imagine a beowulf..." post).
The last time I actually spend a long time on an article it actually ended up drowning in a lot of noise (well, somebody hopefully read it, but the story was to old for it to get any mod-points).
As long as you don't let people post before the story is fully public...
TC - My Photos..
I may even subscribe if they let you see stories early but not if you get to post early , the subscribers will use all the best jokes :-(
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
I don't understand why folks are saying that SlashDot is selling out.
While you may not like the editors, they have t o be paid somwhow. Banner ads aren't what they used to be.
And how much does the computer equipment cost? The bandwidth?
And you gripe about those who pay get benefits and gripe about banner ads. I don't understand.
It costs a good bit of money to run a site like slashdot why should it be completely free?
I just KNEW this was coming!
To allow subscribers to let the Editors know about dupes and spelling mistakes before the rest of us see them? That sure would decrease threads of those types.
what we really need is a way for Slashdot editors to see into the past for similar (duplicate) stories. Maybe when they post a similar (duplicate) the color should be grey.
Get a free ipod.
Is it just me or is that even less clear than it was before?
Does this cadging for subscribers mean Slashdot is hurting for money and might soon join the ranks of dot coms jeered at on www.fuckedcompany.com ?
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
This isn't news. Companies have been doing this sort of things for years. What sort of thing you ask? Giving more in exchange for more. They give extra content for those who they take money from. Unfortunately in this case slashdot is taking away content from the people who don't pay and giving it those who do. Is it fair? Not really. Is it unexpected? No. Those who have the money to subscribe will see the posts before the slashdot effect takes place, and thus get what they pay for, but those who don't pay will be left with pages already slashdotted by those who did pay. It makes perfect sense...for a business.
Let it be known that on this day of March 6th, 2003, that slashdot.org has become even closer to being known only as slashdot.com.
><));>
In closing, this is a new feature and we appreciate all your feedback, both good and bad.
Why would you want bad feedback? If I were you, I would want all of the feedback to be good, regardless of whether it was positive or negative.
I have to think that this will lead to an ironic situation where someone has an account, writes a script that updates some blog, somewhere, and Slash (well, their parent co) goes after them with lawyers. How Microsoftian.
That aside, I think this is a pretty cool incentive to subscribe. I'm not against subscription models or for paying for things I use, so long as they're not absurdly priced. And yes, my attitude is that if I wasn't going to buy it anyway, nobody lost anything. No blood no foul.
My
Limekiller
How well are subscriptions doing for slashdot? Does anyone know if this feature was added because subscriptions are doing well or because subscriptions are doing bad and they need more incentives to subscribe?
At $5, slashdot is getting $0.005 per ad-free page view. What does slashdot get paid per page view with an ad?
http://www.windmeadow.com/
Not so much that I care about posting early myself, but I like the thought of reading comments for a while that are all from people who care enough to subscribe... Sure there would still be some trolls and such, but no AC's which would weed out a lot of crap to start with (and AC's can always post when the story gets released).
I think it would generally improve the quality of posts, and possibly even tone down the posting rush when a story gets released to everyone.
It would also make for two interesting times to read stories - at first when they are visible, and then again when they are released when you can see comments on the comments.
Perhaps you could provide two levels of subscription, one to let you see the posts early and then a higher level to let you post early as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Another possible feature addition that we're discussing is to allow subscribers to post during this window."
This is a bad idea, because earlier posts tend to be moderated higher than later posts, simply because more people see earlier posts. This will give subscribers a much louder voice in the forums, while potentially degrading the quality of the discussion.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Mozilla block ads from this server is much cheaper than a slashdot subscription. And seeing the stories early is nice, but how many articles do I actually read anyway? At best I skim them, and most of the time they are not slashdotted.
What I'd really like to see is being able to submit real queries to the slashdot DB for real statistics (I.E. to figure this, or to keep drafts of stories submitted, comments, and the like, or to have a better way to rate comments and friends.
Have you read my journal today?
Is that you get to read a duplicate article before everyone else!
On a serious note, Slashdot needs to do something, so this isn't a bad thing IMHO.
Having said that, my lack of subscription is for a very simple reason: it's not professional.
I won't subscribe until I never see a dupe or typo. Really, for all of our vaunted technology, if Slashdot cannot surmount these two very simple obstacles, it doesn't deserve any real monetary support. It just doesn't. And again, I say this as a real fan.
Fix that, Taco, and you've got my money. And maybe even a little more credibility.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Using mozilla, all you have to do is right-click on an image. You get a menu that, among other things, lets you suppress images from that host. If you use this with /., all the images disappear, and you can read the text in an uncluttered window. And it'll really cut back on the bandwidth you use.
Right now, you sometimes get a rectangle of white space where some of the images aren't shown. But they'll probably get rid of this in a future release. Anyway, it's not distracting.
Sometimes I turn the images back on for slashdot.org. But there's never any actual information there, so I turn them back off.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I think this is a good idea- At least it is a unique approach to funding an on-line news source. I would much rather have the choice to subscribe and get this than have even more ads...
J
If people can read articles from the future it will inevitably corrupt the time line and will spell certain doom for everyone. Resist the urge. Don't do it.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Mind you, I'm not a subscriber, but...
I think this is a great idea. Early access would be great especially for graphic/video intensive sites that sometimes come up. As other posters have pointed out, it would also be cool to see some well thought-out early posts which would happen if the subscribers have the ability to read a story before it goes live.
For everyone bitching, seriously give it a rest. The banners are not even bad at all, and I know if I subscribed, I wouldn't care if they still showed up 100% of the time. Early access to stories is a valid new feature that adds some serious value to the subscription which is cheap anyway.
I'm not subscribing but damn, I'm not going to complain about it! It's not like they are raising the rates either. If you don't subscribe, fine! But quit bitching about the subscription features, especially when they are adding siginificant value to them!
Mark
ps As many posters have pointed you, you may want to rethink the red-green story headers, for colorblindness reasons...
The BSD section is already red. How would stories from the future be posted to the BSD section?
I can see the replies already to this post: "*BSD is dying; it has no future!"
Anyway, is fair, subscribers could check the referred site before it gets slashdotted, non-subscribers maybe don't see dupes or at least their first view of the article already includes "obvious" corrections and addition to the article text,, first posts will be a right, not just luck and their first view of articles could be clean that are now, before moderation.
But if slashdot want to attract subscribers, I suggest that the stories that "shows the future" are about sports results, investments, lotto numbers and things like this, so subscribers feel that are not spending money, but investing it.
I wonder if this have something to do with "missing" articles that appeared lsat days in the rss but not in the first page, and things similar to this.
That is rather sad. I actually like the banner ads on the index page! And I rarely load the index page more than 2~3 times in a given day (I set my index page to display as many articles as possible, and that usually covers a day), so in order to be eligible for the "plum" I would have to completely sacrifice seeing those ads?
I can't stand the bigger ads, which is why I became a subscriber in the first place. I love the banner ads at the top of the index page: it's the first thing on the page, I get to see it before I actually start reading anything, so it doesn't "interrupt" my thought processes. And at that point I will be quite willing to visit the site pointed to by the ad if I'm actually interested. But the big ads in the middle of the page really annoy me, and that's why I turn those off with my subscription.
I guess either (1) OSDN thinks that by enabling ads on the index page our credits would dry up faster, or (2) they want to encourage us to spend our credits on the index page and hope that we'll compensate by turning the big ads back on!
Too bad... given those terms, I guess I'll live without the "plums".
"Words have meaning, and names have power." -- Lorien
Now all we need is some photoshop contests and Slashdot could be fark for techies or Linux advocates.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
I wonder would we be able to alert the moderators about dupes. That way, we could eliminate one of the ed's most beloved past times. We could also tell them about any spleing mistaks we find in the posts. /. the way it is. Warts and all. Esp when we have a dupe and 95% of the posts are all:
Would I pay for such power. Hmmm. Maybe, but I like
This is a dupe!
or
We saw this story here yesterday!
or
RTF/.
What, me Tweet?
i can see into the future... i can see myself not subscribing to your stupid site...
imagine paying to be taco's speling/dupe checker
fwiw, i do love slashdot, but not in that way ;)
and i do know that speling is only correct in the case of mod_speling... ;)
ID-10-T is a way of life
i don't mind paying the $5, it's worth it. i read this site everyday, have for years. and as far as the ads go, i've actually found that many of the ads on slashdot have been useful, or have at least reminded me about something. sometimes knowing what's new over at thinkgeek is kinda good too. i like that i'll have access to the stories a few minutes sooner, that's nifty.
cheers,
pt
How about allowing subscribers to post early during the Mysterious Future window and queuing the posts so that they don't show up until the article is published for the rest of the masses? This would allow first crack at input by subscribers but no discussion/moderation until all have access.
Speak truth to power.
Why don't you guys do do like PBS? annoy the heck of us with fundraising talk until we cheap bastards pull out our pocket books!
Personally I have not subscribed to slashdot yet, but it will soon take some other already subscribed publication place (local paper)on my budget.
I just read over the subscription FAQ. I know we're geeks, but does slashdot need such a complicated subscription system?
The system seems to revolve around you buying add-free pages, and then spending a certain number of pages a day.
Get a grip Taco! Just make it ten bucks for a year's subscription with no ads and unlimited usage! Simple simple simple.
And if you think $10 isn't enough, think again!
---
I support spreading santorum
When I want a free preview of important Slashdot stories, I just go to The Register.
I immediately thought of Max Headroom, and how it was set 10 minutes in the future. That was a cool show.
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
Maybe Slashdot will locally cache the sites they are about to slashdot.
I think people would be willing to subscribe to such a service.
As of Postgres v6.2, time travel is no longer supported.
Slashdot has figured out what it's two most valuable commodities are, and found a way to sell them: "First Post!" and a way around the "Slashdot effect".
Of course I don't care much about First Post, and if something really interests me I either grep for a mirror or wait a few days, but if this brings in some dough to keep /. running, I say more power to 'em.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Total Slashfark.
I wonder if slashdot themselves offered this service, wouldn't it be coercion? As in "you will be slashdotted if we post our story - which we are going to post - so either pay up or adios!" ... hehe
So I can help you avoid dupes, but i have to pay for it?
What Joel (Spolsky) will write about it?
Doesn't do much for me.
Now granted, slashdot does gather good stories, but it's the same old song: what really counts is the community contribution via comments.
Now if I wanted a story w/o commentary from bright people, why not go to one of dozens of other sources?
I just don't see the value.
No to the early posting ability, BUT
give subscribers with the top %10 karma and no "subscriber penalties" the ability to mark an article as a dupe... if an article is marked as a dupe by more than lets say at least 10 subscribers, then someone at slashdot gets notified immediately.
[subscriber penalty: if a subscriber abuses this ability more than 3 times, they get their ability to mark dupes revoked]
--
Time is on my side
Good marketing, Slashdot! It reminds me of the Coke machine fiasco a few years ago. They tested machines that had temperature controls -- when the temperature got hot, it would automatically raise the price of the bottles. The media caught wind of this and had a field day. If Coca Cola had only beaten them to the punch and billed it as a "machine that discounts soda in cold weather", they'd have been heros.
"Slashdot subscribers - you get news quicker!" Sounds a lot better than "Cheapskates: you get delayed news!", doesn't it?
Josh Woodward
be first to read the dupes before everyone else.
-nt
ISP's figured out a long time ago that people would rather pay for one month of unlimited access than a bucket load of hours that would probably take them over a month to use. People, like information want to be (feel) free.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Second, and I am sure you are looking into this, this might be a good way to get rid of dups. Since the stories have not been officially posted, if the subscriber base sees a dup perhaps the story can be pulled. I am not sure how to implement this. Perhaps a 'dup' button that alerts the poster of the story if a certain number of users report with it.
Third, I recently added a journal entry on moderation suggestions. One suggestion is non-linear variable moderation values. Perhaps one perk for subscribers is that they get a bit power in moderation, i.e. extra power in a single moderation, or extra moderation counts.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The links will be slashdotted before non-subscribers and anonymi get to see them. (Meaning we won't be able to Read Article Before Posting)
There'll already possibly be n comments (as n -> several dozen) that will be discussed, moderated, and closed before non subscribers get to see them.
And you're drafting subscribers to check for dupes and spelling?
Why is this a good idea, again?
I'd like a cookie that would allow me to use my "ad-free" views in one location (home on my slow dialup) but not in another (work on the fat pipe). I don't mind seeing \. ads, and have actually found a couple interesting things I never would have discovered otherwise. But skipping those bandwidth-hogging ads at home would be useful, and might prompt me to subscribe.
As far as early posting for subscribers, I'd vote against it. The cardinal rule on \. is "post early" or you get drowned out, regardless of how insightful|informative|interesting|funny you are. Non-subscribers logging into a discussion with 100 posts and a couple dozen 4's and 5's already will likely not contribute as much. That would be a shame, and would reduce the quality of the forum for everyone, IMHO.
Constitutionally Correct
it's like Fark.com
well, without the boobies
Copying features from fark might not be a bad idea, /. does not adopt fark's "and hilarity ensues".
as long as
SCO to Hell
Here's some easier ways of actually getting more subscribers without writing a single line of code.
Spell check.
Correct grammar.
News that is actually timely and relevant.
Lose the inane commentary from paranoid jerks like michael, who add nothing new to the discussion and only serve to trollbait the users.
Listen to the readers, instead of waiving all the criticisms as trolls.
Lose the moderation system. It doesn't work, and never has.
That's a good start to people paying. Run it professionally.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Does this put subscribers comments first? are they more important? money != intelligence
seems unfair to me. just like scientists who have decided NOT to tell the public in the event an asteroid is going to collide with earth.
If you don't let people post in the first 20-minute window, then the subscribers who see the post in that window probably aren't going to come back later to post. But these people are probably more likely to make quality posts overall. We wouldn't want the quality of posting to go down even further... And I'm not a subscriber so don't go thinking I'm personally biased here.
"TV is great! Every New Year's I make a resolution to watch more TV." - Ann Coulter
You can think of it like being a gold member for a news subscriber.
You get a few more perks, b/c you forked over some money. Which in turn, shows that you support what they do.
You probably get the same feeling when you're flying to hawaii, but you're in coach, getting peanuts, while people in first class get fresh baked cookies and pancakes from Aunt Jemima herself.
The future messages feature just means subscribers will see article dupes before everyone else. Or they will see URLs pointing to five year old projects again before everyone else.
Another example of big corporate sell outs with no original ideas stealing from the little guy.
I don't understand why /. doesn't just sell out all the way and become pay only. I mean (no offense) but eventually that's going to be the choice that it has anyway: make money or close down.
/.ers where unwilling to pay for the service, the 10% left would be at least 30K or so people. At say, $10/mo, that's 300K/mo, or 2.6M/yr, which would *more* than cover the costs of the reduced amount of bandwidth that the smaller subscriber base uses.
I'd say rather than slowly alienating your potential customers, just get rid of the lot who are unwilling to pay for it immediately, and then grow the base who are willing to pay.
Based on the hit count, even if 90% of
Internet advertising works in only a *VERY* limited way, and to be honest, I don't believe most users (and certainly most users here) ever pay attention to the ads. Eventially advertisers will dry up on the net.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
Wouldn't that be blackmail?
"Hey, I'm calling about your impending doom... I have a way out. Deny my offer, and suffer..."
dupe filter? Or the ability to smack Taco every time it happens?
Why pay to block ads? They are dead on the web! Simply run Privoxy. Combine it with Transproxy and you'll be able to block all ads on the web. Especially combined with the regex know how of Regular Expressions Tutorial.
The more people subscribe, the less value to the feature. If everybody is subscribed, then you can't beat the slashdotting.
Web site operators worldwide are encouraged to sign up for advance notice of port-80 DDoS attacks. "If you see it coming," said co-founder Hemos, "at least you have a chance to take down your web site before your ISP prepares a gigantic bill for that web site you put up to show your friends what you've been doing with your Lego kits."
Slashdot is a subsidiary of OSDN is a subsidiary of VA Software Corporation.
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
...to fix spelling, to check for dupes (HAH!) or even to reject the story outright!
How about putting a simple little form underneath the stories for these previews? Something like:
Story is:
[] dupe (enter orig. url: ______)
[] fake (rebuttal url: ______)
[] mis-filed (better section: {popup})
[] mirrored (enter mirror url: _____)
Misc. Comments: [__________________]
[submit comment to editor / author]
Something like this would make it trivial for people to immediately help with the editorial process -- as opposed to having to write up a full email, etc. Plus, by allowing previewers to voluntarily announce a mirror this way, a list of mirrors could be presented once the mirror goes live, right at the top of the article. (come to think of it, it might be good to keep a mirror link list / submission form for all users, even once it's posted...)
I'll be more likely to subscribe when I see:
Being able to see articles "early" just doesn't motivate me to send money.
All about me
I've never quite gotten the level of frustration at /.ed sites some people show. Is it really such a big deal to wait a while and go back? Almost nobody stays /.ed for more then a few hours, let alone a day. The only reason I can see to get upset is that people want to be sure that their comments ARE RIGHT UP NEAR THE TOP WHERE THE COOL KIDS ARE. Blech.
/. notice system, where Taco or whomever, at theri discretion, sends a formal, standardized notification to sites announcing that in X minutes their site will be in a /. story, perhaps also including a mirroring of the site before the notice is sent to bypass the cases where M$ or whomever then changes the site to cover up whatever the significant bit was.
Look, if it's such a big deal, then maybe you should all be agitating for a
Nawwww, that would make far too much sense.
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
And someone with $40 billion is going to have all his friends here before you and me. Looks like another way to make the fanboys pay.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Most content is already indirectly funded by people's employers.
I am a Total Fark susbcriber and the only reason I did it was to get access to EVERYTHING that was submitted.
... why not open up the whole queue for people to read? No comments, but at least let us check out what other people think is important and relevent.
The enjoyment in using Fark comes from the ability to see what other people think is unique and newsworthy.
Slashdot is a great clearinghouse not only for technical news, but of technical thought as well. How many times have articles been submitted that the editors don't think are relevent to their vision, but that I'll get value from?
Isn't that what Slashdot should be selling? Access to the stuff other people consider important?
When I read Taco's explanation about the early preview the only thing it does is:
1) Offer the community the ability to check dupes.
2) Offer a headstart on crushing a site.
If a site is going to get slashdotted what is the big deal if it's slashdotted by the first 100 or the last 100? It's still going to be slashdotted.
If anyone from the Slashdot editor team is listening
Right now your model is focused on avoiding ads. Why? Focus on the CONTENT and you'll do much much better.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
I was happy to subscribe the first time this idea came around. Got my 1000 page views no sweat and enjoyed it.
Then, after the initial 1000 ran out, I looked at ads again for a while. About three months ago I got sick of it and tried subscribing again. No soap.
Paypal showed my payment as unclaimed for days, and I was still looking at ads. No replies received from the relevant OSDN address after sending two emails... not even a vacation message. I eventually cancelled the payment and am back to looking at ads.
Attn: Taco and team: I want to support you, I really do. But blowing off paying subscribers is BAD. How do you expect to retain your paying customers when someone is asleep at the switch? Why should I subscribe now?
"The cup... the drop... it's a YES!"
I've always thought /.'s rss feeds are somewhat useless without any content included. If /. offered full content to their rss feeds, that would be the greatest incentive for me to subscribe.
So who's going to write the netsaint plugin that detects "future story" http referers and preemptively pages the fire department so they arrive just as your webserver/db bursts into flames?
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
What's to stop any bozo from claiming to represent ./ and start coercing sites left and right?
Earn-it, schmern-it just show me the money!
......
And if you buy now, you get one free Insta-Troll token to use against your enemy!
Imagine the mod wars
...that Slashdot subscribers will be able to see repeat posts from The Mysterious Future as well?
Pay a little more, get access to cool things before the Great Unwashed Masses do... I like it! Then again, I'm a Mac user, so I'm used to it.
Just do like we do for the general user community ...Slashdot.org is blocked. After being mentioned and slashdotted, then our employees discovering the place it was the only thing we could besides fire them :) Luckily I manage firewalls and proxy servers :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Nope. You can't post a comment until the story goes "live." I checked.
Are people really paying $5/CPM not to see a banner ad on the top of this site? And as far as contributing $ to Slashdot for the "warm fuzzy feeling"... who are they kidding? It's not like Slashdot is working on a cure for cancer or ways to feed the hungry. Am I missing something here?
A 'plum' I would seriously like to see is giving us subscribers access to the rejected stories 'bin'. There are a goodly number of quality posts that get killed due to not fitting into the 'schema' of the moment or for any of another various and sundry reasons. Perhaps we just get a link on the sidebar somewhere between 'preferences' and 'submit story', or a new slashbox.. Either way, I think this would be something that would be very easy to implement and I think would bring some additional value to the subscription with no real effort. How about it Taco?
Hey, former boss!
I tried to get our Salespeople to do something like this at MII. Not at lot of 'traction', as they say, however.
Heck, I thought our CDN should offer it for free (a la google's cache) just for the publicity. If we can withstand the slashdot effect, that should be proof enough that our service is rocksolid.
Mrs. Taco must be expecting....
It's one thing to mirror someone else's content for "caching" purposes. It's another thing to save someone else's content and charge for viewing that content though.
In addition these new features for subscribed readers, for the non-subscribed we will rename slashdot to cachedot as all the articles posted have been posted earlier for subscribers.
At least on the Apple.Slashdot side, because I read MacSlash. It's posted on Mac/, then Pudge posts it over here.
then every single subscriber should get 5 "future mod" points every day.
If posting is allowed "in the future", I for one want it heavily moderated.
Also, if I pay for a subscription, I'd be nice to have more moderation input for "future posts" only.
This would work fine because once the story hits "real time" I, as a subscriber, lose my "future mod" points for that story and the hoards are now free to mod anything to oblivion. But at least the signal to noise ratio _starts out_ pretty good.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Or, considering this from the admin's view: if they were warned ahead of time, they might be wise and just simply pull down the material so their business (be it academics or professional) doesn't get hindered.
I don't like the idea, but in many cases this might be a reasonable response.
Sounds like the benefits of viewing stories before the /. effect kicks in only apply if there is a small number of subscribers. The more subscribers, the more slashdotting a link takes even before the story goes live. If the goal is to have everyone subscribe, then you just wind up with a pre-/. effect. So the more subscribers, the less incentive to subscribe. Or something like that.
Merely surpressing a few ads (and apparently not all ads) isn't worth the money. Seeing articles in the future? I'll just go over to Linux Today.
Now, if you were to provide a totally ad-free slashdot site without *any* ads (or the delay to show *ANY* ads) for a monthly fee (and no 'surpression' limits), then I'd consider it. Mirror the links you show so that I don't have to actually register with the NYTimes or other 'have to register' sites and I probably will subscrible. Until then.......
I have no problem with banner ads on the site, however I never click on them because they are rarely for something that I am interested in.
Is it possible to classify the ads somehow (hardware, software, toys, conferences, etc.) and then have checkboxes in my preferences for the types of things I'm most interested in to help target the ads? Say you need to have a minimum number of classifications checked, otherwise you see all ads.
Did Taco Bell raise the price of tacos?
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
Cheers!
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
....I'm getting a "future message"..... w-o-r-k....
t-h-i-s.....w-i-l-l....n-e-v-e-r...
- OrbNobz
Yours legs are stupid. - Zim
as a subscriber, do i get to filter out slashdot ads.... like this entire story? ;)
my blog
For a look into the future look at NewsNow Tech sectionthis will give you 90% of the stories to hit /. later.
Help fight continental drift.
... don't be so damn uptight! I'm sure you'd complain about free beer not being cold enough.
Seeing dupe stories and silly spelling mistakes in the two-liners that editors write, add a lot of humanity to the site. It shows that there's a guy sitting there thinking "Oh man, I can't wait to get this out to the crowd!".
And all you can think about is that it says 'there' instead of 'their' somewhere. Sure, it's easy to spell-check but it's not about that. We don't want computer generated texts, we want it live!
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
I bet I could write a mini-ed2k-server (eMule >= kaza) (and put it in /pkg/trmb/bin) which would serve my current subscribe'd cookie on the fly! Even better, since I'm currently jobless, would be to popup a paypall link and collect $1 for each pirated-cookie! BoooWhaaaHaaHaaa...
This would be an example of the above principle... by which software developers get screwed because their goods aren't considered valuable in this business model, as the company doesn't sell the software, and execs can watch their machines make money.
Nifty.
Every site admin on the planet now has a legitimate (!) reason to subscribe to and read Slashdot on an hourly basis. Then they will know in advance if their server load is going to go up by an order of magnitude when someone posts a link to them in an article. THAT, my friends, is a good Internet business model.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So now the Slashdot editors have a way to get people who actually read the site (i.e. not the editors) to read the stories before they go up and tell them when they posted dupes, movie reviews for movies that came out a year ago, etc.
Not only that, they actually get to pay for the privilege. This is brilliant!
Mmmm.. Donuts
The key would be for the offloading to not depend on the site in question. 20 minutes isn't enough to contact the person in question and get a mirror set up, but it would be just enough to download any large binary files from the site, generate P2P fingerprints for them, and store those fingerprints in either a network (ok) or within slashdot itself (better, but good luck convincing them of it!)
(...and another thing!!)
I *hate* credit-card entry fields (and, for that matter, date fields). Why do website designers trust users to enter their phone number or credit card numbers, but not to enter dates (forcing them instead to select from month and year dropdowns)? Why do we always have to enter credit card numbers "with no spaces or dashes," when it's much easier (and less error-prone) to enter them *with* spaces or dashes? Couldn't a simple "s/\s\-//g" eliminate the pesky extra characters on the backend with little muss?
Just a peeve.
Worst Idea Ever.
It's a pretty fine line, because according to that, the only thing distinguishing coercion from extorsion is whether the coercer or extorter gains any financial or material benefit as a result. One could argue that since Slashdot's subscribers would be getting better access to the articles, Slashdot would benefit. Slashdot makes money by selling subscriptions and banner ads, and better access would increase the popularity of both.
I don't think it would REALLY be coercion... After-all, the webmaster COULD just remove the page... I don't think anyone will be going over their bandwidth cap if they are just serving up a "Click HERE to help pay for my bandwidth" page.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
(Hi Matt!) In the Clearway days before Mirror-Image, we went as far as starting to register "slashdotted.com" for just such a service. Got lost in the CW/MII shuffle, I believe.
./ subscribers start clicking on the site, the Webmaster will already be seeing a good-sized surge of traffic; it's much easier to sell traffic surge protection when the customer sees a surge actually starting, and they know that they have only a few days or a few hours (or minutes!) to make a decision.
./ subscription, and having a specialized sales rep make a couple of phone calls a day.
The difference here is that the customers can be identified a few hours or days before the deluge of traffic hits. And by the time
The two biggest problems in the CDN business are (1) finding high quality new customer leads, and (2) convincing people that they'll actually need the service and that they'll see real benefit. This scheme addresses both, head-on. And the cost of this marketing program? Just a basic
Of course, if MII doesn't want this business, I'm sure there are others who do. And besides, they always say if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself... *gr{i|oa}n*
-Mark
Yeah, who determines what stories make it through, anyway? Because no story I've ever suggested has made it through, not even "Autonomous Slug-eating Robots". The faq says the "authors" select them, but how and why? Why not leave it to the subscribers instead?
Speaking of which, it would be a nice feature if the stories you submit still show up on your personal page, even if they are rejected.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Hey, this is just to let you guys know that after fooling around with my prefs for the first time, the adds all went away. Was this a preview of the add-free subscription? If so, I'm in! Otherwise I guess this is a bug post(flaimbait i guess). Also, I would pay more to be able to view some posts and comments in my RSS browser. It would be 5 bucks just to decrease my daily news time. Is there a way to do this securely? It seems like having slash spit out more info in RSS wouldn't consume too many resources.
Just curious, is Slashdot ever going to have (like on some registration sites) a side bar that shows how many "guests" , "Users" and "subscribers" are oline? I think it would be interesting to see the numbers. In my opinion if I saw a lot of subscribers it would trick me into subscribing - and yes I do give in to peer pressure easily :)
Ave Molech Setting
Twenty minutes is plenty. Clearway always advertised that our "FireSite" system could CDN-enable your Web site in "less than ten minutes"; in practice, a typical sysadmin could be walked through it in about five minutes on the phone. And FireSite always replicated the biggest/hottest/most important stuff out to the (previously deployed) network servers first -- the goal was always to minimize the load on the primary origin server and the associated Internet uplink.
Even without all that mumbo-jumbo, a standard reverse-caching-proxy server type CDN (ie, Akamai) can be set up in minutes, too, just by changing a couple of URLs on your own HTML pages.
Not, mind you, that an out-of-band solution wouldn't be good, too; it's just that in-band (regular HTTP) solutions are a couple of orders of magnitude easier today.
-Mark
How dare you call me an unwashed mass? What evidence do you have to substantiate...
[sniff sniff]
When I get out of the shower, I'm lodging a formal complaint.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Charge even more for a program that allows people to see the stories just one minutes before even the current subcribers...done right, I bet we could fund the whole site on just the "First Post" whores!
char *mySig;
I guess FortKnox was right when he said you get to pay for the privilege of doing the /. editors jobs for them.
Personally this sounds like a swell idea. Right now I'm offering a once in a lifetime chance to pay 30 dollars and help write my Doctoral Dissertation! Of course you will get no credit but the experience itself and returns to the CS community will be priceless...
What is music when you despise all sound?
Now, if they were doing it to sell OSDN hosting services, that would be extortion.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Thank you, this post was quite helpful.
If I had moderator points, you would get them.
Read the Register (www.theregister.co.uk).
Somedays slashdot looks like a Register mirror site. This new feature will even establish the familiar Register red colour-scheme.
Worth every penny!
Good God, must sign up now
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
I am going to sign up so I can leave myself messages from the future. Every message will begin: 'Repost this immediately so the me from 3 hours ago will read it.' That way I'll find out whether I should dump my perfumania.com stock now or if the New Economy is just in a temporary slump.
No it's extortion, which btw is not coercion either.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Hm...just wondering. I wonder want a UID of 1 would go for on EBay...
Only if you were the one bringing the impending doom I would think. It's not like you would be about to cause their server to over load afterall.
This new feature seems to break the table background image on the Apple section articles. The article titles used to have the Aqua-style image in the background.
Or am I missing something?
So, can subscribers grab the story URL, hop into the latest public thread, and anonymously post the URL for everyone's viewing?
...
Your Karma has gone down 2 level(s) for the future posting of goatse.cx links
More eyes are better
Wow, what a cool idea. This actually made me subscribe, and I REALLY don't like spending money. This may be the closest I ever get to actual time travel. Oh well.
--- "Maybe you can interface with my ass. By biting it."
Why not put a timed delay on all posting to stop the silly first post syndrome.
...what you ought to do is bring back Jon Katz -- but only for non-paid subscribers. And anon lusers.
they will fix that in some way tho
There is a serious problem here. Slashdot discusiion will now be limited to slashdot subscribers only, for practicle purposes. I mean, in 20 minutes you get 100 comments, so the rest of us are at the bottom of the totem pole.
As if the moderation system wasn't bad enough....
I mean we're all geeks here - I'm sure some of you want to read it on the train or tube enough to justify it being sorted?
1. scour the web for news
2. add star trek is cool & bill is evil stories
3. invent toy economy / community building points system
4. ???
4.5 damn! clickthru ads aren't working (hello?!) screw with #3
4.75 blast! screwing with 3 isn't working - screw with the very fabric of space/time itself
5. profit!
j'ever think of giving contributors a free pass after
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I don't understand why Slashdot doesn't set up its own proxy server (using a link prefix to the "real" links) that caches external links in new stories while they are on the home page.
:)
It seems to me that this wouldn't be that hard to do, and it would prevent the abuse that other web sites endure when they are popular enough to be linked to in a story. If you really look at it, Slashdot isn't a very good netizen. In the worst case, it's a DoS tool with editors deciding which sites will get slashdotted.
Now I will have time to come up with witty comments and get +5 Funny, instead of -8 Redundant.
Monkey! Quit playing with your pee-pee!
If you guys told me this _before_ slashdotting ftp.slackware.com earlier today, I might have considered it. :)
.sig: No such file or directory
We can pay slashdot to learn earlier why we shouldn't have to pay for software/music/movies. Anyone subscribing want to set up a mirror/proxy?
"Hey, I'm calling about your impending doom... I have a way out. Deny my offer, and suffer..."
Oh wait... You're talking about a slashdotting... At first you sounded like a Microsoft rep warning me that Win2K won't be officially supported anymore and I'll have to migrate the entire IT department to XP.
Whew. (for now)
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
That's when they announce a new Premium Slashdot Member status, where you see the stories an hour before they go live, and it costs $20 more.
The only problem is that the pre-pre-posts are so rife with spelling and grammar mistakes, that you feel like you're reading the Navaho version of slashdot, compared to the current where it feels like you're reading a report from a C-level high school kid.
Incidentally, which is why I personally don't subscribe - I'm not paying a dime until you boys find something on linux that can spellcheck for you. That and stop with the dupes. I rarely read Taco's submissions any more, since Hemos usually posted the same thing a day or two before.
Bugger off to CNN or something if you don't like it lad !
/. has - the warts-and-all everyone-gets-a-chance approach to reporting.
I love the sort of irreverance that
It's community for community - wakey f'in wakey sunshine !
Guess you missed the point entirely and missed the point why this website is so damn popular !
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
i'll never pay for it, but i'd like to see a few schmucks with stolen credi...i mean their honest hard earned cash in the form of cheques pay for a service where they see the news 30 minutes before everyone else and if it get's rid of the dupes---score!
someone else here entertained an interesting buisiness idea which i hope someone persues[setting up a 'emergency bandwidth' mirror for sites about to get slashdotted for cash]...
and so long as it doesn't change anything for me i don't mind it. i'll start complaining when they take away things they've given the free-slashdot-luser and giving them to only the paying ones...
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Cool, so subscribers can spot duplicate articles before they're even posted? Sign me up!
While we're discussion improvements to slashdot, how about a larger range for moderation totals. Particularly with the ability to add points to friends and based on moderation type (funny vs insightful) it would be nice if you could sort for only score 6 or 7 comments.
With more posts and more moderation it would be nice to have more different catagories for posts.
Dinny
I know some ppl would love the oppurtunity to post the *earliest* comment--and most of them have good reason for that (being originally funny, avoiding dups); but I like it cold and dull.
:-)
The reason--well I dont open slashdot for the news alone. Its the discussions and the comments that make it worth wasting precious long work-hours. I hardly ever read a story before it reaches a 3-figure comment mark. If its fresh, its been visited by less ppl; and ofcourse the moderators still havent done the job.
So if you are like me, going through only the 4+ comments, u better stay away from subscription for this particular reason.
But thats just me
... hee2 is stuck under the bed.
On the other hand, slashdot could easily solve this problem by randomizing the comments while still preserving threads (randomize top level posts, then children of each parent and so on). As a bonus, discussions will no longer be fixated on a single catchy but off-topic thread.
It might be nice if moderators also got the advance reading. That might increase the chances that the moderators have had a chance to read the topic before they moderate. Plus, moderators would get a peek at what the advance viewing system would be like, and it might encourage them to subscribe.
Instead of subscribing to slashdot - just load Macslash.org.
So if we *don't* subscribe we won't see dupes?
Sounds good to me!
I just subscribed. Paid these guys $10.
/. you can get the posts first. Hell, you spent more than that last month on condoms, and you never get a chance to use them!
The coolest part is that I really can get FP.
But it will be karma whoring.
I know mine says "excellent" right now, but I'm sure they're tracking it. That's next. Subscribers actually get to show their karma-whoring totals, not just "excellent".
Perhaps if you spend $5 on
j'ever think of giving contributors a free pass after a certain number of successful contributions?
or how about karma levels linked to ad reductions?
"The text label is one way we've decided to emphasize the point that karma doesn't matter. "
Ummm, yes it does - but not as an absolute - and therefore how about it matters for ads?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
people will post anonymously in live stories about future stories... i'd imagine full cut and paste of the html...
" Anyway, paranoia aside, this wouldn't eliminate anon postings altogether, just hopefully eliminates/lessens all the junk anon posts. I agree that some anon posts are actually meaningful, but the ratio seems to me is quite low."
Yup. just like this one.
*****lame (and OT to boot) post ahead*****
With the economy in the crapper and lots of talented (and not so) people out of work. For a geek who is middle-age (Is your hairline receding, or did your face just fall forward?), educated (Woo Hoo! Paper degrees), unemployed (hi mom!), Reasonable people skills (Get outa my @#$@!! face!) and would like to get a leg up when things turn around ("The economy that wouldn't turn around" next on rudderless theater). Doesn't mind the self-teach meathod (see it works!). What career would people recommend? Heathcare, Technical position, telemarketer, wallpaper hanger? OSS and cheap hardware does open some possabillities.
BTW Did I mention lack of a sense of humour?
I would still think the /. effect would be better suppressed if slashdot would mirror stories
Actually, the html files of many stories are already mirrored. Of course, this doesn't help for the JPEG-heavy case mod stories, etc.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Nearly every change made to Slashdot over the last several years has made it harder to offer any real diferentiation in a premium service. People buy totalfark subscriptions to get more time to "win photoshop contests" - while slashdot has hidden it's equivalent karma system (and most regulars have topped out anyway). The delay from story acceptance to publication isn't all that long - it can't be: Slashdot is primarily a news site. The sophisticated readership could avoid ads if they really wanted to (I suspect most don't because it's part of the social contract). Finally, there are too many people who have run afoul of Malda's notoriously thin skin to have built up a "save salon" type of outpouring. (Setting special flags on people's accounts just because they dared mod up a critique? How juvenile -- but I digress).
Still, there are a number of ideas that haven't been tried that might be of interest, if done right:
Have a special premium queue for stories, plus the promise that one story will be picked a day. Suitable markings to differentiate stories drawn
from "preferred" queues ala google.
Allow premium users additional access to html. IMG tags anyone? Maybe combine this with small level of image storage.
The ability to "challenge" a mod down. Automatic if the mod is "overrated" which doesn't get metamodded; better yet, get rid of "overrated" it's an invitation to abuse.
The option of mirroring any content mentioned in slashdot (except ads) for any site owner who is a premium member. Most site owners love the attention slashdot brings them, it's just the slashdot effect that's so hard to deal with.
The ability to be modded to a value of "6". (The post still has to earn that value from the mods on it's own merits though.)
The ability to read from low karma to high. For fans of "alternative humor".
The ability to start at a +1 karma level (editable, of course, for those so unamerican as to believe money != speech). This would be especially attractive to people with "high uid" accounts.
A higher bandwidth channel to premium customers.
A java plug-in that downloads slashdot incrementally in the background, making those annoying page-load/drill-down delays go away.
Allowing edits of your own posted comment, so long as it hasn't been modded or responded to. If it has, you can still edit it, but a link is added to the original version.
I think this is a good start on you offering enough differentiation to make a "premium" view worth money without cutting into your site's popularity.
The bill for my business advice will arrive in the morning.
It's only generally considered extortion or coercion if you're say "We will do X if you don't pay use." If the thing you're going to do is legal and paying will provide a legitimate service which is useful in the situation, that's generally fine.
In any case, being slashdotted isn't such a bad thing; probably more people will read your site before the server gets overloaded than would have otherwise read the site in the time it will take to get it back to normal. And getting people to read the site is kinda the point, anyway.
Is this one of those things with a backwards business model?
1. Prophet
2. ???
3. Bankrupt
Read the subject line.
It's the duty of paying leechers to put up mirrors :)
for us other people. When they are at it I think the 10 minute head start would be good enough to put up a totally free mirror of slashdot aswell
Though to handle both slashdot and slashdotted sites I guess a highly efficient p2p network would be needed to accomodate the load.
We're pleased to announce the newest reason for you to subscribe to Slashdot.
/. will purposefully delay our news until it is ripe and old (unless you pay).
Or...we're pleased to announce the newest reason you should just go read The Register (and NYT and PopSci Magazine) yourself. Because we at
I'd pay...if they promised MORE CmdrTaco dupes.
No. You're just offering to help for a price. If you had to power to stop the impending doom of Slashdot then maybe. It's not blackmail because you
a) can't stop slashdot from posting the link
b) can't do (have no obligation to do) anything to increase their main server's capabilities
c) aren't preventing them from looking somewhere else or saying "no"
d) aren't offering anything they need
Slashdot should already be warning sites about being submitted on a front page article so they can take steps to lessen the blow like shrinking/removing images with a notice they'll be back to normal later if people are still interested.
The "ooh shiney" people get to see and the people who are genuinly interested will come back later.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
So,
I just got sucked on and subscribed.
For the last two 'red' posts, (Austin and China's CPU) every time I click on 'Read More' I got a hung browser with a title of 'Error'. Is this supposed to be working?
http://www.WinWithRealEstate.com/
There's only like 10 subscribers and they are all CmdrTaco's family.
I have my max number of banner ads set to 0 (block all banner ads and damned be the cost!)
Is the code written as
if count >= 10 || count == 0
or just as
if count >= 10
Logically, it should be the first, but I'll bet it is the second.
www.eFax.com are spammers
And at that point I would remove the article in question from my server and replace it with a page that summons a horde of 50 or so pr0n pop-ups. ...PROFIT!
do not read this line twice.
Funny, I never see them. Oh, maybe that's because I use the free Proxomitron. It's the ultimate in configurability. Windows only, sorry...
That will just lead to the same brain-dead, knee-jerk posts. By having a delay, people may actually read the story and compose a thoughtful post for when commenting opens up.
Commercial sites would love this. Academic/government ones probably wouldn't care as much. You could sell them a contract with an existing CDN (Akamai, Mirror-Image, etc.) or build out your own special purpose service, just to handle slashdot-like effects.
I can imagine the phone conversation now:
Unsuspecting Web Host: Um, hello?
Commercial Web Mirror: Dude... you've got 30 minutes until 1 million angry Slashdotters pummel your server into a pile of slag... What do you do?
Unsuspecting Web Host: [click]
Something else to not spend money on. Guess what, banner filters work GREAT on slashdot, and don't cost stupid money to see stupid posts 20 minutes before the rest of the Great Unwashed Masses.
Congrats, you've just created a Geek Class Boundary.
Since most of the stories were forwards of advertizing campaigns for new handhelds or cell phones I'm not going to miss much by not paying.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
.. I thought thats what The Register was for?
TotalFarkingSlashdotted
adj., describes the state of having your webserver grind to a halt four times in a day as the Total Farkers, then the Farkers, then the Total Slashdotters, then the Slashdotters, are thrown a link to one of your webpages.
Look, it's the spirit of the thing, y'know?
Go ahead and block slashdot ads if you want. I'd like to think slashdot isn't evil, like x10.com.
If you don't want to subscribe, don't. But I don't think it's virtuous to not subscribe, to kill ads, *and* to post saying "I'm bright - and you can be, too!".
Do the first two, and you're fine. The last makes you an anti-slashdot fanatic and you'll no doubt be visited by the proper authorities any time now (knock, knock...).
Just my $0.02. Very much tongue-in-cheek. CmdrTaco will be sending me the usual check for $0.02 at the end of this month...
Redundancy is good; triple redundancy is twice as good! - Me.
Slashdot alternatives: http://www.bottomquark.com/ http://www.kuro5hin.org/ Slashdot sucks monkey ass.
Get a host file that associates ad servers names to 127.0.0.1 to get a connection failure. Works with most websites.
...)
Here is an example.
Doesn't cost you anything and works on most platforms (windows, Unix
If you run a webserver that binds to 127.0.0.1, just choose another non-occupied IP number.
Look- CmdrTaco is karma-whoring! You'd think he'd be an arch-wiz on this MUD by now anyway...
/. have a better sense of humour than people who moan about trolls and crapflooders, but I'm probably wrong...
In all seriousness I am amazed that His Taconess hasn't been modded down into oblivion yet, just because people can.
I'd like to think that the people running
graspee
can read it is basically what this plum means. I think it sucks personally. Why didn't you implement a cache system?
sad but true
Not sad; it is a necessary reality. "Equality" may be an illusion, but it's one that exists for a reason.
We are close to an optimal situation: equal opportunity. Not necessarily equal "rights," or equal "success," or whatever.
Success (specifically the financial kind, in this case), comes from a series of good decisions and good fortune.
I don't vote Republican, but I do happen to believe that the complaints of "inequality" come from people who have made, and continue to make bad choices. Their circumstances may be exacerbated by bad fortune... their upbringing, the faults of their parents, their geographic location... but with a strong will and an illusion of equal opportunity, all of these factors can be overcome.
How about an auto +2 moderation on all posts?
This time window gives other authors a chance to take a look at them. To fix spelling, to check for dupes (HAH!) or even to reject the story outright!
So, for people who don't subscribe, they don't have to put with dupe stories!
"Honey, call the bank and cancel that check!"
I don't mind supporting slashdot with money. I don't release my credit card # online, if there was a P.O. address Mr/Mrs/Ms taco would get a money order from me in a few short weeks. Most of the ads on /. are very useful, they actually work.
The other stuff about fp and the rest I could care less.
Here's the real question, I'm surpised nobody asked it. Slashdot is already turning into "discuss google news hours afterwards". Does this mean that non-subscribers will get the news even later, or that slashdot will get the news on-time for the subscribers? If slashdot gets the news any slower, that's just one more reason NOT to come here.
So there will be more subscribers but less free readers. In the short term that's good in terms of revenue. In the long term that's very bad.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
On a similar vein, why doesn't /. get hit with DDoS lawsuits/threats?
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
As an AC I've earned 23 karma points, not all of us are trolls. The grading curve interesting as AC.
story is posted for subscribers: target site gets 400 hits/minute
20 minutes later the story is publicly posted: target site gets 1000 hits/minute
Meaning: ~40% of the slashdotters are subscribed
Perhaps the discussion about slashdotted links might not be affected substantially (other than the addition of "here's a mirror" and "+5 funny joke about the speed at which it was slashdotted" posts). But most of Slashdot's income is from subscriptions and banner ads, both of which are affected by the shear number of hits. For example, if more articles weren't slashdotted, I might be more likely to check the front page more frequently to catch stories as they are posted, instead of waiting 12 or 24 hours until the slashdotting subsides.
Like I said, it's a fine line. From a business standpoint, this fine line could be even riskier than outright extortion. It could have the potential for a long, drawn-out argument as opposed to a quick "oops, we were wrong, let's throw in the towel quickly before anyone else notices" judgement.
don't forget the porn... fark looooves the porn
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
Doesn't this suspiciously sound like Micro$oft-speak? For example, when Gates says something ridiculous like "We're implementing DRM and palladium because that's what our customers want."
I guess if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right Taco? :)
That's what was said above, they're considering it, they haven't implemented it yet.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
That would be extortion, not coercion. Read your own link. If they have money to gain, it is extortion. If they are doing it for non-financial reasons, it is coercion.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Mozilla: right click; select "block all images from this server".
No more ads.
+5 Informative.
How about a /. book?
/. an internet success(?) story
covering
Readers comments, some of the humor is priceless
yade-dada..
...to see duplicate articles before everyone else. :-D
I guess that's why the future is "mysterious".
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Stop the presses!!! slashdot.org grubbing for money!! Leenooks geeks miffed! Story at 10.11.0.42
The case linked has nothing to do with legalizing coercion. This is just an anti-abortion fanatic trying to get his licks in on a totally different discussion. Go back to christdot.
Also if people cannot create fake login names using the same IP address. If someone wants to waste their days getting a dial-up connection to make fake slashdot IDs, let them. Broadband users, however, not be allowed to do so.
Basically, until the crap comment ratio becomes insignificant, I can't put money in slashdot's pocket. They have potential for fees but not yet.
Laws are for people with no friends.
I already know what's going to be posted half an hour from now - I just re-read what was posted two days ago!
do not read this line twice.
If you let the subscribers post mabye we would not have so many "First posts", also I have not subscribed, but for the chance to advoid the slashdot effect I just might.
I see. So if the subscribers were allowed to post early then we'd start off with a higher quality of posts, instead of those from people who don't read the article. Except for you, of course.
Heh. Or maybe like a scene from a spoof of a Keanu Reeves movie...
Slashdot may give you news 20 minutes in advance, but The Next Week Times, the psychic journal, gives it to you a week in advance!
</shameless self promotion>
Convert RSS to HTML - integrate webfeeds into your website
So I can read two year old news stories from other free services before anyone else, if I pay you?. Not bloody likely
/. doesn't automatically send users to the /.ed webpages, /. just says 'you might want to go here'. Each individual user chooses whether they want to click the link, and the pages actually get viewed by an interested (?) reader. And who the hell is gonna sue over free publicity? If they didn't want anyone looking at their pages, they shouldn'ta posted 'em.
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
I was thinking along the same lines of that. However, I'd like to tally up those responses and if it reaches a certain threshold (% of paid subs?) of votes, then /. would let the editors know by saying "HEY! Something's wrong/good about this post!". I think this would give a good heads up to the editors in case they missed something, but keeping them in control of what stories get posted, etc.
Yes. When they posted the reviews the book had not been criticized in this manner. When Belliesles resigned from Emory many of these news outlets reported it. That doesn't mean they should go back and alter history by changing their review. When a panel of experts criticized the book as "unprofessional and misleading" it was reported, not covered up. That's as I would expect.
I was very impressed with the idea to see stories ahead. I have to say that it is pretty annoying to have sites be gone so quickly when the mass descends on them.
This allows people to spend a little to get something of a head start, which should be of value to those who actually want to look at the articles.
It should also have the effect of diminishing the Slashdot effect as well by smoothing the network access. After all, by the time the hoards arrive, some of the early birds will be gone and not weighing down a site.
And to top it all off, this is done without really removing value for the regular freeloaders, who are an integral part of the Slashdot puzzle.
I've got filters set sorta high, so I tend to see the interesting stuff. But on new stories, there's still a lot to wade thought since nothing passes until the spill level is hit (I suppose I could set a spill level of like 10 and get the same effect).
I'm all for anonymity. I've personally never posted as AC, but I really like the idea of people being able to if they want or need to. Having said that, I don't think putting a "ACs can't post until a story has been live for 30 minutes" rule will hurt people's "right" to post AC. It won't stifle any speech. The people who post as AC right when a story hits aren't usually whistleblowers risking their careers to give us some inside scoop.
And while I'm already typing, I think what Slashdot really needs is more stories per day. It was really nice around here during that blackout nonsense last year (reminded me of when I first came around, actually; less noise, more signal). I'd susbscribe if it meant seeing more stories. And I'd definitely subscribe if I got the chance to vote on what stories in the submission queue made it to the front page (would that be proto-moderating?).
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I'm also not new to /., but I haven't noticed decreased quality. I just read much less stuff than I used to. Usually I get some good links, the occasional really insightful post, and most of the time some good laughs.
/.'s comments sections, but occasionally there is really good stuff. My newsreader is very suitable for going through a lot of articles. Web interfaces to discussion forums on the other hand, although I do have a very fast connection, suck.
I don't care much about diaries, friends and foes or getting to see stories early. I can handle ads, too. I'd subscribe if I had an easy way to pay (I don't have a credit card and I'm outside of the US, at least the last time I checked that ruled out any way for me). My #1 subscription reason: NNTP access.
There is a lot of crap in
Post pictures of Tux in "kinky" sexual positions. ....Go!
Last post!
If you don't allow people to comment before a story is posted (which I agree may be wise), it'd be nice to allow users to somehow signal to you via a checkbox or something that a story is a dup.
--LP
if you allow paid subscribers to post comments in stories early you are asking for trouble. your moderation system does not work. whoever posts first always has the best chance of getting rated up no matter how stupid they are.
don't allow people to pay to sway the masses.
take a hint from kuro5hin, early posts into stories should only be -editorial- comments meant to make suggestions to the editors. they should disappear when the story goes live.
Where in slashcode should I look for this code? I did some (well, a little, anyway) digging around because I was curious, but I couldn't find it. I'd love to play around with it. Grepping for "duplicate" didn't net me much.
i suppose if they buy the editors beers that's acceptable as a bribe. ;)
Also, could a paid subscriber get linked stories and post them to some other geek/nerd news site (not to mention free), thus getting the jump on Slashdot and causing more people to go there instead?
Preslash.com is available.
...
Let me get this straight. There are two versions of slashdot. One has been edited by a group of experienced and knowledgable editors. The other has not.
I pay more for the first. I get the one that has taken more effort to produce for free. I think I know which I will choose.
Amusingly, the scheme places a *negative* economic value on the work of the editors, since it implies the market will pay more to get rid of their meddling. Even this takes 'information wants to be free' a little far.
Slashdot is selling premium access to random web sites (before they are slashdotted). That almost sounds like charging admission to see you blow up random buildings. I can't wait to see what happens when one of them figures out that /. is using this technique to make money off of their content.
I didn't subscribe at first because I hadn't gotten PayPal working. I wanted to support Slashdot, but I didn't really care about ads and was, I admit, lazy. I subscribed today... the clincher for me actually was not the early-warning, but the "More Comments..." link that lets me read earlier posts.
I've been annoyed many times how impossible it is to find an old Slashdot post I'd written on a subject. One that I couldn't get via Slashdot's (kinda weak) search feature, or even, to my great surprise, via Google. (I only found 6 or so Google links containing my username, despite having a few hundred posts over the last several years here.)
Anyway, I thought I should point out that "More Comments" link and mention it publicly lest CmdrTaco think I was really liking this new 10-minutes early thing. I don't mind it. But I really joined because I was reminded about subscribing. I've never been a 'read-every-story-when-it-appears' reader and I doubt I'll start now.
--LP
If I were paying for my traffic, I'd pay up.
The last time one of my sites was slashdotted it cost me $500 in increased bandwidth charges. If I could have thrown Rob and the boys a $50 to take the load off I would have done it in a second. That was a few years ago when bandwidth was more expensive, but still, I'd be willing to pay.
Yeah, it's sort of like mafia protection money. But at least with the mafia you get the chance to pay for protection before your store gets burned down. With Slashdot around it's like living with an arsonist next door.
Sorry, I thought I had all the essential info halfway through the article, so I only skimmed the rest. It looked like details that weren't really important to the overall concept (minimum subscription level, etc). In my defense the important info really should be up front.
That troll guy is such a boob.
Instead of letting a user choose the sort order for comments, (how many people ever change it from it's default value?) when a user first looks at the comments for a post, a random number should be determined such that half(?) the time the top level of comments are posted in reverse chronological order. (ie the same as "Newest First" half the time and "Oldest First" the other half)
This is depending on the "people are lazy" idea, but if that holds true, then half the people reading the comments, including the people with mod points, would see the posts at the bottom which frequently go unmoderated.
Ideally a static number would be generated for logged in users such that they always saw the comments in a post in the same order, no matter how many times they opened it. ((UserID + PostID) mod 2?)
A less complicated version would be to enforce reverse chronological order for everyone, which would remove any focus from the earliest posts up until the point everyone started automatically scrolling to the bottom of the page.
And if you wanted to leave everyone with a choice, keep the Sort Order options but make the default one of the above ("Newest First" or "Random") and reset everyone to the default. Depending on how lazy people were, a lot of them might stick with it.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
And offer some anti-slashdot cache of the linked pages for the subsribers, so I don't have to check /. every 10 minutes to see whether something new has popped up, and I can then visit it in a hurry to make sure I can visit it before anyone else does. No, it would be better to give the subscribers a tool so they can read slashdot and its linked web pages in their own times, without non-subscribers irritating them by slashdotting everything in sight.
You might say that, but I can't tell red from blue, and walked into a police station thinking it was a brothel.
My first thought was "Bloody hell, they're laying on the 'uniform and handcuffs' theme a bit thick aren't they?"
Don't get me wrong, I agree that technically, it can be done.
But are you really going to be able to get the guy on the phone in 20 minutes? (Especially for some smaller site that just made it big.)
Funniest comment for ages. Thanks :-)
Political Correctness is doubleplusungood.
I think he should be taught a lesson! Critiquing the Slashdot Reich! How dare he!?!?
It's unlikely that non subscribers would all be modded as redundant.
I end up with moderator points quite often, and I think i've only used a negative moderation once. I would bet most moderators would rather moderate positively than negatively as well.
It's also unlikely that there will be that many comments in the 1st 20 minutes that the other comments aren't noticeable, especially cause you'll have a lot less "haah the webserver must be running on a 286 cause it's slashdotted already hahaha" posts from subscribers...and that's what the majority of the posts in the first 20 minutes usually are, along with the FP! posts....
//FIXME: Bad
Wow! this will add a whole new dimention to karma whoring! get the jump on all the other geeks!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Good idea indeed, though it creates a problem as well: Now their telephones / email will get "slashdotted" first by plenty of /. subscribers: ... Profit!
2. Contact Web site owners and warn them politely of impending future slashdotting
3. Offer to sell them (short-term?) service on a Content Delivery Network
4.
As well as real time Duplicates and coming soon Duplicates Revisited and rehashed. Slashdot will be fucking great then!!!!
and for people who run windows, The Proxomitron does the same thing =D http://www.proxomitron.org/
I discovered Slashdot quite by accident. As I recall, many years ago, I was using my favorite search engine plugging in the words "computer news" and lo and behold there befor me was Slashdot.
At first I was impressed by the variety and newness of topics covered. However, reading all the comments was tedious at best. I didn't ever agree with Slashdot's ranking method as many if not most of the posts ranked with 3's to 5's were clearly
little more that floatsam. So I just stopped reading them.
I did find Slashdot useful in developing a list of computer related news urls which I now review prior to coming to Slashdot. I continue to come here on a daily basis to see if there are new urls to add to my bookmarks and will continue to do so untill the site puts it's hand out at which point I'll cut Slashdot loose as I did Salon.
I've discovered that I can, many times, find and read articles 'before' they're ever posted on Slashdot. Of particular value are CNet, The Register, The Inquirer, Wired News, and, yes, even Geek.com as many of their stroies are posted days before they make it to Slashdot. Most never make it. The only reason I can think of that this might happen is that the staff at Slashdot do not find the items to be sufficienty news worthy. The deal with Intuit's Turbotax and its use of C-Dilla's DRM technology comes to mind. Geek.com carried it two days befor Slashdot. I'll have to credit Slashdot in that it did cover the DRM matter in a cursory fashion sevral months previously.
Now Slashdot is attempting to create value ephemerally using negative reinforcement. More power to them if they succeed. I've never been impressed by Madison Avenue's efforts to tell me what I might find to be of value. I know value when I see it. No one needs to help guide me; that I should value this over that.
As time goes by I find Slashdot less and less relevant. Slashdot used to be on the bleeding edge. Now it seems to be an also ran. This bodes ill for Slashdot. I do, however, wish Slashdot the best in continued success.
...*blink* *blink* ... ummm ... *heh* ... *blink* *blink* .... I'm still not sure what to think of this idea.
RFC2119
If you want a real benefit for the subscribers, even if they wait until after the story goes live, how about cacheing the main pages of sites that are linked to that don't have high capacity, and that haven't asked not to be cached.
If google can get away with it, you can do the same. Just be rigourous about turning off the cacheing if a site wants it off (give an automatic way to do that, such as them inserting a meta tag in their page which you check every 10 minutes).
And offer a way for them to access the logs on the cache, so that they can see how many hits they got. (Alternately do a HEAD only hit on their server for every hit on the cache, which they can probably handle.)
Of course you must include their ads (uncached as they get paid only for real ad fetches) and you can have a list of high performance sites (NYT, major news sites) which don't get cached.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
... slashdot crowd will do spell checking for me, so watch out for anything 'in the future'.
Taco.
For instance, if I read a story when it breaks and there are 15 comments, then I revisit it a few hours later and there are 30 (I read at 3), it would be nice to have the comments that I've already seen with a different color, to differentiate them.
It could be a greyed-out background, or just the heading being in red or something.
And I know this would add more data to be stored, but it could be as simple as recording the date/timestamp of the first time I read it, and then any comments before that are marked "read" (the only issue would be a comment that was below my threshhold, which then got moderated up, would be marked as "read" even though I hadn't actually seen it).
This could also be something "for subscribers only" to help sell subscriptions.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Appropriate apologies to the tux, the goatse guy, my parents, and anyone who clicks this
Last post!
I user AdMuncher to block all ads *except* Slashdot. Many companies don't deserve my ad revenue, but /. does. So I support them. What's it cost me? very little. And sometimes I see links to cool stuff on ThinkGeek. So, yay.
It is funny to think that I just sent them an email the other day suggesting this very feature. I just wish that they would include my additional request... mirroring of slashdotted websites for subscribers.
"Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of 'diversity' insist on absolute conformity." -- Tony Snow
Excellent point. A solid chunk of the time the answer will be no.
However, if you can get "the right guy" on the phone once or twice a day, you could probably sign up a one or two new customers each week -- not a bad business model, IMHO.
-Lucas
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
No offence, but with this, I think slashdot's finally jumped the shark.
when you start seeing referers from http://slashdot.org/, start blocking access. since it'll be coming from a relative trickle of users, it won't be difficult to start the block.
then again, i'm sure it would work fine already, without having to read the posts from the future, but, still..
Or you could just ignore them, banner/inpage ads dont really catch my eye but seeing as i have no money anyway. The advertisers arent going to be getting my buck anytime soon
please commander dufas, I'm not going to give slashdot a penny for this crap.
how about you spend some time editing and stop posting duplicate stories every 4 hours
are we now doing to have DUPS FROM THE FUTURE?
I can filter your ads with my own proxy server, so I'm sorry, but
NO SOUP FOR YOU!!! NEXT!
So now instead of hearing about a news item one day after it's been reported elsewhere, it's one day minus twenty minutes. What's the big difference, and why pay for it?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Why do you like FAILURE?
So, one plum is a next to useless feature, that will probably cripple slashdot if you use it, and the other is increasing a maximum on something that's a goddamn waste of time in the first place?
Although, I have to admit, in the face of non-subscriber features like "duplicate stories", "biased editor comments", "april-fool stories any time of the year", and "complete inability to learn fucking english", these plums come up a little sour.
This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
And BTW, I'm pro-choice.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
For the others a lot of discussions will start half full just when the article is widely available.
...which is much the best place to join them anyway. It's enough time for the (frequently tangential) themes and discussions to emerge and for the moderation system to subdue some of the early noise.
L.
So now the people that pay will have their opinions posted first. It's nice to see /. ignoring their original goals for a community-based discussion unlike an other site, while trying to make a site and a concept that was never meant to generate revenue do just that.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
this tells me that you are not that interested in participating in the discussion, just in reading it after the fact. Would eliminating the Slashdot Effect change you from a lurker into a more active participant?
On the contrary, most weeks I take a very active position in the discussions here. I should have said "one might be more likely" instead of "I might be more likely". Take a look at my users page.
Anyway, even theoretically (and especially without any statistics), I'm making a tough argument. But my point is that given anti-extortion laws, Slashdot could get hurt if it tried to get sites to buy external hosting "or else". If Slashdot offered the hosting themselves, it's even more blatant.
That's worth $15/year, isn't it? I MEAN $15/1000 PAGE VIEWS OF DRIVEL.
*SOBS UNCONTROLLABLY*
- slashdot staff
I subscribed just so I can see this magical "red" titlebar...
Now where can I find one?!?
And what is "Fark" ?
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
What might make me fork over some money is access to the stories/articls that people submit to /.
/. come from news.com and wired.com -- or worse, dupes from these two sites -- I can't help but think that there is a wealth of good stuff that never sees the light of day around here. Not that what is posted is really bad, it is just that I think there is some really cool stuff that doesn't make it.
Given that most of the items allowed on
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
Boobies. They call them Boobies.
They said that coercion doesn't violate the Hobbs Act or the RICO laws. They didn't say that the protesters action were non-criminal, but they reversed the judgment that they committed extortion. Saying that someone did not commit some particular crime is different from saying that they did nothing illegal.
And you thought the stuff about who could get first post was the important info?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
A benefit of this SHOULD be that paid subscribers should be able to mark a story as a dupe before it goes live, giving the editors time to take it down.
This feature was enough to make me want to buy a subscription...and I did. My only wish is that we could see stories more than 20 minutes before they go live.
This story is [ ] Ready to Post [ ] Full of Errors
Then users could flag stories for rewrite without adding tons of discussion and overhead.
sulli
RTFJ.
The same that was said about the benefit of AC posts still applies even in the TMF window - people posting valuable information but fear of prosecution or whatnot. I mean, to access the TMF window you have to me subscribing anyhow, why take away freedom to AC post? Could you explain your reasoning?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
as someone who has never logged in and has often got +5 informative/funny first posts and the like, this makes me think I've give Slashdot up.
I think alternatively, I think a very simple scan of *html* links in the proposed story w/ stories w/in the last (insert time units here) would be a simple (though not foolproof) way of checking for duplicate posts. I.E. these X stories in the past have the same links in them, please check and verify that this is not a duplicate story. A slightly more sophisticated version of this would be doing some sort of similarity pattern testing on the story post themselves. That would be fun to implement/ play w/ but in the meantime I think scanning stories that are accepted for slashdot posting to check for duplicate links would be a trivial way of getting a large chunk of these duplicates.
-avi
Can happen in Soviet Russia.
The majority of the comments have been about the whats and hows of the subscription. I have no problem with a subscription model, but it seems to me that this new "feature" is more in the spirit of Microsoft's preferred customer preview program rather than the open source model of "release early, release often".
Subscription services should be an icing on the cake such as extra features or a separate server or something. But this service is giving preferential access to the meat of the site, being the content itself. Big mistake... Maybe this should change it's name to "backslash.COM"
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
...his comment was pretty funny.
Slashdot: bringing you the news, before it happens.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Is there a way I could make my trillian news ticker show me the early stories since I am a subscriber?
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
As I said, IANAL, but:
1) The Supremes said the protesters comitted coercion, not extortion.
2) The Supremes said the protesters won their case and were free to go (they overturned the lower court which found them guilty).
3) Therefore, the message I get from the Supremes is that coercion is Okey-Dokey with them.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Just kidding! Like I'm actually going to keep track of the karma for every single AC post I make. Silly mods.
Red bars and I see the articles first?
Minus first post!
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
My initial impression was what alot of people had said, if posts are allowed before the article goes live you will have a rapidly growing split between the subscribers and the rest. Various people have gone onto why this would happen. Something along the lines of stuff that is not near the top doesn't usually get modded much if at all.
/. for the day.
This is not really a problem when everyone is on the same playing field, but when you have this "have/havenot" situation, it makes things worse, especially if you allow posts AND moderations in this "preview" period.
The parent makes a point that if you DO NOT allow posts at all, you stiffle the spontaneous comments, this may or may not be a bad thing, but it is probably a thing for moderaters to deal with.
I thought that perhaps, allow people to post but they would not be shown until the article goes "live" for the unsubscribers. And then at least then it would not be the subs modding the subs, it would be everyone modding the subs. Not such a great solution, but better.
I think that the problem that needs to be addressed is that stuff that is posted early has much more weight. Also, if the article is not even readable by the time it goes live due to slashdotting by the subscribers, then you will lean towards intelligent discussion by the subscribers, and speculation by the rest, further compounding the problem.
Possible solutions/situations for "preview"
1. No Posting (sucks for the subscribers to wait)
2. Allow Posting and Moderation (makes a split)
3. Allow Posting but NO Moderation until "live" (little more fair)
4. Allow Posting but have the posts unavail until "live" (above would allow replies, this wouldn't)
5. Something like 4. but seed the posts into the discussion in random fashion (seems unworkable)
These ones are kinda sarcastic, although not totally unrealistic take them that way:
6. Let people filter subscribers. (kind of a joke, but at least then you would give a choice, don't see this happening)
7. Let people pay to move their posts up (might as well get that money! haha)
My personal feeling now is that I don't bother to comment anymore on articles from the day before, or articles near the bottom of the front page when I first look at
I think this would be similar to new articles if I know that the chance that my comment will even be read is slim.
Why bother wasting the time to contribute to a discussion if a situation arises where you have to pay to be heard, this does not seem in the spirit of slashdot, I say this:
8. Don't allow posts before the live period, but allow subscribers to filter out the future posts so they don't have to deal with the situation of wanting to post right after reading the article.
At the very least use (3) Posting but No moderation.
Because, sometimes they just have to touch the stove.
-YY1
Someone's already done this, claiming to be a girl in her sig, and giving a link into her journal. In there, she has a listing of the top 10 Slashdot users who have the most Friends (Fans? I never could keep that system straight). Looking at her journal entries (and I think this just started a month or 2 ago), she's steadily increased until she's now #1.
And moving completely offtopic, someone's made a video game out of spam: www.outwar.com.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
You fucking astroturf piece of shit. Fucking post attributed Hemos.
I've been doing this for years, and what's cool is Slashdot ads still show up for the most part (hosted from images.slashdot, clever!). I say cool because the least I can do is support this site, even if I'm pissing all over everyone else's revenue model :)
However, if you run Back Officer Friendly, it picks up these requests to 127.0.0.1. Opera still makes the actual GET request to localhost, and boinks when there's no service running. Makes me wonder what your logs would be like if you ran a web server on a machine with a munged hosts file.
For those not in the know, Back Officer Friendly is a Windows-based semi-honeypot. It can sit and listen to various common tcp ports - http, ftp, etc - and act sort of like a honeypot. It handles the syn/ack handshake, takes the initial request, then closes the connection (you can also set up a faked reply, sort of). Any requests from people show up in its status windows. Unfortunately it's only really good for seeing http requests, but for those that have never seen it, and are stuck on Windows, check it out. It's amazing how many IIS exploits are tried against my PC every day.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Uhh yes, and all we'll have to do is complete all 4 steps in 20-30 min.
Now, i realise that it needs to continue with more than just my chosen fields of commentary and content. But i haven't subscribed for a couple of reasons. One is that i haven't seen anything htat would make me want to. I don't mind the banner ads, and i occasionally pay close attention to them. A time delay, well, look. You've built this community. And there are a lot of people who don't help- it's like high schiool, there are people at the back of the class throwing spitballs. I'd like to see some better form than the ambiguous karma system to deal with this- maybe moving the worst of it into separate categories. Add more content, maybe play with the categories and try to see that more gets put up than just the latest whimsy. Whimsy is good and i like it, but this place is a valuable tool for those of us who really want to share and know.
I'm rambling a bit, and i realise that. My main point is that frankly, if Slashdot were a little different in setup for the subscription site, i might pay for it, and if it were a little steadier in its day-to-day presentation, i'd donate just for the hell of it. I do that for other sites that i belong to. But i'm not likely to subscribe just for a time advantage, because frankly, i think that's an unjust punishment for nonsubscribers, and i think it's unclear whether you're actively trying to set up a caste system here. The mod system appears to be quirky and frequently unfair- and i'm saying htis in spite of some points i've been given for various reasons. I've seen a lot of things that should be modded down not be, and then repeated, and repeated. If there's a way to set up an individual mod system for subscribers, i'd pay a LOT more. A way to say, well, x number of users have just hit 'ignore' and deleted your post from their screens. Yeah, i know you have foes and fans and freaks. I'm still relatively new here, i guess. And i don't want to make people be enemies, i just want to be able to dump the dumb stuff and read the really fascinating stuff that people have to say.
So here's my vote: develop a couple of different models and run this by us again. I think that there should be a subscription option. I think it should include access to your junked news pile, and i think that it should have NOTHING to do with the banner ads. I mean, the benefits of registering an identity are that you are a clearer member of the community. The benefits of subscription are that you are then a contributing member of the community- but that doesn't mean that those who can't subscribe or won't shouldn't have access. You're on the right track here.
One other thing that i would like to add: the fact that you sought our input means a lot, and is one reason why i want to pitch in. Do this without selling out; do this without exiling those who are just milling around, and install some traffic cops to put the flamebait out and the trolls back in their cages. I really appreciate what i've found here, respect the people who think well and clearly and frquently with incredible humour, even when i don't agree with the lines of thought represented. I come here because of the people who think. I stay here because this place is held together by them. Don't form an elite class; just let us have the option of individualising our experience a bit more. After all, that's why we register in the first place.
And keep up the good work.
-Sol
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Simple. I view my messages LIFO and mod them in the same order.
:)
Please do so too
Privacy is terrorism.
Well I happen to agree with the previous poster. I hate banner ads and won't look at them, even on a site I enjoy like Slashdot. I generally don't go around telling people that they should block Slashdot's ads, but if someone were to ask me how I'd definitely tell them. I don't think it's immoral or unvirtuous to do this because I'm saving people from banner ads. I think there's more virtue in saving someone's poor eyeballs than there is in saving an interesting business' profit margins.
If Slashdot went away because it couldn't make money in its current business model I'd lament its passing but it wouldn't change my opinion. For a while I was concerned Slashdot's demise was just around the corner because it relied only on banner ads, but this new feature gives me hope.
I think this is a great answer to the question of "why should I subscribe?" It doesn't take anything away from the freeloaders like me, but it does give something tangible to subscribers. Chances are, they will never have to worry about a linked site being slashdotted. That, on its own, is sometimes worth the money. They can even use it to essentially "buy karma" if that's important to them. They can get this karma by making a mirror of linked sites then posting the mirror (and getting Karma) once the story goes live, or by researching the issues in the article and having interesting, reasoned comments ready by the time the story goes live -- this also gives them the opportunity to make it more likely their positions are heard. Aside from these tangible benefits, it also gives them a feeling of being special. It's like a backstage pass to Slashdot.
And folks, remember this as prior art once someone patents: "A system wherein high priority agents have an enhanced temporal relationship to data as compared to low priority agents."
The '@slashdot.org' e-mail address I'd say.
If I subscribe, do I get my blacklist removed? After all these years, it'd be nice to finally get moderator points for the first time. But because I posted in "The Post" way back when, a valid critique of Slashdot that the editors didn't like (but was modded up by the readers), I miss out. Will subscribing change that for me?
As long as i get 50 mod points a day and can use them all on the same post if i like :)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Desperate for subscribers?
Try being nice to your potential client base *before* you ask them for money. Like, shut off the ads first, then offer features that a) count, and b) can't be gotten with a no-brainer filtering proxy server.
It worked for K5 you know.
[ approaching AI ]
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
This should not be implemented for a couple of reasons. First off, as many have noted, discussions will be half full when unpaid users gain access.
Second, moderation will become worthless. A Future post has the advantage of more time to be moderated, so it will have a bit of a bonus - maybe only a point or two, but enough that moderation becomes (more) unequal.
Third, while this could be seen as political, if a majority of the paid users vocally agree with one postition on an article, then the entire thread can be bent toward it. If Paid users like position A and have 20 minutes to toss in a bunch of posts about it, then suddenly position B seems to be a silent minority and must prove their point against an established position.
I don't like the idea of future links either. It allows people to set up their arguement already, and it will eventually just cause a site to be slashdotted before the unwashed masses even get the link - Pre-cog Slashdotting, anyone?
What would be an obvious extension of the moderating system is moderating the articles themselves. The default could be to ignore this, so only readers who gave damn would see the effect -- otherwise organised groups would be likely to mod off articles completely for spurious reasons (newbies wouldn't know why, more experienced ones who activated the feature would know how to turn it off if abuse was suspected).
Two weeks ago I might have cried. But maybe it's time to move on.
I recently go my fifth first-post on slashdot, which should qualify me as an 'ace'. It's sad to see the end of an era like this, but maybe it's time to move on.
Or I could just subscribe and rub it in the noses of those wannabies with only one or two under their belt! Yeah!
Believe with me, my saplings.
I am employed by an organization with direct links to this case on NOW's side of the fence, but I agree that the Supreme Court was NOT legitimizing coercion. NOW wasn't claiming that coercion took place, even if it did - they were claiming that extortion took place. The reasoning is that if extortion took place, you could get their assets seized through RICO. Proving coercion isn't good for more than the usual small fines.
That's a ridiculous conclusion. Suppose I put someone's eye out (who didn't die) and was convicted of murder. That verdict had damn well better be overturned, but no one would conclude that the court that reversed the verdict thought putting eyes out is ok. Also, if you read the thing you linked to, it specifically mentioned that coercion is a crime. But this wasn't a criminal case. The protestors were sued by NOW and some others for RICO violations that involved extortion.
...I liked this idea better when it was called TotalFark. Maybe they should get a patent?
Online wrestling as a trading card game? WWF With Authority.
hilarious
Sorry, I know that this is the second reply that I've posted to this comment, but I just had this thought.
/. effect hits.
Rather than displaying no timestamp on preview stories, could you display a negative timestamp so that subscribers know when a story is due to leave the queue? (i.e. 5 mins before going live) This would be for those who want to come back and post comments, or for those who want to know how long they have to read/load the links before the
I thing this is a great idea.
I 'll probably not be a subscriber any time soon but I thing that you reach a good compromise between added value for the subscribers and not substracting value for no-subscribers.
Personally I would let subscribers 20 minutes to make the first (moderated) posts.
Does this mean slashdot was slashdotted :p
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, pater@slashdot.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Apache/1.3.26 Server at slashdot.org Port 80
You can now get 2 slashdottings for the price of one... and guess what CmdrTaco profits from it..
GREAT IDEA !!!
Thye don't have to delete the story (there may be some threads that people want to pursue). However, there should be some way to bounce it from the front page. (The simplest hack would be to change the date, to make it yesterday. Or preferably, something that had the same effect, of moving it to "older stuff".)
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, xxxxx@slashdot.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Apache/1.3.26 Server at slashdot.org Port 80
Wow! That felt excilarating!
PS: this post has been censored to protect the more less innocent.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
All they have to do is create a 'dupes' category that we all can block. When a dupe is detected, it is moved to this category.
that, to me, would seem like an incentive *not* to subscribe...
RTFA. On the link you posted coercion is clearly called a crime. The point of that ruling is that coercion is different than extortion, so federal laws aimed at extortion are not applicable.
>K
Why didn't you implement a cache system?
I think there might be some legal complications with a cache system. *Most* of the sites linked to from Slashdot sell banner advertising... A cached site would not run the server-side script to deliver the advertising, so sites would be missing out on millions of hits. If I was the director of marketing for ZDNet or any other of these sites that get linked to on a regular basis, I know *I'd* be mighty pissed.
I think Slashdot would get a bunch of "cease and desist" orders within a couple of days of implementing a cache system.
Yeah, the Slashdot Effect sucks, but it's the web hosts' problem, and there's nothing that Slashdot can do about it.
That would be great, thanks.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Slashdot should be an advertisement paid service, publish the click through results and have a click through top 10 and discussion once a month....
Get slashdot paid and focus ad revenue by clicking through on what you want to see more of advert wise....
Marketing as education, information and comment, who would have thought.
Score 2 - personal high stats:
replies: 10% of my posts
Score 2: 5% of my posts
Troll, rant - whats the difference? (Rhetorical)
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Recently I noticed that one of my articles had a greater than average number of moderator points expended on it.
I would like to be able to view the top-25 comments from the past week (on any given day) which have had the greatest number of moderator posts expended on them (positive and negative.)
Is there any way to do that presently? If there is no room in the comment record table for a counter, then another table could be used to tally each moderation with comment id number, using a first-in, first-out queue with a duration of one week. A periodic process could total the counts in O(N) time. This report would not be difficult to generate, but I am not able to do it myself, as far as I know. I will post a copy of this comment as a slashdot.org topic comment to help answer the question.
P.S. I suggest that this report replace whatever is presently used in the Slashbox for "10 Hot Comments". At present, I consider only two of the ten "hot" comments to be at all interesting, and the slashbox preview comment author agrees: "Exciting? Not really, but its a great way to waste time." If the measure was moderation controversy, I think the articles would be exciting.
They're just offering forth the fact that they are going to link to the article.... they will post the article anyway, so it isn't extortion. /. links, site goes down
/. links anyway site stays up.
it's "We're going to link to you, do you want server space"
Answer: No
No server space,
Answer: Yes
Server space sold,
the key is they are going to link anyway, so it isn't extortion/protection rackets..
should read where conservatives are dumbasses. Fuck you.
C:\>tracert life.liberty.pursuit-of-happiness
t imessquare.isgay.coma y.com (66.250.110.131), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
Bzzt. you are a fag know nothing windows fuckface.
the proper prompt is #
the real command is traceroute
i dont want windows fags talking about rights and whatnot, because you are fucking stupid and will reflect poorly by submitting fag arguments from your fag sausage fat sexless fingers from your fucking windows box you fucking fag.
and use the -n with traceroute. why resolve every fucking hop. are you wanting to know the names of core routers, fag?
From FreeBSD 5
fbsd# traceroute -n circletimessquare.a.stupid.fucking.fag.and.circle
traceroute to im.a.stupid.fucking.fag.and.circletimessquare.isg
1 154.54.11.1 14.936 ms 14.977 ms 12.014 ms
2 154.54.1.41 11.883 ms 12.080 ms 11.901 ms
3 66.28.4.69 12.044 ms 11.939 ms 11.948 ms
4 66.28.4.94 11.998 ms 12.000 ms 11.911 ms
5 66.28.4.73 210.088 ms 224.946 ms 168.021 ms
7 66.28.64.98 23.881 ms 21.044 ms 23.922 ms
8 66.250.5.222 23.937 ms 23.993 ms 24.022 ms
9 66.250.110.131 24.002 ms 24.013 ms 23.927 ms