Slashdot Subscribers Now See The Future

We're pleased to announce the newest reason for you to subscribe to Slashdot. Besides the ability to suppress banner ads, limit journal postings to friends, and a few plums, Subscribers now see stories posted on Slashdot from The Mysterious Future! These stories are recognizable by the red title bar, and the lack of a time stamp. Subscribers will be able to beat the rush and read the links before everyone else. You can hit the link below and I'll explain exactly what this means. If this appeals to you, you could read the subscriber FAQ or just go subscribe. First off, this feature doesn't change anything for non-subscribers. All Slashdot stories are put into the story queue before you see them. The time stamps on these stories vary tremendously. Sometimes the story is posted days in advance (like, say, a Book Review or an Ask Slashdot where time isn't critical and we post a set number a week) Other stories are "Breaking News" and are posted just seconds before they go live. But most stories are posted 20-30 minutes before they go live. 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 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.

Comments

Re:Hah! First!

[gmuslera]

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.

Awesome

[RedWolves2]

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.

Allowing posting would be bad!

[DavidpFitz]

Another possible feature addition that we're discussing is to allow subscribers to post during this window.

But this would mean 2 things:

(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.

Re:Allowing posting would be bad!

[CmdrTaco]

(1) This is a big issue and one that we would need to consider. I guess what it would probably mean is that you post to future-dated stories at your own risk. You're seeing Slashdot behind the scenes, you should expect some dust.

(2)Moderation is already based towards early posters. But since subscribers will likely only represent a small percentage of all posting, I can't imagine more than a few dozen comments making it inside this window. And right now, the first couple dozen posts are almost always disposable anyway.

We already know pretty reliable that subscribers are statistically better moderators. (we've done a bunch of internal reports, and basically according to M2 results, they are several percent more "Fair" then the population as a whole. I don't think we've ever done any reporting to see if subscribers are better posters. I'm guessing they would be less likely to crapflood, but beyond that, I really would only be speculating.

Re:Allowing posting would be bad!

[CmdrTaco]

We've considered such a ranking system, but we're scared that we'd create another video game out of Slashdot. We learned a lot from Karma. Users started abusing it. It's purpose was misunderstood and turned into a game. It was never really intended to be that- it was intended to be a useful indicator for moderation eligibility and a few extra features on the site.

So any ranking system we designed would have to be very carefully thought through. Frankly I don't really care to see "The top 100 Slashdot Users" on a web page... but I would like to see "The Top 100 Recent Good Journals" or something. Personally I'm not interested in "Is Joe Good or Bad" I'm interested in "Is this journal a good journal and worth my time to read". Hence the threshold based moderation system. Someday perhaps we'll apply that to journals somehow.

Beating the slashdot effect?

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

Gee, I'm sure all the web sites that are suddenly and violently knocked off the web will be happy to know that slashdot is doing this for their subscribers. This seems a little like saying, well, my movie theater is quite flammable, so if you pay me $5 more, I'll make sure to seat you by an exit so you can get out before everyone else dies. It doesn't change the core problem, i.e., that slashdot is posting stories where they know from the outset that the effect is going to be a massive web server smackdown, and providing neither a mirror or a warning to anyone that this is about to happen.

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.

Re:But...

[gallen1234]

Information may want to be free but bandwidth is another story.

Reasons for not subscribing.

[thatguywhoiam]

I like Slashdot a lot. I come here every day. Despite the common flames (and downright freaky displays of human frailty around -1), I think the group consensus here is fantastic. It's often very funny, and I like knowing what all the really smart mf'ers think about certain issues and topics. I feel smarter for reading Slashdot.

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.

Re:Reasons for not subscribing.

[dasmegabyte]

Allow me to rebutt this.

I don't care about dupes and I don't care about typos. I've seen much worse than this on so-called professional news sites...in fact, I'd have to say that when compared to our local fox affilitate, Slashdot looks like the goddamn BBC.

I don't visit slashdot for the regurgitated, puree'd content. I visit slashdot for the clout. I visit for the semi-high profile interviews and the "insider" info.

And most importantly, I visit for the posts. If slashdot were just Drudge for technolosers, I wouldn't come back. But we have millions of intelligent people with degrees and experience chomping at the bit to respond to everything that gets posted. At the same time, we have a bunch of assholes waiting to post the funniest eye-opening responses they can. And we've trolls willing to play devil's advocate and to hell with karma, they're going to counterargue just to get us talking.

Slashdot is like a giant block party for subversive loner technology geniuses. It's hip, it's grooving, and if they want $15, they'll get it from me.

This BS about dupe checking, typos? Come on. It's not that important, and it adds to the "news of the second" quality that makes /. so appealing.

Re:But I don't see any ads now ...

[CmdrTaco]

Suppressing ads from servers is a fairly common practice. Probably 2-3% of our users do it. And that number will likely grow as browsers make it very easy to do so. Thats why we're adding plums unrelated to advertising on Slashdot. We knew that the Ad Suppression filter was really more of an Honor System kind of thing since using Junkbuster or even Mozilla's built in blocking is trivial for even the most competant of users.

However we hope that enough of our users will think beyond that and try to support us. Programmers, Editors, OC3s and Racks of web servers cost money.

Immediate "Contact the Author" form?

[dschuetz]

...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...)

You know what would make me subscribe?

[ChaoticCoyote]

I'll be more likely to subscribe when I see:

• Professional Journalism
• Proper use of English
• Less flippant editorializing by the staff
• More in-depth, investigative reporting

Being able to see articles "early" just doesn't motivate me to send money.

Re:Hah! First! [privoxy, transproxy, and regex]

[Bill Privatus]

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...