Slashdot Mirror
LA Times Pulls Wikitorial, Blames Slashdot
ubermiester writes "The LA Times pulled down it's "beta" wikitorial after people began inserting obscene content faster than the editors could remove it. Though there is nothing on the LA Times editorial page or in the general coverage, the NY Times notes (free reg req) the fact that the bulk of the vandalism occurred after a posting about the wikitorial appeared on Slashdot and goes on to quote a member of the LA Times editorial staff as saying, "Slashdot has a tech-savvy audience that, to be kind, is mischievous and to be not so kind, is malicious". " Apparently Michael Newman thinks that all half a million daily Slashdot readers are malicious, although I personally would guess more like a 60:40 split myself *grin*.
I bet the entire article was changed to "frist post".
Those mean old Slashdot readers, pointing out the obvious all teh time!
It would have happened sooner or later, they should thank us for finding the bugs right away.
Raydude
I am proud of Slashdot
(wipes tear from eye)..
I just knew someday, you'd make something of yourself...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I am the evil twin.
one bad apple spoils the bunch.
Myself, I bet it was the Crips.
12:50 - press return.
I've collected much more information and some critique of the LA Times' experiment here: Wikitorial Post Mortem
Let's proof that /.-ers are better people.
Create a slashwiki and see if it lasts longer.
Couldn't be more than 65/35!
Seriously though, you're going to have malicious people do that kind of thing anywhere, but to blame one particular site's users for that kind of behavior is just wrong. "Tech-Savvy" doesn't mean malicious. Its like the adjectives Yellow and Big.
Just because you're Big, doesn't mean you're Yellow, but there are definitely some Big Yellow folks out there.. (Big Bird?) Ok, maybe that was a bad analogy...
And they said zombies weren't real!
Of course that was going to happen. I wouldn't exactly blame the slashdot crowd (although I'm sure a number of "I'm 12!!! Look how much I can swear!!!" slashdot readers and even some other readers at least though of it), because a major paper gets a lot of readers anyways. And since posts are moderated here, most have probably begun to realize "Hey, people don't like trolling and obscenity..."
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
After the novelty wears off, the juveniles move on to the next place. Here in CA, school just got out for the summer. Coincidence?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
And you're proud of that? I'm not sure it's as funny for everyone who might have benefitted from the service that's been taken down.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
They should have had some type of obscene checker before you post.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
Now everyone is going to think we're all a bunch of goatse men or something...
Getting lectured on ethics from the staff of the New York Times is interesting.
Someone you trust is one of us.
It sounds like Michael Newman is just jealous that Slashdot has a MUCH larger viewing audience than his rag!
No one can stop the slashdot idiots except MacGyver.
That was me, sorry about that. I thought I was on Wikipedia.
Lets face it, slashdot breeds trolls. I see two reasons for it:
1.) The using a shotgun to kill mice method for banning users. To paraphrase: Banning entire subnets to catch a single troll, and, therefore, banning tons of innocents in the process. They use vinegar to lure bees instead of honey. Lets face it, the moderation system isn't good, and its just forcing more and more malcontent and loss of posting.
2.) AC's. Really, that's what kills slashdot. If AC posting was removed, there would be a lot less crap. Making an ID is free, easy, and doesn't require you to give out any personal information. Why not tie stuff to an ID so its easier to get rid of the crap? Instead of IP bans, you can setup an IP 'greylist' that means if you create an account from the greylist, they can't post much or have to wait a couple days after registration to post.
Instead of trying to suspend everyones posting to stop trolls, how about we use a little insight and postive effects to combat trolling and crapflooding?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Half million users cannot be that bad.
Burn teh NYT burn burn burn!
*grin*
All things considered, I think I understand *why* they say such things, but given their place as a public news source, I think *where* they are saying it is just totally inappropriate.
The *why* is quite simple, their techs and point-haired's have probably gone nuts trying to get accurated site-visitation numbers, and every time a story goes up on slashdot, we simply obliterate the accuracy of their logging. So I don't expect them to be happy with slashdot.
I *do* however expect them to be professional journalists. Perhaps I expect too much?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
It would be interesting to see how many of those posts were made by users who visited the site by clicking on the actual link in the Slashdot story.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
On a more serious note, it'd be nice to know why the LA Times had these problems but services like Wikipedia have generally avoided it. I'm going to make a guess that Wikipedia et al have had to put up with it but over time have (a) become boring as targets for defacers and (b) have grown to add procedures that discourage simple defacing in this way.
Unlike Slashdot, whose moderation and IP restriction systems seem to consistantly avoid doing anything about the problems while causing the rest of us no end of grief.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
powerful movement.. its like cyber terrorism, but what we do is not illegal !
Excuses, excuses... I blame Canada.
We shouldn't have done what we did. On the other hand, however, what we did isn't anything out of the norm for the internet in general.
So them complaining about it is akin to a new car owner complaining that all this oil, grease and gas is making their engine not look shiny.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Wiki's have their purpose. Collaborative story writing? Sure. Editorials and news stories? Maybe not - after all, an editorial is suppose to be a group of people's opinion, so in that case you want a "read-only" wiki with "write" ability to a very small subset.
What the major newspapers should do however is allow comments (a la slashdot style - include user moderation and some basic spam/troll protection). This would let them to two things:
1. Make more money off of ads (Google or otherwise) as people come back to see who's commented on their comments.
2. Readers can point out errors or omissions - yes, this can have an echo chamber effect such as when a group of liberals and conservatives fight it out about who's got the bigger penis and/or breasts, but overall it might be useful if a anonymous commentator could point a reporter towards another source or more information, or bring another opinion in.
Again, wiki's can be a great thing, but perhaps the format they chose was not the best one. And to blame Slashdot readers is a little silly - I'm sure there were many, many other people who wanted to just grief the article to death. Slashdot just helped people know about it.
Of course, this is just my opinion - I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Unfortunatly enought, users tend to have this kind of actitude, participating only to gain the spotlight, even if for reasons not related with the content it self.
(Cinical remark) Good thing we have Slashdot moderators to give a zero score to this kind of participation.
I am portuguese. If you think my written english is bad, try posting in portuguese!
Or that you'd use such redundant and repetitive adjectives.
It's as censored as a Chinese blog... and congrats to slashdot. THis may be the first time a site was taken down by slashdot users without it being a bandwidth issue.
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
or if you just don't use/know about bugmenot (w00t karma!)
By ALICIA C. SHEPARD
Published: June 21, 2005
A Los Angeles Times experiment in opinion journalism lasted just two days before the paper was forced to shut it down Sunday morning after some readers repeatedly posted obscene photos.
On Friday, the paper introduced an online feature it called a wikitorial, asking Web site readers to improve a 1,000-word editorial, "War and Consequences," on the Iraq war.
Readers were invited to insert information, make changes or come to different conclusions. The model was based on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia where anyone can add facts or update information.
"It sounds nutty," said an introduction to the wikitorial in Friday's paper. "Plenty of skeptics are predicting embarrassment; like an arthritic old lady who takes to the dance floor, they say, The Los Angeles Times is more likely to break a hip than be hip. Nevertheless, we proceed. We're calling this a 'public beta,' which is a fancy way of saying we're making something available even though we haven't completely figured it out."
What they had not planned for was hard-core pornography, which the paper's software could not ward off. Its open-source wikitorial software allowed readers to post without vetting from editors, who could take down posts only after they appeared. Any contributor who persisted in bad behavior could be blocked.
During most of Friday and Saturday, readers thoughtfully altered the editorial. By Friday afternoon, hundreds had weighed in. Some did add profanity but just as quickly a Web master from the paper took it down.
"Nothing bad happened really until after midnight on Saturday," said Michael Newman, deputy editorial page editor. At 8:32 p.m. Saturday, a posting on www.Slashdot.org, which bills itself as "news for nerds," directed readers to the Times wikitorial.
"Slashdot has a tech-savvy audience that, to be kind, is mischievous and to be not so kind, is malicious," Mr. Newman said. "We were taking stuff down as soon as it went up and staving them off. Finally we had to go to bed. Someone called the newsroom a little bit before 4 a.m. and said there's something bad on your Web site, and so we just took the whole site down."
The paper put a note on the editorial page Web site explaining the disappearance and thanking the "thousands" of people who logged on.
Andres Martinez, editorial page editor, said: "I was heartened by how seriously people took it. I was really impressed by the level of high-minded participation. It's not a total shock it ended up this way. Now we will evaluate what this means."
Taking it as 60% "mischievous" that's 300,000 people to take down a site. Or, if it was meant as 40% that's 200,000. In either case, that's an ample amount of people that editors would not be able to keep up with.
It's funny, because /. itself went through much the same thing. But by careful filtering and moderation, it's been kept reasonably useful. You still have all kinds of morons posting here, but you don't ever have to see them if you don't want to. And we don't even have editors, really.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Good idea, poorly implemented. Had absolutely nothing to do with Slashdot. People fear the unknown and then therefore blame it on them. /shakes head\ wiki's encylopedia seems to be working quite well, what's your problem LA Times? Don't blame us, or what you don't know, just realize that you poorly implemented a good idea and shutup.
Print media soon discovered the real meaning of a free press.
...A lifetime of ridicule here at Slashdot! They have won our FUD-zombies of the day award! *giggle*
the same way Scobliezer does! We're just a bunch of tech savvy and malicious crybabies anyway...
Well we all know that this is all Bullshit but it will become true because he just insulted all of Slashdot. That means you!!!
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
They couldn't take it, took their ball and went home.
Seriously, don't set something like that up on the Internet if you aren't willing to deal with the Trolls.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I mean, when middle school kids are hacking Wikipedia sites, it's not like it's secure in the first place.
/.ers for it should realize that's a Troll and Flamepost mod, and shouldn't be surprised by people's reactions ...
That said, the person blaming
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I say the crap and disinformation that the LA Times puts out, combined with its total lack of perspective (Editor: Hrm...black gay man wants others to pay for sex reassignment surgery, Russia launches nukes on US...let's put the sex reassignment story on top, front-page, nuclear Armageddon page 10, 2 lines of copy.) is malacious to anyone who reads the thing. Of course, LA Times is just the bastard inbred offspring of the NYT, no prize itself.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
A few of you bad apples ruined it for the rest of us.
I hope you're happy.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Just think, we gave you over a year's worth of experience in about 24 hours. We're not malicious, we're efficient!
Hmmm.... I don't know what made them think slashdotters could be malicious [goatse.cx] ?
wikipedia doesn't have these problems /. links to them. ;P
with
maybe the LA times needs to take a lesson
on content management from a open source project.
Again, wiki's can be a great thing...
Yes indeed. Like increasing literacy. Perhaps, if enough take part, one day our people will even know the difference in spelling between possessive and plural.
I spent 3 days pounding that site and all I get is a link to NYTimes?
and are surprised that it degraded so quickly?
Without some form of responsibility (like a diff engine with soul-sucking registration that might actually work, I know.. I know) others are right:
It was going to be sooner or later, and slashdot simply made it sooner.
Wikipedia more or less works because it can contain posts and that its supposed to be factual information, not opinion.
While I applaud their willingness to try something new, I seriously wonder how much thought went into this. Yes, wiki is wonderful and more or less self regulating. On the other hand, check out Slashdot for some of the -1 postings. There is ample evidence that there are MANY idiots out there with nothing better to do than deface cyberspace.
The service was obviously not well thought out, since they weren't able to cope with any kind of volume. They probably expected that the existing editorial staff could handle weeding out the graffiti.
I wondered whether a wiki was a good fit for an editorial site. Seems like the wrong model.
My best essays have always been the result of reacting to reader responses and making alterations. Probably something like the Slashdot Journal page format would have been better for them.
They could even have a real person looking at comments before they were published. The volume would tend to be self-limiting, since you'd be less likely to post comments if they never got out of the reviewer's backlog.
sigs, as if you care.
It took me an hour to discretely put in links to 'hello.jpg'....
"Slashdot has a tech-savvy audience..." Bastard must pay, he doesn't have the write to point out I haven't been with a women since conception. In the words Rick Vaughn from Major League: "Want me to drag him outta here, kick the shit out of him?"
I say we just grow up, be adults and die.
I'm all for pushing the boundaries, collaborating, finding new paradigms, whatever you want to call it. But most people I've met shouldn't be let anywhere near an editor's desk.
That said, it's good to give them a shot. An online community of sufficient size is clearly capable of producing quality content and dealing with constant vandalism. Slashdot and Wikipedia are examples of this. There are just too many people watching to let bad content stay around for long. It's too bad they got hit so early; if there had been a chance for more people to get involved, it probably would be self-regulating.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
You make a editable page available to the PLANET and then are surprised when there's lots of problems with people posting "unacceptable" content?
BS I say...Put that in your required registration and smoke it.
Hey, Slashmob even sounds like Flashmob. It could be used to describe situations like this where a Slashdot mob was able to disrupt something, w/out the classic Slashdotting effect! In other words, if the server is still standing, but things on the target sight have changed due to Slashdot directed users hitting it, it will be due to a Slashmob.
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
OK, who has a screencap of the first GNAA post at LA Times? That's a press release I wanna read.
Also... who the fuck considers the goatse man "hardcore pornography?"
Slashdot is not group think. Some people who visit slashdot may have done that, but don't lump me in with the assholes that do this kind of crap.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Is what he said libelous?
_______
2B1ASK1
I, for one, found the adjectives superfluous and duplicative, in the finest /. tradition.
Actually, you are wrong. The ability to ./
easily respond to posts anonymously makes
an attractive site. Can't you
"registered lusers" configure things
to filter out ACs if you want to. So why the bitching?
With the "group think" mentality that often
seizes things here on slashdot (
witness what happens to anybody that
criticizes Apple or KDE around here),
why would anybody bother to post thoughtful
posts under a registered name?
Now the problem in replying to this article is that if I troll in my reply am I trolling or being insightful? Or, if I try to be insightful about trolls, am I trolling?
...err.. no... ...PROFIT!!!! err...
Damn you Taco! How does one reply to a post about slashdot trolling properly?
In soviet russ...
goatse.. no..
***USER BRAIN OVERLOAD. CORE DUMPED***
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
From the BBC article ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/technology/411 4312.stm ):
The online version of the paper started its "wikitorial" experiment last week. It was meant to give readers a "voice".
It was suspended after it was bombarded with inappropriate material.
The grad student who taught a tech for pre-service teachers class the semester before I took over was researching the use of wikis for his thesis. He kept preaching about how wikis give everyone a voice.
It was finally one of my history teaching majors who pointed out, "Wikis only give a voice to the last person who spoke."
Yes, you can look in the document history and all that, but who does? If the last person to speak was a liar, or wanted to put up some p0rn, or even wanted to spam the page with viagra adverts, that's what you get.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
I dislike about 99.9 of what AC's post. But if you remove them SLashdot will wither, and it won't even solve the problem as you'll just see a lot of brand-new users posting the same crap.
Indeed having the AC outlet gives people who want to mess around a way to post that is very easy for me to filter if I desire. If you start making these people register SLashdot will become far more unreadable. Slashdot has developed about the best compromise there is, which is why it's still very popular and widely read.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know that every group has its' trolls but, I'm not sure I could classify us (if they can make a generalization to slam on us, I can make one to redeem us as well.) as malicious. Let's think about this for a second:
True: We have coined the term slashdotted for killing a site's bandwidth cap through many users clicking through.
True: Above mentioned slashdotting has given 'free press' to sites that may not have become as known as they did without the link.
True: Reader evaluation and commentary can (keyword: can) provide insightful information about a given topic before downloading/buying/reading...
True: Slashdotted content can also speed up the process of bug reporting or weak features of a product.
Okay, so we've murdered some bandwidth in the past. If someone's wiki got spammed with porn, they should have set up a better moderation system. Either they find out within two days that their system wasn't effective or it would happen eventually after it was established as a normal page (thus making users cry out WTF when the page goes down).
I wouldn't call us malicious...more like hyper enthusiastic.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
a half-million slashdot monkeys typing away couldn't create a shakespearean play? Oh well, there goes that theory. I am going back to my cubie/cage and throw some crap at the boss.
These are not the
Group Based moderation + Friend Based moderation = future. Soapboxes will be no longer reserved for the loud and simple, but smart.
God spoke to me.
Today, when reading slashdot, turn on your stereo with M.Jackon's song and sing "we are bad, we are bad, we are really, really bad..."
Is that 60% mischievous and 40% malicious, or the other way around?
"You're not balancing your internal energy with the environment." -Gary Busey
I can't even SPELL mulishus???
-- Witty Tagline --
Every wiki has these problems, linked to by slashdot or otherwise.
. . . root of all evil . . .
and we're proud of it.
Pretty Pictures!
or Jack O'Neill
Not foreseeing that this would happen proves that the LA Times knows nothing about the internet. The opportunity to post pornography on the website of one of the biggest newspapers in the country would certainly never be overlooked by the Beavis and Buttheads of the world.
Blaming Slashdotters for it is even stupider.
Talk about a failure to accept responsibility!
"If The L.A. Times knew what they were talking about, they'd know better than blaming /. -readers, as they (we) are the least likely clientele to reduce ourselves to that kind of activity."
*HaHaHa* *wipes tears from eyes*
Pure comedy gold.
that's right!! I suggest we immediately lobby to have ourselves censured and wiretapped by the FBI to ensure we don't get into any more terrorist mischief!! You just can't trust us!! there's no telling WHAT we "geeks" are capable of!!! It's high time that decent tech-fearing people got together and stopped us before it's too late!!!!
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
"Slashdot has a tech-savvy audience that, to be kind, is mischievous and to be not so kind, is malicious" I think that most of the "tech-savvy" would be a little more creative than profanity. Such as an elaborate joke involving monkeys, chicken-wire and a bottle of tequilla. And the only one to rightly consider us malicious would be the monkey.
The belief that you know a thing is a most perfect way to prevent learning.
As someone pointed out in the original article, could this have just been a ploy to discredit on line journalism and drive up paper subscriptions?
Article Translation: "You kids with your damn computers!"
News Flash
There be dragons in them there hills!
WTF, you take a wiki live without fault or tolerance testing.
Your IT department should be ashamed and probably will be as soon as they stop laughing at the post the copied before the site went down.
Well, I think if you were to actually turn on the power to the computer it may work a little better.
They should of used a moderated comment system such as slashcode for this.
Now my copy and paste mousing finger, that is a different story! :D
Like the beaver, it's just Dam one thing after another
I, for one, blame it on the boogie.
I certainly don't think the reaction from the LA Times is a realistic one, but the response you put down (CmdrTaco) turned my perception of /. on it's ear (from a place to get interesting topical reading to a house of punditry, for a moment at least).
Be aware of the power you have: your comment "although I personally would guess more like a 60:40 split myself" gave me the impression that you might be playing demagogue.. Perhaps it's my literal mind, but 60% of several tens of thousands is no small number. I don't think you're actually doing this, but even jokingly suggesting to the population of readership that they are unruly might have some affect: You accept that activity rather than rebuking it, and well, people do read the site and pay attention to your words.
_B
Bad Slashdot! Bad! Now sit in the corner.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
That would only be viable if we didn't have so many mods with their own agendas. There have been many times where posts have been made (and a few by me) that had no malice or intent to start any kind of war. They were merely opinions that just so happened to go against the /. grain, but not presented in an adversarial way. It didn't take any time at all for them to be modded as troll, flamebait, or overrated simply because they were not going with the flow of the /. majority.
As long as these kinds of intolerant mods exist whose sole purpose (so it would seem) is to censor down those posts that they merely disagree with, which of course goes against that person's karma, culpability is not necessarily a positive thing. I know that the metamod functionality is meant to keep this sort of thing in check, but considering how quickly non-inflammatory yet dissenting posts get censo^H^H^H^H^Hmodded down, there should be a better way. Apparently, many mods have decided to ignore Slashdot's recommendation to save mod points for elevating those posts that should be elevated.
I agree that trolls need to be kept in check. In that case, those with excessive, provable trolling (above and beyond just moderator opinion) should have their accounts locked completely; however, I also think that mods who use negative moderation frequently (or even exclusively as many mods claim to do) should not be given mod privileges as often. Being cuplable for what you post is one thing; being targeted because your post doesn't necessarily agree with the Slashdot grain is another. It's difficult to have the former when you're subject to the latter.
Just wait and this post will likely become proof of that. I said something negative about certain mods in this post, so it will most likely be shot down in rating.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
slashdot continues to promote the stupid jokes with high moderation scores. Is it the 'ratings' race? That gives the posters a warm feel of acceptance.
Most of the jokers have no respect for anything. I am not surprised slashdot is filled with jerks.
I don't read the comments any more.
The first reply to this post (if any) will be some stupid comment on the correctness of the language - who cares? you guys are a bunch of ass holes. It's a pity I loose some of the good comments from some of the smart people around.
Let's DDOS them! That'll show them that they can't impugn the good names of Slashdot readers!
Try this link: irony.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Which way?
The article says they went to sleep. What do they expect? a bunch of techies that sleep? HA
Affordable Business Web Hosting with a Personal touch.
Lots of people are calling this LA Times experiment a failure of understanding of what a Wiki should be used for. That using it for an editorial is wrong, but using it for news articles is okay.
I call bullshit.
Who are we to dictate what a Wiki should and shouldn't be used for? Just because we're accustomed to seeing it used to accumulate and summarize the combined knowledge of many people doesn't mean it can't be used to summarize the combined opinions of many people.
Just what if you could use wikis to see in a general way not only what the summarized knowledge of a subject is, but also what the summarized opinion is as well? A topic initiator would post his thoughts and then others would chime in with their own. Some people might remove opinions they disagree with and others might just add counterpoints. It's all very interesting to think about and I think the LA Times experiment was a Good Thing (TM). But, of course childish idiots from Slashdot decided to screw it up.
We sit here and rant and rave about making things more open and increasing communication and understanding between people and then certain members of our community act like asses and destroy something that's trying to do the very thing we've been preaching about.
Here's what I have to say to those who defaced this experiment in democracy.
"You're a jerk, Dent. A real knee-biter."
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Uhh, thats the point of community moderation and the comment rating system that Slashdot uses.
You think the slashdot editing team could edit out the trolls and such?
Not a chance.
Had the LA Times fully understood the issues they were facing they would have seen, they should have started with Slashcode.
Wax on, wax off baby!
This post might get annihilated, but I'm wondering if, as they did with Wikipedia, GNAA launched an assault on the LA Times wiki.
/. and share the postmortem for everyone to see.
Too bad LA Times admins won't come over here to
Fact: The trouble started after a /. posting about Wikitorial.
So what? All this proves is that the Slashdot posting and the malicious kiddies happened to coincide. Unless the LA Times editorial staff has proof that the people who posted the obscenities WERE, in fact, /. readers, they don't have much of a case.
Nothing to see here, folks; move along.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
It would have happened sooner or later, they should thank us for finding the bugs right away.
Well a big fat thanks to the hordes of slashdot, eh? Mischeivious, us? No, not really, we're as much victims of the same sort or maliciousness. Ever seen the trolls here before they get modded down? You think these people actually get something out of slashdot other than some place to post their rubbish and feel 1337?
To allege these crimes are from the actual readership or slashdot is tarring us with a brush and I don't much care for it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
... all your blame are not belong to us. Chill!
Even if they used slash code, the same exact problem would have manefestied itself.
/. mod system only works as well as it does because /. is, as you say, a community and the "sane" outnumber the "jerks" by probably 100:1
The
Just throwing up a wiki does not immediately create a community. It could takes weeks, months or years befoire the sane community outnumbered the jerks.
The stated problem was that vandalism was ocurring at a rate that was faster than the sane people could prevent it. Until there was a sufficient number of people that cared enough about the site to actually perform the required level of moderation, the vandal problem would be the same.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
"What is interesting to me is that /. has some defenses against crapflooding and trolling. These defenses have been built up over years and years to react to new threats."*
Uh, huh. We've had the "To confirm you're not a script" for years.
*Love the "years-old" skinner moderation system too.
Oh please, like the staff of the LA times hasn't seen tubgirl or Goatse.cx before.
C.
Wiki for editorial is like dial telephones at a leper colony. It's the wrong technology. All you "I'm a leper and I'm offended /.ers", those who stupidly cut off their fingers with a saw or blew them up with a home made bomb, and you thalidomide babies hush up. I'm not 'bashing' you so don't you 'whine'.
/. knockoff for independent reporters. Leave the newz for nerdz to /. and let all the Bush snorts coke, Carter smokes dope stuff have a ride over at NYT. It would blow /. out of the water in terms of posters/readers. But no, they have to complain about 'us', a bunch of ignorant young pups, a few sharp kidz, and a few old geezers such as myself, who are trying to safe the world through cultivated BS. Such a threat we are that we leave the poor NYT arts and letters crowd quaking in their hip boots and suffering steaming capuchino soaked codpieces.
What NYT should have done, and what would be a lot of fun, would be a
Bite me NYT. Go fab another story for your brain dead BA readership.
Wiki is for colaboration. ?. is for BS. NYT is for chrome plated shit.
Why not put the blame on the tools trolls use and their root cause? Botnets are the real tech savy tool used to crapflood and vandalize content. Without Microsoft operating systems open for all manner of abuse, there would be no botnet and the net would be a much quieter place. A Wikitorial might even work in a world like that, despite it being the wrong tool.
Old media is not stupid, it's malicious. More reason to not go through loops and hoops to read the NYT and LA Times.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Wikipedia disallows the posting of images hosted on other sites to prevent goatse-spamming. It wouldn't have been a bad idea to do this on the LATwiki.
However, the main problem, from an anti-vandal perspective, was the lack of moderation. At one point in time (thankfully pre-goatse), I was single-handedly reverting the various vandalism that was ongoing. Most of it would have been easily blockable had there been an active sysop (it was originating from a mere two user accounts). If you're going to have a highly publicized wiki, you owe it to yourself to have 24-hour moderation.
I agree that trolls need to be kept in check. In that case, those with excessive, provable trolling (above and beyond just moderator opinion) should have their accounts locked completely;
NAZI
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
If there is one thing that I can say of a Slashdot reader, it is that that reader has the freedom to chose what they want to read and how they want to interpret it, rather than the 'pre-digested' and outright biased reporting that is available from the media at large. This openness is the key to developing the independent, 'out of the box' thinking; the generalists of the evolving age of Information and Knowledge.
So kudos to Slashdot and their outspoken and many faceted readers.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
I'm a Wikinews editor, and was kind of interested in the LA Times experiment: over at the English Wikinews, we've been avoiding editorials since they're so personal in nature, and not NPOV.
I ended up on the Wikitorial wiki soon after it opened, and proceeded to help with the vandalism, and with providing some navigation, new user help, etc. Jimbo Wales (founder of Wikipedia) was also around from time to time, as were other Wikinews and Wikipedia people, trying to grow the wikitorial from a one page thing to something actually usable by a group of people.
I've written up about my personal view on the wikitorial experiment. Take a gander.
-Ilya Haykinson
Well fuck you too!
There really are a lot of assholes online. People say and do things they never would in person. Some delight in trying to be as big a jerk as they can and causing as much trouble as they can. If you aren't used to that environment, it can really shock you. The RvB PSA on teh topic is particularly appropriate, but I can't find a link to it right now.
At any rate, while they shouldn't be scapegoating Slashdot, I don't blame them for being supprised and angry. It is amazing the amount of crap some people online will spew and how far they'll go to wreck things for everyone else.
It was just a little perl script I whipped up. No need to get so sore about it.
Wikipedia is defaced almost constantly. As a result, I can't even post from my University becuase of a ban in effect because someone on our resnet either posted something that was not well received (like how unpopular opinions are modded down on Slashdot and eventually results in IP bans) or blatantly defaced it.
I've clicked thru Wikipedia links posted in Slashdot articles to only be greeted with pictures of genitalia.
Wikipedia and other wiki things are cool, but until they figure out how to get a lid on these things, there will be people out there wary of "wiki" anything becuase of maliciousness that can occur. Just imagine, what would the public think if kids doing a research assignment, with an directions from the teacher to visit a Wiki article and that article got defaced with something obscene?
Maybe the LA Times should've used slashcode instead of a wiki? Atleast the pr0n posts could've been moderated into oblivion.
http://slashdot.org/~tf23/journal
Here's a radical idea for LA Times:
How about reviewing each wikitorial submission *BEFORE* it gets posted on the web site?
I know, I should've patented this idea before suggesting it but Amazon already filed for it an hour ago.
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
:-)
If there's a situation where this old saying fits perfectly that would be it.
After all of the DOS attacks we've performed, you'd think they'd have called us that earlier.
Put a tray of 100 twinkies out in times square and tell the bums they can only have one to eat. Then expect they'll follow your instructions. And you gotta know that at least one of the twinkies will be used for something other than eating. It's absurd to believe that the world at large has the same goals as you for a given project. It could be Chocodile kinda crowd. Then the twinkies can be ignored and they move on to something harder like RingDings. Then where are you?! Damn those Twinkies and their evil lure...
I don't know why exactly, but I do. Whoever it was at the LA times that was reponsible for the wiki's implementation clearly had no idea what they were doing. It may be that the Slashdot community is absolutely the last group on earth to whom you would want to expose a poorly protected website, both because of our technical savy and particular sense of humour. But really, what the hell do they expect. This would definitley, 100% for sure happened without slashdot's help, it just might not have happened so quickly and brutally.
I laughed harder than I have in weeks when I read that there was a bunch goatse on their wiki. It's priceless. Priceless!
As many others have pointed out, they COULD do this right; Slashdot.org has been dealing with slashdotters for a long time. The Times acts surprised that their bare unprotected forum was flooded with pr0n, but it's hard for me to imagine that they have NOBODY capable of dealing with this situation like an adult.
My guess is that they get shamed into wiping away their tears and trying again.
NY Times is dying
We shouldn't have done what we did. On the other hand, however, what we did isn't anything out of the norm for the internet in general.
First: "We"? I didn't do any of that.
Secondly: "Someone else did it too!" is not a valid excuse to do something you know ain't right.
Except if you ever see someone jumping off a cliff... in which case I urge you to follow immediatly.
You can't take the sky from me...
The LAT has an editorial section, letters to the editors, and editorials posing as "news". Why do they need an on-line editorial as well?
[Insert pithy quote here]
a site similar to Slashdot last week was accused to be:
Almost a forge for all the hackers and the paid crackers of the web, considering that they are always first to lack regarding the web users.
Here's the link (in italian)
http://punto-informatico.it/p.asp?i=53477&r=PI
(dramatic pause)
KAHNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
Just a thought here.. but maybe you're getting modded down because you come across as a complete asshole?
I started out caring about karma, eventually realized it made NO difference, stopped moderating and meta-moderating, and now I'm much happier.
I can still find the interesting and insightful content on Slashdot and I'm convinced NO moderation system on a public site like Slashdot could ever make any difference.
There is still good content, and still lots of trolling, but I just ignore the trolling.
And I'm happy. Happier than I would be if I gave a crap and started trying to "fix things".
That way lies madness.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
They don't. And I don't mean that they don't handle it because everything works itself out. I mean that, IMHO, wikis don't work for controversial topics. There are unfortunately plenty of examples of this on wikipedia, to the point where some articles are rambling and worthless. If you watch, the well-meaning are overrun by the tide of trolls/ideologues/etc. It's amusing to watch, but it makes me wonder why wikipedia even tries to have articles on controversial topics.
What you forget, is that by cross-correlating the content of different posts belonging to the same account, you might at the end find out a lot about the author. That's not possible with AC posts - there are many AC's. Of course, some one could create an account MrAC, post the password publicly, but then we would be back where we started, wouldn't we?
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
What right is it, exactly? My right to not be poo-pooed by some news reporter? Boo fucking hoo.
Instead of hiring microsoft to do their censorship work, the chinese government might consider hiring slashdot. ...
What a nice AND democratical way to censor sites: you just submit a link to slashdot and wait for the servers to melt or for the isp to ban the poor bandwidth sucking fellow.
Wait, they don't have to pay to achieve this, oh too bad! No profits for slashdot!
Blackmail?
Here: http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html
user@host$ diff
Sure, the newspaper's wiki service was sure to be abused, and sure, Slashdot excelerated that abuse. But still, what a smug response for the author who posted this discussion topic! He seems to delight in the fact that we can't have a free and open society because some people are bent on destroying nice things.
this can have an echo chamber effect such as when a group of liberals and conservatives fight it out about who's got the bigger penis and/or breasts
Let's put this to bed right now. Liberals have the bigger breasts and penises!
This is because we are more willing to have them surgically altered.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Hi Mom!
That wiki proved to be a complete mockery of Big Media and the "conservative" and "liberal" labels they place on everything. We were able to clearly see how well their attempts to divide the American people up into specific, rival groups has worked. Indeed, very few of the wikiers sought after the truth; instead they just fought mindlessly for their Democrat or Republican faction. And that of course is what the Big Media wants.
Remember, Big Media exists solely to make money via the sale of advertisements. They are not interested in the truth, or offering real news. They want strife. They want conflict. That is what sells media plastered with ads. And to foster such strife they have partitioned the American public into two very specific groups that can be adhered to without much thought.
That wiki did nothing but plainly show the conflict they intentionally create. The quest was not for the truth, it was for strife. Had they not shut it down, it would have been painfully clear to all the divisions they have intentionally created within the ranks of the American citizenry.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I believe this is the one you where thinking of.
Didn't I also head all about the wiki editorial pages on NPR on Sunday? As in, another huge audience hearing about it within the last few days?
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Tell people before you link to their site. Maybe, just maybe, they would have done a better job if you had done yours. Editor.. pfft.. more like "PHB".
Bigger than your normal everyday "mischeveous" slash-dotting. They actually canned the page.
And why start out with a controversial topic like the Iraq War?? It was Father's Day, they should have started out with a 'Thank You to Dads' or some other softball to see if the wiki-concept could handle that.
Personally, I can't see a wiki working for an editorial. A wiki could work for movie reviews or restaurant reviews maybe... but what's the value of using it for an editorial?? What they should do is model evil old slashdot and its moderation system... heck maybe even use the slashcode itself... or better yet hire Taco as a consultant. They could post their staff editorials with slashdot style discussion. Maybe even experiment by modifying the moderation to mark a comment red or blue.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
/. is (was?) one of the most modern and intelligent tech communities in the history of 1995-2005. People go to places that are considered cool where other cool people hang out, but the real action is here (or at least was until it became an ad site).
/. community, much bigger that a couple of individuals who think they have something to say. So you have to respect the AC community.
ACs are a big part of this
Congrats on your +points.
Keep saying things that represent the opinion of the majority to get more.
Maybe one day you'll become a moderator!
I'm listening to Rush right now at 1:12 CDT. First time I've ever heard him mention Slashdot. He's talking about this story now. He attributed the defacement to a small minority of the population, but read the L.A. Times quote about /.
As an aside, Rush does have the largest subscriber base of an podcasting service on the web, is a Mac advocate and no stranger to technology as his deafness requires his show to be transcribed in real time so he can "hear" his callers.
They used a basic wiki. Everything annoying that can happen in that setup did. Why are wikis like wikipedia and all the programming wikis able to survive? I know wikipedia allows you to subscribe to an entry so you can be notified if it's modified, but is that all there is? Just a situation where there was so little modifiable on the paper's wiki that all the bad tendencies overwhelmed them? Not that I'd really mind porn on their site, but knowing slashdot it was all goatse.cx
Rather than looking simple and honest, why not just BE simple and honest?
It's simpler.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I don't think you need to look at just /. for bad behavior. The entire Internet is rife with people trying to do unkind things to other people via there computer systems.
This is why we have firewalls, virus protection, and password protection on our websites.
If anyone thinks the Internet is anything but a malicious frontier, then just put a Windows 98 OS online without a firewall or virus protection and see how long it takes it to become a zombie PC or just hacked to death.
I'd trust a perfect stranger on the sidewalk with my laptop more than the Internet.
http://chicagodave.wordpress.com
just what they are doing. Those who have build successful online communitiy discussion sites (and yes I consider Slash to be very successful) have invested a lot of time and energy getting it right.
One would think a high profile exercise like this would be worth a few bucks getting some real talent in on the ground floor to insure success.
They saw some buzzwords and jumped in and got wet.
Blogging because I can...
So, was it those wascawy Wepubwicans who "defaced" the LA Slimes wikitorial? Who screwed it up so bad that it had to be taken down after only two days?
Was it those darn Religious Right fruitbats who did it? Darn them all to heck!
Nope. Porno posters. Dickheads who most likely vote (wait for it) DemocRat when they bother to vote at all.
Low life, in other words. Scum. People with the social graces of a goat and the smell to match. They kind of people who will piss in the soup pot when no one is watching.
As usual.
Nevermind that it was badly done, the message is it can't work. People often blind themselves.
You mispelled "the". :-)
You misspelled "misspelled".
You misquoted 'mispelled' as "misspelled" to indicate that 'misspelled' was misspelled as 'mispelled'.
I thought he misquoted 'mispelled' as "misspelled" to indicate that 'misspelled' was misspelled as 'misspelled', not misquoted 'mispelled' as "misspelled" to indicate that 'misspelled' was misspelled as 'mispelled', which would be an error on your part.
Let me know if this is at all fuzzy.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
That some people are idealistic and would like to live in a world without assholes?
Dark Helmet: Careful you idiot. I said across her nose, not up it!
Laser Gunner: Sorry sir. Doing my best.
Dark Helmet: Who made that man a gunner?
Major Asshole: I did sir. He's my cousin.
Dark Helmet: Who is he?
Colonel Sandurz: He's an asshole sir.
Dark Helmet: I know that! What's his name?
Colonel Sandurz: That is his name sir, Major Asshole.
Dark Helmet: And his cousin? Colonel Sandurz: He's an asshole too sir: Gunner's mate, first class, Philip Asshole.
Dark Helmet: How many assholes we got on this ship anyhow?
Crew: YO!!!!
Dark Helmet: I knew it, I'm surrounded by assholes!
[Dark Helmet pulls his mask down]
Dark Helmet: Keep firing assholes!!
You asshole trolls. Juvenile little disrespectful twits. Slashdot should do good, not evil. You've been slowly spoiling this site for years, now you are giving all slashdotters a bad name.
Thanks for spoiling an inroad between the new and old media, dickwads.
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
In Soviet Russia, shit is full of YOU!
This is totally true. And if you newcomers to the site dig through the archives you can find many valuable in insightful discussions on this and other topics.
AC posts are good for:
- leaking info that might have consequenses to the person doing the leaking
- challenging the groupthink
- theraputic posts (face it, we need 'em sometimes)
- capturing casual insights that we might otherwise miss if registration were a requirement.
It's all been hashed out here before. The mod system and later the filtering system were designed to allow each user the choice necessary to get the experience they need from Slashdot.
The primary idea was to keep the discussion totally open to all who want to participate. Closing things down with registration, etc... hurts in that we miss out on potentially great things. So it's all here, ASCII art and all. I've personally benefitted from a few AC gems in the time I've been reading. (And that's nearly the entire time the site was up and running --just put off getting an account.)
This site embodies the concept of free speech and set the bar long ago for how it should be done. Rather than dumb down a great community, dig in and learn from it and be better for it.
Blogging because I can...
I also think that mods who use negative moderation frequently (or even exclusively as many mods claim to do) should not be given mod privileges as often.
;-)
I think there might be something like that already - I only ever moderate posts upwards, and those I do mod up are usually low-rated posts (which I may or may not agree with) which I feel are likely to promote varied, interesting, non-ranting discussion. They often go on to be +5 posts, but that's not my fault.
Anyhow, I've been getting moderation points at least once a week for several months now. Coincidence?
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
I have a thesis on this. I call it The Vicious Circle of Slashdot:
1. If you have good spelling, your grammar is bad.
2. If you have good grammar, your spelling is bad.
3. If you're smart, you write like a chimp.
4. If you're dim, you write like Shakespeare.
5. If you spend your spare time writing up posts like these on Slashdot, there is little hope for you indeed.
That's "its" not "it's." Sorry, its just one of my pet peeves
Slashdot has a tech-savvy audience that, to be kind, is mischievous and to be not so kind, is malicious
/. user. Now they think I am worthless. Oh and I just received a subpeona because since I am a /. user I am malicious and probably caused some detriment to some company. My lawyer will p0wn your lawyer.
Ok so he is saying:
1) 'To be kind' we are tech-savvy. insulting our technical skills
2) "is mischievous"..."malicious"
Thank you for degregading my technical skills. I just lost a client who saw that and knows I am a
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
You have to question the L.A. Times reserach into this project if they weren't expecting it to be mention on /. and then not expect all the criminal elements from /. to pay them a visit. They may have better luck if they limited themselves to paying subscribers.
/. retards would have a field day. I'm fat and ugly, so what?
This is one reason why I don't have a commentary system on my website. If I did, all the fat-loving AC
The only way communities get to be of sufficient size is by the hard work and dedication of those wanting it to get there.
The newspaper just threw this thing out and hoped for the best. That will almost always fail. Had they enlisted interested volunteers and let them do their thing, they would likely have something great started right now.
I don't think they really grok community just yet. They are thinking free editing and content and other bonuses that they can then publish and benefit from. What they don't get is that something has to be given in trade for that.
Pick dollars, control, freedom, etc...
They didn't invest, thus got no return.
Blogging because I can...
wtf do you expect when you use a open-access cms (wiki).
/.'ers, or should be fired for even making such a stupid suggestion in the 1st place.
LA Times, and most other wiki-users need to either STFU, or Wake up and get with the program!
Either set it to allow moderation, or continue to be stupid and allow anyone to alter the content.
Anyone who recommends wiki's for public use on their website, should only expect this sort of behaviour, whether or not your visitors are
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Since I think there is always generally a ratio of people who care v. people who make trouble, it's really just a matter of how long the users take to learn how the moderation system works.
Set up properly, for example defaulting everyone to +4 comments only, would teach people pretty fast there are comments that get modded up and comments that don't. Further by adjusting their settings they can decide who/what types of messages to see.
So let the junk flow in, it just wont ever get seen, only the highly moderated comments will. Basically default it to only the comments someone has modded up, not rely on people to mod things down and you have won 3/4's of the battle.
Or so I think.
Regards
Wax on, wax off baby!
http://www.big-boys.com/articles/leeroy.html
>> ...people are oversensitive
So, how are you planning on changing how the rest of the species has felt for the last several dozen millenia?
Arguing that you're right and everyone else is wrong to be offended by language ignores the reason those words exist in the first place: to be offensive.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
It was a short RvB flick called Real Life vs the Internet and was an amusing explination between the differences. For example they have a political discussion where the real life version is two people talking civily and the Internet version is a huge war (a literal war with tanks and suck, being this is RvB). It was first screened at the Ney York Video Festival.
/. crowd. I suppose I could seed a torrent, if someone has a tracker and such they want to use for that.
It's in the subscriber section, if you have an account, but not on the public page and I really don't have the facalities to rehost it for the
I've done my share of political commentary on Slashdot, and I can't say that I share your pessimism.
There are trolls, yes, and there are radicals on both sides. But I've found that if you post reasonable discussion and stay away from preaching, that you can get reasonable discussion in kind.
Slashdot's moderation system, on the average, works. Yes there are some injustices done on occasion, and I wish the pure trolls would just stay away... but overall, the system does an excellent job.
"Perfect is the enemy of good enough" after all.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Oh, there's a brilliant, thought-out response. { roll eyes }
Idiot.
It's called Valium. I think you need some.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
I think there's a good chance that LA Times' rivals, and just people with a grudge against the LA Times read about it on Slashdot, then preceeded to do mayhem. What do you think the chances are that these weren't just vandals, but people with specific motivation to bring down the project? Maybe its paranoid, but its worth considering before they placed the blame on the general /. readership.
The world is made up of Dicks, Pussies, and Assholes. Pussies don't like dicks because pussies get fucked by dicks, but dicks also fuck assholes. Assholes who just wanna shit on everything. Pussies may think that they can deal with assholes their way, but the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is that sometimes they fuck too much, or fuck when it isn't appropriate, and it takes a pussy to show 'em that. But sometimes pussies get so full of shit that they become assholes themselves. Because pussies are only an inch and a half away from assholes. I don't know much in this crazy crazy world. But I do know that if you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're gonna have our dicks and our pussies all covered in shit.
ID numbers: what does Slashdot feel the need to create a hierarchy of the "elders" by publishing id numbers?
AC: Yes, this does kill slashdot. anonymously posting is not "cowardly" assholes
Trolls: You all need to admit that TROLLS ARE VERY ENTERTAINING. Admit it to yourself
Yes, i confirmed that i am a human
Apparently, the LA Times moderators have a problem with obscene language and dirty pictures. It should not be that difficult to reject posts with dirty pictures...and dirty words. Secondly, the wiki users themselves, and not the LA Times, should be able to remove the offensive images easily. (I hope...but know better...that it was probably Goatsie pictures...yuk.) Hopefully the wiki, which I never had a chance to view, will be back online soon.
In that case, the king is the man sitting on the porcelain throne. He's also the only one who gives a shit.
He who has no
Research shows that most serial killers, terrorists and used car salesmen read the New York Times.
The road between democracy and tyranny is paved with secrecy in the name of security.
...but the 1-percent is so very capable, thanks to our widespread love of *nix variants and CLI tools!
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
I've never seen that sort of behaviour from slashdot readers, and as a slashdot reader myself, I am quite offended by this accusation. Many here are IT professionals and pillars of their community. p.s. - POOPSEX!
Not quite, though your post has some merit to it.
The reason I would disagree is because your comment is incredibly biased toward Western thinking--actually, I'm wrong. It's incredibly biased in favor of nations whose rulesets encourage free speech. I can disprove the statement rather simply: In China, people are afraid to say things in person because they fear punishment from the government, not because they know them to be wrong. (Conversely, I suppose you could argue that they know certain things are wrong because it might solicit punishment from the government.)
So I encourage you to think carefully about the context of the post. There are plenty of cases where someone may be afraid to say something truthful because of the social implications attached to it. (E.g. Woman: Does this dress look okay? Man: Erm... sure, honey.) Just because someone is afraid to say something doesn't necessarily make it wrong! I think this was the intent behind the parent post (grandparent to this one); be careful when criticizing someone, particularly when the criticism is taken out of context.
He who has no
I bet Slashdot will get sued someday for Slashdotting a site. Just a thought, since they usually know it will happen and are doing it willingly.
Well those darn words. Yet, another news organization ruined by those pesky things. When are we going to ban their usage?
The L. A. Times is a biased, yellow journalistic cumrag. There's even bipartisan agreement on that sybject. Their editors are nothing more than propagandists, and everyone in So Cal laughs at them.
You need to be more tolerant of diversity.
That includes toleration of diverse opinions.
Just because you disagree with someone doesn't make that person "a xenophobic, nationist, tribal, classist racist".
Actual "xenoracistnational" posts are actually
quite rare around here. Calling someone
a name, however, is not.
Just because an individual is a member of a group does not mean that all memebers of that group resemble that individual.
I guess hordes of Slashdot trolls were the reason why the LA Times National Edition failed last year.
Events like this show exactly how weak are the established media corporations, when they actually have to compete without entrenched advantages. They were naive not to expect their public beta would have lots of "postitti", after decades of public Net message boards have shown that's the rule. Since any look at Slashdot itself shows the cesspool into which they were diving, they probably base their blame of it on the unchallenged comments of a single anonymous source. That kind of ivory tower freedom from consequences is under serious threat. A horde of trolls is nothing compared to waves of truth, and the much larger audiences of people who want to hear it.
--
make install -not war
True, especially the last paragraph. I suppose I should have specified more and said, "The kinds of things the people might say to ruin an editorial website i.e. 'first post,' or, 'this site sucks!'" There are times when social constraints can cause people to not do things that would be OK to do.
As to criticizing out of context, I still hold the opinion that the main of my post criticizes the great-grandparent (grandparent of your post =)) mostly in context with what he was trying to say. But thank you for your insight on the issue of the inappropriateness of certain constraints.dead horses beat YOU!
Sorry, had to be said :)
I'm not Malicious!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I dumped it after I was consistently getting modded down by apparently the same couple of users. I was getting too many +5 -2 mods. Now as an AC, when I do get a +5 there isn't the usual -2 accompanying it. Maybe not this time though.
and goes on to quote a member of the LA Times editorial staff as saying, "Slashdot has a tech-savvy audience that, to be kind, is mischievous and to be not so kind, is malicious".
Class-action lawsuit, anyone?
Slashdot's culture and the anonymous coward account encourages assholes to be here. On slashdot, you can be an asshole without being accountable for your actions. And, since people think removing asshole postings is some form of "censorship", it does nothing to discourage them (modding people down to -1 doesn't stop the damage personal insults cause, since people usually see the replies to their posts, -1 or not)
LA times must have heard about the massive abuse of Wiki's by spammers/etc. The fact that the wiki system is open to abuse, in general, seems to preclude the need for LA Times to actually properly defend their Wiki system.
If they can't be bothered to properly secure and manage their system, beta or otherwise, then they can't go blaming another news site for advertising their Wiki and having a horde of people "abusing"^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H"overloading" their system.
It's like putting up a beta mail server and not properly securing it and wondering why they are getting blacklisted.
Winged Power Photography
It's the LA Times you Eurotwit. LA as in Los Angeles. As in California! Not only is the LA Times *NOT* the NY Times, it's not even close!
You missed by 2450 miles. Thanks for playing!
No, it is more like proof to the Internet Makes You Stupid theory:
Normal Person + PA = Total Retard With An IQ Below 20.
Mental pain is as real as physical pain. People lose their jobs, drink, do drugs, even kill themselves over mental anguish.
Now you are correct in that what effect words have on someone is in part dependent on that person. There are people who just let insults wash over them, there are those that find a way to take even the nicest compliment as a rebuke. However it's not all internal. Words have meaning, and the speaker has a communicative intent behind them. intent behind them. If you are trying to make your words caustic and hurtful, they are very likely to be so.
This line of reasoning that "words don't hurt" is just used by bullies and social misfits as an excuse to be assholes when someone calls them to account for it. Words can and do hurt, and while people need to work on developing skills to ingore and cope with it, that does not give you the right to be an asshole all the time, nor absolve you of responsibility if your words cause pain.
I have a friend with a life-threatening allergy to peanuts, but it's no bother to me. If I intentionally give him something I cooked with peanut oil, it's his own body that's reacting to it, not anything I did.
The reactions are his, not imposed by me.
Of course, he could stab himself with an epi-pen, so it's a wash.
LATimes also made a poor choice in selecting only editorial articles for visitor contribution. Wikis are good for adding data and facts because they are impartial. Asking for opinions however creates imbalances in an article that can only be rectified by having counter opinions. Hence, the fighting and the inappropriate material that forced LATimes to withdraw the wiki. Wikis are good for sharing knowledge, not for sharing opinion.
It's pretty obvious who's gonna be on the losing side of that stick.
About the only thing that they could have done would have been to let the Wikki run it's course and (hopefully) edit out all of the malicious work done by the vandals. A secnd backup would have been to disallow posts by anybody referred from Slashdot. That wouldn't have been foolproof, but it would, at least, have filtered things down to the point where they could probably handle what's left of the flood.
Unfortunately, it would have also possibly taken more tech savy than they had at their fingers -- and, although it would have probably been productive, posting a help message on the slashdot article would have probably been counter-intuitive given the apparent source of their difficulties
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
The only people I worry about are the ones who claim to be sane.
/. mod system only works as well as it does because /. is, as you say, a community and the "sane" outnumber the "jerks" by probably 100:1
The
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
"On the other hand, I learned that the person to blame for my problems was not the nebulous society that was oppressing me, but me myself"
have fun in the land of conformity you conformist.
make sure to get the biggest SUV with the fastest spinners. oh i think dr phil or some reality tv is on so your probably goign to watch that instead of responding. oh well. such insight i was getting for you.
I frequently make comments that aren't popular on /. I've defended Windows on a number of occasions, or said Linux was as great as people claimed. I know I have a winner when it's got a ton of moderations up and down and a massive thread of flames in response.
That was my point, that the Times probably didn't realise it was this bad online. You get a lot of teenagers, who tend to be abrasive when given the chance anyhow, many of whom are social outcasts, remove accountability, and you get some nasty results. However that sort of thing isn't such a problem in person.
I had some knock-down, drag-out flame wars with a guy online that I met later in real life. While he was a real ass to me online, calling me all sorts of shit, he was quite nice in person. Maybe it's because I had 6 inches and 50 pounds on him, but more likely it was simply because in person we have a feeling of accountability, and so are likely to be more civil.
If the L.A. time would like to claim Slashdot as the cause for all their wiki-miseries, perhaps they haven't been reading Slashdot very much.
Compare the types of comment posts and the general support for Wiki-based projects on Slashdot verses the average post on Yahoo's news message boards. That should make it pretty clear who was responsible for ranpant vugarity on their pages.
It seems the problem here was the L.A. Times wasn't expecting the kind of content you get from a news page open and attractive to the general public.
In nature, animals without assholes simply regurgitate waste orally. Hence a world without assholes would be full of people talking shit. Therefore, I can conclude that there are no assholes on Slashdot and the LA Times is incorrect in implying otherwise :-)
I think this was an experiment by a bunch of well meaning, but not net savvy people at the LA Times who didn't take this stuff into consideration.
As for blaming slashdot, I do think some people here deserve the blame. How many times when there have been companies/people/etc slashdot has dubbed EVIL, a lot of people post & run wget and other scripts to DDos sites, all related contact info with the intent to hurass, signing up emails for spam, magazine subscriptions when it is a spammer, and say things like "I need to visit their site 500,000 times just to see if it is still there" or "hope they like the SEX TOYS FOR GAY GUYS catalog"?
Sure the trolls here will deface stuff, but you expect me to believe that some regular slashdotters when given the chance wouldn't do the same thing? Even some people who agree with the LA Times agenda would also take the chance to mess with something a highly publicized or something that has a good chance to be seen by lots of people(and those who haven't been exposed to things like goatse). Plus there are those who would love the chance to frame things and put the blame on those who don't agree with their agenda.
>>I wonder which world they're living in ?
Oh, they're waaaaay out there in fantasy land.
Remember, this is a newspaper we're talking about. They're used to being the gatekeepers of opinion and information, so the idea that information (or abuse, unfortunately in this case) may flow upwards from the masses to the media is unthinkable to them. (Which is one of the reasons that The Elite Media's share of consumer attention declines each year in favor of the Internet, blogs, etc.)
Let's just say that they've been schooled in the John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
And as we all know, the assholes shit on everything.
Who even visits the times?? I am never giving up my first born to look at anything on their site.
It's free press...
I offer the truth, you offer ad hominem.
Like so.
You can't take the sky from me...
You go ahead believing that. Methinks thou dost protest too much.
. . . a way to filter out +4 and +5 posts that bitch about the moderators? They irritate me as much as trolls do.
-- . . ramblin' . . .
Since we are discussing Wikis and research, how about discussing the use of Wikis for low budget or open source application documentation.
They would be well suited towards FAQs it seems, as well as general documentation.
Without constant moderation, are they destined to a slower but ultimately similar wikideath as the LA Times Wiki, or is there hope?
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Of course, you could just use a proxy and be done with it.
I've been the victim of that once before too. Annoying and should be fixed. However my post really spoke to the moderation system, ac's and the filters. The combination of the three, as embodied here, permit a high degree of freedom compared to many other venues, that's all.
Blogging because I can...
nudge nudge
nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse
but sixty or forty?
realkiwi
The parent: :-)
:) (I would if I could)
In nature, animals without assholes simply regurgitate waste orally. Hence a world without assholes would be full of people talking shit. Therefore, I can conclude that there are no assholes on Slashdot and the LA Times is incorrect in implying otherwise
Intelligence on Slashdot has been detected! Please mod parent up both as insightful and funny
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
Mr. WideScreen, please stop using AC. kthx.
Here's a CRAZY idea: /. about how they're idiots, tell them nicely how to do this worthwhile thing so it's not filled with crap.
When everyone is done laughing and pissing a moaning and pounding each other on the back, maybe someone should offer to HELP THEM DO THIS RIGHT. Instead of posting to
* - OR - *
Just be hypocrites and keep laughing.
Well I was going to create an article for that, but alas, here it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wob
Enjoy!
-Valiss
"Slashdot has a tech-savvy audience that, to be kind, is mischievous and to be not so kind, is malicious".
Fact: There are many Microsoft employees who are avid Slashdot devotees. And to be kind they are malicious, and to be not so kind they are eeeevil.
And the plunger is his sceptre?
I wrote this once, many years ago:
Ode to a plunger*...
Threads like these show why the slashdot crowd isn't welcome on the mainstream media's wiki pages.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Wikipedia is huge, and it is actually relatively easy to slip vandalism into the less-traveled, low-traffic backwater articles. If it happens to make it off the bottom of recent changes it can sit for weeks or months until someone happens to notice it, especially if it's subtle.
Here, thanks to the New York Times Link Generator, is a link to the story that should not expire or require registration. If the /. editors were better, they would use it. The generator is great for blogs. Hail the generator.
You people are fucking idiots. You promote your own little culture then you ruin it for yourselves. sucks to be you guys!
Defacing an LA Times Website; That's kind of like pissing on a wall of grafitti, isn't it?
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
"We have thoughts, but thoughts are fluid. You know, [humming]. And, then we assign a word to a thought, [clicks tongue]. And we're stuck with that word for that thought. So be careful with words. I like to think, yeah, the same words that hurt can heal. It's a matter of how you pick them.
There are some people that aren't into all the words. There are some people who would have you not use certain words. Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them that you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven. Bad words. That's what they told us they were, remember? 'That's a bad word.' 'Awwww.' There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad Intentions.
And words, you know the seven don't you? Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits, huh? Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that will infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war."
Words are words and words can not hurt, it's the intentions that matter.
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."
Like I need to. "Oh, my! No one would possibly agree with him, so it has to be him under AC!" Whatever. Believe what you want. It's clear that you won't listen to anyone other than yourself anyway.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Life is never as simple as a Slogan...
I saved a significant portion of my property from being burnt out by a fire that had already covered towards 100 acres, by lighting a large series of fires; small, controlled, specifically positioned to provide an area of burnt ground, that the otherwise out of control fire front could not cross; standard open country fire fighting technique.
No. You can't look at my Sig; it's mine, and I'm not showing you.
Valium. So I'll be too sleepy to notice the 45 degree Leftish slant of the Times and of the Slashdot editors? I don't think I could miss that even on major valium. Its kind of like a moose head on the dining room table.
/. assumes "conservatives", meaning racist/bigot/homophobe/add your hate group here Republican operatives are going to screw up this noble experiment, and naturally they miss the boat completely.
Point being
Pervs and people who steal shit are what fucks up society, not conservatives.
Drink some of that coffee you're smelling there, eh?
Editorials are inherently unsuited to the wiki-type format. Wiki collaboration is good for setting out objective data. Where there isn't much heated disagreement as to its content, experience shows that the content will tend to be refined upon and not 'defaced'.
On the other hand, posting opinions -- especially on heated topics -- is likely to cause the exact effect the LATimes observed. It's the same effect you see on wiki pages on other controversial, opinion-heavy topics like abortion and Israel. You are often not going to have a happy middle, but two or more polarised camps each hating the other and 'defacing' the content they don't agree with. It's just human nature.
This is all the more so when the original slashdot story contained the line about the anti-war editorial being ''defaced by reactionaries'', basically tempting anyone who is pro-war and who does not consider themselves ''reactionary'' to go and edit the content.
If the Times had stuck to a wiki about the LA area, or some similar thing, I predict it would have worked. Choosing to make an editorial a wiki is IMHO simply stupid.
This is a potential weakness for any wiki system -- how come it doesn't happen to wikipedia, or the one on my PC? I've got two guesses : server-side smarts, and automation. 1) What do you think is easier when combating wiki spam? Rejecting edits faster than 1-per-minute, putting on a static front page and requiring registration to make edits, or alternatively, correcting all problems yourself? 2) What do you think is more likely - thousands of rampaging geeks will all be bothered inserting link referral schemes, or that one rampaging geek wrote a bot that your system is too dumb to stop? Wikipedia seems to self-defend reasonably well, and my home system uses uncommon software, so isn't an easy victim to automation. I think it's a shame to see it go down, myself. Isn't there anything us geeks could do to save it? Cheers, -BM
http://melbournephilosophy.com/
Amazon only patented the review of wikitorial submissions with one click.
sounds like sour grapes from 'em to me.
"I did no such thing. "Ad hominem" is when you are replying to someone else's argument. I am not replying to their argument. I am making my own argument, which is that they are stupid."
And "ad hominem" means...
Slashdot - Mutual Assured Discussion
how stupendous of you
This may be a harmless prank to some. But it is just as bad as trolling or spamming in my opinion. And worse still; it appears it was done by a dumb cow that had the gate opened for them by information provided by /.
Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do it.
Please do not feed the troll. Thank you.
-The Management
Perhaps it would have helped if the test editorial was something which made more sense than criticism of the war in Iraq.
There really are a lot of assholes online. People say and do things they never would in person.
Jeez, you make it sound like there are a lot of assholes online who say and do things they would never do in person.
Why don't you just go ahead and say what's on your mind: That there are a lot of assholes online who say and do things they would never do in person.
Stupid online! Things were so much better when we just had ponies.
"We're millions of miles from earth, inside a giant white face, what's impossible?"
I only ever moderate posts upwards, and those I do mod up are usually low-rated posts (which I may or may not agree with) which I feel are likely to promote varied, interesting, non-ranting discussion. They often go on to be +5 posts, but that's not my fault.
Of course it's your fault. You're one of the people who modded the post up. How do you think it gets to +5?
This article needs some photoshopping (screw adobe I like using the word photoshop as a present progressive).
Open Source Sushi
There's an interesting article on Clay Shirky's site, that deals with this very topic:O wn+Worst+Enemy%22
:)
http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html or via Google
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22A+Group+is+its+
How there's some difficulty in separating the wheat from the chaff
remember to loot and pillage before you burn!
Score zero, troll. Predictable Lefty response. When criticism arises, CRUSH IT. Why not go for -1 and waste another mod point, you bunch of juveniles?
Enough, attitude, itself, cynical. Those are the words you spelled incorrectly.
As to your comment, we must never forget that Slashdot also exists to provide humor to the geek community and that First Posts are relatively harmless in that pursuit.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Silly twits - waving a red flag in front of the Slashdot bull ... can you say "AYBABTU"
... well, yes you can be ... 60:40 was prolly a reasonable estimate ...
Not that
"Oh, look; the entire Eastern Seaboard has melted down from a backSlashdotting directed at the New York Times!"
Quite true, I'm sure I afforded him more of the benefit of the doubt than strictly necessary. (I'lll confess that I took the post out of context slightly in order to prove my point.)
I will agree that words can be very hurtful--perhaps more so than physical actions, which is probably what you were infering. Without some sort of social accountability, the situation can grow quickly out of control. But, I suppose that's looking through the spectacles of Western thought, where anti-political commentary doesn't get one executed.
Anyway, apologies for my bluntness ex postfacto; I step on toes periodically when making points.
He who has no