Slashdot Mirror
On the Subject of Slashdot Article Formatting
I'm not talking here about "Should a story be posted" or "I have 9 submissions about the same thing, which is best." Today I'm talking entirely about what I try to do when I decide that some story is good for Slashdot. What changes I think matter before posting it. Picking which stories to post is a big part of our job, matters of style and formatting matter too. Today I try to address what things I think are important before I click 'Save'.
The most important thing is what I'll call my most-important-link rule. Often submitters submit stories with like 8 links. I try to remove any link that doesn't substantially add to the article. For example linking ZDNet.com directly, and then a second URL to an article on ZDNet is redundant. Or if your link is to Joe's Blog, where he essentially says nothing except "I found this article". I'm not opposed to having several URLs in a story, but I want to make sure that they each serve a real purpose.
Next is proper anchor texting. I fix the hyper text on the vast majority of submissions. People link the word 'Here' or 'Article' or 'CNN' and I find that very frustrating. I want the hypertext to be the most appropriate 2-3 words that tell you exactly what you're clicking on. I think that is absolutely essential. Every URL should matter, and every bit of hypertext should tell you exactly what it is you're going to get when you click that mouse button.
Another key component in Slashdot article formatting is to strip off the extra text in a submission. I have a mental image of how long a Slashdot story is. Many submissions are to long or to short. So I get out the scissors and start looking for sentences to cut.
Often a submission starts with a clause that says something to the effect of "Hey guys, I found this URL that says...". I'd much prefer to cut that out and get right to the meat. Likewise many submissions end with a call to action... "We should get those guys" or "Lets show them what Slashdot can do about it!". I yank those sorts of things. As a general rule, I want the story to be short, sweet, and direct. Anything that distracts from that, I want to chop out.
Likewise some submissions are simply a URL and a single sentence. Since I want my articles to be around the same size, this is my chance to put in my own words. I'll try to add a joke or opinion. Or just a fact that I thought was worth sharing from the article itself. It's often these phrases that comment posters get most up in arms about: irate readers commenting that I should not be allowed to post my views.
I consider this opinion to be simply ludicrous. Slashdot was spawned from what today would be called a blog. To be more precise, it came from MY blog. Where I posted almost nothing but my own opinions. But more blatantly, I could simply rewrite the entire thing, say exactly what I want to say, and post it as an anonymous reader. Or as a made up nickname. I don't do any of those things. I simply add my 2 bits at the end to the occasional story. Not only do I think this is desirable on Slashdot, I think it's essential.
Now let us talk about one of my secondary concerns: spelling and grammar. Let me be clear. As you are probably well aware, I don't think these are as important as the things I mentioned above. I want a Slashdot story to be focused, directing your attention to the URL in question. It needs to be not to long, not to short. Links should be clear. Spelling and Grammar are secondary issues.
Slashdot is not the Wall Street Journal. It is not The New York Times. Slashdot is an informal meeting ground. A town hall. A pub. A bulletin board in the quad on campus. Here people might not properly capitalize a proper noun. They might transpose letters in 'thier'. They might use jargon that isn't in oxford. And all of that is OK with me.
Now sometimes a sentence doesn't parse to me. I'm not opposed to correcting the grammar in a sentence if it just doesn't work. But I simply don't think that a typo or grammar error is a make or break problem for a Slashdot story.
Many users routinely email me to complain about such errors. I'm usually fairly flexible on these matters. If the error is blazingly bad, I will often correct it. Of course some users like to email me to tell me how much Slashdot sucks, how fat and lazy I am, and how the most terrible thing in the history of Slashdot is the fact that the 4th story down contains the word 'to' when it ought to contain the word 'too'. That missing 'o' is the greatest travesty on-line today! It's hard to take that seriously. Especially when people are rude.
As an aside, for awhile we actually had an editor reading Slashdot articles and correcting grammatical mistakes. Turns out it doesn't really matter much. People found other things to complain about. It's almost as if some percentage of the population wants to complain. And they will find something to complain about no matter what. Perhaps by leaving a few typos on the site, I am making their day a little easier! Leave them some low hanging fruit I guess.
A a further side note to anyone who ever wants me to look at anything on Slashdot. If you e-mail me, include the URL. A comment mismoderated? A user who is misbehaving? A story with a typo? Include the URL. Don't say "The article about Novell" because there might be 3 in the last 2 days. Don't say "The last comment I posted" because it might be 2 hours and you might have posted since then. It takes you 3 seconds to cut and paste a URL. It might take me 3 minutes to find the content in question if you don't. That doesn't sound like much, but if it happens a couple dozen times, it adds up really fast. Do you want to stay an hour late at work today?
But back to the topic at hand, You are welcome to disagree with me on matters of grammar and spelling. And many of you do, very vocally in the forums. I would hope moderators would see such commentary as offtopic. A story about a new motherboard chipset has nothing to do with the proper use of "Its" and "It's".
The moderation system serves many purposes, but perhaps the most important is to provide a user, 24 hours later viewing at Score 2 or 3 an accurate pulse on the topic at hand. If the comment is not about the new motherboard chipset, that comment at least should not be modded 'insightful', and in many cases, ought to be modded offtopic of flamebait.
As with last week, I'm going to try to participate as best I can in the discussion. If major points arise I will update here. I think the real topic of this article is the formatting of Slashdot Stories: not moderation, the story selection process, and or story selection criteria. Please help by staying on topic so I can try to address these matters efficiently. And please don't email me directly- lets keep the discussion here in front of everyone so i don't have to answer dozens of you individually. Moderators, feel free to moderate good questions up to help me find them, and likewise if my answers are good, give those the thumbs up too so that readers can find them and save me from having to re-read questions i've answered already. Once again, I plan to do this as regularly as I can. If you have ideas for future discussions here, e-mail me... but I beg of you, wait until tomorrow!
Update Here is a further clarificatio on typo and grammar errors on Slashdot. I believe that Slashdot is a somewhat schizo place. A dozen voices stand side by side on the main page. Some of them will have proper grammar. Others won't. Just like a mailing list. Just like crappily written comments in some ancient piece of source code. Just like that email jotted out in seconds. Just like some bit of IRC chat you just read a few minutes ago.
Simply hiring a copy editor to purge these changes fundamentally alters the personality of the site, and my opinion is that alteration is for the worse. It might improve clarity to some percentage of readers who truthfully can't parse bad grammar or spelling. Likewise it might cut down on some offtopic meta threads in the forums. But the I think that it changes the flavor. The feeling. The tone of Slashdot.
Some people disagree with me. You are welcome to do so.
Another note about URL formatting. An interesting thread spawned in there about what text makes a proper hyper link. Given the example string:
CNN has an article about a sticky widget
What text should be linked?
There are 2 potential URLs in here, a CNN article, and the text 'CNN'. Some users think the words CNN should link to an article. Other users might link CNN directly to CNN, and the word 'article' to the article in question.
My stylistic preference is to only link 'a sticky widget' to the article. Not to link CNN directly to CNN.com (that link is redundant- I want only the most important links. And not 'article' because that tells you nothing about what you are clicking on.
Meta discussion on Slashdot is a substantial issue we intend to address in the moderation system redesign. Things like typos and grammar have a place on Slashdot, but today that place can only be described as 'Offtopic'. (And I think all moderators and meta moderators should keep that in mind). Our plans for dealing with 'Meta' discussion are best left for another editorial. In fact, I have one half written. Maybe next week.
Bravo Taco! Good points well made.
I would like to take slight issue about the importance of spelling and grammar, especially in the slashdot article itself. To your main point, the article is about something, not spelling and grammar. That is true. But correct spelling and grammar lend accuracy to the article and are not ancillary niceties. Too much carelessness around grammar and spelling leads to muddier thinking and sometimes requires extra interpretation from the readers.
Case in point from this very article, ninth paragraph, describing how long a slashdot article must be:
While it's mostly clear what you mean, the sentence could take on different meaning. For example, the "It needs to be not to long" could (easily in fact) be interpreted to mean the length of the article should be appropriate as not to leave the reader "longing" for more. And, the "not to short." could mean the article should have appropriate length to assure you have not "shorted" the reader. Nuances, yes, but appropriate (not perfect) grammar is important.
Again, thanks for the illumination of publishing policy. It really is useful!
Now let us talk about one of my secondary concerns: spelling and grammar. Let me be clear. As you are probably well aware, I don't think these are as important as the things I mentioned above. I want a Slashdot story to be focused, directing your attention to the URL in question. It needs to be not to long, not to short. Links should be clear. Spelling and Grammar are secondary issues.
Slashdot posts, what, maybe two dozen "stories" a day? To support this Slashdot has a crew of paid, therefore professional, "editors". Is it really that much to ask that rudimentary spelling and grammar rules are obeyed?
Not meant to be critical, but I'm wondering if you're letting the flames and hate mail about posted articles get to your head. A good book to read is the 7 Habits of Highly effective people (ISBN: 0743269519 at your favorite bookstore). However in short from that book, I'm wondering whether or not you're letting outside factors you can't really control get to you. Unfortunately there will always be people who will simply not choose to read or ignore what you have to say and will always send you hate mail and flames regarding this. Don't let it get to your head, ever, or they've won.
Post the articles you enjoy, and others will follow; It's that simple really...
...in bed
How would I react to a television broadcaster saying that lighting and focus weren't all that important? Or a radio station claiming that static was okay? Proper spelling, grammar, and usage are easy compared to the syntax of a programming language or shell. Get them right and I'll take you more seriously.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
My biggest complaint is when the submitter blatantly trolls in the headlines. Not just an opinion, but an opinion that draws the ire of others. I'm not saying the opinion had by the editor, but the original submitter. I really wish you guys could consider rewriting or simply removing that stuff.
Oh, and bravo on all this communication stuff, Taco. You really kill conspiracy theorists when you are open with us. That way we get to see the people behind the curtain, instead of just the black box.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I have for a long time thought that being a Slashdot editor is one of the world's easiest jobs, but held back due to the possibility that there was more to it than I thought. This long description of a task that anyone with a high school degree should be able to perform confirms my original impression.
Rob, with all due respect, I am not impressed. Slashdot would be so much better if you all would either a) act like real editors (e.g. fact check, give feedback to submitters, spelling/grammar check), or b) admit that you are basically superfluous and get out of the way (e.g. like Digg).
At the very least, please improve your writing skills. Even in a "pub" like Slashdot, communicating well is important.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
/. is feeling the heat from digg.com. End of story.
It looks to me like the fundamental disconnect here is that the editors of Slashdot still perceive the site to be their blog. Many of the users believe it to have graduated from that to a legitimate news source, and complain when it doesn't live up to the mechanistic standards of, say, CNN. Google News thinks it's a news source and treats it in the same manner as it does CNN - but those who run Slashdot apparently don't hold it to that high a standard.
There's nothing wrong with this, but it might shut people up if they were reminded of the purpose of the site as intended by its makers. So, CmdrTaco, what exactly is Slashdot?
I can confirm this.
Here is a suggestion: try reading your own site. Having editors submit the same story multiple times shows a complete lack of interest.
You're choosing mediocrity.
Since there are a million grammar / spelling checkers out there, and they can be programatically applied (aspell perl library is one example), why NOT use them?
It's far more difficult to come up with reasons NOT to do the right thing. The paragraphs of effort that you just expended to discuss spelling errors, the countless comments you've read about spelling errors...
They're bits of your life that you've whittled away.
Now, compound that by adding in MODERATOR TIME. Now compound that by adding READER TIME.
Yes, people may have started to complain about something else. YES, that might always be true.
I don't care that there are complainers about topic X. I care that it's the same complaint, for years, and that it's a relatively easy problem to solve.
I have to wonder why you don't.
Video Game News, FAQs, etc
Exactly. Dead fricking on.
Essentially Taco's argument here is that the site started as his blog, and that he wants to continue to regard it as the equivalent (to use your analogy) to a cable access talk show, rather than a polished source of news.
There's a middle ground, but the effort to clean up language would be so very, very beneath him. Apparently he wouldn't care how the picture quality was on his cable access station, and it's so very cool and informal of him not to give a rip, because he's really a content man.
I'm not a paying subscriber. Paying for a service entails certain expectations that Slashdot isn't meeting at the moment. The glaringly apparent laziness of the editors is the biggest mark against the site.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
One of the things that drives me crazy is when the Slashdot article reads something like "Soandso writes 'blah blah blah etc etc blah blah blah'..." However, on closer inspection one sees that Soandso did not actually write the original text "blah blah blah" but rather pulled it directly from the linked article without paraphrasing.
This may seem a small thing, but I work in a field where one lives and dies by one's word and original ideas. It is anthama to take someone elses words and I would hope that the editors here try and correct the attributions whenever it is at all possible.
Download my free songs!
You're wrong, and will remain that way until you provide a couple of actual examples (actually, examples comprising 50% of the links posted, since you did say "half the time"). It is *never* correct to link something like "click here" - unless you're linking to the Click Here(R) Inc. home page. If the article is on CNN about flying monkeys, "flying monkeys" should be linked because that's what the link is about - it's not about CNN.
Please take this as constructive criticism. Slashdot is great - but all things have room for improvement.
The only problem I have with Slashdot is that sometimes the article summary (both the one-liner and the submitter's summary) don't accurately summarize the article. It's often something subtle. The summary would be something like "Security hole in X causes billions of dollars of damage" when the article actually said that an analyst estimated up to a billion dollars of damage could be caused by a well-written exploit (i.e. no actual damage had occurred, but the potential is there).
This is a major problem because readers often don't follow the links (myself included), and thus get bad information. Then the information gets passed around the water cooler, etc.
I haven't ever emailed you to alert you of them, so it's my fault as part of the community. However, by the time I read something, it often has already scrolled off the front page and the damage is done.
Also, just for some perspective, I think the most basic spelling and grammatical errors are as annoying to many readers as linking "here" and "article" are to you (and me). Maybe someone so annoyed could submit a patch for spelling and grammar checking.
I'm much more concerned about the fact that taco can't differentiate "to" and "too". Even assuming it's not very important - usually, I admit, it isn't - it does take some time to parse incorrectly formed sentences.
I half to disagree. Misuse off gramma, spelling and/or punctuation make's every reader waste a few second's while they work out what it actually mean's. Well all have to do a double-parsing, if you like.
So every reader waste's about as much time as it would have taken the writer to check that what they had written was correct in the first place.
Of course, some people just don't know the rule's; but that is the precise definition of an editors job; too correct. Too correct and amend exactly the sort of ambiguous things which mislead. Thats why these thing's annoy people; because they mislead, and say thing's they don't mean to say - not because off an anal demand that all rule's be obeyed without question and unerringly.
My favoutite examples of misleading mistakes:
"I helped my uncle jack off a horse"
-- which letter(s) should have been capitalised?
"To my parents, Mary and God"
-- an Oxford comma would prevent the author from claiming to be Christ
'No rational religion claims "supernatural" exists, that's an atheist slander.' - seen on slashdot.
Below average I suspect. If you've never managed to reach the stage where your reading is pipelined then you won't be impacted much by grammatical errors.
Clearly you are one of those people who see discussion and argument as something to win rather than a way to share knowledge. Instead of trying to figure out how to communicate effectively you have instead invented a new rule for the game that allows you to 'win' the game if someone has trouble reading what you have written. You remind me of those kids who shout "but that was the practice game, the next one is the real one, don't you remember me saying that?" when they lose a game.
-- SIGFPE
Moderation is the tool that a portion of the community uses to tell the remainder of the community which comments it feels are the most useful. The fact that R.P. comments get modded up, and so do grammatical comments should tell you something. Instead, both this week and last, we (the community) are told were are wrong because we don't share your vision.
Really you have two options; 1) limit the moderator pool to people who share your vision, or 2) live with the fact that the community and you disagree on fundementals.
The second one really is a key one - you want Slashdot to be a pub, etc... etc... The community wants a source of quality news.
Then I don't want to hear about you ever complaining about something like IE not following the standards. It's the same thing. Having a standard makes communication more clear, succinct and useful. When I read "looser", I parse it as something coming undone. But when it's "the looser of the game went home", I (and many others) reach a cognitive stop, and have to re-parse the sentence and try to find the word that the typist meant to use, rather than the on they did use.
Mostly, it just makes people look lazy and stupid. Kinda like being homeless because that's what takes the least work. Ever read anything that Einstein wrote? Churchill? They all have impeccable spelling and grammar, as well as gigantic vocabularies.
*before anyone bitches about the homeless comment, I never said it wasn't a hard life. I simply implied that it's what happens when you stop working.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
You don't understand the point of standards.
..." and the original poster says "No, you misunderstand me..." It's everybody's personal preference for what is a meaningful grammar rule, instead of having an objective ruleset.
We have these grammar rules so that we are all on the same page. You're overlooking the point of grammar which is exactly to make sense.
The example you use is a red herring. "I went too the store." is easy to understand. However, once we decide we can break the rules, then it's up to each individual poster as to what rules they want to follow, and what rules they want to discard. The replier says "Earlier you said that
Yes, some of the rules are crufty and old, like "its", "it's" and "its'". However, the vast majority of grammar rules are here so that we can understand each other. Let me repeat that, ignoring a few grammar rules:
can understand vast that we each so majority the of rules are here other. grammar
So we have a few dumb spellings and grammar rules. Suck it up and learn them.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Having been born the son of a man whose idea of a good hobby is proof-reading the Encyclopedia Britannica, I'm afraid I have to differ with you. While there are times where an occasional misspelling or grammatical error does not drastically alter the meaning of the sentence, there are a lot of times where the mistake is substantive. Consider, for example, the following sentence:
last week frank helped his uncle jack off his horse.
Depending on capitalization and punctuation, that could either mean that Frank assisted his uncle, named Jack, to get down from a horse. Or, it could mean that Frank assisted his uncle in one part of an animal husbandry function. The meaning is changed drastically by one letter and two commas.
The rules of grammar are akin to the rules of any activity. While it might be technically possible to play a game similar to baseball in your back yard using whatever materials are available, were one to show up at Wrigley Field with a basketball and a golf club expecting to play a quick game with the Cubs, the only reaction from observers would be laughter or incredulity. Auditioning for American Idol without being able to carry a tune gets you laughed off the stage. Similarly, attempting to engage in a serious debate on technical topics but being unable to demonstrate even a basic understanding of the rules of English degrades the impression the message leaves with observers.
Is it possible to be understood by competent readers even if you break the occasional grammatical rule here or there? Certainly. Is it possible to appear anything but a buffon or a dullard when trying to counter a well-reasoned and well-written argument with l33t-sp34k? Probably not.