On the Subject of Slashdot Article Formatting

Every day we post dozens of stories on Slashdot. Every day we read hundreds of submissions. And as most of the people who work behind the scenes are in fact human, we occasionally make mistakes, posting typos, or grammatical errors. Today I address matters of article formatting. What I think matters before I click 'save', and what I don't.

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.

Comments

don't short shrift grammar

[yagu]

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:

It needs to be not to long, not to short.

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!

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[gEvil (beta)]

Case in point from this very article, ninth paragraph, describing how long a slashdot article must be:

Good God, man! Didn't you read the article? Include the URL! : p

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[metlin]

You're right. It's hard for some of us not to look at grammatical or spelling errors and wince. Quite honestly, just how hard is it to read through something and check for the odd mistake? An occasional mistake or two is not a big deal, but the fact that Slashdot editors seem apathetical to this practice is what annoys me.

As a subscriber, there have been several times when I've pointed out mistakes, but they're seldom corrected.

The reason some of us hate errors is not because they are occasional, but because it's become a habit for Slashdot editors not to care about those errors.

Delay posting that article by five minutes - paste the content in a spelling and grammar checking tool, and you can eliminate a good chunk of the mistakes. How hard is that, really?

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[thewiltog]

And don't forget those readers for whom English is not their first language. What may be an obvious mis-spelling or grammatical error to a native english speaker may render the article (or reply) incomprehensible to someone who's having to look words up in a dictionary.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[SIGFPE]

It's not just about wincing. The process of reading is pipelined. Humans can scan through text very quickly because while the eye is scanning one word you're parsing the sentence from a few words before and thinking about the meaning of what came before that. When you hit a grammatical or spelling error you cause a pipeline stall. If an incorrect word is used you can often continue for several more words before you discover that the sentence is impossible to parse forcing you to backtrack. Good writers intuitively know how to construct a sentence to lead you towards the correct parsing and make the process of reading as effortless as possible. The Slashdot editors often make reading a chore with readers being forced to scan sentences over and over again in an attempt to find a sensible reading.

People have been endeavouring to write well for centuries. It's funny how the Slashdot editors can suddenly decide that this entire tradition is worthless. Have they not noticed that writers have been trying to convey a message other than "I can spell" for aeons and yet still make the effort to spell correctly as a courtesy to their readers?

When you write text on a forum like Slashdot every minute you spend writing translates into thousands of minutes of reading. People would do well to remember that.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[Golias]

Taco's comment here is quite telling:

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.

So, what he's saying is, in his view, the complaints are the problem.

Headlines on his site which look completely moronic are only a problem because they generate complaints, not because they are a mess to read. Were it only not for these troublesome "Squeeky Wheel" users who dare to be critical of our piss-poor use and abuse of the English language, Slashdot would be perfect.

What a shitty attitude!

(But his attitude is only a problem in the sense that it provoked me to complain, of course. Clearly, I'm the real problem here, and if Taco ran this site like a professional, I'd find something else to bitch about.)

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[cyclop]

As a non-native English speaker that has some grasp of English grammar and orthography, I can say grammar sloppines on /. (or everywhere else) is not only confusing but really annoying. Orthography errors just sound more than sloppy. They sound stupid.

I don't know how can you cope with this. It seems to me here in Italy we pay much more attention to grammar and words (That's perhaps we had low alphabetization levels until 50 years ago, so correct language skills are still highly respected). Typos occur, but bad orthography and grammar are often touted as symptoms of absolute ignorance.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[1u3hr]

Taco might note also that the only way we can judge him is by what he writes. If he posts illiterate garbage, many will judge him to be an illiterate, and undeserving of respect.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[Golias]

Rob, you said at that time that Slashdot is like a bunch of people talking at the local pub, so spelling and grammar isn't important.

But if you go to the pub and someone there is constantly speaking with poor grammar, you still judge him negatively because of it.

Not only that, but most bartenders would not leave a sign hanging out front which says "Rob's Rilly Gud Tavurn."

They would also check their menu for spelling errors.

There's a difference between what you expect of the patrons and what you expect of the establishment.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[CmdrTaco]

You just caught me on a good day I guess.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[CmdrTaco]

Again, we do this. Almost every story is posted to Slashdot 30 minutes early to subscribers, during this time they can message us glaring flaws, and we can (And do!) fix them.

In most cases a thousand+ eyeballs vet a story before it hits the main page, and in many cases the story that DOES finally hit the main page has had corrections made.

It's such a good idea, we've been doing it a loooong time now ;) But it doesn't correct every typo or grammar error. It sands off blatant stuff. Catches a few dupes. But not all of them. And it never will.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[CmdrTaco]

Well what they are paying for is the ability to see the stories before everyone else. They are also given a window of opportunity to report errors- this system actually works quite well I think.

We have plans to solicit more feedback on accepted articles (good, bad, typo, dupe etc).

It's not a bad idea to give some random percentage of users a view of the future stories too, just to increase the amount of feedback we get before the general population gets it. The problem is that when you give users functionality "Randomly", it gets confusing. Witness the moderation system for numerous examples of problems with this randomness. Users constantly don't know that they have points or don't know what to do when they get them. And once they don't have them, they get ANGRY if they don't get them again. It creates a whole new class of problems!

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[Malor]

I meant the generic 'you', as in, 'the Slashdot organization'; I apologize for my poor wording.

I don't think it was you specifically... when I was still trying to help, it was, hmm, two years ago maybe? Articles would get posted with obvious/glaring problems. I'd send in email. The article would still be posted with the glaring error intact. And this was stuff like broken or wrong links... not judgement calls, outright errors. They'd generally be fixed later, after going to full release. I was submitting to the 'on-duty-maintainer' link or whatever it was called. (I haven't seen one in a long time, so I'm not sure what the exact wording is.)

About the third time that happened, I just gave up entirely.

Again, I don't think it was you. For a long time, you didn't really submit stories. I've never emailed you directly to my knowledge. (I did mail Hemos once, and he answered me promptly.) It was just the on-duty-editor mailbox that didn't seem to be read.

By the way, just so you know, your 'we won't fix grammar/spelling errors' policy has pushed me yet further away from the site. This was once my homepage, and I was a subscriber... neither is true any longer. It's not just mediocrity, but aggressive mediocrity.

If you want to attract the run-of-the-mill, that's a great policy. But once upon a time, you had the best and brightest here. Slashdot once held some of the best thinking on the net. At this point, I rarely see comments that strike me as unusually insightful. Your former luminaries seem to have mostly left. I now get +5, Insightfuls all the time, but the quality of my posts hasn't gone up at all. Rather, the really smart people are mostly gone, so people mod up my junk instead.

I can't prove a causative link, but the correlation seems a strong one. Your editorial policy is mediocre.. your audience quality seems to reflect that. If my posts are doing this well here, you have a problem.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[Golias]

While I may be annoyed by some of our host's personal habits, I don't *have* to be here. So whatever he wastes of my life, I've effectively consented to.

Obviously, but that doesn't change the fact that Slashdot would be even better if attention was paid to such editorial details.

Taco is rightly proud of the many improvements to Slashdot he's got in the pipeline, but I would contend that proper editing would be a greater improvement to the site than any of those tweaks.

Bloggers -- use this advice for your site!

[dada21]

Taco's "review" on article formatting is one that many of us should use and learn from -- especially anyone with a blog or an opinion site themselves.

The most important thing is what I'll call my most-important-link rule
I've actually been watching how articles are "formatted" for the past 2 months and tried to mimic it on one of my blogs. The result? More people clicking within that blog, staying on for up to 1/2 hour per visit. This is a good thing, it means that people like the content for whatever reason. If you're linking to other sites, make sure you find the link that really has all the information in total. Do some google searches before settling on the link you think is good. Don't link to 10 different sites all offering the same general information.

Next is proper anchor texting. I fix the hyper text on the vast majority of submissions.
I find that another of my blogs has better content than the previous, but it isn't read very deeply (if even past 1 page). I seriously believe this is because I would link to "here" or "article" instead of linking to "the housing bubble is about to burst."

Another key component in Slashdot article formatting is to strip off the extra text in a submission.
Of the 12 articles I've submitted to slashdot, the 3 that were accepted were posted almost verbatim -- I actually think it was because I left the editor with a good direction and a good article at link's end. The ones they rejected often were short articles, or opinion pieces with links to other sites with deeper information. I'm actually glad the editor at the time went to the link and read it (or probably did). Looking back, those submissions should have been rejected. I'd love to see an option on slashdot -- a checkbox saying "If rejected, show complete submission on user page as journal entry" so others can moderate our submissions on our journals. They won't moderate if this article is worthy, just comment on the submission. I'd love to know what others think about some of my submissions.

Anything that distracts from that, I want to chop out.
If you're a blogger, definitely listen to the part of Taco's "review" that talks about making generic comments like "I found this" or "Let's get these guys!" I hate blogs that write these little side comments. If I go to a site because of an opinion, I like to stick with sites that offer non-fluff text written by the opinion writer. I've seen newspaper columns that are all fluff content like that, and it drives me crazy.

It's almost as if some percentage of the population wants to complain.
I believe that to be true. The more sites (/blogs) that I work on, mine or those of others, the more complaints I see from the same people, even between two totally different sites. I have one grammar nazi (I actually appreciate his e-mails even if I don't adapt) who has probably spent hours criticizing my grammar on different sites (and on slashdot). What is the old cliche about one's importance if others are criticizing you? By the way, Google Toolbar's spell checker is pretty amazing, I'm trying to make it a habit to use it on every textbox.

Side topic:
I tried Digg, but I didn't like the feel of it. Democracy, to me, is not a good solution for posting articles. I like having someone doing some work, and I completely understand the dupes we see (I've submitted a few in my life, thankfully none were accepted). Sometimes I'll post something insightful and end up with 100 e-mails in my Inbox from slashdot users, so I can completely understand how the average editor here is a bit overwhelmed.

My final remark is one question I haven't seen an answer to -- are slashdot editors paid, and is it reasonable compared to the amount of work they perform? If they're not paid (or if they're employees of the bigger picture), why do they put up with us?

Sorry, I couldn't help it...

[FalconZero]

Paragraph 5 : Many submissions are to long or to short.
Paragraph 11 : ..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!

I don't care too much for exact spelling either. (I spawned an entire thread about my misspelling of segue.), but I couldn't resist pointing this out. :)

I clicked too quickly...

[lbrandy]

I must have come to the site instantly as this was posted, beacuse the first time I clicked on "On the Subject of Slashdot Article Formatting", I got "Nothing to see here, please move along". I gave it a +5 funny.

Spealing n Grammer

[ergo98]

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?

Re:Spealing n Grammer

[CmdrTaco]

Amusingly enough, a professional editor DID read my editorial and correct the typos before it was set to post. I chose to keep my typos to prove a point.

Re:Spealing n Grammer

[Cutriss]

Who gives a shit about whether this is a professional business or not?

The point is that your audience is filled with people who are generally regarded as "above-average" in terms of intelligence. If you want them to take you seriously, you need to play the same ball that they do.

When you refuse to acknowledge our intelligence by ignoring spelling and grammar, you basically disrespect us as geeks. We went to spelling bees as kids, we got beat up for knowing big words in high school. If this is "News For Nerds", then treat us like we really are the Nerds you are supposed to be a member of.

Re:Spealing n Grammer

[AVee]

You do prove a point. Spelling errors distract from the content. It's happening right here...

"As a general rule, I want the story to be short, sweet, and direct. Anything that distracts from that, I want to chop out."

Thus spelling errors should be avoided. For that reason and that reason alone.

Disclaimer: English is not my native language, I really miss most spelling errors, I don't care about correct spelling, not even in my own language. But the only way to avoid spelling meta discussions really is to avoid spelling errors. Sad, but true.

Re:Spealing n Grammer

[CmdrTaco]

I should try to resummarize this and include this at the top just to end this since I'm tired of repeating myself.

I think that slashdot is stylistically more akin to a mailing list or blog than to the NYT or WSJ. We are informal. Which is what I want Slashdot to be. Casual. To hire a copy editor and purge all these things from Slashdot changes the tone of the site. It shifts us to another place. Some people think that change is good. I think that change is bad. This is a place where a dozen voices are heard on one page. Some will make a typo. Others a grammar error.

To be sure, one of the jobs of a traditional editor is to give a publication a unified voice. My decision with Slashdot is that our "Voice" is a little more schizo than the mainstream media.

You are welcome to disagree, and your points are all valid: some people can't see meaning through grammar error. But me, I'm used to mailing lists, bulletin boards, quickly jotted emails, badly written comments in source code etc etc. This is a stylistic decision.

Yes I could hire a copy editor. Yes every typo and grammar error could be removed. And I think that the tone of the site would be different. I personally don't believe that particular change to be an improvement.

The /. effect on Taco?

[jacobcaz]

In the years I've been reading /. I don't think I've seen this much direct communication from Taco or any of the other /. staff posted as I have in the last few weeks.

What's up guys? Why have you suddenly started "talking" to us? And for the record, I like it. I think there should be more direct communicaiton to your readers like this.

Re:The /. effect on Taco?

[Anonymous Coward]

/. is feeling the heat from digg.com. End of story.

Re:The /. effect on Taco?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

slashdot's stories are well done

[iocat]

Before the inevitable crush of people pointing out the difference between too and to, let me just say that slashdot story lenths are perfect. Enough so you get the jist, but don't need to click if you aren't more interested. It's probably one of the best features of the site, and why I come back. (other than the flame wars.)

Hey CmdrTaco

[tekiegreg]

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...

Re:Hey CmdrTaco

[CmdrTaco]

But I am a human being, and being told repeatedly that I suck tends to wear a human being down, especially when, on the whole, I think the work we do here is very good.

That said, my intent here is to address specific concerns of the Slashdot user base. To be more directly accountable. To share more of the guts that help make the site work from day to day. I think it's important to tell readers what I think matters when i'm formatting an article. They are welcome to disagree, but at least I've been clear on the matter.

Re:Hey CmdrTaco

[tekiegreg]

But I am a human being, and being told repeatedly that I suck tends to wear a human being down, especially when, on the whole, I think the work we do here is very good.

Indeed you are human, and as such you like everyone else are subject to forces which you can't control. Namely what other humans give you as feedback. Being that you have such a large audience; you can expect a lot of feedback, both positive and negative. There is just no way around it. The outside mail will be a force that you can only alter slightly at best. However as you are human, you are capable of interperting the outside world and visualizing differently. The trick is just set up your keyword filtering to dodge the flames as best you can, and maybe do something positive every-time a flame slips past into your inbox (take that moment to chuck your Thinkgeek microbe across to the next cube perhaps?). You'll find life more enjoyable once you don't really care :-)

Re:Hey CmdrTaco

[smallpaul]

I think that what bothers us complainers is the claim that professionalism just doesn't seem to matter on SlashDot. It would be one thing for you to say: "I try hard on grammar and spelling but sometimes I slip up. I keep working on it and I'm getting better every day." It's another thing for you to say: "I just don't think that being a professional-quality editor is my job."

I make computer programs. People don't buy those programs for the spelling in dialog boxes. But I try hard to make the spelling correct. That's just professionalism, and professionalism shows respect for my customers. If a customer reports a grammar or spelling mistake in my software then I apologize and correct it. I don't try to say tht professionalism isn't my job. If you're providing a service for people then you should strive to do it right rather than claiming that it is good enough to get some aspects right and ignore others.

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.

Nobody is asking you to be perfect and therefore shut up the complainers. They are asking you to acknowledge that professionalism is important and that perfection is something that is worth striving for. The frustrating thing is that your opening position is that getting things right (especially spelling, grammar and dupes) is not even a goal. Nowhere in your essay did you say that it is even something you are working on or concerned about.

If you started putting effort into these areas, then over time it would become just second nature. That's what happens with "real-world" editors. Being able to instantly notice spelling and grammar mistakes is a skill to be proud of, not to denigrate. (and no, I don't have that skill, editing is not part of my job)

Oh, come on

[ColonelPanic]

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.

Trolling in the story

[FortKnox]

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.

Re:clearly...

[jamie]

It reaks of amateurism when a story submission is rife with misspellings

You misspelled "reeks."

Editing submissions

[RonnyJ]

On occasion, I've seen the submitter of a story complain in the comments about how what they submitted had been drastically changed in content, although still attributed to the submitter. I'm afraid I haven't got any links handy (anyone?), but should this really be allowed?

The job of Slashdot Editor

[Shimmer]

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.

Re:Sticky

[CmdrTaco]

Unfortunately the closest thing we have to 'Sticky' is an update to the FAQ... and very few readers bother to actually read FAQs. In my experience, the only real use for a FAQ is approximately so I can say "STFUN00b" in a *slightly* more polite way (Your question is addressed in the FAQ! Please read it! Oh, and STFUn00b) ;)

Re:Is this really a problem?

[CmdrTaco]

Have patience! I have a half dozen of these editorials in various states of completition. This one was finished first, so I posted it. It's going to take me several months to get to every major problem on Slashdot. After that, we'll be perfect and I can take a break ;)

What do you mean "Most of the editors are human" ?

[__aailob1448]

most of the people who work behind the scenes are in fact human

What do you mean by MOST??!! Not ALL of your editors are human? What creatures are being employed here?

Hellspawned demons? Blood-thirsty Aliens? Evil robots? Republicans?

WE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW!

My 2 Cents

[Se7enLC]

While I agree with some of the points you make, some others not so much.

1). You make the point that you prefer to use relevent keywords in the story to be the link to the article, thinking that it "gives the user an idea of what they are clicking". I think it does the opposite. They already know the topic from reading the short paragraph on slashdot, what they want to know is what SOURCE they are clicking. Is it a blog? Is it an article? is it just a link to the MAIN PAGE of a news site? I typically just click all the links on an interesting story, and I'm irritated when half of them are duplicates of eachother or link to www.cnn.com with no story ID, just because CNN was an interesting word.

2). Spelling and Grammar aren't important? Quite often an article will be posted where the grammar is so off that I have to reread it a few times to guess what they meant to say. Sure the non-english speakers just think every word that sounds the same is, but the rest of us actually read the words and have a tough time following it. You say something to the effect of "Spelling and Grammar aren't as important as the article", but in that case, why not correct the errors that clearly detract from the article? If I see an article with the headline that uses the wrong "your", it makes me embarassed to even be reading the page, forget what the article says. If I get a resume with bad grammar, it goes in the garbage. It takes just as much time to write an article correctly as incorrectly, and if you have to read/edit them anyway, why not fix the glaring mistakes?

If you don't want it to be such a pain, why not just have a spell-check? Every other site on the internet has a spell check. It might still miss some of the less-obvious problems, but it will catch typos and similar issues.

While we're at it, why not an "intelligent html" edit mode? I like being able to add links, but I also like being able to hit enter to make a linebreak (I can't tell you how many times I've written a comment, decided to add a link, and then had to go through and add
  to every line so that it didn't look like garbage)

Also, see my comment on the spelling/grammar from the last CmdrTaco rant:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=173521&cid=144 38339

A few guys' blog or true journalism?

[idiot900]

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?

But... It's not HARD, so why not?

[larsoncc]

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.

Anchor Texting

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

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....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.

I'm not quite sure exactly what you really want here. To be honest, I'm never quite sure how to anchor hypertext. It's always been up in the air for me. For example, take the following:

The Geekery Times reports a decline in proper anchor texting.

How should this be marked up? What's your preferred style?

1. The Geekery Times reports a decline in proper anchor texting.
2. The Geekery Times reports a decline in proper anchor texting.
3. The Geekery Times reports a decline in proper anchor texting.
4. The Geekery Times reports a decline in proper anchor texting.
5. The Geekery Times reports a decline in proper anchor texting.
6. The Geekery Times reports a decline in proper anchor texting.

Do you have trouble with any of them? How would you like it done? Should the article even be linked to in this sentence?

Re:Anchor Texting

[CmdrTaco]

I would probably link with #5. Decline in proper anchor texting.

Geekery Times is not the story.

"Reporting" is not the story. "Reporting" is sorta implied by the fact that we are linking. It means the same as "Saying" or "has an article" or "Writes". These are all words that tell you that on the other side of the link, there will be words. And thats pretty much implied on the glorious web by the fact that we're mostly a text based media.

The focus, the meaning, the point is 'a decline in proper anchor texting' which is probably what I'd link.

Re:"A communal meeting ground"?

[CmdrTaco]

I think that you are talking about 2 seperate issues here, and it's easy to blur the lines: You are saying that because I am commercial, I can't be a community? I think that is untrue personally. This place costs a lot of money to run. Bandwidth, Servers, Programmers and yes (gasp) editors aren't free. And even to run the site for-profit doesn't really need to be a contradiction.

I think most anyone who works in the money part of OSTG would admit right up front where my loyalties lie on Slashdot. Hell maybe I should get marketing or sales to write the article explainign all the times I've put the needs of the community ahead of the business needs. I value this site and the needs of the readers above all else, because I believe it makes long term sense to put those needs first.

Where we simply disagree is on style. I think Slashdot is informal, and therefore typos don't matter that much. Obviously a good number of readers disagree. They print out pages and mark them out with red pens and post in the forums that we are awful. But I don't think that a stylistic decision like that is really that important in the grand scheme of things.

Arrogance so often claims to be humility

[ianscot]

Get them right and I'll take you more seriously.

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.

Proper attribution is key!

[geeber]

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.

Re:#1 issue I have.

[cloudmaster]

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.

Re:How about this.

[CmdrTaco]

This does happen. Most stories are posted several minutes and read by subscribers. When they choose to contact us with typos or URL fixes or other notes, we often include those chages.

Summary Accuracy

[HalB]

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.

Re:Summary Accuracy

[CmdrTaco]

This is somethign we struggle with. When you see that happen tho, feel free to email. The problem is there is a spectrum here that ranges from "Factually wrong" to "Focuses on Some Detail that is not the focus of the article". Where the teeter totter tips on that scale is a subjective thing.

Re:What about context?

[CmdrTaco]

This has been discussed over here as well. At our core, we tend to exclude those who are outsiders. We assume a basic level of knowledge, and tend to write to that. If you lack that, you might be lost.

There are things we could do to address that: linking wiki entries, breaking down acronyms, including definitions on strange words. I think these things might add value to some, but to do so would shift our focus. It would change the nature of what Slashdot is. So it's not something I really want to do.

It's like "Footnotes". Sometiems a footnote could be pulled right up and placed in-line in the body text. Other times, it could simply be skipped and ignored. These decisions are essentially about writing for your audience.

I choose to write Slashdot as if I'm writing to my friends. Always have. My friends know certain things about encryption or microprocessors. And I think that a large reason slashdot succeeds is because many people have that shared base level of knowledge. Change that now is one of those things that I think change Slashdot on a molecular level.

Re:His own example is a train wreck

[IngramJames]

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

One editor to another, you've got backwards

[1369IC]

Let me start by saying I like the site, think you're doing a good job and don't care if you change it based on what I, or anybody, says. That said, I have been an editor of one sort or another for 25 years or so, and I must take exception to how you're defining your job if you're calling yourself an editor. You are, in fact, the first editor I've ever heard of who thinks spelling and grammar aren't of primary importance. I don't want to sound snippy, but if you're going to say spelling and grammar are of secondary or tertiary importance, you need to come up with a new title. It's as simple as that. Perhaps article aggregator.

In editing (and maybe in everything) you have functional obsessions and dysfunctional obsessions. Spelling and grammar are functional obsessions because they speak to clarity, which is central to good communication. They also help define how much credibility you have, which your readers use to decide everything about your site. As someone else already noted, if you can't catch to vs too, humans who know the difference will inevitably start to wonder what else you didn't understand or chose to overlook. There's no way around it. It's human nature. It's like asking someone to not question a meal served up by a short order cook with cigarette ashes on his shirt or snot dripping from his nose. You just have to wonder what else is going on.

Your obsession with link wording, on the other hand, sounds like a dysfunctional obsession to me. Unless you think your readers are reading the link text without reading any of the surrounding text, it doesn't matter much what the link text says (as long as it remains coherent and relevant, of course).

Think about how readers approach a story. They read the headline, which should tell them at least half of what they need to know. It certainly puts things in context. Then they read the lead sentence. I doubt anybody's clicking links before at least getting through those two things (OK, unless they're easily outraged and the headline is "MS disses Linux again!"). By the time they've read the headline and lead, they have enough context to know what to expect when they see the word "here," or "at CNN," or whatever as a link. It doesn't matter a whit nor a tittle if relevant words are used as link text or the phrase "the article" is. None. Not to the reader. It matters to you, so you spend time fixing that problem when you could be spending that time fixing the most egregious spelling and grammar mistakes. So it's dysfunctional. It robs you of time you could be using to do things that matter more to the quality and health of your publication.

Sure, it's a matter of opinion, and hey: it's your site. But if you want to be an editor and a professional, and you want your site to be as respected as possible, you'll value the fundamentals of communication over a pet peeve that most of your readers won't notice either way.

Now, all that said, I certainly agree there's almost always a better way to construct the sentence than to have it end "the article," or "here," or whatever, just so you can have something to link against. But to spend time rewording sentences because of the link text while ignoring glaring spelling and grammar mistakes is a poor use of your time.

Again, nice site. I'll be refreshing a dozen times a day either way.

Re:Correct speeling is for teh weak

[SIGFPE]

Do i have above average reading comprehension skills or something?

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.

i take that to mean that you implicitly accept all of thier points, as you only can basically nitpick their arguments.

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.

Moderation

[DerekLyons]

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.

Taco; you brought up moderation last week, and again this week - in both instances complaining moderation is not being used the way you think it should be.

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.

A reader's perspective

[Eil]

Dear CmdrTaco,

It's great that after almost 10 years you're finally giving us some real info on how the inner, mysterious workings of our beloved Slashdot operate. Unfortunately, you do so with an entirely defensive point of view and tone, as if you're tired of explaining all of these things to everyone a million gazillion times. Except that, from what most of us can tell, you haven't.

So I'd like to offer some counter-points to a few of the issues you raise, but from the other side of the fence: a daily Slashdot reader and sometimes poster.

Picking which stories to post is a big part of our job, matters of style and formatting matter too.

From our perspective, picking which stories to post is the ONLY thing you do. Slashdot does not post all that many articles per day (say, like one an hour?). I'm sure there are tons of submissions each day, and that just choosing which ones to post take up the vast majority of the editors' time. However, this shouldn't mean that basic grammar, minimal fact-checking, and dupe-checking are to be overlooked. Perhaps at any given time you should have one editor browsing through the submission queue who hands off potential submission to another editor that does the actual editing. Might not be feasible for some reason or another, but it's just an idea.

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.

CmdrTaco, we HATE this. There's nothing wrong at all wrong with wanting to comment on the story, but for crying out loud, put you comments where the comments go. Since you have the power to post comments, you also have power to post your own comments very early in the thread. Believe me when I say that we, your readership would prefer this. This way, you can be seen as an active part of the Slashdot community instead of just some editor on the other side of the glass. People can use their friends/foes score modifiers to either view your comments or not. And I don't think you have to worry about not getting a +5 on almost every single one. Believe it or not, many of us do want to hear your opinion and wit, just not necessarily as part of the article.

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.

We may not say it all the time, but CmdrTaco, we love Slashdot. Really, we do. Or we wouldn't be here otherwise. It may have been your personal blog at one point, but you have to acknowledge that it is not your personal blog anymore. It's a news aggregation site frequented by what, millions? We're not going to tell you that you can't add your opinion (see above), but we're mainly irate that Slashdot never seems to have any emphasis on professionalism or improvement, so we feel that it must be our job to TELL you that we want to see those things. You may percieve it as mindless complaining (and much of it may in fact be mindless complaining), but honestly all we really want to do is help.

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.

We have to put up with grammar and spelling nazis too, just probably not as often as you.

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.

This is going to happen. A good percentage of the articles that are posted contain comments that ARE mostly a whole bunch of complaining. Then again, what exactly do you expect when you post articles that have a "Post your comment here!" button right below them? We're a culture of

Re:Correct speeling is for teh weak

[PitaBred]

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.

Re:Correct speeling is for teh weak

[lawpoop]

You don't understand the point of standards.

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 ..." 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.

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.

Re:Correct speeling is for teh weak

[bitslinger_42]

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.