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Slashdot Bookmarks

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the well-isn't-that-special dept.

Recently we've added a new bookmark function that logged in users can use to maintain public lists of URLs for tagging and sharing with the world. You can read the bookmark faq to answer a few specific questions, check out the global bookmark lists that can be tagged, journaled over, or submitted as stories. Read on for notes on what we're planning for this.

The idea is that URLs are bookmarked, either using the javascript bookmarklett thingee or by directly visiting the bookmarks page. But when you are DONE bookmarking and tagging your URL, you can then write a journal or story submission about them. On a related note, journals are now directly submittable to Slashdot editors as well.

We plan to add RSS exporting as well as a few other features, but mostly what we're going to try to do is figure out ways to mine bookmarks for stories. You can best help by tagging bookmarks on the global bookmarks pages. This is all very experimental, so your help is appreciated.

Now as always on Slashdot we appreciate your feedback and bug reports. You can do this the slashdot SF project page. Or even better you could visit the site and consider submitting patches. Ideas are never in short supply here- time to code them all ALWAYS is. Join the mailing list! Or just start bookmarking and tagging stuff. Lastly, thanks to Tim Vroom who put all of this together.

update to clarify a point for the readers- this system is primarily an extension of our submission bin. You are welcome to bookmark & tag for your own pleasure, but our intent is that this system eventually be used to help us find content for the mainpage. So of course the functionality has overlap with other sites. No huge shock there. But our intentions is to use user bookmarks & tags as another input channel for editors picking stories for the audience.

32 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Let me be the first by eclectro · · Score: 4, Funny


    to say that I'm glad dupe and spell check have been added.

    --
    Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
    1. Re:Let me be the first by IAmTheDave · · Score: 5, Funny

      to say that I'm glad dupe and spel check have been added.

      --
      Excuse my speling.
      Making The Bar Project
  2. Google Bookmarks by neoform · · Score: 4, Informative

    Isn't this pretty much the same sorta thing as http://www.google.com/bookmarks/ ?

    Just seems like a nice way for a site to get it's users to index the internet for it..

    --
    MABASPLOOM!
    1. Re:Google Bookmarks by generic-man · · Score: 2, Insightful

      ...which is the same as Yahoo!'s My Web, which is similar to del.icio.us (since bought by Yahoo!), etc., etc.

      But it has TAGS! They're like meta keywords but they're totally Web 2.0ified with scriptaculity!

      --
      For more information, click here.
    2. Re:Google Bookmarks by lysergic.acid · · Score: 2, Informative

      You seem to have completely missed the point. Tags aren't an alternative to text searches. They're an alternative to conventional categorization. Meta tag overloading isn't really a problem in most tag system implementations, and by the success of del.icio.us, it seems to be a very effective organizational system for web content. You can still do a text search on the collection, but tags give a more intuitive way of grouping related articles together using the benefits of folksonomy, which increase with the the size of the userbase. So Slashdot's implementation of tags seems to be very appropriate.

      I stumbled across the above link while exploring LibraryThing as part of the research I've been conducting for a network library application I'm developing. I was looking for a way to categorize/catalog the ebooks in a virtual library and found conventional catagorization techniques to be inappropriate for a virtual collection. Genre hierarchies seemed inadequate for a collection not limited by physical restrictions. Most books tend to belong in multiple categories, and many subcategories have more than one obvious parent category. Tags seemed to be the perfect solution to the problem as it did not rely on a specific view of how things should be categorized and used a more web-like structure rather than the rigid hierarchical structure of conventional classification systems. This is also more in line with the web's overall structure where all the nodes are interconnected by hyperlinks in a folksonomic organization.

      I would recommend reading that article and doing some more research on folksonomy before you dismiss the practical benefits of tagging as opposed to alternative organization methods.

  3. Blog ? by karvind · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How is it too different from a blog thingee ?

    1. Re:Blog ? by lucabrasi999 · · Score: 5, Funny
      How is it too different from a blog thingee ?

      Bah, you don't get it, do you? This is all about MINDSHARE! After Mindshare you get Innovation. And, after Innovation, you get Web Traffic. And, after Web Traffic, you get Dupes!

      It may not make sense now, but one day, young grasshopper, you will understand. Now, where did I put my percosets?

  4. Redundancy by SarekOfVulcan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ok, and we should use this instead of del.icio.us why, exactly? Might be good to put on the FAQ list.

    1. Re:Redundancy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Because Slashdot's got a midly less annoying domain name?

    2. Re:Redundancy by hackwrench · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well eventually every themed website of sufficient size is going to have them, so you can organize your bookmarks around those sites instead of wading through your bookmarks menu in your browser.

  5. Great New Idea! by gasmonso · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is absolutely del.icio.us!!

    http://religiousfreaks.com/
    1. Re:Great New Idea! by pHatidic · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Exactly, all this is doing is splitting the online bookmarks sharing market into even smaller and smaller silos, subtracting value from end users. Why doesn't Slashdot just work out a deal with del.icio.us so that Slashdotters can mark the fact that they have a Slashdot account in their del.icio.us preferences, and then have those bookmarks be minable by the Slashdot editors. That way it would be easier for the Slashdot editors, better for del.icio.us, and would actually add value to the Internet instead of further splintering the market.

    2. Re:Great New Idea! by caluml · · Score: 2, Interesting

      diggdot.us

      --
      Get your own free personal location tracker
    3. Re:Great New Idea! by MarkByers · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Exactly, all this is doing is splitting the online bookmarks sharing market into even smaller and smaller silos, subtracting value from end users.

      Yes! Choice and competition are bad and evil! While we're at it, we should get rid of Firefox for splintering the web browser market.

      --
      I'll probably be modded down for this...
    4. Re:Great New Idea! by pHatidic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Your analogy is broken because Firefox doesn't take advantage of the network effect. The more people that use a particular online social bookmarking service, the more value there is for each user. I'm not saying there shouldn't be different approaches, but it would be nice if there was some sort of standard so that they could interoperate with each other.

  6. Wow by blackmonday · · Score: 2, Funny

    Let me be the first to say: I find this to be a delicious new feature!

  7. Benefits by truthsearch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It seems the primary benefit is to help slashdot find good articles to post about. For bookmark management and sharing there are plenty of other places to go. However many here do read each others journals, so maybe this will turn more into a community of bookmarks instead of delicious' million random links. I guess I'm saying it has the potential to be a more social system since /. has such a large community.

    --
    Developers: We can use your help.
  8. This needs a better name. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think we should call it Sla.shd.ot.

  9. Suggestion by truthsearch · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Mentioning digg here isn't trolling or flamebait. But you could have provided a constructive comparison of /.'s new bookmarks to digg. Example:

    * Digg links gain popularity through votes. It seems /.'s links are like del.icio.us. The more people add a link the more popular it'll be.
    * Digg's whole site is based on link popularity. Slashdot has article posts still moderated by humans. The bookmarks are simply another source of information.
    * Slashdot has a community of people who flag each other as friends and foes, read each others' journals, etc. Digg is full of only random meaningless comments.

    --
    Developers: We can use your help.
    1. Re:Suggestion by quokkapox · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Digg is getting better fast. They implemented barebones threaded discussion not long ago and I'll eat my hat if they don't add adjectives to moderation fairly soon. They've got problems (more dupes than slashdot, for one), but they're moving fast.

      --
      it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
  10. Not just big! by CupBeEmpty · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The point is that it is targeted not just large. I feel like people who take the time to delve into /. tend not to be the same kind of people that just spew moronic crap on Digg and the like. The best part about /. is the community that keeps it as good as it is. If you go to a /. tagged bookmark site you have a better idea of what you are going to get.

  11. Re:It's been dugg by truthsearch · · Score: 2, Informative

    And the very first comment on that post is the perfect example of why I don't like digg. For 11 minutes now this comment is still visible:

    wrong board

    marked as spam /. sucks

    On /. that would have been modded to nothing in 10 seconds. Plus the article isn't spam.

    --
    Developers: We can use your help.
  12. Re:To CmdrTaco by RangerRick98 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The owners of a web site can ignore their users.

    Not a smart idea when some of their users pay for the site.

    If you don't like it, don't whine about it. Just leave.

    Brilliant attitude. Then nothing is ever improved. Whining--or, more accurately, constructive criticism--leads to positive change if it's listened to.
    --
    "You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."
  13. Public vs. private bookmarking by technopinion · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This and delicious may be great for making site suggestions to the masses (or promoting your own site), but how about when you want bookmarking to actually be useful? I've been using http://www.ifaves.com/ a lot and find it great for personal private bookmarking. Set it as my home page, auto-login, use their bookmarklet for adding new pages, and it saves me a ton of time trying to remember what sites I want to revisit, plus lets me share bookmarks with friends without having to do it up in an email.

  14. Top 10 bookmarks by FerretFrottage · · Score: 4, Funny

    --
    "Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
  15. Wait a minute... by Cytlid · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...you mean there's other websites? Besides Slashdot? I've been doing this since 1999 and noone let me know?!?!

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    FLR
  16. Re:I have an idea by Laur · · Score: 3, Informative
    In your date formats, include the year.

    You can change this in your preferences, under "Homepage." I use the "Sun Mar 21, '99 10:00 AM" setting myself.

    --
    When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
  17. Feature request by caffeination · · Score: 3, Insightful
    How about giving us the ability to remove and/or modify in any way the tags we've already made. These aren't ephemeral comments that go away after a day or two, they're long term displays.

    Give us some power over our own work please. Some of us work like Slashdot editors, with a tendency toward dupes and typos.

  18. Usefullness/Feature Request... by dcowart · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hi Slashdot Editors & Mods, I like the idea that tags give a way to codify information based on small words with commonly accepted meanings. My Feature request would be that clicking on a tag didn't edit the tag, but brought up a list of global bookmarks or articles with that tag. So let me click on the 'anime' tag and get a list of people's 'anime' tagged bookmarks. I want the tags to be a search feature. I think this would make the tags even more usefull.

    Also, how are "Popular" bookmarks figured out? By the number of people bookmarking the same site, or by the number of people following the link?

    --Donald

    --
    www.rdex.net
  19. http:///..org by tepples · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Slashdot's domain name is intended to represent stuttering: "http colon slash-slash-slash dot-dot org". How is this significantly less annoying than del.icio.us?

    1. Re:http:///..org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      ...said mooingyak (720677). :-P

  20. That's not the point... by Vorondil28 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ok, and we should use this instead of del.icio.us why, exactly? Might be good to put on the FAQ list.

    You don't get it.

    CmdrTaco:
    But when you are DONE bookmarking and tagging your URL, you can then write a journal or story submission about them. On a related note, journals are now directly submittable to Slashdot editors as well.

    The point is not to replace sites like del.icio.us, but to use a system similar to del.icio.us as an alternative way of submitting links/stories/etc to the editors for posting. If you want to use /. bookmarks insetead of del.ico.us, that's fine, but keep in mind that's not why it was designed and implemented.

    --
    This sig rocks the casbah.