Introducing the Slashdot Firehose

Logged in users have noticed for some time the request to drink from the Slashdot Firehose. Well now we're ready to start having everybody test it out. It's partially a collaborative news system, partially a redesigned & dynamic next-generation Slashdot index. It's got a lot of really cool features, and a lot of equally annoying new problems for us to find and fix for the next few weeks. I've attached a rough draft of the FAQ to the end of this article. A quick read of it will probably answer most questions from how it works, what all the color codes mean, to what we intend to do with it. What is the Slashdot Firehose?

The Slashdot Firehose is a way for you to participate in the Slashdot editorial process. You are able to see all the content submitted to Slashdot: from RSS Feeds and user submissions, to journal entries and successful completed Slashdot stories.

You can participate by voting on these entries: click the minus icon if you don't think the story is great for Slashdot, and click the plus if you do. Better yet, when you make these choices you can help further refine your decision by clarifying why you made the choice you did. You can tell us if a story was binspam, or a dupe, or insightful. If you don't like the options provided in the pop-up windows, you can always open the tagging box and provide whatever tags you think will help Slashdot Editors, and other Slashdot Readers make informed decisions about the content they are reading.

Why does the Firehose have articles in it?

The Firehose has all data on Slashdot. RSS Feeds. Journal Entries. Story Submissions. And of course, accepted Slashdot Stories. The idea is that this view of Slashdot can provide you a single place to view all Slashdot content in one interface.

If you don't like any particular data type, you can filter it out. If you don't like journals, you can just filter on -journal and they are gone. If you don't want Slashdot stories, -story will get you there.

You will note a variety of interesting options that allow you to control how this page is displayed. For example, if you filter on 'story' and set 'expand top rated' you will see a page that is very similar to Slashdot's main page today... except that it dynamically updates and allows voting and in-place expansion of sectional content. Alternatively, filtering to -story and toggling 'abbreviated mode' will let you see a real-time stream of reader contributions. It's really up to you

What do the colors mean?

The spectrum of colors represents an overall quality rating for content. Red is the most popular, the highest rated, and hopefully the best content on Slashdot. There is relatively little Red content, although most stories we post default to red. Some stories show up as orange. As you work down the spectrum you will find more content. Default submissions to the Firehose start at blue. At indigo you will find a number of RSS feeds and journal entries. At violet you are probably wasting your time, and at black you definitely are!

Play with the color slider to find the level you enjoy reading most at. Use Red or Orange for busy days or if you are a casual reader. The lower you pull the slider, the more content you will see.

How does the calendar widget work?

The Firehose is usable in 3 "Modes". In "latest content" mode you are looking at the last few days of Slashdot content. Display is optimized for you to easily navigate within this small bit of time. In 'Day Of' mode you will see content only from (surprise) any day you specify in the calender. Finally in 'Search Archive' mode you will search the entire database. For now, this goes back only perhaps 6 months but eventually we think this can replace our existing search infrastructure.

What can I do with the Firehose Tabs?

We've found that we like to use the firehose in a number of different ways. Sometimes I want a casual view of Slashdot, and other times i want to see more stories. Sometimes I want to see only the stories I've tagged. Other times I just want to see Journals. Well, shockingly enough, each tab will remember your settings and allow you to quickly return to them later.

If you change your settings, you do so in an 'Untitled' tab. If you click on your tab, you can name it which will save it for later. Also, you can subscribe to an RSS feed for any particular tab if that's your cup of tea. Please keep in mind that we have a robots.txt file that restricts the rate that you refresh pages. I'd suggest a 30 minute minimum.

What browsers are supported?

Currently we work great under Firefox 1.5 and 2.0, as well as Safari. IE7 is functional but has glitches that we are working to fix. The iPhone functions as well with a number of optimizations for small screens (although the bandwidth requirements are still fairly steep so you are probably better off on a WiFi connection for now)

IE6 is known to be broken. Other browsers might work, but we haven't really tested them.

Why didn't you post a submission that made it to red?

Slashdot is a complex beast with readers with a wide variety of interests. Part of the job of Slashdot Editor is to create a website that is interesting to all of us. That means that sometimes our opinions may differ from yours. We use the voting in the Firehose as an indicator of value, but not as the definitive measure of if something is a Slashdot story.

If you don't like that, you can simply remove our Slashdot stories by putting -story in your filter. The firehose you read will be then be completely reader driven. We believe that the way we've built this system can appeal to the wide variety of Slashdot readers without compromising the story quality for our core audience.

Doesn't this make you just like

Well first of all, we're happy to use good ideas when we see them. Countless websites have knocked off our cool ideas, just like we joyously took ideas from those that came before us. But ultimately the idea here is not to imitate any other social network news site. We feel that the editorial layer that exists on top of Slashdot is important. But we also think that having many eyeballs will help us more efficiently sort through the ever increasing volume of content on this here internet of ours. That's why we'll aim to strike a balance. Slashdot stories will continue to be posted by our editors. We will use the advice given to us by our readers. Sometimes we will agree, and other times we won't. You are welcome to read more or less editor content depending on your tastes.

At the end of the day, striking a balance between the wisdom of crowds and the tyranny of mobs is a difficult one. It's also a personal one: some people might regard it as having a moral component. Others may just want to read a bunch of good stories no matter what the methodology. We're hoping that we can strike a balance that will work for everyone. Your feedback can only improve the system for everyone.

Comments

Huzzah!

[pegr]

We can now pitch the editors!

Story submission now based on subject quality?

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

The firehose view just lists the story subjects and allows the user to click +/- from there. Yes, you can view the entire story, but I think most people are just going to vote based on the subject alone. Is this good or bad?

Re:Story submission now based on subject quality?

[lawpoop]

...I think most people are just going to vote based on the subject alone. Is this good or bad? I think it's wonderful. In the few times I've used the firehose, I immediately canceled stories that had sensationalist or uninformative headlines ( "Amazing New Findings!" ). For the headlines that were pithy, informative, and intriguing, I went to the article ( yes, I actually navigated to the internet article ) and decided whether the story was worthwhile, appropriate for slashdot, and accurately summarized in the subject, and voted accordingly.

Re:Story submission now based on subject quality?

[eln]

You seem to be a conscientious and thoughtful person who is interested in quality articles that will spur interesting discussions. Once you and the 5 other people on Slashdot who are like that do your thing though, what about the thousands of other Slashdot readers?

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that not even the paid editors of Slashdot put that much time or thought into deciding whether a submission is good or not, how do you expect the average Slashdot reader to do so?

The Firehose is an easy way for the editors to reduce the number of story submissions they have to look through in order to find the good stuff. It will not reliably bring the best stories to the top, but it should be pretty effective at burying the most obvious garbage. Basically, it's like a spam filter for the editors, and is essentially doing part of their job for them.

Re:Story submission now based on subject quality?

[lawpoop]

Basically, it's like a spam filter for the editors, and is essentially doing part of their job for them. That's wonderful. The more the editors get out of the way, the better. If slashdot totally got rid of the editors, I think that would be paradise. They don't even edit ( as in, correct and revise text for clarity, spelling, and grammar)!

I can read articles days in advance on digg. However, digg is cluttered up with crappy "Amazing Photos! title sez it all" articles and insightful, highly rated comments such as +157 "Doucehbag [Reply] ".

I come to slashdot for the community. Not for the articles, not for the crappy non-editing that the mods-called-editors do, but for the intelligent discussion from karmalized nerds with modpoints. If the slashdot community could also have complete control of the story posting system **and summary editing**, that would be the Shangri-la of internet message boards.

Re:Story submission now based on subject quality?

[Dachannien]

If the purpose of spam is to get people to see its contents, and the purpose of the Firehose is to let people see most or all of the article submissions, then doesn't the Firehose encourage spam submissions?

Aside from the thinly-veiled slashvertisements we sometimes see, the average front page reader on Slashdot doesn't see the spam, because it's rejected by the editors. With the Firehose, there are at least some eyeballs looking at all those rejected submissions, so it's worth the spammers' time to submit more spam even if it never makes it past the Firehose, because it gets seen on the Firehose.

Re:Story submission now based on subject quality?

[TheRaven64]

Can you not get users to add a date when submitting an article? This would be either the date of the original article for news items or a N/A placeholder for others. Push news entries to the top of the FireHose and expire them after a week. When there aren't any interesting news stories, it's probably a good time to start posting the 'slow news day' ones, and these will automatically trickle to near the top.

Re:Story submission now based on subject quality?

[lawpoop]

I think that part of why Slashdot is relevant is because us editors exist and prevent 'amazing photos! title sez it all". Of course that's true, but what I'm betting on is that the hurdle has been cleared and the slashdot community has been 'gentrified'. Just as we don't get "Doucebag!" comments modded to +5 Insightful, I likewise don't think we would get "Amazing Photos!" submissions modded to the front page by slashdotters with mod points.

Also, and I don't mean to start a flame war here, but editors have consistently gotten away with poor editing. Most recently, there has been at least threesubmissions with improper usage of the phrase 'begs the question' in the summary. They don't really edit, or at least, they are allowed to make the same editorial mistakes over and over again -- they are just mods! Admins! Title them correctly. ;)

Basically what I'm arguing is that the community system we've created through development and usage, karma + mod points, is strong enough to handle the editing job. The proof of the ability of the community to handle editing is the high quality of comment moderation, as compared to digg.

My hope is that the hose will give us a chance to satisfy the desires of a broad spectrum of users... I think I see now where you are trying to go with this. However, I think most users will use the features and functions of the default opening page, which means, they won't use these personalizing features at all. At least, that's my prediction ;)

Re:Story submission now based on subject quality?

[CmdrTaco]

If your only concern is that 'Editors' have an inaccurate job title, then I think we are doing just fine.

If you want community oriented tools to actually edit content wiki style or whatever, www.slashcode.com has sourcecode. I've had a user contributed patch/diff system on my TODO list forever, but it's a hard job and I've got another dozen hard jobs ahead of it on the list. We'll get there someday, you could get there tomorrow :)

Re:Story submission now based on subject quality?

[Dachannien]

Whoa, dude. By "slashvertisement", I wasn't attempting to imply that you guys were getting kickbacks - merely that an article submission itself looks like it was written more to sell something to one's fellow Slashdotters than to inform one's fellow Slashdotters of something interesting. Same thing happens on Wikipedia all the time.

Since the article was written by its submitter, the quality of the article is mainly on them. If it's pure advertising copy, that's on them, first and foremost. Still, you might consider taking the hint that Slashdotters are offering when the "slashvertisement" tag appears on an article, namely that the article crosses a line that your readership would rather not see crossed.

I've noticed that a lot of times this happens when the article describes a product with purported scientific basis, but when you go to read the linked webpage, it turns out that there's really no scientific substance to it at all. Since most Slashdotters are interested in the nuts and bolts more so than forking over cash for something of dubious usefulness, such articles get railed against.

On a side note, if there are problems with quality-of-article at certain points during the day, you might consider automatic queueing and posting of articles to add some pacing, so that article quality doesn't decrease during the off hours. Instead of several articles showing up during a short span, the editors could add the articles to a queue which automatically adds a new article to the front page after a somewhat random period of time.

On another side note, regarding the Firehose spam in the first place, I don't think nofollow is going to cut it. Lots of weblogs and forums have nofollow on their links as well, and some weblogs and forums haven't even been posted to in months. That doesn't stop the spambots from posting to them, because of the possibility of someone seeing the spam eventually (which is the whole point of spam). If the threshold for worthwhileness of posting spam is that low, the Firehose is a gold mine in comparison.

Like usual..

[Dragoonkain]

Slashdot does'nt test anything in IE. Yes I know, everyone is supposed to use firefox! But while you people keep dreaming of that day, the rest of the world uses Internet Explorer. I am sure this service is nice, but as of right now I can not use the service because it looks like complete trash with JS errors in Internet Explorer. sigh. You are excluding 50% of the browsing market from using your website. Thanks!!

Re:Like usual..

[fbjon]

Well, it was extremely slow and clunky on Opera for a long time, but now it's a breeze to use, so something changed for sure. Just the filter slider, and some icons in the prefs are a bit messed up.

cryptic flags?

[nmrs]

Why use cryptic flags like -story and -journal that the user has to just magically know (i don't see any list of available flags by the filter box). Why not just use checkboxes or something of things to include? [x] stories [ ] journal

Firehose questions

[Experiment 626]

Why isn't there a "troll" or "flamebait" option in the minus sign menu? These apply to a lot of the journal rants, and several of the submissions too, but the closest thing you can mod them is "stupid".

Is there a way to set the view to show more than 25 entries at a time?

If you click the plus or minus sign, but don't provide a reason in the menu that comes up, does the plus or minus rating still take effect?

Re:Opera

[sethadam1]

Firehouse may work, but Discussion2 almost always freezes up Opera for me. I had to go back to the old system just to get a story page to load without bringing my processor to 100%

Opera 9.2/Windows XP SP2

Bug? Feature? Weirdness?

[wiredog]

I can comment on stories that are submitted, but not yet accepted. Intended behavior?

What happens to the comments if the story gets dumped?

Re:Not so sure

[CmdrTaco]

I think there is value in both methods. I think it's about striking a balance between mob rule and dictatorship. I refuse to let the Slashdot story selection turn into American Idol because I think sometimes the little stories are the most important, and sometimes the story that everyone wants to read... well, everyone has already read it, and do you really need to see it again?

As for the community, I like this one. Lots of good folks post here every day. And a few dickheads that I really wish would shut up. Sometimes I wish I was as evil as some of them accuse me of being. It would be a lot easier to simply ban them ;)

Re:Color coding, bad idea.

[CmdrTaco]

I occasionally give a slide show where I discuss gaming and Slashdot. The reason is that numbers create games that people try to win. The problem is that Slashdot isn't really a game... or at least, it shouldn't be. We learned this the hard way with 'karma'. It was a publicly visible integer and it turned into a dick-length contest. People treated it as XP. They treated it as currency. And none of these things aided the real goal of the value ("Promote positive Discussion").

The lesson I learned from all this is to avoid numbers at all costs because otherwise people create video games where perhaps it is better that none exist. I understand this- it's our nature. I LOVE video games where I earn and spend money. I love games where I gain XP and improve stats. But Slashdot shouldn't be those things... it should promote discussion. It should try to put the spotlight on good stories. It shouldn't be about how much XP You or I accumulate, it should be how much benefit we all collectively get from quality content.

Of course you've demonstrated that you are a cynic. I try to be an optimist here. I've learned an important lesson. Hopefully Slashdot is better off for it.

Re:Opera

[jeevesbond]

Opera 9.2/Windows XP SP2

I had the same problem on Ubuntu until Opera brought out 9.22.

I've seen videos of Hakon Lie using Opera on the OLPC to read /. so if there's a problem which stops /. working properly on Opera I doubt it will be a problem for long. :)

Perhaps the /. devs should give more credibility to Opera, since they obviously have some fans high-up in the company!

Linking submissions/

[Pentagram]

It would be good to be able to link submissions together, as in "these are the same story". Flagging a submission as "dupe" is logically awkward if there are several submissions covering the same story from a different angle. Do you flag the weakest submissions as the dupe or the later ones? Not sure how that would work interface-wise though.

Monochrome is better

[AlpineR]

I'm not colorblind, but I agree that a rainbow spectrum is a bad idea. In a color circle, violet is closer to red than green is. Having violet equal bad and red equal good is confusing. Anything spanning more than 180 degrees of a color circle will be. And certain colors, like yellow, stand out more psychologically, giving a strange emphasis to stories with scores around 60%.

The best solution might be monochromatic: black to white, or white to red. Or have black be neutral, red be positive, and blue be negative with monochromatic gradients in between. That'd be like a good elevation map: green to brown for increasing altitude of land, light blue to dark blue for increasing depth of water.

AlpineR

Exclusing people

[Per Abrahamsen]

> You would rather exclude millions of people

There are millions of people using IE on platforms not supported by Firefox?

> Someone who has no idea (or has no privlidges to install software) is not going to care about what
> firefox is. They just want to browse the internet.

And you feel that people who can't install software or have heard of FireFox is the core demographics of /.?