Slashdot Mirror
The History of Slashdot Part 4 - Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
As the dust settled following the dot-com bust, we would see only minor changes to Slashdot. Hemos moved to Boston both to be closer to Andover HQ, and to get his wife in commute range for her grad school work. Nate went to California when his wife got a teaching job. Both moved to Ann Arbor a few years later, as did CowboyNeal, Samzenpus & I. The band was back together, and has been for the last several years.
These days we have a little office in A2 where we do much the same things as we have always done. Jeff spends way to much time in conference calls with corporate offices. He's got a fancy VP title which means he makes the big bucks in exchange for radiating his head on a cel phone. But he's always been a people person so I think that suits him just fine. Nate is an engineer for SourceForge and working on his own advanced degrees. CowboyNeal is on leave right now, but we're looking forward to his return. Samzenpus still sits at the receptionist desk scaring away the door to door salesmen that still seem to show up randomly with no clue what we do. We conduct most of our affairs via a jabber channel where people on both coasts work together.
At the end of all of it, I'm happy that I still get to work with my oldest friends, as well as a number of really honestly great people we've had to good fortune to meet up with in the last decade. And beyond that, I've had the good fortune to work with a number of other smart and cool people that have gone on to bigger and better things. On some level, the memories and people are the most important part of life, and I'm very happy with how that has gone.
As for Slashdot itself, there's a theme in the discussions about Slashdot jumping the shark. That theme has resurfaced regularly for our entire lifespan. From the creation of user accounts in 1998 on, every action we take on Slashdot provokes a 'This is the end of Slashdot' from someone. But what this tells me is that we actually haven't jumped the shark at all- if we had, they'd stop saying the same thing every time we do anything. You learn a lot in my position about large communities: Most of you never say a word... only the most passionate of you ever post. And an angry user is 10 fold more likely to post than a happy one. And when nobody can agree on anything... well there's meaning in that too.
At the end of the day, we've done some reasonably great things over the years. Take for example Sep 11. On that day the mainstream news websites buckled under the loads, and although we had to turn off logging, we managed to stay up, sharing news in a time where it was often difficult to get. That was the day where the team of engineers that make this site happen pulled together and did the impossible, forcing our limited little hardware cluster to handle traffic that was probably triple or quadruple a normal day.
Or take Columbine. When this tragedy hit, our readers took it a differently. Instead of blaming video games, we looked hard at the culture of abuse that drives high school. We talked about how the jocks beat us up. We knew that the terrible events of that day are almost inevitable when you stick kids into a system where certain groups of kids are given free reign to beat up others based on extra curricular activities. During that series of stories many people had a place to talk. It was cathartic. Our role was small, but it mattered.
Darker moments like those are rare, but there are countless other moments good and bad. Many you see on the page, and others you don't. From little successes like trading banner ads for office chairs or the time Gamara chucked Hemos's cel phone into an empty ice bucket... except it wasn't empty. Or the time the crazy guy showed up at our office and offered to give Samzenpus his car in exchange for 5 minutes of time with CmdrTaco, where he would "Reverse Engineer My Life". I proposed to my wife here... and she accepted and now years later we have a baby. I couldn't begin to enumerate the countless moments that have made the last decade here awesome.
I have other thoughts that are perhaps more bleak. There's a possible dark future for Slashdot if corporate interests take over. There's constant pressure from within the company to create new "products". Sometimes these mean new/more/bigger ads which usually result in people installing junkbusters. Far worse is the occasional attempt to create some sort of content partnership that blurs the lines between legitimate Slashdot content, and the paying advertiser's message. I hate these meetings because I have to constantly be the guy that says 'No'. My worst fear for Slashdot is that someday someone with deep enough pockets comes along with a check so big that someone in the company with a shortsighted view of the future is willing to cash over top of my objections.
Likewise, there is pressure for us to grow as a site, but this has 2 major problems. The first is that our audience was here in the 90s: we were the early adopters that made the internet great in the first place. Our growth will never match the population of the net because we are a small group that isn't growing: we were here first. Second is my personal feeling that marketing is just icky: read if you want. Or don't. If you don't find us on your own, you probably weren't meant to be here. That's my Gen-X showing I think, but it's still how I feel. And it really doesn't help when people on-line regard Alexa as legitimate and definitive. We could gain traffic by posting boobs or covering other subjects, but that would distract us from our real focus. And it would drive you guys away.
Similarly, new websites and technologies arise regularly. From Kuro5hin to Digg to Reddit, there have been dozens of websites that do similar things to Slashdot with varying degrees of success. Some have surpassed us, while most have faded into obscurity. From AJAX interfaces to alternate methodologies of content selection, they all have ideas, some good, so bad... some right for Slashdot, and some wrong. Distinguishing one from the other is tricky: you guys all deserve a modern web application, but at the end of the day, our story selection and discussions are what make this site unique. Drastic changes would alienate our long-term user base, so we need to tread cautiously.
A 10 year anniversary is a good time to think about what a 20 year anniversary would be like. And I think that the only way that Slashdot in 2017 is as good as Slashdot in 2007 is if we continue to maintain editorial independence, moderate advertising quantity with a clear distinction between advertising and content, and of course, that we continue to select the right stories to appeal to our existing audience... not to spend our time courting other audiences that would only dilute the discussions that bring so many of you here day after day.
For me personally I've spent a lot of time this month reflecting on Slashdot and my role here. Every day, 7 days a week, from my first cup of coffee until the moment I close the lid on my laptop, Slashdot is a part of my day. It's most of my browser tabs, most of my chat windows, and most of my inbox. And that's fine because I love this place: the readers, the content, and the people I work with. I'm honored that I continue to be the caretaker of this place.
Of course I've been here my entire adult life and I doubt that will always remain true. Certainly to leave would leave a hole in my life. But it's a constant struggle to maintain the site up to my standards. It's a struggle that I often win, but occasionally lose too. On some level, what keeps me here is knowing exactly what would happen within a few months of my departure. I don't like that one bit.
But let me end on a high note: I am very aware of Slashdot's unique place in the history of the internet. There's no way I could thank everyone that made that possible, but you all know who you are. I dream that in 2017 we can look back at 20 years and be just as proud of our second decade as our first. Keep reading. Keep submitting stories. Keep posting, moderating and meta moderating. If it isn't to much trouble, click on a banner ad every now and then. And hopefully I'll see you then.
--
Rob Malda
Pants are Optional
I share your fear that one day that will happen, Rob. I don't want to see that happen: not now, not ever. To make this absolutely clear, the day that happens is the day I tip my cap and leave this site for good.
Personally, I wish you'd never sold the site and continued to run it with the original team but there is no use crying over spilt milk. We are where we are.
At some point, Rob is going to have to take a stand against these goons and defend Slashdot from corporate greed. He says he already is but I fear like the Ring of Power, the pull becomes stronger over time and it will develop in to a darker more insidious threat. To defend against this threat successfully he will need convincing evidence that Slashdot will be thoroughly destroyed if the enemy prevails.
I hope people will stand with me today and that this thread will form part of that defence.
If you agree with what I've said can you please reply to this thread with "I agree." Let's send these people a message that ultimately this site exists for us. We are their customers, not the advertisers.
Simon
You're so wise it makes me sick. Why can't more people be like Rob?
Seriously, if you want to make a killing off of Slashdot without making changes that would kill Slashdot, you should expand your articles into a full-length book. Your site is officially an Internet institution. You are a bonafide part of geek culture now, which makes your perspective unique and interesting. You also have proven experience in building a successful community from nothing to millions, which would come in very handy in lots of industries and fields, both small and large.
Plus, when the book is reviewed and the link is posted in the article, you could earn royalties AND sales commission, how sweet is that?
Who knows, maybe you could even patent some of your methods of community-building, and then post an article on how evil you've become. ;-)
Congratulations on 10 years of hard work. You have a lot to be proud of.
.... still here.
Keep fighting the good fight.
I still swear some days that the trolls are going to drive me out, but here I am
And as an aside - Slashdot (and its ads... believe it or not.) led me to one of the best decisions I ever made in my career.
Moons ago, you had an ad running for some company called "Ironport". They had a neat device that was just a mail delivery engine. As a company that has over 60 million customers, that's important to us. When customers' bills are ready, we're sending, well, 60 million emails. So such a "spam cannon:" is important.
Anyway, that simple banner ad on Slashdot put me in touch with the folks at Ironport, and here we are, 5+ years later, with a completely modern email infrastructure that Just Works (tm). The Ironport folks made some changes to their appliances to meet our particular needs, and it's been a great partnership for us.
Thanks guys. And if it weren't for that "icky" advertising, it would've never happened.
The future of Slashdot is identical with it's past: Hot grits, Digg circlejerks, and all the Roland Pipperqquualalllelee you can eat.
Actually, Slashdot was where I first heard about it. It's was just after the first plane hit - I seem to recall at the time it was thought it was a small plane. The second followed shortly with additional information.
"We could gain traffic by posting boobs ... it would drive you guys away."
Posting boobs wouldn't drive me away! I promise!
(unless they are saggy granny boobs or man boobs)
More music, fewer hits
What disappoints me more than anything else is the slow creep of the "Slashdot groupthink" that, which once was merely a quirky attitude prevalent among a few vocal members, has grown into the mindless anti-IP/anti-corporation/anti-establishment theme of most of the stories posted here. There are very few "nerdy" stories on this site anymore. Most of the stories are either devoted to Google and Apple fanboiism, "IANAL but.." topics, Microsoft/SCO/Bush bashing, or tech update minutia.
The only readable sections are Science and Developers. YRO has got to be a honeypot for trolls, but how can you tell the difference anymore?
The 2002-2005 troll eradication has left this site impotent and truly enmeshed in hivethink. Say what you will about their abuses of this site, trolls provided an entertaining, if not reasonably useful, devil's advocate. With only hiveminded thinkers left, like any monopoly, this site has stagnated.
The heydays are over, I think. And while I hope you make it 20 years, I have serious doubts that this site will make it that far. There are so few things actually covered here at Slashdot, and that list is being constantly trimmed, that I think at some point YRO will be the only section that survives intact. And if that's the case, then that will be a sad day indeed.
... is this: I read adds on slashdot. For the very simple reason that i believe that, while you may be relatively ad agnostic (a good thing), the kinds of companies interested in advertising to a community like this are the kinds of companies that i just might be interested in. I'm much more likely to click on an ad on a slashdot page than i am on a google results page any day, and that's because the community that has been established around this site dictates a certain amount of honesty, legitimacy, and decorum that i do not see on other news sites, or websites.
That is because of your editorial independence. So the day slashdot shills anything is the day slashdot dies. The corporatistas may not know it, but Rob Malda is the difference between the profitable business known as slashdot and no business at all.
You may one day leave, and that's fine. Good even, new vision invigorates a company. Your most important task is to be instrumental in choosing who will succeed you. It's good enough feudalism, it's good enough for slashdot:)
You said they always want new ideas - how about slashvertisements?
Not the usual lingo here - but an ad agency/division of
- text, and maybe pictures
- no or limited animation
- no sound
- no suggesting the the viewer is a moron (either in general or for not using the product)
- require a maximum size that an ad cannot exceed
- require any client put the ads in only a limited set of locations
- Ad voting, similar to the comment karma system here.
Advertising - done non-evil.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Yes friend, it wouldn't be the same without you.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
I'd like to point out that as of now, there are only 10 (+ this) comments at +2 or better, while we have crap-tons of comments on far-less relevant articles.
:-)
10x more likely to bitch
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
It's interesting to me that CmdrTaco sees 9/11 as one of Slashdot's greatest moments. Personally, I have mixed feeling. The fact that Slashdot stayed up indicated that Slashdot is run by some quality people but, more broadly, I see a tremendous failure of the media to keep 9/11 in perspective. This failure to maintain perspective has had profoundly negative consequences - most notably the US invasion of Iraq but also the USA's human rights abuses and reckless deficit spending.
Back when Slashdot started there was all kinds of interest in computers and the power of technology and science to change the world for the better. Now, the focus is on conflict and war accompanied by a loss of basic human rights.
The energy crisis (and associated problems - such as global warming) is real. But imagine that, instead of spending hundreds of billions a year on the mess that is Iraq, the USA instead spent hundreds of billions a year developing the science and technology to overcome these energy problems permanently rather than just prolonging the inevitable by fighting over the last reserves of oil. The USA put a man on the moon back in the days when most computations were performed by sliding two marked sticks together (slide rules).
If there was the will, the USA could solve our energy problems permanently - but by failing to maintain perspective after 9/11 the USA has lost it's way. That's not to say that Slashdot was the one thing that caused the USA to lose it's way. Merely that Slashdot was powerless to prevent it.
CmrTaco: I'm not a computer guy -- though I do learn a lot by reading /. -- so bear with me if this is a stupid question. What I've taken away from CSS Garden is that, through CSS, you can provide drastically different interfaces with the same content. Why couldn't Slashdot do something like that? Provide users with different ways of viewing the forums?
To be, by FAR the best forum interface ever is provided by Google Groups (in the "Tree View" mode). It's the only forum presentation I've ever seen that provides intuitive navigation from a left-hand pane, letting you see immediately where you are in the "tree". It is so superior, I am baffled as to why it hasn't been widely emulated. Other forums make you constantly go up to the top of the screen to see the hierarchy, which is obviously useless.
Where I'm going with this: I wonder if you'd ever consider approaching Google and asking them to share that code with you. I bet they'd do it -- it seems like a good, high-profile PR move for them. And what a huge boon for users. Man, Slashdot with a navigable left-pane hierarchy -- that would be a dream come true.
- Alaska Jack
The editorial independence of slashdot, and the meta moderating has keep me coming back here for years. I am glad you have been able to resist the coporate culture as long as you have, and maintain a quality site.
Back a couple of years ago, I was giving a presentation to a bunch of high school seniors on careers in engineering. I asked if any wanted to be CS majors. A few timidly raised their hands. I then asked if any of them had hear of slashdot.org. None of them had. I told them point blank that if they wanted to get anywhere in CS, they had better start reading slashdot.
Good luck on the next 10 years!
--C. Alan
While I have only been reading this website for the past 7-8 months, I must say that I have great respect for the vision of Slashdot. As my 1st post, I have learned more here than I had hoped. However I stumbled upon this place, this is the 1st page that opens every day. The intellectual insights of the users, as well as the general content will keep me coming back for the next 10 years and more.
I agree.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Thank you, slashdot.org, for your existance! :)
This is the end of Slashdot!
Nah, thanks for the catharsis you insensitive clod!
Do I get modded down for squeezing in two cliches? Yeah? Crud.
Slashdot Drama 2008
- CowboyNeal will finally have sex with CmdrTaco whose wife gets a divorce; CowboyNeal and CmdrTaco will move to a new apartment, together
- kdawson gets promoted to upper management for his consistently excellent news delivery
- RMS, ESR, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer settle all their arguments and celebrate the merge of major software license platforms by engaging in a massive man train of over 13,000 Coders for Cock (a Guinness World Record!)
- Theo de Raadt commits a suicide after OpenBSD's tight security got penetrated with a huge NIGGER penis
- Linux finally dies, FreeBSD gets hijacked by Singaporean homo-mulatto pirates from San Fransisco
- goatse.cx goes back online!
It's been great so far. See you in another 10.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
You mention boobs. Flashy highly admirable boobs do grab the guy's attention.
Even in my RC Heli magazine they use boobs. I like them of course because it is a dream that hot chicks like that are in to RC toys and geeks. But the reality is that they are just paid boob whores to get more revenue.
Having said that, if you threw in a few boobs, other than the average readers, I would certainly pay attention to them. I might miss some of the stories though because I would be fixated on the boobs.
But, a thought is that you could customize the body parts seen depending on the user's claimed gender like the MySpace ads. My wife gets ads with guys on them, and I get ads with girls on them.
Why not have stories that when I'm logged in, can see a boob next to borg bill. That would make Bill look a lot better for sure. =)
If you build it they will come! I think that was in some movie or something. We're here to stay now that you've built it though. Keep it real for the next 10 and all will be well. Ben
We'll finally be rid of the .gif images on the site. :-)
Hopefully to be replaced with scalable SVGs. Hey, I can dream, right?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Or take Columbine. When this tragedy hit, our readers took it a differently. Instead of blaming video games, we looked hard at the culture of abuse that drives high school. We talked about how the jocks beat us up. We knew that the terrible events of that day are almost inevitable when you stick kids into a system where certain groups of kids are given free reign to beat up others based on extra curricular activities.
This is what I like about Slashdot. A focus on technology and a view that solutions are not necessarily what everyone else on all sides of the political spectrum seems to think they are.
When I see people imbibing the kool-aid of Macintosh, Linux, Libertarianism or any of a dozen other -isms or fanboy silos, I sense the creeping death that threatens any organization: groupthink. Moo.
It's to your credit that you've kept it at bay. Ten more years, at least, and keep it hairy here so if the corporates want to intervene, they'll get F1R5T P05T and goatse in their laps.
technical writing / development
I never posted this request before since I thought that the crew was split apart but since you're all in Ann Arbor, bring back Geeks in Space!
I used to have a ball at listening to CowboyNeal, Hemos and CmdrTaco chatting about what was happening online and whatever else happened to come up. I still remember CmdrTaco bitching about how lossy MP3 compression was and since then I've used his cymbal noise as an example of why FLAC is better.
Call it a podcast, I don't care! Since the quickies are dead (and I miss them too), I wanna hear what you guys think about the latest South Park episode, how your female WoW characters are doing and other nerdy, nerdy, silly stuff.
Anyway, throw us an audio bone and bring back Geeks in Space, please!
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
The good thing is that the CowBoy Neal jokes can't get any worse in 10 years. So that's one part of
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
And not a single grammatical or typographical error (at least none glaring) in TFA. Bravo!
I remember for while when digg became popular, people would often complain that they had seen it on digg yesterday.
I decided to give digg a try, but found that so much crap got through as well that I was wading around trying to find the
"good stuff". Also, the comments are about on par with a pre teen message board, and headlines frequently look like a 9 year old wrote them.
This kept me on slashdot, where the worst that I have to endure is old jokes (that still make me laugh when executed correctly).
Most trolls get modded down pretty quickly, and I have actually end up learning something most of the time.
I still check digg every now and then, and the new fad is for a single (AWESOME!) picture to get dugg up.
I had an interesting IT experience about a year back, and said to myself, "self, I bet you could make the front page of digg with this".
So, as an experiment, I created a blogger blog and submitted it to digg. Lo and behold a few short hours later this non news story, personal
blog had hit the front page of digg. I enabled adsense and made about $20.00 from the thing. Its just not a news site anymore, and easily gamed.
music lover since 1969
I can't recall when I first read Slashdot, but as my nick here is the first online nick I had (subsequently changed, for obvious reasons), I figure it would be around late '98.
The net back then was a very different beast, but what is so great to see is that Slashdot has matured with *cough* some dignity and grace. What makes it good now is what made it good 10 years ago.
I've had my private rants at Slashdot, permanently removing it from my bookmarks on a few occassions - I can never really recall what makes me do this, possibly really bad news days or too many 'repeat' stories, or possibly too much booze.
Funny thing is, I always come back.
Perhaps it's because I have good Karma... (or no social life?)
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
I mean please.
Posting anonymously so that you can't tell if I've ever actually posted anything nice...ever
> proposed to my wife here... and she accepted
> and now years later we have a baby.
Wait until your baby creates his/her own Slashdot account - mine did this year. That made me feel both proud and old...
sPh
Of course you may have reserved userid 10 for that purpose a long time ago...
Damn, my first one's on the way and You just made me feel old thinking about seeing him (I hope it's a boy) browsing /. and hacking away.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Only halfway kidding on that. At a recent conference on IPv4 address exhaustion, /. got called out by name when the main speaker said that IPv6 wouldn't take off until Slashdot supported it.
/. crowd.
/.++, would hurt much. Certainly, IPv6 would add some tech cred without any damage. A working API like google maps or facebook have might be interesting just to see what new ideas are floating around.
I had started to write a question for the "Ask Rob" story, but ended up wandering off before hitting submit. In short, it was a question on future technologies, and whether there was any youthful geekiness left in the
But then, there was Rob's excellent response to similar question.
"I think the single biggest threat to Slashdot is for us to try to be something we're not."
Which is why slashdot still has legions of followers after 10 years. The moderation systems, the layout, the filtering systems are quite good for what slashdot is. The addition of RSS feeds, CSS, and the few other improvements over a decade shows that slashdot grows as necessary, too much too fast would only hurt.
That being said, there is a part of me that wonders if adding some AJAX navigation or publishing an API so people doing mashups can make a
Rob, do you even have time to play with new technologies like AJAX, or look at what other places are doing with their APIs and mashups? Do you get out to conferences or trade shows (I know, with a new baby, probably not much)?
I'm not really asking for slashdot2.0, the newest paradigm for a social mashup avatar-driven search engine portal, because I probably would never use (or be able to use) it.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I enjoyed my years working behind the scenes on Andover/OSDN/VA's network admin and much of that because Rob and Jeff were fun to work with. For example there was LinuxWorld in NYC, when we drank a few too many Gin & Midori concoctions to the point where [name withheld] couldn't remember his hotel room, or what floor it was on, or even coherently explain where the jacket he was wearing came from.
Good times.
BTW: The fish restaurant in Boston mentioned in history of Slashdot part 3 was Anthony's Pier 4, a good place in its day but Boston has better nowadays.
You could really feel the pain oozing through the /. crew being forced to do something, which goes so much against the grain and the spirit of this board. Nevertheless I think it was the right decision since this would have been a fight with no way to win.
However, and to stay in Scientology(R) slang, the whole sordid affair was a big win for Slashdot. As usual: the good Scieno(R) burgers created so much rotten publicity and once again so many folks, who didn't give a shit in the first place, learned about the sinister methods of this "applied religious philosophy".
And all for the price of pulling a piece of bad science fiction. Science fiction for which some less enlightened members of our species pay 300'000 or so bucks to read at that. But then again you can find it on a lot of other places on the net for completely free.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
We could gain traffic by posting boobs or covering other subjects, but that would distract us from our real focus. And it would drive you guys away.
Yes, instead we post goatse to keep us in focus!
If it was up to me, the section was re-established. Perhaps periodically with another sponsor or so.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Thanks Rob & the entire slashdot crew. I've been around, mostly lurking, since long before user accounts. Professionally, I've "grown up" with slashdot, and it's shaped a lot of my career, solved a lot of problems, and of course provided a dependable distraction. Other sites have come and gone (and as you allude to, some probably have staying power and many probably have features worth "stealing from"), but at the end of the day I'll keep refreshing /.
The great refreshing taste of Pepsi. The preferred Cola of 1 out of 1 CowBoy Neals!
This place's slow descent into being kdawson's personal blog. That wasn't a joke.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
I remember one day way back then when I no longer could find Dips & Chips and was redirected to a new site called Slashdot. I also remember telling all my coworkers about D&C because we were all Linux guys and this site provided us with all sorts of interesting news on the subject.
I really can't believe I've been here for 10 years, day in and day out... I've become addicted to the Slashdot news. I even check the site on my mobile when I'm away from a computer for more than a day. I have to...
Thank you Rob and your team. You've all given me so much. I can't tell how much you're appreciated.
Yours truly,kekePower
it's amazing how Internet can change each other lives.. slashdot story is very inspirational !
Minutetraders | Voice Exchange Marketplace - Buy/Sell
I'm one of those people who have never submitted a story, rarely post, but never let a day go by without checking the stories on Slashdot. So thanks and keep it up.
Paul
Lots of other people also found it interesting. I don't know the numbers, but I guess that means a thousands of people found something that gave them at least a marginal amount of entertainment. You effectively received a few cents from each of them for the service.
I think this is exactly how Digg and sites like it are supposed to work. Certainly they can't be free--bandwidth is still too expensive for that. You, the content provider just got a cut. If you were to find more interesting IT stories you could do this more, and everyone in the process would gain from it again.
Thanks for the the good work. I've enjoy this site since about 2000.
One thing, have you thought about spreading the slashdot approach to forums? All is see is blogs. In my opinion more users moderated forums would be a very good thing.
Thanks,
To their way of thinking, you are a fossil living in the past. You think that what is must remain. They think how to grab new consumers today, and if they think they can get twice as many adclicks by trading in all the old customers for new consumers, their cold blooded short term calculations will lead them that way.
History is bunk, they say.
Infuriate left and right
If 'the band' is back together, where's my 'geeks in space'?
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
=)
Just kidding!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I have been reading and posting to Slashdot since at least 2001. I've posted 1,376 comments during those years. Slashdot mods have both lauded my postings and bitch-slapped them for complaining about the "rules" on Slashdot, ranting on Creationism vs. Evolution, the MS vs. Linux debate, and probably hundreds of other somewhat random topics. Sep. 11, 2001 was particularly memorable as this is where I too first learned about the awful events of that day. But it's also funny that this is the one site, that despite all the other newer and shinier sites out there (Digg) that come along from time to time, keeps me coming back for more. There IS discussion on this site, not just adolescent e-penis boasting like you find on sites like Kuroshin or Digg. Why? Because this site found its nitch early on, and never strayed. I have found over these past 6 years, that all of my favorite brick-and-mortar entities, be they church, shopping, or entertainment, also do the same: they cater to exactly their nitch and never stray from it. So keep up the hard work, gang, and don't stray!
BTW, corporate entities: many if not all of my favorite technology things that I have bought over the years were in one way or another promoted by others on Slashdot at some point in time, I looked into their recommendations, and decided to buy the technology for myself. By no means does this mean that I WANT comment spam from corporate shills - I most certainly will see such fraudulent shilling and resent all the more your product... but if you produce a good product and your customers appreciate your efforts enough to mention the product on Slashdot, WITHOUT compensation for doing so, then you're doing the RIGHT THINGS and should keep it up! A short list of things I've used based on customer recommendations on Slashdot:
Godaddy
Fastmail
nVidia graphics cards
Linux - Mandrake first, and now Ubuntu (love it!)
O'Reilly books
Edward R. Tufte's books
Firefox
iPods
and a host of other stuff that I've recommended to friends and family as well
Rob, after reading your last segment I was going to shoot you over an email thanking you for all of your and your team's hard work and character.
;-)
But I was sidetracked...
I have been reading Slashdot since 1997 and I have been a student, lumber yard worker, bookseller, father, IT engineer, NOC Director and for the last
three years an owner and engineer for my own IT Services company. I have read the site just about every day and it is just a kick ass amalgam of all of
the kind of stuff that I hold dear to my heart.
(I regretfully lost my original account and then I didn't bother trying to login for a few years (yes I'm a lurker) if you can find a badmotor@ix.netcom.com email
addy/account in the way way back machine, I would gladly swap it
You guys have been critical in turning me on to new ideas that have paid real dividends (heart, mind and money). So keep on keeping on and know that I
deeply appreciate what you have done over the last ten years. I think the Rudyard Kipling poem, If, is fitting when it comes to walking the razor's edge
between your heart and the corporate abyss:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!
--Rudyard Kipling
Thanks!
Colin
I never thought I would become a geek, in high school I could use a computer, had decent knowledge, but had no clue about coding and the such. Then I moved to Hawaii to get a business degree in 1998. Though, with having my own laptop I quickly learned about irc, mp3s, and *nix in mid to late 1999. This is also when I found out about slashdot from friends. I remember the days of trying to install linux and not having much luck, and then finally getting slackware successfully installed for the first time was a major accomplishment! This is about when I then realized I needed to change majors and I switched to Computer Science... I must thank slashdot for this, as it helped me realize my true calling in life, to be a geek! Slashdot helped the inner geek in me come out, so thank you again.
How do you take a picture of the best moment of your life?
I had an interesting IT experience about a year back, and said to myself, "self, I bet you could make the front page of digg with _this_".
I think you just gamed Slashdot.
I love this troll. Here's to ten more years!
OK, Here is a suggestion that may help grow Slashdot, but I am not sure how the rest of you will like it. A "Slashdot Daily" video feed/channel, like "Fast Lane Daily".
So you post a 3 minute video to one/many/all of the numerous video feeds daily (and make sure it is a feed that gets picked up by TiVo so I can have it waiting when I get home from work).
The video would contain some of the days top stories with narration and a video clip or picture that pertains to the story.
For example the clip on "Capsaicin Tested On Surgical Wounds" would have a clip of CmdrTaco dripping Pure Cap on Hemo's paper cut to make it "heal better".
The video would also have a 5-10 second commercial somewhere in there, like for ThinkGeek or somewhere else which could grow your revenue stream with a minimal amount of user aggravation.
Just my two cents
Patrick
I did a quick search, didn't see it.
This is as good a topic as any to ask:
Who won the user id 1000000 lottery? Please, stand up and announce yourself?
No, I don't have a "dim view" of you at all. I appreciate the reply.
Perhaps I wasn't totally clear though. My stance is this. ALL companies are going to make their share of mistakes. Given enough time, yes, they'll even do some "slippery slope" things that leave you jittery about your privacy rights and such. I don't like it, but I accept it as reality. From there, I look at the pros and the cons, and decide overall which companies are worthy of praise, and which aren't.
Currently, yes, I'd mod someone down for making anti-Google comments, because right now, they all center around the same old issues. (EG. Gmail keeps SO much of people's info, they're getting too powerful!) Until something actually happens that indicates Google is, indeed, doing something bad with all this info, it's just hypothetical fiction. If the story actually covered Google changing corporate policy and reselling the contents of people's emails - THEN I would of course give that due consideration!
A "fanboy" treats a business like a religion, and claims it is "perfect in every way", basically. I don't treat Apple, Google, or any other business like that.
Claiming it's a contradiction to like OSS but like Apple is an over-simplification too. Apple computers have a really good OS today because they were able to build on the strengths of open source. Apple's wish to dominate their market and eliminate possible competition defines business in a capitalist society. The idea is always that others will also be just as driven to "push back" with alternatives, and that vying for dominance creates a win-win situation for consumers. Right now, Apple is in transition from a "computer company" to a "media company". They have to juggle a lot of things to make that happen, including making some deals they probably don't really like (with DRM on music, restrictions on the iPhone, etc.). I can see where they're trying to go, long-term, with all of it - and unlike some people, I'm pretty ok with the "grand plan". They wouldn't HAVE an online music store today if they stubbornly insisted on idealistic ideas about music having NO restrictions on it, period. (Apple wasn't able to just buy the entire recording industry and make it a sub-set of their business, after all.)
Tell us about that "Intel Technology Center" thing that hung around for a while (I just now noticed is gone)? How did that come about? What did you feel about it? Where'd it go?
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
What's great about slashdot is the quality of the discussions and it's model of moderation and information filtering. It's not only geekdom that's overloaded with information. Business, politics, celebrities' life, sports, etc. Why try to squeeze money out /. if you can clone it, put some makeup, and try to build a comunity out around another subject?
Thanks for this site, Rob. We come from all sorts of different backgrounds and do all sorts of things, but I like to think that this is one place where we can kind of just be our petulant selves. May you have a lot of sucess in your life.
Let us know how much you made off slashdot.
I have 2 ideas concerning the future of slashdot.
First, an approach to gaining new readership and bringing new web interfaces to slashdot. Another website I frequently view (www.hardocp.com) also grew to the point where they had to expand their offerings without alienating their old-time viewers. In the end, they essentially tabbed their website. Their homepage is pretty much the same old hardocp, but they have tabs at the top of the homepage that link to more specialized versions of their basic site. They can now offer much more content without alienating their long-time readers who habitually hit their front page looking for cutting edge hardware news.
Slashdot already has sections which focus news, but there could be some sort of tab selection at the top between the slashdot logo and the search box to select more focused, "modern" sites that might appeal to newer viewers without diluting slashdot.
Second, an approach to active marketing. You've already pegged who slashdot readers are, and the ad selection pretty much covers all the usual "push" marketing we'd expect to see for people marketing tech crap to the usual slashdot readership. But what about the various "pull" stuff the average slashdotter looks for on their own time? Two examples I can think of right off the top of my head are things like online universities or online degrees (I'm getting my MBA online now but had to google for a suitable program myself), and professional associations or services such as professional journals, legal databases, etc. My online degree program gives me access to proquest and a couple of other very nice virtual libraries, but my access to those resources ends when I finish my degree. Might those organizations or similiar professional associations be interested in advertising to the slashdot readership, who seem to be mostly tech oriented professionals who are also addicted to information?
My point is that going out and deliberately finding advertisers who offer services the readership might be interested in would be more productive than rejecting yet another ad offering from www.boobies.com. There are tons of professional resources that we are interested in both personally and professionally, but we seem to mostly get ads for microsoft's (or sun's) latest or whatever hardware knicknack is on sale this week.
Frankly, as odd as it sounds, I'm honored and pleased to have been able to enjoy this site for the last 10 years (including the original 'Chips & Dips' with the WM themes and your kooky animations). This place is the only one that I have done my best to check every day at least once in the morning, just to see what was new and what others thought about it. Hell, I've even done three years in prison (long story), and met one other person there that read here.
You've come a long way, and still have a ways to go.
Cheers
.
Property is theft.
7 years worth of lurking and I've finally got around to getting a login and posting (pity - a low UID would have been nice!) As Mozilla to the browser, Linux to the OS, /. to the web... Thanks to those due, and here's to me posting a similar message in 10 years time.
We could gain traffic by posting boobs or covering other subjects, but that would distract us from our real focus. And it would drive you guys away
Well, that depends on who's boobs you post.
Place nail here >+
Slashdot was no better than the Mass Media at identifying the true issues involved in Columbine. While the media and politicians ran with the Marilyn Manson/video game angle to confirm their own biases, Slashdot ran with the bully meme, which was no more accurate and just as much of a bias.
The Columbine shooters were not motivated or pushed to the edge by bullies. The facts just don't bear it out, but the story lives on because it suits the people pushing that angle. It justifies their biases and prejudices. Just like Cassie Bernall, one of the Columbine victims, did not actually get shot for affirming her belief in God/Jesus but it suits the Evangelical Christian movement to push that story.
Instead of an event deserving kudos, the Voices from the Hellmouth series is a black mark on Slashdot.
ResidntGeek
I have had ./ as my home page (more recently, a tab) since 1997 and aside from vacations and major life events (having a daughter, losing family, moving) for the whole time I have been among the silent majority who religiously scan all the articles on the main page and read the ones that interest me. Over the years I've checked in with k5, digg and others, but I always come back to ./.
./ is A Good Thing.
There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
There's constant pressure from within the company to create new "products". Sometimes these mean new/more/bigger ads which usually result in people installing junkbusters.
Huh? Slashdot has ads? Who knew?
We could gain traffic by posting boobs or covering other subjects, but that would distract us from our real focus. And it would drive you guys away.
Well, my immediate thoughts was "That might entice me to turn the images and Web 2.0 junk back on." But then I thought "Nah; there's no shortage of them on other sites, some of which I have bookmarked. And I wouldn't go away, since I wouldn't see the boobs any more than I see the ads."
What might drive me away is if the site were "improved" to the point that I couldn't reduce it to plain text with no eye candy. Sites with actual information shouldn't bother with such junk; it just annoys those of us who are looking for information and don't like wasting time suppressing the junk.
Anyway, I'm somewhat sorry I missed the party. I had too many gigs. My sophisticated calculations conclude that the 20th anniversary will probably occur at Halloween, too, so I'll probably have too many gigs then, too.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Disclaimer: I'm a suit. A VP in a Really Huge Company, in Marketing, no less. Get your weasel on!
/.? Probably not destroy, but possibly influence. But if that small sell-out allowed you to fend off paid content, then so be it.
So, here's the pitch: you already have paid subscribers. I'm one and have been for a long time.
Sell me a Gold subscription. What do I get? HTTPS access? No thanks, my work-mandated copy of IE6 complains on every page refresh with that anyway. No, sell me what I want.
Mod points.
For USD$10 a month, I get 3 mod points a week, guaranteed.
For USD$25 a month, I get 10 mod points a week, guaranteed.
Would that destroy the socialism of
Just an idea.
I hadn't looked at that in a long time. My bad.
The correct notation would be
http://[::1]/subtlety/is/not/my/strongpoint.html
the AC
the slashdot filter doesn't like IPv6 address notation in the URL field, but I know you typed it correctly and got pwn3d by the filter
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Regards,
Your friendly neighbourhood Grammar Nazi.
Angry/happy doesn't work. Perhaps angry/placid and sad/happy. I'd agree angry posts outweigh placid ones, but I fail to see the same correlation between happy and sad, in fact I would find it very difficult to categorise any given post in this manner.
Oh, and we <3 you too Rob.
Thanks so much for this series, I've really loved reading it, it takes me back to a day when the internet was a much better place.
For what it's worth, my "regular geek news" is the Slashdot and Digg Technology RSS feeds, in a Firefox Live Bookmark. I often find Slashdot has better articles in 15 items, than Digg Tech does in a whole screenfull.
Keep up the good work guys!
I just came online to check my e-mail, then go to bed. That was 1:45... and now it's 3am, and I'm reading /.
I hope I'm still hitting myself over the head in 10 years!
thanks
"It's the Law of the Universe, and I'm the sheriff." Slash-cott 2/10-2/17
couldnt disagree more.
1. sounds like your moderating habits are 100% against the
2. "anti-google"
Stop that and sooner or later they are gonna start thinking "noone cares about this stuff, we should do it".
3. one of the oldest principles in this world says "it is better to Prevent than to Cure"
you sound like an articulate guy, but your mod habits are totally off (or at least the way u described them above)
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
thank you
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Slashdot has already a solution for large companies. Intel used it. They setup a special topic page (intel.slashdot.org) with Intel stories submitted by Intel. Besides it is obvious that Intel paid for it (it is made clear), there is a interesting side-effect. Stories have comments and they are run just like ordinary Slashdot stories. Some people (including AMD die hards) have moderation power, people can post comments being critical of the vendor and they are still safe since there is meta-moderation system in charge.
Intel also showed their trust to themselves by allowing such thing and it was also mentioned couple of times.
"........I think anyone bashing them, yet claiming to be into technology, is foolish, bordering on hypocritical. So yes, I'd mod down an "anti Google" post myself, too!......"
/. for a long time, without ever creating an account. (gasp!) The sad thing that you (royal you) people don't get is that you are hypocrites. The only difference between a MS fanboy and an Apple fanboi is where they buy there coffee (and perhaps their hybrid coupes). You are as much a part of the institution that you're trying to stand up against.
To you it doesn't matter if the person that is anti-Google has a well thought out, rational stance as to why they dislike Google. You mod them down because they disagree with you. Cognitive dissonance breeds ignorance, you already happily, even willingly treading down that path.
I've been reading
F'n posers.
Currently, yes, I'd mod someone down for making anti-Google comments, because right now, they all center around the same old issues.
...
A "fanboy" treats a business like a religion, and claims it is "perfect in every way", basically.
Most religions use the dodge of "these is the same thing we've heard before" when it comes to having their faith questioned. This sounds like the same thing to me. From what you have said here you qualify as a fanboi to me. Maybe you don't like the label but the blind moderation of a post that criticizes a business is fanboism in my book.
Claiming it's a contradiction to like OSS but like Apple is an over-simplification too. Apple computers have a really good OS today because they were able to build on the strengths of open source.
Without getting too far off topic; Building on open source and being open source are oceans apart. From what I've seen here the open source crowd is up in arms over the concept that Microsoft's dealings with Linux vendors may be leading to close source ventures. So how is that different from Apple? Also, I've never seen an open source venture who has bashed or made moves against those who hacked their design. Let's see... iPod, iPhone and OSX? How many people have gotten hosed by Apple in some form for creating modifications their design? Come on now, that screams of being against the same ideology that made open source a movement instead of just a couple of guys cranking out code.
They may have taken ideas from the open source crowd but they certainly aren't friendly to the concept in their business practice.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I have no idea what the current value of Slashdot is but if we are really scared what will happen to /. when Rob leaves someday, wouldnt it be an idea to try to buy it as a group? I for one don't like the idea of Slashdot losing editorial independence, will not welcome any corporate overlord and would donate to prevent it from happening, if possible.
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
I love Slashdot, love the content and the community, and have enjoyed the inside perspective on its history and future. Congrats to Rob et al. on their achievement.
/. tradition, not to be a grammar Nazi, but the misuse of "to" and "too" in this piece (as in "if it isn't to much trouble") was irritating.
However, in
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
I want to echo everyone else that already said it: Thanks very much Taco - I've been enjoying the site for many years now, and imagine I will continue to do so.
As you think about the future, I have to wonder about the remark: What does slashdot need to make it a 'modern web application'? The most recent updates to the look and feel are for the most part good with me. My general thoughts are that you have a modern interface already, and for the time being about the best thing you could do is just subtle tweaks here and there. Making things a little easier to navigate, incremental improvements that speed load/rendering time in most browsers. I don't think you need to re-think slashdot to become a modern web app. Just little fixes here and there, occasionally trying something out to see if it looks/feels better.
Looking forward to the next 10 years...
A Measly $3.62 so far....622 page impressions, 8 clicks.
music lover since 1969
If you're a GNU/Linux user, I'd recommend you go take a look at Linux Weekly News (LWN). They're very much like Slashdot, in that they steer very clear from the corporate greed. They've been around for about as long, and have remained independent, with minimal ads. Their articles are very well-written and well-edited. (I.e. they're also very different from Slashdot!) I read Slashdot several times a day, but I actually consider LWN to be my number 1 site. I pay for both sites, even though though the subscriptions don't offer all that much feature-wise.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I too think your example about your powerbook story making digg to be non-exemplary. To be honest with you, digg is the best place for that and when I go to digg that is the kind of thing that I expect. You said you only made about $20 from the thing so that, to me, doesn't seem like enough motivation to go to the effort and expense of gaming digg. If you tried to game digg with crap, you would fail. I mean there are people out there like kipkay that are supposedly successful at it, but at the same time if kipkay's videos really sucked, he wouldn't be.
Slash_Baaack ! /news life when I was wery buzzy.
Slash__BaAaAaAaAaAck !
Slash___BAAAAAAAAAAAAAck !
It saved my
[Pruneau
I've been reading /. since 2001, but more often since 2004. This site has been for me one the greatest source of knowledge and one of the most interesting websites since then. I learned a lot reading the discussions here (I'm a gentoo user because of this site). The constant provision of interesting, funny, nerdy, scientific stories and, above all, the discussions about them are all features that make this place truly unique. The debates here are really useful to point out one's flaws, biases and mistakes. I'm a bit bashful but, believe it or not, I also found appealing the "social" debates that sometimes arise here, e.g: the discussion about nerds' virginity/lack of social skills or stuff like that (I do have a little social life but I have one, I assure you!). The idea of a periodical publishing of a collection of the best comments (that someone has proposed before) could be a boon to /. visibility, but I don't know if it will generate any revenue. It sure wouldn't be weird to see /. as a popular-science-technology magazine.
Finally, I want to thank all the people that made this site and all the people that keep it running. I hope it will remain integer and interesting as it has been till today.
PS
I'm Italian, I apologize for any mistake I made.
I think modding a post down as "overrated" would be well within the definition of what the term means, if I use it to mod down yet another "I'm against Google because they've got so much info, it makes them EVIL!" type of post.
Look, Google got ALL of the info they have today VOLUNTARILY. Again, what happened to personal responsibility here? If you're that worried/paranoid/whatever about a big corporation having the ability to search and read your email, don't sign up for a free account with them! Or alternately, only use your gmail account for unimportant information you're not concerned with them having. Or hey, maybe use it as a "throw-away" address for all your spam to go to?
Activism is great, when it targets a real, existing problem. Activism loses its credibility and potential usefulness when it's used as a bullying or scare tactic. (EG. Greenpeace's fixation on making Apple look bad for environmental issues, despite them contributing FAR less to the problem that manufacturers selling FAR more products with similar or worse environmental "footprints".)
For the record, I rarely mod *anything* down, because I prefer using my mod points in a positive way (as encouraged by Slashdot themselves).
Not here, not now, not ever.
yours is far from being the worst sample of "opinion-moderation" but i still think it is not ok.
Look, Google got ALL of the info they have today VOLUNTARILY. Again, what happened to personal responsibility here? If you're that worried/paranoid/whatever about a big corporation having the ability to search and read your email, don't sign up for a free account with them! Or alternately, only use your gmail account for unimportant information you're not concerned with them having. Or hey, maybe use it as a "throw-away" address for all your spam to go to?
you got a good point, it is not their fault that ppl are so careless with their info
Activism is great, when it targets a real, existing problem. Activism loses its credibility and potential usefulness when it's used as a bullying or scare tactic. (EG. Greenpeace's fixation on making Apple look bad for environmental issues, despite them contributing FAR less to the problem that manufacturers selling FAR more products with similar or worse environmental "footprints".)
sorry, cant comment on this particular sample cause i dont know much about the issue.
as about greenpeace targeting pretty much any tech company, i agree with that
For the record, I rarely mod *anything* down, because I prefer using my mod points in a positive way (as encouraged by Slashdot themselves).
100% agree with that
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Don't know if it's been said before, but I for one am grateful for the daily compilation of stories, delivered to my inbox. ;-)
It keeps me in touch with what's going on, even if I don't have the time to venture to the website - and I can duck out of moderation/meta-moderation without actually making myself unavailalbe
(Only when pressed for time, honest!)
Don't blame me, it's usually 2 in the morning when I post