Slashdot Turns 100,000

This entry represents the 100,000th story posted on Slashdot. Technically this is a bit late since we're missing the first few months of stories from the DB, but there are now 100k items in the story database and I thought that milestone was worthy of sharing with the universe. We've come a long way in the last 12 years, and while the site isn't always exactly what I want it to be, I'm very proud of the work done by our thousands of submitters and by the editors our readers have "affectionately" referred to as "The Slashdot Janitors" for so many years. Special grats to timothy who is just short of his 17,000th story and is far and away the most prolific person here. The hall of fame has a few other bits of trivia.

Comments

Age and quality.

[pwnies]

What's amazing to me isn't that /. has carried on this long, but rather that the comment quality on here hasn't gone the way of most social new sites. It seems that in general as a social news site ages, matures, and grows, the comment quality follows an inverse pattern. Or more simply, as the number of users approaches infinity, the comment quality approaches 4chan. Digg used to be a decent site for discussion; now you'd be laughed at for even suggesting that the comments might be notable. Reddit is quickly getting there. Slashdot though seems to best this pattern. While I'm well aware that someone will reply to this with "In soviet russia 4chan approaches you!" or something similar in a successful attempt to disprove my point, but I think it still holds true in some respect. Kudos slashdot, keep it up. You keep trying to make UI (un)improvements and we'll still be here to comment without RTFA - and we'll both be thankful for it.

Re:Age and quality.

[Shadow of Eternity]

Tragically this is because the degradation is instead shifted to the editors. Slashvertisements, things in "ask slashdot" that should instead get someone redirected to google, and kdawson....

Re:Age and quality.

[ModernGeek]

I credit the moderation system.

Re:Age and quality.

[Shakrai]

You keep trying to make UI (un)improvements

The new UI doesn't bother me as much as it bothers some people but for the life of me I can't figure out the new meta-moderation system. It also seems to me that the quality of moderation have been down and we've seen a lot more people using negative mods to punish those they disagree with than we did in the past -- whether or not this is related to the new meta-moderation system is open to debate.

Re:Age and quality.

[pwnies]

As do I. Having comments separated by funny/insightful/etc, capping them at +5, and only letting a select few upvote is a surprisingly effective strategy.

Re:Age and quality.

[Taelatus]

What I like most about the comments is that the good ones are usually far more interesting than the article being commented on. I hate to admit it but I usually skim the summary and dig straight into the comments section of any particular article. I almost never RTFA.

Re:Age and quality.

[DAldredge]

You mean the same moderating system that hasn't given me mod points in 4 or 5 years?

Re:Age and quality.

[dancingmad]

I dunno, there are old-timers here who have been around longer than I have, and I go through cycles of posting and not posting, but I think there's been a pretty marked change in both the kinds of users and the stories. I will probably get moderated to hell for saying this, but when I started lurking and then signed up for an account, slashdot at that time was more like some parts of reddit (to disclaim I post in both places, and I think the general quality of comments are better here, but there was a level of free-wheeling, shared culture that isn't quite as present here - it reminded me of the quirkiness of the jargon file). Back in those days everyone would catch and upvote semi-relevant Simpsons and Red Dwarf quotes for example (I got into RD via slashdot, if I remember correctly).

Perhaps the change in stories has been related; it's gotten a lot more general (it probably started before but I remember noticing the change as and after the politics section was added).

So yeah, the site's still around and there are still people posting and it's still relevant (more than I can say for digg), but the focus and community have changed a lot and for better or worse, as far as "net culture" is concerned, it seems like 4chan and the sites that interact with it's culture (reddit, unyclopedia) have more influence.

Don't get my wrong, I still love the slashie.

Re:Age and quality.

[epp_b]

...You keep trying to make UI (un)improvements...

Really? I think the comment system UI features that have been added over the past while are slick and efficient. The fewer times I am required to leave the current page for a small chunk of data to load, post or be rearranged, the better.

Re:Age and quality.

[maxume]

It's the worst one, except for all the others.

Re:Age and quality.

[Firehed]

I haven't gotten mod points in quite a while either. That's why it's successful!

Wait a second...

Re:Age and quality.

[rm999]

On Slashdot, the moderation system keeps good comments at the top and bad comments hidden. This is why the quality seems so good: one only has to read the top of the comment page to get really good discussion. So, regardless of how many trolls there are, they remain out of view. This was Slashdot's greatest innovation, IMO.

Reddit deals with the same issues: plenty of smart users, so they need a good ranking to keep the good comments at the top. Reddit used to use Slashdot's approach to ranking, but the inherent moderation system is different so it didn't work. The average comment in an active story on Reddit can get dozens of mods VS less than 1 on Slashdot. Reddit's problem was Slashdot's system heavily biased in favor of comments with a lot of moderation (upvotes minus downvotes is scaled higher). Typically, the first few non-troll comments were fixed at the top. On Slashdot this isn't a problem because mod points are rare so people use them with more care; also, the maximum score is capped at 5.

Reddit recently started using a more statistically sound approach which rewards high upvote:downvote ratios, and the comment quality has drastically improved. It saved the site, IMO. Slashdot is still known for having better quality comments than Reddit, and I commend them for it.

See http://blog.reddit.com/2009/10/reddits-new-comment-sorting-system.html for more information on reddit's new system.

Re:Age and quality.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

To my way of thinking, there are main two factors at work here

1) The nature of the discussion. The kind of people who frequent 4chan and digg not have... the patience needed to discuss the kind of stories or threads on Slashdot. Stories about plastic flash memory and drivers in the Kernel are simply not very attractive to the kind of person for whom posting "lol" and "NO U" is a way of life.

2) The moderation system. Like it or not, the moderation and karma system helps separate the wheat from the chaff in comment threads. There have been complaints about group think and even censorship, but by and large a casual reading of +4 and +5 posts gives readers quality feedback on the story and is often even more educational than RTFA. In the last 5 years, I've learned more about technology from +5 comments on Slashdot than from any other source. Vapid posts are kept to a minimum and while there are many of them, funny posts do I think keep the discussions lively and interesting.

Another big factor to my mind is the lack of anything resembling post-counts, avatars, images, or anything that would be regarded as cruft(I'm still using the 1.0 discussion system so YMMV). This site is all about text and its content, and that is the way it should be. You can read Slashdot on lynx and get essentially the same discussion(minus the soothing green light). The signal to noise ratio on pages is high, in terms of raw content and on the quality of that content. Slashdot proves that you don't need the latest in web N.0 technology trends to run a good site, and long may it continue to do so.

Re:Age and quality.

[rolfwind]

Digg is direct democracy, Slashdot is a republic.

I've seen the most intelligent comments get buried to negative infinitey on digg simply because they went against the prevailing group think at the moment. Not so much here.

And you're correct, every UI change here has been an unimprovement.

Re:Age and quality.

[Threni]

I've said it before and I'll say it again - it would be great if there were questions/tests which could be somehow worked into Slashdot so that a rough idea of people's techinical skills/ability/knowledge could be gathered, and applied to rating. I'd like to prioritize comments from people who know what they're talking about.

Re:Age and quality.

[Nithendil]

Oddly enough in my old slashdot account even though I never commented and rarely used them I was handed 5 moderation points pretty much every week.

Re:Age and quality.

[Firehed]

The UI would be fine if a) it worked correctly cross-browser, or at least among standards-compliant browsers and b) the javascript that powers most of it wasn't some of the slowest ever written. Honestly, the whole lot of it could be replaced in about 5kb of code that works 10x better and 50x faster, in about two hours worth of work. Well, if half of slashcode hadn't been eaten by a grue years ago.

Re:Age and quality.

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. Back in the day slashdot discussions used to be primarily about technology. Nowadays even in stories that are ostensibly about technology, all the discussions end up being about politics instead. For example someone posts a story about a cool new electric car, and half the comments are ignorant hicks repeating the same old ignorant bullshit about the inefficiency of burning coal. The same applies to pretty much every discussion. Just look at that list of top stories and you'll see that 9/10 of them are about politics or creationism (same thing really). A single top 10 story about technology (and a stupid one at that) on a site that is supposed to be "news for nerds" is pretty damned bad, if you ask me.

Re:Age and quality.

[bsDaemon]

I've had like 30 points in the last few weeks... it can grow tiresome, though the dry spell before that was an equal burden.

Re:Age and quality.

[Valdrax]

You mean the same moderating system that hasn't given me mod points in 4 or 5 years?

I don't know what's up with you, but I get mod points about 1-2 per week.

Hmm... Maybe this is a sign of Slashdot's quality, after all!

Re:Age and quality.

[stefanlasiewski]

Yes, that one. Apparently it's been giving me all your mod points. Most weeks, I get more mod points then I can have time for.

Re:Age and quality.

[Xugumad]

Oi, 6-digit, get off my lawn :)

Re:Age and quality.

[TapeCutter]

Yes, it's the only site I can think of where I occasionally learn something from people I violently disagree with. The comment system allows me to easily carry on a debate or discussion with another user, IMHO it is second to none. I look forward to another 10yrs of humuor and insight.

Of course there would be nothing to discuss without the much maligned editors, so thanks and keep up the good work.

Re:Age and quality.

[Beardo the Bearded]

If you get them, just do what I do -- find a thread you don't have any interest in and moderate the first X posts as "under-rated". (X is the number of mod points you get, which is 15 for me.)

This gives you the benefit of nothaving to actually moderate plus you can't be meta-moderated.

I get points about once a week. YMMV. CYLDFD.

I'm really only posting here in case there's an acheivement... achievement... anchoviement.

Sorry, not enough sleep makes everything seem funny. At least I'm not rambling on pointlessly.

Wait.

Re:Age and quality.

[satoshi1]

This is what I do as well. I've learned far more from you guys here in the comments than I have from the maybe five articles I've actually read since I joined this place.

Re:Age and quality.

[Mister Whirly]

Jesus, who the hell has time for all that? And why bother? Having all your comments rated highly and $1 will buy you a cup of coffee at your local diner.

Re:Age and quality.

[rabiddeity]

The new UI doesn't bother me as much as it bothers some people but for the life of me I can't figure out the new meta-moderation system.

I agree. It's straightforward if you see a positive mod and it's good; plus means "yes, it's funny, I agree, mod up". But what does minus do? Does minus mean "that's not funny at all" or does it mean "that's not +5 Funny"? And how are you supposed to metamod things that are labeled Troll or Offtopic? Does plus mean you agree with the negative moderation, or does it mean "this should be rated higher"? Same with minus. It's the equivalent of the OK/Cancel box in bad UIs, in that it's not at all clear what effect your actions will have.

The old system was a lot better; you get three selections labeled "Funny", "Unfunny", or "Not sure", and mark the appropriate one. For a comment modded "Flamebait" the options were also clear: "Flamebait", "Not Flamebait", and "Not sure". Why can't we have the old metamod system back?

Re:Age and quality.

[Mister Whirly]

Well, what are you waiting for then? You seem to know how to fix it, so why tease us?

Isn't it funny how every coder in the world knows how to make existing code better in orders of magnitude with "hardly any work".

Re:Age and quality.

[bertoelcon]

I have actually found that if I spend all my points before they run out and don't post while I have them I tend to continue to get them until I break the cycle.

Re:Age and quality.

[bertoelcon]

Having all your comments rated highly and $1 will buy you a cup of coffee at your local diner.

My local diner coffee costs $1.50 plus tax you insensitive clod.

Re:Age and quality.

[electrosoccertux]

I think more and more people kept making dummy accounts to accumulate mod points and use them to shape discussions.

You can get the moderation formula down-- don't visit multiple times/day. Every 2-3 days seems to give me pretty consistent mod points.
The metamoderation I believe has you rate whether or not a users' unrelated comments "add to the discussion" and are helpful. I think this is how it works at least.
Ideally, people that do not mod fairly would post sucky comments. But obviously, this is not always the case. Most people may be perfectly safe modders until something like the AGW CRU scandal pops up-- if you noticed, in the first discussion we (slashdot as a whole in that thread) clearly determined that there was manipulation of evidence occurring, that this was not the scientific method, and the further attempts to hide the data/claim it was lost from a harddrive crash/delete it/etc. were plenty damning of AGW supports, and were supporting of the skeptic's desire for more peer review. What scientist doesn't allow people to see the original, un-"adjusted" data, etc. etc etc...
So in the first discussion we determined this; then there were several new stories posted about this later on, yet in these many comments such as "I looked at it and there is no evidence of data manipulation" got modded to 5, and many comments suggesting otherwise (and even those pointing back to the original, first entry where we determined what we did) were modded "troll" and "flamebait", to do just as you say, hide posts because the guy with mod points didn't agree.

Throwing the rating of other peoples' modding decisions (the original metamod scheme) doesn't help because then the people that metamod can do the same thing that they do if they want to mod someone down because they don't like the opinion-- they rate the +1 modding for a comment about a political ideology that they personally do not agree with, as being an incorrect/bad mod. Then the moderators that support questioning of AGW and mod up posts that bring up valid points, no longer receive moderation ability.

Now consider in all the above that the people most active on this site tend to be of a younger type-- myself included. As life progresses, we learn more things, our minds expand, and doing the same old just doesn't stimulate us like it used to. So we move on with life-- job, girlfriend->wife->kids, wham no time for slashdot anymore. So all the people that have balanced lives, that aren't political left/right extremists that troll the internet, in other words the people that we want to be doing moderation, aren't visiting. Of the few that do spend to dump their leisure time into slashdot, it's probably unlikely that they will receive mod points. So you can see the dilemma.

I also noticed an uptick bad mods when they started granting people 10 and 15 points to mod with. Maybe we should all go back to groups of 5 points, so that everybody would rather spend their points modding up posts that pick out faults with parent posts, rather than simply modding the parent post itself as flamebait or troll.

I think on the whole a much more involved moderation system would be needed. Have the meta-mods track how an individual moderator dumps his 5/10/15 points into a discussion. Of course have several people following any individual moderator, and have them all report back. Does the given moderator spend his points wisely? Is he using troll/flamebait to mod down things that are valid/non-inflammatory posts? Encourage those watching the moderator to not be lenient. If it's on the line as to whether the moderator is abusing points, go with abuse. Explain all this in the metamod section so it gets publicity, or create a link that says "read about the new metamod formula!". Many criminals decide not to commit the crime they desire to when they realize they won't be able to get away with it, and part of th

Re:Age and quality.

[mooingyak]

Having all your comments rated highly and $1 will buy you a cup of coffee at your local diner.

My local diner coffee costs $1.50 plus tax you insensitive clod.

Putting the value of having all your comments rated highly at approx $0.50

Re:Age and quality.

[el3mentary]

In the middle of a long dry spell myself

Re:Age and quality.

[fbjon]

There are all kinds of modifications that can be done, some of which sound good. But really, how much better can the discussion realistically get?

Re:Age and quality.

[Lord Lode]

Apparently it is, it would be very interesting to know why exactly this works. I mean, seriously, comments almost never get deleted here, right? (unless it's related to scientology?). And you can post as anomymous coward without logging in? It's a miracle that it isn't full of crap posts and automated spam messages.

Re:Age and quality.

[Sir_Lewk]

No, I really don't think so, I often browse at 0 or -1 and even then the comments in general seem more intelligent. Sure there are a lot of offtopic trolls, but I still think that is far better than ontopic stupid people (though there are of course a far bit of them).

Re:Age and quality.

[Hadlock]

I visit 5-10 times a day (I really should invest in an RSS reader) and still get 5 mod points ~2x a week. I think the moderation system works fine. I don't see any moderation abuse to any great degree here. Usually if someone is astroturfing or BSing or just plain wrong, people will call them out on it in replies.

Re:Age and quality.

[somersault]

If you're going to do that, you might as well just ignore the mod points..?

I've found that when I post less I tend to get more mod points. Even if I don't use them it still tops them up every few days.

Re:Age and quality.

[interkin3tic]

I hate to admit it but I usually skim the summary and dig straight into the comments section of any particular article. I almost never RTFA.

You must be old here.

Re:Age and quality.

[Nemyst]

Isn't that symptomatic of how the "net culture" has changed, though? Back when Slashdot was new, being on the Internet was something few people did, even less so without inhibitions. It was the lair of tech and science geeks, and that was that. People would dig up interesting science/tech articles and then the comments would debate it over and over (with of course random quotes).

However, nowadays you can't help but notice the politicization of the Internet and, by extension, of all things related to computers and science. I'd argue the politics section you noted highlights that fact: politics now influence this community far more than it did before. There are now ideological debates, megacorporations to praise or decry, lawyers to monitor, laws to bash or applaud... Blogs, social networks, all have changed the face of the Internet and I only believe it normal that Slashdot changed to reflect that.

I honestly wouldn't mind seeing more science and tech articles and less law stuff, but at the same time I'm glad I have a good source from which to read the latest developments in copyright crap or ISP abuses... I guess. Bah, you see my point!

Re:Age and quality.

[nschubach]

I think it has to do with the attention factor. ACs can post what they want, but they aren't going to get more than a few views before someone mods them out of view to the default filters. They lose the attention a controversial topic may bring and they soon get bored and move on to those other sites. In this case, "Don't feed the trolls," seems to be working!

Re:Age and quality.

[CodeBuster]

It's a miracle that it isn't full of crap posts and automated spam messages.

At least part of that stems from the aforementioned moderation system, the fact that most regular users don't browse at -1 (which means we wouldn't actually see AC spam even if it was occurring), and perhaps also because geeks are not good marks for the sorts of products generally plugged via spam; that and geeks have the means, motive, and opportunity to take active technical measures against spammers making us doubly not worth the effort from the spammer's point of view. In short, The spammers don't spam Slashdot because picking fights with the geeks is not in their interest; it wastes their time and invites sophisticated and targeted retaliation which only distracts their attentions from their real prey (i.e. grandma's AOL account).

Re:Age and quality.

[fbjon]

Hell, my name has been in the title of a story on Slashdot before now.

Indeed! "Anonymous" Hacks Palin's Private Email

Re:Age and quality.

[openfrog]

I credit the moderation system.

Of course, and as others have said, who choose to use and to read Slashdot in the first place. It is a very interesting community and I would believe, vastly more influential than what is suggested by the conventionally self-deprecating comments.

I love Slashdot so much that I often find myself worried about the possibility of organized attempts to manipulate the system. The next topic (the 100, 001st): Virtual Money For Real Lobbying, address this very issue, but about other discussion groups. I must say that I am reassured most of the time by the efficiency of the moderating system, with one recent exception: the issue of climate change, on which there have been 5 or 6 stories over the last few days. I admit the topic is controversial to begin with, but the comments I have seen modded down, with the intelligence and tone associated with the scientific minds whom we are used to read around here, and some comments I have seen modded up, left me with the impression of a massive attempt at manipulating the moderation system, only partially successful perhaps.

My immediate reaction was to reflect on what form of comment analysis, statistical or otherwise, would allow confirmation or infirmation of such coordinated attempts. Anyone has an idea on that?

Re:Age and quality.

[_Sprocket_]

Perhaps the change in stories has been related; it's gotten a lot more general (it probably started before but I remember noticing the change as and after the politics section was added).

So yeah, the site's still around and there are still people posting and it's still relevant (more than I can say for digg), but the focus and community have changed a lot and for better or worse, as far as "net culture" is concerned, it seems like 4chan and the sites that interact with it's culture (reddit, unyclopedia) have more influence.

It seems to me that Slashdot has always been a relatively niche audience. If Slashdot ever influenced 'net culture, it was because 'net culture itself was once very much a subculture. But that has changed. The user base of the Internet in general has grown, become more diverse, and become more main-stream. Sites like 4chan are a part of this broader audience. And while Slashdot has also felt some of this broader influence, it still remains pretty firmly removed from the mainstream.

Re:Age and quality.

[JustOK]

plus an unknown constant vaguely related to pizza.

Re:Age and quality.

[Omestes]

The moderation system is awesome. It is the one thing I always notice the lack of when reading other blogs. It also is much better than the binary system on some blogs, and Reddit and Digg, which tends to lead to an even larger herd (hurd?) mentality than here. But there has to be more, Kuro5hin has a much more expansive and powerful (or at least arcane) mod system, and has collapsed under the weight of its own lack of relevance long ago.

The thing that probably lead /. to keeping its glory is the diversity of the crowd here. Most of the people here are geeky, many are educated, and every single one of us is opinionated and not scared of trying to fight for ideological supremacy (be it Democrat versus Republican, Socialist versus Libertarian, Vi versus Emacs, KDE versus Gnome, etc...). The fact that there is no 4chan-ian hive mind here helps a ton. Every time I come to this site, I can expect to nod my head in complete sycophantic agreement, and erupt flaming bile within the same discussion.

I just wish that the Politics section never hit, it seemed to have made EVERY damn discussion political (Bush uses BSD therefore BSD sucks... FreeBSD is socialist, therefore it sucks... etc...).

Re:Age and quality.

[religious freak]

I have found that I get metamoderated into oblivion (and therefore lose my mod-points) if I moderate a discussion in a way which does not fit the general opinion of most slashdot users.

That's the negative aspect of the /. moderation system, it encourages groupthink and censorship.

But yes, I agree, it is certainly the worst - except for everything else.

Re:Age and quality.

[nathan.fulton]

I'm curious, how do you determine your meta-mod status?

Re:Age and quality.

[GaryOlson]

You have succumbed to the overpowering hum of groupthink.
All your thought are belong to us.

Re:Age and quality.

[religious freak]

how do you determine your meta-mod status?

Guessing.

But it was fairly obvious. I was consistently given mod points for years, until I moderated the heck out of a story in which I was of the complete opposite opinion of 80% of the comments in the story. So I positively moderated those that agreed with my point of view (and made valid, logical points). Within one month of my moderation, I lost the ability to obtain mod points for 13 months (kind of an interesting-to-know timeframe).

Re:Age and quality.

[ZPWeeks]

I think Slashdot has done much better than other social news sites in this regard. At least some of the mods and meta-mods can recognize that upmodding shouldn't correlate to agreement with a statement. Try posting unpopular opinions on Digg or Reddit and you'll see how much harder it is to be heard because everyone has downvoting power. Honestly, I'd be overjoyed to see a flurry of insightful or informative comments, even when they're not what I agree with. I want to be forced to think and be confronted by conflicting opinions - that way I can form more educated opinions of my own and be less influenced by groupthink circle jerks.

Re:Age and quality.

[buchner.johannes]

Also, the ordering of comments. Sites where the most recent comments come first encourage repetition, circling around the same arguments and bad quality, whereas a thread you can follow allows picking up an existing conversation on top of arguments already made.

Re:Age and quality.

[jc42]

Yeah; I've been getting 2 or even 3 15-point mod sessions per week for a while now. One thing it makes me think of is that I don't really understand all that much of how /.'s mod system really works. Is it actually documented somewhere that we can read? I haven't found anything that I'd call very informative about the mod system.

Part of the reason I'm interested is that some friends and other acquaintances have recently asked me about building some online news/blog sites for a couple of local organizations. Doing the basic programming seems rather straightforward, but I suspect that there are some subtleties for which it'd be best to learn from others. I'd want to include some sort of moderation system, so I'd like to read about some experiences with such things. Both successful and unsuccessful ideas would be useful. It'd probably be better than me making guesses about how to do it.

I did look into slashcode, but found that the documentation seems scarce, and apparently nobody is feeding and watering it any more. I also did a bit of googling, but didn't find much useful. Maybe I just didn't guess the right keywords ...

Anyway, if the /. editors have produced any sort of history of what they've tried, what worked, and what didn't, it could be interesting reading to some of us.

Re:Age and quality.

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is that you moderated messages based on whether or not you agreed with them, which is exactly how you should NOT moderate ? No wonder you don't get mod points anymore ...

Re:Age and quality.

[Draek]

The problem of rewarding good posters too much is that it tends to make the community degenerate into a clique. Look at Wikipedia and its editors, for example.

The best thing about Slashdot's moderation system, IMHO, is that it rewards good *posts* rather than posters because even Anonymous Cowards can provide interesting insight, and even the most intelligent fellow is liable to the ocassional episode of stupidity.

Re:Age and quality.

[Draek]

It wouldn't do you much good. I'd wager that a good percentage of the Slashdot population is knowledgeable in IT and programming, yet they'll still happily provide legal advice in the YRO and Ask Slashdot sections.

You could say that, then, the test should be divided by areas and then the bonus be applied to comments belonging to related stories but there's been plenty of ocassions where a simple joke or off-topic comment turns into a debate that may be insightful, but have absolutely nothing to do with the story it belongs to.

Re:Age and quality.

[Shakrai]

the fact that most regular users don't browse at -1

Actually I would recommend that everyone browse at -1. There isn't really that much spam/trolling to contend with -- in exchange for having to scroll past one or two racist trolls you'll get to see raw unfiltered discussion that may not have survived the group think that permeates the moderation system.

I stopped caring or paying attention to moderation a long time ago. Give it to me raw baby!

Re:Age and quality.

[rolfwind]

That said, there are benefits to representative democracies that are lost in a direct democracy. But I wouldn't go so far as to categorically state that representative democracies are always better. For one, it's much easier to bribe one representatives than everyone of his/her constituents.

But that bribery exists on many times over. Bribing constituents have been happening for a long time. It's called farm subsidies, social security, medicare, medicaid, welfare, etcetera.

It has happened time and again that parties play to the fears of constituents being paid off that the other party will take away that money. Social Security and the elderly voting block is a great example of this.

And it's particularly relevant as this country heads into bankruptcy in the coming years, it will be Medicare and Social Security Spending that does us in, with interest payments on debt being in 3rd place.

Re:Age and quality.

[maotx]

100,000th story, what's the comment count at? 30408632?

Re:Age and quality.

[Lazy Jones]

But that has changed. The user base of the Internet in general has grown, become more diverse, and become more main-stream. Sites like 4chan are a part of this broader audience. And while Slashdot has also felt some of this broader influence, it still remains pretty firmly removed from the mainstream.

My impression is that slashdot has kept most of its older users from the early days, while the younger people from the "mainstream" era of the web never found it interesting enough to spend a lot of time on it. They frequent 4chan, digg, youtube etc. and have thus mostly spared slashdot from the onslaught of that kind of posts, except for a few years back (must have been around 2002-2004) when "meme" type posts were big on slashdot...

Re:Age and quality.

[mahadiga]

Slashdot = Wisdom of Intellectuals
Reddit & Digg = Wisdom of Crowds

Re:Age and quality.

[pseudosocrates]

<unlurk>

Agreed. I never post. I hardly ever mod. But Slashdot has been an immense education for me as a tech generalist over the past 8 years (yes - took me a few years to even sign up for a uid). A couple of thoughts.

I love the js powered post-expansion. Massive improvement as I no longer have to skip about posts. Never any speed issues.

Lack of avatars + user cruft mean posts rise to the top rather than personalities. The few who I can name have it for good reason - I've actively noticed who they are through consistent quality posting: nycl, badanalogyguy, akaimbatman, clevernickname...

To paraphrase a comment above - /. is where I frequently learn from people whose general views I actively reject

To another 100k.

</unlurk>

Re:Age and quality.

[krelian]

I agree!

Re:Age and quality.

[Idiomatick]

Vi versus Emacs

I thought all the vi users would have died of old age by now. :P

I personally like the politics section. It definitely fits into the 'stuff that matters' category. And I like the variety of opinions available. Where else on the internet can you find a group of educated nerds willing to DEBATE not argue (for the most part). Though they are misused sometimes people on /. point out fallacies, how many other sites can claim that?

Idle on the other hand is like it was design to drag /. down.

Re:Age and quality.

[RealGrouchy]

I've found that when I post less I tend to get more mod points.

Traffic loyalty scheme? If you haven't been posting much lately, maybe it's because you haven't been reading/visiting much either. Mod points (esp. when notified by the Slashdotter FF extension) perhaps serve to bring you back in.

- RG>

Re:Age and quality.

[Provocateur]

and even the most intelligent fellow is liable to the ocassional episode of stupidity

That was only the *one* time, I told you. Jeez, cut me some slack will ya. Well, since you've been most gracious in not mentioning my name, I won't be the spelling Nazi right now, and we'll call it even. In fact, to top it off, on Monday I will even pretend you didn't even make this post.

Re:Age and quality.

[Hurricane78]

Well, Slashdot still is only thought halfway to the end. The idea is a trust-relationship model trough action rating. Or in other words: People rate other people’s works, which given them a karma. which then is used to determine what a moderation of that person is worth.
But on Slashdot, instead it determines, who gets mod points. Which is a bit more binary, as there are no people with e.g. 10% moderation power, or anything in-between. You either have points or you don’t.

So it’s pretty close to the theoretical perfection.

The only thing it still has problems with, is that it has no concept of competency, and that meta-moderation is used. normally, one who moderates badly, would get thrown out pretty quickly, because he would lose his moderating power. But because /. does not know how competent you actually are, to moderate on a subject, that isn’t built-in.

I thought about this for a long time. But one thing remains open, even in a theoretically perfect system:
The ability to abuse the system, when you can’t uniquely identify people. (The sock-puppet dilemma.)
One could simply moderate one’s socks who then moderate oneself.
Also social aspects mean, that this can happen even without sock puppets. (Social engineering / politics.)

Unfortunately I haven’t found a solution to that problem yet.

Re:Age and quality.

[shiftless]

I think what he meant to say is he gave points to those who had valid, logical points, yet had not been upmodded or in some cases unfairly downmodded since the opinions they expressed conflicted with the Slashdot groupthink. Happens all the time, and good for him for trying to swing the balance a bit.

Re:Age and quality.

[shutdown -p now]

Well, what are you waiting for then? You seem to know how to fix it, so why tease us?

I'm not GP, but I'll bite.

I'm not a web developer. I haven't ever dealt with AJAX (even though I know how it works, in theory), and I've no idea how to fix Slashdot. However, I visit other websites, and I've seen quite a few interactive sights which are both more convenient, and much, much faster. A good example of a site that uses Ajax rather heavily, but is nonetheless very well designed and convenient to use, is StackOverflow.

Congrats!

[nametaken]

Congrats /. and "Thanks!"

You've been a regular haunt of mine longer than any other tech site and I'm glad you're still around. :)

Re:Congrats!

[RJFerret]

How about we celebrate when we reach a round number, like 131,072. Shouldn't a binary milestone count for more here?

lowest account number?

[axjms]

third post?!

I am curious to find which one of us reading this has the lowest account number? I had a really low one but lost that account..

Re:lowest account number?

[ModernGeek]

You have to hold a four or five digit UID to wake them from the darkness, otherwise they won't listen and will continue to hide.

Re:lowest account number?

[Tackhead]

You have to hold a four or five digit UID to wake them from the darkness, otherwise they won't listen and will continue to hide.

Only one way to find out:

``Pl'ngooi hglw'grtz Natalie Portman /. wgah'nagl b00bies petran''
(In a pool of hot grits at Slashdot, Natalie Portman lies naked and petrified.)

Thanks for 100,000, Taco and Company.

Re:lowest account number?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is my highest numbered account, my first one (three digits as I recall) got lost in some sort of database snafu in the early days and my second one I forgot the password to. I only ever read via RSS though... (and even then I mostly just skim).

Re:lowest account number?

[palpatine]

How's this? I know a few ppl with even lower though... and obviously the staff!

Re:lowest account number?

[gmuslera]

Maybe more than lowest account number (mine isnt that high, but surely won't be the lowest one) what really matter is to be in this community all this years, since 1997.

Re:lowest account number?

[Darth]

You have to hold a four or five digit UID to wake them from the darkness, otherwise they won't listen and will continue to hide.

I have a five digit UID and am nihilistic enough to awaken eldritch horrors purely out of curiosity to see what would happen.

Is there a man page for it?

Re:lowest account number?

[PopeRatzo]

I had a really low one but lost that account..

Me too.

My really low account number was one lower than your really low account number, but I lost it. I think it's somewhere in a dresser drawer, next to the keys to my other car, which is a Porsche 911 GT3 RS and has a kicking sound system.

Re:lowest account number?

[Token_Internet_Girl]

Ah yes, the Call of Cthbooblu.

Re:lowest account number?

[bertoelcon]

When did you find the time to log on? Aren't there kids in your lawn that need to be told get off?

Re:lowest account number?

[thoth]

I remember a few times the "low UID" issue came up (for no other reason than asking who's got a low uid??)

Somebody was bragging about their low UID (2 digits) and Taco responded "pwned".
Another time the discussion was about if people with low UID's posted useful info, and user #11 (I think) said "nope just pointless comments really". ;)

I see Palpatine posted below, #94 that's pretty low!

Re:lowest account number?

[sho-gun]

``Pl'ngooi hglw'grtz Natalie Portman /. wgah'nagl b00bies petran''
(In a pool of hot grits at Slashdot, Natalie Portman lies naked and petrified.)

Thanks for 100,000, Taco and Company.

*blinks* Did someone say something? I thought I felt a "disturbance" in my "force"

Re:lowest account number?

[voidref]

What about a lowish number AND a username with illegal characters?

w00t!

Re:lowest account number?

[volsung]

Wow, you definitely win there. :)

Re:lowest account number?

[Owyn]

Yeah, that's pretty good. :)

100,000 stories?

[canajin56]

There may be 100,000 stories, but what's that without dupes though? 1000, 2000 tops? ;)

Congratulations

[Dartz-IRL]

From a new user.

Here's to the next 100k.

If it was ever all laid out, this site would actually be a pretty interesting resource for future historians. Of course, that depends on future historians being able to read whatever formats the site is stored in.

Anybody remember the Domesday Book project in Britain from the 80's being digitised into a 'permanent' format, that was obsolete a decade later.?

Anyway, kudos.

>65,635 stories?

[Shakrai]

At least we know they used the right data type for the stories ;)

CmdrTaco

[dancingmad]

I'm curious about CmdrTaco saying the site isn't always what he wants it to be; care to elaborate?

I'm seriously not trying to start a flame war or anything like that; just curious as to how the site has differed from your vision for it.

Re:CmdrTaco

[RobotRunAmok]

I'm curious about CmdrTaco saying the site isn't always what he wants it to be; care to elaborate?

I think he was referring to the decided lack of tentacle hentai. I'm pretty sure slashdot-as-tentacle-hentai-hub was part of the original prospectus.

Re:CmdrTaco

[Kingrames]

Well there's still time, dudes!

100,000 is not a round number...

[Stephen Williams]

...to a geek. We should hold off celebrating until the next power of two. Looking forward to the 131,072nd story!

-Stephen

Re:100,000 is not a round number...

[geekoid]

I don't understand why 32 stories is worth noting.

Re:Star War TV special?

[Soulskill]

Something broke it temporarily. It should be fixed now: http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/09/12/10/1333202/The-Star-Wars-Christmas-Special-Still-Exists

From one of the faceless lurkers

[Hecubas]

Thanks for the good work over the years, keep it up.

the days of old

[Phantom of the Opera]

I remember reading posts like yours in the days of old, decrying the decline of /.

Re:the days of old

[Mister Whirly]

Everybody thinks everything is getting worse, since the dawn of man. Every generation thinks the one after it is far less worthwhile then their own. It is the oldest cliche in the book. But really it is just getting old. The times change faster than you do.

Re:the days of old

[Phantom of the Opera]

Late 90s sometime. There were a few years I skipped. When was the uid wipe? Wondering if that is what changed my name from 'Phantom of the Operating System'

Re:the days of old

[_Sprocket_]

I remember reading posts like yours in the days of old, decrying the decline of /.

Back in those days, people really knew how to decry the decline of /.

12 Years, 100k stories.

[SilverHatHacker]

Adding my congratulations to the pile.
Sure, we may poke of fun at kdawson; complain about dupes, javascript, and stupid memes; go off on all sorts of irrelevant tangents about OS choice, porn habits, and government decisions; but really, were would any of us be without Slashdot?
And please don't anyone say 4chan.

Re:12 Years, 100k stories.

[Arthur Grumbine]

but really, were would any of us be without Slashdot?

Working?

Congrats and thanks

[Sebilrazen]

/. keeps me from productively working myself out of a job.

well

[Phantom of the Opera]

that woke me up, but I think I saw someone in double digits somewhere around here.

// fomerly - Phantom of the Operating System

// curse you shrinking varchar!

Re:well

[Anonymous Coward]

I am technically lower. AC is 666.

Re:well

[chris mazuc]

The lowest I've seen in a very long time is a three digit UID.

Re:well

[chris mazuc]

Nevermind

Re:well

[Owyn]

Like this one? I only post in low id threads these days, if I stumble across one. Ha.

I still read slashdot, I just don't really have time to moderate/post comments...

Re:Here's to the next 100000

[PopeRatzo]

Now it's official.

Re:Plus or minus one?

[teko_teko]

Does that 100,000 include the Star Wars Christmas Special story which mysteriously disappeared yesterday?

It's been fixed, says Soulskill:

Something broke it temporarily. It should be fixed now: http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/09/12/10/1333202/The-Star-Wars-Christmas-Special-Still-Exists

not much have changed

[bjoeg]

using Wayback Machine to read their first edition of /., not much have changed, more or less the same articles

Or no Javascript at all...

[Valdrax]

The UI would be fine if a) it worked correctly cross-browser, or at least among standards-compliant browsers and b) the javascript that powers most of it wasn't some of the slowest ever written.

I liked the site better when it didn't rely on Javascript at all: back when all the comment boxes worked without a hitch, and there weren't so many clever little popups that don't work half the time. Plus, I used to be able to see icons for friend/foe markers. Even with everything turned on in NoScript (save DoubleClick), the site doesn't completely work, and it's maddening.

I haven't seen ANY value added by ANY of the UI changes to Slashdot in the past couple of years. All they've done is make the site harder to use and less attractive. I always get the feeling no matter what browser I use that the site was coded for some other browser. And that's just terrible.

Re:Or no Javascript at all...

[swiftx05]

The option is under "Discussion Style" here: http://meta.slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm

Re:not to toot my own horn

[Valdrax]

What, were you waiting for the statute of limitations to run out before confessing or something?

100,000 includes the dups

[karnowski]

What CmdrTaco failed to mention is that when you remove all the duplicate articles they're only at 75,654.

Sloppy editing, but indispensable.

[Futurepower(R)]

I agree with you about the editors. It is amazing how little Slashdot editors seem to have learned about editing in the last 12 years. Sometimes stories have not even been spell-checked. It is very common that a Slashdot story is misleading in some way.

However, even with the sloppy editing, Slashdot is the best way of learning about computer and other technology events. It's indispensable in my life. Slashdot editors have been very good at choosing stories that are interesting to us.

The comments have often been valuable to me. For example, several years ago Slashdot ran a story I suggested about making international telephone calls. There were 880 comments. One of them mentioned BroadVoice, a company that provides unlimited calling to land lines in 57 countries (then 35 countries). Since we often call land line phones in other countries and talk for hours, that was a very valuable suggestion. (I'm only a customer. I have no other involvement with BroadVoice.)

It seems reasonable to mention also that editing is extremely mentally intensive. It is much more difficult than it appears to those with no editing experience.

We are lucky to have Slashdot. Where else could we go for these stories?

Re:Sloppy editing, but indispensable.

[Reaperducer]

I wonder how many of the 100,000 are dupes.

Re:Sloppy editing, but indispensable.

[Toonol]

I think there is some sort of sociological principle at play here... some sort of emergent property of systems. As the number of people frequenting the internet, and social networking sites, grow... there's an effect that both drives most sites toward absolute mediocrity, the most populated part of the bell curve... but if you are sufficiently above or below the middle, you may be pushed further to that extreme.

The smart people need a site, and there's more smart people than ever... so there is a demand for something on the high edge. But there's absolutely no need for a 'halfway smart' site, like, say, Digg... at that point, the site joins millions of others in vying for the attention at the populated middle. I THINK there might be something like that happening with slashdot... at least I hope.

I think something similar happens with movies and tv.

How to get the llowest account number

[tomhudson]

Keep registering accounts until it overflows - you'll then have the lowest number possible ... $MAX_NEGATIVE_VALUE.

Re:High karma, but stopped getting mod points

[somersault]

Isn't that what happens if you get ranked badly in metamoderation? I'm not going to RTFMMM just now.

Thats ok ...

[nitroyogi]

But where are my mod points man? :(

Re:12 Years?!?

[bennomatic]

Kids these days! This last August, I celebrated 20 years since my first Internet access account. Pre-web, we used things like "tin", "nn" and "rn" to get our "newsgroups", and "Gopher" to gain access to all sorts of amazing data worldwide via links rather than that outdated FTP system. Oh, and we had IM; we just called it IRC. In a way, IRC was a lot like a stateless version of Twitter, too.

Sigh.

Still here after all these years

[jgerry]

I don't post nearly as much as I used to, and I don't get mod points as much as I used to either. But I'm always scanning the RSS feed and checking out stories, because I value the discussion here more than anywhere else. The quality of discourse here remains high, which is almost an anomaly in this age of Digg & Facebook, but it's that anomaly that keeps me coming back.

Re:12 Years?!?

[bennomatic]

Oh, and back then, Internet email wasn't always easy to send. I had a friend at Mt. Holyoke, and to email her, I had to send to [her_name]%holyoke.edu@gateway.riverside.edu.

And if you wanted to email someone who was on a BBS (say, 'BBS-X') which wasn't connected directly to the Internet, but got their feed through another BBS (say, 'BBS-Y'), the address would look like: BBS-Y!BBS-X!user@somerandomgateway.com.

Back then, you had to EARN your email.

./ made me smarter

[toopok4k3]

Congrats are in order. I have been here for at least 5 years now. I can say all the comments and the way people discuss things here changed the way I see/understand the world and people. Big kudos to all of you!

Ask Google

[tepples]

things in "ask slashdot" that should instead get someone redirected to google

Not everybody is an expert at formulating search engine queries. In these Ask Slashdot articles, I take the question to be the following: "To answer this question, what words should I have typed into a search engine?" Even a "Let me Google that for you" response can be informative if it reveals keywords that the submitter couldn't think to use.

Re: Memes

[Wonko the Sane]

Funny that slashdot trolls have existed long enough to be a source of nostalgia. Somebody should post the "nullo" troll for old time's sake.

Re:Groan

[piripiri]

Yeah it would be cool to have some sort of linux kernel swear counts but with /. stories, which matches some patterns like:

• in soviet russia * you
• i, for one, welcome our new * overlords
• but does it run linux
• imagine a beowulf cluster of those
• there. fixed that for you
• goatse
• [no carrier]
• you must be new here
• cowbowneal

Come on /. devs, bring us a xmas gift ! ;)

Re:Groan

[hjf]

# cowboyneal

there, fixed it for ya.
signed,
grammar nazi

Re:Since I was a teenager!

[awyeah]

Oh yes. Definitely worth subscribing to. The cost is ridiculously low. And I've actually selected to turn of Ads on all pages, and I have set my limit of ad-free pages to zero.

Well worth supporting /.

And a good walk down memory lane.