Slashdot Mirror
Help Shape the Future of Slashdot
Long-time readers will know that we try not to clutter the front page of Slashdot with much stuff about the site itself; this is a rare exception, but we hope you'll like the reason: we want your opinions. You should see above a link to take a survey about Slashdot, and (just to be heavy handed) here's the direct link. The questions there are simple, but we're going to read the answers carefully. The reminder bar up there will remain active for some time, but this story will scroll down the page like all Slashdot stories. Comments are welcome below; surveys have their limitations, after all, but please don't comment without also giving the survey a visit — if it makes sense, feel free to cut-and-paste any answers from there as comments, too. The engineers who build this site (and the editors, too!) are counting on your honest opinions and hoping for some great ideas; ideas outnumber the hours we have to do things, so we hope you'll make a case for the ways that Slashdot should change (and the ways it shouldn't!).
Slashdot has probably of the best comment systems on Earth. But it certainly is subject to orthodoxy. Unpopular opinions are modded down, turning some comment threads into echo chambers. I'd rather hear stuff I don't agree with than only one side.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Make it so I can see all the posts without logging in or Javascript. My usage of the site has gone down dramatically because it's a pain in the ass with the (relatively) new system. I have been reading the site since 1998 and this fucking sucks.
Stop hitting the web server on my NAT box for ok.txt every time I post.
Don't assume that any cookies you set will ever be sent back.
Don't use referer fields at all, just send straight HTML.
Don't use all this horrible crashy javascript.
Some really terrible articles get through sometimes. Articles from some no-name person's blog that contain no or very few external links to anything to back up the crap put forth on their site.
Better quality editing.
Sounds mean but it has to be said. Some of the stories over the last year or two have had blatant errors in the summary (one was even in the title, about some incident at a nuclear plant), I remember at least a few troll stories that got through, it's shameful. It seems like the posters are often putting more effort into the posts than the editors are putting into the articles.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Articles shouldn't start like this: "Mr Submitter, with his first accepted submission, writes: [summary]". No one gives a fuck.
It's certainly not perfect, but I'd agree it's one of the best systems you'll find anywhere on the 'net. Look at the results of the vote systems on Digg and Reddit. Formerly sites that had intelligent contribution that have been brought to the lowest common denominator and worse. You do get a certain type of comment being approved frequently here but it's certainly a better trade-off than endless memes being rewarded while intelligent discussion is relegated to the darkest corners.
I never get used to these constant resurrections
It has a single voice if you want it to have a single voice, ie, you already think it does. A whole lot of people claim that on here, but it really is a dead unicorn trope. Why? Because when some story comes up which you would think would cause everyone to fall in line... people start arguing about it. However, confirmation bias works wonders. Funny how people who think slashdot has groupthink seem to disagree amongst themselves as to what, exactly, are the ideas slashdot is groupthinking about...
Great Intellect...
In addition to the moderation / meta-moderation issues noted (confirmation bias anyone?) Changes over the past year have made reading /. on a mobile device (e.g. iPhone) almost impossible. Page loads take forever and it must be trying to calculate pi to 1 billion places for each page load. Plus, clicking a collapsed story to show it will scroll to the top. That's stupid. The "More" links are lame, too. You can keep clicking "more" to get more stories (since it only displays like 5), but when you go into a story to read comments and then come out, all your extra stories are gone. A simple "next page" feature would be far more useful. AJAX is all fine, but /. abuses it to the point where it detracts from site functionality.
Oh, and more stories about ponies.
I don't know, but it works for me.
Slashdot has probably of the best comment systems on Earth. But it certainly is subject to orthodoxy. Unpopular opinions are modded down, turning some comment threads into echo chambers. I'd rather hear stuff I don't agree with than only one side.
I've found that one can thoughtfully articulate an unpopular opinion in a way that causes others to consider ideas and perspectives they would otherwise be unwilling to entertain. Though they do it for petty and ignorant reasons, that same rigid orthodoxy winds up serving the higher purpose of helping me sharpen a skill that is otherwise more difficult and costly to practice. If they insist on being this way, let them; I will continue to use it constructively despite their narrow-minded intentions.
If you're going to fix something about this site, you should first identify something that can be easily recognized as broken. What comes to my mind is the JS that drives the comment system. It's unresponsive as hell. Most of the time, I have to click "Preview" and "Submit" multiple times before anything happens. Even then, it often won't update to show me the finalized comment, forcing me to use my browser's Refresh button. Since this is neither consistent nor the intended functionality, I consider it a glaring and obvious bug(s). If I were the developer, I would focus on basic usability and getting fundamental functions to work smoothly before I'd move on to larger ideas.
Otherwise, it would be easier to view the staff as a group of professionals if they'd take a small portion of their revenues and hire a good copy editor. Even a part-time copy editor would help tremendously. I frequently see mistakes that even automated spell-checkers would have caught. You're telling me an article submitted to an audience of millions isn't important enough to spend a few hundred milliseconds of CPU time to run a spell-checker? That would cost nothing, even if they can't be bothered to proofread anything. The lack of even basic attempts to achieve quality sends the message that these are not professionals who really care about the quality of their work, that they're just mercenaries who are not doing something they enjoy and value.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
When they changed the meta-moderation system I stopped meta-moderating. I'd be surprised if I were the only one that stopped. The older system of an up or down vote was a lot easier to do, without actually spending huge amounts of time, it's just too hard to figure out what the moderation should have been.
They could also provide an easier way of reporting abuses of mod points.
Give all logged in users the ability to mod.
Hell, NO! That's the main problem with Digg. Everybody can moderate, so moderation becomes commonplace. In Slashdot, you can't always moderate, and your possible number of moderations is limited. This makes every +1/-1 more valuable.
Hi. This comment has absolutely nothing to do with your comment, but I'm posting it here so it'll be at the top and more likely to be read and/or modded up.
This is such a common practice nowadays that 75% of the discussion are all replies to the Frist Post and the whole thing becomes a fragmented mess.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
One of the things that I find disappointing is that probably the single largest factor in terms of whether a comment is promoted or demoted is the time after the post hits the main page. It is extremely common to see average posts (i.e. limited informational or insightful quantity/quality) rated very highly (probably too highly) simply because they are submitted shortly (within 1-2 hours, often much less) after the parent post hits the main page. Conversely, insanely high quality posts (i.e. those with tons of useful information or insight) that are submitted after the magic window either do not get voted up or are only voted up to a minor degree.
I understand why this occurs. A large influx of people are reading the comments shortly after the post and then there is an exponential decay afterwards. The result is that high quality and deserving posts do not get voted up since fewer and fewer people with mod points see them. It is completely understandable, however I think addressing this would have a significant positive impact. I know there have often been times that I would not post simply because I figured it was too late and practically no-one would read the comment so why bother. Unfortunately, I do not know how to solve this problem, just that it is real.
I do realize that the meta-moderation system does have some limited impact here, but I think it is too limited to be effective.