Upcoming Changes To 'Ask Slashdot'

We're pleased to announce that changes are coming to the Ask Slashdot section. Ask Slashdot is a place to get your technical questions answered, show off your big brain by helping others, debate products and practices, and occasionally talk directly to companies about their offerings. Over the years, we've posted more than 7700 questions, on everything from workplace relations to home networking to evading censorship from unfriendly regimes. Starting tomorrow, you'll see that some Ask Slashdot questions have their own sponsors; the sponsors don't pick the questions, but experts from each sponsor will stick around for the discussion. Next up: we're making it easier for you to submit questions. Our goal is to make Ask Slashdot your "go-to" place for answers to your pressing nerd questions. So please post your questions, put on your answering hats, and come along for the ride.

Comments

And I was worried

[Anrego]

I feel silly for getting concerned when that pulse stuff started showing up in the sidebar. Clearly things are heading in a good direction :)

For the first question I’d like to know how my organization can best leverage Oracle’s EJB technology to obtain the rapid and simplified development of distributed, transactional, secure and portable applications that we are looking for in our growing business.

Re:And I was worried

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd best start synergizing as soon as possible or your cloud initiative will fail to leverage your business intelligence paradigm and we all know what happens then,

But, whatever you do, don't panic. Oracle professional services, in conjunction with the talent acquired in the Sun buyout, is standing by and ready to address your every business need.

StackOverflow competior?

[bigsexyjoe]

Slashdot, are you saying that you are trying to emulate the functions of StackOverflow?
What's the deal with the sponsors? Are you saying Oracle (for example) is going to have some expert answer common Java questions in a slashvertisement/tech support type thing?

Re:StackOverflow competior?

[claytongulick]

No, this appears (on the surface) to be another gasp at squeezing revenue from "the slashdot".

While I don't blame them for wanting to be profitable, I can just site here and think of the high level exec meetings that had subjects like "We need to find creative ways to monetize our user base" and someone said "I know! lets take 'ask slashdot' and make it a revenue opportunity...".

I suspect there was internal resistance to it, but most of that probably faded with CdrTaco leaving.

Slashdot polls have been replaced with Splunk marketing surveys, Ask Slashdot is now a vendor sponsored forum...

I give it two years before slashdot is indistinguishable from the Yahoo! main page.

Typical corporate acquisition stuff. I suspect, based on some other clues, that Geeknet is suffering from decreased revenue pressures. I suspect that ThinkGeek sales have tanked, and no one knows why (and apparently no one realized that pushing cheap, low quality crap with clever marketing at twice the sane price is not a good long term sales strategy). Sourceforge has got to be operating at a loss, and has been hemorrhaging projects as mass defections over to github and others occur.

So I think there's probably a lot of corporate pressure to make slashdot start earning more to make up for shortfalls.

We'll see more of this, it was predictable. The user base will continue to fall off, and soon we'll be getting emails ala Facebook - "We haven't seen you in a while! Do you know what you've been missing!?! Come back and be an awesome geek! Derf derf..."

Sorry if I'm coming across as too cynical here, I'm not against companies earning money. What frustrates my is the overall cluelessness of executives that think the proper path to profitability it to turn this (once great) site into McSlashdot.

Re:StackOverflow competior?

[claytongulick]

Sorry to reply to myself, but I'm a big believer in not bitching about a problem without offering a solution.

Slashdot corporate overlords, if you're browsing these posts for reactions to the change, here's a suggestion: consider the metafilter business model.

Put a slashdot poll up and ask the users if they'd be willing to pay $5 per year to get rid of all the ads, and eliminate 90% of the trolls (most trolls aren't willing to pay to troll).

Make karma mean something - those with excellent or above karma get a discounted (or free) rate. Same way we can turn off Ads now.

I know that I, for one, would jump at the chance to help fund slashdot, and to help make it great again.

Interesting

[lazarus]

I've been here for a long time. It used to be that I would very rarely if ever read comments submitted by other Slashdotters as I was far more interested in TFA. But as time has gone on I find I am more interested in what others here have to say. Everybody has the same news stories now and it is the insights and comments from the people in this community that are the real value.

Not certain how you're planning to define "sponsors", but if you're planning to accept money from people who would like to mine this community for information I would caution you to tread carefully. You may be trying this on the wrong group of people...

Hope it boots!

Re:Interesting

[pecosdave]

My experience tells me /. IS the community.

The consensus on /. is what the tech industry is going to do, like it or not. We are the ones who are driving out DRM, slowly. We are the ones who made sure SCO failed. We predicted Microsoft 's decline in dominance unless they stop acting like assholes.

We predict and drive the tech sector, /. is the helm and our excellent but not completely flawless mod system keeps the GNAA from driving.

Just like everything else in the tech sector /. will be subject to the judgment of /. It will either work well or the consensus will stop it. I hope it works well, I want the folks who run the joint to make a few bucks, but if it doesn't there will be no choice but to stop or fail.

Yes, I think /. has a lot in common with Anonymous only less coordinated, a mass of individuals working separately toward the same goals motivated by the rational consensus reached here.

R.I.P. CmdrTaco

[Hadlock]

He saw the writing on the wall and got out while the getting was good

Re:I for one welcome this change with open hands

[mwvdlee]

"Dear Slashdot readers, Why does Linux suck so much?"
(sponsored by Microsoft).

Re:Serious Questions

[PerlJedi]

The sponsor will not be given any special treatment with regards to comment score and moderation. The "expert" the sponsor will be providing to take part in the conversation will have an account which is "badged", meaning that it will be visually apparent when the a comment was posted by the sponsor. Beyond the visual treatment that will make clear which comments are made by a representative of the sponsor, they will have no special power. They will not be able to hide comments they don't like, or highlight those they do.

We want to offer a sponsor the chance to have a serious conversation with our audience, but we are not going to be giving them a soap box to stand on. If they want to engage with our audience, they will need to understand that means taking the good with the bad.

Re:I for one welcome this change with open hands

[mcgrew]

I have a Nike T-shirt (St Louis Cardinals logo on it). Paid seventy five cents for it at a garage sale five years ago.

Anyone who pays full price for fashion is no nerd. In fact, if you care about fashion at all you probably aren't a nerd. If you just want to meet women, ask women what to wear.

This advice comes from personal experience. After my divorce I couldn't get as much as a dinner date for 3 years, until one night in a bar a woman suggested I cut my beard into a goatee. So I did an informal survey of women 18 to eighty seven, and seventeen of eighteen respondants said "goatee" (the eighteenth was standing next to her boyfriend, who was wearing a full beard).

The dry spell ended almost immediately. I guess women don't like the RMS look.

Re:What?

[NeutronCowboy]

The point is not the censoring, the point is the signal-to-noise ratio. And the ratio WILL drop once marketers and PR people join the conversation.

I find the evolution of the latest PR-flak kinda interesting: first he completely side-stepped the fact that he was being paid for his posts. He was the definition of an astroturfer. Now he's coming out officially, and contributing to discussions outside his PR mandate. I'm curious to see how he will continue to evolve. I have a strong suspicion that he might be a good indicator of the future of discussions:
* PR always posts first, because they're paid to do so
* PR is always on message, and posts more than any other single user (again, because they get paid for it)
* PR will drive the discussion because of the two previous points.

Whether that's good or bad is still to be seen. But I definitely think that the experts need to be uniquely identified, and we need to have the ability to ignore them.