Slashdot Mirror
On Slashdot Video, We Hear You Loud and Clear
You complained; we heard you. We're making some adjustments to our
ongoing experiment with video on Slashdot, and are trying to get it
right. Some of the videos just haven't gelled, to put it lightly, and
we know it. We're feeling out just what kinds of videos make sense
here: it's a steep learning curve. So far, though, besides a few
videos that nearly
everyone hated, we've also seen some wacky,
impressive,
fun
technology,
and we're going to keep bringing more of it, but in what we intend to
be smarter doses, here on the Slashdot home page. (A larger selection
will be available on tv.slashdot.org.) We're also
planning to start finding and documenting some creative means of
destruction for naughty hardware; suggestions welcome. We have also
heard you when it comes to improving the core Slashdot site experience
and fixing bugs on site. We're working on these items, too. As
always, suggestions are welcome, too, for other things worth getting
on camera or publishing on Slashdot.
No saving slashtv. Just add a checkbox for it under the "exclusions" tab and call it a day.
I'd like you to be honest with ads. I don't particularly have a problem with ads, but I think you could be more transparent when a story has been paid for. I really don't see any good reason to try to pretend that a story is organic when it isn't.
Since this is /., and since there was a recent news bit about Adobe releasing its last version of Flash for Linux, could you please dump the one-off flash player and switch to something supported by HTML5? Also, I'd rather not have to deal with a noScript shit-fit in order to watch these "amazing" videos.
No interest in the videos; would rather read about technology vs. watching it.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
1) Don't post advertisements. Or, if you're going to, at least say they are outright. Don't try to disguise it as a story. This isn't Huffpost or Fox News, most of your readership actually has a pretty large amount of still-functioning brain cells. We can tell when you're bullshitting us.
2) I joined Slashdot... hoo, 5 years ago. Maybe longer. How is it that Slashdot actually runs slower now? Doesn't anyone consider efficiency in coding as being important anymore?
3) Add proper UTF-8 support. Add support for loads of characters. What if I want to type in Japanese or use symbols? And on that note, remove the "junk characters" filter. ASCII art is a part of Slashdot's history. Sure, people used it to make goatse, but by that same logic why not remove hyperlinking since people still link to it today? The trolls will be modded down as always. Let us have some opportunity for creativity again.
4) Lastly, take a look at your functionality. When a *free* forum suite like PHPBB - hell, when free shit like *Wordpress* has more functionality in their comment system, something is very wrong. You're a tech site. If anything you should be on the forefront on this kind of shit, not lagging behind.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I'd go further, though.
Tag all the "slashvertisements" as such and allow them to be blocked.
The last time I made the mistake of clicking on one of these new Slashdot videos, the video was preceded by a several minute long ad on some ridiculous alternative/new-age treatment. Ignoring the ridiculous length of it (any video ad longer than 10 sec and I'm out...), who thought that was relevant to science/tech/nerds?
Many websites have started steering people to video versions of news stories. This is quite irritating, because the video content is mostly irrelevant b-roll footage, and the narrator ploddingly reads two paragraphs in three minutes. Three minutes for a news story that I could have read and comprehended in 10 seconds.
Unless there are mentos and soda, video is not needed.
Thanks for always thinking of improving your service and not charging a penny.
Sincerely,
Everyone.
Whenever I try to play one of these videos, nothing happens. When I disable AdBlock+, the player loads, but then I get some embarrassingly cheesy advertisement instead of the announced video. Sorry, ctrl-W.
But now it applies at Slashdot too... we are the product, not the customer.
Please, offer the videos on YouTube and offer up the YouTube link. Or Vimeo.
YouTube has support on practically everything networked, while both sites offer both HTML5 and Flash support (and work well on iOS).
These sites also have embed that works and do allow saving videos for later viewing.
Since when? If Slashdot had listened we would still have the "classic discussion system" available to those of us who never sign in. The new version is horrible even with allowances by no-script.
None of your videos seem to load over my authenticating squid proxy that only allows 80 and 443 outbound.
Someone else already (albeit rudely) suggested the idea of allowing for excluding SlashdotTV items from the main page. I am all for new content and features, but be sure to make them opt-in. That way, everyone can have what they want.
That said, I will repeat a previous suggestion when SlashdotTV launched. Please include full transcripts of all videos when posted either on tv.slashdot.org or on the main page as a story. Not everyone can listen to the audio, because of technical issues or hearing issues. Or like me, we are at work and cannot stop to listen to a video in an office environment.
Other than that, keep up the great job, Slashdot! And thanks for being free!
Have you considered that maybe the majority of /. readers simply doesn't want videos?
We came a long way with the Internet. The medium has the convenience of multimedia with the control of books. The best part of it is that I control how I consume. I can have /. open in a window to the side, or in the background. I can tab over there when something is compiling or rendering or uploading, check a story or a few comments and switch back to whatever I'm really doing at the time.
More importantly, I can ready carefully or skim over stuff. Most stories get but a glance to see if there's anything that stands out as interesting.
Videos don't work that way. They take a lot of control out of my hands. I'm a quick reader, but I can't speed up the video. I can't really skim over it the way I can with text. While I can pause and rewind, it's more work than on a written text.
Really, online videos are a step backwards in most cases. Most of the stuff on youtube doesn't really deserve a video. Two screenshots and three sentences would cover it just as well. But grabbing your smartphone camera and uploading the crap without any editing is much easier, isn't it?
You want to improve /. or move it forward? How about you listen to the criticism of the fans first and shelve any cute ideas until you have the basics covered? The editing quality on /. is as horrible as ever. Pay a couple good editors. 10 times the benefit of moving pictures.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
No need for a separate "TV" section. A better approach would be to link videos, audio, etc to posted articles, as needed. And make the TV section simply a different view of articles that emphasizes / lists all attached videos.
Text based articles is what most visitors of Slashdot expect. Slashdot might as well just move the "TV" section over to a YouTube channel and be done with it.
Like I said before, /. is a text medium. Leave it alone.
This isn't You Tube. When I want videos I go to You Tube. When I want pr0n, I go to a pr0n site. When I want News for Nerds I go to /.
Slashtdot TV looks so much like Fark TV to me. Didn't work for them either. We are here for the same old Slashdot that has been around for years. Stick to your core business. Seriously.
You can post videos. Of course you can! Just put them in the same blog-style posts as usual.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Some of the videos just haven't gelled, to put it lightly
You mean the slashvertisments? Yeah, those are terrible. I understand that you guys want to generate additional revenue from the site, but really you've been pushing the boundaries of what some of your audience will consider as an appropriate story.
You've got a mostly technically inclined audience, and trying to sell them a "database proxy" that prevents SQL Injections will pretty much put off anyone who's done serious work in that area. You're not exactly catering to the easiest audience, but you managed to do so for the most part in the past 10 years. If you suddenly forgot how to pander to your audience, I really think you should have a look at your community and its roots and see where exactly you've lost touch.
We're also planning to start finding and documenting some creative means of destruction for naughty hardware
No, please... We've got the will it blend guy pimping his blenders, the will it fry guys with their tesla coils, and more enough kids with fireworks or hammers on youtube. Do something neat, something geeky. Do something that makes me go "Oh cool, I want to build one too" and grab my soldering iron or favourite editor of choice. Don't build a "death ray" out of a giant magnifying glass (remember that horrible story?) and burn yet another iphone/ipod. It's been done to death, and is extremely not geeky.
Always include a transcript.
Give us chance to skim the content in 10 seconds and decide if we want to spend the 3+ minutes to watch it in real-time.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
To add to the above: And I may not be in a position to watch a video at the time I find the article, even if I had the time to do so.
I am aware that some people prefer talking heads. I have no problem with that. But if you don't provide at the very least a transcription as well, I will usually be heading elsewhere before I click 'play'.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
I have a sneaking suspicion that somebody just got here and think this site is digg.
even those juvenile enough wanting to watch stuff blend doesn't come to slashdot for that.
The readership of slashdot are not morons least ways not the ones that post the good stuff.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
We're open to suggestions, particularly of the mentos-and-soda types. And we've got some more visually-appealing ideas in the pipeline. There's been talk of breaking stuff with lasers.
Seriously, get a host who doesn't weird people out.
For what it's worth, something with a steep learning curve means that it is learned very quickly.
If you're guessing, you're doing it wrong.
And yes, if you are doing a brainstorming session among the editors, without asking the readership, that's still guessing.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I have 1050 pixels wide window, it is just fine for the Slashdot itself but the damned videos gets clipped from the right.
Make the player to scale by the width of the window and element around it.
Why wouldn't anyone believe that? Just because they seem to focus less on the tech and more on the commercial product of a specific company?
See? If we laugh then it means that you were wrong. Because otherwise we wouldn't laugh, would we?
Is it something that other companies and other people are ALSO doing?
Let's see a video about the cool new features of The Ford Motor Company's newest, coolest truck, the 2012 Ford Explorer (tm) named North American Truck of the Year in 2011.
That is an advertisement.
A video about blue tooth in cars now is an article.
Then you have to be aware that people will try to use you for advertising. Whether they pay in cash or toys or whatever.
If you do them correctly. What good is a single review of a single product in a single class? That is an advertisement for that product.
In order for it to be a review you would have to compare it to previously reviewed products by other vendors in the same class.
It's called "the web" for a reason - put a link to the video that is posted on youtube or wherever and you're done. Really doesn't matter to me either way - I won't watch 'em...
Hackaday is a tech-oriented site which includes videos in many of it's posts. In general, their videos are informative and on-point. They make the browsing experience better.
Let's compare and contrast those videos with the ones here, and see if slashdot can keep the good parts and ditch the bad parts.
Hackaday videos are generated by the people making the articles. IOW, when they make some cool gadget, they have a website describing the build and a video of the device in action. Here's the first example that I could find in a quick search. Lots and lots of other examples.
The subject matter of the cited example is rather uninteresting and techy, and it's amateurish, but the video does an excellent job of counterpointing and illustrating the text of the build.
I've seen other examples where the ideas expressed in the text are badly described or difficult to grasp, but the video makes it clear. There are also many examples of things which are just plain cool when shown as video. Lots and lots of examples.
Images are used to illuminate and express the interest and wonder of a concept, and videos should be used in the same way. Not as a medium in and of itself, but as a way to express those aspects which don't come out well in text or images.
Using them for fake advertizements is the wrong approach - there is simply no general interest in seeing advertizements, and making them into videos doesn't make them more palatable. Having a video of a person talking, expressing an opinion, or describing something is completely backwards - the description should be text, the diagrams in images, and the action in video.
If you had videos in the same vein and for the same reasons as Hackaday, it would be roundly appreciated by just about everyone.
It's like what everyone says is the problem with the RIAA and MPAA - change your business model, give the customers what they want.
We're still your customers, right?
Just have one of those nifty "click to expand for transcription" link under the videos. PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! It would probably take less than 10 minutes to transcribe a 3 minute video. For people who WORK in an OFFICE, this would be essential.
/. TV is not going away, because you need to stay "relevant" and "hip" with all the kids with their ipad thingies, but for actual people with actual jobs, no one is going to stop and watch a video on the site.
;-)
I know
Content wise, I remember a while back there was a guy who was firing home made rockets off on the Great Salt Flats. @#$@ YES, I want to see videos of stuff like that.
Or videos of the IIS passing in front of the sun or something. Product reviews, meh, not so much. Before you post a video, think to yourself... "IS THIS 100% BADASS enough to need a video?" If not, then it's a story. If yes, then post the video!
Thanks for soliciting feedback.
Also, if you REALLY AND TRULY don't accept money for posting review stories, please MAKE IT KNOWN THAT YOU DON'T ACCEPT MONEY FOR POSTING STORIES. I saw soulskill or someone say that the very idea makes you "chuckle". Well, 99% of the readership believes that you do this (I did until I saw soulskill's comment above), and you would be doing yourselves a favor to get some good PR out there, and fight back, explaining that you actually don't take bribes for posting stories!
Thanks for a great 10 years... here's to hoping I'm still reading in another 10 years, not watching videos about hoodies!
This. I wish you luck but I doubt I will ever watch a video on Slashdot.
You are /. We love you for being what you are. Do not let your corporate overlords re-program you. You do not need to be "fun" and clever; those people will not visit here anyway. You need to be Mecca for nerds, and you are. Don't change... just get better at doing what you do.
Fondly,
A long time user
How about some ideas, instead?
Talk Podblack in to helping you with the presentation. http://podblack.com/
TED is doing alot of things right when it comes to video so you might want to leverage some of their methods. One feature that is really nice and that would be great here is interactive transcripts. Along with that, a new markup comment tag to refer to a point in the video would be a great bonus.
ayottesoftware.com
"Sorry".
Seriously, you guys are treating this like it was a technical bug when it was a basic violation of the accepted norms of the site. And it's not even so much the "transgression" factor there as the fact that the current editorial staff simply doesn't appear to understand the concept at issue here, that of basic editorial common sense to select stories that are appropriate for the site.
You might mollify a few people with bland PR-speak (though I doubt very many or by much) but you can't save your own selves with it.
If people want "visually-appealing", they already can find plenty of that on YouTube...
"mentos and coke" About 18,500 results
"lasers burning stuff" About 909 results
And zillions of other related science related video can be easily found there. The Slashdot "TV" section, in its current incarnation, seems redundant to many visitors.
I come to slashdot to learn about cool things and find that I learn quite a lot when someone who knows what they're talking about expands on the article with an in depth comment on the science or history behind the topic. For the videos, every comment is "Give me a transcript" or "This is an ad" and frankly that's because the subject matter sucks. I think it could be a great idea, but the content really needs to be better. We're all nerds here, we can handle something technical and interesting rather than PR buzz speak or "look what I can fit in my Jacket!" (really? WTF.) We already have YouTube, we don't need another.
/. to focus on is making a fucking mobile site that works. The /. demographic has a higher concentration of smart phones than the normal population and we like to use them, but slashdot looks like crap on every mobile browser I try and is hard to read without paning around all the damn time.
:)
Although what I'd really like
Also, thanks for providing me with thousands of lost work hours for free
No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."
If you want videos to be a hit on Slashdot, any person in the video should be a better-than-average-looking female, preferably one who isn't conservative with her clothing. All people in the video(including the one demonstrating the technology) should be shown as little as possible, unless they meet the aforementioned criteria very well. The product should be shown in action as quickly as possible to accommodate the widespread attention disorders (so many people have 4-minute videos that show the product in action for 30 seconds at the end).
If you're showing a product everybody likes anyway, less women are necessary. If you're showing a product that makes everybody wonder how the product made it on the site, more women are necessary.
Bonus points if you can find a hot East Asian girl willing to bash China.
I can see the point of video on a generic website. Most people are barely able to read, and really don't have a clue of how to code ideas into symbols. And maybe that is where /. is going. Passive consumption. Computer people aren't the same in the new century. This is not good or bad,. Most computer people of the last last century could not write assembly. Skills change.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
... it's still one of the few places left on the internet you can have somewhat intelligent discussion. Even with the stories being more baiting a good lot of us come for the comments and the fact that slashdot is still one of the few places in a world deeply mired in corruption and political bankruptcy.
You can't please everybody but the growth at all costs mentality always leads to mediocrity. There is a reason why any discussion or issues approaching intelligence naturally limits audience size. If you need to expand your audience you need to start a spinoff site that allows more mainstream lowest common denominator stuff.
Yeah, we definitely appreciate that there are a number of people who just don't want to watch video on Slashdot. What we'd like is to keep producing video content (a small amount, always vastly outnumbered by the normal content),without actively offending those readers.
This is one of the sneakier tricks emerging.
Done right it's cool, but apparently Slashdot's first videos have struggled a little.
The news types like it because the "content" is almost un-copyable as is; it's like Talking Head DRM. It also traps the viewer who can't use any active reading skills on it.
Meanwhile on Chessbase the new hotness is chess videos. While I haven't bought one, if it didn't come with additional actual raw games & annotations, then the video itself for some $60 would be a total rip-off. It's a way to double your price tag at 1/100th of the content.
Others are stuck in some 90's mentality of "ooh, let's leverage our Multimedia!"
ISP's like it because it jacks up bandwidth use right into their bandwidth caps.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Stick with your core mission - text articles and responses from experts who can debunk them. If I want videos, I know where they are.
Transcripts. Transcripts transcripts transcripts.
A good chunk of us are not going to watch a video, but including a transcript with the video (even behind a link) will help get a lot more eyes on it without a WHOLE lot of extra bother.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
How long have you been using teh innerwebs? Any silly video has to have cats or some other cute animal.
Scottevest's whole pitch is clothing that you can store a lot of electronic gadgets in.
So trying to make a "silly" video about using a product in exactly the way that product is MARKETED ... and you did not think it would appear as an advertisement?
I don't think you understand what "loud and clear" means.
I hate ads..I won't watch them..That being said,I'm also a Linux user and i enjoyed the Ubuntu tv piece.While i have no plans to use it,since I don't have a tv..It was interesting. Tec stuff i enjoy...
Just....don't. If you want to do this, just create a slashdot video channel on youtube. That sort of junk just doesn't belong here.
You still haven't provided any clear reason as to WHY you want to do this. Why do you think this is such a great idea, when the readers seem pretty firmly against it?
Then provide transcripts...
Your videos do not play. I just see lots of refresh/redraw and a whole lot of nothing when I hit play. Firefox 3.6.28.
Here's what people want:
Interviews with compelling engineers or other intelligent and worthwhile notables or pieces on compelling and interesting topics and technologies. Though, I don't know why that has to be done in video.
Here's what people do NOT want:
Advertising, masquerading as "programming". We're not stupid and we KNOW that YOU KNOW you are providing an advertising service when your video is:
* Some lawyer type guy with no seeming background or history as per google searches to justify his claim that he's some sort of expert... who happens to be doing the video out of his office in a strip mall.
* Anyone who is a non-technical CEO.
* Anyone who is in marketing.
* Anyone whose title (like yesterday) is "PR".
Frankly, I find what has already been done to be offensive enough that I don't plan on being here much anymore. I've been with Slashdot since it was Chips & Dips and have made thousands of posts and spend hundreds or thousands of hours here. Visisting -- for the most part -- dozens of times per day.
In the last couple years, that has slowed. And since taco left and you guys started with the blatant advertising, I almost never even remember to come back (and when I have, I've seen these "slashdtv" things that are poorly veiled advertising.
I probably won't be here even once a week, going forward. If you really want to turn into Engadget or Gizmodo, then go for it. I don't care. It's sad to see what Slashdot is turning into and there aren't many other places around like it... but I can find another home for tech professionals and geeks to discuss things.
Bonus points if you can find a hot East Asian girl willing to bash China.
NMA's Li Anne, out of Tapei, does that.
Now, if Slashdot wanted to have cool videos, they could have NMA do it. NMA is a video production house and the fastest animation shop in the industry. They turn out animations in hours.
To add some weight to it: there's a company that sells "great" courses on audio CDs. Some of them are crap, some are decent, but the thing is: a 12 CD course (12+ hours of talking!) on writing that I have recently borrowed fits in a pamphlet with about 1/3 of the text of a single Chronicles of Narnia book. You can read 12h worth of audio course in an afternoon.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The first link should be to the transcript.
At the top of the transcript should be a link to the video.
If the transcript makes you want to watch the video then you can click on the link at the top and watch it.
And in a related note, NO SLASHVERTISEMENTS that are not clearly labelled as such and blockable.
I am here, because i can read across the news, filter out the relevant part and i am informed very fast. On a video i cannot do this. i can try to skip through it, use fast-forward or similiar stuff, but then i miss out things. on a text i can see the important buzzwords whils scrolling over it, and slow down when its interesting. A video is much more time consuming, needs a workstation with speakers (most of the videos do) and of course a browser with the needed addons installed.
so do the interview, make a video for people who like to listen to the interview, and then provide a nice writeup in the news article, and only link the video.
Exactly. I read so much faster than people speak. I hate having to listen to podcasts or watch videos for something that's just as easily - and up to around five times as efficiently - done via text. Some things need pictures or video, sure - but not interviews, ffs.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Find an intelligent, insightful, informative, funny, or other +1 modifier term to present video on Slashdot rather than the -1 redundant, overrated, etc... methods you are employing. The videos would be relevant if you thought about your karma.
I recommend you use more of them in your videos.
Except, you should always have them in pairs. And they should be on good looking women.
(I just realized that my post probably needed clarification)
Now, to check your hearing - the words you heard were "GET RID OF IT" right?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
I don't watch streaming media nor do I have sound enabled on my work computer. I would classify anything with video and sound NSFW by a general rule whether it is or not.
Please, offer the videos on YouTube
I thought YouTube's Content ID had too high a rate of false positives, especially for videos that review copyrighted works.
Or Vimeo.
I thought Vimeo had a blanket ban on commercial use. Or what am I missing?
what did you mean?
"It's a steep learning curve" means "it's easy to learn".
a shallow learning curve means you don't get a lot of learning per unit of increased experience.
Is that what you mean? OK if you did, I just can't tell.
I've been reading /. for about 15 yrs and have never heard about /. video before.
Was it a private beta?
I don't use javascript, so perhaps that's the issue?
Based on the comments, I think you need to move on. Sell the video equipment and let video be done by professionals.
Natalie Portman, naked, petrified, and covered in hot grits.
Or is that meme played out?
Video is a terrible medium for teaching people about something new.
The written word is much better, but I know, that doesn't justify all the toys like cameras and upgraded storage devices and new networking purchases.
I hate video and audio (podcasts) when they don't add value, so thats why this old timer isn't ever going to give "slashdot video" a click.
The same reasons this always happen.
1) Someone wants new toys to play with and has figured out a way to get the company to pay for it.
2) Some moron thinks they can sell more video slashvertisments than normal ones.
3) They're about to go bankrupt and are grabbing at straws for anything they can to save the sinking ship.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
How about the next poll asks who is interested in video on Slashdot. I don't care if its there, but I doubt I will ever watch them.
-1? Wow - typical of the recent lame-assed modding of this site.
Like most "old" sites on the web, this is not the Slashdot of yore, just a pale and superficial imitation (and a waste of electrons) inhabited mostly by children who got here 10-15 years too late. Just pathetic panty-wastes and techno-wannabe-know-nothings.
No wonder Taco left - he knew when things had gone to pure shit.
To whoever wasted mod points modding the above down: what's the matter - is bible school closed or something? Why don't you just play with your tiny balls until you get sticky like your priest does?
RIP Slashdot.
Aside from clearly marking ads, how about using a professional production team, script, and editing for these infomercials? I've been in more than one promo video, and they've all been shot with a team of at least 6 people - there was the presenter, a cameraman, soundman, makeup artist, light man and one or two other people (producers?). It was a question/answer session and the presenter had his part completely scripted. They shot about 5 times more video than they used (60 minutes of taping for 10 minutes of final product).
If you don't use a professional team, you end up with that Polycom video. I can't believe their PR department even approved it.
Of course, the occasional unscripted video when you've caught an engineer at a conference talking about some interesting new product is fine, as long as there is actual, interesting content. But if you're going to let a PR person talk about fluff, at least make it look professional.
Every time I come to an article that includes a video, there seems to be a problem with browser ratio and how the video player is included. Last time I watched one, half of the video was off the page and I had no video control options other than hotkeys. I think an HTML5 video player would be better for future-proofing, and browser wide conformity.
Slashdot is not and should not be a place for videos. Please stop.
I am concerned about any program, any piece of hardware, any treaty, any law that treats me as a consumer, not a citizen
Many websites have started steering people to video versions of news stories.
This is despite only some news items being highly visual. Online video news is gaining popularity not only because some prefer to consume information in a veg-out mode, but because video is a linear single-focus medium that is well suited to getting people to pay attention to its in-stream ads.
I prefer http://www.allthingsnow.com anyways..
I blame geeknet more than anything. Public company made up of companies started by smart people, many of whom leave after the buyout.
I just thought of the best headline...
What should we replace slashdot with?
:-)
Frankly, if you spent as much time on the quality of content (Summaries, selection of stories etc. as opposed to crap ones) then you have on the wrapper it comes in you might not seem so desperate by coming up with video and other practically useless features. All of these other features are there to support the content, if you don't have quality content then it's all going to waste.
I refuse to be forced to sit through ANY length of "pre-content forced advertising". Whenever I see "this advertisement will end in XX seconds", I think to myself; "no, it ends now" and close the window. If I see "you may interrupt this ad in xx seconds", I would think; "no, I may interrupt it NOW" and close the window. That's MY issue advertisers... Can't speak for the masses, but I will tolerate peripheral ads around the video since they DON'T INTERRUPT. I can also stomach small, translucent ads that DON'T INTERRUPT the video I clicked to view (i.e.youtube). "Forced view, pre-content" ads remind me too much of the scene from Clockwork Orange where the dude's eyes are held open and he is forced to watch violence... Until I found Adblock, I had a mental list of sites using forced ads and just didn't view their content. Now that I run Adblock, I don't see many of those, but Slashdot's video seems immune. . . . . so I submitted it to adblock for screening. I'll skip the content and check on occasion until it is either blocked by adblock, or changed by slashdot. I didn't view videos on Wired for two years...
You make good suggestions, and I second them.
But exclaiming you're ditching Slashdot because it sucks now in a post from the editors soliciting community input on the use of video is, well, a bit much. Does Digg ask you how they should run their site? Nah, didn't think so.
I've been a /. reader since almost the beginning. My first userID was 4 digits, but lost the login during a rootless period of my youth--long story. And I would say that the quality of the site has stayed about the same or even improved a little, since the moderation system has been refined and the Jon Katz's of the world, whom I personally didn't mind too much but whom everyone else seemed to loathe, are no longer given a soapbox.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
There was the one that Timothy did with the hoody or something. I can see why many thought it was an advertisement, but I didn't mind it because I too have many gadgets and am interested in smart clothing or items with great storage.
But to follow up on the suggestion, structuring the reviews of several products/gadgets around a theme I would appreciate. Why yes, I do have to travel for business next month and would like to see suggestions for geek apparel that would make that process less annoying at the airport. Or, Ubuntu's switch to Unity has really ticked me off, so what other distros or desktop environments can you tell me about that I can explore? (And, if you evaluate them according to a common rating system, ie. "Affordability: 4 stars | Ease-of-use: 3.5 stars" you'll get extra geek points)
Anyway I hope the Slashdot editors persevere. I've been interested to see video on the site as a logical next step for a venerable, solid community. I'd love to see you guys set the standard for online video geek journalism the way you did it for a geek site.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I am always grateful to read comments written by experts in the /. community who are directly involved in the work a post is talking about, or who can provide informed insight into a field different from my own. That is, when reading a post about, say, the mars robots and someone who works for JPL chimes in, it makes me feel grateful to be part of a community where that can happen.
So my suggestion is to approach those community members to do interviews or to comment on geek current events and cultivate them the way that news organizations cultivate experts to provide perspective on issues (but do it in a genuine geek way, not empty-headed fluff faux-journalist way). I know I would benefit from that, and the experts might as well because it will raise their professional profiles and might help their careers. It also bolsters the /. community by adding in a bit of aspirational value to its members: craft intelligent, insightful (or even funny) posts here and it might lead to other good things.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
This is one of the sneakier tricks emerging.
Done right it's cool, but apparently Slashdot's first videos have struggled a little.
Emerging? TV isn't new, thats all this is. Slashdot's video will continue to struggle, if we came here for video, we'd be watching the news, not these douche bags expel hot air. Just because you get it on demand doesnt' make it different.
The news types like it because the "content" is almost un-copyable as is; it's like Talking Head DRM. It also traps the viewer who can't use any active reading skills on it.
Its about as un-copyable as websites that disable right click, its trivial to work around if you have a clue, and works great for the content producer if you don't, this is pretty much the same in both forms of media, the difference is that most people who have embraced the Internet earlier did it because they weren't okay with the old way of doing things. These are just people trying to bring the old 'we control everything!' style of publishing to the Internet, and slashdot is learning that it doesn't work here.
Meanwhile on Chessbase the new hotness is chess videos. While I haven't bought one, if it didn't come with additional actual raw games & annotations, then the video itself for some $60 would be a total rip-off. It's a way to double your price tag at 1/100th of the content.
There is something seriously fucking wrong with you if you're talking about paying $60 for a chess video ANYWHERE.
Others are stuck in some 90's mentality of "ooh, let's leverage our Multimedia!"
Yes, pretty much everyone who is doing it is still stuck in that mentality. The big studios don't want your video, its unlikely you're that 1 in a million person who they actually made a mistake on. Just because you CAN publish on the Internet doesn't mean you're any good at it or that anyone enjoys it. The Internet doesn't stop you from doing shitty work. Again, just because they figured out how to publish on the Internet doesn't mean they should.
ISP's like it because it jacks up bandwidth use right into their bandwidth caps.
... so let me get this straight ... ISPs complain about bandwidth usage, so they start adding caps to plans to prevent people from using as much bandwidth ... but they are happy that people use a bunch of bandwidth and get to their caps, even though most of them just throttle you down and don't have an option for buying more bandwidth? Thats pretty stupid logic. They'd prefer you use as little bandwidth as possible so they can add on more accounts to the existing upstream they have. They want you to use more of their resources without any way to increase their revenue ... yea, thats what they're doing ... they don't care about making record profits so they can pad their own pockets or anything.
You pretty much got everything backwards in your post, good job.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
>Actually, thinking about it, you could stage debates and make it a very big deal. Like invite people from Canonical, GNOME team, and some XFCE zealots to fight it out. That sort of stuff video is great because there's a lot of passion and controversy. And I'm sure people here would give you lots of other great ideas for topics if you did a poll.
There used to be a show on PBS called "Truth on Trial: Ethics in America." They had a panel of exceptionally smart people from different fields who debated the aspects of an ethical dilemma from religious, military, legal, moral, etc perspectives. It was riveting and the only television I have ever watched that truly made me feel smarter for having watched it.
I would love to see Slashdot capture that sort of dynamic in its video by hosting panel discussion on geek issues with participants from different corners of the geek/tech/engineering/scientific universe. Of course, it takes a lot of practice and skill to moderate those effectively but it would be so worth it.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
There are videos that I watch for entertainment, and videos I watch for information. Mentos and coke is entertainment, how to build a DIY aquaponics set-up is information. I can easily see how a lot of geek subjects would avail themselves to the former.
For instance, I can almost never go to Comdex or most Cons. I like watching the videos where people go around and show you the atmosphere and what the cool things are they've seen. I would happily watch Timothy do that because I can't go, and I trust him.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The world is a better place for Slashdot's being in it.
Asking for feedback always brings out the haters. I hope you recognize that for what it is and don't take it personally. There have been a lot of good suggestions, though, and I hope you're able to follow up on them.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Then come up with a way to privilege user submissions from people have been contributing a long time or who have been deemed experts by acclamation of their peers! Or figure out how to give submitters points for submissions on subjects that you initially rejected and then later accepted from someone else, so that next time the original submitter has a better chance of getting chosen.
I have been a member of the /. community for, what, 12-13 years and feel proud when one of my posts gets modded to a 5, but I stopped trying to submit articles a long time ago because they were never chosen and it felt like a waste of my time.
In my career so far I have been at the epicenter of geek operations with wide ranging implications that I am sure would interest the /. community, such as the use of crowd-sourcing platforms to find & rescue earthquake survivors in Haiti, but I never bothered to submit that because, again, submitting articles to /. feels like a waste of time.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I agree with the comments about not wanting to see news/articles in video form; but there is a place/requirement for video on /.
/. crowd, but staying relevant is also important; video is a major source on the net today, and can be complementary to discussion, but redundant video, that's not worth my time.
-This site is about commenting/discussion on things/events; in some instances, video is the original source(of discussion).
-A picture tells a thousand words, and a video... There are some thing that must be seen; also a relevant and appropriate usage IMHO.
Video for videos sake is never going to gel with the tradition
There must be a "ted talk" or "technical seminar" video each month that warrants a discussion or two. Limiting discussion sources to text/web pages would seem to be excluding an increasingly important portion of the net...
XP Flash 11,1,102,55 installed, Thailand, doesn't play anything at all so never watched it.
Basic technical issue there. Engadget works fine BTW and is my main source of technical videos as a result.
Maybe I could put myself up for some video talking. It'd be a great opportunity to clear up a ton of BS regarding LED horticulture technology.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I just read this entire thread. There is a lot of criticism obviously, but a lot of it really is constructive stuff. You guys did good by asking the community, and although not everyone is sold on videos and probably never will be, if several of the ideas sprinkled throughout this thread are implemented I think they'll have much more appeal.
I've only looked at two videos so far. They were both good. both were interviews. I wouldn't bother to look at one if I wasn't interested in it.
Generally, print is better for short info. Video is better only for a limited subset of presentations.
Here's a suggestion: drop video entirely. Really. Stick with your core competency and do that well. Don't expand just for the sake of expansion.
A poll for the owners of Slashdot:
Which of the following things do you think is true?
1) There isn't enough video content on the internet.
2) Slashdot, a text-based news site, is qualified to do video better than it's being done anywhere else on the Internet.
3) Slashdot's user base has been clamoring for video. All these years we've been reaidng text stories but secretly pining for video
4) If Slashdoit doesn't do video it will be "stale" and not "hip" enough for "the kids"
5) It isn't enough to just do one thing well forever, you have to keep adding new things until you do NONE of them well, and die.
Seriously. You are a text-based geek news site. You do that really well. Just do what you know. Don't dliute yourself into mediocrity like so many other sites. Don't let the MBAs take over. They don't know shit about geek stuff.
Will you please clarify what "Today" means? It is now 8AM Sunday in my time zone (ICT), Saturday in the USA.
Slashdot.org barely works on my Android 2.2 phone. "Today" and "Yesterday" and sometimes "More" just hang. The tv.slashdot.org site I can browse but never see or hear anything. You seem to detect the mobile phone, but the HTML and/or JavaScript is beyond the capabilities of my phone (the only thing I own that has sound).
Is this the end of the famous /. laissez-faire ``we don't censor comments, we just let you moderate them down'' policy? Or is that already gone and I was looking elsewhere at the time?
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
Attached this to the wrong article. Sorry.
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/