Slashdot Mirror
The Standards Wars and the Sausage Factory
Esther Schindler writes "We all know how important tech standards are. But the making of them is sometimes a particularly ugly process. Years, millions of dollars, and endless arguments are spent arguing about standards. The reason for our fights aren't any different from those that drove Edison and Westinghouse: It's all about who benefits – and profits – from a standard. As just one example, Steven Vaughan-Nichols details the steps it took to approve a networking standard that everyone, everyone knew was needed: 'Take, for example, the long hard road for the now-universal IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi standard. There was nothing new about the multiple-in, multiple-out (MIMO) and channel-bonding techniques when companies start moving from 802.11g to 802.11n in 2003. Yet it wasn't until 2009 that the standard became official.'"
Mod parent up please!
We are the product, jumping from the shelves. What's the name of the store across the street?
You're not the target audience.
And it's evident that Dice sure as fuck does not get it.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Let's be clear who the combatants are: Dice vs. Slashdot users.
I have yet to hear anyone defend Beta. (If you do, you might want to post AC to preserve your karma. I doubt the moderators will be kind to someone who is so wrong.)
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Oh sweet sweet Karma. Farewell. We had a good run of it, didn't we?
STFU about the beta site already, we get it.
That's because you are slightly less dense than the DICE overlords, who still don't get it. More protests are needed, until it's clear that the brass and not just the foot soldiers have heard us.
Who cares if you get it?
The only winning move is not to play.
Well, the users with mod points might not be kind. But there seems to be an unlimited supply of OT mods going about that are being applied to anti-beta posts. I'm sure the individual(s) doing this would be happy to supply some good karma to the turncloak.
..the Beta wars.
I initially found the protest against annoying and juvenile, but I'm changing my mind. Slashdot is its contributors. Look what happens when they cease to contribute.
Power to the people, motherfuckers!
have you seen how the past dates are displayed on posts? it only says 3 years ago... WTF... why not say what day and months? is it too difficult to display the date correctly? I wonder how they came up with slashbeta?
Yep. How long before they come fed up with these protests and start deleting comments, or moderating them into oblivion? Please continue the fight, and also, pleace comment outside of their control here on reddit (where I may soon be moving to if classic goes away): http://www.reddit.com/r/social...
First comes the fact that I am unable to renew my subscription (the checkbox is dimmed), second, to me, the beta is worthless.
Bad thing, there are not many places to go for decent content. Digg and Reddit are at the level of /b/ these days, and I get better news articles shared from Upworthy, Buzzfeed or Cracked than those two sites.
Maybe it is time to head back to USENET, or maybe someone should make something functionally identical to USENET/NNTP except architected with anti-spam provisions and the fact that if a site gets known for uncontrolled spamming, other sites just won't forward that site's stuff.
The festering, designed-by-committee bullshit that passes for "standards" these days makes me long for the semi-anarchy of the 80s again.
Not onlike the festering, MBA approved garbage that is the slashdot redesign.
And Dice is interested in exactly one thing: their revenue stream.
So, if someone with a corner office has decided this will grow revenues ... then I assume they don't give a fuck about what we want.
If that means they lose the core audience of Slashdot and turn it into the next Women's World Weekly, that's what they'll do.
Beta does look like ass -- but corporations chasing profits only care about the profits. Thee and me, well, we're just the under-performing product which isn't generating enough ad revenue.
Which was more or less a predictable outcome the moment it got sold to Dice in the first place.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Where is this claim being made?
I don't like how beta was made (without serious consultation and requirements gathering) and I don't like the final product (site that no longer meets the needs of its community) so in this case I'm not eating whether I've seen the sausage factory or not.
FUCK BETA!!
Maybe it is time to head back to USENET, or maybe someone should make something functionally identical to USENET/NNTP except architected with anti-spam provisions and the fact that if a site gets known for uncontrolled spamming, other sites just won't forward that site's stuff.
Sigh. I do miss Kibo and Ludwig Plutonium.
I don't like the beta either and hopefully every story being full of complaints will help but don't forget to complain on the survey and answer the request for email based feedback too.
Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/sdredesign
mailto:feedback@slashdot.org?subject=beta_feedback
Add comments to http://beta.slashdot.org/journal/634763/update-on-the-march-of-progress-how-slashdots-new-look-is-shaping-up
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
have you seen how the past dates are displayed on posts? it only says 3 years ago... WTF... why not say what day and months? is it too difficult to display the date correctly? I wonder how they came up with slashbeta? why are they doing this? and
what the hell is going on in their minds?
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
Hell no. And it's not over now...
The Beta Version prophets of doom swamp every story with predictions that everyone will leave slashdot and hyperbolic comments about how awful the new version is...
The remaining few who visit to read intelligent posting on critical analysis of tech stories get served up page after page of hyperbolic comment on how awful the new version is instead. They also leave.
The end
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
A little history of Slashdot courtesy of Wikipedia. What it was before It was destroyed by Beta. I tried posting this before but could not see it with beta. What am I doing wrong? I guess I will have to keep on trying until I can read it. Maybe that is why they call it beta. I am sure they will fix everything and everyone will be happy again. Tell me if you can read this. I am really upset that I can not see my own posts Maybe that is why they call it beta. I am sure they will fix everything and everyone will be happy again. Can you see this? I can't. What is wrong? Is this why they call it beta? I hope someone will be able to fix this because I am not happy it is not working. Maybe after the beta test is over it will work. It sure doesn't work now. I am getting even sadder.PLEASE HELP ME!!!!! The origins of the site now known as Slashdot date back to July 1997 when Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda started a personal website called Chips & Dips, which featured a single "rant" each day about something that interested him – typically something to do with Linux or open-source software. At the time, Malda was a student at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, majoring in computer science. The site became Slashdot in September 1997 under the slogan "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters," and quickly became a hotspot on the Web for news and information of interest to computer geeks.[4] The name "Slashdot" came from a somewhat "obnoxious parody of a URL" – when Malda registered the domain, he desired to make a name that was "silly and unpronounceable" – try pronouncing out, "h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slashdot-dot-org".[5] By June 1998 the site was seeing as many as 100,000 page views per day and advertisers began to take notice.[4] By December 1998, Slashdot had net revenues of $18,000, yet its Internet profile was higher, and revenues were expected to increase. On June 29, 1999, the site was sold to Linux megasite Andover.net for $1.5 million in cash and $7 million in Andover stock at the IPO price. Part of the deal was contingent upon the continued employment of Rob Malda and Jeff Bates and on "the achievement of certain milestones". With the acquisition of Slashdot, Andover.net could now advertise itself as "the leading Linux/Open Source destination on the Internet".[6][7] Andover.net eventually merged with VA Linux on February 3, 2000,[8] which changed its name to SourceForge, Inc. on May 24, 2007, and became Geeknet, Inc. on November 4, 2009.[9] Slashdot's 10,000th article was posted after two and a half years on February 24, 2000,[10] and the 100,000th article was posted on December 11, 2009 after 12 years online.[11] During the first 12 years, the most active story with the most responses posted was the post-2004 US Presidential Election article "Kerry Concedes Election To Bush" with 5,687 posts. This followed the creation of a new article section, politics.slashdot.org, created at the start of the 2004 election on September 7, 2004.[12] Many of the most popular stories are political, with "Strike on Iraq" (March 19, 2003) the second-most-active article and "Barack Obama Wins US Presidency" (November 5, 2008) the third-most-active. The rest of the 10 most active articles are an article announcing the 2005 London bombings, and several articles about Evolution vs. Intelligent Design, Saddam Hussein's capture, and Fahrenheit 9/11. Articles about Microsoft and its Windows Operating System are popular—a thread posted in 2002 titled "What's Keeping You On Windows?" was the 10th-most-active story, and an article about Windows 2000/NT4 source-code leaks the most visited article with more than 680,000 hits.[13] Some controversy erupted on March 9, 2001 after an anonymous user posted the full text of Scientology's "Operating Thetan Level Three" (OT III) document in a comment attached to a Slashdot article. The Church of Scientology demanded that Slashdot remove the document under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. A week later, in a long article, Slashdot editors explained their decision to remo
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part!
And we're just the guys to do it!
I am not Slashdot -- I am part of the Slashdot community, and the community can go elsewhere. Old Slashdot was pretty good (certainly not perfect), but it was mostly the people here that made it great, and they were just guided by a sensible and intelligent framework (the moderation system was special), and a common goofy culture (Soviet Russia, Natalie Portman, insensitive clods...).
Don't feel discouraged, and don't think that this current Slashdot is the only option. New Slashdots can replace it because the website code ("Slash") is open-source. AltSlashdot is looking at getting this code up and running. Maybe there will be a variety of Slashdots in the future, who knows? In any case, we know that we don't need Dice, and we don't necessarily need the past history of Slashdot. New frameworks can be set up, people can go to a new site, and the electrons will flow elsewhere. In open-source terminology, we can fork Slashdot at anytime, and since Cowboyneal isn't an editor anymore here, I won't feel bad about leaving him behind.
DICE SUCKS. BETA SUCKS. FUCK BETA.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
What a coincidence, Dice thinks of Slashdot as another sausage coming from their factory, that needs to be standardized.
Yes, and in that briefest of moments, they epitomized everything wrong with society today. While we all talk about individuality and uniqueness, our economy is built on one-size-fits-all and making carbon copies of everything. Our houses, furniture, cars... pretty much everything we own comes off an assembly line. And the kicker? It's still more diversity than we're seeing on newly launched websites. Invariably, it's pastels, square blocks, and while it's pretty to look at, it's functionally about as useful as a flat tire on the interstate. Which is to say, you can move the car.. but you're not going to enjoy it.
The internet's standards and protocols were built to allow for a nearly limitless selection of design, every kind of spoken and written language, multimedia... it's all there. So why then, do the couple hundred people that hold all the money in the world seem to have homogenized into a single herd... charging like lemmings over cliffs while screaming "You're gonna follow us or else!?" Is it some kind of power trip? Some kind of collective psychosis?
I mean, how loudly do we have to say it before they get the message? Do we have to literally burn down their offices around them before they can see the people outside holding the signs that say "You had a good thing going. Then you fucked it up so bad nobody wants it anymore. TAKE THE HINT." ?! I am geniunely curious as to how this kind of disconnect becomes so severe without any warning indicators appearing. It's not like we haven't been telling them it sucks from day one. Do they not have focus groups? Did they not check their e-mail for the past, uhh... six months? Or is this an institutionalized case of confirmation bias and arrogance taken to a level in excess of that even seen in government?
I really do want to know how a load of fail this big happens. It's an excellent marketing study on how not to do it. We should teach this shit in classrooms.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Agreed, the little news blurbs on the page would be quite useless without the discussions.
... the way we are being forced out.
With a huge raging, diarrhea shit all over our former stomping grounds, forever marking it and dissuading its subsequent use.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
In the Quakenet comments.
If you hate Beta, DO NOT VISIT Slashdot on 2/7!!
How you you show them Beta sucks? You drop their ad impressions!
Keep Classic/Fix Beta, or we walk.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Sure, we've all seen our share of "___ is killing slashdot, so I'm leaving" comments over the years. Video slashvertisements, other "sponsored content". However, I've never seen quite this level of outrage before.
I don't think slashdot's ever seen this level of outrage. Sure all change is met with some resistance, but this flies in the face of everything most important about the site. Moreover, it has managed to do something I've only ever seen once before - seemingly unite the whole population of slashdot users in a common purpose.
What's astonishing to me is the total lack of response. That the head editor (is that timothy now?) is silently downmodding relevant discussion about the survival of the site, without himself posting anything speaks volumes to me about how the management of slashdot has changed.
Taco, wherever you are, you are missed.
Can we please spam the firehose with articles on this? Perhaps if we can get it repeatedly on the front page itself? Just post it and get people to upvote the story on the beta, rather than just on the comments.
The beta is bad at showing comments, so maybe if the headlines are "Slashdot Beta Sucks" ..
That, sir, is probably the best Fuck Beta comment yet. Bravo. Bra-vo!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Let's be clear who the combatants are: Dice vs. Slashdot users.
I have yet to hear anyone defend Beta. (If you do, you might want to post AC to preserve your karma. I doubt the moderators will be kind to someone who is so wrong.)
Personally, I don't have a beef with Dice. Now all of the flaming "Fuck the Beta" posts, that's a different story. The beta is far more useable than classic mode is with all of these posts, so personally, if I'm going to go to war over slashdot it will be with the people messing it up -- and that isn't Dice.
something functionally identical to USENET/NNTP except architected with anti-spam provisions and the fact that if a site gets known for uncontrolled spamming, other sites just won't forward that site's stuff.
So... USENET/NNTP? It could do that stuff: the failure wasn't technical, it was the human element. Admins tended to be notably reluctant to employ the UDP, for some reason
I'm surprised with the amount of protesting under each story there hasn't been a response from Dice.
Agreed, the little news blurbs on the page would be quite useless without the discussions.
You mean like they are, now? As somebody else pointed out, Dice is interested in revenue streams. All this beta hate does is make slashdot not viable. People may get their wish and the beta will be cancelled -- right about when Dice shuts down slashdot all together. Great way to win the battle and lose the war.
As a long-time (VERY long-time) veteran of Usenet, I'd like to point out that it's quite viable. The anti-spam methods now in place are quite a bit better than what we had just a few years ago. There are a number of newsgroups that are doing very well (including a lot of technical ones), some that are languishing, and some that are on hold.
/. appears to be intent on committing public suicide via this idiotic Beta,
supported exclusively by the imbicles and morons at Dice, perhaps it's
time to start migrating back to Usenet, where corporations can't exert
the kind of control they can here.
Usenet has a lot of architectural features that make it very good for these kinds of discussions: it is privacy-friendly. It's text-based. it's easily gatewayed to and from email. It's easily archived. (I have many, many years of certain newsgroups.) It requires modest resources. It's resilient in the face of broken sites and broken network links. It's bandwidth-friendly. It runs on relatively lightweight hardware. The software is mature. And so on.
Not that it's perfect: of course it's not, and I can probably enumerate its flaws better than all but a handful of other people. But it works, and it works well even when other allegedly more sophisticated mechanisms fail. I've long said that Usenet proficiency is one of the basic qualifications for system and network administrators: they don't need to know the ins/outs of NNTP nor do they need to admin a node, but they do need to know how to use it.
Since
You guys are going to drive poor Beta to suicide! Then you'll feel guilty!!
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
lately, I've been hanging out at eevblog.
good people there, lots of techies but not really a news site.
still, its not run by a corporation (yet) and so it still has a soul.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Yep. How long before they come fed up with these protests and start deleting comments, or moderating them into oblivion? Please continue the fight, and also, pleace comment outside of their control here on reddit (where I may soon be moving to if classic goes away): http://www.reddit.com/r/social...
The real question will be how long before they become fed up with these protests and just shutdown slashdot?
Reddit.... /cry
The way things are going, pretty soon /b/ will seem a better alternative for discourse.
Sad, really.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, Dice is getting almost no ad revenue from slashdot because most of the users either don't click on ads or use adblock (complete write-off for FY13). So not visiting the site just reduces the site load and saves them a little bit of operating cost.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Perhaps I don't visit Slashdot as much as I used to, but I just looked at the site through beta to see what the fuss is about. Perhaps my eyes don't move in the right way, but is it the additional ads that I ignore on the right-hand side? I'm not defending beta, I'm just asking for additional education about what makes it so bad other than being different.
I'm Peggy.
Gee, who do you think has unlimited mod points and a vested interest in shutting down the anti-beta posts?
The funny thing is, as another poster pointed out, the /. editors would be the first ones to cry "Censorship!" if some other site attempted to silence *their* users.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
In A.D. 2014 ....
War was beginning.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the beta.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's You !!
Dice: How are you gentlemen !!
Dice: All your site are belong to us.
Dice: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
Dice: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Dice: HA HA HA HA
Captain: Take off every 'classic' !!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move 'CLASSIC'.
Captain: For great justice.
Them's fighting words. HAVE AT THEE
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
The internet's standards and protocols were built to allow for a nearly limitless selection of design, every kind of spoken and written language, multimedia... it's all there.
I'm pretty sure that was not one of DARPAs stated goals. Sounds good, though.
With all the rants about the beta, I have yet to see specifics as to what is less functional or causing such distress. It is different, but exactly what is causing such frustration? It's just a news feed, afterall, nobody's life or liberty is being harmed.
Your assumption makes you look like an ass. A guy in a corner office is to be concerned with his revenue stream, which IS his community. So they'll try to update their site to to ensure it attracts the most people.
The problem is, most slashdot contributors I don't think click on the ads. So frankly as a community, you're not that valuable. They're redesigning the site to attract more people that might click on ads and increase their revenue. And what's wrong with that? They have ongoing costs in terms of servers, IT support, and the moderators. Word is for the most part the Slashdot revenue stream has been shrinking for Dice, which means they'd be bleeding money. Even if they were non-profit they would have to be concerned about this; you can't support a money-losing enterprise forever. So it's change or shutter.
I'm the kind of guy they want. I post AC and don't have a profile, but I do click on ads. I have bought stuff through those click throughs. I support Slashdot by supporting their advertisers because I value the resource Slashdot provides me. Frankly I'm not a fan of the beta, but I think Slashdot's look is dated and clunky, so something new is at least welcome.
So frankly, yes, the beta wars have begun, and the protesters came with a lot of shouting and no weapons. Have fun losing. I mean, where are you going to go? Gawker? CNet? Maybe you'll find the stories they post on your own. If so, good luck to you and enjoy spending your time doing that. Also, good riddance.
Just change everything about it and it will be perfect! First of all, I found Comment Threshold and that is good, however the default should be 1, not 0, because otherwise you get some truly vile comments on your first pass.
Next, Comment Threshold is nearly invisible. if it was defaulted to 1 that might not matter but it isn't so it does, so fix it.
EVERYONE HATES LOAD MORE COMMENTS.
either autoload them as you scroll down, or better yet just fucking load them to begin with.
I kind of feel as though the walls are closing in on my a bit on the left and right. why so little text and so much empty space? Are you getting ready to do wrap-style banners? Please don't do that.
How about collapsing some of these posts? Commenters should hook us in with a decent title, and that is all we should see until we click it. otherwise, we just CONSUME page space for no good reason, and it makes the conversation harder to follow.
There is so much additional whitespace. This isn't a design/marketing website, and we don't appreciate the ascetic as much as you might have anticipated. a little narrowing of the gaps would go a long way.
Wait. There are little news blurbs?
Wait. There are little news blurbs?
Right above "FR1ST P0ST!"
They may well have *listened* to it. It was the fact that they then *disregarded it* that's the problem.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
I'm not sure how long I've been on Slashdot... at least 10 or 11 years, I guess. It's been a continuous source of enjoyment for me, even though I've never been a particularly active user. Oh, I comment every now and then, I moderate and meta-moderate occasionally, and I may have even tried submitting a story or two at some point (I honestly don't remember). There have been periods when I left Slashdot for some time, when something else really caught my interest and monopolized my attention, but I always came back. I felt like I was part of a persistent community that would last.
Now, the previously unthinkable may happen... I may leave and never come back. Beta is that bad. I hate the way it looks, the way it works, and how it will affect all the things I love about Slashdot.
This is really sad. I never thought I would feel this way about a website. I used to enjoy segfault back in the day, and I remember feeling that loss pretty keenly. The loss of slashdot will be infinitely worse. I hope it won't happen, but I fear that it will.
Please, please, please... if anyone at Dice is listening... don't kill my Slashdot.
Getting tired of Slashdot... moving to Usenet comp.misc for a while.
I'm surprised with the amount of protesting under each story there hasn't been a response from Dice.
Soulskill was responding to posts a bit ago, I'm guessing that task was handed down from on high.
Hopefully he's stopped, for the sake of his own sanity.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Wow. I just visited the beta site. I can't believe anyone would want to foist that poor of a layout on /.
Reddit.... /cry
The way things are going, pretty soon /b/ will seem a better alternative for discourse.
You see that, Slashdot/Dice puppetmasters? Do you see what you're doing to us?
Someone, please, think of the children, and scuttle that abomination unto humanity known as beta.slashdot.org!
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
This ID is a somewhat useful indication of how long the commenter has been around here.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part!
We'd rather we keep our old hangout, but if necessary, we have the slashcode, and it's not like AWS is expensive. We'll just take the open sourced code, raise the black flag, and then ram Slashdot... and it shall sink, and Dice shall drown, and shiver me timbers, we'll have our Slashdot 2.0... it just won't suck.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Now I see the problem. My 7 digit UID doesn't show up! How else can I prove my old-timer cred?!
I'm Peggy.
What a coincidence, Dice thinks of Slashdot as another sausage coming from their factory, that needs to be turned into another turd
Fixed it for ya!
A strange game, this "corporation".
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Please learn how to edit
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Well, YOU may think you're Slashdot, but Dice thinks you're "our audience" - you know, the people who come here for the stellar, dupe-free, award-winning editing of up-to-the-minute tech stories.
In this case, however, I believe their strategy is not a good one. If you alienate the commenters, then they will leave, and all that will be left is a stream of story digests with links to other sites. The bulk of their readership (all those people who come to Slashdot but don't comment on stories) will go to other sites (there are plenty that do a better job of finding and organizing links to interesting stories). The only differentiator that Slashdot has is its vibrant and intellectual community, which leads to interesting discussions, which in turn justifies actually visiting the site. Once the commenters leave, your revenue stream (ad impressions) will go away.
There is some truth to this. Slashdot users are probably less likely to click on ads than the average person. We are probably more aware of advertising tactics, and may thus avoid being influenced (to the extent one can). Slashdot users are probably more likely than most people to use ad-blockers. On the other hand, Slashdot users occupy a huge number of key decision-making posts in all the major tech companies. Even 'lowly' employees can have a huge impact on what their employer spends money on. I would also note that an ad is not necessarily a failure if no one clicks on it. One of the main purposes of advertising is awareness and branding. If you see ads for a given company on Slashdot, you will subconsciously become aware of them, making it more likely that you will consider them when making your next purchase. No clicking required.
I fully admit that it is difficult to quantify the 'value added' of advertising to the unique Slashdot community. I would hope that Dice has made this case to their ad partners; I guess it wasn't enough?
Actually it's not clear to me that's the case. The things I've read indicate that revenue coming from Slashdot is decreasing with time. But this isn't the same thing as saying that Slashdot doesn't generate enough revenue to pay for operating Slashdot. From what I can gather, Slashdot is a net money-maker... it's just not making enough money, and the owners want to make more. (If someone has better info, please share!)
Well, YOU may think you're Slashdot, but Dice thinks you're "our audience"
No .. Dice thinks that I am a statistic that allows them to sell ad space.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The beta is far more useable than classic mode is with all of these posts,
And with no beta, these posts go away, and classic is more useful again.
f I'm going to go to war over slashdot it will be with the people messing it up -- and that isn't Dice.
The /. community didn't stir up this hornets nest. Dice did.
Their stubborn silence with respect to addressing the communities perceived shortcomings with the new site is what escalated this to where it is now.
In the end Dice can do what they want with the site. Whether it has any value to anyone once they've finished remains an open question.
Managing a community is hard. If this was anywhere but /. the insightful comments here watching the "other" site implode would put the blame squarely on the sites management for failing utterly to meet the needs of the community and audience; failing to maintain communicatation about what the community wants and needs.. And then maintaining stoic silence and apparent determination to just keep on doing what they are doing in the face of rising outrage just stems to further fuel that outrage.
You just don't get this level of outrage from the people who use a site unless you REALLY botch it good.
This event will be a great case study in managing (or failing to manage) an online community one day.
What do We Want?? We want to live just long enough to see them cut the head off the person responsible for the beta and stick his head on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations of MBAs that some redesigns come with too high of a price
Can you do that Mr Dice??
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
What's astonishing to me is the total lack of response. That the head editor (is that timothy now?) is silently downmodding relevant discussion about the survival of the site, without himself posting anything speaks volumes to me about how the management of slashdot has changed.
I'm hoping that the poor slashdot staff are caught between a rock and a hard place. And that their lack of visible response is indicative of the corporate overlords.
BTW I have seen several accusations of mass down voting. I'm genuinely curious as to how you show that. I've seen several of my own anti-Beta posts rid up and down the moderation ladder today and I can't tell if the down mods are due to corporate influence, or just people who want o read stories without seeing "Fuck Beta"
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
With all the rants about the beta, I have yet to see specifics as to what is less functional or causing such distress. It is different, but exactly what is causing such frustration? It's just a news feed, afterall, nobody's life or liberty is being harmed.
There was nothing wrong with the Edsel car either. I mean, it had four wheels and it got you from point A to point B. Fun fact: Aesthetics matter too.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I think sometimes posts get lost because of that awful "preview comment" functionality that makes it look like the post went through, when it's waiting for you to click the yellow button.
If the Germans were able to bomb Pearl Harbor, it would have been well and truly over.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
...which is ultimately not very meaningful.
Beta does look like ass -- but corporations chasing profits only care about the profits.
You presume that the people making the decisions know what the fuck they are doing. I don't think they do.
Becoming yet another website of pablum without a niche isn't going to bring in any profits, the competition for the most mediocre site on the net is just too fierce.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Would they?
Maybe once they would have. Not so sure any more.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
> reddit (where I may soon be moving to if classic goes away)
I've had some wonderful discussions and arguments here on /. over the years. At least there is _some_ token of civil discussion here -- or at least there used to be ...
-- /. Beta
Fuck
We've implemented a number of changes since the first October rollout in response to feedback. We'll be implementing more in response to today's feedback. I'm sorry we can't make all those changes instantaneously; our engineering team is small and flooded with work. But that's why the classic site is still available.
I can't promise that the end result will be to your exact preference; a hundred different people will have a hundred different opinions on how the site should look. But I can promise that we'll take all the feedback to heart.
There was one person that posted "Beta is fine, Beta is great", but the comment text itself was how to improve things that fell short. It seems like a forgone conclusion that once the new system goes live, most people that contribute to the Slashdot community will leave and never come back.
BTW I have seen several accusations of mass down voting. I'm genuinely curious as to how you show that. I've seen several of my own anti-Beta posts rid up and down the moderation ladder today and I can't tell if the down mods are due to corporate influence, or just people who want o read stories without seeing "Fuck Beta"
The problem with proof is that as a user rather than an editor there really isn't any, since we don' t have access to a timeline of mod value over time for each post. However, at the time I looked at this post and its descendents, they were ALL uniformly modded -1 or 0 "off-topic". If I accept as valid the claim that that post was at 5 before it went to the -1 which I observed, then either 6 different mods thought that data was irrelevant, or an editor did it. And I have reason to accept that claim as valid since it is now back up to +4 Informative, where it should be. At the moment I saw the consistency of "off-topic" being applied equally to both the poorly written anti-beta drek and the well-reasoned, insightful anti-beta comments, I became convinced of the accusation which had been made in the comment which led me there. The fact that contemporaneously timothy was the only editor posting stories lends weight to the idea that he would be responsible. It is certainly possible that there are some other hidden overlords who are actually doing the dirty work, but absent knowledge of their existence, I'm led to conclude that it is instead one of the known editors.
Not proof, but substantial statistical evidence bolstered by my own eye-witnessing. Perhaps I should have taken screenshots, but that seems like a bit much.
Here of my own accord, actually. We'll have an official posting coming out soonish, but I wanted to let people know we're listening in the meantime.
Timothy has been responding to a ton of emails -- mainly the ones with bug reports and constructive suggestions. But our inboxes got blown up pretty well over the past 24 hours, and it takes time to consolidate several thousand data points.
You seem pretty worried about this, but there sure are a lot of high-scoring anti-beta comments on every story.
Also, we don't delete comments.
Here of my own accord, actually.
Ah - so, less official mandate, more masochism. Should have known you like the abuse :)
Timothy has been responding to a ton of emails -- mainly the ones with bug reports and constructive suggestions.
Can you define "constructive suggestions?" Perhaps provide an example or two?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
In case there's discussion about historical facts someone with a lower ID might actually have been around at the time which can carry weight.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Thanks for the reasonable response.
Some functionality hasn't made it to the beta yet, yes. That's a totally valid objection, and we're working to make it feature complete. My personal preference is to never lose functionality -- but at the same time, I'm well aware of the development conventions that say at some point, you need to ship. It's really tough deciding which features don't make the initial launch.
Dice can't see it, since they are new here ...
But, the most loyal long time avid readers of Slashdot, are not trolling the site in protest of the failed beta. Where is GNAA, Natalie Portman grits, and frist prost when you need them!
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Messed up the link.
This post is the one which was downmodded along with it's descendants.
The main thing we want is a site that doesn't look old and stale, because that will slowly drive readers and contributors away. Or keep new users from giving it a shot. (Not necessarily new types of users.) Websites have to evolve. To me, it's a necessary evil. I'll occasionally use the Wayback Machine to check out sites I frequented 10 years ago, and it often strikes me how bad the old versions look, comparatively. They didn't look bad when I used it, but they do now.
Sometime's that's done incrementally, and sometime's it's done in huge chunks. We're doing the latter, of course. Unfortunately, we can't just think about what the site looks like today -- we have to think about what it will look like in three years.
First of all, thanks for replying. It's nice to know that someone in the /. hierarchy is paying attention ...
We've implemented a number of changes since the first October rollout in response to feedback. We'll be implementing more in response to today's feedback. I'm sorry we can't make all those changes instantaneously; our engineering team is small and flooded with work. But that's why the classic site is still available.
... or are you? Because seriously, I think it's pretty obvious from the feedback that the best thing to do would be to give the overworked engineering team some time off. As in, stop having them work on the beta. Because there is no way to fix the beta. The only change we want to see is the beta deleted forever.
I can't promise that the end result will be to your exact preference; a hundred different people will have a hundred different opinions on how the site should look.
Several thousand people--which is probably just about Slashdot's entire active user base at this point--have made their single opinion quite clear. Please stop pretending there's a debate about this.
But I can promise that we'll take all the feedback to heart.
Uh-huh.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Been there at the beginnings. /. is but a platform, staff is not even capable of editing submissions properly.
Beta /. platform is an abomination.
Community is key - see you guys elsewhere when Beta ./ is enforced upon us.
well from the comments your CURRENT userbase has the following feelings
What do We want??
"I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some redesigns come with too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this.
[WAVES]
Can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Soulskill? "
what this site will look like in 3 years is a 404 (userbase not found).
Why not update things to have proper Unicode support?? (maybe whitelist known sections??)
Allow the turning OFF of the pics??
Have a setting to SHOW ALL COMMENTS??
Have at most 4 levels of indent (and indent only like a half tab)??
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
The main thing we want is a site that doesn't look old and stale, because that will slowly drive readers and contributors away.
Driving readers and contributors away quickly is a much better strategy, huh?
Both you and AC articulated what I was starting to *feel* regarding beta. I have so many users who rebel against upgrades just because they're different; I just wanted some good reasons why the beta sucks.
As I use it just a little bit, the UI was obviously designed by blind monkeys, or perhaps just committee. I have to scroll and scroll and scroll, and yet there is so much wasted space around comments. Add to that the fact that replies don't load automatically, and I have to populate the reply subject. I see nothing good about this "upgrade."
I'm Peggy.
Posting history is a much better judge of trollism than knowing what UIDs they're up to now. Seems like that would be difficult to stay accurately on top of.
As for facts from the old days, the only real important thing is that Slashdot has always sucked in it's own way, it's nothing new, but definitely not at all so bad as the abomination that is beta. Doesn't work at all on my work box (something's failing or getting blocked at the firewall, and it is munged very, very badly - hard to find the article itself way down at the bottom - count me out!) and on my phone quickly devolves to a series of rows one word wide. Ridiculous.
Even so, there seems no shortage of secondary accounts, so that high UID user could, in fact, be an old-timer. Again, ultimately not very meaningful.
If you keep driving your community away now, there won't be a site to look at in three years.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
Well, if you don't want to completely kill the sense of this being a discussion site, there really needs to be a way to:
1) see if anyone has responded to your past comments
2) see if your comments have been moderated
Both of these things are easily accomplished in Classic, but I couldn't figure it out in Beta. Maybe I just overlooked the display somewhere, but assuming I didn't, will those things be worked in before launch?
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Frankly, the whole cut your head off and stick it on a pike is going too far. You think saying that to someone is even remotely appropriate? This is slashdot, but still claiming the want to look up into the lifeless eyes of someone and wave is shameful and you should pause and reflect about yourlife and what you are bringing to the table here. This site has been my homepage since pre y2k and your comment goes down as the one that made me ashamed to actually be part of this community.
Please don't lump "me" into your "WE want" asshattery. I'm not fond of the beta but please don't think your sentiment is even remotely appropriate, or that everyone stands beside you.
I can disprove you in one word: Facebook.
I wouldn't know I don't use it, and of the people I do know that use it most are using it increasingly less.
Facebook has also made an about face on some policies that the users got up in arms about.
Finally, as bad as you or I might think facebook is, when has it done anything so monumentally disliked that the facebook user community impoded on the scale that /. just has. Where every single page is complaining about it. Every update posted on any company page is responded to with complaint about the facebook change. Its Never happened, nor anything close to it.
Its always been sporadic grumbling here or there, occasionally loud but never anything at all like this. /. has always had its flare ups of complaints during redesigns, people displiking april fools, bennet haselton making it his personal blog, idiotic editing, lousy summaries... etc... but that just noise compared to THIS.
This is something entirely different.
So I'm not sure what "facebook" proves.
So why are you forcing users to use the beta when you even admit it's not done ?
To stay kinda on-topic, it reminds me of the release of kde 4.0
But I really hope the tech team will take a step back, look at why anyone thinks beta stops, and then do a re-design so we get a new usable site instead of beta.
ps: What about talking to the guys which did stackoverflow. They might want to take over development and they kinda know how to make modern cool websites.
We've implemented a number of changes since the first October rollout in response to feedback. We'll be implementing more in response to today's feedback. I'm sorry we can't make all those changes instantaneously; our engineering team is small and flooded with work. But that's why the classic site is still available.
I can't promise that the end result will be to your exact preference; a hundred different people will have a hundred different opinions on how the site should look. But I can promise that we'll take all the feedback to heart.
I defy you to delineate the changes you made in response to user feedback. Be specific. Show your work. Otherwise you're just a lying sack of shit.
you work for slashdot and you're just sitting around accepting this. with such a low uid, either you're not truely a low uid user, or they gave you a fat pitcher of koolaid and you can sip on it throughout this storm.
you're not helping the cause here..
You can do this by switching from Standard mode to Classic using the button in this screenshot: http://imgur.com/6wnb138
Unicode support is just a matter of finding time to do it. We've got a small engineering team and lots of work to do.
Better comment loading/filtering is in the works.
I can't speak to the indenting, but I'll bring it up with the designers.
There have been a lot of great emails from users with tweaked screenshots showing how they'd prefer the layout to look. Some people have even sent us CSS/HTML tweaks.
But mainly, it just helps to have a detailed explanation of a specific task, and how the beta site prevents you from completing/accomplishing it. For example, direct links to individual comments isn't implemented yet. So, if you were to say, "Every time I leave a comment, I go to the comment link and bookmark it in my browser to keep track of it. The beta doesn't let give me direct comment links, so I can't do this anymore.' That would be something well-defined and actionable.
No, as a matter of fact, I don't. I assume the ones making the decisions are the ones who make the decisions, and them knowing what they're doing isn't a pre-requisite. Just like every other company I've seen -- once management decides this is the direction, for good or for bad, This Is The Direction.
Don't mistake seeing it for what it is with me believing the people making the decisions have a fucking clue. I figure they have as good of a chance of destroying Slashdot as 'fixing' it.
And, like I said, if they think it will bring them more profits and they want to turn it into "Woman's World Weekly", then that is precisely what they'll do. If that backfires on them, tough. If it works for them, well, they're better at business than I am.
Does that guarantee them profits or anything else they're looking for? I have no idea. I'm simply saying that once management decides on a course of action, the lower echelons (and sometimes the customers) don't matter. And, really, who are the customers at Slashdot? The subscribers? The advertisers? Or the users?
If the rule is "if it's free, you're the product", then what they're selling is the right to advertise to us. If we don't generate enough ad revenue, they might well decide what they want is the right to advertise to someone else.
But never mistake that for me believing the notion that the people making the decisions know what the fuck they're doing -- because I got over that idea over a decade ago. In fact, I'm largely of the opinion that usually they don't know what they're doing.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
1) The reply to comment has a pointless title box labelled 'Reply to Comment'. What's it for? I left it blank in this reply.
2) Once you scroll down in the comments, fully one third of my monitor's width is wasted.
3) Also once you scroll down the indentation of the nested comments occurs on both sides, so that the comments gradually get narrower and narrower. This happens on the old site too, but the incremental indentation is less, and the amount of width to begin with is much greater. I have seen this taken to such extremes on some sites that comments actually become a column of letters.
4) The main page, wherein the stories, are listed has lost its personality. Gone are the icons on the old site that added colour and humour. Gone are the "from the insert-witty-and-relevant-comment-here dept." bylines, which added to the personality of the site. The place is for geeks, so it's supposed to be a bit geeky. It's not supposed to look corporate and neutered.
5) The main page downloaded a total of 1.7Mb when I refreshed. The old page downloaded 1.1Mb - which is still completely insane but it's quite a bit less.
6) The main page gives the impression of wasting large amounts of vertical space - although this is actually an illusion because both the old and the new site fit the same number of stories in each page - it still looks sloppy.
7) When I tried to preview the comment it turned out that I have to put something in the "reply to comment" box. So let's try again.
8) Ah it turns out to be the title, which used to be filled in automatically and is irrelevant anyway if you're replying.
I wrote a long comment about all this, but the beta site ate it.
Well, we can see how even the erudite and well-spoken can fall to four-letter epithets and ad-hominems.
This genesis is not so different from how Slashdot originally began, if I've read things correctly in my time here.
My thought: sustainability is going to be the key to any fork venture. It is well that we come to consensus, because without it the core of what makes Slashdot what it is disappears, and with it the horde that makes Slashdot a verb. You submitters, and commenters that stay at +5, you are that core. You particularly, girlintraining, I looked for your voice of reason in the madness. We agree the Beta sucks, but that is not enough. We need decisive action. We don't need to go the Patriot Act screaming-hysteria route, over-extend ourselves, and hoist ourselves by our own petards for all the world to point and laugh. We need a firm vision, and leadership to see it through administratively.
Dice has written off the entire community. We could have done much of their work for them, pointing out the bugs and what needs improving. You know it, I know it, they know it. They don't care. We weren't juicy enough economic morsels for them to feed off of, and they've decided to try reinventing themselves as the ultimate mediocrity: flashy clickbaiters. So this is where my concern comes in, because the status quo wasn't sustainable.
How are we going to do it where they have failed? What can we learn from the development and hosting of Linux and other FOSS, a similar and seemingly heavily-related community? One kickstarter is not going to do it. Donations are a tough business method. Ads aren't going to work with this crowd. Bandwidth is an ongoing cost, even if this doesn't have to be a for-profit venture. Do we charge for moderator status? Do we solicit patronage somehow? Find one of the rare MBAs worth his salary and get him to buy Slashmedia up with his company's resources? Goodwill and enthusiasm are fine, but they only have value if someone's actually buying, as Dice has discovered to their chagrin.
Altslashdot.org is currently... slashdotted. I might suggest we bring that info back here for just a little bit longer.
Goddammit just when I get my first +5 the Beta rolls out and kills everything
I'm not apologizing for Dice. But quite frankly, the "F*ck Beta" post are much more annoying than the new interface. Dice probably should have done things differently. Hell, there's lots of stuff I wish I had done differently, but once it's done, its done and you can't go back.
It's unlikely that they are going to cancel the new site because of these posts. If anything, the posts will probably encourage them to simply shut slashdot down. Who wins in that? A crappy interface is better than no interface at all.
As for
You just don't get this level of outrage from the people who use a site unless your REALLY botch it good.
Really, this is slashdot, we complain about everything. In terms of how many are complaining, I only see a handfull. For all those AC rants, they could be the work of one person or not, but since they are anonymous, they really don't mount to a hill of beans.
All of this just reminds me of the KDE 4.0 or Gnome 3.0 or Unity/Ubuntu rants that flared up when those changes were made. Like it or not, rants aren't productive because the people who need to here them that can make change, simply don't because they are, well, rants. I'm not saying that those who don't like the new interface need to be all sugar and spice and sickly sweet. It's fine to have an opinion or disagreement, but one also has to accept that in the end, it is still just our opinion.
Based on what people are saying though, it seems like Dice didn't kill the slashdot community, it was already collapsing under it's own weight. So, in the end, maybe its best to go away, new interface or not.
Forget features. how about fixing the white space issue.
Depending on the thread my screen can show 75% whitespace to text.
Give a spot to upload screenshots. once you start in a thread the layout is almost entirely whitespace instead of text and posts.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
With all the rants about the beta, I have yet to see specifics as to what is less functional or causing such distress. It is different, but exactly what is causing such frustration? It's just a news feed, afterall, nobody's life or liberty is being harmed.
There was nothing wrong with the Edsel car either. I mean, it had four wheels and it got you from point A to point B. Fun fact: Aesthetics matter too.
True, but then people who didn't like the Edsel didn't block the road so that those with an Edsel or any other car couldn't drive.
Yes aesthetics are important, but really, is all of this over simple aesthetics? From the venom being spewed, I thought there would have been a massive loss of functionality.
The OMG Ponies slashdot April Fools joke was better
It at least functioned.
Dice: Frankly, many of us want a new design, Classic is broken in so many ways. But beta is terrible, and this is what is wrong:
* The value that Slashdot brings to its users is not in its articles. Frankly, the articles are terrible. The value that Slashdot provides is a discussion forum for self-selected nerds.
* As such, it is vital that you remember that the community is not just an audience, it is also your primary content creator.
* Your new redesign does not allow the community to create (or even consume) content because:
- It makes it impossible to follow discussions in the comments sections. This is largely because of the max-width on window and the fact that of the space left over is taken up by a useless sidebar. The vertical spacing is also overdone.
- Slashdot has a fragile but effective moderation system. Your changes make it impossible for readers to leverage that system to read a high quality discussion and ignore the trolls.
- It disregards conventions of the community. UIDs matter. We’re nerds. We understand that you need to attract a younger audience, but for a lot of us (including the younguns) it is thrilling to see a post from somebody who has been there from the beginning.
* In the last 24 hours Soulskill has bitterly commented that the community has been involved since October and that they also get emails supporting the new design; only the comments are an echo chamber. This comment demonstrates a deep incompetence in your development team. Soulskill should have been citing A-B testing numbers. A-B testing is cheap, easy and effective but instead you are taking stabs in the dark.
* Your ability to attain user acceptance is dismal. A number of years ago, when Taco needed to modernize the site, he solicited the community for designs, and awarded the best designer and used that design. That is how you leverage a community and gain their acceptance: incorporate them in the design process. As a bonus, you won’t have utterly useless redesigns that will either ruin your website or have to be scrapped.
And This Too Shall Pass
But quite frankly, the "F*ck Beta" post are much more annoying than the new interface. /. is nothing without the comments. You want the new interface without the fuck beta comments? Start an original website somewhere else. Otherwise, they have to deal with the community.
Really, this is slashdot, we complain about everything.
Nothing has ever brought the signal to noise ratio anywhere near this. This meets the threshold of protest unprecedented here and indeed anywhere else I've seen.
but once it's done, its done and you can't go back.
Says nobody who has ever worked with software, ever.
Of course they can go back.
Based on what people are saying though, it seems like Dice didn't kill the slashdot community, it was already collapsing under it's own weight.
-shrug-, it was contracting. That's not the same as collapsing under its own weight.
So, in the end, maybe its best to go away, new interface or not.
Or they could just leave it alone. A text only web forum that moderates itself ... /. is not exactly a high maintenance project. I'm willing to bet if Dice wants to wash its hands of the whole affair we could take over /. and self host classic /. for a pittance.
That can be fixed without turning into the stale, soulless (and badly broken), monstrosity that is Beta.
Beta is going to do that in days.
You and your bosses just don't get it. We've been telling you for months how ugly and dysfunctional is is, and you've refused to believe us and refused to fix the problems. We're not going to start buying into the new site based on eleventh hour promises that the suits are listening and things will someday be fixed when we have months of evidence to the contrary. You are demonstrably not listening. You are demonstrably not fixing the problems.
I hope whichever suit is driving this steaming pile had a golden parachute, because the point is about to be driven home with a thermonuclear weapon.
Well partly at least it's the fact that I wrote a long reply enumerating seven specific things that I thought were terrible about the new design, and the comment was eaten by the site.
1) The reply to comment has a pointless title box labelled 'Reply to Comment'. What's it for? I left it blank in this reply.
2) Once you scroll down in the comments, fully one third of my monitor's width is wasted.
3) Also once you scroll down the indentation of the nested comments occurs on both sides, so that the comments gradually get narrower and narrower. This happens on the old site too, but the incremental indentation is less, and the amount of width to begin with is much greater. I have seen this taken to such extremes on some sites that comments actually become a column of letters.
4) The main page, wherein the stories, are listed has lost its personality. Gone are the icons on the old site that added colour and humour. Gone are the "from the insert-witty-and-relevant-comment-here dept." bylines, which added to the personality of the site. The place is for geeks, so it's supposed to be a bit geeky. It's not supposed to look corporate and neutered.
5) The main page downloaded a total of 1.7Mb when I refreshed. The old page downloaded 1.1Mb - which is still completely insane but it's quite a bit less.
6) The main page gives the impression of wasting large amounts of vertical space - although this is actually an illusion because both the old and the new site fit the same number of stories in each page - it still looks sloppy.
7) When I tried to preview the comment it turned out that I have to put something in the "reply to comment" box. So let's try again.
8) Ah it turns out to be the title, which used to be filled in automatically and is irrelevant anyway if you're replying.
Those all sound like bugs that should be reported. Fine, but on any other system, do bugs reports sound like what is being posted here? For instance, your first post about the comment box. If that is a problem why not post that it is a problem. That would have a much better chance of getting changed than a post that says "Fuck this shit!" (not that you have made those posts, or maybe you have).
All I am suggesting is that if the interface has problems then people should voice those problems in an intelligent way. That is, at least, if they want their concerns to be heard.
Good Form Helps Function. /. only needs a few tweaks to go from good to great. Namely,
Bad Form Hinders Function.
* Can the editors PLEASE actually do their freaking JOB of fixing typos, spelling, grammar, dupes, bad/inaccurate headlines, /. innovated moderation from that usenet S/N cesspool .. PLEASE innovate again.
* Please define abbreviations the first time they are used in the article summary
* Please add UTF-8 support. Only of these I'll be able to post diacritics such as über -- that is "Uber" with two umlauts, and not worry about "Smart Quotes" getting mangled. WTF is this 1997?
* Please Allow us to edit our posts -- BUT show the original post so we can do a _visual_ DIFF of what has changed !
* Please actually fix the broken 'ecode' tag -- I'm a programmer yet still can't post whitespace aligned code!?
* Please fix the lame-ass lameness filter -- against I've been here years, I want to post CODE but I can't. WTH.
* Please allow us to private message (PM) other members like every other forum does.
* Lastly, please STOP with the crappy Betteridge's Law of Headlines -- that is, stop trolling us just to get more "ad revenue"; we're here for the insightful / informative / interesting _user_ comments, not for some 2-second "sound bite".
Thanks, /. reader sine ~2000.
A long time
It's precisely that belief that change in appearances much be continual that resulted in the the bland, flat appearance of Metro and has permeated into nearly all UIs and sites these days. There's NOTHING WRONG with keeping the same appearance for years, since people will come to learn exactly what to expect. If there's an improvement that can be made, it should be made gently (unless it's just added functionality like UTF-8 support which will never happen despite repeated requests).
reddit has had its appearance for several years and from a designer's point of few looks like total trash. They're one of the biggest sites on the planet though and continually getting bigger, proving that a stale and old appearance doesn't mean jack shit so long as people have the functionality they require (which reddit does). Take that away like the beta does, and you'll lose everything.
Account abandoned. I can't fucking spell for shit and Slashdot doesn't even allow time-limited edits of posts. Plus you'
...and a hundered different people would all say the same thing: leave it alone.
You could always just not ship, if the new is worse than the old. I'm pretty sure the Slashdot faithful have made that clear, and continuing the path that doesn't work will morph Slashdot into Digg. You'll end up having a difference audience to what you had before, which will end up being Slashdot-in-name-only. Maybe you don't care, and believe that's just the way it has to be. But it doesn't.
Account abandoned. I can't fucking spell for shit and Slashdot doesn't even allow time-limited edits of posts. Plus you'
/Oblg. The beatings will continue until morale improves. :-/
You seem to think that Dice should host this site out of the goodness of their hearts. Why should they? Yes, slashdot is a community, but slashdot community members don't pay the bills. Yes, advertising covers the costs (although I don't know if it covers 100%) but still, it is Dice's business. Unless advertising exceeds the cost versus just breaking even, there is no loss to Dice if the site shuts down.
The "F*ck beta posts" are doing more harm to the user base than good. Since the beta, it is virtually impossible to get to any real posts on any article. That is impacting both the beta and classical modes and has effectively made slashdot useless. Yes, useless, but not because of the beta, but because of all of the AC spam about the beta.
The irony is that all of that added traffic has increased ad revenue, so instead of hurting Dice, it's helped them. If the ACs who are upset actually hadn't taken that approach and instead actually boycotted the site, that would have hurt Dice.
As for not stopping the beta and going back to classic, that's just naive. They've spent a lot of money on the changes and aren't going to flush that effort down the drain. Sure, they may lose current members, but look at it from their perspective - it's just the loud obnoxious whiney ACs that are leaving. That would be a win for them.
Finally, IIRC, CmdrTaco used to talk about the amount of work keeping slashdot going. It doesn't just happen. On top of that somebody has to pay for the bandwidth, the servers and all of the other infrastructure. If you think it could be done for a pittance, I challenge you to go do it.
ps. slashdot doesn't moderate itself and never has and prides itself on being unmoderated. If it was moderated, this whole flame thing would have never of happened.
Well partly at least it's the fact that I wrote a long reply enumerating seven specific things that I thought were terrible about the new design, and the comment was eaten by the site.
I understand the frustration in that, but it's not unique to the beta. I've had what is now called classic eat or mangle posts before, too. I've gotten to the point if it is something that I really want to make sure it gets said they way I entered it, that I copy it to the clipboard first, just incase I need to paste it back.
Not surprising that SlashDot revenue is decreasing over time. Before I disabled ads completely (flash is off by default) the ads being shown here, apart from the amazon crap that displays stuff I've recently viewed on Amazon, were 3rd rate companies that you wouldn't even see advertising on CNET.
The straw that broke the camel's back, was when Opera prevented a pop-up from Slashdot...when the tab was in the background (not the active tab). Fuck that noise, JS disabled completely on slashdot.
Yes, useless, but not because of the beta, but because of all of the AC spam about the beta.
That is rather the point of a true protest. True protestors get in the way and make their presence felt. They don't sit in some free speech zone behind the building where they can be conveniently ignored. That's not protesting.
The irony is that all of that added traffic has increased ad revenue, so instead of hurting Dice, it's helped them.
They've spent a lot of money on the changes and aren't going to flush that effort down the drain.
Again says nobody whos ever worked on software ever. Flushing failed projects down the drain is expected. A large percentage of projects are flushed down the drain. Beta might be salvagable, with a lot of rework... but it might be better to start from scratch. It often is.
Briefly spike of interest sure. But only a halfwit would think it would bring in new users long term with such caustic low value comments drowning out all signal day after day.
ps. slashdot doesn't moderate itself and never has and prides itself on being unmoderated. If it was moderated, this whole flame thing would have never of happened.
If it was moderated this whole /. site being a phenomena might never have happened. Some of us would attribute the unique qualities of /. as being relevant to its success. If you want to "what-if" some key property of /. away you likely gamble on /. never being more than just another also-ran unremarkable news aggregator.
Finally, IIRC, CmdrTaco used to talk about the amount of work keeping slashdot going. It doesn't just happen.
Its also not some herculean task that only Dice holdings could ever possibly manage.
If you think it could be done for a pittance, I challenge you to go do it.
A relative pittance. Its a text only forum for christsake not youtube. Yes its still going to need servers and bandwidth and maintenance, but its 2014 and its primarily a text site.
Thanks for the reasonable response.
Apparently the only responses you consider "reasonable" are the tiny minority supporting the beta. Okay, now we know unequivocally what the terms of the "discussion" are.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Again says nobody whos ever worked on software ever. Flushing failed projects down the drain is expected. A large percentage of projects are flushed down the drain. Beta might be salvagable, with a lot of rework... but it might be better to start from scratch. It often is.
That's the second time you've said that. You don't know me, but I guarantee that you use software that either I have personally developed or our company has each and every day. Once a project makes it to beta, it is rare for it not to be finished. Yes, it may have to be reworked or even go back to the drawing board and start over, and often is, but it is still part of the same project, not a new one. Again, it is rare to totally scrap a major project that has made it to the beta stage.
Its also not some herculean task that only Dice holdings could ever possibly manage.
That is true, but it doesn't matter Dice owns slashdot. Get over it.
A relative pittance. Its a text only forum for christsake not youtube. Yes its still going to need servers and bandwidth and maintenance, but its 2014 and its primarily a text site.
Evidently, if it is so easy, there wouldn't be the problems with the beta. Again, if you think creating and maintaining a high volume text site, go for it and create your own. Just like Facebook toppled MySpace, maybe yourdot will topple slashdot.
Its a riff off of Babylon 5. Nerd pop culture and all.
The main thing we want is a site that doesn't look old and stale, because that will slowly drive readers and contributors away.
1924 called, it wants its idea back. At least cars aren't getting their styling tweaked every year any more.
(Beta is, to be fair, not the utter complete piece of shit that, say, the current version of nbcnews.com is; I sincerely hope everybody responsible for that either learns a lesson from this or never finds employment in anything even vaguely related to website design again. But that's setting the bar spectacularly low.)
Seriously, you can't recognise the name of one of the site's editors?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Hi Soulskill, while I don't think the beta is an eldritch abomination... I can see why some do. And I _don't_ like it either. But if the reason for the redesign is ultimately revenue? Let's eyeball that elephant. Classic slashdot serves me one or two ads in a banner at the top. But while I come to the site for the articles, I _stay_ for the comments. So almost instantly I'm scrolling down, and those ads are GONE.
(1) Keep the Classic UI. If the code is tired, rewrite what you must (unicode, wysiwyg) but keep Classic's look. Improve it without changing it. That look _works_.
(2) Add resolution-aware code, and use CSS to fix the (sigh) inevitable ads along one of the long edges of the browser's window - whatever _least_ cramps the reader's view of the comments. Allow the reader to override the edge-choice in settings.
(3) Carrot, not just stick. Or at least a choice of stick. If the site needs revenue to survive, allow individual users to turn off ads if they donate/flattr/subscribe or regularly generate comments that get insightful/informative/interesting mods.
(4) If some PHB has their knickers in a knot and is going to introduce Beta come hell or high water, then see if you can extract a compromise to retain existing Classic as an option and let the users decide. If a year onwards the majority of users are still on Classic, hopefully that PHB will have had time to disappear / exit gracefully / rewrite history that keeping Classic was their idea all along.
You and I both know that it has been YEARS with the excuses---Fix the fucking Unicode already.
Hire a real editor. I have nearly 2 decades of experience in the field. Feel free to ask for my CV.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
You're not one of those chemtrails nutters, are you?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
That was a Babylon 5 reference.
Shame you didn't get it.
And in context, in was meant as a warning, not as a literal threat.
I've been here since 1997. Turn in your geek card.
Reeses
..or is it?
Reeses
You probably already know about it as you're usually on top of things and I'm now going back to some older posts, but just in case, I'll reply to you anyway. altslashdot seems to be in progress of being constructed. It may end up at a different website, but that's the start.
-- Common Joe
Valentines Day Slashcott: Boycott Slashdot because "Fuck Beta!": February 10 - 17
Support Okian Warrior's alternate slashdot idea! Information can be found here: www.altslashdot.org.
Gee, who do you think has unlimited mod points and a vested interest in shutting down the anti-beta posts?
Then why am I seeing so many highly rated anti-Beta posts? Oy. I thought I was a conspiracy theorist.
But yeah, I tried beta several months ago and again recently. I do not like it and a few others have detailed EXACTLY why.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Regardless of "needing to ship" or what features are on the board, the commenting system is the ONLY reason people come here. Reading moderated comments is the ONLY reason I come here.
The dev team absolutely needs to ensure that commenting, reading comments, and seeing threads is FULLY functional.
The wasted space is annoying but livable... except when a deeply nested comment is only 3 words wide and contains multiple paragraphs.
The annoying pictures are livable too.
The fonts are livable... but some things are NOT.
Again, this must be heard: It is all about the comments and participating in the comments (writing or moderating).
Thank you for your time.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Can you or someone at least acknowledge that some of the concerns listed in the feedback article are being addressed? The one I see most commonly is that the beta makes very inefficient use of space (especially vertical space); an acknowledgement that this and some of the other problems are actually being worked on would at least make me feel a bit better (I can't speak for others, I think at this point even if all of the problems were fixed, there would still be people complaining).
That's my biggest complaint. And all this BS about "We have to have our engineers work on it" is a joke. It's ALREADY AVAILABLE IN CLASSIC!! It's not something that requires a lot of work to implement, because the functionally is ALREADY THERE! They clearly made a conscious decision to remove it and now, despite months of complaints about it, still absolutely refuse to put this functionality back in the beta version.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Exactly. I have tried the beta out for months (checking it out from time to time) and I haven't noticed a single significant change since they put it up.
So tell us, Soulskill, what were those changes you referenced?
[crickets]
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
For one, we drastically upped the maximum page width. Back in October, people very strongly complained that it was too narrow, and made the site difficult to use on bigger displays. So we fixed it.
We also reduced the amount of whitespace. Yes, we know a lot of people think there's still too much, and we haven't finalized it yet.
The original beta was also very feature-incomplete. We've implemented moderation, the ability to add replies, a number of comment navigation options, story submission. We've re-arranged some page elements to make them fit better.
You may not like the current design -- that's your right. But that doesn't mean we aren't incorporating reader feedback. I'm sorry if it's not as quick as you like, but that's why the classic site is still around, and why we're continuing to ask for feedback.
Radia Perlman, the inventor of Spanning Tree and many other protocols fundamental to computer networks, has quipped in several of her talks (available on YouTube): "Many people think standards committees are intelligent, careful examiners of all aspects of a technology. But that's wrong. They're actually like drunken sports fans." Or words to that effect.
Go Radia!
That first comment over on the linked Reddit page says it all.
Seriously, I don't care how ugly Slashdot is (I run it with colors off and no scripts and enlarged fonts, so what I see is even uglier). I care that it's fast, functional in any damn browser, and doesn't annoy me or my aging eyes.
Slashdot is what Usenet used to be. Change it, and in due course it'll be just as has-been as Usenet.
And this long-time subscriber (12 or 13 years as a paid sub) won't re-up that subscription.
Maybe I should check out Reddit for a change.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Myself and others have noted that Slashdot was the replacement for Usenet, back when it kinda went to hell. And I believe a great deal of why Slashdot has been so viable for so long (far more so than other discussion sites) is because it kept some of the best usability features of Usenet, plus made it easier to find good discussions and good comments.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"The main thing we want is a site that doesn't look old and stale, because that will slowly drive readers and contributors away. Or keep new users from giving it a shot. "
Erm... that doesn't wash given the userbase, both historic and current. The number of registered users has skyrocketed, mostly in the last 3 or 4 years, and if it's slowed down at all lately it's probably because the new generation of internet users are doing Facebook and text messaging instead of forums, and are nearly not so interested in geek news as we who thought PCs were a great replacement for Erector Sets.
If the interface was keeping new users away, there wouldn't be over two million registered users. If it was driving away old hands, there wouldn't be so many low-digit IDs still here, nor would there be so many long-term regulars. If the quality of the comments were poor, the average discussion would have 30 or maybe 3 comments, not 300+. If it were a pain to comment, I certainly wouldn't have almost 16,000 comments (14,600 officially, but the system lost over 1000 of my comments during one of the previous upgrades).
The users, new and old, obviously don't CARE if the interface is "old and stale", or we wouldn't still BE here. We care if it's usable and non-annoying. We prefer functional if primitive DOS to where-the-fuck-did-they-put-my-stuff Win8.
And as many have pointed out, and you would do well to remember: Slashdot is NOT the stories, nor the interface. It is the community and the discussions. Lose us, and you're just another blogroll.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Was the plan not to have any moderation? Otherwise you weren't really listening to user feedback, you were just progressing from an alpha to well... a better alpha. I mean either the design team didn't think moderation and links and ranking were important, which is damning; or the design team has been planning on doing all of this anyhow and it isn't actually a reaction to user feedback at all.
You made the page width a bit wider because of user feedback. Can't say I'm impressed.
Animal House, rent it.
Hey Ebassi! Now we have the GNOME folks on.
Is there are so many of them.
I'm with you though. Back in the 1980s I told a bunch of Unix guys - don't care which one we pick, but standardize on either SYS V or BSD. Don't let the split remain. What did they do? Split even more. Even in the GUI. All over pride I think.