Ask Slashdot: How Can We Improve Slashdot?

Hi all. Most of you are already aware that Slashdot was sold by DHI Group last week, and I very much enjoyed answering questions and reading feedback in the comments of that announcement story. There's no doubt that the Slashdot community is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and prolific communities on the web.

I wanted to use this opportunity to get a discussion going on how we can improve Slashdot moving forward. I am not talking about a full re-design that will detract from the original spirit of Slashdot, but rather: user experience, bug fixes, and feature improvements that are requested from actual /. users. We appreciated many of your suggestions in the story announcing the sale, and I have taken note of those suggestions. This story will serve as a more master list for feature requests and improvement suggestions.

We welcome any and all suggestions. Some ideas mentioned in the sale story were, in no particular order: Unicode support, direct messaging, increased cap on comment scores, put more weight on firehose voting to determine which stories make the front page, reduced time required between comments, and many more. We'd love a chance to discuss these suggestions and feature improvements and pros and cons here before we bring them back to our team for implementation.

Comments

You must be new here

[BarbaraHudson]

here's no doubt that the Slashdot community is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and prolific communities on the web.

You must be new here.

Re:You must be new here

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

You beat me to that one. I even pictured the shot of Gene Wilder as Willie Wonka that most people use in that meme.

Re:You must be new here

[alvinrod]

I don't want to toot the site's horn too much, but have you looked at other communities on the internet lately?

Slashdot might not be objectively good, but compared to plenty of other places it may as well be the pinnacle of internet civilization.

If there were honestly something better in a general sense, there would be far fewer people here.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here.

This. There are several missing important moderations. "You must be new here" should be one of them. Along with "+1 Troll" (or "+1 look at that") a positive mod for things which are sufficiently bad to be worth reading.

Re:You must be new here

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

I think that was meant as tongue in cheek. When I came here to say that, that was certainly my intent.

Re:You must be new here

[jc42]

I don't want to toot the site's horn too much, but have you looked at other communities on the internet lately? Slashdot might not be objectively good, but compared to plenty of other places it may as well be the pinnacle of internet civilization. If there were honestly something better in a general sense, there would be far fewer people here.

Heh. Remind me of the comments I've seen in assorted places, to the effect that the intelligence of any group of humans is an inverse function of the number of members.

There's dispute about just what the inverse function is. This might be settled, in a sense, by the easy observation that the large body of internet groups show wide variation in visible intelligence, and it's fairly easy to show that this variation is very poorly correlated with a group's size. The conclusion is that there's not just one inverse function between population size and intelligence, there are many such functions.

This opens up what could be an interesting research proposal: Can we collect enough detailed data on populations, including not just their sizes and apparent intelligences, but various other quanitites that might be measurable (and which the groups' leaders will tell us)? If so, maybe we can infer useful information about why some online groups have the intelligence levels that they do.

Or maybe it's all just a hopeless mess. The value of the current IQ tests gives us little hope. But we do have something they don't: many petabytes of comments on all topics by billions of humans, most of it backed up so that repeated access is possible.

OK; it probably really is a hopeless mess. But think of how useful it could be if we could give discussion leaders useful guidelines for improving the intelligence of discussion groups. OK, with things like politics and religion, they'd just use it to drive the level down, but for most other subject, it could lead to an improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio.

Re:You must be new here

[itsenrique]

+1 Stereotypical.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like the Republican Party in the US. Moderation on posts re stories such as H1-B immigration, trade agreements such as TPP, illegal filesharing and DMCA notices, government surveillance, and STEM opportunities targeted towards women and minorities, will always be predictable and reflect the opinions of the majority. That is, even an incoherent post laden with f-bombs will be modded all the way up if the poster is politically correct.

That's an obvious defect of this forum in my view, but if the new sheriff comes into town and tries to fix that, well, I predict that the honeymoon will be very short.

Re:You must be new here

[BarbaraHudson]

Perhaps people should use their own intelligence to filter out the signal from the noise, rather than having everything curated for them - otherwise ... well, for one, they'll never learn to distinguish signal from noise on their own - like the chemtrail conspiracy nuts.

Re:You must be new here

[MacTO]

I will give the Slashdot community credit in one area: it is possible to express an unpopular perspective without being moderated into oblivion. State your perspective clearly, and you may even be moderated up. That's difficult to find elsewhere.

Re:You must be new here

[BarbaraHudson]

Everybody's been trying to get the mythical +5 Troll (it was possible, but extremely rare, years ago).

Re:You must be new here

[whipslash]

Yes that's true and something we want to keep around.

Re:You must be new here

[grcumb]

You must be new here.

This. There are several missing important moderations. "You must be new here" should be one of them. Along with "+1 Troll" (or "+1 look at that") a positive mod for things which are sufficiently bad to be worth reading.

The simplest way to get this is to separate the qualitative from the quantitative i.e. have one drop-down with the score (+ or -) and one with the qualifier. More or less the way metamod works now, but with all the options all the time.

Re:You must be new here

[squiggleslash]

Technically true. I find I usually get modded down for expressing popular perspectives...

Re:You must be new here

[Darinbob]

Remember though, that this is compared to the rest of the web. There are large swaths of the internet that make slashdot appear refined and cultured. The rest of the web doesn't worry about flame wars breaking out because the first flame war is still ongoing.

Re:You must be new here

[Darinbob]

+1 train wreck in progress

Re:You must be new here

[lgw]

Add a disagree mod.

Because we don't have one, people use mods like troll and flamebait inappropriately. We need an explicit "disagree" mod to allow mods to express their intent. Whether it's -1 is a different question, but I'd be OK with it either way. We really need to emphasize the idea that someone can disagree with you, but be sincere, not trolling, if we want to be different from the non-geek sites.

Re:You must be new here

[lgw]

You could improve the mod system a bit by having it detect "controversial" comments - those with many both up and down mods (just find the statistical outliers). Those should always be kept visible. We need downmods to self-police garbage posts, GNAA posts, APK, and so on. But we need someway to prevent a comment being censored if 10 people mod it up and 12 people mod it down - any such comment is interesting and should be kept visible, rather than becoming a scale of the political leanings of the mods. Maybe mark it in some way and disable further moderation.

Re:You must be new here

[whipslash]

Very interesting idea

Re:You must be new here

[grim4593]

I have always thought that there should be a way to flag and remove obvious garbage posts rather than simply moderating them to -1.
For example, if enough people flag a post as garbage:
Run an automated check vs a list of common garbage posts; if there is a high % of match (like a plagiarism detector), remove the post or remove the content of the post.
If it is not on the list of common garbage posts but it has a large number of flags, perhaps it can be reviewed by either moderators or employees to determine if it should be added to the garbage list.
My thought is that if less eyeballs will see the garbage posts they lose their ability to troll and the quantity of them will decrease.

Re: You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

I browse at -1 and let conversations play out. Everyone gets to speak and I get to accept or reject arguments (followed by my own research). All voices add to the signal AND noise. Nobody right, nobody wrong.

Re:You must be new here

[skam240]

I couldn't disagree more. A "disagree" mod that didn't affect a posts score would be pointless. What's the point of disagreeing if you can't post a contrary argument or idea?

As for if the "disagree" mod has a -1 value, down voting is in essence silencing a person as I imagine a lot of users don't browse at the 0 score level. A person shouldn't be silenced because you disagree with them. Meanwhile most would agree that relegating those who post Obama erotica or the like to a 0 score is fine as they're not contributing to the conversation in a positive way. Sure, some people miss use the tools Slashdot provides to drown out Trolls and Flamers as a means of stifling legitimate ideas or arguments but that doesnt mean we have to legitimize the process by giving it an actual mod title.

I doubt the modding system will ever be perfect but providing a "disagree" mod would only serve to stifle discussion and debate if it was scored and would be just pointless if it wasn't.

Re:You must be new here

[Orgasmatron]

Depends on a lot of stuff. There are groups of mods that will nuke certain things to oblivion if you catch them at the wrong time.

I'm looking at the SJW-squad mostly, but that's the one that I personally get notifications for. I can't rule out the existence of the opposite prospiracy, but I never see upvote storms when I mock The Narrative, just singletons.

Re:You must be new here

[currently_awake]

Some sort of rating system for commenters would be nice. Maybe have the higher rated comments percolate to the top of the list.

Re:You must be new here

[arth1]

Having a "+1 disagree" would work, though...

All the three -1s are used to silence opponents, and some use sockpuppet accounts.
It would be nice if the new and improved slashdot could do some log file analysis, and at least strike down on patterns of posters that quickly get +1 while the parent gets -1. Once in a while can happen, but there are some posters where this happens far too often for it to be chance. Statistical anomalies should be easily discoverable.

Re:You must be new here

[x_IamSpartacus_x]

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

I have mod points right now. I could easily have downvoted this. BUT there are enough people who think you are insightful to mod you up and simply modding people DOES NOT add to the conversation.

If you disagree with a comment
Post. A. Reply.

Do NOT stifle discussion just because you disagree with someone. I've modded people up who I think are horribly wrong about something but they make a good point and are adding to the discussion in a meaningful and non-toxic way so they are free to hold different opinions.

I cannot say this strongly enough. DO NOT DOWNMOD JUST BECAUSE YOU DISAGREE! We need to be free to disagree with each other and hold opinions that differ from the norm so that we can talk about this stuff. If we just downmod people we disagree with this whole site becomes an echo chamber of whatever the predominate pre-held opinion is. We should never encourage people to mod IN ANY DIRECTION (up or down) simply because of agreement or the lack thereof. Mod based on the informative nature, the insightful nature, the funny nature, etc. of the post. NOT HOW MUCH IT COMPLIES WITH YOUR WORLDVIEW!

Re:You must be new here

[Noah Haders]

I hate the phrase politically correct. it used to mean something. now its just meaningless term to describe something you disagree with.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Add a disagree mod.

You would need to add two: -1 SJW and -1 MRA. Call it "-1" but don't tell anyone that it doesn't change the score.

Re:You must be new here

[thinkwaitfast]

Perhaps people should use their own intelligence to filter out the signal from the noise, rather than having everything curated for them

If this were the case, might as well read the youtube comment section.

Re:You must be new here

[Pseudonym]

The comments of mine which tend to attract the most "troll" mods are honestly-held opinions on the various merits of different series of Star Trek, a topic which comes up surprisingly often. I'm used to it by now.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

That community is referred to more commonly as Slashdot Beta, unfortunately. There has been no mention at all, Your Honor, of any date marked as "post beta". John the Romero might redo another DOOM level by the time the better-than-beta edition comes out.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm looking at the SJW-squad mostly, but that's the one that I personally get notifications for.

Believe me, the MRA-squad is just as bad.

Re:You must be new here

[schnell]

Add a disagree mod.

I disagree. (You see what I did there.)

If you disagree, respond and explain why.

I strongly believe however that there should be a "-1, Factually Incorrect" mod. There are simply too many cases of someone posting something like "You can't install your own apps on MacOS X," or "Restriction on drones are prohibited by the Constitution," or "Android has 95% of the smartphone market," or "Abandonware is not legally copyrighted anymore," or "Hitler was a religious Catholic." And many of these comments are rated up - leave aside my somewhat joking political examples - because the comment sounds informative but mods don't know any better. The comment is usually followed by a stream of "OMG you are demonstrably, factually wrong" posts but often those are invisible to those browsing at higher mod levels and the net effect is to present a demonstrably incorrect statement as true.

These statements aren't necessarily trolls (again, except maybe the political ones) or flame bait, and they aren't just overrated. They are simply wrong in some way that could be factually demonstrated or logically proven. There really does need to be some mod for "your factual claim is provably incorrect." Preferably followed up by some comments citing counterclaims to the contrary.

Re:You must be new here

[Mashiki]

If you disagree with a comment
Post. A. Reply.

Good idea.

I cannot say this strongly enough. DO NOT DOWNMOD JUST BECAUSE YOU DISAGREE!

The problem is there are too many people who are intellectual cowards, and would rather mod something contrary to their opinion as -1/whatever vs disagreeing with the person and in turn getting into a discussion over something. Win or lose, you're more likely to learn something instead of remaining in your ideological hugbox.

Re:You must be new here

[Pseudonym]

Some sort of rating system for commenters would be nice. Maybe have the higher rated comments percolate to the top of the list.

We could call it "karma", and perhaps give all such comments an automatic +1.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

You could improve the mod system a bit by having it detect "controversial" comments - those with many both up and down mods (just find the statistical outliers). Those should always be kept visible. We need downmods to self-police garbage posts, GNAA posts, APK, and so on. But we need someway to prevent a comment being censored if 10 people mod it up and 12 people mod it down - any such comment is interesting and should be kept visible, rather than becoming a scale of the political leanings of the mods. Maybe mark it in some way and disable further moderation.

I almost hesitate to suggest it, but you might be able to combine what was said above with a bit of statistics from the poster's history, regarding how his or her previous comments were moderated. It is difficult, yet perhaps not impossible, to calculate some quality value based on that history. For instance, perhaps the top 10% of posters quality wise, however that gets magically defined, get an extra +1 when they post. I'd guess that any more than a plus 1 based on quality/reputation/etc probably isn't worthwhile, assuming of course there isn't already something like that. I haven't even tried to use a non anon account in quite some time.

Re:You must be new here

[lgw]

. A "disagree" mod that didn't affect a posts score would be pointless

Oh no, it would get used. And much better than abusing -1 mods.

As for if the "disagree" mod has a -1 value, down voting is in essence silencing a

Sure, but that's so damn common already, I doubt it would be worse. I'd prefer "0" though.

Re:You must be new here

[ShanghaiBill]

have you looked at other communities on the internet lately?

Yes, I have. All of them had Unicode support at least a decade ago.

Re:You must be new here

[lgw]

have always thought that there should be a way to flag and remove obvious garbage posts rather than simply moderating them to -1.

I disagree - reading at -1 is not for the meek, and I think garbage and meme posts from cows to GNAA to APK keep /. colorful and creative. There doesn't seem to be a problem with the garbage posts staying above -1, and I like the "we never delete anything" ethos.

Re:You must be new here

[BronsCon]

I can see a plethora of +5, Disagree posts. Yes.

Re:You must be new here

[quantaman]

Add a disagree mod.

Because we don't have one, people use mods like troll and flamebait inappropriately. We need an explicit "disagree" mod to allow mods to express their intent. Whether it's -1 is a different question, but I'd be OK with it either way. We really need to emphasize the idea that someone can disagree with you, but be sincere, not trolling, if we want to be different from the non-geek sites.

I disagree.

Mod scores should reflect the post, not the personal opinions of the moderator. Someone can post a well thought out post criticizing the scientific consensus on climate change. I'll disagree with their conclusion but that doesn't mean they aren't +5 insightful.

Even a "wrong" mod really just becomes a poll on whether the mods think the post is right or wrong. If the post is wrong then someone should reply with a rebuttal and if it's good it should be modded up.

I honestly think the moderation system is pretty good other than the fact that "Insightful", "Interesting", and "Informative" have far too much overlap. When I'm trying to make a serious contribution to the discussion I find it tends to be pretty random which of the three I get.

Re:You must be new here

[complete loony]

An early comment to a story may seem correct and get modded up. Only to be proven false and then modded down. This is fine, it should be possible to make it disappear.

Re:You must be new here

[lister king of smeg]

Add a disagree mod.

Because we don't have one, people use mods like troll and flamebait inappropriately. We need an explicit "disagree" mod to allow mods to express their intent. Whether it's -1 is a different question, but I'd be OK with it either way. We really need to emphasize the idea that someone can disagree with you, but be sincere, not trolling, if we want to be different from the non-geek sites.

There have been time I have up mod'ed people I disagreed with as they have had valid arguments and replied as an AC to them with my rebuttal. I don't know that we need a disagree mod or if we do just don't have it have + OR - attached to it.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it's about Microsoft. They could be closing their doors tomorrow and donating their entire fortune to orphans worldwide and /. will still find a way to hate on them.

Re:You must be new here

[arth1]

The problem is there are too many people who are intellectual cowards, and would rather mod something contrary to their opinion as -1/whatever vs disagreeing with the person and in turn getting into a discussion over something.

I thought that to get mod points you had to actually engage in discussions.
I could be wrong; I'm new here.

Re:You must be new here

[excelsior_gr]

Good idea. The disagree mod should then be positive. In this way, the controversial (but not trolling) comments will be upvoted for discussion.

Re:You must be new here

[el_chicano]

Win or lose, you're more likely to learn something instead of remaining in your ideological hugbox.

Learn something? On Slashdot?

You must be new here!

Re:You must be new here

[TopSpin]

"controversial" comments

The comments are a symptom. One easily ameliorated by the existing comment moderation system once the cause is addressed.

The real place "controversy" needs to be addressed is the stories. No amount of comment moderation will suffice to deal with the squabbles created by mdsolar's anti-nook crap, global warming click bait and gamer gate grievance mongering, among many other sad themes that have damaged Slashdot. That stuff needs to stop so the malcontents that live for it go away and let the place heal.

And no, just turning over story selection to the (existing) crowd will not work. They'll squander their employers time indulging their favorite cause and keep feeding in the same click bait. What is needed is a few people with good judgement and some patience to allow time for recovery.

As I write this it occurred to me to survey the last few days worth of stories. Except for the Clinton coin toss mistake — which promptly descended into a giant flame fest — it looks pretty good. Keep that up, add some more Linux/BSD/MCU/etc. related stories and something good could happen.

If I'm right and there really has been an editorial change, keep it to yourselves. Talking about it will just produce a giant sh*t storm.

Re: You must be new here

[EzInKy]

Some people are too sensitive for that. They have to know who to punch in the nose if something is said that they don't like.

Re:You must be new here

[EzInKy]

If you disagree with a comment
Post. A. Reply.

Too dangerous. There are those here who won't give up until they can identify each and every dissenter. I think they want to hurt them.

Re:You must be new here

[fahrbot-bot]

You could improve the mod system a bit by having it detect "controversial" comments ...

That shouldn't be too difficult, just look for a few key words - Note: The actual commentary doesn't seem to matter.

I'll start: (and probably get modded Troll or Flamebait - because there's no +1 ironic)

• (Fox|Faux) "News"
• Gun (control|rights)
• (Hillary Clinton|Sarah Palin)
• (Democrats|Republicans|Liberals|Conservatives)
• Star (Trek|Wars)
• (irony|ironic)

Re:You must be new here

[Opportunist]

And just look what wonders it did to the quality of their content!

Re:You must be new here

[Opportunist]

And you think that would not be abused in political discussions?

Re:You must be new here

[Anarchitect]

Set it on fire and collect the insurance money.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Add a disagree mod.

I disagree. (You see what I did there.)

If you disagree, respond and explain why.

..

Actually, I disagree. What's needed is a "+1 wrong" or "+1 disagree" mod. Sometimes a comment is excellent because it's wrong. It calls up an excellent discussion, it has been completely contradicted ("the space shuttle blew up because it used the wrong fuel.". "no it didn't if they just used the right rubber there would be no problem at all".) but the comment its self gets hidden. It's difficult to mod that up in cases where the actual post its self doesn't quite deserve "+1 interesting" (+1 funny gets used)

If moderating I would use that on lgw's post here. It brought up an interesting point (there should be a disagree mod). It was destroyed by your post (disagree is not a reason to hide). It inspired me to remember what I really thought was missing.

Re:You must be new here

[Opportunist]

Any discussion medium will by the very nature of human reflect the collective consensus rather than reality.

Re:You must be new here

[Opportunist]

Sigh...

Anyone remember the good old days? When this list would have been

(vi|emacs)
(Free|Open) BSD
(Intel|AMD)

What do we have today? We could consider ourselves lucky that we at least got (init|systemd) as a relevant controversy left. Even though the discussion is far more emotional than ... Ok, granted, the discussions about the topics above were too.

Re:You must be new here

[Hognoxious]

It could affect the post, but not the user's karma. Sort of like +1 funny does but in reverse.

As I've said before metamoderation should go back to the old system where you moderate the moderation rather than expressing an opinion on the original post. Modders who are "downmetad" should lose their modding rights (or at least be sent to the back of the queue).

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

this post brought to you by the letter 't ' for troll, which has nothing to do with the greater LGBTQPWTFBBQ group

Yeah we know you been aiming that for a long time. If you finally get it, will you go away with your travesty bullshit? I am willing to help if that will make you go back to tumblr.

Re:You must be new here

[AmiMoJo]

I've been a victim of block down-modding and allowing people to flag posts are garbage would just make that even worse. Despite what the GP says, some controversial opinions do attract large numbers of down-mods from certain groups, e.g. anything to do with sexism or GamerGate.

At least at -1 there is some record of the abuse and people can see what happened, with the possibility of meta-moderation back up to positive numbers later. I've seen my posts fluctuate from +4 to -1 to +3 over the course of a few hours.

Re:You must be new here

[jandersen]

In fact, we could do with a more nuanced scoring system - who not an array of counters, so we can see how many in each category a comment receives? And perhaps give out more mod points and allow the modder to use several on a comment.

Re:You must be new here

[AmiMoJo]

No amount of comment moderation will suffice to deal with the squabbles created by mdsolar's anti-nook crap, global warming click bait and gamer gate grievance mongering, among many other sad themes that have damaged Slashdot. That stuff needs to stop so the malcontents that live for it go away and let the place heal.

Problem is not everyone agrees with you there. A lot of people thought that the Ask Slashdot with Brianna Wu was a troll story, but I thought it was an interesting opportunity and enjoyed it. Same with the stories about diversity issues. Some people complain bitterly as if they are some kind of personal attack on them, but some of us are actually interested in that topic and find it relevant to nerd culture and science.

I enjoy some of mdsolar's stories. I enjoy stories about electric vehicles, even though they are always inevitably trolled by the "I need to drive 1000 miles/day uninterrupted or it's a useless POS and doesn't deserve to exist" brigade. Even the stories about nuclear power have had a positive effect I think, as if you look over time people have come to appreciate some of the points being made (money is a big issue, thorium isn't as wonderful as they think, renewables work for base load, the damage done by Fukushima isn't just monetary/temporary etc.)

That's what makes Slashdot great. It often takes multiple stories about the same topic, but eventually the conversation does slowly move forward. If there are to be changes, they should be aimed at making the progression faster, not banning certain stories that are clearly popular. If they really offend you just avoid reading/commenting on them.

Re:You must be new here

[chill]

AKA +1 Trump

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.

The only problem I see with the current mod system is that too many people use it to fulfil personal vendettas than to actually mod sensibly.

That could be solved quite trivially by just putting a limit on how many times person A can mod person B - maybe for example limit it so for every 5 mod points you can only mod 5 distinct users, and you can't mod the same person down more than once a week or similar. That way if someone genuinely is being an ass then they'll still get modded down as people will be forced to spread their mod points, but it prevents good comments being censored by people who believe the mod system is there as their own personal censorship tool.

Re:You must be new here

[AmiMoJo]

"-1 Factually Incorrect" would be massively abused. Want to talk about the gender pay gap? -1 Factually Incorrect. Global warming is/isn't real? -1 Factually Incorrect. Renewables can provide base load. -1 Factually Incorrect. Nuclear is safe. -1 Factually Incorrect.

If something is factually incorrect, just post a response explaining why. Responding is always better than moderation, because then your response can be evaluated and moderated on its merits and people have a counter view to judge the parent comment by.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

The what?

Re:You must be new here

[Teun]

About the intelligence of a group, this is an open forum and 'by design' those with the strongest opinion will appear to be the voice of the 'group'.

The moderating system helps (can help) to suppress the over-abundance of loud mouths with hollow rhetoric and hopefully bring forward the more shy but insightful including AC's.

Re:You must be new here

[drinkypoo]

All moderation is already massively abused. That's why there is metamoderation. Perhaps metamoderation should be promoted more.

Re:You must be new here

[Aighearach]

Or the alternate theory, that it gives them an enhanced platform.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Like "SJW-squad", "MRA-squad" is a deliberately stupid term. I meant it as a catch-all for gators, Thunderf00t fanbois, brogrammers, Breitbarters, and others of that ilk.

Re:You must be new here

[Aighearach]

We have disagree, it is called "overrated."

Re:You must be new here

[Anne Thwacks]

How about -10: Political.

There are loads of political forums. Take your politics elsewhere.

and how about +1: SIlly!

I support the idea that the points and reason should be separated, and the scale of points expanded to give finer resolution.

Re:You must be new here

[Crowd Computing]

Heh. Remind me of the comments I've seen in assorted places, to the effect that the intelligence of any group of humans is an inverse function of the number of members.

However, with a smaller sample, the probability of getting either extreme is higher. In a crowd of three, two idiots make a majority.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, what alternate reality do you live in? Slashdot is the definition of groupthink censorship. Express a dissenting opinion and be censored by other users. Yes, by other users who have no authority whatsoever. The site abdicates responsibility for content to its users. It is disgusting.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not to want to rain on your parade or something, but this is quite what I don't see anymore.

I've come to Slashdot since the very beginning: initially (for some years even), just to read, then to post as an AC. The basic idea is that I want to be a voice in the crowd, I do not want a soapbox or collect karma. Alas, sorry for all those who devised the concept, I see karma as a major flawed concept. Much like the child in the famous "The Emperor is Naked" fable, sometimes the best idea comes from the less prepared.

Registering automatically provides for the "authority argument". This unavoidable: I caught myself lending more consideration to comments from eminent people (this is some kind of instinct to be grateful for their many good deeds). Obviously, I don't feel bad for being grateful to them; what I don't like is reading a comment with any bias, good or bad.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are after the ones who post. Having someone shouting "the Emperor is naked" is undesirable to many -- specially to the Emperor (i.e., people in power). Recently, ISPs have been forced to keep records, even if just IP addresses. In my country, a while ago, there was some legislation proposed to prohibit anonymity in case of libel. Of course, since one has to judge that a posteriori, obviously that means no anonymous posters. I'm still in doubt if I must register in case such law comes to be approved, since obviously this site in in the US and subject to US laws.

Of course, there is the massive problem of the trolls. Post scores, regardless of being accumulated as karma, allowed for filtering the inadequate posts. These days, they have different aims:
- somehow reduce Slashdot bandwidth usage -- I gather many people just browse at the default post score;
- annoy those who want to browse anonymously and have to adjust display level at each and every newsstory;
- force these latter to register with the annoying "if you register, you can set your own defaults" answer;
- allow some kind of Political demoting for posts with excessive "freedom of expression" and
- allow some radical groups to demote posts against their morally dubious agenda (or promote the ones they favor, even if they're dumb).

> Slashdot might not be objectively good, but compared to plenty of other places it may as well be the pinnacle of internet civilization.

Frankly, no.

Other sites (e.g. reddit) seem not to have that problem: troll posts find their way to oblivion, and from what I see, there is less downvoting based on personal/ideological agendas. They also have clear separations where, for instance, sexual content is (various) or not (eli5) adequate. Since /. is a mostly technical site, we may not need that.

Not that I expect any solution (I surely don't offer one), but I wished to register the problem.

I'm quite content about my past contributions and getting a 5 score on some posts on which I was more inspired. All of them without getting any karma, which I think makes them even more valuable (at least in my admittedly biased judgment).

But for Slashdot, this is of the utmost importance: links can be found in many ways, but the comments here once were really insightful. These days, people post even wrong things and easily get a +2 score.

How to make a site sink... do that ^

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

I think your thought process is exactly WHY there is a need to allow controversial comments to be displayed. Because the status quo doesn't like it, and this crowd is perhaps a rare breed that appreciates hearing multiple sides to a story, despite how unpopular they are.

If you are going to vote against unpopular ideas, then consider the last 100 years of unpopular ideas that needed to discussed and how the popular vote treated them. (racism, slavery, women's rights, worker's rights, child labor, etc..)

I WANT to hear unpopular opinions. If you don't, I have no problems accusing you of a rash of terrible things, starting with oppressor and censoring.

Re:You must be new here

[aliquis]

Still possible to be moderated flame-bait and troll even when you really aren't / intend to be one.

I think those are rather often misused even though they shouldn't. I don't know if using over-rated is accepted to be used or when it's supposed to be used, at-least it doesn't put an message on the post saying it's irrelevant / no-one should care.

Off-topic posts get moderated off-topic sometimes and I understand the idea of keeping things on topic and I guess it make the comments more interesting for more readers possibly but personally I view it as discussions which can go anywhere, or did, and I kinda want to be able to branch of out of something. Maybe that shouldn't be done and doesn't belong but it's how I work :)

Maybe the first post of a branched off thread could become pink and with hidden content and everything below it hidden and just have a link to "branched off discussion" which opened another page with those comments for those who were interested in following that part? =P

Re: You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

http://wiki.soylentnews.org/wiki/Traditional_moderation

Some moderation ideas from SoylentNews (tm)

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Never, ever, EVER put that shit about "rappers beefing" here again. Dude, we couldn't give less of a shit if we tried! Either that or grab your coat!


But seriously, CLEARLY you haven't frequented these spots for long if at all! It's a shame, because if you had you wouldn't need to be asking thee questions as you would just be doing with this site what we readers have been saying for years!!!

1. Fix Unicode!!
2. Fix modding system!! It's archaic at best!
3. Bring back the slogan "News for nerds, stuff that matters!"
4. We don't give a fuck what p-diddly poopy dogg is doing (unless it's a nature show - that was pretty funny) Please keep it relevant.
5. Proof read submissions with (some) intelligence! Please! For the love of all things digital, get this right! It wasn't hard at school, it isn't hard now!
6. Something I've no doubt forgotten, feel free to chime in!

Re:You must be new here

[jafiwam]

I couldn't disagree more. A "disagree" mod that didn't affect a posts score would be pointless. What's the point of disagreeing if you can't post a contrary argument or idea?

As for if the "disagree" mod has a -1 value, down voting is in essence silencing a person as I imagine a lot of users don't browse at the 0 score level. A person shouldn't be silenced because you disagree with them. Meanwhile most would agree that relegating those who post Obama erotica or the like to a 0 score is fine as they're not contributing to the conversation in a positive way. Sure, some people miss use the tools Slashdot provides to drown out Trolls and Flamers as a means of stifling legitimate ideas or arguments but that doesnt mean we have to legitimize the process by giving it an actual mod title.

I doubt the modding system will ever be perfect but providing a "disagree" mod would only serve to stifle discussion and debate if it was scored and would be just pointless if it wasn't.

The other guy is onto something, but I do agree with you about the wording.

It should be a "not helpful" or "not useful" (to the thread it's in) or something like that. There are people that jump into the first post thread and then change the subject... just to be at the top of the page. That mod would help prevent that type of stuff.

But also be a way of not telling someone they are wrong, but their argument isn't working. Considerably more fair and more to the spirit of what the discussions should be here.

Overrated and underrated are completely useless in my opinion.

ALSO; this site needs a FAQ or something to teach about all the settings and controls where new stuff can be added and RTFM will again become a wonderful chorus here. There are blogs, there are dots that change color, there are click to expand or contract threads (which is new ish) the links are now in an odd place, there is moderation, there is meta-moderation, there is a timer with mysterious criteria, etc.

Re: You must be new here

[TheReaperD]

I do my best to keep them at -1 if they deserve it.

Re: You must be new here

[TheReaperD]

I must say, for all my gripes about Slashdot, the lack of Unicode support is pretty far down the list. If they have to spend a limited time on their code, the JavaScript issues on their mobile site should take priority. It is very hard to moderate or read my messages using Firefox mobile on Android. The Chrome and Adblock browsers don't fare much better.

Re:You must be new here

[dreamchaser]

here's no doubt that the Slashdot community is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and prolific communities on the web.

You must be new here.

The really sad thing is that it used to be so. I've been here since the beginning, though I didn't sign up for an ID immediately. This used to be the go to site for news for nerds and stuff that matters. Not only has the level of discourse dropped precipitously but the quality of content has as well. Most 'breaking news' stories that I see here are ones I saw days ago on other sites. The editors are a joke and do not even bother to try editing anything. I'm willing to give the new owners the benefit of the doubt, but I really can't see how they can fix any of this.

Re:You must be new here

[jafiwam]

What?

Re: You must be new here

[TheReaperD]

Wow, I'm not even sure where to begin. This site runs into problems with civility at times but, compared to the bloodbath that is Reddit or god forbid YouTube, it's usually down right tame. Now some of the articles lend themselves to trouble (an article about Trump, what were you expecting editors?!) and that is the maintainers fault.

You complain that people have the option to register and possibly build up a reputation. It's optional as your AC status confirms so, I don't see your issue there. As long as registration isn't forced, I am fine with it. People can choose whether or not they are recognized. Though it seemed to be part of your complaint is that people with high reputations (karma) receive a posting score bonus and thus every comment's score isn't 100% based off its merit. Though I can acknowledge the argument, it seems reasonable that one of the best ways to anticipate the quality of a post is the history of past posts; thus the initial karma bonus if you have a high karma rating. Is it perfect? No. Is any system? No. So, the reward for good behavior doesn't seem to be a real problem. I've still been modded down to -1 if I deserved it. It just means that I start at a higher score.

The real bitch I've had about Slashdot is the article choices. Some lead to trouble as their designed to cause a fight as that gets more clicks, therefore more money and others are just crappy quality. The community isn't perfect, no community of this size is, but, to me, it's really the quality of articles that has been choking the life out of here.

Re: You must be new here

[TheReaperD]

I so would love to have an achievement for that! If you are that masterful of a troll, you've earned it.

Re:You must be new here

[Chris Mattern]

We need an explicit "disagree" mod to allow mods to express their intent.

No, we don't. All mods are +1 or -1; that is their purpose. The tag is just there to indicate why you wanted to mod the post. People should not be downrating posts because they disagree with them. The fact that some people are misusing mods to do so anyways does not mean the system should starting endorsing it.

We really need to emphasize the idea that someone can disagree with you, but be sincere, not trolling, if we want to be different from the non-geek sites.

And you can. Hit the "reply" button. Posting a "disagree" tag on a post without stating any reasons or arguments is meaningless.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

I read at -1 because so many threads make no sense if you ignore the comments that have been modded down because the mods disagree with the post rather than it being off-topic or whatever.

Eg: In a thread about climate change ( urgh ), somebody making coherent comments that happen to disagree with the theory are often modded to -1, so you only see the actual discussion if you read at -1.

Re:You must be new here

[infodragon]

In any sufficiently large crowd, most are idiots.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is who defines "garbage" posts?

I can say with no uncertainty that some very well write, well documented posts have been modded down simply because they don't tow the Slashdot groupthink line. I've personally posted about problems with Linux that had been confirmed by others and which I could reproduce myself that have got modded down because I dared to speak out against some peoples' darling OS. The same can be said of Android.

Sorry, but when you have such strong groupthink you're going to get factual and honest posts censored at the hands of rabid fanbois. That's a fact.

Re:You must be new here

[dinfinity]

If you disagree, respond and explain why.

People don't always have time for that or might not want to undo their moderations in the thread.

Although I'm not sure GPs proposal is the best implementation of it, there needs to be an outlet for the feeling of disagreement with the content of a post. Even 90% true and insightful posts evoke a negative reaction if they do not align with your own views. We're only humans, after all.

In a sense, agreement with the content of a post is a different dimension than the technical quality of it. Ideally, the moderation system should reflect that. It may prove to be too complex (although if anyone would embrace slightly increased complexity for greatly increased functionality, it would be Slashdotters), but one could imagine having to indicate agreement with the content for all moderations (+1 Insightful, Disagree slightly, for instance), making moderation a two step action.

Re: You must be new here

[Jason Levine]

Wow, I'm not even sure where to begin. This site runs into problems with civility at times but, compared to the bloodbath that is Reddit or god forbid YouTube,

And if you think those are bad, Twitter can be even worse. You can have mostly good conversations with people on Twitter and then have some troll come out of nowhere, harass you, and have Twitter shrug their shoulders because the person didn't explicitly threaten you with physical violence. A friend of a friend of mine on Twitter is currently battling white supremacist trolls who are attacking her because she's adopted two white kids and two black kids. I read some of these people's tweets and felt like I needed to scrub my eyeballs/brain afterwards. As bad as Slashdot can be sometimes, I highly doubt that people like this would last here.

Re: You must be new here

[drakaan]

That's true, but most of those sensitive people don't continue to visit Slashdot. Additionally, many of those people only seem sensitive because they lack the means to rebut the views of others that they find objectionable. Those kinds of people don't add to the discourse anyway.

Re:You must be new here

[Jason Levine]

I'd second this. Reading the "disagree mod" and "factually incorrect mod" discussions, I wondered if it would be possible to tag posts like this and have the tags appear alongside the other mods.

For example:

The Earth is flat (+3 Insightful, -4 Factually Incorrect, -3 Disagree)
by SomePoster
Here is an overly long post explaining why the Earth is flat......

In the example above, the +3 Insightful is used for the actual moderation. So browsing at +3 would show this post. However, the "-4 Factually Incorrect, -3 Disagree" would show that 4 people think this isn't factually correct and 3 people disagreed, These might not factor into the actual mod score, but they could be displayed for context. Yes, this would be abused, but keeping it from affecting mod score and just having it be display only might limit this abuse.

Re:You must be new here

[gfxguy]

I don't like the idea in theory, but in practice I have to agree with you - if people disagree, they should post. Yes, that might mean they can't moderate in that thread, but so what - if they want to say something, they should say something. Participating in the discussion in much more important than moderating it.

But people don't do that - they moderate something as flamebait simply because they disagree with it.

Perhaps a better answer is for people to be able to moderate moderations - click on the score, see how it was moderated to the value it has, and be able to check negative moderations as "unfair."

In any event, "disagree" mods should not be allowed to drop a post below 1 for a user, 0 for an AC.

Re:You must be new here

[gfxguy]

Of course - I completely agree with you. But you can't change human nature.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot say this strongly enough. DO NOT DOWNMOD JUST BECAUSE YOU DISAGREE!

Which is exactly why a "disagree" mod is what we want. It'd be a trap - "disagree" mods would use up their mod points but not actually achieve anything. The comment would stay visible no matter how many "disagrees". It'd merely be an indicator of dissent.

Re:You must be new here

[green is the enemy]

I'd like to add that if any changes are made to the moderation system at all, the ability to make controversial comments visible should be a priority. Just an observation: controversial comments (even if modded into oblivion) tend to generate a lot of replies that themselves are highly modded. So there are two criteria to detect these: the total number of mods (in either direction) and the number (and score) of the replies. To allow users some control over display of such comments, maybe promote them one level: from not shown to abbreviated, or from abbreviated to full.

Re:You must be new here

[internerdj]

We've created a society where it is encouraged to live inside your own echo chamber on every topic. We physically seek out places to live that conform to our standards. We seek out online news and data sources that conform to our biases. We elect the people who talk like us on issues and the "intelligent and sane" party is happy with suggesting the other side to be shot into space because they aren't even human. Letting people curate their own information isn't doing what you say it should be doing.

Re:You must be new here

[Flea of Pain]

You think there would be any comment in a political discussion which was not provably and demonstrably false? Unless the comment was "both parties are lying" any attempt to back a candidate from either party will be "demonstrably false" given how long these candidates have been alive, the amount of stuff they have done/supported, and previous things they have said on record.

Very few (I hesitate to say none) political candidates have demonstrably supported the same position over their entire careers.

Any attempt to back that candidate in a comment could then be modded "demonstrably false". Therefore, there will be no comments on political threads on Slashdot...wait a second...I think we just fixed Slashdot.

Re:You must be new here

[Minupla]

If they really offend you just avoid reading/commenting on them.

This is exactly why I come back to /. year after year.

Some days I'm in the mood for a debate, and some days not. I can choose to click through to the comments if I'm in the mood , read the summary or (gasp) click through to TFA if I want the less-debated viewpoints.

And for debate, compared to some of the other places on the internet, I can't find a community better then /. Our standards for flame wars (e.g. the coin toss article) look like a kid's 7th birthday party by comparison... which isn't to say they're pretty, which you'd know if you have ever hosted a 7th birthday party! (hint: don't serve hotdogs unless you can stand the penis jokes)

Min

Re:You must be new here

[bluelip]

What dumbass suggested unicode? What dumber ass thought the suggestion was serious? Direct Messaging?

You really are all fucktards since being bought out.

Get back to being a "News for Nerds" site. No, you don't have a clue. Let /. die instead of being bastardized by PR scumbags. The only chance left is to return /. to Taco.

Re: You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend of a friend of mine on Twitter is currently battling

How about ignoring them until they get bored?

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

> there's no doubt that the Slashdot community is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and prolific communities on the web.

Not to mention high-strung!

Re:You must be new here

[Vanderhoth]

A lot of people thought that the Ask Slashdot with Brianna Wu was a troll story

Give it up already. Everyone knows Wu is a con and a troll and GamerGate had legit beefs, which you did your best demonize, cover up, minimize and dismiss, but you're clearly in a minority. This is exactly what TopSpin is talking about. The issue is over, it was dealt with, but morons like you just won't let it die. GamerGate, as an controversy, continues to burn because there continues to be "opposition" that blames, literally, EVERYTHING on it. What are you even opposed to? Opposed to better standards in reporting? Opposed to doing away with clickbait? Opposed to people voicing concerns or being lied about? Opposed to people ACTUALLY pointing out trolls and their bull? Opposed to dealing with collusion and corruption?

As someone who's support dealing with the issues that caused and perpetuated GamerGate, for over a year and a half now, **I** am sick and tired of hearing about it. But now that my eyes have been opened to all the crap that was going on, and people like you that live outside reality and spread deception, misinformation and outright lies, I'm not going to let you pretend you're fighting unopposed for some just cause by promoting a damaged abusive ideology and the people that go along with it.

So let's make a deal. You stop bring lying and pretending and I'll stop correcting your bullshit lies. And that will make this a better site for everyone.

Re:You must be new here

[ChrisMaple]

Perhaps a two dimensional score. 1 part like the current score, the second part agree/disagree.
Score:-1 Flamebait _ -50 Disagree
Score:+2 Informative _ +12 Agree

Re:You must be new here

[mu51c10rd]

My thought as well when I saw this quote in the press release:

What impressed us about Slashdot was the quality of the typical community member and how truly informed and educated they were on a wide variety of discussion topics that directly relate to today’s relevant tech news.

Re:You must be new here

[aaarrrgggh]

Not always true. In a perfect world, modding helps manage and focus the discussion. Disagreeing is a valid mod when the statement being made is not contributing to the discussion. I generally go for overrated in these cases, since it doesn't impact karma; it serves a purpose.

I would argue that not posting anything when you don't really have something worthwhile to say is more valuable: moderate thyself first.

My hope for Slashdot: provide more content that fosters strong discussion in a variety of topics that are relevant to today's nerds. Try to keep editorial agendas to a minimum, and keep the useless kruft from being forced on everyone.

Re:You must be new here

[AmiMoJo]

Oh, I'm all for ethical behaviour, calling out bullshit and lies, and maintaining high standards in reporting. That's why I'm still waiting for GamerGate to admit that it was founded on a lie and that the alleged review doesn't exist. Revise the pages on the GamerGate wiki, and make public apologies.

Start by being ethical and admitting past mistakes, and then we can talk about other issues. As long as GamerGate supporters continue to lie about this, the movement will never have any credibility. If GamerGate supporters really don't tolerate harassment, they should start by correcting the lie on which much of that harassment is predicated.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk posts on topic. He's not same as GNAA! Identifying who issues upmods or downmods would be an improvement.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk posts on topic. He's not the same as GNAA! Identifying who issues upmods or downmods would be an improvement.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG YES. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen this:
"Android has 95% of the smartphone market, here is why they have such a high percentage [paragraph follows]" (+5, Insightful)
"You are factually incorrect. [5 links from reputable sources follow]" (+1, Neutral)

A mod, browsing at 1, comes and sees this situation and says... um, I guess this +5 thing is overrated, but not a troll or flamebait. -1 Overrated.
Another mod, browsing at 3, sees this and says "wow, what an insightful post", +1 Underrated.

This comment stays at 5, despite being wrong and being demonstrated wrong. I see this situation at LEAST once/day. I browse at 1 just to see this type of thing.

I would really like, not a "-1, Factually Incorrect" (because it will get stamped on everything), but a "+1, Stronger Counterpoint". The +1SC moderation should give the parent a de facto "-1", but not affect karma (no negative points for being wrong). The benefit of such a mod is that 2-3 +1SC comments will take a wrong comment out of discussion.

This should have the added benefit of correcting the "whoops, I can't edit, but here are the correct calculations" threads.

Re:You must be new here

[Quirkz]

+0 Inciteful (as in, highly insightful, but said in such an insulting manner it's also flamebait)

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

You can browse at -1. Nobody is preventing you from reading anything posted here, so spare us the hysterical cries of "censorship!"

Re:You must be new here

[Vanderhoth]

I have no obligation to apologize for made up offenses I wouldn't be responsible for even if they were true. And this response is why people down mod you so hard.

No one is responsible for internet trolls who were around looooooooong before GamerGate. You gave them a free pass no one else. You hold up some of the worst people as "victims" when they're some of the most abusive deceptive people on the internet, then dismiss anyone with relevant criticism while holding up the actions of individual trolls and blaming anyone with legitimate issues for the actions of those trolls.

Instead of allowing people to discuss actual issues with the press you forced in your own pet issues and insist everyone must talk about them or they're misogynists, then you wonder why people down mod you and act like you're not doing anything wrong.

On top of very few people actually agreeing with you on your GamerGate stance, you've sabotaged your own cause by tossing away any credibility you have on easily debunked claims and strawmen. And you still obsess over it.

Re:You must be new here

[JD-1027]

Or better yet, make "disagree" a +1? : )

Re:You must be new here

[Will.Woodhull]

Or maybe it's all just a hopeless mess.

Yes.

.

Anecdotally, there appears to be a variance in the average intelligence of Slashdot's comments that is related to the USA academic year. Slashdot gets dumber in the early Fall, recovers somewhat around the time of study for mid term exams, gets dumber during the Winter break, etc.

This suggests that one way of improving Slashdot would be to prevent persons under the age of 25 years from making comments. But that might be difficult to enforce. Blacklisting persons who are enrolled students in certain schools (Princeton, Yale, Stanford, etc) would also be effective, but also difficult to enforce.

An enforceable policy would be to start all newbies with a karma score of -1 (negative one), to be increased automatically on the 3rd anniversary of their join date, or by merit of their posts (the usual). Most of us who care enough to not want to see the garbage could filter at zero and above-- which should be the default anyway.

Re:You must be new here

[Painted]

This seems like a good idea to me. When I'm moderating, I like to mod up insightful or informative posts; but when you get into a APK vs. Coren22 spamming contest you end up burning 10 points just killing the APK spam...

Re:You must be new here

[Lab Rat Jason]

I think you are confusing moderating with conversating... if you disagree, just post up and say so.

Re:You must be new here

[Lab Rat Jason]

Good effort, but Factually Incorrect should not be a mod... it should be a reply... with the facts.

Re:You must be new here

[KGIII]

I've done that. Unsurprisingly, there are actual good comments on YouTube. I'm not even kidding. No, there exists high quality comments on YouTube.

Err... Well, they do exist. I've even seen a few. They don't exist in great numbers and you gotta be really bored to go find them but they do exist. Maybe that's a little something to do with what they were getting at with their comment? Sometimes, the world isn't filtered into nice little boxes and you have to make some effort to find what you want.

Re:You must be new here

[Larry_Dillon]

It wouldn't be too had to show the up and down votes, like Ars does.

Re:You must be new here

[ArmoredDragon]

I think Bennet Hasselton is perhaps the best evidence that slashdot isn't as intelligent as one might think.

That is, unless, we can stop Bennet. Mod this post up if you want to stop Bennet.

In terms of features, I'd say add unicode support and probably seriff fonts when usernames are displayed. The reason why using seriffs in usernames is necessary is because there's some jackass that goes around using a name similar to other people, only substituting capital I with lowercase L, or vise versa, and copying their signature, and then making posts about mycleanpc fixing his fucked up life.

(IlIlIlI notice how these letters all look the same on slashdot font? And yet they're not the same.)

This is exactly what prompted me to abandon my old 5 digit UID account: I had two lowercase L's in my name, which made it a prime target for abuse.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

here's no doubt that the Slashdot community is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and prolific communities on the web.

You must be new here.

No, New Here stopped posting back in 2012.

Re:You must be new here

[KGIII]

Can you imagine what people would read into that moderation - even if unintended? Oh my.... I am thinking that's one of the worst moderations they could have but, at the same time, it might be one of the best. I guess that would be a matter of perspective. Err... I don't actually moderate - even though I get points. Though, I get fewer points now but that seemed to happen when I stopped moderating a very long time ago. I suspect there's something automated there as my behavior (and the resulting moderation) hasn't really changed - if anything, my scores increased.

That said, I've a whole bunch of thoughts on this subject but it seems like wasted effort to throw them in with 1200 other comments. Someone is bound to have asked for everything I want and everything I don't want.

But, in the spirit of the thread... This is my big one:
Remove, or alter, the arbitrary 50 post per day limit that is still imposed when you reach the highest level of karma. That's just silly. You want good content. You want more content. For better or worse, Slashdot likes my posts. I write a lot. I will write a lot. I bounce off that limit all the time - it's like a rev limiter for no good reason. That limit is like cutting off your own nose to spite your face.

Re:You must be new here

[radarskiy]

"Responding is always better than moderation, because then your response can be evaluated and moderated"

How can responding be better that moderation if it required moderation to be better than moderation?

Re:You must be new here

[radarskiy]

What topic isn't political? Not even linux kernel releases could escape that moderation.

Re:You must be new here

[Quirkz]

I generally agree. I'd rather have more stories available, and then just ignore the ones I don't care about, than limit the selection. I even like the occasional borderline offtopic controversy, just because the discussions are generally interesting. It may be mostly unproductive, but even political flamefests are at least better argued here than most other places I visit on the web, and occasionally I learn a little something.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

lmao...i saw what you did there

Re:You must be new here

[KGIII]

That's part of why I do not moderate. I never (or very, very seldom) moderate. If I feel like judging your post, I'll judge it. That's my judgment and my judgment shouldn't impact others. If I feel like replying with my opinions, I'll do that. In fact, that's what I'd prefer to do. I much prefer to respond - often in novella form, when I see an insightful, troll, informative, etc. type of post. I guess you could say, that is my moderation. It just doesn't impact how others are going to see the post by means of a moderation score.

And, as I've mentioned this before, I should probably save some time and add this now instead of having to answer this question later...

Don't read more into that than I wrote. I didn't say anything, or even indicate a dislike, about other folks who moderate. I read at -1 and usually don't even really notice the moderation. I can see the system as having value for some people and do not dislike it. I just do not feel that my personal feelings about a post's qualities should be reflected by a number and then missed or seen because of people's filtration systems.

On the other hand, I used to meta moderate but, alas, they altered that system and I don't actually know what my cast votes mean (for certain) so I no longer participate in meta moderation on a regular basis.

I did mentioned earlier that I don't like the 50 post threshold. No matter how high the karma, you can post no more than 50 posts in a day. Maybe that limit can be erased if the user is willing to opt out of moderation? I'm unsure of what effects that might have but it might be worth thinking about.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. The mod system (with appropriate thresholds set by the reader) does a sufficient job filtering out junk.

Additionally, any such system would run the risk of occasionally removing a valid comment. When logged in with mod points, I'll often cruise through all comments...I've modded up comments that had been modded down to 0, only to eventually see them a day later at +5 insightful.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we just need to lose the "troll" and "flamebait" mods. The simple fact is that everyone who thinks they know a troll when they see one is just someone who assumes their own opinions are so superior to the opinions of others that anyone who disagrees cannot be serious, but must simply be looking to cause trouble.

If you want to improve the comment system, try taking a scientific approach and remove the self-selection bias. Anyone can vote on comments if they like, but they don't get to choose which comments they vote on. Rather, they enter "vote" mode and are presented with random comments which they can evaluate, with the selections being based upon which posts in a given discussion have been voted on by the fewest number of moderators so far. This would eliminate the largest problem with Slashdot's moderation system: It heavily favors first posts. The first person to post anything has their post seen by thousands, and so they have many opportunities to gain moderation points, whereas anyone who takes the time to think about what they write ends up posting much further down in the thread where they're lucky if even ten people read their post, nevermind if anyone with mod points reads it.

If we want Slashdot to be an intelligent site, its moderation system should be effective at finding and highlighting intelligent posts, but instead, what we have is a system where many times the most intelligent posts are rated 0 or even -1 if the first person to see them happens to disagree.

Re:You must be new here

[jellomizer]

Agree mod as well.

Many times we get modded insightful or interesting because that is what someone else was thinking. However Insightful or Interesting should be something that they didn't think of and somehow enlightened from the comment. But for most of the time our comments are the standard dribble, not bringing anything new to the table, however you get comfort knowing that you are not alone, thus the Agree mod, or you find the common dribble against your values, however it was a decent argument, have a disagree option.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Add the ability to see who issued up or down mods since they get abused either way by karma farming sockpuppets with an agenda upmodding their main account using sock puppet fake secondary accounts to do it or abuse in unjustifiable downmod bombings of valid posts that affect their agendas and when users can't stand behind their moderations they deserve no moderation points (which does not go for users that can back up their moderation with facts).

Re:You must be new here

[LWATCDR]

The problem with that is you have an almost infinite amount of noise and a very limited amount of signal.

Frankly Slashdot's moderation system works as well as anything I have seen. If you do not like you can always view at -5 and do all the work yourself.

Re:You must be new here

[T.E.D.]

Perhaps people should use their own intelligence to filter out the signal from the noise, rather than having everything curated for them - otherwise ... well, for one, they'll never learn to distinguish signal from noise on their own - like the chemtrail conspiracy nuts.

We had a place like that. It was called Usenet. No filtering there whatsoever except what you yourself put on it.

There's a reason user moderation was put here back in the late 90's. While it may be healthy to be able to do all your own filtering, just like it may be healthy to be able to grow your own food, its horribly inefficient, and most of us have better ways to spend our time.

Re:You must be new here

[T.E.D.]

I strongly believe however that there should be a "-1, Factually Incorrect" mod

Why doesn't "-1, overrated" work for that?

Re:You must be new here

[grim4593]

I was referring to the page long posts about GNAA, poop, spamertizements, etc that get anonymously posted repeatedly.
I believe spam removal should be a different process than moderation and I think using a plagiarism style detector will ensure any controversial but on topic posts don't get lumped in with the spam detection.

Re:You must be new here

[david_thornley]

That only works with an adequately high S/N ratio. That's damn rare. I can't get a similar S/N ratio elsewhere. (I can get into self-congratulatory echo box forums that don't have as much noise, but a bunch of people who all agree with me give very little useful signal either. Slashdot is the best place for me to go and have intelligent people give reasons why they think I'm dead wrong.) I think a lot of this is the moderation system, which I'd like to see changed only slowly and carefully, if at all.

And, Barbara, can't I at least blame Slashdot Beta on the chemtrail conspiracy?

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Overrated and underrated are completely useless in my opinion.

Underrated is completely useless, yes. I will admit to using overrated, but only where there is some flamebait or trolling language mixed into an otherwise worthy comment that has somehow made it to +5 insightful.

Re:You must be new here

[david_thornley]

The nice thing is that there's a good solution. If you find somebody who has a strong pattern suggesting abuse of mod points, give that person fewer mod points. No need to muck with things any further.

Re:You must be new here

[ultranova]

Add a disagree mod.

Because we don't have one, people use mods like troll and flamebait inappropriately. We need an explicit "disagree" mod to allow mods to express their intent.

Their intent is to bury content they don't like. Using a "disagree" mod would not achieve that intent as well as "troll" does. Thus people who abuse the moderation system now would still abuse it with a specific "disagree" mod.

Also, what's the point of just expressing "I disagree"? Write a reply and explain why. (Dis)likes are for Facebook.

Re:You must be new here

[david_thornley]

I don't want a -1, Disagree mod (if nobody here disagreed with me on anything here it wouldn't be worth hanging around), but there is some use for a -1, Clearly And Definitely Flat Wrong And Probably Libel mod. If there was only a way to put a sufficiently good definition on them that they wouldn't be confused...

Re:You must be new here

[david_thornley]

There's a problem with that.

Say I've got mod points today, and I'm happily going though a comment section figuring "Hmm, this is insightful, this is a troll" and spending mod points. Then I find something some idiot wrote that's at +3, Somethingorother that's positively dumb. I can write a comment and lose all the earlier mod points, or just try to find a suitable downmod and let the stupidity stand unchallenged.

Re:You must be new here

[skam240]

You know i hear people complain of this rampant abuse but i rarely see it. Here I am with three posts disagreeing with me and I'm at +5 and the post I disagreed with is doing just fine as well. There's been a time or two where i suspect a post i've made has been down modded inappropriately but as far as I've seen it is hardly the epidemic I see a few people make it out to be. We would however, see an uptick in people modding people down because they disagree if you provided a legitmate option. We would be left with only the blandest, least controversial posts at a score of above 1.

As for a zero point disagree mod, please explain the point of doing a zero point "disagree"? If one disagrees with some one, what's the point of stating it without explaining why?Disagreeing with no justification is pointless.

Re:You must be new here

[david_thornley]

I see a flag icon on the lower right of posts. Last time I used it (on the third APK post in the first half of the comment section), nothing seemed to happen.

Re:You must be new here

[lgw]

To my mind, AmiMoJo's posts are exactly the same in value and content as GNAA posts. But there's an objective difference: GNAA posts only get downmods, but AmiMoJo's post sadly get both up and down mods (it's an imperfect world). On that basis, keeping his posts visible would mean most people could stop browsing at -1 and the GNAA posts would in practice disappear.

If we leave it to any subjective judgement, controversial opinions look just like GNAA posts, but clearly they aren't and thus clearly we need some objective system to provide special handling of them.

Re:You must be new here

[Muros]

You could improve the mod system a bit by having it detect "controversial" comments - those with many both up and down mods (just find the statistical outliers). Those should always be kept visible. We need downmods to self-police garbage posts, GNAA posts, APK, and so on. But we need someway to prevent a comment being censored if 10 people mod it up and 12 people mod it down - any such comment is interesting and should be kept visible, rather than becoming a scale of the political leanings of the mods. Maybe mark it in some way and disable further moderation.

Interesting idea you have there. It would be nice to be able to filter to see the most moderated posts, as well as those with a particular score threshold.

Re:You must be new here

[david_thornley]

The comments are the heart of /.. Other than that, it's a crappy news aggregator that is usually late for anything that isn't stupid or clickbait. I'm not saying that what previous editing was good, but /. was good even with it. There's much that can be improved about the stories and editing, but that's secondary.

Re:You must be new here

[ooloorie]

I couldn't disagree more. A "disagree" mod that didn't affect a posts score would be pointless. What's the point of disagreeing if you can't post a contrary argument or idea?

There could be a "factually wrong" mod and a "disagree with the values" mod.

As for if the "disagree" mod has a -1 value, down voting is in essence silencing a person

We could go back to having you decide on your own what the value of different mods should be: you may choose a "0" for disagree, others might choose a "-1".

Re:You must be new here

[ooloorie]

If something is factually incorrect, just post a response explaining why. Responding is always better than moderation, because then your response can be evaluated and moderated on its merits and people have a counter view to judge the parent comment by.

I'm tired of correcting nutcases and idiots; some people just have nothing worthwhile to contribute and they will never learn.

I'd just like to be able to remove people from my Slashdot experience entirely, and share that choice with others. What we need is kill files.

Re:You must be new here

[Coren22]

I would be proud to have that mod, it should even be an achievement.

Re:You must be new here

[Puff_Of_Hot_Air]

Enforcement of the rules in regards to moderation needs to be better. I know that's what meta moderation is meant to be all about, but I just don't think it's effective. The rule is don't down-mod because you don't like someone's post. Repeat offenders should simply not get mod points. Moderating comes with responsibility to do the right thing.

Re:You must be new here

[omnichad]

That can be solved without serifs. Just a better font that has more distinct letterforms. The curl at the bottom of a lowercase L is not a serif.

Re:You must be new here

[omnichad]

This could work. I don't know how much better it is than underrated.

Re:You must be new here

[ravrazor]

You must be new here - that's the "Relationship" sphere next to the poster's username that you can use to make people a friend or foe

Re:You must be new here

[Grishnakh]

If you disagree with a comment
  Post. A. Reply.

Half the time, I can't: "Slow down cowboy! It's been 6 hours since you posted a comment."

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

you're not a victim when you post factually incorrect stupidity and people call you on it

you're not a victim when you lie and people notice

you're not a victim and your "plight" is that you can't post bullshit and get away with it - we have the whole internet and can see when you lie

Re:You must be new here

[skam240]

What would the point of that be? If a post is interesting and one thinks people ahould read it then it should be marked as such. If you disargee with some one then write a post. Disagreeing without posting a jutification is meaningless in a discussion.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea what you're asking. But if it helps: If "MRA-squad" probably refers to nothing, then "SJW-squad" probably also refers to nothing.

Re: You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

APK is much more irritating than GNAA because he's much more prolific, spamming many more threads and each thread many times.

Re:You must be new here

[legojenn]

I'm only 16, so I was never around when Slashdot was in its heyday. Slashdot posts are crap today.

Re: You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Breitbart is a right-wing website but as for the others? Also, I was taught to define my acronyms - what does MRA stand for?

Re: You must be new here

[Drishmung]

I'd like to see a "newbie" flag. Rather than give newbies a -1 they can lose by positive moderation, just a flag that expires on the 3 month/6 month/1 year anniversary (exact interval to be debated). Then I can browse at +1/newbies +3. I can always add extra bias towards a newbie whose comments I like. It might aid sock puppet ID as well.

It's also not just a penalty. A visual indication that someone is new might cause responses to be more gentle/forgiving. (I must be new here. Maybe I'm just an optimist)

I'd also like a "welcome back" flag for comments more than 6 months since the last time (or maybe a smarter algorithm that determines a hiatus based on previous activity). A little more personal, but also a point of information which can act as useful guidance to the reader.

Re: You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

"Men's Rights Activist", which is a term used by the broad antifeminist wing of the men's rights movement.

Re:You must be new here

[cold fjord]

Add a disagree mod.

I disagree. (You see what I did there.)

If you disagree, respond and explain why.

Unfortunately there are more than a few people here that don't have an argument, let alone a good one, but they do have mod points.

I've endured a lot of mod bombings over the years.

Re:You must be new here

[cold fjord]

The real place "controversy" needs to be addressed is the stories. No amount of comment moderation will suffice to deal with the squabbles created by mdsolar's anti-nook crap, global warming click bait and gamer gate grievance mongering, among many other sad themes that have damaged Slashdot. That stuff needs to stop so the malcontents that live for it go away and let the place heal.

And no, just turning over story selection to the (existing) crowd will not work. They'll squander their employers time indulging their favorite cause and keep feeding in the same click bait. What is needed is a few people with good judgement and some patience to allow time for recovery.

Disagreements, squabbling, quibbling, and flame wars have been around far longer than the internet. Even then you have:

vi vs emacs
PC vs Mac
Sys V vs BSD
Linux vs BSD
GPL vs BSD
. . .

The influence of story selection is limited. People can discuss even divisive topics civilly if they care to. They can also be abusive in language and moderation.

Training. procedures, enforcement mechanisms, and accountability help.

Re:You must be new here

[Aighearach]

Sorry Mr Coward, but back in the olden days on Slashdot Radio they always liked to make references to MC Hawking. Check him out on youtube, he's still around.

Nerdcore never died.

Me, I'm still listening to the Netslaves book soundtrack, with classics like "In the Server Cages" and "Your Boss is an Idiot."

I'll bet I'm not the only one still listening to Hampsterdance, either.

Or the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins by Leonard Nimoy and the Pixie Chicks.

Re: You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

And im sure people still believe selling body parts is just a theory too.

Re: You must be new here

[TheReaperD]

Yea, the only reason I have a Twitter account is so that no one else can use my screen name there. Even with that, I had someone hack my account and I had to take it back.

Re: You must be new here

[TheReaperD]

For the type of people that the poster is referring to, that is their life. They don't go away.

Re: You must be new here

[TheReaperD]

Right now, if people use the -1 mods to silence opposing viewpoints rather than for their actual purpose, other mods are supposed to send an email to the site admins with the CID to correct it an censure the mod that did it.

Re: You must be new here

[TheReaperD]

And we're supposed to report crap like that to the admins. That's one of the moderator's jobs.

Re: You must be new here

[TheReaperD]

Yea, I'm not sure meta-mod works either. I know what it is supposed to do but, it doesn't seem to work. I think a few extra site admins going through a random sample of mods would work better.

Re: You must be new here

[TheReaperD]

But, what would we do about APK with that system? He can sometimes burn all 15 of my mod points in one thread.

Re:You must be new here

[argumentsockpuppet]

Damn right.

Actually I use this account to pick the stupid fights I can't resist jumping into. Sometimes I know I need to say something offensive or argumentative to get both sides of an issue on the table for discussion. It's often something I don't want associated with my regular account... thus the nick.

Frankly it's fun to present the contrarian opinion. Sometimes its even the right thing to do and karma be damned.

Re:You must be new here

[ooloorie]

You apparently don't understand what a "kill file" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... The "Relationship sphere" is not a kill file.

Re: You must be new here

[TheReaperD]

Oui! The irony of being modded troll for that post. It burns!

Re:You must be new here

[Lotana]

I can write a comment and lose all the earlier mod points, or just try to find a suitable downmod and let the stupidity stand unchallenged.

Third option: You just take a deep breath and move on. Focus on moderating further threads.

Let others reply and correct. You are not the only being on this site. xkcd 386 is supposed to be a joke!

Even if something wrong does end up as +5 insightful, nothing is ever perfect. Let is go.

Re:You must be new here

[skam240]

What would be the point of that? If a post is worth reading then mod it "interesting" or the like. If you disagree then post a response. A mod of "disagree" is literally meaningless without some sort of argument to back it up.

Re:You must be new here

[AmiMoJo]

It's not just "internet trolls", it's the GamerGate wiki, the main GamerGate discussion channels like KotakuInAction, and the majority of Twitter accounts using the hashtag.

Sorry, but the "no true Scotsman" argument is invalid.

Re:You must be new here

[skam240]

You initial point has merit as "factually wrong" would give modders an option to mod someone down after correct information has been posted. "Disagree with values" seems super vague and is basically just a disagree option which is to say, pointless without a backing argument provided by a post. I'm very weary though of adding any extra negative mods beyond flame and troll though as they risk stifling conversation. For instance, if a post explaining why another was factually wrong isnt made then the "factually wrong" mod is pointless as it's just a baseless claim without a justification.

In regards to your second point, any form of institutionalizing a negative score for disagree stifles debate. It only encourages any post that is a bit controversial to be down modded to oblivion. While a minority use Flamebait and Troll to do so, providing a legitimate downgrade option for disagreeing would only increase the frequency and thus result in less debate. Likewise, as stated before, a disagree with a zero score is pointless and disagreeing without explaining why is as such.

Re:You must be new here

[skam240]

I agree with you in ideal but in practice I don't think it would be a good idea. Adding more negative mods would only encourage their abuse. I'm quite certain that a "Clearly And Definitely Flat Wrong And Probably Libel " mod would encourage people to downgrade based on ideology in regards to debates where that applies.

By the way, your account signature cracked me up.

Re:You must be new here

[tehcyder]

posts about mycleanpc fixing his fucked up life

Oh come on, they were fucking hilarious.

Re:You must be new here

[ooloorie]

In regards to your second point, any form of institutionalizing a negative score for disagree stifles debate.

No, letting people decide what scores to assign to different kinds of moderations doesn't "institutionalize" anything; in fact, it does the opposite: it individualizes it.

Likewise, as stated before, a disagree with a zero score is pointless and disagreeing without explaining why is as such.

Hence my proposal: people should be able to assign their own scores to moderations. E.g., "disagree from a friend = +1", "disagree from anybody else = 0", etc.

stifles debate

You wouldn't believe how much it "stifles debate" when people leave Slashdot. And as someone who has been here nearly since the beginning, I'm getting pretty close to it.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

When posting allow commenters to tag their own stuff for filtering.
Marking a post as "humor" allows people to filter them out or select for them.

A small number of tags can be chosen that posters will actually want to use.
"Timewaster" might not get a lot of use.

Re:You must be new here

[BarbaraHudson]

Usenet was a blast even w/o any moderation. Certainly a higher s/n ratio than, say, facebook or twitter. :-)

Re: You must be new here

[BarbaraHudson]

If you're referring to planned parenthood, the courts have said it never happened. If you're asking about the general trade in human parts, there's plenty of that going around that is perfectly legal. Enjoy :-)

Re:You must be new here

[david_thornley]

But somebody is WRONG on the INTERNET!!!

More seriously, I was replying to a comment that the right thing to do with a dumb +5, Insightful comment is to reply, and saying that in those cases that may not work. In the grand scheme of things, it isn't really important (the destruction of the Earth by the expanding Sun is more significant, if more remote), but it would be nice to have a way to reply without losing mod points or posting AC.

Re:You must be new here

[david_thornley]

Thank you.

You're right, of course, about the mod.

Re:You must be new here

[countach74]

I wonder if we're conflating two actually distinct ideas: moderating as it exists right now is supposed to reflect the quality of a post. "-1 Disagree" isn't about quality, but popularity. Perhaps in addition to moderation, a simple thumbs up/down interface could be added, with the intent of relaying popularity; perhaps this system could be used in an unlimited fashion without the need to spends mod points. Of course this may clutter things up and may encourage people to use one system over the other. To counteract that, my initial thought is that the thumbs up/down should be visual only, the sole purpose being a simple way to express one's beliefs without the unwarranted +/-.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the "+1 Troll" mod. Unfortunately I had to post as AC so that I could mod your comment up. There are terrible trolls out there, but there are also magnificent trolls who deserve to be seen.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

I like this idea.

Re: You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been reading and irregularly contributing to Slashdot since the beginning. I've done a lot of UI design over the years, some on very large projects with millions of users.

I agree 100% with what you are saying.

I'm a fan of interfaces that teach without getting in the way.

A simple (0) disagree mod that costs nothing, and literally does nothing (no visible count or tally, nothing), except to allow you to click it, I'd wager, would improve moderation habits hugely -- it wouldn't stop those hellbent on downmodding a viewpoint with which they disagree, but does send the message "This community does not believe in stifling well-articulated, unpopular opinion." -- without having to spell that out and forcing the user to read (they often won't), as well as projecting an obnoxious 'lecturing" tone.

Make it the first option. It is my opinion that this would stop ~90% of well-meaning 'disagreement' downmods.

Re:You must be new here

[Bathroom Humor]

I modded someone else but I must throw it away to make a humble suggestion:

Perhaps -1 Incorrect would work if it's the only mod that not only allows posting after it, but requires it just to be used. So anyone who wants to downmod someone for being wrong MUST then go on to explain why they are wrong, and if they do not actually explain anything relevant, then I guess they'd get modded down and their mod removed from the post they downmodded.

Of course, that would likely be more complicated than it needs to be and would still be abused by people who don't understand the word "explain".

Re:You must be new here

[Kiaser Zohsay]

but there is some use for a -1, Clearly And Definitely Flat Wrong And Probably Libel mod.

The word you are looking for is "-1, Troll"

Re:You must be new here

[Duggeek]

If you disagree with a comment Post. A. Reply.

Indeed! That's the spirit of /. for you. It's the spirit vs. the status quo, and that's the most important struggle of them all.

Hunt that wumpus, embrace the snark! We will not have feels stifled, and the glory of earnest discussion should shine through!

Humorous rejoinders and snarky rebuttals are a symptom of 'dotters', but not necessarily the truth. The real value of comments and threads is the increasingly rare unmoderated debate threads. These threads need to be unearthed, for the sake of all the snarky wit "fertilizer" under which they are often buried.

The mod system was, is and ever should be a method for visitors to find the earnest debates, despite the status-quo rabble.

My votes:

1. Mod system eliminates down-vote scores in favor of 'flagging' —posts with "enough" flags would be reviewed for appropriate handling.
2. Mod system upvotes expand into more and positive-oriented categories; e.g., "FunnyGood", "FunnyBad", "ROFLcopter" and "NiceTry"
3. Mod cap for a single comment should now be 11. (because it goes to eleven)

If anyone dares suggest it go over 9,000... I salute you, then you will be shot.

Re:You must be new here

[skam240]

I addressed all that in my prior post. Please reread.

Re: You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting using the mobile UI (at least in FF for Android) is horrid. Write comment, prod submit. Wait. Prod submit again. Stare at phone expecting some sort of feedback. Wait a bit more. Repeat until suddenly after a random time of at least 15 seconds the article page reloads and you see your comment.

Seriously, it can't be that hard to add a wee whirly wheel to show that the submit click registered and things are happening.

Re:You must be new here

[cwsumner]

...
This opens up what could be an interesting research proposal: Can we collect enough detailed data on populations, including not just their sizes and apparent intelligences, but various other quanitites that might be measurable (and which the groups' leaders will tell us)? If so, maybe we can infer useful information about why some online groups have the intelligence levels that they do. ...

Now there, my friends, is a true slashdot response! 8-)

Re: You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that was an interesting decision: PP wasn't selling body parts but the investigative reporters were buying them. Where I come from you can't have a buyer without a seller, so if he was buying then PP was damn sure selling.

Re: You must be new here

[Specter]

"The real bitch I've had about Slashdot is the article choices."

+1 Agree. In the past (few?) years it's become obvious that the editors were selecting political articles with not much news for nerds but lots of red team/blue team thread wars. I would not be sad to see that category of articles go and never return.

Re:You must be new here

[Specter]

+1 Agree.

Re:You must be new here

[Specter]

-1 Challenges my intellectual prejudices

Re:You must be new here

[Specter]

-1 Disagree

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

I addressed all that in my prior post. Please reread.

I quoted your prior post and was trying to get across to you why you were wrong.

Re:You must be new here

[gzuckier]

here's no doubt that the Slashdot community is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and prolific communities on the web.

You must be new here.

no, it's true. sad, but true. see if you can read the youtube comments for more than 10 seconds.

Re:You must be new here

[gzuckier]

Having a "+1 disagree" would work, though...

All the three -1s are used to silence opponents, and some use sockpuppet accounts. It would be nice if the new and improved slashdot could do some log file analysis, and at least strike down on patterns of posters that quickly get +1 while the parent gets -1. Once in a while can happen, but there are some posters where this happens far too often for it to be chance. Statistical anomalies should be easily discoverable.

best idea in a long time.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

here's no doubt that the Slashdot community is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and prolific communities on the web.

You must be new here.

nekkid pitchers of wimmen.

Re:You must be new here

[datavirtue]

Is Timothy gone? I haven't been on as much in the last two years but that douche really stinks up the place.

Re:You must be new here

[datavirtue]

If you disagree, comment. A disagree mod is stupid. I dont want to know if someone disagrees without an intelligent retort. The best thing about slashdot are the intelligent responses from someone who disagrees. It is called a forum.

Re:You must be new here

[datavirtue]

Maybe a karma loss when people downmod for disagreeing? It can be done with machine learning based on the following comments and mods.

Re:You must be new here

[Specter]

It's not a defect of /. per se but a reflection of the type of stories that have been promoted recently. The previous owners made an intentional decision to post inflammatory political stories that brought the political kooks out of the woodwork. Over time we got more political kooks and less geeks. It definitely started a death spiral; I know I stopped coming here as much. Now you can't even post a geeky article without it devolving into a red v. blue flame fest.

That's not something you can fix over night. It's going to take a long established history of restoring the 'news for nerds' mantle to /. before the user base recovers. When that happens then you'll see a return to the quality of comments we used to have.

Re: You must be new here

[BarbaraHudson]

Sure you can - cops do it all the time in drug stings by selling fake drugs.

Re:You must be new here

[RyoShin]

I'd prefer to see a more generic "agree"/"disagree" system that stood alongside the existing moderation system. It would allow people to show what the "groupthink" is, while preserving the ability to moderate a post on its merits (or lack thereof). A simple agree/disagree, where that value is shown on the post but is far less prominent. Unlike moderation, the "agreement" system would have no limits of any kind except it would be logged in users only (to make it a bit harder to game), and one--and only one, so no taksies-backsies--vote per comment. It would be shown as a % and not a whole number, and would not affect karma at all.

With such a system, it would be entirely possible to have a "+5 Insightful" rank with "98% Disagree". I know a lot of people will say that it reeks heavily of Facebook/reddit/disqus, but they didn't create simple approval systems, and as long as our new overlords don't make it prominent (it is a more minor data point, and must not overshadow regular moderation) it could be a nice addition.

Speaking of moderation, it would be nice if "stories" like this could have a "free mod" setup, where any logged-in users could give moderation to as many posts as they want, and users who currently have mod points don't spend them when moderating. This will give a much better idea of what the majority of the community wants, because right now all of these +5s are set only be people who have moderation. I'm not suggesting they don't deserve to spend their mod points here, but there are many other users who just don't have them right now who should be heard as well. (A reply doesn't cut it, and such a "free mod" system might alleviate "me too" or "someone mod parent up" posts.) Of course, if the "agreement" system were in place then "free mod" would be moot.

Re: You must be new here

[RockWolf]

I've been reading slashdot for probably close to 15 years - and it's never been as good as it used to be, if you listen to the commentariat. It's just part of the noise around here.

Re:You must be new here

[Trogre]

I strongly disagree.

One of the Slashdot culture's strengths is that posts are immutable - they cannot be edited or deleted. It nurtures this culture where people think a bit before hitting "Submit" (I know, I know, I must be new here). Also who gets to distinguish "obvious" troll posts? Downmodding to oblivion (-1) is the correct course of action.

The only exception to these immutable posts that I'm aware of was several years ago and involved the church of scientology.

Re:You must be new here

[Hognoxious]

What's funny about being wrong?

It was Benjamin Franklin, as any fule kno.

There's no doubt that...

[YrWrstNtmr]

There's no doubt that the Slashdot community is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and prolific communities on the web.

Used to be. Can you return it to that?

Re:There's no doubt that...

[whipslash]

We're going to do our best. That's why we want to hear from you all first so that we build the features and improvements you guys want to see. We're not here to slap more and more ads on the site just to make ends meet.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[YrWrstNtmr]

Personally, what I see i:
1. The topic selection. Far too much gunk
2. The comments. Every single thread devolves into many, many political bullshit rants. Democrat idiots, Republican assholes, liberal, conservative, Socialist, Communist, Fundies blah blah......

#1 you can maybe fix
#2 not so much

News for nerds, stuff that matters.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been on a lot of different forums over the years, and at some point the people in charge always start talking about "how can we make things better". In theory, a great idea with good intentions. In actual practice, not so much. Slashdot is what it is. If you start tinkering with it and try to "make it better" you just end up with Windows 10.

Seriously. This is as good as it gets. Either accept it or shut it down. The last thing the Internet needs is another over-moderated SJW fag-fest.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[arglebargle_xiv]

Unicode support. This has been an open sore for years.

More generally, at the risk of sounding snarky, copy some of the stuff Soylent News has done, e.g. ability to moderate individual posts rather than having to scroll to the bottom and moderate all, ability to moderate in a discussion you've contributed to, etc. Soylent was forked to fix various Slashdot problems, and they've done a pretty good job of addressing the major issues.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Grog6]

How about:

Free massages for all Uid's under 100k. Preferably at the Bunny Ranch.

Natalie Portman pouring hot grits down our pants. (I think she was still underage when that meme began; I have no real Idea what it means.)

Another interview with Larry Niven.

Interviews with the Goatse guy and tubgirl. (don't search either one.)

I'm sure I'm missing something...

Re:There's no doubt that...

[whipslash]

Great points. Will keep these in mind.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[whipslash]

Noted. We'll look into it.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Prune]

I agree with GP's post with the exception of allowing people to moderate posts under the same story as they are posting. That's inviting abuse.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Zontar The Mindless]

You can already moderate individual posts.

Permitting moderation AND posting in the same story is not a good idea.

The only change I see necessary is that metamoderation needs to be restored to its original purpose/function. The "new" metamoderation never made any sense whatsoever.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[davester666]

kill the stupid tracking javascript code slashdot uses. when my internet connection gets slow, it becomes painfully obvious that stupid crap is happening, and not help me do anything. For example, you don't need to do anything when I click the close button for the tab.

Actually, I think I have to run noscript for Slashdot.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[jc42]

Personally, what I see i: 2. The comments. Every single thread devolves into many, many political bullshit rants. Democrat idiots, Republican assholes, liberal, conservative, Socialist, Communist, Fundies blah blah...... #1 you can maybe fix #2 not so much

One of the aspects of this that I've actually seen some partial results for: The current thread layout tends to make it difficult to get beyond the first or sometimes second reply's threads, which fill up many screens, and it's hard to wade through it all to find the non-BS sections of the message trees. It could be a lot more useful if the Nth top-level replies were easier to find, and then also look at the 2nd-level replies to each. I don't think I've seen any really great solutions to this, though I've seen a few that seem to work a bit better than what /. does. Anyway, the problem can be seen in a lot of discussions by starting at the bottom, and noting that most of the messages there have few ratings or replies, meaning that hardly anyone has read them.

Of course, it's possible that something like this is available in the New! Improved! /. UI, and I just haven't recognized it. If so, maybe some more documentation is in order. It's also possible that just adding several more selectable numbers in addition to rating, depth, karma, etc., and provide some easily-accessible config settings so we can tweak them all until we each find a setting combo that we like.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[arglebargle_xiv]

Just curious, how would it be abused? Soylent have had it for ages, and I haven't seen any signs of problems, it's no different to moderating a discussion you're not part of. At best, it forces someone to apply one extra step of using a sockpuppet to mod the discussion they've contributed to.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Prune]

At best, it forces someone to apply one extra step of using a sockpuppet to mod the discussion they've contributed to.

That's still extra effort that will dissuade most from utilizing the technique.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is an election year, are you suggesting the elections don't matter, or that there is no impact of technology on elections?

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

"copy some of the stuff Soylent News has done, e.g. ability to moderate individual posts rather than having to scroll to the bottom and moderate all"

You're way new here (not using my 6-digit UID for now.) But comment moderation has worked exactly like that for quite a while. Enable some javascript.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[PopeRatzo]

That's the spirit. We have a lot of faith in you.

Say whipslash, are you an AI?

Re:There's no doubt that...

[arglebargle_xiv]

I was really tempted to reply to my own post from the account "sockpuppet1234" saying "Mod parent up!".

The real question though is, what's the threat? What's being defended against?

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa! Unicode in slashdot, is this real?

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

The last thing the Internet needs is another over-moderated SJW fag-fest.

I'm a fan of free speech. Sorry, comes with the upbringing.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[whipslash]

Oh yeah it's coming

Re:There's no doubt that...

[whipslash]

Thanks PopeRatzo. I'm not AI unfortunately.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[grub]

Awesome! I can't wait to post my first goatse link in Hebrew or Russian!

Re:There's no doubt that...

[mykepredko]

I've been on /. for 20 years (gasp). I haven't seen a lot of difference in the posters.

- There are amazing individuals that provide interesting and detailed insight into issues.
- There are great technical resources and posts by people who truly understand the issues, solutions and how to address them.
- There are a few genuinely funny and clever people.
And, for any given story, 25%+ of the posts are from assholes or good people who, for some reason, post without reading/thinking, believe they have some god-given insight into the issue or are generally having a brain cramp at that particular instant (I think everyone falls into this latter category). That number doesn't seem to have changed over the years.

I don't see that changing and it's really up to everybody to learn how to sort out the bullshit and figure out who are just stupidly angry and who are just plain stupid. In either case, you have to know how to ignore them.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Applehu Akbar]

When we discuss politics in here, it would be nice if it were on topic. Instead of exchanging talking-point exchanges on guns and abortion, let's home in in science and its applications. There is a lot of politics in this area that we, as domain experts in technical fields, have unique contributions to.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Applehu Akbar]

Sorry, "rote talking-point exchanges." My kingdom for an Edit button.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Applehu Akbar]

I agree with GP's post with the exception of allowing people to moderate posts under the same story as they are posting. That's inviting abuse.

Only if you could moderate in the immediate vicinity of your post. Allow moderation in subthreads other than the one in which you posted.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Nethead]

I've only been waiting 18 years.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Applehu Akbar]

" At best, it forces someone to apply one extra step of using a sockpuppet to mod the discussion they've contributed to."

And if we make the suggested change to identify modders, use of that trick can be revealed.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC as I'm currently discharging the solemn civic duty of moderation. But parent has verbalized something that's always bothered me but I just couldn't put my finger on: the thread structure on /. makes comment volume a negative feedback system.

The livelier a discussion is, the **less** likely I am to post, because it all get shuttled to the bottom. Over a certain level, people only see the pile on to the responses to the responses to the first (real) post. It becomes very top heavy.

<100 comments and a direct post has a good shot at being seen. 100-200 you probably need to pick someone in the first few top level posts and respond to something there. >200 and it's barely worth posting at all. Forget >500, you're lucky to see anything from the second poster downward. Hundreds of comments are just dingleberried to the first post because people want their comments to be seen.

If you want more people coming and posting more comments (because that somehow leads to 3. Profit!), find a way to make the threads here less disincentivizing to discussion.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[PopeRatzo]

I'm not AI unfortunately.

That's exactly what an AI would say.

But good luck. You have our baby in your hands. Don't drop her in the wood chipper. Slashdot is a great community.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[whipslash]

oooo good ideas

Re:There's no doubt that...

[whipslash]

Your wait will be over soon

Re:There's no doubt that...

[aaron4801]

With regards to the politicization of non-political posts, right in the mod guidelines, we get this gem: "Concentrate on promoting more than demoting." It seems like part of the culture to let offtopic comments slide. Combine that with the "no modding and commenting in the same post" rule, and people are more incentivized to continue the argument than to just downmod and participate in another part of the real post.
It makes sense to not be able to up/downvote and then reply to the same comment, but it sure would be nice sometimes to not have to choose between moderating and participating in the whole topic.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Pikoro]

Yes. But even the old metamoderation system was a bit lacking. I like the whole "Was this a fair moderation or not" part, but often, the presented mods were just a single post with it's scores displayed which took it out of context. Perhaps a collapsed thread of at least to the GGP of that comment should be visible so the reason for the moderation is in context?

Re:There's no doubt that...

[JustOK]

try using words other than "guys" if you want to be more inclusive.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[JustOK]

I'm sure I'm missing something...

neurons. You're missing neurons.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[phantomfive]

The "new" metamoderation never made any sense whatsoever.

I didn't know that existed anymore

Re:There's no doubt that...

[whipslash]

ok

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, can we go back to the early 2000's please. The current state of the Internet, information boards, politics and rational is just awful. In the early 2000's Slashdot.. Well, it was great.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hire someone who speaks English and has a lick of common sense to edit the goddamned submissions. That's been my biggest gripe during the Dice years (I started reading in the 90's, had an account once, forgot the password in the early 00's, and never bothered trying to recover).

Stories should be written in normal English that anyone from any field with a passing interest in the story and its field could understand. Uncommon jargon and abbreviations should be explained, or links should be provided; knowing the difference between uncommon and common is where the common sense comes into play. Make sure, though, that the stories have actual tech content rather than focusing on hiring/quota/visa/gender/religion decisions: this isn't HRdot, and we're not Toby fucking Flenderson.

Don't do the Dice click-bait thing. Don't approve ever Forbes blogpost that crosses your desk, and think strongly about denying anything that links to a site that blocks adblockers. Don't become some blogger's SEO linker. Never post anything by Bennett Hasselhof (or whatever his name was) again.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[thinkwaitfast]

I've been reading slashdot long before they had logins (and was part of the controversy when they were introduced). Anyway what made the site great was that it as very technology focused and users didn't have to wade through political debates in every comment section.

Ideas were discussed by technical merit and often at a level that took a fair amount of knowledge and intelligence to follow. Often times, I had trouble following a thread because it was beyond me, but on the other hand, I learned quite a bit.

I think over the years, the people who had deep knowledge in a field have left, but it would be nice t get them back.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[whipslash]

I agree

Re:There's no doubt that...

[bidule]

ability to moderate in a discussion you've contributed to

Bad idea. OTOH, you should be able to flag certain posts as "in need of meta-moderation" to fix unfair moderation. But let someone else agree with you.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Pseudonym]

One possible way to do this might be the ability to collapse and expand subthreads as a whole. That way, you could examine the top-level comments only and decide based on that if you want to delve deeper or not.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Pseudonym]

Yes, edit button. I'll have one of those, please.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Pseudonym]

In Soviet Russia, Slashdot asks You.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Qzukk]

Which exists now, if you click on a post title. Maybe slashdot needs a reddit like [-] next to it so you know to click it.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[arth1]

There's a reason why there isn't an edit button.
A very good one too:
You don't get to post an inflammatory comment, and then change it after the fact, making your esteemed opponent appear like an asshole for replying in kind. And similar other variations, where people change what they said, and not just fixing typos.

If (and I still don't think it's a good idea) implementing an edit button, at least make it only possible to submit an edit until someone either replied or voted on the comment.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[lucm]

It is an election year, are you suggesting the elections don't matter, or that there is no impact of technology on elections?

He must be a Democrat and he's afraid that people will talk about the Clinton email scandal.

Liberals are always in favor of free speech but only as long as they agree with the speech.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[arglebargle_xiv]

Enable some javascript.

Ah, OK. I've only ever read Slashdot with Noscript because that's the only way to make it usable, I want to read threads, not click and shuffle and click and click and select and click again just to see everything.

So that's perhaps another biggie, at least as big as Unicode: Have a "just show me the damn discussion" mode where, if I click on a link to an article, I get to see all comments within my pre-selected threshold limits.

(I've been using Noscript on Slashdot for so long I forgot that there's an annoying alternative interface to it).

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Pseudonym]

There's a reason why there isn't an edit button.

Some comment systems (e.g. stackoverflow) only let you edit for a limited amount of time. A minute seems enough to fix that one typo. That wouldn't be unreasonable, and presumably moderation would be suspended (or wiped, and the moderator gets their points back) if a post is edited.

I don't know what to do about replies during that time. Maybe give responders a notification and time to fix or even delete their response.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[SessionExpired]

In the US. I come here for "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". Nothing particular American about that.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Barny]

Basically, this. Implemented into something that boils or floats the more insightful threads/posts toward the top of the page by default. It might also stop the waves of people who just reply to the first post, so that their message is read before anyone else's, regardless of how on topic they are within that thread or the first post itself was.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[DocHoncho]

The real question though is, what's the threat? What's being defended against?

None and nothing.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Tablizer]

It can be marked as edited along with a link to the original text to reduce hit-and-run deceitful changes, or a "correction" section at the bottom to describe corrections.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Zontar The Mindless]

By "Unicode support", we mean, "Please stop filtering any/all characters that aren't used by US English".

We understand that Slashdot is a US site. But lots of Slashdotters aren't.

And I didn't go the trouble of learning Hanzi (and enabling it as an input option) only to find I can't quote Deng Xiaoping in the original in my sig, which is really bogus, man.

--}> I'll even mow the yard this week without being reminded and everything... Please?

Re:There's no doubt that...

[fahrbot-bot]

I'm not AI unfortunately.

That's exactly what an AI would say.

My younger brother asserted that computers have been smarter than humans for quite a while, but are smart enough to not let us know. His logic has been difficult to disprove.

Re: There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.

I always thought there should be a way to sort the comments (while still keeping them in threads).

Users can choose between the following:
Chronological (as it is now)
Random
Ordered by mods (+5 initial replies first, down to -1)
Ordered by replies (most replies first, least last)

Re:There's no doubt that...

[dryeo]

Learned something new today.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[dryeo]

The trick is to just let a few scripts run. Currently noscript says "3/9 (janrain.com, slashdot.org, fsdn.com)|: 31|:0" and it works fairly well here. I can't remember why I added janrain.com to the whitelist and it might not be needed now.
Edit, there was also SCRIPT and OBJECT in angle brackets in the above that vanished on preview and I'm too lazy to fix.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Opportunist]

Fixing #1 fixes #2. If there are no political or other yellow press topics but only topics where you need some brains to not look like an idiot and be ridiculed for your lack of information and general foolishness, people without said qualities will leave, lacking a reason to stay. This in turn can well convince people to return who turned away in disgust due to these people littering the comment section.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Trepidity]

You could at least mitigate #2 a bit with better #1, especially by running fewer general-interest political articles. Sure, tech news often implicates politics, and don't avoid those stories. But stuff like the recent Trump stories (e.g., e.g.) is general election-season news with only a very thin tech veneer.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unicode support. This has been an open sore for years.

Indeed. Ascii is not enough for the names of people and places. And this is news for nerds - we may very well have discussions on unicode issues. And language peculiarities. And math. . . Shouldn't be hard either - web servers have supported unicode for a long time already.

Re: There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

15 year lurker here. Possibly my first post ever! I have to say this is exactly the issue that bothers me. 90% of discussion revolves around one or two threads and there's no diverse analysis or novel input from many separate parties. I think about this literally every time I read a comments section here.

This is something I find refreshing on Ars Technical. It has less threading so more original posts show up.

Perhaps threads can be collapsed to max-depth=2 and people can expand the thread if they want to follow that particular conversation deeper? Couple that with some incentive (no idea what) for posting an original comment (Bayes analysis?).

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Hognoxious]

I've seen it abused in other places. A staff member was losing an argument and started threatening bans for people who disagreed with him.

You should be a player or a referee, not both.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Pseudonym]

Wow, there you go. It works for collapsing, but doesn't do the expected thing for expanding. But hey, it's something.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Teun]

Do you really have to ask?

Suppose we get in a discussion and I don't agree with your points I could anonymously (!) mod you down which would destroy the discussion.

Now about modding on the subject but not the thread you have contributed to, that could be considered.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anne Thwacks]

Sure as hell does not exist for me (Firefox on Ubuntu-Gnome classic).

Re:There's no doubt that...

[bluegutang]

So what communities are *more* thoughtful, intelligent, and prolific nowadays? If you can name some, I'd like to frequent them.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[arglebargle_xiv]

Suppose we get in a discussion and I don't agree with your points I could anonymously (!) mod you down which would destroy the discussion.

Suppose we don't get in a discussion and I don't agree with your points I could anonymously (!) mod you down which would destroy the discussion. That's currently permitted, and it has the same effect.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Applehu Akbar]

Only a badly designed Edit button (*COUGH*Disqus*COUGH*) would be still usable after a post has been replied to.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Fire_Wraith]

You could also institute a time limit for edits, something like 2 minutes, or even 5 minutes, to give you a brief window after posting if you realize you screwed something up and hit submit anyway.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[taiwanjohn]

I could see allowing modding and posting in the same thread, just flag those posts as such, and make a mouse-over popup to show the mods by the poster/modder in that thread.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, what I see i:
1. The topic selection. Far too much gunk
2. The comments. Every single thread devolves into many, many political bullshit rants. Democrat idiots, Republican assholes, liberal, conservative, Socialist, Communist, Fundies blah blah......

#1 you can maybe fix
#2 not so much

  News for nerds, stuff that matters.

The editors are the first line of defense for #1. There are other sites for political fights, tree-hugging/burning, and other such stuff. To keep it "news for nerds", there should be some definition for what that means, and herd intelligence may not be the answer. I've seen far too many "Why is this on /.????" comments.

Hilary brushers her teeth with Crest toothpaste? nope.
Hilary brushers her teeth using Crest toothpaste and a robotic arm resembling Iron Man's gauntlet? You'd have my attention.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[arth1]

In my experience, most of the times I think "drats" upon seeing my submission, it's because of the interface either

- mangles HTML codes it claims to support, and once did, but which got borked in the beta fiasco.
- mangles pastes that may have unicode.

Those can be fixed first, without any edit function, and may reduce the need for an edit function enough that it may be much lower priority.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[scott.todd]

You don't get to post an inflammatory comment, and then change it after the fact, making your esteemed opponent appear like an asshole for replying in kind. And similar other variations, where people change what they said, and not just fixing typos.

Or allow edits, and provide an edit history.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seconded: an edit button that lasts until a user replies, with trumps going to the reply. If I am "in the editor" while someone is replying and they hit submit before I do then my edit is lost and the original text stands. In addition to this, the edit button would be available up until the moment anyone else hits reply - regardless of whether they submit that reply or not.

This will maintain the original intent and offer most submitters a chance to make a "quick fix" to their post after submission.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or possibly an "append" (or concatenate) button.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Morgon]

Or they can do what Facebook does and show you all revisions of a comment. Only one time have I ever seen anyone try to edit their comment to materially change their tone, and enough people (not all, but enough) knew how to look at the Edit history and call the poster out on their feeble attempt.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Morgon]

Perhaps, but you'd only be one mod action. Presumably, there would be other mods whose votes would counteract your ragemod.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Morgon]

I disagree. Many stories can generate several different comment threads. I would be quite happy to moderate one thread that is either spewing knee-jerk crap where it's simply not worth responding to or wanting to upvote posts in a thread which need no further comment .. and then join another thread offering up useful discussion.

I'd be okay with not being able to mod in a thread you've commented in, but even then, sometimes half a story's comments come from a single GP.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[NimrodMCSE]

I'm a long time MetaFilter member and they leave a very small time window (one or two minutes?) to edit for spelling/grammar. Also, the mods aggressively suspend or ban folks who abuse the edit feature to change the actual messaging in posts.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[david_thornley]

I think we're confusing things here.

It would be really nice, as a reader, to be able to easily skip a thread on the basis that it starts out badly, and it looks like I'm really not interested in it. If we can do that, I don't think the moderation guidelines and such will be nearly as important.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Public shaming goes a long way here - public moderation if you moderate in the same conversation. And obviously no upvoting of your own stuff. Honestly if the flagging stuff works and you have someone actually paid to watch that stuff "I know spam and goat.se when I see it" AND its transparent that a post was downmodded because of flagging, then I think a lot of moderation woes go away. People can focus on bringing up comments rather than pushing down trolls/spam/etc. Leave the downmods for those really clever trolls.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Coren22]

You should have, it would have gotten a +5 funny.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Coren22]

All great ideas, I need to invest in grits...

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Prune]

http://imagesmtv-a.akamaihd.ne... In the mutually exclusive case, some percentage of the time, a disagreeing user is going to reply instead of abusively moderating. That is a net benefit.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Prune]

Given your long history of trolling on Slashdot, I'd say there is a lot to defend against.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[EL_mal0]

In my opinion, also shows the importance of an editor being an active part in making decisions about what makes it to front page.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[KGIII]

Mí Español es muy míeda. Es no en Engaís y yo no nescito Magicó© para el diacritico.

Err... Something like that. Probably NOT applicable to the language you speak of. But some support is there. © ® × ¥ ÷ € £ etc... Hmm... I'm also not sure what I actually said. I can't say that I've ever had the opportunity to use those words in Spanish.

×

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your presence is requested in a fair challenge: Going to evade it doubletalking again old man? http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Re: There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

A world where people can say "SJW fag-fest" without fear or irony.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[dgatwood]

I've seen it abused in other places. A staff member was losing an argument and started threatening bans for people who disagreed with him.

That doesn't really apply to people who get only 5 moderator points once every few months, though. There's only so much damage that we plebs can do.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[dgatwood]

I was thinking the same. IMO, the rule should be no moderation of descendants or ancestors, i.e.

• No moderation of a post that you replied to, even indirectly, even if it is eight levels up from your post.
• It's okay to moderate siblings of posts that you replied to directly or indirectly, including their descendants, because they're at least somewhat different subjects.
• No moderation of any posts that replied to you, even indirectly.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[isj]

I would like the threading system to not encourage people to reply to the top-most thread. Like I'm doing now.
The first comment could be inane or completely un-insightful yet people are forced to reply in that thread in order to get a chance to be seen.

Perhaps you could just disallow the first comment to be from an AC? That could solve multiple problems.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Lotana]

Disable the edit button if the post has any replies.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Plumpaquatsch]

There's a reason why there isn't an edit button. A very good one too: You don't get to post an inflammatory comment, and then change it after the fact, making your esteemed opponent appear like an asshole for replying in kind. And similar other variations, where people change what they said, and not just fixing typos.

If (and I still don't think it's a good idea) implementing an edit button, at least make it only possible to submit an edit until someone either replied or voted on the comment.

This is 2016. I'm sure there must be a way to also make a button to show previous versions of the post, And for people to then make posts pointing out deceptive edits.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[arth1]

This is 2016.

The slashdot engine is from around the turn of the century. I'm really not in favor of major changes that can easily break things more than they fix things. Remember Alamo. And Beta.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Bathroom Humor]

In addition to this, it would be a good idea to have any and all edits be viewable by other readers. A little "edited" icon will appear somewhere on the post, and clicking on it could highlight which lines were altered/removed and hovering/clicking over those lines will show the original text. Something like that should be possible if they were going to add an edit feature.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[cwsumner]

Considering how often I see an error in my post, just after hitting Submit, I think and edit button that was only there for ten seconds would do the job!

Re:There's no doubt that...

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Kudos. It's really not that difficult. The main problem I could see /. having is having to down the site to convert the database over to utf8 or utf8mb4. That would take a non-trivial amount of time compared to when we did it over at Soylent News. Otherwise there's very little in the way of tweaking that needs to happen with Apache2.2/mod_perl2. Blob fields in the db will be the main gotcha. We only had to use about a dozen [de|en]code_utf8 calls over the entire codebase and about half a dozen uses of _utf8_on. Granted you lot have diverged significantly since the codebase we started with was released but if I can do it all by my lonesome, you guys can surely kick its ass in short order.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[whipslash]

Yes you're pretty much right on. Hopefully it'll be shipping soon-ish

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know you can collapse threads right? Click on the title bar...

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Specter]

Agreed, this is a site for nerds. Exactly how hard would it be to give us versioning on edited comments?

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Specter]

IIRC correctly the old metamod system had a link right there to see the post in context. I recall needing to use it about 1/3 of the time which is probably a good enough reason to show some of the thread context without asking, as you suggested.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Specter]

+1 on this idea.

Also perhaps occasionally require a metamod (old style; on a different story) before you can submit a post?

Re:There's no doubt that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh FFS this is exactly the kind of useless politically correct bullshit that I despise about /. recently. "Guys" is a generic term that was in no way intended to offend anyone but of all the on-topic things you could have contributed to this conversation you had to zero in on that one trivial so-called micro-aggression.

Want /. to be a better more inclusive place? Stop going out of your way to be offended and save your outrage for the genuinely, intentionally, offensive posts.

Re:There's no doubt that...

[JustOK]

"guys" is, by definition and use and perception, NOT generic.

Start with removing the malware from SourceForge

[Anonymous Coward]

SourceForge still packages malware in its users distributables. Fix that first.

Not enough content

[Sigvatr]

There's not enough content on the front page every day. I know there are many submissions that are made everyday that never make it to the front page. Perhaps loosening the filter or helping people post quality front page material would help. Sometimes good stories never make it through because the guy who wrote it has bad grammar or something. That's a shame.

Re:Not enough content

[whipslash]

That's a good point and something we will look at. Should we weight firehose voting more heavily so that highly voted stories make the front page regardless of an editor?

Re:Not enough content

[scdeimos]

Second that. Sometimes it's 3 or 4 hours between new stories on the front page - on a work day!

Re:Not enough content

[whipslash]

Ok noted.

Re:Not enough content

[Sigvatr]

I'm not sure how the system works exactly, I've only had a look at it briefly in the past. Maybe give firehose readers/moderators the ability to quickly be specific about why something needs to be touched up before it is front page worthy.

Re:Not enough content

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that in those 3-4 hours I've already read it somewhere else.
The only stories that appear on Slashdot first are click bait.

Re:Not enough content

[rudy_wayne]

Second that. Sometimes it's 3 or 4 hours between new stories on the front page - on a work day!

If you were working you wouldn't notice.

Re:Not enough content

[ancientt]

Should we weight firehose voting more heavily so that highly voted stories make the front page regardless of an editor?

What I'd like is an option in preferences to have the highest firehose voted stories included on the front page. I already get preview stories highlighted in red, maybe have the five highest ranked firehose stories highlighted in yellow.

The temptation will be to push them as a default option, but resist that temptation. Advertise it like the firehose is advertised (and there ought to be a link on the footer all the time) but don't make it the default for established users and only make it the default for new users if adoption and feedback are consistently positive.

Re:Not enough content

[alvinrod]

I think there are other ways to go about getting more content. If you're going to have a paid staff, you could have periodic features, such as an article going into more depth about an open source project on a regular basis. Another thing I wouldn't mind seeing is more articles related to scientific research without the usual media misrepresentation (i.e., it probably didn't cure cancer, but that doesn't mean it's not interesting) that seems to go along with the stories. Again, if you're going to have paid editors, have them reach out to scientists and do some interviews related to their research to generate some original content. Perhaps a weekly article highlighting a DIY project that might be of interest to the community. You could even try having more reviews of science fiction media or such things. There's all kinds of things to try that seem more interesting than aggregating news stories from elsewhere.

Try a few things out and see what sticks or what people respond to. At worst, something doesn't gain traction and you move on to something else instead.

Re:Not enough content

[twistedcubic]

How awful! Being forced to waste all that time working instead of reloading Slashdot! :)

Re:Not enough content

[whipslash]

This is a really good idea. Put it on our list of things to consider.

Re:Not enough content

[Anonymous Coward]

No! That is too easy to abuse by people with an agenda to promote.

Unfortunately, some of it does rely on editor discretion to pick stories, balanced by popular vote. Digging deep into the archives of the firehose should help things, and maybe bring to light stories that got overlooked.

Re:Not enough content

[whipslash]

All good points we'll keep in mind. Thanks for sharing.

Re:Not enough content

[whipslash]

Anyone else into this idea?

Re:Not enough content

[whipslash]

How about showing a few firehose stories on the front page that have reached critical mass in terms of popularity?

Re:Not enough content

[Applehu Akbar]

That's a good point and something we will look at. Should we weight firehose voting more heavily so that highly voted stories make the front page regardless of an editor?

Yes.

Re:Not enough content

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good point and something we will look at. Should we weight firehose voting more heavily so that highly voted stories make the front page regardless of an editor?

Respectfully, to take a human editor out of the chain all together would end up in an eventual rooting of that particular system. The particular point is a lack of validation of incoming votes as far as vetting a supposedly vetted voting pool.

Re:Not enough content

[Anonymous Coward]

Should we weight firehose voting more heavily so that highly voted stories make the front page regardless of an editor?

What I'd like is an option in preferences to have the highest firehose voted stories included on the front page. I already get preview stories highlighted in red, maybe have the five highest ranked firehose stories highlighted in yellow.

The temptation will be to push them as a default option, but resist that temptation. Advertise it like the firehose is advertised (and there ought to be a link on the footer all the time) but don't make it the default for established users and only make it the default for new users if adoption and feedback are consistently positive.

As I prefer to load all comments, even those at -1, I still agree with this premise.

Just still allow me to view, browse, and respond to comment at comments at -1. This is a powerful check against an abusive mod or cadre of abusive mods who gang together to do an aggressive takeover of your new aggregator+web comments site. As an AC, I should be able to report and comment, right?

Please never allow total deletion of a post, and I very highly suggest an audit trail of how that ID was edited.

Re:Not enough content

[phantomfive]

fwiw I wrote a really nice book review that never got accepted and I'm kind of bitter about that :)

Re:Not enough content

[whipslash]

Thanks for the feedback

Re:Not enough content

[Wolfrider]

--We already have that; in fact I've done that in the past. You can post (at least logged-in) comments on Firehose stories before they get accepted for submission. Not sure about AC.

Re:Not enough content

[swb]

You laugh. but I seem to remember back 10+ years ago, there were more stories more often. The reason you hit on the reload button was the same reason the lab rat presses the lever for the food dispenser with cocaine in it, you hit the button and got instant gratification.

It was also a terrible risk to productivity -- you just *knew* if you hit reload, there would likely be some new story, and they were a total rabbit hole of reading comments, writing comments, looking at web sites mentioned in the comments, then their links....and then you went back to the main page and hit reload again.

In addition to less frequent updates, there's a loss of focus in story subject matter, way too much drift into social media hot button topics, political rants, and so on. Some can be interesting, but what's the *technology* angle?

I suppose the more general hazard is the for-profit nature, which aims for large user bases and therefore lowers submissions to the more common denominator. It would be nice to see more technical topics of a more sophistication. I wanna learn something I don't know.

Re:Not enough content

[Wolfrider]

--Sounds good to me. I've been here since like 1998 and only started getting into the Firehose when I added it to the right-side bar last year or so. Making people more aware of it is probably a good idea.

Re:Not enough content

[MobyDisk]

We have half the commenters complaining about the low quality of articles, and you 2 jump in asking for more articles. These two things are incompatible. If you want more stories on the front page, then start submitting content!

Re:Not enough content

[whipslash]

Yeah you're right. Thanks

Re:Not enough content

[arth1]

How about showing a few firehose stories on the front page that have reached critical mass in terms of popularity?

How can you prevent that popularity from having been reached through improper means?

It wouldn't take me long to write a script that bumped up slashvertising posts on the firehose from a few hundred sockpuppet accounts. Having a human editor[*] that makes the final decision seems like a good preventative measure.

Anything done through automation can be thwarted through automation.

[*]: By "an editor, I don't mean poor Timothy, but an actual staff - Timothy must be a wreck after running the ship 24/7 the last few days. Send him home for a week.

Re:Not enough content

[Anonymous Coward]

Well yeah, for whatever value of critical mass ( I kinda assumed it already worked this way, mostly).

But more to the idea of if it is a particular slow day, looking back at older firehose submissions is going to be the best bet.

You might even not move as many stories to the front page if there are numerous good submissions at once.

Re:Not enough content

[Harlequin80]

In theory yes. However it could be a real target for abuse by bots and undesirables.

Re:Not enough content

[deek]

I'd go for this. Sounds like it could be interesting.
Of course, you have to worry about firehose voting being abused. Though rather than trying to second-guess what could go wrong, try it out, and see how the community react to it.

Re:Not enough content

[whipslash]

There will be a human editor still at all times. This would just be to get some interesting/popular content onto the front page and get people discussing it when a story hasn't been posted in x amount of hours. It would be regularly monitored for abuse.

Re:Not enough content

[whipslash]

We would keep it monitored at all times by both human and programmatic means so that it's not abused

Re:Not enough content

[whipslash]

Yes I think you're right. Proper thresholds would be set so that the item would have to actually be really popular and interesting before it was promoted to the front page. Once it was on the front page it would be clear it was a firehose promoted article. We'd also set limits so only x amount would be promoted in a certain period of time. And of course we'd monitor it with an actual human and programmatically to prevent abuse.

Re:Not enough content

[bhiestand]

That's a good point and something we will look at. Should we weight firehose voting more heavily so that highly voted stories make the front page regardless of an editor?

That would make me nervous. Is there already some sort of firehose widget that can show the top stories in firehose?

To address "helping people post quality front page material", there may be room for a stackoverflow-style editing system. Maybe allow high karma users with a good moderating history to make edits (attributed to the user)? Could work well with simple guidelines and something akin to metamoderation.

Or just get a few more trusted editors and have them actually edit.

Re:Not enough content

[serviscope_minor]

There's not enough content on the front page every day

Maybe... but maybe not. I think everyone here agrees that the thing about slashdot is the comments. With too many stories, the comments might get spread too thin, especially if the stories disappear off the top too fast. There's also the thing where unless a story has tons of comments, more or less no moderating happens once it's past about half way down the page. So, slow, in depth, insightful conversations between technically knowledgable people languish at +2 (i.e. the default).

Re:Not enough content

[AmiMoJo]

It would be nice to see some more non-US content on the front page. I post a few Japanese and Chinese stories now and then. Okay, I appreciate there is a language barrier, but it's interesting to see what other countries are doing and often the tech is really interesting (linear motor trains, 8k video broadcasts, moon landings etc.)

We get some European news, but I'm sure there must be interesting stuff happening in other parts of the world.

We could also broaden the scope a bit. It looks like Microchip is buying Atmel, and there have been a lot of purchases/mergers in the electronics sector lately. Little mention of it on Slashdot though, even though there are definitely some electronics geeks here.

Re:Not enough content

[jrumney]

Yeah, an option in preferences is a good idea, maybe a sliding scale for how much firehose content to include. For some of us, the fact that stories get filtered through human editors is a feature, and the quantity of stories is not a problem. I wouldn't mind seeing one or two of the top rated firehose stories on the front page, but others, who have more time to digest more stories (or perhaps the same amount of time, but don't bother with the comments so much) might want to see more.

Re:Not enough content

[drinkypoo]

I rarely bother to submit a story because I know from experience that inferior submissions posted after mine will frequently get accepted instead. Why bother?

Re:Not enough content

[rastos1]

What I'd like is an option in preferences to have the highest firehose voted stories included on the front page.

Isn't this what Firehose Slashbox does?

Re:Not enough content

[Anonymous Coward]

That would depend on the job, for some of us jobs have more... awkward times than those in the normal 9-5 scene. Me for example, i currently temporarely work in a dive store (yes im IT person but jobs around here are pretty much extinct at the moment) Which means during the summer i have no clue what a day off is. Where as in winter i go to work... but i can basically do whatever i want since nobody comes in.

Re:Not enough content

[Painted]

It's pretty bad, to be sure. But at least they pay us... :-)

Re:Not enough content

[Quirkz]

That's a shame. Unless it's totally off topic or incoherent, something like a book review should almost always be accepted. It's free content, it's educational, and it's an opportunity for discussion of something that's usually not strictly a repeat of common headlines.

Re:Not enough content

[phantomfive]

Thanks :)

Re:Not enough content

[Anonymous Coward]

/. need this, add it: Other forums do identifying who issues upmods or downmods. If users can't stand behind their moderations they don't deserve modpoints. Too many sockpuppets as arth1 notes are here and we all know it. They downmod anybody that they can't prove wrong too. If they used facts to back themselves that's ok but they don't and modbomb instead. Mods are too easily abused by those using multiple accounts farming karma to mod their main account up and to mod down anyone who gets the better of them somehow adversely affecting their agenda. Everyone knows advertisers have been caught doing it for example.

Re:Not enough content

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on the results of online polls, Ron Paul looked like he was going to be president in 2008. Reality was, of course, very different. The problem with letting the firehose voting determine front page stories, is that the system can be gamed by an enthusiastic group with little initial or no investment in Slashdot-as-a-community. Despite the complaints about editors, they do a pretty reasonable job of encouraging relevant stories.

Sorry to post as AC, but I've moderated here.

Re:Not enough content

[MachineShedFred]

You must be new here....

Re:Not enough content

[DerekLyons]

The temptation will be to push them as a default option, but resist that temptation.

Amen. Slashdot will benefit most from a blended system - stories upvoted from the firehose with their summaries checked/corrected by an editor (an actual editor not a meatware approval robot), as well as stories chosen by an editor and pushed to the front page because their intrinsic value/interest or their time sensitivity. In this Internet 2.0 world, the temptation to give yourself over completely to letting the users do all the work is a temptation - but the 'net is littered with corpses of sites that tried that. We want, nay need, a site with a firm and consistent editorial hand and editorial policy that keeps and promotes the good stuff and gets rids of the cruft (E.G. mdsolar's constant anti-nuclear trolling.)

Re:Not enough content

[Harlequin80]

As long as it doesn't become so much of a resource pit that it stops other features. Of course only you know what level of resources you're willing to spend on Slashdot.

Re:Not enough content

[Anonymous Coward]

Very few stories are scheduled for the US night (or the European day), and then when you hit the European evening, the front page suddenly starts updating.

Can we have 3-4 stories more between 6 - 12 UTC? It's practically dead here during the day. I only have yesterday's stories to read then.

(Although frankly, I disagree with the GP's solution. I think we have enough stories per day already.)

By the way, the firehose is full of Indian-originated spam during the E-day. Then someone comes in the E-evening and clears them off in one fell swoop.

Skub

[Mantrid42]

I'd like to see more articles about skub.

Re:Skub

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Is this the modern equivalent of shouting "BABA BOOEY!"?

Re:Skub

[PopeRatzo]

I'd like to see more articles about new technologies, such as BOFA.

Re:Start with removing the malware from SourceForg

[whipslash]

That's being fixed as we speak. In fact, we've removed the DevShare program altogether already. Now we're working to remove bundled installers added by the project owners.

No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[Stonent1]

Seriously.

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[Stonent1]

Oh yeah and buck feta.

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[whipslash]

Can you give me an example of this?

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[whipslash]

Check the department.

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you give me an example of this?

http://slashdot.org/~Nerval's+Lobster/

Every comment links to dice.com, does he work for you guys?

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[alvinrod]

Just look at the user profile and submission history. Every single submission in the first three pages contains at least one link to Dice. Even if it's not paid, it's pretty damned sad.

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[whipslash]

He might have worked for DICE. We are not DICE so those won't be around anymore.

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[OzPeter]

Its not just Nerval. There are other frequent posters who only link to particular sites, and who never actually commented on anything. Nerval was one, the Hackaday guy was another. Just do a scan of the prolific story posters and look for patterns

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[whipslash]

Are these making the front page or just the popular section of the firehose? If they were making the front page I can assure you that won't be the case going forward

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[OzPeter]

There have been in the past (can't really speak for now yet) a lot of articles that made the front page and seemed to have bypassed the firehose. Those articles tended to be crap, and had submitters that always posted links to particular websites. The submitters and said stories were universally derided but they still kept coming. Nerval was a prime example, but there were others EG The Hackaday guy and people like Bennet Hasselton. It was things like that that gave us all a bad feeling about /.

(Now that I think about it, the bypassing the firehose wasn't the problem - it was the low quality of story)

If you are cleaning up your act as you say (and I really believe that based on your engagement) then all you need to do is correlate individuals with high submission rates against the domains that their stories come from, and ask is this reasonable?

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the department.

Please promote everyone in that department.

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[adolf]

Are you old enough to remember when the Internet broke and gave up on 9/11/01, except for /., which was the only place to find news other than television and radio?

Will /. be able to weather a similar storm in the future? Or is it on the same cloud infrastructure(s) as everyone else is now?

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[whipslash]

Yes our infrastructure is sound enough to weather a storm like that. Hopefully its not a similar storm, however

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[Anonymous Coward]

I appreciate that you're asking about this.

szczys -> hackaday.com
itwbennett -> csoonline.com
snydeq -> infoworld.com

I don't know whether their front-page-posted submissions are voted up through the firehose. But, I will say that I do notice the frequency of their submissions appearing on the front page. The frequency makes me feel like Slashdot has (had?) an affiliate relationship with those sites. If that were the case, then I'd feel a lot better if such submissions were tagged with a disclaimer to indicate that an affiliate relationship is present.

If an affiliate relationship is not present, then why is Slashdot just giving away traffic to these domains with such frequency? Honestly, I feel like many of the submissions from these posters are just op-eds / clickbait, not "news for nerds". I get the feeling that if there's no actual formal affiliate relationship between Slashdot and those sites, then these submitters are simply taking advantage of Slashdot to siphon traffic to their sites. I don't appreciate that.

If these articles make it to the front page because they are legitimately voted-up through the firehose... then, fine.

Thanks for listening.

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[oneiros27]

And don't forget

coondoggie -> networkworld.com

He bothers me *way* more than szczys.

Szczys will actually reply to comments in his submissions (although I'd be interested to know if these folks ever comment in articles that they *didn't* submit).

Whereas coondoggie hasn't actually participated in a discussion since 2008 ... just a bunch of rewritten press releases to leach traffic to network world. (owned by the same company as infoworld ... and snydeq hasn't commented since 2010 ... and writes obnoxious clickbait titles).

What bothers me the most is when there are so much better write-ups of a given event / topic / whatever out there ... and slashdot is only linking to some crappy version written by someone who doesn't actually understand it. I seem to recall a few times when CmdrTaco would add new links to the bottom of articles after the article had been frontpaged ... it helped to give people a deeper understanding of the situation. (which if this is 'news for nerds', I would assume that'd be what the audience wants ... especially when the top 5 comments are basically 'this article is a load of shit, see (x)' so we know not to waste our time on it.)

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

It seems Timothy is the only one still posting, and he's still posting every few hours. They must be mainlining redbull from an IV bag into him at this point. I'm expecting an article saying "Breaking News: Timothy has heart attack after five days as the only Slashdot Editor" or something.

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[AmiMoJo]

Bennet is the only guy who ever made me go full Kirk. People many kilometres away wondered why the sound of a guy screaming "Bennet!!!!!!" rang out over the land.

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[dave420]

This happens rather frequently. I don't want to single anyone out, but the most common one I've seen is MojoKid. He is (apparently) the editor-in-chief at HotHardware.com. All his submissions link to HotHardware.com, even if just to a tiny article which then links to the content's actual source. There is no mention of his affiliation in any of his posts (that I have seen, at least), but it is rather obvious just from his posting pattern alone.

Plus thanks for listening to the community! Years ago Slashdot was a great site full of incredible expertise and experience, but now it seems to be slipping into a hate-fest filled with accusations, barbarity, and hubris. I've been visiting Slashdot since the late 90s (under a couple of different, lost accounts), and the change is rather obvious. Just go back to tech stories from back then and look at the difference in comments.

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[jafiwam]

Yes our infrastructure is sound enough to weather a storm like that. Hopefully its not a similar storm, however

In case you weren't here for that... I recall a stripped "emergency mode" that had one or two stories that were about the event and NOTHING ELSE was done on the site and all the rest of the stuff turned off. Other stories were temporarily removed. I don't know what happened to advertisements (or if there were any) at the time, those need to be within your control to shut off as well.

Most other major news sites were offline or so slow as to be useless. Some of them were using advanced load balancing technology at the time (Akamai?) and it didn't help.

Slashdot was one of the few places that allowed for collecting information from "the hive" and getting first hand reports by people nearby.

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[Trailer Trash]

The problem that is correlated to this is a lot of these sorts of submitters also would submit a story about a story, just clickbait to bring traffic to their own site. It was doubly frustrating because for many such stories there were rejected submissions that actually went straight to the source.

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[Maow]

Check the department.

This raises a point of irritation: when the comment link got moved to the top (instead of below the story on the front page - a bad move IMHO), the Department ended up getting truncated most of the time.

For example, I see this:

Posted by whipslash on 2016-02-02 17:42 from the

It'd be nice if the link to comments were moved back to below the story so we can read the story and never have to scroll back up to click on link to see comments.

Thank you and I wish you a lot of luck with the future of Slashdot!

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[whipslash]

I will keep a look out for this stuff. Thanks for the feedback

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[desdinova 216]

lately there's been someone who always posts links to Forbes, and usually gets lambasted because of Forbes' policy regarding ad blockers

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[mu51c10rd]

Nervals Lobster was apparently a Dice account...their submissions were typically not worth of this site, and usually linked to a Dice-owned website.

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[whipslash]

Yeah those won't happen anymore. I'll make sure to keep an eye out

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[RyoShin]

THANK YOU. This alone has improved /. twice over.

If you're also going to ignore "submissions" from Bennett Hasstleton, four times.

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[whipslash]

Most likely. Hey you can change your signature now too :)

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[RyoShin]

Yeah, I noticed that when the announcement first happened but have been too lazy to do that. Thanks for the reminder, I'll do that now. :)

Re:No more paid posts by Nervals Lobster

[whipslash]

Kewl

HTTPS support

[Cutriss]

Because seriously.

Re:HTTPS support

[whipslash]

This is 100% already on our list.

Re:HTTPS support

[new_01]

Please keep it optional. I work in a place that routes all https through a single server which makes all sites that default to https extremely slow. All non https traffic is speedy.

Re:HTTPS support

[kinko]

I remember that doing MITM of vanilla http traffic to slashdot was one method that the spooks were using to inject browser exploits, when they were targeting IT professionals at 'interesting' companies. so I think https everywhere would be important :)

Re:HTTPS support

[Bender0x7D1]

If you do implement both HTTP and HTTPS, if you could add something on the page that indicates what you are using, it would be appreciated. Yes, I know the browser will let you know, but I would like something slightly more intrusive just in case.

Re:HTTPS support

[disccomp]

You could use a separate subdomain: secure.slashdot.org, just make that host default to https. But a looming problem is that browser vendors may start making non-https look bad: http://thevarguy.com/secure-cl... I suppose the inverse could be done too, default to https on the regular address and have a subdomain dedicate to non-https.

Re:HTTPS support

[Prune]

I think parent is referring to Strict Transport Security (HSTS), which is pretty trivial to configure on a web server (HTTPS Everywhere is a browser feature).

Re:HTTPS support

[fibonacci8]

Really hoping you meant obtrusive rather than intrusive.

Re:HTTPS support

[mykepredko]

Could somebody mod this more than +5 Insightful?

Pretty ironic for a geek site to have such poor HTML5 support.

Re:HTTPS support

[johnsnails]

This^^

Re:HTTPS support

[footNipple]

Maybe I'm dense on this, but why is https important?

Re:HTTPS support

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'm dense on this, but why is https important?

Prevents man-in-the-middle attacks, avoids the issue of an upcoming change to Chrome that will raise warning messages to the user whenever they visit a non-https site.

Re:HTTPS support

[MightyMartian]

I think haviYOU ARE BROWSING UNENCRYPTEDing frequent alYOU ARE BROWSING UNENCRYPTEDerts informing you that you are browsYOU ARE BROWSING UNENCRYPTEDing unenYOU ARE BROWSING UNENCRYPTEDcrypted would work juYOU ARE BROWSING UNENCRYPTEDst fine.

Re:HTTPS support

[Anonymous Coward]

Optional is fine, but I suspect few people have this issue, so please still make it the default.

Re:HTTPS support

[footNipple]

Of course you're right. I suppose I was wondering why it was important for Slashdot to offer that type of access. Maybe people use the site differently than I do... :)

Re:HTTPS support

[Melkman]

While you're at it please add IPv6 support too. IPv4 is getting slow here with NAT up on NAT.

Two simple suggestions.

[minkowski76]

Fresh, solid and intelligent articles on TECH, and a banning of any and all trolls. Start there.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[grub]

The troll problem is handled by the excellent moderation system, set your threshold higher and you needn't worry about goatse links and the like. Personally I read at -1, Raw and Uncut because I'm a masochist and often find some funny stuff down in the gutter.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[sunderland56]

This.

You have a wonderful feeback loop on slashdot. Editors post an article about foobar. The article gets 437 comments; so clearly the community is interested in foobar, and might want to see more of them. Conversely, if only 23 comments are posted, maybe foobar just isn't a thing.

Of course you need to actually *read* some of the comments. If there are 437 comments, but 400 of them are "foobar sucks" and "why won't foobar die", maybe you *shouldn't* post more stories.

And, if an article gets pitifully few comments: look at the headline and description. Maybe it just wasn't written well enough to make people click. Hopefully you're already tracking editors by watching how many popular and how many stupid topics they post.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[BarbaraHudson]

Trolls have always been an integral part of slashdot, and part of the "uncensored" appeal of the site. "First they came for the trolls ..."

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[grub]

Trolls have always been an integral part of slashdot, and part of the "uncensored" appeal of the site.

Agree 100%. To this day I still laugh at myself when I get suckered into a goatse/rosebud/tubgirl click. If ye can't handle the gutter, read at +2 or higher.

To reference back to an old post of mine from 2003 ''Reading /. at -1 is like driving through Cracktown in a covertible that's stuck in first gear. There's a whole culture "down here"''

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[whipslash]

All good points. Thanks.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[Anonymous Coward]

as much fun as a mosh pit and keep me coming back

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[BarbaraHudson]

I've done worse (much worse) :-) But then again, I'm evil .... ;-)

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[jc42]

Trolls have always been an integral part of slashdot, and part of the "uncensored" appeal of the site. "First they came for the trolls ..."

Yeah; one of the things I've been trying for: I've gotten troll+insightful, troll+informative, troll+funny, and funny+insightful+informative mods over the years, but I've never managed to get a troll+funny+(insightful|informative), no matter how hard I try. Part of it is starting off at level 2, so I have to get exactly 1 of each to succeed. Evicting trolls would totally end this (admittedly pointless) goal. OTOH, if the max rating were raised above 5, I'd stand a better chance of success. I've seen others manage it, so I know it's possible.

(I think I've figured out how to write "insightful" and "informative" messages that get me a "troll" mod from the overly serious or doctrinaire. But I haven't really figured out how to offend the humor-impaired while getting the humor across while talking seriously. It's sorta like trying to juggle one too many balls. ;-)

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are some pointers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAuWMzuBAI8

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[Jack Griffin]

Editors post an article about foobar. The article gets 437 comments; so clearly the community is interested in foobar, and might want to see more of them.

Not this. All this eventually achieves is a race to the bottom.
I don't want popular, or I'd be reading Bieber/Kardashian's Twitter feed. I want interesting and intelligent, regardless of popularity.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[Orgasmatron]

The data is here.

One presumes that a simple query could find the sum and average of moderation for all comments attached to a given story. Heck, the sum of metamoderation for a story should be easy to fetch too.

Correlate those with the tags or something, and you should have a good idea of what kinds of stories are popular (lots of comments), which ones produce quality discussion (better net sum and/or average of moderation), and which ones get the blood pumping (inverse average of metamoderation).

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[shanen]

Maybe they could do it with a wrinkle of the charity share funding idea? How about payment for articles? Your concern with the race condition is well founded, but my initial idea for a solution might involve two prizes funded out of the donations, again based on donors who are willing to donate for those specific prizes. The first prize might be called the "Early bird prize", a small award for the first solid report of something.

The second prize might take a few days and be more substantive, but it would be for the best published article on the topic. I guess one way to implement it would be to start by letting the editors pick the featured article on that topic, and readers who want to vote for the best article prize would have to read at least one of the other candidates before they could vote (again, with their donation).

Remember that slashdot is already holding the money, so there is no risk on their side. In this category of funding, they would be earning a cut for running the contest.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[shanen]

Second round thinking on this one. If people want to vote for the best article prize, then they have to read a second article. If one of the alternative articles is consistently willing against the current feature article on the topic, then that article may take over the top slot and become the editor's pick that people see first.

Now the voting could be done with small charity shares, say $1 charity shares against a prize of $100. First article to get 100 votes as best article gets the prize, and that's the end for that topic. The other votes just revert and those donors get the pledges back in their accounts.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[Nemyst]

It's worth pointing out, though, that a lot of the "news for nerds, stuff that matters" articles don't get a whole lot of comments because in the end what causes activity is controversy. If you have a disagreement, a point to make, something to prove/disprove, you're going to be active. If the article is just some nice cool science/tech stuff that's not in any way controversial, you'll have 20-40 comments tops.

I'd rather the articles be weighted on their own merit rather than by how many comments were posted in related stories.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[AmiMoJo]

I wouldn't necessarily take the number of comments as a sign of popularity. You can't see how many people read TFA. Maybe there just wasn't much to say. For example, I posted a story about the Chinese releasing some images from their moon lander/rover. Not much to say about it, but some really nice images to browse.

Beware of using numbers on Slashdot for anything much. There are so many sock puppets and anyone can post anonymously any time, so having a high hate:like ratio might only mean some troll decided to spend all day posting about how much they hate that thing.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[Anonymous Coward]

The moderation system is not excellent it is fucking horrific. Users can be banned from posting by other users and this is abused. You cannot leave the moderation of a site to its users. It will be abused. I registered once on slashdot and posted something perfectly reasonable that others did not agree with. I was banned. I will never register here again as long as other users do the moderating. Site staff has to do the moderating. Not users.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[Anonymous Coward]

The moderation system by nature takes time to kick in, and there's no differentiation between individual unpopular/unhelpful posts by normal users, and outright troll accounts that do nothing but aim for -5... Not to mention time and mod points spent on those posts are time/points not spent on the actual discussion.

As such, I agree with Minkowski to a point; bans should be applied a bit more liberally than they are. That said, care must be taken not to apply these to legitimate accounts with unpopular views. Allow people to have their say, but get rid of accounts that are saying nothing.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[jafiwam]

The moderation system is not excellent it is fucking horrific. Users can be banned from posting by other users and this is abused. You cannot leave the moderation of a site to its users. It will be abused. I registered once on slashdot and posted something perfectly reasonable that others did not agree with. I was banned. I will never register here again as long as other users do the moderating. Site staff has to do the moderating. Not users.

The moderation system and moderators are not the same thing. The system is the little drop down box and scores. Moderators are humans that check for flagged messages (or just see them) and act on it per policy, or per bias.

You probably ran into one of the biased SJW's that was tearing up the place. You could also just be in incoherent dick. (Your post seems quite incoherent.)

Some of that was valid removals, some was not.

So how about completely clearing the banned list because it is tainted with past poor management?

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree 100%. The trolls are a big part of the fun of this site. And trying to catch a "full mod bag" on a comment is great sport !

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[Anonymous Coward]

In support of the "comment volume" != "story quality" meme, i recall a few recent examples of very low-volume yet highly interesting stories.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[c]

Of course you need to actually *read* some of the comments. If there are 437 comments, but 400 of them are "foobar sucks" and "why won't foobar die", maybe you *shouldn't* post more stories.

Amen. I'm consistently seeing +4/+5 moderated posts calling something spam or a bullshit topic. In other words, that's logged-in users with decent karma who care enough to moderate telling you that your editors are fucking things up. That's a feedback goldmine, there. Pay attention to it.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[sunderland56]

You can't see how many people read TFA..

I'm sure that the data on page reads is available to slashdot internally. And yes, that would be excellent data to use.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[chihowa]

Articles on tech are fine, but TECH is not the only subject that falls under the "News for Nerds" umbrella (oh yeah: add that tagline back to the front page). Slashdot should run articles on a broad array of nerdy subjects including SCIENCE and MATH.

The areas that should be avoided altogether are purely political articles, which are highly toxic to the environment here, and most of the social justice type articles. If most of the comments below an article are bitching about its presence, it's a good indicator that the site would be better off without it. Even trollish tech articles like mdsolar's end up being somewhat informative. The political ones never do.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[sunderland56]

I'm consistently seeing +4/+5 moderated posts calling something spam or a bullshit topic.

I'm also tired of seeing perfectly reasonable comments moderated as -1 Troll. Expressing disagreement is not the same as trolling.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[chihowa]

Of course you need to actually *read* some of the comments. If there are 437 comments, but 400 of them are "foobar sucks" and "why won't foobar die", maybe you *shouldn't* post more stories.

Make sure that you guys take heed of this point, though. I think that Dice was under the impression that, "more comments means more ad impressions... end of story." We've seen a huge uptick in articles that don't fit the demographic in the last few years because of this, and the overall result has been regular users bailing. Pissing off your userbase is not a solid strategy for longterm profit!

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[chihowa]

I've always wanted to get a +5 Troll, which I know is technically possible. I guess I'll have to try harder...

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[whipslash]

You're right

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a tricky problem, though. Because the much-maligned controversy stories (those dealing with global warming, or politics, or SJW/Gamergate) are typically the most commented, precisely because they ARE controversial. Despite the cadre of users that always shows up on such topics to lament the departure from "News for Nerds", these are the stories that generate traffic and keep the community engaged. I for one have learned a shit-ton about economics, climate science, and politics thanks to being a long time slashdot reader and reading nerd opinions on those controversial topics.

On the other hand, a post about an uneventful rocket launch might not attract much attention in the comments, but that doesn't mean it isn't valuable.

I guess the point is - if a story is getting a lot of comments, that's because the community wants to discuss it. There's no story that has ever gotten over 500 comments that didn't have some really insightful discussion somewhere within. Truly vapid stories don't get that - the much-loathed Bennet Haselton stories rarely get over 200 comments.

So, overall: highly-discussed, controversial stories are important. It would be silly to get rid of these entirely. As a community, if we want to see different types of content, we need to "vote with our comments", by commenting more on the types of stories we most want to see.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[cras]

Personally I read at -1, Raw and Uncut because I'm a masochist and often find some funny stuff down in the gutter.

I usually read at +3 or +4, but I give extra +5 score to flamebaits. I started doing it years ago after reading about the idea from somebody else. Those posts are funny/interesting often enough that I haven't reverted it.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just modded you troll, so with the funny you're 2/3 of the way there!

Somebody else throw the man an insightful.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[Thelasko]

Fresh, solid and intelligent articles on TECH, and a banning of any and all trolls. Start there.

All tech, not just IT.

Re:Two simple suggestions.

[0100010001010011]

How do you handle your triggers?

make nobeta the default

[smoothnorman]

It's lamentably inconsistent with the business sense of "moving forward", but it should be stated that the old "no_beta" slashdot was superior in nearly every way. That is, the less you manage to do, the more the loyal old farts (myself among them) will sing your praises. Make glitzy choices which head opposite to a clean text interface and you will lose four geeks to only one newbie gained.

Re:make nobeta the default

[whipslash]

That's the purpose of this post. To better understand what the "old farts" want. No glitzy changes are in store. Just solid bug fixes and obvious feature improvements that are brought to our attention.

Re:make nobeta the default

[BarbaraHudson]

Beta still exists? And worse, you're still seeing it? Both slashdot and you are doing it wrong :-)

Re:make nobeta the default

[smoothnorman]

of course you and i are "doing it right". but clear your cookies and leave the "nobeta=1" off your url and you'll see the TMZ/USAToday version of slashdot

Re:make nobeta the default

[nameer]

A 7 digit UID is now a loyal old fart? This site has changed. (Do we still do my UID is lower than your's any more?)

Re:make nobeta the default

[OzPeter]

A 7 digit UID is now a loyal old fart? This site has changed. (Do we still do my UID is lower than your's any more?)

You betcha we still do. Mind you I'm scared of waking up the really low UIDs

Re:make nobeta the default

[whipslash]

Hell yeah we do my UID is lower than your's. BRB... getting a lower UID.

Re:make nobeta the default

[Applehu Akbar]

I haven't seen beta for months (good riddance!) but a more relevant interface critique is: can we eventually have a mobile interface that doesn't suck horribly? At least on tablets.

Re:make nobeta the default

[clovis]

A 7 digit UID is now a loyal old fart? This site has changed. (Do we still do my UID is lower than your's any more?)

You betcha we still do. Mind you I'm scared of waking up the really low UIDs

Then don't walk on our graves.

Re:make nobeta the default

[trogdor8667]

A 7 digit UID is now a loyal old fart? This site has changed. (Do we still do my UID is lower than your's any more?)

You betcha we still do. Mind you I'm scared of waking up the really low UIDs

Crap. You woke me up!

Re:make nobeta the default

[Anonymous Coward]

This old fart wants a user interface that (a) works without javascript and (b) does not require me to log in order to enable it.

For years now the bottom of every comments pages have said this to me:

"Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to turn on Classic Discussion System in your preferences instead."

But you can't do that without logging in. If system is smart enough to recognize that I have javascript disabled, it is should be smart enough to automatically serve me noscript-friendly pages.

FYI noscript is the 3rd most popular add-on to firefox and the reason is pretty simple - over the last decade and a half 99.9% of all browser exploits have had javascript as a necessary component. Disabling javascript is the single best security practice anyone can do. Slashdot should make it easy for people to use the website more securely.

Also it would be nice if the front page could be set to never collapse any stories. Collapsed stories are just a waste of mouse clicks, there are so many stories on the front page anyway that there is nothing to be gained by collapsing some of them. We still have to scroll a bunch anyway, saving 20 lines out of 200+ is not worth the hassle of even a single extra mouse-click.

Re:make nobeta the default

[JustOK]

it's just implied.

Re:make nobeta the default

[Wolfrider]

--Eh? Say what now?

Re:make nobeta the default

[Orgasmatron]

Kids these days got no respect.

This story seems to have dragged a bunch of 4s out of retirement. I'm impressed.

Re:make nobeta the default

[Anonymous Coward]

"mobile interface that doesn't suck horribly"

the stars say, unlikely

Re:make nobeta the default

[thinkwaitfast]

I was here pre-UID (back when slashdotting was a common occurrence). At the time many were railing against them and voted never to get one. I held out until the 5 year meetup and lost it soon after. I'm on my second now. It's interesting that cultural change.

Re:make nobeta the default

[Common Joe]

I haven't replied to any thread on Slashdot since I last screamed "Fuck Beta" as often as I could over a year ago. I believe I logged in once when Slashdot said they had removed Beta. (It didn't look like it to me.) I'll occasionally look at a story if something looks interesting on my RSS feed. I don't come to the website except to log in. It's been a long time since I've actually visited.

Want to show a really good faith move to attract the "old farts" back? When Soylent News was formed, they took the old Slashdot code and saw it hadn't been updated in years, and was severely broken.

Open source it again. Put a nice link on the website in an easy to find location. As a matter of fact, make it a front news story once you've done it. If you think that this is a bad move because you need to keep the code close to your chest so you don't have another split off like Soylent News, then you don't understand the "old farts" and they are not your target audience.

And even after you've done that, it will still take time for the old farts to trust you. Trust is not earned with a single action nor in a short period of time.

Re:make nobeta the default

[Etcetera]

A 7 digit UID is now a loyal old fart? This site has changed. (Do we still do my UID is lower than your's any more?)

You betcha we still do. Mind you I'm scared of waking up the really low UIDs

We lurk... waiting for the moment to strike.

Re:make nobeta the default

[Trepidity]

According to this article, as of 2011, there were a little over 200 users with 3-digit UIDs who had posted in the past year (i.e. 2010-2011). Not too bad a percentage considering those accounts would all have been about 14 years old by that point. Wonder what it is now. Probably a bit lower.

Re:make nobeta the default

[AmiMoJo]

My biggest regret in life is not registering earlier. I read for years without logging in, not realizing I could have simply reached out and grabbed something so valuable as a 5 digit ID.

Re:make nobeta the default

[sad_]

This story seems to have dragged a bunch of 4s out of retirement. I'm impressed.

good to see you guys again! :P

Re:make nobeta the default

[dave420]

I've done that and I still get the old Slashdot... I think I saw Beta once and never since.

Re:make nobeta the default

[Zappy]

No we don't.

Re:make nobeta the default

[Not-a-Neg]

I wonder if there's a market for selling smaller UIDs the same way people sell MMORPG characters?

Re:make nobeta the default

[CyberKnet]

I became scared the day someone thought my UID was low.

I also then immediately lamented the 3+ years I lurked without registering :)

Now be quiet, before you wake the four digi... damn. They're already rising.

Re:make nobeta the default

[Anonymous Coward]

if you change anything please NO JAVASCRIPT or at least have it degenerate but still be useful.
If I need JS to post (which I occasionally do) then I won't post.
If I can't read it with JS disabled, I'm gone.
ecce signum
- loyal mostly-lurker

Re:make nobeta the default

[Anonymous Coward]

Username checks out...

Re:make nobeta the default

[MachineShedFred]

Mine is lower than yours.

But only just.

Re:make nobeta the default

[GPS Pilot]

You can walk on my grave, clovis. But everybody with a 5000+ UID: get off our graves!

Re:make nobeta the default

[Slacker]

This story seems to have dragged a bunch of 4s out of retirement. I'm impressed.

good to see you guys again! :P

I'm not dead yet! I feel...happy!

Re:make nobeta the default

[Anonymous Coward]

It's lamentably inconsistent with the business sense of "moving forward", but it should be stated that the old "no_beta" slashdot was superior in nearly every way. That is, the less you manage to do, the more the loyal old farts (myself among them) will sing your praises. Make glitzy choices which head opposite to a clean text interface and you will lose four geeks to only one newbie gained.

It's perfectly consistent with moving forward.

The U.S. repeal of the 18th amendment to the constitution was a step forward, was it not?

Sorry for the lazy AC post.

Ossified community

[Bayoudegradeable]

I don't mean this in a bad way; as soon as you try some great tinkering you will have killed off what is left of the original slashdot. If you dream of attracting new members and new soaring metrics, well, what we think won't matter. If you don't want to run this into the ground then why fix what might not be broken? At least someone sold the property and got paid for it... as for some dream of crazy traffic numbers... perhaps that ship has sailed. News for nerds, stuff that matters.... why not just keep that comin'

Re:Ossified community

[whipslash]

By "tinkering" we're aiming to fix bugs, and add oft-requested features (https) etc. We're not trying to reinvent Slashdot here.

Re:Ossified community

[Anonymous Coward]

By "tinkering" we're aiming to fix bugs, and add oft-requested features (https) etc. We're not trying to reinvent Slashdot here.

That's what I wanted to hear!

Re:Ossified community

[PopeRatzo]

Give back the subscribe feature so we can pay money to avoid ads. It hasn't worked in ages. I used to like to give other commenters gift subscriptions if they said something I found particularly entertaining or enlightening. It was like moderating, but with cash.

Re:Ossified community

[nmb3000]

Give back the subscribe feature so we can pay money to avoid ads. It hasn't worked in ages. I used to like to give other commenters gift subscriptions if they said something I found particularly entertaining or enlightening. It was like moderating, but with cash.

Another vote here for reviving and revitalizing the (now defunct) subscription feature. Let users pay to remove all advertising, keep some old perks (early viewing articles was great) and come up with some other cool perks. Consider updating the system to allow both time-based (e.g., monthly) as well as the old pageview-based option. A significant number of registered users abhor advertising and (at least claim to) want to support sites directly.

Oh, and fix the damned user account settings and preferences pages. It's embarrassing how broken they are, and how long they've been that way (years). It's impossible to find settings and some (like subscriptions and comment moderation options) seem to have been ninja-removed.

Re:Ossified community

[whipslash]

Good idea...

Re:Ossified community

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with the grandparent that tinkering would kill what's left of the original Slashdot. Tinkering and sometimes implementing sweeping changes (Slash 2.0) was always behind the development of Slashdot. I'd say Slashdot was ruined when corporate decisions decided the direction of Slashdot and (I'd guess) budget cuts meant there weren't enough resources to tinker anymore. A lot of things like the unique moderation system exist because Malda tinkered with a lot of new ideas until finding something that worked. Also, please make Slashcode a community project again and open the source. Let the community help you tinker and improve the site. Tinkering is in the spirit of the original Slashdot. Changes based on corporate decisions and stagnant site development are the problems. Users will understand if you try something in good faith and it fails. Listen to users, admit mistakes, undo them, and people will forgive and keep participating. Slashdot users are smart enough to distinguish between an honest mistake and corporate greed.

Re:Ossified community

[Anonymous Coward]

By "tinkering" we're aiming to fix bugs, and add oft-requested features (https) etc. We're not trying to reinvent Slashdot here.

Where did I hear that lately? Microsoft? Adobe? Apple?
It's just a minor patch for a little know bug. Just apply it and don't worry about the new UI, the loss of functionality and such nonsense.

Re:Ossified community

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

HTTPS will soon really be required as both Chrome and Firefox are soon going to make the non-secured warnings far more visible. It would be an embarrassment for one of the oldest tech sites to not stay caught up.

Re:Ossified community

[castionsosa]

This. Please.

Slashdot is one of a number of websites (Zam and bikeforums are others) which are worth supporting directly. I'd be more than willing to pay either by the page, or for periods of time.

Re:Ossified community

[whipslash]

Yeah I'm aware of the Chrome and Firefox policy changes. We will be https soon.

Re:Ossified community

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Your multiple responses give me (and from what I read, many others) high hopes of a far better Slashdot under your companies guidance!

Re:Ossified community

[whipslash]

Thanks!

Re:Ossified community

[MachineShedFred]

Oh, then here's a quick hit list to endear the new corporate overlords onto the masses around here:

1. Unicode support. This should have been in place a decade ago.

2. HTTPS. Seriously now - we're expected to log in with a password, but you're probably still doing some half assed MD5 hashing or something that was broken years ago.

3. Revert whatever was done to metamoderation to what it was before. I haven't even seen anything about metamod in years, even though I used to see it all the time. Is it hidden now? Is it the pot of gold at the end of some rainbow you can never reach?

4. If you want a good laugh, check the box that says "Disable Advertising" and then witness that the front page is still festooned with ads. Big bar across the bottom of click-bait garbage I'd expect to see on Yahoo News. Late-loading boxes on the top-right of the front page that displace my messages right as I'm trying to click on them. Either just get rid of this lie-in-the-form-of-a-checkbox, or make it actually disable advertising.

5. Move the poll back to being a SlashBox on the right side, so that it can always be seen on the front page. It's useless to have it embedded as a story that crawls off the front, where people will stop responding. Larger sample size means more interesting results.

6. Hire at least one editor that understands basic spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Or, send a couple of the ones you've got to a remedial English course at the local community college. Yes, typos happen. No, not with the shocking frequency that we see from these "editors."

7. Contrary to what some others have said, low comment count doesn't necessarily correlate to the popularity of a subject. I will read discussions about topics that I have no comments to make, because I don't know enough about the subject to add anything to the discussion. The great thing about this: I'm learning about it right then, so that in the future I might be able to intelligently discuss it.

8. In the current moderation system, there is no way to denote that something is factually incorrect, so Troll, Overrated, Flamebait, etc. get misused. There should be a -1, Incorrect mod; if you've taken care of #3 on this list, you already have a system in place to prevent abuse.

9. The "lameness filter" really sucks, and prevents people from being able to post code snippets. This seems antithetical to a site for nerds that is 'sister' to an Open Source hosting site.

10. Rely less on the 'firehose' voting and more on curated content. Trust your editors - even though we bitch and moan about stories from $EDITOR, they've been here a while and understand the crowd. If they find something interesting, other people here probably will too. I would imagine that MANY people never even bother with the firehose, because the signal-to-noise ratio is terrible.

11. When relying on your editors, encourage them to editorialize less. This is what comments are for, and their opinion should be nowhere near the posted summary. Countless examples are available, but the most famous would be the introduction of the iPod which famously was disregarded by an editor here as "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

12. If a story on the front page is repeatedly tagged as "dupe" it should probably get called to an editor's attention. Or, instead of putting a bandage on the problem, come up with a better way to prevent dupe story posts.

That's about all I can think of right now.

Re:Ossified community

[whipslash]

Thanks for the feedback. Hope to address all of these soon

Re:Ossified community

[cwsumner]

I use it enough, that I would be willing to buy a subscription...

Re:Ossified community

[sootman]

I'm late to the party but I'm hoping that the new powers that be will read every comment once the story has closed. Most of my ideas are either relatively simple code fixes, or fixable by human attention. And I think you'll find that unlike "ban ACs"/"keep ACs", there would be little debate around any of these.

Let's see, how many of my ideas from eight years ago are still relevant?

1. Though it has a long, proud tradition, dupes should be avoided. Slashdot has gotten much, much better in the last few years, but it still happens every so often.

2. Spelling and grammar. PLEASE. And make sure the headlines are parse-able by humans.

3. Useful links. Don't link to a blog post about a blog post about a blog post about a story, unless they have useful commentary that you're highlighting. Just go right to the original. (Or a really good description/summary of it, if the original source is very technical, like a multi-hundred-page published paper.)

4. Fact-checking. Make sure this isn't a hoax. Also, in general, things should be new. Just because some guy just discovered something that someone else posted in 2011, that doesn't mean you need to post about it today.

5. Read the comments. Update the story as needed. If a bunch of people write to say that a story is wrong, fix it!

Other things not mentioned by me in 2008:

1. Use standard tags in standard ways. I think the <i> tag is still broken, though it works in preview mode. And neither

1. ordered

nor

• unordered

lists work.

2. Add a "-1, factually incorrect" mod.

3. Add a rich-text editor. Just a simple one -- bold, ital, underline, UL, OL, subscript, superscript, quote, link, and a few others. (Yes, I know the "few others" are subject to much debate. But you can ship a few and revise alter as needed, right?) And/or support some flavor of Markdown. But allow HTML, because Markdown still sucks for common tasks like linking to URLs that end in parentheses, which many Wikipedia articles do. Eg., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

4. I'm not going to say that unicode support is easy, but it's probably not too hard to support a few more basic characters like smart quotes and em- and en-dashes so it doesn't look like ass when you copy and paste text from another website. Decent rich-text editors usually have this built in.

5. Make a decent mobile view. DO NOT a) worry about supporting every feature or b) make it overly app-like. (Related: make mobile apps?) ALL I WANT is to see a story's headline, the body, who posted it and when, and the number of comments. Something like this http://pixelcity.com/slashdot/... which I made years ago but got tired of maintaining after the Nth code change. Here is my old project page, which was one PHP script. AvantSlash does much more.

That's all I can think of for now. Just fix all that and then I'll share more ideas. :D

Re:Ossified community

[sootman]

Interesting. <i> is broken in some old places like here http://slashdot.org/journal/21... but it works in new posts today. FYI, once upon a time, someone thought it would be a good idea to treat <i> like a blockquote. Not sure why.

Re:Ossified community

[whipslash]

New powers that be are reading every comment. Great list. Thanks for the feedback

Re:Ossified community

[spork invasion]

I created a new account to start logging back in and posting. Here are some ideas:

1) The stories on here are quite a bit less interesting than they used to be. I realize that nobody will be interested in everything on here, but each story should be of interest to a large enough portion of your users to make it worthwhile. Track the number of views each story gets and share that information. Also, allow users to vote on stories posted as "interesting to me" or "not interesting to me" and share that information, too. Look for each type of story and figure out which ones don't get a lot of views and aren't interesting to many people. Perhaps aggregate that information by the tags assigned to each story. Don't post types of stories that aren't interesting to many people and don't get many views. Post more of types of stories that get lots of views and get voted up as interesting to more people.

2) Create an option to read the lowest rated posts first. Some people find trolls amusing and would like to read that stuff. But the real benefit is in Slashdot's own guidelines to moderators that they should read at -1 to mod up posts that have been unfairly modded down. It's easier to do this if you see the lowest rated posts first.

3) One of the abuses in the moderation system is the "overrated" and "underrated" mods. These exist so that if a post gets moderated up or down a lot in a short amount of time and the score is higher or lower than it should be, it can be corrected without labeling it a particular way. A good post that perhaps should be at +3 but gets modded to +5 shouldn't have to be modded troll or offtopic to correct it. That's where overrated and underrated come in. But they're also open to abuses because they don't show up in metamoderation. Essentially, you can moderate with impunity using those options. I'd suggest limiting overrated and underrated moderations to posts that have already been moderated at least twice. You can't use an underrated mod on a post that's at not at least two points below its initial score. You can't use an overrated mod on a post that's not at least two points above its initial score. Also, show the previous score of a comment in metamoderation and make these subject to metamoderation like everything.

4) Allow users with good karma to voluntarily make a post at 0 or -1. Sometimes it's worth correcting a bad post at -1 but you don't want to take a karma hit if someone mods you down for participating in that discussion. Or, perhaps, you want to post and alert moderators that someone is making abusive posts (especially goatse links or isn't posting in good faith) without getting modded down yourself.

5) Don't require users to login to see users' friends and foes. Don't require logging in to see how a post has been moderated. I see no reason for those requirements. Also, when you view how a post has been moderated, show the number of each type of moderation instead of percentages. Besides, the percentages are rounded to multiples of 10 so they often don't add up to 100% once you get more than three or so moderations. It just looks bad. Removing the login requirement and displaying the moderation count is far more transparent. Also, display which moderations have been done by editors and when are by ordinary users. Transparency is important and has been an issue in the past.

6) You've had a LOT of good suggestions for changes to this site. It's a lot of work to implement them, and probably a lot of money as well. I suspect there's a large enough following interested in this site that some users would be happy to implement suggestions for you. Slashdot's code used to be open source and was hosted on Sourceforge. That's pretty much a thing of the past for this site, and the only modern open source version is Soylent News' fork. It makes sense that a site that posts a lot of news about FOSS would be open source. It also benefits you if users contributem and I think some would. Please open the code back up.

Re:Ossified community

[whipslash]

Thanks for the feedback. We will consider all of this

Re:Ossified community

[spork invasion]

Thank you for reading my post and replying. Unfortunately, I'm skeptical that things will actually change.

I've read many users who seem to share some of the views I'm going to express. During an acquisition like this, there's a short amount of time when goodwill is afforded to the new management. In order to maintain that, we expect to see actions. I understand that modifying the code running the site takes time and changes won't be immediate. I understand that tinkering with existing features needs to be done carefully and adding new features requires thoughtful consideration. I think most reasonable people understand that.

However, there are things that can be done right now to improve the site. They include communicating with the users and improving the quality of stories posted here. It's one thing to go around and acknowledge having read people's posts. It's another to really let people know what's going on. Two longtime editors, Soulskill and sampenzus, are no longer seem to be posting here. There's been no acknowledgement to the users about what's going on. Stories continue to be of poor quality, with even more typos and outright incorrect statements than before. Here's a list of some:

• http://it.slashdot.org/story/16/01/31/061230/nsa-hacker-chief-explains-how-to-keep-him-out-of-your-system: The link in the text of the story is to an unrelated article that actually belongs to the previous story.
• http://science.slashdot.org/story/16/02/02/1322234/chinas-change-3-lander-and-yutu-rover-camera-data-released: The summary indicates that it shows pictures of the Earth's surface. That makes absolutely no sense.
• http://science.slashdot.org/story/16/02/06/1627237/giant-magellan-telescope-set-to-revolutionize-ground-based-astronomy: This includes a link to Forbes, which MANY users have protested against. Why? Because the site demands that ad blocking be disabled to view content. But Forbes has very recently (within 2016) displayed ads that contain drive-by malware.
• http://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/02/06/1550249/even-with-telemetry-disabled-windows-10-talks-to-dozens-of-microsoft-servers: The methodology of this test makes the results bogus. Telemetry wasn't disabled (set to basic) and outgoing connections were blocked at the router encouraging Windows Update and other services to try new hosts. The claims made are totally false, which is truly embarrassing to have on Slashdot's front page. Perhaps it should have been obvious that the story was suspicious because a user named "Motherfucking Shit" submitted it.

Things like obvious problems with stories could be cleaned up right away. I'm sorry, there's a lot of talk, but I don't see much going on of substance. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm skeptical that things will change and I think a lot of other users are starting to feel that way, too.

Regardless, good luck with Slashdot, I wish you and Slashdot Media nothing but the best.

Re:Ossified community

[sootman]

One more thing: all pages should function 100% and look fine when viewed with JavaScript disabled.

What I want

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me more ways to make people understand just how wrong they are when I write a reply that contradicts everything they said. Some way to really make them realize their stupidity and experience terrible shame because of it.

I think that would help your bottom line quite a lot, since that seems to be what the majority of people come to slashdot to do.

(Yes, this post is a troll. I won't apologize though, as that would violate slashdot tradition.)

Re:What I want

[whipslash]

Lol

Re:What I want

[fibonacci8]

I don't follow, could you use a car analogy?

Re:What I want

[Applehu Akbar]

Yes, I hate it when somebody is wrong on the Internet.

Re:What I want

[OzPeter]

I don't follow, could you use a car analogy?

It like his postings are a Ford that he drives and wants the ability to attach a sticker to the back window of Calvin pissing on the Chevy posts that everyone else is making

Re:What I want

[JustOK]

it's like a car.

Re:What I want

[Kohath]

I won't apologize though, as that would violate slashdot tradition.

Why even consider it? Are you a Canadian?

Re:What I want

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure: The OP wants to honk at someone like we all do at transit when that old lady won't get out of the road fast enough.

We could even add a tag!!!

(Note to the <marquee> authors: No, I'm not serious!!)

Re:What I want

[HelpTheNewOverlord]

We could even add a tag!!! And Unicode support, with *maybe* some "wikier" way to format the post so that </> is not needed anymore...

Re:What I want

[DeBaas]

Agree, /. should have a 'car analogy needed' functionality like wikipedia has 'citation needed'

Re:What I want

[Anubis IV]

On a serious note, I actually wouldn't mind a feature that allowed me to indicate I had retracted a post. Not remove it, mind you, since I should have to live with whatever idiocy I posted, but maybe change the green bar's color to a different shade of green or add an icon next to the message ID to indicate I no longer stand by what I said.

I've been corrected more times than I can count by people posting thoughtful comments that contradict what I said, and when that happens, I'd like to point people towards the responses that did the correcting, which is especially true if I've been upmodded but the responses that corrected me have not yet been.

Re:What I want

[slew]

I don't follow, could you use a car analogy?

Perhaps people want a way to force people to be seen driving around in yugo?

Don't change a damn thing..

[Anonymous Coward]

If it ain't broke.....monetize it.

Re:Start with removing the malware from SourceForg

[Kobun]

Will there be a separate "How do we fix Sourceforge" thread or do you want those questions here?

Some of this has already been said, but my top Two

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

HTTPS

Eliminate Anonymous Cowards (yea that's sacrilege here, but we're not the same community we were 10 years ago.)

OMG!

[Anonymous Coward]

More Ponies !!!

Re:OMG!

[BarbaraHudson]

Ahhh, those were the days :-)

Re:OMG!

[nmb3000]

More Ponies !!!

Offtopic? I must assume there are some moderators here who weren't around for April Fools Day in 2006. Slashdot did ponies before it was cool.

PS: Wow, that was ten years ago.

Re:OMG!

[Anonymous Coward]

"More Ponies !!!"

I would wait towards the end of March for that....
But speaking of Ponies; Slashdot has always been a Text-oriented site. I, for one, loathe the Videos. Not the idea of them, but the execution. They _have_ been getting better, (No more Flash; Yea!!!), but perhaps the next few Videos could be about _making_ Videos; as the Video Folks here learn the ropes, they can then teach the rest of the Community. Editing is important.

You still don't have JPEG/etc. support, and that is mostly a Good Thing. This is not an Imageboard. But Unicode Support, or equivalent, must be addressed at some point because one of the crippling bugs in serious discussions here is in writing, reading, and parsing Equations. These are mostly approached from the Software side, and every Language has its quirks.
Software comes _after_ the Equations are sorted, or should. But maybe a basic Equation Editor is too much to take on.
On the other hand, Unicode Art is inherently uglier than ASCII Art.

I post as AC simply because I've long forgotten my low five-digit ID, and I couldn't be bothered to create a new one in the mid seven-digit range. Cream rises on occasion, and my posting as AC makes it a little more rewarding when "Score:5 Informative" settles out. Keep AC.

Politics... at some point you may need a Cornfield, where the most obnoxious Partisans are Banned to, by IP Address, where they can Vitriol to their withered hearts content, out of sight/site of the Public.

Advertising. This is a tough one. As most Sites have a Privacy Policy, you might even implement and publish an Advertising Policy. Note that I am not opposed to Advertising, just Obnoxious Advertising. So I have a blanket Ad Blocking position, simply because I can't be bothered sorting the Good from the Bad. Well, you have ranking on Comments, why not ranking on Ads? "Score:-1 Obnoxious" could be a powerful Feedback Mechanism, when a "Score:+5 Funny" might actually be something an Advertiser would strive for. Great PR.
And Scoring Ads means Scoring Eyeballs. (Actually, that sounds painful...)

Slashdot Editors have recently come under fire for, frankly, ineptitude. _Very_ basic spelling and grammatical errors, poor summaries, and a tendency to ignore any and all comments pointing all this out.
There are some here that think that this was deliberate. If it _was_ a Conspiracy, just drop a hint or two...

Do _something_ about APK. I'm sure that since I mentioned Ad Blocking, we shall now have a few more of his pages extolling his inept Hostesses Flies. Kill Files are difficult to implement at the AC Level, which I'm sure is part of his strategy. What's this DDOS thing that I keep hearing about?

I've been in and out of Slashdot since the beginnings. I find Software, and specially Linux, very boring. I'm a Hardware kind of guy. But I would not presume to say what Slashdot should or shouldn't cover. "News for nerds, stuff that matters." is pretty broad, while still scaring the Bronies away.

Great Captcha: pinhead
Just call me Zippy

Re:OMG!

[trogdor8667]

I miss the pink April Fools /. personally.

Re:OMG!

[EzInKy]

Yes, absolutely. That was the best April Fool's ever!!

Re:OMG!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk posts on the topic at hand or in response to inferior addon users showing them many ways how hosts is better and no one proved him wrong validly technically to date. That screams of advertisers or inferior competitors bought out by them (ghostery/adblock) doing it with sockpuppets downmodding apk's posts on topic.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[whipslash]

https is coming

Fix mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Remove the mobile version of the site. When I load it on my cell phone, I spend more time trying to find the link to the full site than scanning headlines
2) Make the slider bar to show more levels of comments work on mobile

Re:Fix mobile

[whipslash]

Noted.

Re:Fix mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

Please note number 2 again. Comments are what make this site, and sometimes I like reading the -1 ones too. I have a boring train ride.

Re:Fix mobile

[ancientt]

1) Remove the mobile version of the site. When I load it on my cell phone, I spend more time trying to find the link to the full site than scanning headlines
2) Make the slider bar to show more levels of comments work on mobile

Those two things seem a little contradictory. I second the second. I'd really like a good mobile site. Making it functional would be a good start, but I'd really like to see it go beyond merely functional and turn into the site I want to use on my phone rather than the one I'd need to.

Re: Fix mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

Book I. Do not kill the mobile version. That is about the only way I read /.

Also, fix the login for the mobile version. I am kinda tired of logging in every time I want to comment non-AC.

Re:Fix mobile

[whipslash]

Got it.

Re: Fix mobile

[whipslash]

Ok got it.

Re:Fix mobile

[gl4ss]

3) make the mobile site actually lighter than the desktop site. classic site is much lighter on transfer and javascript than the mobile site.

and I posted about fixing the mobile adverts earlier. curate them. buy a vpn that gets you to view the site as it really is if viewed from europe and especially asia..

Re:Fix mobile

[Megane]

While the mobile site may not be perfect, being forced to use it simply because of user agent strings is a problem. If you are using a tablet with a large enough screen, you should have the option of using the regular site. Mobile web browsers are a lot better now than they were ten years ago.

Suggestions.

[Anonymous Coward]

The default score of AC posts should be "1."

Oh, and get rid of the mess of tracking scripts on your site.

Re:Suggestions.

[whipslash]

Noted. We'll take a look at the scripts

Re:Suggestions.

[Eristone]

Disagree with this. The reason the default score for Anonymous Cowards is 0 while a named individual is 1 goes to the whole "stand behind your comment" thing. Anonymous Cowards who post things that the group find funny, interesting or otherwise insightful get modded up fairly quickly. The ones who post trolls (unless they are good) get modded to -1 and disappear from the view of most individuals.

Now all the ad tracking scripts -- that one, can agree with somewhat - just have to find a balance, yes?

Re:Suggestions.

[BarbaraHudson]

Why make AC posts as +1. If you say something but you're too much of a coward to stand behind it, you deserve less visibility.

Re:Suggestions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't agree about the default being 1. It's better if troll comments never get read, however that means you want to make sure that at least five mods get a chance to boost AC comments early on which might mean some change to the mod system to bring them more to attention. Otherwise good AC comments get completely missed.

Re: Suggestions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because sometimes, depending on the topic, we post AC to keep our employers from firing us :)

Some of what gets mentioned probably isn't supposed to leave the meeting you attended.

Re:Suggestions.

[AHuxley]

That +1 by default for AC's is just going to keep a flood of AC's trying their luck at pushing out some message, ad's, trying to be a better sock puppet backed by some funding.
Learn to log in and have something to say, users will then add to the conversation.

Re:Suggestions.

[lgw]

Thanks for noting the scripts. I think we're all in support of some sort of revenue model to keep the site alive, but one that didn't involve creepy tracking would be appreciated.

Relatedly, please allow AC to be as anonymous as possible, Is TOR still blocked? If so, why? The mod system works well for garbage posts. Most AC posts are garbage of one srt or another, but we've had some pretty informative posts over the years from people who needed to stay anonymous. Anything to fight the tracking would be good to encourage that.

Re:Suggestions.

[MightyMartian]

No way. I want APK spam and trolling quickly downmodded. Want to have posts start above 0, use an axxount?.

Re:Suggestions.

[JazzLad]

I think it would be neat for ACs to be able to get a -2, then I can read at -1 without the goat.cx / APK type bs (reading at -1 to catch moderation abuse against logged-in users - I don't care about abuse of ACs). Duhno if this is overall a good idea, just a thought.

Re:Suggestions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk posts on the topic at hand or in response to inferior addon users showing them many ways how hosts is better and no one proved him wrong validly technically to date. That screams of advertisers or inferior competitors bought out by them (ghostery/adblock) doing it with sockpuppets downmodding apk's posts on topic!

Re:Suggestions.

[MightyMartian]

Shut up, APK

Re: Suggestions.

[BarbaraHudson]

What does that have do do with making anonymous posts default to +1? Oh, nothing. Nice troll from another AC.

Re: Suggestions.

[MachineShedFred]

Well, if moderators are doing what they are supposed to (Yeah, I know... how often does that actually happen?) they would be browsing at -1 in order to spot those kinds of comments and up-vote them accordingly.

There's already a mechanism in place for this situation.

Re:Suggestions.

[Megane]

Says the AC. Nope, AC default at 0 has been a day-one foundation of the /. moderation score system for multiple reasons. As the other guy said, "stand behind your comment". Also, we don't need "lazy ACs" who are posting AC simply because they can't be bothered to log in, and part of the reason for the 0 score is to encourage people to create an account.

Moderation score is not a popularity contest. It is to give an indication of the quality of the post. Moderation done by users is done based on the content of the post, but the source of the post is also important. A post where the user is willing to attach his name to it is inherently of higher quality than an AC post.

Whatever you do, don't ignore how the karma system works, or why we can no longer see our karma scores. The basic idea is as you get moderated up, you get a KP to record that you made a useful post. Likewise, when you get moderated down, you lose a KP because you made a bad post. If you post AC, there is nobody to change the karma points of, which is one reason why AC posts are inherently of lower quality.

If your karma goes negative, you default to 0 instead of 1, and if it goes really negative (like -10, which I think is the low cap), you start at -1. You can redeem yourself by making only good posts after that. Eventually, someone with mod points will see your good post at 0 or -1, mod you up, and you will become less negative.

If your karma goes above a certain level (I think it's +10), you can select to start at 2, which is sort of like modding yourself up. However this is really only supposed to be appropriate if you have something worth that extra point and technically it is not unreasonable to get an Overrated mod when you just leave it turned on. Karma caps at 50, and because seeing the actual number made "karma whoring" too easy, the actual number was hidden. "Gamification" just encourages bad posts, and a visible karma score was unintended gamification. (This also why increasing the maximum post mod past 5 is a bad idea, it just encourages gamification.)

Suggestion: make that +1 (post at score 2) checkbox visible when you make a post (and update its default checked state when a post is submitted). Back in the real old days of /. when we didn't have inline posting, it was always on the message posting page (I think). I just gave up years ago and left it turned off because it was too inconvenient to change for a single post.

Literal comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Newswatcher like interface for viewing messages. Ability to prioritize certain posters.

Re:Literal comment

[whipslash]

Interesting idea

Re:Literal comment

[nmb3000]

Ability to prioritize certain posters.

You can already do this actually. If you log in you can add people to your Friends list and then set your comment moderation preferences so that friends get a bonus.

Slashdot is kind of decrepit but it does have some fairly powerful configuration options (especially when you consider it had them more than 10 years ago, haha).

Thank you for asking

[Anonymous Coward]

I would just like to say... Thank you for asking. I don't really have any gripes other than make sure you display paid for posts with a clear "AD" banner or something.

Re:Thank you for asking

[whipslash]

You're welcome and thanks for the feedback. We will make sure of this.

Moderation

[WhipITGoodER]

Create a moderation system that *really* disincentivizes the crap comments. There was a day when the comments were as insightful as the best articles. Now, the comments really detract from the overall quality of the site.

Re:Moderation

[BarbaraHudson]

One person's trash is another person's gold. Even browsing at -1, the crap isn't bad enough to justify changing things. Sometimes "good enough" means what it says.

Re:Moderation

[WhipITGoodER]

Unfortunately finding good content is like searching for gold. I yearn for the old days when actual "nerds" frequented the site. There was a community of thinkers instead of virtually no community whatsoever.

Re: Moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno. I could do without the extra long gibberish posts. I'm also aware that cows go Mooo, so don't really need to see those a dozen times in any given thread.

Re:Moderation

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

I'd like to be able to browse at -1 and still not see ACs.

Re:Moderation

[david_thornley]

Back when I created an account, it seems to me that people wanted the old Slashdot then too. (I could be misremembering, of course, as that's a long time ago.) There's still plenty of nerds around here.

To quote a friend I haven't heard from in a few decades: "Things ain't what they used to be. Never were, neither."

Re:Moderation

[MachineShedFred]

There's "trash" and then true shitposting.

Someone responding with nothing but "no" or epithets, or a profane screed that doesn't actually articulate any particular point of view other than questioning the heritage of the person being replied to is a shit post, and should be moderated accordingly.

Re:Moderation

[BarbaraHudson]

And what is your point? They'll be down-modded, and you can just change your view settings so as not to see them. Besides, I've received lots of what you call "sh*tposting" personal attacks; this is just the internet - if it bothers someone that much, maybe they need to grow a thicker skin. Really, who cares what someone on the internet says about you of a personal nature? It. Doesn't. Matter.

When someone goes out of their way to post hundreds, if not thousands, of times over the years that I am a "transesticular one-eyed cyclops who must be mentally ill because they got their penis chopped off", etc. it reflects on them, not me. It quickly gets moderated to -1, which provides several pieces of important data. 1) the moderation system works as advertised. 2) the majority of slashdot users are not transphobic. 3) the people throwing rocks at transsexuals nowadays need to get a new playbook - we've heard it all before, and it just isn't working. Society has changed drastically (which is a good thing to be able to demonstrate) :-)

Re:Moderation

[MachineShedFred]

So you agree with me then. There is a such thing as shitposting, and it gets moderated accordingly in the existing system.

Enforce login to post

[MouseR]

Anonymous posting has become a haven of trolls, far from it's original goal of protecting people when discussing work conditions and the like.

Allowing anyone to post as anonymous without login simply paves the way for endless trolling. The value of the comment section has diminished greatly over the years because of stupid comments.

Enforcing authenticated login, federated from elsewhere to tender to the laziest if need be, would at least allow for some accountability by weeding out repeat abusers of the comments section.

Logged-in, members could still post with anonymity to allow a return of the original intentions.

Re:Enforce login to post

[BarbaraHudson]

The only way to really be authenticated is to have the site accept and verify personal identification to create an "authenticated account." That will really bring out the tin foil hat brigade.

Besides, most logged-in users are already anonymous cowards - your name isn't really MouseR, is it?

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, we need more stories about our fundamental right to remain anonymous on the Internet, including using anonymity services like Tor! That is particularly important in light of the Snowden revelations.

Of course, we'd require that you log in in order to post... but that has nothing to do with the real issues at stake.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Frosty Piss]

Allowing anyone to post as anonymous without login simply paves the way for endless trolling.

Set your threshold higher, such as +2, and you will not see 99% of the trolls. Those that wish to surf at -1 or zero can up-vote topical AC posts.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous posting has become a haven of trolls, far from it's original goal of protecting people when discussing work conditions and the like.

Allowing anyone to post as anonymous without login simply paves the way for endless trolling. The value of the comment section has diminished greatly over the years because of stupid comments.

Enforcing authenticated login, federated from elsewhere to tender to the laziest if need be, would at least allow for some accountability by weeding out repeat abusers of the comments section.

Logged-in, members could still post with anonymity to allow a return of the original intentions.

Oh yeah??? Well, fuck you, MouseR! Fuck you in the face!

Re:Enforce login to post

[Prune]

I vote against this. Trolls will simply use sock puppets, and there are also other reasons people may wish to make certain posts anonymously, such as self-censorship due to where one is working, etc.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

crazy.
put in any tracking silliness here, and AC transitions to all-troll all-the-time.
you'd never have the real truth step foot here again.
*poof* instant dissident extermination.

TL;DR in Soviet Amerika, Cowards Anonymize You!

Re:Enforce login to post

[wbr1]

Anonymous posting has become a haven of trolls, far from it's original goal of protecting people when discussing work conditions and the like.

Allowing anyone to post as anonymous without login simply paves the way for endless trolling. The value of the comment section has diminished greatly over the years because of stupid comments.

Enforcing authenticated login, federated from elsewhere to tender to the laziest if need be, would at least allow for some accountability by weeding out repeat abusers of the comments section.

Logged-in, members could still post with anonymity to allow a return of the original intentions.

NO NO AND NO

Anonymous is a defining feature. There are tools to tune out trolls and spam and they work (they may need fine tuning but are otherwise powerful). Do not be lazy, use them. Without the freedom to post in a TRULY anonymous fashion then speech is stifled and groupthink, echo chamber like discussion worsens. I want to be challenged by viewpoints that do not met my expectations and may run afoul of social, governmental or employment considerations. I want to be able to post them should the desire arise as well.

To repeat.. the coward should remain among us with no blocking or authentication at all.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

"Logged-in, members could still post with anonymity to allow a return of the original intentions."

Logged in and anonymous, users can still troll, as I'm doing this very second, you fucking idiot nitwit.

Despite your UID, you very obviously know jack shit about the current system, or at least any logical thought process beyond one or two steps.

If you had any brains or true logical processes, you'd still see that anonymous or not, logged in or not, trolling will happen, un-a-fucking-bated.

Oh, you're an artist (judging by your homepage.) No fucking wonder you lack the critical think-ahead skill.

Re:Enforce login to post

[MouseR]

It's actually my email account ID for many system. But my homepage really identifies me.

But the point is, if someone is going to spend time creating an account (including email verification) only to have it deleted because he abused the comments, chances are that creating another troll account (with a different email) would become bothersome.

I care not really to know that your name is Charles (or whatever) or that you know that my name is Martin-Gilles Lavoie. That's not the point.

Right now anyone can post without even logging in and that's making it really easy for the script kiddies and poorly-upbrought people in need of attention.

Re:Enforce login to post

[MouseR]

I still moderate them when asked.

Re:Enforce login to post

[MouseR]

My point exactly.

Re:Enforce login to post

[q4Fry]

No modpoints today, but I agree with this position.

Re:Enforce login to post

[ChunderDownunder]

+1 Flamebait :)

Re:Enforce login to post

[Nethead]

Ack! He's a Canadian! When did they start allowing those people on here?

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

This utterly defeats the point of anonymous. If you don't like seeing the junk, change your filter level. Some of us LIKE the junk.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Applehu Akbar]

"Besides, most logged-in users are already anonymous cowards - your name isn't really MouseR, is it?"

I would turn this around to say that screen names already give us the anonymity we need, without the need for AC posting. And...every post as a screen name becomes part of a posting history. How many times have you seen an insightful AC post and wished we could see what else that person has posted?

Re:Enforce login to post

[Jack Griffin]

Anonymous posting has become a haven of trolls, far from it's original goal of protecting people when discussing work conditions and the like.

Isn't that solved with the default post view at +2? AC's start at zero so most people never see them anyway.

Re:Enforce login to post

[AdamHaun]

I second this. The value of the comments section is (and always has been) informative commentary from people who know what they're talking about. The folks who want to read trolls can go look at 4chan or YouTube comments. Fears about groupthink are wildly unfounded -- people get modded up for "controversial" opinions all the time without any Microsoft/Apple/Google/Facebook/liberal/feminist/GNU/Linux/Gnome/KDE/Sony/BSD/Minix conspiracy stopping them.

The theory that anonymous commenting will somehow create a utopia of free speech has utterly failed. Pseudonymity is almost always good enough. I'm fine with letting logged-in users have their posts show up anonymously for the special cases.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

About 2 years ago there were paid posters that followed my login account. Within 5 minutes of my posting with my user id I would be at -1 Troll no matter what I said. Anyone moding me up would get overridden by more down mods. I post AC only since then. One of the main ones was ikanreed, he only posted 9-5 EST weekdays and any AWG posting he posted about 50 posts per article. He also literally complained about an article about a linker and got mad because the summary didn't explain what a linker was or could be used for.

I remember the day a story came out about the DNC stopped paying people to post to web sites and forums and suddenly he, and a bunch of others stopped posting.

Just explaining there are other reasons to post AC, to avoid being trolled by literally paid shills.

Re:Enforce login to post

[EzInKy]

OMG no!! How will we ever get the inside scoop from those who are putting their lives and livelihoods on the line simply by posting here. Are you a NSA spy or something? People should be able to speak their minds!

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't do this. Trolls get modded down and ACs already start out at a zero score. An increase in the ability to mod posts down could help if trolling did become a real problem (I don't think it has, just more stupid/younger/ignorant people with less time to RTFA and the general loss of net quality). If you don't want to see bad AC posts, just browse at 1 or above. It's really that simple and yet people whine and whine about ACs. I expect more from a group that's supposed to have technical skills.

Mandating log-ins just means trolls will create a new account every time they want to post. These posts will be at score 2 which is already move visible than ACs and now you're polluting the user database with a bunch of useless accounts. If you want to claim you could ban their IP address, that can already happen with ACs. Maybe you didn't know, but the amount of AC posts per IP is already rate limited with time restrictions increasing per post.

Not having an account means you can't track my posts (and that's one less password I have to remember and one less company that has my email address. I'm glad Dice couldn't grab my info from Slashdot's database. How do you know the next owners will be trustworthy?). Slashdot is just like any other company, it can be hacked. Someone might dump a database of your semi-anonymized posts and that can screw people up (especially with the increasing religious violence. Not everyone posts from USA.), especially when they thought it was anonymous. The best they could dump about me is just an IP address.

Requiring everyone to log in provides no benefits, unless you limit accounts to one per person, and you'd need to require real names or something similar to do that (and don't you fucking dare suggest requiring an expensive cell plan or a device with everything on it designed to track everything you do. My current phone access costs $27 a year and covers 100% of my needs.).

Personally, I believe the content matters not the poster. If anything, all names should be removed from all posts. Slashdot can generate a unique id per posting account on each article so that people can still track a single person throughout a conversation, just not across articles. That would greatly limit moderator trolling to single articles only. Make it an account option so those foolish to think nothing bad could ever happen to them can still think they're better than everyone else for having their user name plastered on all their posts.

A small off-shoot of that idea would be to return a unique code to every AC poster. They could then use that code when replying so other users can know they're responding to the same AC within the article.

Re:Enforce login to post

[jdavidb]

You can already ignore anonymous cowards.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

Did this sale occur in order for BIZX to obtain the IP addresses of certain AC comments?

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't share the philosophy of the original ethos. Some of the most valuable comments to this day are often found to be AC. People at /. understood the value of anonymity--even if only pseudanonymity, and logins online help no one. That "solution" is what you sell managers who have no technical clue, or a dipshit who put his career online for the idea and now *must* MAKE it *work* or else. The genius of the *original* moderation system was in allowing the good stuff to rise-up like cream and the trolls to be oblivioned.

Now stop trolling us with your nonsense.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. Sometimes someone may want to post something risky, but the login requirement will spook them away.

Slashdot should not become a reddit with anonymous posts. Full anonymity or nothing at all.

Re:Enforce login to post

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

"Anonymous posting has become a haven of trolls, far from it's original goal of protecting people when discussing work conditions and the like."

Mouser, this is clearly the cleverest of all trolls. I tip my hat to you sir!! would be a medicore troll attempt, but for your low uid, makes it a masterpiece!

 

"federated from elsewhere"

ooo hit ALL them buttons!

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

Until you get a subpoena from someone fishing for grounds to fire an employee.

Keep anonymous posting. Delete IP logs quickly and regularly. I refuse ever to identify myself or my employer, and I don't want my employer knowing who I am. There are good ACs here and on Soylent: they don't always post, and there are plenty of bad AC's, but that's what moderation is for.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

Plenty of people post as AC for legitimate reasons and make useful comments that are not trolls, and while you acknowledge there is value in maintaining AC (e.g., when discussing work conditions and other sensitive topics), you're willing to toss all that away?

The mod system takes care of the "bad" ACs and leaves the good ones alone. ACs already start at a moderation disadvantage such that you can avoid all of them unless someone happens to mod them up because someone said something of value. It works fine if the mods are doing their job thoughtfully.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. There are still lots of insightful post that are done as an anonymous person. Making accounts required makes the entry bar much higher for many people to join the community if they are new. Many people for years visit the site without creating an account. The moderation system is meant to deal with trolls. Anonymous post already start at a lower default score so most people don't see it anyways.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been lurking and posting without an account since 2001. No thanks.

Re:Enforce login to post

[nametaken]

Anonymous posting has become a haven of trolls, far from it's original goal of protecting people when discussing work conditions and the like.

They certainly should not get rid of Anon on a site where you can't delete a user account.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

I stopped logging in in protest of beta. I may start logging back in soon, that remains to be seen.

I have posted at least 5 +5 comments as AC in that time period though. I do not recall any -1, although I cannot check back all of my posts. Do you really want to remove comments that add to the discussion? Throw the baby out with the bathwater? I disagree.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to remove moderation power from users and take responsibility for the site content if you want to do this.

I once registered here and posted something perfectly reasonable and was banned from posting by other users. I have never registered since. The user moderation system is abused horribly to push agendas and silence opposing views.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

Except by IP address because..."Think of the children"

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

I vote against this. Trolls will simply use sock puppets, and there are also other reasons people may wish to make certain posts anonymously, such as self-censorship due to where one is working, etc.

I am logged in, and have posted a bunch of times in this wonderfully refreshing thread.

Yet, you don't know who I am or what my account name is. That protects me from my employer and whatever else.

Having NO account and being able to post has NO VALUE to the rest of us. If you want that, go to /b/ or something. But having an account to use or lose will keep ACs the valuable kind you want, and remove a whole bunch of crap all in one swoop.

Re:Enforce login to post

[jafiwam]

Posting again with my account to add a point:

And with ACs having accounts makes the management side much easier.

Re:Enforce login to post

[jafiwam]

You need to remove moderation power from users and take responsibility for the site content if you want to do this.

I once registered here and posted something perfectly reasonable and was banned from posting by other users. I have never registered since. The user moderation system is abused horribly to push agendas and silence opposing views.

That's not how the moderation system works.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

Please keep AC. I have been a daily reader since 1990's and I never registered, I happen to like this feature. If AC posting is broken, then please state your case and fix it, iterating on the solution until the problem is solved. That process will be accepted if the case is laid out in a clear, logical manner. If done right, the core audience will become the biggest advocate for change.

Re:Enforce login to post

[dave420]

If you believe that is likely, you won't believe any answer they give you... This is why leaping to paranoid conclusions about the motives of others is not a particularly bright thing to do...

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, and I'm posting this as an AC who has never registered for a /. account.

Honestly if I'm ever required to log in, I simply won't. It's nice to not have an identity. I am no one, and the only thing that exists of me is this comment. And when I hit submit and move on to the next article/comment, the "me" in control of this thought dies.

A lot of AC posts are crap, but some of them are good. Some even get modded up. It would be a shame to lose those. Whether they're 100% AC like myself or a registered user who goes AC so they won't be tarred and feathered - doesn't matter. They should be able to voice their opinion.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. There are places I read/post from that I don't want to or an unable to login with my personal credentials.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Prune]

Come at me, /b/ro

Re:Enforce login to post

[Ranbot]

Just to be sure....Did you miss the last sentence of the poster above?

....Logged-in, members could still post with anonymity to allow a return of the original intentions.

That sentence wasn't very clear and seemed rushed, so I can understand missing it, but I think it addresses some of your concerns. Basically members should get a toggle if want their comment or submission to be posted anonymously, but they still have to be logged in. I'm not naive enough to think that all trolling and spammers will stop by requiring a log-in, but it's a simple, reasonable step to weed out the laziest of the web's worst. Yes, there are tools to tune out trolls and spam already, but I think those tools would be more useful by reducing the need for them to begin with. Cutting down on the trolls and spammers would also allow moderator points to go towards building up actual discussions instead of modding down junk.

A community website not taking easy steps to deter trolling and spam is like a company not investing in at least some basic cyber security. Just because you can't guarantee a troll/hacker will never get in and wreck things, doesn't mean you do nothing.

Re:Enforce login to post

[Anonymous Coward]

Before that how about actually fixing the logging in process?
Recently, when I think I'm logged in and post something, it comes up as Anonymous coward.
Or if you log out, you can't log in again. I don't think I'm the only one experiencing this, but there is no way to report this problem that I know of.
So I don't think its off-topic to recommend fixing the login page as a possible way to improve Slashdot.

So to summarize my recommendation:
Fix the login page!
Fix the login page!
Fix the login page!
Fix the login page!
Fix the login page!
Fix the login page!
Fix the login page!
Fix the login page!
Fix the login page!
Fix the login page!

Re:Enforce login to post

[wbr1]

I try not to engage in ad hominem, but jesus christ I want to here.

Yes I read the last line. Being logged in but posting with an anon tag is not the same. There is still a record on the site that can be sold or subpoenaed. Yes, I know that not having a login still leaves IP records, but people who want to be anonymous can mitigate that with VPNs, TOR etc.

Also, with a required login, trolls and spammers will still use shill accounts.

If you want to see a shining example of required login commenting, go look at youtube comments on some popular videos. Especially ones that are political or religious in nature. Or go look at a local news stations disqus comments. This community website HAS taken steps to deter trolling and spam. It is the moderation system and may need adjustments. It is not perfect, but it works while allowing real anonymous speech that is worthwhile to shine through. If you do not like the spam, do not browse at -1. Unless I am moderating, I browse at 2, and see very little junk.

If you think stifling speech to fail at blocking spam is a good idea, your thought process is not much different from those who would have backdoors in encryption to fail at stopping terrorism. It is a trade of liberty for false security, and in the end you WILL lose both.

Bring back Rob Malda

[Anonymous Coward]

He used to work on this site, would sometimes post stories as "Cmdr Taco".

Oh, yeah, and started the friggin' thing.

It'd be like Apple bringing Steve Jobs back, only not as expensive.,

Re:Bring back Rob Malda

[whipslash]

I've reached out to him.

Re:Bring back Rob Malda

[BarbaraHudson]

^^^^ THIS ^^^^

Re:Bring back Rob Malda

[rmdingler]

Really...

I got the same feeling in the #7 Star Wars preview when Han & Chewie were in the house.

Re:Bring back Rob Malda

[OzPeter]

There was a comment way up the top where Whiplash mentioned already reaching out to him

Re:Bring back Rob Malda

[whipslash]

I've reached out to him...

Re:Bring back Rob Malda

[Danborg]

I'd also consider bringing back Jonathan "cowboyneal" Pater. Seriously.

Re:Bring back Rob Malda

[Anonymous Coward]

I've reached out to him.

Rob Malda, or Steve Jobs?

Heh.

[grub]

Funny that this was not posted by Timmy.

Cap on comment scores

[Atmchicago]

I actually like the current 5. If something has 5, it's enough to notice and probably worth reading. Other moderators can then spend time to up or downvote other comments, rather than pile on the bandwagon.

Re:Cap on comment scores

[Prune]

Agreed. Having more gradations just invites hyperbolic moderation.

Re:Cap on comment scores

[Tablizer]

"5 mod points oughta be enough for anyone" -Gill Bates

-6 stupid

Re:Cap on comment scores

[Puff_Of_Hot_Air]

Modded the wrong way damnit :( Posting to correct

Re:Cap on comment scores

[green is the enemy]

The +5 cap is good, but the "karma bonus" is not great. It basically makes +1 and +2 the same. I know that I can disable the karma bonus, but then many +5 comments will appear as +4, which is not great either. I'd like the ability to quickly spot the top modded comments and also see all comments with just one positive mod on them.

Re:Cap on comment scores

[Maow]

I actually like the current 5. If something has 5, it's enough to notice and probably worth reading. Other moderators can then spend time to up or downvote other comments, rather than pile on the bandwagon.

I'd upvote this to +5 but have already commented.

I completely agree.

There's a reason they capped positive moderation back in the day and it'd be folly to forget how we got to where we are.

https and content

[Anonymous Coward]

https and content

Re:https and content

[Eristone]

noting if you are logged in and a subscriber, you get https...

Le Gem is Gem

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Beta. AltSlashdot. SoylentNews.

three things:

[turkeydance]

1. allow max mod points usage. example: application of all toward one post. 2. eliminate auto-play advertisements. 3. retain log-in until logged off.

Re:three things:

[BarbaraHudson]

Riiiight - so you're in favor of mod-bombing ...

Better would be to allow people to comment in a discussion they've modded, so they can explain why, or if the discussion later on takes a more interesting turn.

Re:three things:

[whipslash]

All noted

Re:three things:

[q4Fry]

Disagree with mod-bombing.

Re:three things:

[FullCircle]

I haven't commented in years because of various issues, mostly related to feeling that I don't get to contribute.

When I did get moderation, there was little I could do.

Most good comments were already +5, most bad were whatever the negative equivalent was.

If I did mod, then I couldn't comment.

Re:three things:

[Anonymous Coward]

How about: you can mod a comment twice, but it takes all your points to do so (5 points, i.e. 1 point first time, 4 points the next time). If you're serious about liking that comment a lot, put your points where your mouth is, and all that.

Re:three things:

[Anonymous Coward]

Better would be to allow people to comment in a discussion they've modded, so they can explain why, or if the discussion later on takes a more interesting turn.

Disagree. I think the barrier between modding and conversation is useful - in an argument, what you really ought to be doing is making your case to try to convince the audience, not your opponent. The way the moderation system exists reinforces that and prevents petty downmoderation between particpants.

Furthermore, you do have an option if you need to participate or explain your moderation - comment anonymously.

Re:three things:

[BarbaraHudson]

As long as you can only moderate once per comment in a discussion, and you can't moderate your own comments, you should be able to post comments into discussions you've moderated. Anyone who wanted to get around that rule could simply make one or more sock puppets anyway.

Re:three things:

[BarbaraHudson]

You can get up to 15 mod points ...

Re:three things:

[Anonymous Coward]

how about, if you comment in a thread you've moderated, your moderation gets derated? say, normally you've moderated a "+1 insightful", and then felt compelled to explain why. if the system changed your mod into a "+0.5 insightful" (or maybe even 0.1?), and applied a floor() function to the overall moderation... you still contribute moderation and comments, but the mutual atta-boy back-slapping from a group of moderator-posters is minimized.

Re:three things:

[BarbaraHudson]

Better would be to allow people to comment in a discussion they've modded, so they can explain why, or if the discussion later on takes a more interesting turn.

Disagree. I think the barrier between modding and conversation is useful - in an argument, what you really ought to be doing is making your case to try to convince the audience, not your opponent. The way the moderation system exists reinforces that and prevents petty downmoderation between particpants.

Furthermore, you do have an option if you need to participate or explain your moderation - comment anonymously.

If your mods are meta-moderated as crap, no more mod points for you. It's already a solved problem..

Re:three things:

[BarbaraHudson]

Now you're asking for problems - do you really want to go from an int to a float? Better to just leave the current system in place, since it allows people to undo mods they made by mistake just by posting.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging by the number of AC comments modded up to +5, I think that's throwing the baby out with the bath water.

I haven't seen much of a difference in quality between AC and logged-in comments. Both have trolls. Both have thoughtful insight. I'm not sure the ratio is much different.

HTTPS though, yeah. Agreed on that.

Take Off and Nuke the Whole Site From Orbit

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the only way to be sure.

Re:Take Off and Nuke the Whole Site From Orbit

[whipslash]

That's plan B.

Re:Take Off and Nuke the Whole Site From Orbit

[Anonymous Coward]

That's plan B.

Isn't it funny how the original post this reply is to is gone?

I wrote it. I know exactly what it said. The subject was as above, and the text was simply "It's the only way to be sure."

I think maybe a little less corporate censorship might be in order...

Re:Take Off and Nuke the Whole Site From Orbit

[Anonymous Coward]

OK. They deleted the comment that I added, referring to the original comment, where I mentioned that there was some "corporate censorship."

I fully expect this comment to follow along into the toilet. I just want the censors to read this.

I haven't logged in with my original /. account in years. I was actually a fairly "good citizen" of this place for some time. I did the modding and filtering.

This place has truly gone to the dogs. ::slowclap

Good job, folks.

Captcha: "punitive" -can you say "irony"?

Re:Take Off and Nuke the Whole Site From Orbit

[Anonymous Coward]

OK. My bad. It's because there's so many comments on this thread that the engine is having a hissy.

Re:Take Off and Nuke the Whole Site From Orbit

[Anonymous Coward]

What's plan C?

Re:Permaban users

[Anonymous Coward]

Permaban dipshit ACs who throw fucking profanity and racial slurs all the fuck over the place like some kind of nigger/wetback autistic bastard child.

I agree. Anyone who mentions filthy fucking niggers should be banned. And no fucking profanity. It's turning this place into shit.

[Official] Dark Theme(s)?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. Using Stylish is weirdly inconsistent on many sites. Also, HTTPS support as mentioned previously.

A few ideas

[red_dragon]

Just a short list of ideas off the top of my head: * UTF-8. I used to get around it by using HTML entities, but nobody ain't got time for that now, and it's been a source of complaints for over a decade. * Click-bait headlines have no place in a site dedicated to serious technical subjects (or that at least takes technical subjects more or less seriously). * CmdrTaco, Hemos, and the rest of the original crew used to occasionally become involved in the discussions and rarely felt the need to withhold their opinions (iPod, anyone?), which gave the site a more personal feel -- a hybrid between a blog and a news site. This still can be seen in sites like some of the sites run by Gawker Media, and it seems effective in maintaining the readers involved. * If there will be editors, they ought to edit.

Re:A few ideas

[whipslash]

All good ideas

Re:A few ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I like UTF-8 and really think there should be only one master encoding.
But ./'s lack of UTF-8 did not have had ANY impact for me ever since I visit this site(LOOONG time)
What is this rant all about? What problems do you have without it? Not being able to post using other set of chatacters?
Is it just an annoying stuff to you or it really makes de use of ./ difficult? Why?

Thank you
from whats-the-problem-with-utf-dept

Random list

[Kobun]

In no particular order:

* Editors who can spell correctly and understand english grammar.
* Some form of control over dupes, perhaps a commitment along the lines of "we won't repeat stories within 2 weeks of each other". This isn't about updates to previous stories, but ones where they are effectively the same posted back to back.
* Fix the mobile interface or get rid of it. As an example of busted - the "top commented" story does not display on my iPad4. I literally cannot see the most active content on the site when I visit using it (it's up to date and using Chrome).
* Expand the friends/foes list limit. I've got a hell of a lot of trolls permanently downmodded from over the years and am capped out. Either this, or find another way to control trolls. I realize this doesn't affect ACs at all.
* Consider rewarding users with good karma with less delay between posts. I write pretty darn fast and have wandered away from more than a few good posts due to the speed limit.
* Come to think of it, I've never noticed a place to report bugs or a bug tracker. Is there one? I haven't gone looking.

Re:Random list

[BarbaraHudson]

How about adding readers who can spell correctly and understand English grammar while you're at it? There are more important worries ...

Agreed on expanding the friends/foes list (or just a global limit ot be divided between the two - I could mark more friends because, as a matter of principle, I've decided not to foe anyone).

This is slashdot. Do you have any idea how many trolls would post crap in a bug tracker. There's a feedback link at the bottom of the page.

Re:Random list

[OzPeter]

* Fix the mobile interface or get rid of it. As an example of busted - the "top commented" story does not display on my iPad4. I literally cannot see the most active content on the site when I visit using it (it's up to date and using Chrome).

One thing I only found out last week was that if you are on an iPad and scroll to the bottom of the Mobile site there is actually a link back to the desktop site - which really works well in safari. I totally avoided /. on my iPad because of that fucked up Mobile site until I saw someone else on here mention that link.

Re:Random list

[whipslash]

We're going to seriously look at the mobile interface. It'll be improved or scrapped. Right now you can report bugs using the Feedback link in the footer. I've taken note of your other suggestions.

Re:Random list

[Kobun]

How about adding readers who can spell correctly and understand English grammar while you're at it? There are more important worries ...

The critical difference is that posters don't get paid (well, at least the non-shills). Editors are presumably paid for their work.

Re:Random list

[whipslash]

We're going to QA the shit out of the site on every device and browser imaginable and get these issues addressed.

Re:Random list

[Anonymous Coward]

* Fix the mobile interface or get rid of it. As an example of busted - the "top commented" story does not display on my iPad4. I literally cannot see the most active content on the site when I visit using it (it's up to date and using Chrome).

This. Absolutely unconditionally This. I spend most of my time reading on a mobile device, and the experience is horrible. We have to force desktop mode. Generally, this is not is not a bad workaround, but the comment filter sliders do not work, and the text does not wrap to the screen size.

Fixing this would be awesome.

Re:Random list

[Nethead]

I agree on expanding the friends/foe limit. I capped out about a decade ago and would have to unfriend someone to add a new friend, which I would really hesitate to do.

Re:Random list

[Applehu Akbar]

"How about adding readers who can spell correctly and understand English grammar while you're at it?"

We use our interns for that.

Re:Random list

[OzPeter]

We're going to QA the shit out of the site on every device and browser imaginable and get these issues addressed.

Maybe you could somehow harness the power of the unwashed masses here to do some of that QA given that your audience probably has access to every device under the sun (and probably a few Sun or Apollo workstations as well).

Perhaps make a root level QA topic with permanent stories for reporting bugs for different devices?

Re:Random list

[whipslash]

Yes great idea

Re:Random list

[Anonymous Coward]

* Editors who can be grammatical without caring about the niggles of grammar-nazis and people who conflate style with grammar: if it makes sense, even if it violates the "rules", it's grammatical.
* Fix letting the Firehose become a source of stories again: this means dupes will likely happen. But the pretend-community-contribution under DICE meant that the so-called editors were duplicating (which made them look dumb, or desperate for more data points related to a theme/topic, or both: either way it drove more of the community away).
* Ignore anyone who whines about their iPad.
* Eliminate the friends/foes list: simply put, anyone who selectively eliminates having to deal with opposing ideas (or cannot grok the function of moderation) is the real kind of person who gums-up the pipes around here, and the kind which came in droves thinking they could benefit by going to the news-for-nerds gathering place, and drove the nerds away.
* Karma was rewarded in /. and probably still is (on principle I won't login so I'm not sure), but no, it should not be rewarded with posting faster: particularly people with friend/foes lists. Especially since the Karma can be manipulated quite easily.
* Good point but you probably don't want to open it up to just anyone. e.g. my COO is awesome and successful but pollutes the issue tracking systems we use with "bla bla bla this should just work like bla" without reproduction, describing anything, any technical vocabulary, any notion of how something can or cannot work in a system. Someone whose complaint about mobile is that "because on my iPad" will likely not give you very good technical descriptions or the details necessary to reproduce issues, and make you or your teams spend many hours doing so yourself. Putting it very basically, the iPad-attached crowd is something opposite of the nerd ethos.

Re:Random list

[Harlequin80]

Scrap it. It is slow, ugly and doesn't handle the comment threads properly. Just kill it. I browse slashdot on my phone by requesting the desktop site.

Re:Random list

[Anonymous Coward]

kill off auto-play video ads.

Re:Random list

[Anonymous Coward]

"Editors who can spell correctly and understand english grammar"

"We're going to seriously look at the mobile interface"

I hope that split-infinitive in response was an excellent troll ;-)

Re:Random list

[trawg]

FWIW the default site works largely perfectly for me on mobile (Android, Chrome).

The only significant change I'd make is slightly increase the size of the story font, but it's usually not a problem for me as I've read the story via RSS already anyway.

Re:Random list

[AmiMoJo]

Just make it a mobile formatted version of the desktop interface. The biggest issue with the current one is that when you follow a link to a comment (e.g. in an email from Slashdot about a response to one of your comments) it takes you to the root of the thread, not the actual comment. If you switch to desktop it goes to the comment.

Re:Random list

[jafiwam]

As a user, I can't go back and correct grammar and spelling mistakes. Editors can. Heck,they can correct the summary after it's live on the front page. There is considerably less excuse for mistakes in the summary than there are for mistakes in comments.

Re:Random list

[martas]

One more thing about the mobile interface -- it's really slow. Granted I have a crappy underpowered android, but I can still browse most websites just fine. I'm not sure if the problem is heavy scripting crapping out the processor, or a lot of requests piling onto the (fast but still not THAT fast) 4G connection, but it's extremely hard to use.

Re:Random list

[Anonymous Coward]

* Expand the friends/foes list limit. I've got a hell of a lot of trolls permanently downmodded from over the years and am capped out. Either this, or find another way to control trolls. I realize this doesn't affect ACs at all.

I'd really just like to know when the last time they logged in / posted. Doesn't have to be spyware-level date-time stamps. I'd just need to know that XYZ hasn't posted or logged in in over 30 days to know that I should consider removing them from my list.

Can we get a code-specific formatting box?

Something like <pre> that works.

Re:Random list

[BarbaraHudson]

The grammar and spelling errors are the fault of the submitter. You don't want to look stupid, proof-read your submission instead of just throwing it at the wall and hoping it will stick, and that someone will clean up after you.

Case in point - everyone continually complains about smart quotes appearing in submissions, but it only takes a few seconds to replace them with regular quotes. I've been doing this with submissions for quite a while. Maybe they should start rejecting submissions that have not been properly edited by the submitter.

Re:Random list

[omnichad]

Count me as another vote for responsive in place of mobile. Anything good on mobile can be moved to the desktop version.

Re:Random list

[whipslash]

Counted.

Fix the summaries

[Snotnose]

I hate it when a summary says "frobozz version x.y.z has been released, this release has many new features and bugfixes", yet never tells me what frobozz does.

I also hate summaries along the lines of "Researcher discovers exploit in ABC using TSR algorithms tweaked with RNG enhancements. This can lead to new discoveries in FNG with QRZ and CDR possibilities". Then the summary never tells us what any of those acronyms mean.

Finally, remember this is news for nerds. Keep the BS articles (I'm looking at you Forbes) to a minimum.

Re:Fix the summaries

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with OP.

Re:Fix the summaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, remember this is news for nerds. Keep the BS articles (I'm looking at you Forbes) to a minimum.

I think this is a good point but it needs some clarification. Forbes, Time, US News & World Report, and the like are not the places the editors should be perusing for the stories to put on this website. Instead, they should be looking at publications like Scientific American, Nature, Microwave News, Microwave Journal, ArXiv, Ars Technica, PLoS One, etc. Of course, that may frequently run up against paywalls, so the editors will have to do some sleuthing to find ways to link to something that the general audience can access. But I would rather have problems running into paywalls rather than news-lite from Forbes et al.

Re:Fix the summaries

[Anonymous Coward]

What does "BS" mean?

Re:Fix the summaries

[ausekilis]

Finally, remember this is news for nerds. Keep the BS articles (I'm looking at you Forbes) to a minimum.

Extending this idea a little bit. It should be clear where the links go (kind of already done in the title line), and the nature of that site. Some things that I have to scan comments for would make life easier:

• If the site is a paid site, like NYT
• If the linked site is multi-page click-fest. One paragraph per page and 30 pages? no thanks
• If the site is riddled with ads and difficult to find the actual content.

This involves a bit more editor interaction... But when one of these shows up in the comments, there's usually dozens/hundreds of complaints and it really drives the noise from the comments up. Alerting up-front may not fix the problem entirely, but at least then the herd can mod down something that's obvious from the start.

Re:Fix the summaries

[DerekLyons]

Finally, remember this is news for nerds.

Personally, I find it funny when someone says "this is a site for nerds!" in combination with "but cut out the acronyms and jargon". Honestly, if I don't know the acronyms and jargon, it's good odds I'm not even interested in the article. But if there's a enough meat in the summary to make me want to look up the acronyms, well, Google is just a few clicks away. That's real problem, all too often there's not enough meat.

Faster article approval

[Yxven]

I more or less stopped reading Slashdot years ago because all of the news articles appear days behind when they first appeared on the front page of Hacker News. The discussions are much better here, but a slightly better discussion system doesn't justify rereading the same arguments.

Re:Faster article approval

[whipslash]

You're right. We will address this.

Re:Faster article approval

[JustOK]

sometimes, 'tho, it's the delay that makes the comments better. People have had more time to think/analyze by the time it hits ./

Re:Faster article approval

[dave420]

How can you possibly know this? :) I mean, it's a fair assumption, but without some rigorous tests that doesn't seem to be a conclusion one can rationally come to.

Re:Faster article approval

[JustOK]

Sorry. I admit I assumed time only goes forward. Also, they have had more time to think/analyze, not necessarily that they have thought and analyzed in that time.

Re:Overhaul comment system.

[nodonn]

Can you add a moderation option for "Whoosh ..."

Editing Comments

[Fire_Wraith]

One suggestion would be to allow a limited window of time where you can edit your comment. It doesn't need to be anything long, even 5 minutes or so would suffice, mostly to allow for typo correction that slips past.

Alternately, have those posts be pending for 2 minutes/5 minutes/whatever so no one else can see them, but you can still edit them until that point is up? Even with the preview function, I know there's tons of typos/etc that slip through, especially when posting from an autocorrecting mobile device.

Re:Editing Comments

[whipslash]

Interesting ideas. We'll look at this

Re:Editing Comments

[fustakrakich]

Please! Don't do it! I beg of you! Say NO! to editing of comments! EVER! A person can post a response and or correction. Editing will ruin everything! Comments set in stone is Slashdot's saving grace, that and the archives. Don't ever let them be edited... And resist the temptation for unicode also. You don't need the hassles.

Re:Editing Comments

[Applehu Akbar]

Most sites allow editing within a window of 5-10 minutes. As a tech site, we could do better: a post would be editable until modded or replied to.

Re: Editing Comments

[Aethedor]

Yes!! Definitely this!! I have typos in my post so verry otfen.

Re:Editing Comments

[Krishnoid]

A few other things along these lines:

• Reliable integration with the browser extensions (e.g., Edit with Emacs, It's All Text) which allow editing textareas in external editors
• Text area autosave/backup, to mitigate the impact of a browser crash
• Instant preview would be great

Re:Editing Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not both? Give a five minutes edit window to every post OR until the first reply is posted, then they are set in stone. This lets people fix the stupid mistakes that everyone makes once in a while, and still prevent abuse.

Re:Editing Comments

[Trailer Trash]

Please! Don't do it! I beg of you! Say NO! to editing of comments! EVER! A person can post a response and or correction. Editing will ruin everything! Comments set in stone is Slashdot's saving grace, that and the archives. Don't ever let them be edited... And resist the temptation for unicode also. You don't need the hassles.

Well, at least allow emojis even if not all of Unicode.

Re:Editing Comments

[HelpTheNewOverlord]

I would like and *append only* edit button

So many posts used only to say *fuck, I said this and wanted to say that*

Re:Editing Comments

[ausekilis]

On a related note, maybe update the comment editor. It's cumbersome to type html when I need to format something. Maybe some wiki-like editing? or a small-scale WYSIWYG editor? It would be nice to be able to type as though I'm in a word processor, then can highlight and make something bold, block quote, italic, etc...

Re:Editing Comments

[asavage]

I've thought a feature where you could add an edit to the bottom of a comment, without being able to edit the actual comment, would be pretty useful.

Re:Editing Comments

[Painted]

What if you could edit for the aforementioned 5-15 minutes, but there is always a way to see the original? That way someone editbombing responses would be shown as a editbomber....

Re:Editing Comments

[danbert8]

Also, maybe a 1 minute UNDO button for moderating. If I had a dime for every time I selected the wrong mod from the drop down and all I can do is comment to remove it along with any other mods I may have done.

Re:Editing Comments

[david_thornley]

The main problem I have with preview is that it appears to present what I write in such a form that I can't see whatever dumb thing I wrote until I hit submit. I fear that an editing window would have the exact same interaction with my perception.

I could go for an editing function that would allow me to add stuff to my submitted post, clearly marked as an addition to the original content and separately time-stamped. That would be convenient for explaining what I really meant.

Addition on Tuesday, June 31, 2016 @ 13:68PM: Sigh. What I really meant was....

Re:Editing Comments

[Lotana]

Instead of playing with the time values (Which can get complicated fast...), how about disable the edit functionality the second it has a reply.

If user was already editing when a reply was posted, give them "Sorry, reply was posted" and discard.

Re:Editing Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps we should have a poll to determine whether majority wants comment editing enabled, in ANY sort of way?

Mobile app? this is 2016

[Anonymous Coward]

for gods sake get a good Mobile phone app for Slashdot

Number 1 priority

Re:Mobile app? this is 2016

[whipslash]

True.

Re:Mobile app? this is 2016

[lazarus]

Thank you. Seeing you respond to this in the affirmative just made my day. This is the only thing that keeps me from reading (and participating in) slashdot more.

Re:Mobile app? this is 2016

[whipslash]

Thank you for caring. Great UID btw.

Do not reward "karma" with more points

[y86]

The comment cap is good. Slashdot is good because it isn't a runaway echo chamber like Reddit. Reddit uses its system to oppress and squelch opposing views. Don't make slash dot a shitty Reddit rewrite.

Re:Do not reward "karma" with more points

[shanen]

How do you feel about logarithmic scaling instead of absolute caps? Both for rating comments and for karma? The system would track the actual numbers, but normally we would only see the rounded exponent.

If you like the idea, then we have to argue whether the base should be 2, 10, or e. Even the natural log comes out in the wash?

Re:Do not reward "karma" with more points

[ancientt]

I get what y86 is saying, but I think there should be some way to improve the system without sacrificing the drawbacks. Maybe additional votes for a 5 point comment only have a +0.75 option, then comments at 6 get a 0.50 option and so on, full on Zeno if that's what it takes.

There are times I want to skim the best of the best comments because I don't have time to go through 200 +5 rated comments. Toward that end, I'd like to be able to set my preferences to "top 10" or "top 50" or "top 100" instead of only being able to set the minimum ranking.

Re:Do not reward "karma" with more points

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the natural log comes out in the wash...

...is another one of grandpa's crazy old sayings. The early bird is a friend, indeed.

Re:Do not reward "karma" with more points

[whipslash]

Interesting. I think we should explore this

Re:Do not reward "karma" with more points

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

and browsing at zero can actually drive you insane / lower your IQ LOL

Re:Do not reward "karma" with more points

[Anonymous Coward]

Add the ability for all users to see who issued up or down mods since they get abused either way by karma farming sockpuppets with an agenda upmodding their main account using sock puppet fake secondary accounts to do it or abuse in unjustifiable downmod bombings of valid posts that affect their agendas and when users can't stand behind their moderations they deserve no moderation points (which does not go for users that can back up their moderation with facts).

Easiest things to do.

[BarbaraHudson]

1. WRT Unicode, the biggest problem is "smart quotes." The quickest solution to get rid of this annoyance is to use a regex to replace smart quotes with regular quotes. The rest can wait for more testing before rolling it out.

2. The current comment score cap works. It's less likely to promote group think as it can quickly be knocked back down or up without having an unreasonable distance to cover. People who worry about comment scores need to get over it - it's just a number. And if you're not browsing at -1, you're missing some good stuff that's gotten buried by the echo chamber. "It ain't broke, don't fix it."

3. Direct messaging? Are you kidding me? Promote use of journals more if you want to encourage inter-personal communications that might be off-topic in a discussion elsewhere. People can also put their email, skype, etc info in their profile if they really need interpersonal communications that are not public.

4. Reducing time between comments? That's only a concern if you have crap karma, and it's easy to go from zero to excellent in a few days, so anyone making any real contributions will quickly find this is not a problem.

5. Fix the color scheme that makes it almost impossible to see the link to the source of the article in the title bar. Go back to putting the link at the top or bottom of the story if it isn't already embedded.

6. Fix the mobile app on android. If you don't know what I'm referring to, try it for a while. You'll get the idea.

7. Do NOT allow inline display of images. Those of us who have already learned not to click on goat.se links don't need to be forced to see it again and again.

8. Get rid of the page between when you click on a link in your message list, and the actual message display. It's redundant.

9. It's not hard to allow people to append to their comments, with a time-stamped notice along the lines of "EDITED: 2016-12-24@whenever added the following" and then the new text. This way, nobody can change their original post, but they CAN correct it in the original place.

10. Increase the .sig length - even tweets are longer. People often use sigs to quickly identify other users (nobody looks at the user name).

Re:Easiest things to do.

[whipslash]

All good points. Thanks for the feedback- will definitely consider these.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[q4Fry]

(1) Agree. (2) Agree. (3) No opinion. (4) No opinion. (5) Agree. (6) N/A (7) Agree. (8) What? (9) Agree. (10) No opinion.

Also:
(A) Fix the styling for <ul> and <ol>. This is way overdue. It's just a little CSS. I could frankly fix it in my own browser, but that would just make me forget that everyone else was seeing a crappy indented text wall.
(B) If you're going to continue doing those videos (and I think you shouldn't), you need to have a transcript available for all formats, including mobile.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[phantomfive]

Direct messaging? Are you kidding me? Promote use of journals more if you want to encourage inter-personal communications that might be off-topic in a discussion elsewhere.

For that to work, you'll need to remove the time-limit on journal comments. Right now, if a journal entry has been around too long, people won't be able to comment on it.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[dcollins117]

4. Reducing time between comments? That's only a concern if you have crap karma, and it's easy to go from zero to excellent in a few days, so anyone making any real contributions will quickly find this is not a problem.

I assure you as someone with the highest possible Karma rating that it is very much a problem for those of us who use basic security and privacy measures.

The number of times I've seen the message "Slow down, Cowboy! it's been 40 minutes since your last post! Give someone else a chance!

That's a bit of a slap in the face considering APK spams the board consistently and apparently no one cares.

HTTPS: This is the only site I visit that does not use HTTPS.

Unicode: I understand the reason not to support every Unicode character. That could be (ab)used by a malicious person to screw up your board. But there is a subset of Unicode characters Slashdot could support so users can copy and paste the material they need to. The ones that are perfectly safe and cover 99% of the use cases we need.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[Applehu Akbar]

The chintzy title length needs to be increased also.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[Orgasmatron]

1 - agree about the quotes. Don't care about or want any other unicode.

4 - I hit the posting delay enough to be annoyed, and I've been excellent since excellent karma was invented.

9 - In my opinion, appending to comments is a bad idea. By letting them be final, the next reader can see exactly what a commenter was looking at when they were typing.

10 - Speak for yourself. I don't think I could estimate to within 5 years how long ago I turned sigs off. I forget for years at a time that such things even exist, usually until someone comments on mine.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[adolf]

My two cents:

1. Unicode. Everyone tells me this is an ongoing concern, and so it must be. I for one am perfectly OK with Unicode penis birds with my hot grits.

2. Scores. Yep, that's one of Slashdot's main benefits, and I see no reason to change it. Reddit has free-form scoring; it doesn't need duplicated here.

3. I like the idea of direct messaging. Sure, my email is unobfuscated (and always has been), and I've only been contacted twice -- ever -- in email from another /. user....but maybe people would communicate more freely if their conversations were both private and pseudo-anonymous.

3.5. Journals should be promoted more. There are some interesting people here still, and I wouldn't mind knowing when they rant about something interesting to them.

4. I have wonderful karma, thank you. But the time-between-comments problem has bitten me more times than I care to remember, and more than once I've just said "fuck it" and not posted something that I had already finished writing instead of patiently waiting for a timer of unknown and arbitrary value to expire, clicking "submit" periodically. The delay should be shortened. (In fact, I think it should be eliminated for UIDs less than 21055.)

5/6/7/8. Yep.

9. This is an appropriately elegant solution that also eliminates any concept of revisionist history, which is a good thing.

10. Sigs used to be much, much longer. I used to be able to put a line from a song and a link to the rest of the lyrics into a sig, and now....meh. 200 characters (including any HTML markup!) seems reasonable, and if folks don't like it they can always turn them off.

11. When our fearless leader was still around, before the first buyout (selloff?), it felt much more like a community here. When /. was down, Malda would write about why it was down and how it was fixed -- same with upgrades. When a new editor showed up, there was generally a few words about them. This level of transparency was perfect for a technical audience, but has been dwindling for...fuck, almost 17 years.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[AmiMoJo]

It might be time to remove AIM, ICQ and Yahoo! IDs from profiles. You could replace them with G+/Twitter/FaceFuck accounts, but why bother? In fact, might as well leave the old ones in there, for posterity.

Slashdot doesn't need to modern. The typos, references to long dead services and occasional dupes are part of the charm.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[StormReaver]

4. Reducing time between comments? That's only a concern if you have crap karma....

In my experience, I can't see any relationship between crap Karma and that moronic delay between comments. Sometimes, there are multiple comments in a story that I want to rebut, but have very little time available in which to do so. That idiotic comment delay amounts to nothing more than massive frustration (which I'm experiencing right now, just talking about it, in case the tone of my posting doesn't make it obvious).

And for the record, my Karma is Excellent (and has been for years).

Re:Easiest things to do.

[UnknownSoldier]

> 1. WRT Unicode, the biggest problem is "smart quotes."

Agreed. Have a minimal whitelist for Unicode (we don't need no fucking Emoji.) This will take care of 99% of the copy/paste text problems when quoting someone.

1. Smart Quotes
2. Hyphes
3. Umlauts & Diacritics

Just remap the Unicode glyphs to ASCII.

1. Smart Quotes

  * U+2018 to U+0027
  * U+2019 to U+0027
  * U+201C to U+0022
  * U+201D to U+0022

Note: I disagree with this analysis

2. Dashes, Hyphens

  * U+2010 to U+002D
  * U+2011 to U+002D
  * U+2012 to U+002D
  * U+2013 to U+002D
  * U+2014 to U+002D, U+002D
  * U+2015 to U+002D, U+002D, U+002D

3. Umlauts & Diacriti

Support: Latin-1 Supplement = U+0080..U+00FF

4. Blacklist everything else, initially.

5. Run monthly polls to see what Language Blocks should be supported next.

This is a good Unicode Block Previewer:

* http://www.babelstone.co.uk/Un...

Re:Easiest things to do.

[The Raven]

I love the #10. The ability to amend yourself (without redacting your post) would be appreciated.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[BarbaraHudson]

That's the same as with regular stories. As I pointed out, people can put all the other ways to communicate directly with them in their info box. A messaging system is redundant. And you KNOW it will be abused.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[BarbaraHudson]

It's easy enough to ignore APK, the GNAA and their greased-up yoda doll, goat links, and even the MOO guy if it bothers you that much. Yes, I've seen that "Slow down, Cowboy" message - but not in the last year or so. It may be a collision between someone else using the same ip (which would flag posting too quickly, and call up the "too quickly" code) and then doing the calculation to determine how long it's been since the last post, which would be a separate calculation that would be displayed.

Re: security - It's just a web forum, not your bank account. I'd file this under "nice to have", not "must have." There are other issues that should have more priority.

ISO-8859 (-1 or -15) 8-bit should be enough for almost everyone. It contains a lot of the accented characters other languages use, Makes storage, buffer sizes, etc. easier to calculate.

One thing I would add, is make visited links more of a contrast to non-visited links. This is a real PITA in the slashdot message center, etc.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[UnknownSoldier]

> 4. Reducing time between comments? That's only a concern if you have crap karma

Disagree 100%. When I want to make a few small comments (one sentence-ish) / replies to *different* stories the 4 minute wait is dumb.

The 10 second reply timeout is likewise dumb for with capped karma.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[BarbaraHudson]

The original comment would still be intact. By appending to the comment, with it clearly marked as to what has been appended when, you can still see what a commenter was replying to when they originally typed their response. I've written this sort of code, and it doesn't cause confusion among the users because nothing in the original comment is changed - just a clearly identified addition, timestamped.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[BarbaraHudson]

I would just say that if it's on a server, or passed over the net, I assume it's not anonymous. But that's just me, and I don't care what 3-letter agencies get their jollies, or anyone else, for that matter. Now, do I think any snoops are taking a special interest in me? Nope. No tin foil hat here,

Re:Easiest things to do.

[adolf]

I'm not tin-foil afraid, either, of whatever I share here.
If I were, it wouldn't say adolf (21054).

And if anyone is somehow afraid, perhaps they should find better methods. (They're easy to find, for those who need/want them. They just can't be 21054, because that will always be me.)

Re:Easiest things to do.

[Joey Vegetables]

That is a very U.S./Eurocentric point of view (and I am a USian myself). ISO 8859-1 and -15 work only for Latin alphabets. The other parts add support for Cyrillic, Thai, Arabic, Celtic and a few others, but still fail to support Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and many others. In addition, processing ISO 8859 text is very painful compared to, say, UTF-8. Just go to UTF, and sanitize out any characters that may cause injection or other issues.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[BarbaraHudson]

You must be marked as someone "special." I can reply to comments in seconds, not minutes. And what "10 second time out?" Are you using Beta or something?

Re:Easiest things to do.

[BarbaraHudson]

English is the #1 language world-wide. You can't even graduate from a chinese uni without knowing it.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[UnknownSoldier]

Nope, no beta.

When I hit reply, I can't hit Submit until ~20 seconds have passed.

Slow Down Cowboy!

Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.

It's been 17 seconds since you hit 'reply'.

Re:Easiest things to do.

[BarbaraHudson]

You're complaining about a delay of 20 seconds? Talk about first world problems ... :-)

Fix the website

[Kethinov]

The site itself is in some desperate need of further development.

- The infamous UTF8 issue.
- The new comment system is widely disliked.
- That said the old comment system probably does need to be replaced with something better. (Don't forget to keep the old one around as an off-by-default option. Some people here just hate change. All change.)
- Remove all hard dependencies on JavaScript. Progressive enhancement is a thing.

Re:Fix the website

[whipslash]

What were the main differences between the "old" comment system and the new one?

Re:Fix the website

[Kethinov]

If you go under https://slashdot.org/prefs.pl and click on "Discussions" this option is present:

Choose your discussion system:
( ) Interactive Discussion System (D2)
( ) Classic Discussion System (D1)

The "interactive" system is widely derided. I personally think it was a good idea, but it needs work. A lot of old timers around here stick with the classic system, including me.

I would recommend investing heavily in a new discussion system, perhaps something that feels more like reddit's, but keeping Slashdot's moderation system in place. But whatever you do, don't remove the classic one as an off-by-default option.

I have some confidence you guys can come up with something that I'll be happy to switch to, but some people around here hate change. All change. They'll appreciate being able to keep the old system around.

Re:Fix the website

[omnichad]

I know that the borders from deep threading have changed. The outer border of the page is now grey and it sometimes makes it hard to tell at a glance how many levels deep a comment is. The bottom border of a thread collapses to no gaps. It's visually nicer looking, but harder to follow.

See an example of the old comment system here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20...?

The comment headers are definitely better now.

Re:Fix the website

[whipslash]

Good call

Bring back something like freshmeat?

[macklin01]

I miss the old days where there was a side bar freshmeat feed of new SourceForge releases. Could we possible increase the SlashDot / SourceForge links this way? A running feed of releases would be nice, and it would help bring us back to our FOSS roots.

Also, in the scientific community (I'm in the cancer simulation field), "grand challenges" are popping up, where there would be a dataset or two, and a challenge to create an analysis or modeling tool for those data. Some really amazing creativity can emerge from those challenges.

It would be interesting if such a thing could be done here, similarly to the "ask slashdot" articles, but then linking to a development space on SourceForge to keep it going. I would love to engage the developer community here on our data standards and other cancer projects, and I hope they'd like to pitch in.

Thanks -- Paul

PS: Please consider stopping the SourceForge spam. I'm not sure I need any more "SourceForge Resources" emails on "Flash Storage for Dummies" and business intelligence / analytics / etc.

Re:Bring back something like freshmeat?

[whipslash]

Great ideas. I've put these on my list.

Re:Bring back something like freshmeat?

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss the old days where there was a side bar freshmeat feed of new SourceForge releases. .

Please, no "side bars". Nothing wrong with the _content_ suggested, but not in the form of a "side bar". Some of the people here don't maximize the browser, using the rest of the screen for other things. "Side bars" makes that harder.

A simple design (and no images at all) is one of the nice things with slashdot. Perhaps it even keeps out some of the garbage-posting clowns who find text-only boring.

Re:Bring back something like freshmeat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Freshmeat is sorely missed. Great suggestion Paul!

Re:Bring back something like freshmeat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks! Please let me know if you need anything. Best -- Paul

Re:Overhaul comment system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Overhaul comment system. A reddit style system, where good content becomes more visible, and bad content is less. .

And of course YOU get to decide what is "good" or "bad".

Here's an idea, fuck you.

One man's trash is another man's treasure.

Two things...

[Anonymous Coward]

(A) I don't like the "slow down cowboy! it's been an hour and 32 minutes since you last posted." restriction... sometimes an anon's gotta respond or follow up in a thread sooner rather than later. You could use Tor and stuff I suppose to log in as a "fresh anon", but this is a major bummer. The penalties and restrictions for posting anonymously-- a great tradition on /., is too high, I think. And if I'm not mistaken, /. can identify a pure anon from an account-holder-posting-as-anon, so maybe take karma into consideration when trying to determine if this is a troll or someone who may be posting just without wanting attribution, for which there are many legit justifications...

At the very least, figure out a way to let the user know in advance that the reply they spent 30 minutes carefully constructing isn't going to be accepted for another hour BEFORE they type it rather than after. Even a "Thanks for posting as Anonymous Coward. You will be eligible to post again as AC in four hours." Or something.

(B)

Also the ability to edit a post once posted would be great to reduce everything from embarrassing typos, malformed links, or clarifications to bigger fuckups (having extra unwanted text below the screen when you hit submit, realizing you just insulted your boss or pasted your system password accidentally, etc.) Obviously once it's "out there" it's out there, but I think most forums and discussion boards permit editing posts-- I don't see how /. has gotten away w/o it for so long.

(I've proofread this a few times, but just KNOW once I hit submit I'm gonna scroll back and find typos I missed. Apologies in advance)

Re:Two things...

[whipslash]

Yes great points

Re:Two things...

[ChunderDownunder]

The slow down cowboy is broken anyway.

Because posting doesn't return you to the original place in the discussion, I right-click a "Reply to This" link to add a new comment in a new tab. Maybe it's a firefox thing but it oft complains even if I haven't posted for hours (cookie?)

Re:Two things...

[Puff_Of_Hot_Air]

No! Not great points!

Editing is another way of saying "revisionism". If you can't edit your post, you also can't claim you "never said that". This goes into building a reputation as well. Some of us are fast and loose with lots of errors, some members you can see always take great care to post perfectly. This tells you something about that person. Don't pander to the anonymous posters here. They don't make the community, the logged in users do. Anonymous posting has a place, but I have no time for people who are unwilling to build a reputation behind a pseudo-handle.

Re:Two things...

[whipslash]

What about editing in a short time period after your comment, to fix typos etc?

Re:Two things...

[Puff_Of_Hot_Air]

What's the big deal about typos? Personally I think it is much more valuable to be able to say "Slashdot comments are permanent, we don't delete, we don't allow you to delete". If you did decide to go down this route, at the very least it should be impossible to edit once moderated or after someone has replied to your post.

Re:Two things...

[Puff_Of_Hot_Air]

I've thought a little more about this issue. Slashdot at it's best is much like formal debating. A topic of discussion may arise and one member will lay out an argument; sometimes appealing to logical reason, sometimes to emotion. Sometimes the argument will be made with references to lend more weight, sometimes not. In the good case, someone with a differing view will come along and present their own argument, trying to be more persuasive in the alternate view. Often the two submitters will cross-examine each others arguments testing the weaknesses. If the moderation is doing its job, and both submitters are worthy, then all of this debate gets moderated up to high insightful scores, and the casual reader gets to see two well argued positions. What might not be obvious here is that there are two very important things that "no editing" provides. The first is that the arguments are presented as is, there can be no revision. Weaknesses in the argument must be addressed by subsequent posts. This is important as the reader can see the point - counter point - counter counter point, as it occurred. The second is that the type, preview, submit, "it'd better be right or I'll look like a goose!" cycle encourages people to take their time. Good insightful posts often take 1/2 hour or more to prepare. It's like a mini journal, reviewed by your peers.

In my opinion, the people that are keen on editing want Slashdot to be more of a forum so they can respond quickly without thinking, fix up any egregious errors, and otherwise try and dominate conversations with speed and volume rather than quality. We don't need a lot of "your an idiot", "no you're an idiot". The preview button exists so that you can proof read your work. I think this was a very deliberate decision, and moving away from it would change the nature of the content that you see in these discussions.

Re:Two things...

[Puff_Of_Hot_Air]

And yes, I see my typo there in the second sentence. I can live with it!

Re:Permaban users

[Sigvatr]

no fuk u

Mobile, better, you can do it!

[soniCron88]

The mobile site behaves a little odd in one browser or another. Open /. in Naked Browser (the only sane browser on Android), click a story. Now hit the back button. (Not the one on the top. The device back button.) Site is now broken. Also, I'd GLADLY pay subscription fees if you kept content to the upper echelon of intellect. The dumb stories might attract more eyeballs, but you lose the brighter minds that make this site what it was. /. isn't about the stories. It's about the conversation. PS, I don't mind off topic stories (read: not *exactly* tech), long as they're about smart shit. PPS On that note, Markdown is a handy markup language for comments. I know it's not assembly or fortran, but it's good stuff, especially for mobile readers... PPPS Please don't suck. You got this! I believe in you!

Re:Mobile, better, you can do it!

[whipslash]

Great points. Mobile will definitely be addressed. Noted your suggestion re: editorial topics as well.

Re:Mobile, better, you can do it!

[kav2k]

Also would be very interested in Markdown for comments.

Just needs...

[Anonymous Coward]

CmdrTaco?

Re:Just needs...

[whipslash]

I've reached out to him

Re:Overhaul comment system.

[Sigvatr]

Often the only people who get to make noteworthy comments are the first posters. There is a 60 second window into when a new post is made that the majority of the conversation will revolve around.

No more hackaday and more reactivity

[Doub]

My suggestions:

1. Stop re-posting the hackaday stuff, it's really bad in the first place because they don't do their work, and it reflects badly on you for not even reading their shit before linking to it.
2. Try to be more reactive with general news: I generally get these faster with my once a day browsing of non-english (ie. translation-delayed) google news, which means you're usually 24 to 48h late. If you're slower than these dying printed newspaper websites, you should send your stuff directly to the Internet Archive and save on web hosting costs.

Re:Start with removing the malware from SourceForg

[Kobun]

Any thoughts on how to attract back some of the quality software that SourceForge previously chased off? Also, can I take the parent post to mean that you're also removing malware added outside of of the DevShare program? Is SourceForge going to commit to serving no Malware (or badware or adware or pick your euphemism), ever?

Fewer stories

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it goes against another suggestion, but I think there are too many stories per day. That creates a rush to comment before interesting stories fall off the front page instead of generating interesting discussions.

Alternatively, stories could be categorized in tabs/feeds by important topics. Although, importance my differ for each user, slashdot has traditionally been oriented certain topics. I could suggest: Linux, Open Source (other than linux), Closed Source, Politics, YRO, Other topics.

Re:Fewer stories

[whipslash]

Thanks for the counter-point ideas. We'll take a look

Nothing Special...

[ewhac]

I want the power to decide who lives and who dies.

Re:Nothing Special...

[fibonacci8]

Deciding who dies is simply a matter of patience, deciding who lives takes more effort and skill.

Re:Nothing Special...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've given this some careful thought and I've decided to grant you this power.

It's the financial models, stupid!

[shanen]

Actually, it would be more accurate to say "It's the stupid financial models that are causing the problems."

No, I don't really know the financial details, but it is pretty clear that slashdot (or sourceforge) has not grown into a billion-dollar company. I'm not even saying that should be the goal, but mostly it seems like slashdot runs at a loss, notwithstanding having a substantial number of users. Dare I say technically sophisticated users? Even more speculative, users who want to make slashdot and the world better? (Perhaps "the world" part is more relevant to sourceforge? I have already described sourceforge as the place where good ideas go to die. Again, I don't know the details, but I suspect that 90%+ of the sourceforge projects are incomplete or orphans or both.)

So the kernel of my suggestion is "By listening to the users". But not just any users. You should listen hardest to the users who are willing to donate a few bucks for a piece of the action. The basic unit of sincerity might be a charity share with a suggested retail price of $10, which is something most folks could afford.

Imagine a forum with a list of new features. Each feature would be defined in terms of the project to create that feature. Each new-feature project proposal should be complete, considering the necessary resources (including humans) and their availability, a realistic schedule, and a budget (which should include acceptable payments for the time of the people who do the work), sufficient testing (with donors receiving priority as testers), and success criteria. If enough donors are willing to support the project, then the powers-that-be-slashdot will release the funds and turn on the green light. (If the project never gets funded, then it needs to be rewritten to earn more support...)

There should also be projects for ongoing costs, which would put the donors on a different kind of supporters' page. However, the interesting part would be if the new features could be implemented 'cleanly' in relation to their ongoing costs. If the ongoing-cost project funding runs out (based on time or usage?), then the associated feature should become disabled, and attempts to use that feature would route wannabe users to an ongoing-cost project to fund that project for the next time period. Maybe it could even be implemented so that pledging to support the project would enable the feature for you, even while the enablement for everyone is pending on the funding for the next year.

One more wrinkle: Support. Again this is a cost that is usually handled badly, but could be broken down on a project basis. If a support project is exhausted, then it just chains to the FAQ and a pitch to fund more support. Again, the pledge might be used to justify spot support...

Obviously I have been thinking about these things for a long time. You would probably even be surprised by some of the sources for some parts of these ideas... Too many more details available upon polite request.

To demonstrate my sincerity, let me note that I probably had an opportunity for first post, but I'm sure it's gone by now. Or could the time zones have worked that much in my favor?

Re:It's the financial models, stupid!

[shanen]

Forgot about that penalty point for the long comment. Due to my own verbosity, I obviously think that should be an option of the user, not the system.

Or at least there should be a warning when you've triggered it, eh?

Re:It's the financial models, stupid!

[whipslash]

Wow. Interesting idea

Re:It's the financial models, stupid!

[Wolfrider]

> So the kernel of my suggestion is "By listening to the users". But not just any users. You should listen hardest to the users who are willing to donate a few bucks for a piece of the action. The basic unit of sincerity might be a charity share with a suggested retail price of $10

--Yeah right, since that way of thinking has been working SO WELL for us in Washington,DC lately.

--Slashdot has NEVER been a "pay us to listen to you" kind of site. Go away before your misguided ideas kill the place for the rest of us - start your own d--n site if you want to pull that kind of crap.

Re:It's the financial models, stupid!

[shanen]

Thanks for your constructive thoughts. NOT. Then again, it is pretty clear you didn't understand what I wrote.

Unfortunately, I have an actual life, even including a rather constraining job working for some big, faceless corporation. Well, at least it feels that way from inside the machine. Before I was married I actually did start my own "site", but I learned that I am not much of a businessman. Also did a couple of hitches with start-ups, but none of the seriously lucky ones. (Actually, there is more than luck involved, but even among the many that see the opportunity and that are pursuing the right angles at the right time, there are only a few winners, so I sincerely think luck is the biggest single factor.)

Having said that, as already noted, I would be willing to put some of my money where my mouth is, subject to seeing a reasonable business plan with some chance of recovering my capital.

Not where your mouth is. If you have nothing to say, then perhaps you should say nothing?

Re:It's the financial models, stupid!

[shanen]

Upon reflection, I feel like apologizing, but the troll ain't worth it. Curse my own stupidity for being trolled?

Oh well, I'll throw in a few thoughts about the troll problem. I think I've already said this somewhere recently, but I think trolls are multidimensional. Yeah, insincerity (or negative sincerity) is a really common element of most trolls, but there are a few that are sincere, so I still feel like there are several vector spaces defining the trolls--and a single dimension of "troll" is not the way to go. (I also dislike the (negative) dimension of overrated. Too unclear what aspect is "overrated".)

The feature that I personally would like to fund to deal with the problem of trolls and sock puppets is a maturity filter, so posters whose accounts are younger than some threshold are invisible to me. My setting would probably be 3 or 4 months, since I doubt many of them last that long. Can't guess if enough other people feel the same way to get it funded...

Re:It's the financial models, stupid!

[jafiwam]

Forgot about that penalty point for the long comment. Due to my own verbosity, I obviously think that should be an option of the user, not the system.

Or at least there should be a warning when you've triggered it, eh?

All this talk of SJWs and you want to add a "trigger warning?" ;)

The "read the rest of this comment" link has had some issues, it used to open up just that thread branch (in the same window, when it should be a new window or tab) and do other crazy shit. One thing is for sure, "new window or not" is a UI issue that has been long ignored (and fucked up) by the previous owners.

I stopped using that link, and just skip the rest of the comment. Some people are too verbose.

Though, I would like to have a site-wide setting of "truncate long posts" Yes/No so I can just turn it off. I have a mouse wheel and a PgDn button, I don't need help.

Re:It's the financial models, stupid!

[shanen]

Not clear what you mean, but the obvious question in this context (though based on the post you probably didn't read) is whether or not you would be willing to chip in to implement that feature? You want it, but do you want it badly enough to put down $10 toward implementing it?

You would get two rewards, however. (1) You would get to use the feature, and (2) Your name could appear as one of the donors for the feature.

Re:Overhaul comment system.

[WhipITGoodER]

Include options such as file 13, the bit bucket, dev null

Allow pics

[mschuyler]

Any particular reason why we couldn't allow uploaded pics, movies, etc.? It's not a text-only world--except here.

Re:Allow pics

[Anonymous Coward]

Any particular reason why we couldn't allow uploaded pics, movies, etc.? It's not a text-only world--except here.

That's one of the things that makes Slashdot special. Visit the rest of the world if you want something different.

Re:Allow pics

[shanen]

Obviously storage costs, but my suggestion is that would be a natural place for ongoing-cost projects. As much storage as needed, but only as long as there were enough donors willing to help out...

Re:Allow pics

[mschuyler]

I'm not thinking that's special. I know some people like black and white film. It's so artistic and all, but the world is in color. Either embrace it or crawl back into your cave.

Re:Allow pics

[clovis]

Any particular reason why we couldn't allow uploaded pics, movies, etc.? It's not a text-only world--except here.

Oh no, please no no no.

Videos of what? Case mods? How to create excel macros? Exciting new products for our data center?
Videos take forever to transfer information.
It's annoying to have a talking head head taking 10 minutes to get across a point that anyone could have read in 30 seconds.
Putting up a video instead of typing it out is lazy. Videos are for cats, porn, and marketing stooges.
Anyone who has a video they think we really really need to see can just post a link to their Facebook page.

Re:Allow pics

[Wolfrider]

--Slashdot has a distinctive look and feel, and a unique vibe. I admittedly thought about suggesting allowing inline pics in the thread, but I realized that's *not* why most of us come here.

--You want tumblr, go to tumblr. You want Fark, go to Fark and post your pics. You want FB, go to FB - and get spied on. I want *Slashdot.* Text news. It's like a distilled refuge from the rest of the multimedia crap that's out there. Why do you think everyone rebelled against Beta? It went against everyone's expectations (especially long-time users.) If they do (God forbid) allow inline pics, at least give us an option to turn it off in Preferences for logged-in users.

Re:Allow pics

[jafiwam]

What's wrong with making a link and telling us why we should click?

There are about a million reasons NOT to add all that bulk to this site.

Re:Allow pics

[dwsobw]

I thought this was our cave?

Re:Allow pics

[mschuyler]

In other words, don't change slashdot. OK. Back to ASCII art is cool.

Re:Allow pics

[omnichad]

goatse.cx everywhere

Re:Allow pics

[Anonymous Coward]

Any particular reason why we couldn't allow uploaded pics, movies, etc.? It's not a text-only world--except here.

There have been enough problems with goatse links over the years. They are still posted. Imagine now if it was "native", present on the page. Just say no.

Go back to your nerd roots.

[grub]

I really believe that what you need to concentrate on is quality not quantity of the stories. Crap like "Why I defend YouTube" and other blog clickbait can all FOAD. I'd rather read more comments on fewer good stories than a handful of comments on shite articles.

Re:Go back to your nerd roots.

[ChunderDownunder]

e.g. quit linking to The Verge They do some good reviews but most of the contributors are rabid Apple fanbois who post garbage like "The Death of Windows Phone".

Been a lurker for years....

[senatorsteak]

I've been a lurker for years at Slashdot and I always found the top headline stories fascinating, but this story made me sign up for an account immediately. I truly believe the internet is a better place because you exist. I love the spirit of Slashdot and the community around it: please keep true to your origins. So what made me sign up? Your mobile experience is awful. The performance is abysmal and the experience of dynamically loading stories is terrible. Your content is so fantastic that it gets marginalized by the bad mobile experience. If the budget allows, make a native mobile app for iOS (that fixes half of your performance issues right there). HTML5 is awful on mobile and the performance is awful. Specifically, the dynamic loading at the bottom of the page (i.e. infinite scroll) instead of pagination is painful on mobile. If you reload the page, you lose your place and have to dynamically reload the page totally. I could live with the small fix of pagination vs infinite scroll but then I think about offline content and performance and my yearning for a great native OS experience increases exponentially. Please do not ignore a great, native iOS experience.

Re:Been a lurker for years....

[whipslash]

Glad you're finally signed up! Mobile will definitely be addressed as soon as we can. It needs work. Very much appreciate the feedback and I'll look into native app ideas as well.

Re:Been a lurker for years....

[whipslash]

Just wanted to say again I'm glad you signed up.

Re:Been a lurker for years....

[Megane]

Infiniscroll is and has always been a bad idea. Try The Daily WTF forums for an example of infiniscroll taken to a completely stupid extreme. (along with a bunch of other stupidity courtesy of Jeff Atwood and Discourse)

Re:Been a lurker for years....

[Slacker]

Or do what I have done for YEARS on mobile, http://www.slashdot.org/palm

Clean simple text, super quick to download, everything works, all the time. Best kept secret on /. You only get to see the top 5 comments, but other than that it's the best mobile experience I've had.

What's up with the system logging me out at random

[Escogido]

I don't know if I'm alone in this, but I have to login every other day, which is annoying since i would like to read comments with my customizations. Oh, and why have the multiple 3rd level domains?

Otherwise, looking forward to our new overlords :)

Slashdot Community

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that makes or breaks most portals is the community that develops around the content, in the case of slashdot, one of the greatest things is the fights between the various sides of the issues and the obvious propaganda agents (Cold Fjord I am looking at you) as much as it is about the content.

The heated arguments over VI vs Emacs, SystemD vs Real Unix, Libertarian vs Thinking Human are what makes slashdot a nice place to visit and anything that changes this dynamic will simply result in another echo chamber.

Maybe that will be better for the bottom line, but what is best for the bottom line is not always the best for stimulating thought.

Re:Slashdot Community

[whipslash]

We're not trying to get rid of that dynamic and I completely agree with you. Just looking to get ideas on what we should fix/improve/add (think https, unicode support, etc), and also to take the temperature of the room and see which order we should do them in.

here is what saddened me long ago

[Anonymous Coward]

/. used to be a quick loading site. i used slashcode many times because of that.

after the dice acquisition they loaded up with all sorts of flash ads, some with motion/video, some with sound. don't do that.

even to this day when i load the site on my mobile phone the ads are overwhelming. yes, i know, various adblockers etc-- there are still some instances where my browser (esp on android) the page loading stalls when using blockers. especially irritating when it happens in each article opened.

pre-dice:
cmndrtaco makes a site that builds an amazing community of mature and intelligent people, spreading their knowledge freely.

post-dice:
get your resume posted here for $$$$$, post a job ad for $$$$$
how can you the community help us help ibm help make you a $marter world?

Re:here is what saddened me long ago

[whipslash]

Performance enhancements will definitely happen. Don't worry. We're also going to scrap the intrusive ads.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[BarbaraHudson]

It IS sacrilege. While I'm comfortable posting under my name, others seek anonymity by using nyms, and others via AC. There's no real difference between the latter two.

The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

The moderation system here is archaic and broken, and needs an overhaul. Instead of helping to promote discussion, it is often used as a tool of censorship and oppression. Given Slashdot's dwindling number of users, and its dwindling number of comments, anything that stifles discussion instead of enabling it is extremely harmful to this site's survival.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not calling for something like the even more horribly broken systems we see at reddit, or Hacker News, or Stack Overflow. We don't need a moderating system here that enables gangs of abusive mods to go around attacking others. But major changes are needed here.

First of all, all comments should be shown by default, whether they were posted by logged in users or anonymous users. It's not 2004, when each story here used to get 300+ comments. These days it's rare to see a story get more than 100. As I scan the front page today, many of the stories that have been up for hours now are still under 50 comments. So the moderation system does more harm than good when only 1 or 2 comments are shown by default for each story.

Second of all, there should be no concept of a downmod. Downmodding is a feature that is always abused as a way to censor comments that are perfectly valid, but which happen to express the "wrong" point of view. Downmodding should be eliminated.

Third of all, the editors here should never moderate comments. Ever. There has been some suspicion that they have been doing this, as we often see perfectly good comments among the earliest posted get modded down to -1. These are vague -1 mods without any Troll, Flamebait, etc. specifier.

Fourth of all, this site needs to list who moderated each comment. It should show the username of the moderator, and what rating was given. If somebody's deemed responsible enough to moderate, then they should be willing to have their name attached to any and all moderation they do.

Fifth of all, there needs to be a way to deal with abusive moderators. Clearly the meta-mod system that's currently in place is not working well, as we see far too much abusive moderation. When it comes to abusive moderation, even one incident is one too many. The entire community, both registered and anonymous users, should be able to flag and revoke the moderating privileges of mods. The threshold for this should be low. Even one vote of non-confidence in a moderator should be enough to immediately and permanently strip that moderator of any and all moderating privileges.

Sixth of all, the posting limits needs to go. Like I said earlier, this site needs more comments, not fewer. The delay between comments should be minimized, down to perhaps a minute, if not less. Even this is not ideal, as it inherently imposes a daily cap on the number of comments which can be posted, which itself is a bad thing to have.

At this point, it would perhaps be preferable to remove the moderating system altogether. It made sense a decade or more ago, when the volume of comments was such that some order was needed. But those days are long gone. Now there are so few comments that they should just all be displayed, with users given the option of hiding (just for themselves, of course) comments that they no longer wish to see. What moderation does take place ends up causing way more harm than good.

This is a historic opportunity to greatly improve this site, and give it a leg up over its competitors. Those competitors, including Hacker News, Reddit and even Stack Overflow, are known for having moderation systems that are easily and readily abused to censor other users. Slashdot should learn from this, and strive to go the other way: create a technology-focused community where free discussion, even if it isn't the prettiest or nicest discussion, is enabled and promoted. Let us discuss issues with a freedom that we just don't find on so many other sites. But in order for that to happen we need to see some major changes to the moderation system here. Either it needs massive reform, or it needs to be completely eliminated.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[whipslash]

All great points. Will definitely keep these in mind. Thanks for laying it out.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Think carefully about the AC's motivations. He's not offering to help you or Slashdot.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[rmdingler]

Don't change too much, too fast.

There's a reason for two decades of success on a fickle internet.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[grub]

Not great points, he's been modded down to -1 by his peers :) You did ask for our opinions, you may want to watch comment scores for this gathering of ideas.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

interesting
1. If I post here I post AC, have done it since Dice took over. If I manage to get modded up to being visible, then I am fucking awesome. Using my +2 karma points is just a crutch
2. There has to be some way to call people out for being complete ass-hats. Do you want to read through hundreds of trolls trying to gouge your eyes out with their sick drivel because the majority of /. posters are willing, but unable, to waste mod points shutting them down? Down-mods are there for a reason, if you don't like em then go post on Disqus
3. Editors should be editors. They should not just be a sluice that allows every submission through the gate. I do not want to swim through propaganda or marketing because nobody is being flushing out the turds
4. Sure, just like Amazon, Disqus, Facebook... run with the herd, be prey
5. You get mod point for good karma. Sorry, but this is already in place. The fact that you have a problem with the results is your problem, deal with it
6. Here I agree, I get shut down to a few posts an hour because I post AC. If I am not abusing rules, then I should be able to post AC all day long

Removing the moderating system would fundamentally change /. and propagandists and marketers would be the first to abuse it, followed by mean-spirited neckbeards posting hate and rape fantasies

What would I want to see in ./? Well, thanks for asking
more 4chan-like disruption, less Disqus/Facebook mediocrity

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Stan92057]

AC Post AC to game /. Ive been here 10 plus years and the AC problem is as bad as its ever been. Ask him why he didn't post with his/her user name? why be afraid in a thread such as this one??

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[BarbaraHudson]

You must really hate mobile users with a band cap if you want all comments shown by default.

Downmodding serves a purpose, and abuse is corrected by the "intelligence of the herd." Besides, if you want all comments shown by default, you should also be browsing at -1. There's absolutely nothing to prevent the individual user making that choice - but it should remain a choice.

As for identifying moderators - your " If somebody's deemed responsible enough to moderate, then they should be willing to have their name attached to any and all moderation they do - by the same logic, you should have to be logged in to post any comment. Furthermore, by that logic, nicks or nyms shouldn't be allowed, but almost everyone hides behind a nym. And you're posting AC - hypocrite much?

"When it comes to abusive moderation, even one incident is one too many." - come off it. The perfect is the enemy of the good, and really, I've been mod-bombed, and you don't see me getting upset about it. It's just people expressing an opinion, not deciding as to whether to launch WW3.

Posting limits need to STAY. The quickest way to get fewer active users s to allow anyone to crap-flood. 30 posts in 4 hours and 50 posts a day is usually enough. Yes, it's frustrating to hit those limits when you have several heated discussions going on, but let's keep some perspective here - it's only the internet.

Moderation needs to STAY. It's one of the ways to keep users engaged.

Several of your points are so obviously detrimental that it's obvious you're just trolling.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[BarbaraHudson]

The AC is a troll, as I pointed out previously.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Rei]

Indeed. A higher moderation cap is fine, and better backend tools to block persistent spam-trolls would be nice. And obviously we want unicode. But let's not go too far and end up with a WSYWIG interface or whatnot. ;) If I post a piece of C++ code or whatnot in a conversation about C++, it should post without complaining. The "basic nature" of the comment system is fine, it just has long-overdue "maintenance" to conduct.

On the other hand, I'm not a fan of the profile design of "modern" Slashdot. First off, it's archaic, with blanks for things like AIM handles and the like. The boxes on the right display information but don't have easy links to change it, you have to browse through an overly elaborate profile menu. And on smartphones it prioritizes a bunch of silly "awards" taking up the whole profile space, rather than one one generally most wants to see, their comment history so that they can keep up with discussions that they've been involved in. Remember, the key design feature people want in mobile versions is they behave like the normal website, just to display properly. The last thing people want is functionality-limited, strange-behaving interfaces. And if the user wants the full version, it should be easy to click over to it, and it should remember the user's choice.

As for stories, the biggest complaints people have are 1) the story is inappropriate (not something Slashdotters are generally interested in, something that seems like shameless advertising disguised as a story, etc); 2) the source is unpopular (such as Forbes); and 3) it's a duplicate. Rather than having people complain about this in the comments, it'd be nice if you had a simple way people could report stories that could lead to timely corrections. Story removal should be done in analogous to removing a symlink - the story's webpage should still exist, with all of the comments, but it shouldn't appear linked from the front page.

There are some squabbles that you're just not going to win at. For example, people who yell at each other as being "SJWs" or "MRAs" and blame all of the world's evils on the other group. Stopping that sort of thing isn't really your job. But stopping people like the APK spammer - people who nobody want around - yeah, feel free to do that. :)

As for your core business, advertising - people generally are fine with it so long as you "play by the rules". That is, stop the malware, don't allow anything that relies on deception, anything offensive, popover ads, etc. A button over the ad to block further from a certain source that the user doesn't like would be nice. And of course you should allow people to subscribe to an ad-free service by paying a small regular fee. Another example of "not playing by the rules" that you should avoid would be secretly inserting sponsored stories and disguising them as news. People really don't like that sort of thing. But legitimate advertising, even targeted advertising... hey, you have a business to run and sites cost money, we understand.

Be good to us, we'll be good to you. :)

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Applehu Akbar]

"Fourth of all, this site needs to list who moderated each comment. It should show the username of the moderator, and what rating was given. If somebody's deemed responsible enough to moderate, then they should be willing to have their name attached to any and all moderation they do."

Yes! No need to eliminate downmodding; just let us know who modded what, and the abusive moderation dries up in the presence of oxygen. If there are such things as moderation trolls, we will know who they are.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Rei]

More: a lot of the Slashdot crowd is hardcore on privacy issues. So you should make it a policy to not retain any more information than is necessary to operate the site - for example, no IP logs or anything like that (except to the point needed for spam fighting). As for data gathering for advertising purposes, that's going to be a controversial one - as an ad company, you probably have interest in that, but a lot of Slashdotters are going to be uncomfortable with that. If you do plan to pursue that route, may I suggest a middle ground? Make it optional, enable it by default if you must, but make it easy for those who care to shut it off.

(I'm not among those who care, but I know there are plenty of people here who do)

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the GP, but...

I post AC because I did not want to lend myself, or my identity in any way, to Dice as they tried to turn /. into their little toy
I post AC because I do not want to wear a brand for a corporate overlord
I post AC because nobody will come after me, my job, my employer, my family because they are a sociopath and disagree with what I am saying

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[bugs2squash]

I'm not sure what the higher mod cap achieves. When I have points the fact that some comments are maxed out just means I have to look for other worthy comments to mark up (or down).

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

way to sockpuppet yourself AC

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[EzInKy]

Ask him why he didn't post with his/her user name? why be afraid in a thread such as this one??

Can I ask you why you care? Seriously, are you out to stalk people or something? Okay, my suggestion is to add an option to browse without seeing any AC posts for those few who are obsessed with taking names and kicking butt. Obviously the ability to hide posts below a certain moderation threshold is not enough for them.

Re: The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[PianoComp81]

Even a category called "slashvertisement" would probably be acceptable advertising if it's not done very often. Just don't try to deceive us into thinking an advertisement is a story. We usually see through it. On a different note: fix mobile logins. I can't seem to stay logged in, even though I have no problem with other sites, so it's not my browser. I read just about everyday (though have rarely posted as of late), but you couldn't tell because I'm rarely logged in on mobile.

Re: The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are paranoid.
I just have a no login policy.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[EzInKy]

Just think, those browsing at -1 would see it and those with mod points could even elevate it if they felt it was deserving enough.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[EzInKy]

Why, you going to go kick their asses are something? Or perhaps sue?

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask him why he didn't post with his/her user name? why be afraid in a thread such as this one??

Can I ask you why you care? Seriously, are you out to stalk people or something? Okay, my suggestion is to add an option to browse without seeing any AC posts for those few who are obsessed with taking names and kicking butt. Obviously the ability to hide posts below a certain moderation threshold is not enough for them.

See also: "Do not track me."

Good luck with that. :(

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[whipslash]

Can you give me some examples or elaborate on who/what this APK spammer is?

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[sconeu]

Remember the "IF I EVER MEET YOU I WILL KICK YOUR ASS" Guy?

There were some pretty fun trolls back in the olden days.

But really, I'm not sure it's necessary to post mod names. I'm not sure what it would do other than allow retaliation.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[AthanasiusKircher]

Agreed. PLEASE -- Keep the mod cap at +5. It's high enough to make excellent posts stand out, and it's also high enough that a single downmod by someone who just wants to disagree isn't going to make the comment invisible. There's absolutely no reason for higher mod scores except to have a "popularity contest," and that's not what good moderation is about... here it's just about making the decent posts stand out from the herd.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[whipslash]

True

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[EzInKy]

Just because blood suckers want to track you doesn't mean you have to follow in their footsteps.

Re: The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

He is a very dedicated person who believes that hosts files are the silver bullets with which to slay all Internet demons. He tends to spam his posts defending his beliefs when he feels he has been modded down unfairly or when someone critiques his methods.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Noah Haders]

mysterious comment.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[ganjadude]

I disagree that they are great points. every single one of those points can and will be used against moderators.

I know i would stop modding if it were made public, im sure others would as well

the only good point in there (IMO ) is the show all by default (maybe except -1)

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[whipslash]

Ok ok. Counter points noted as well.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who reads slashdot comments on their cellphone? I mean I'm sure they're out there, but just slightly less numerous than those who read them through lynx.

Re: The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[arth1]

Slashdot could always use a hosts list to block him...

IGMC....

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Applehu Akbar]

If we have posting histories, why not have moderation histories?

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

He will fire off two, three or five posts back to back. Each post is gigantic, with random bold words. He seems to be on a personal battle against the rest of the world. If ever there was an argument to be able to truly bury or remove a post, APK's would be the ones to remove.

Posting AC because APK has been known to hound those who disagree with him. Regular APK is bad enough. APK-with-an-axe-to-grind is like an unhappy mother-in-law. Sorry, like a mother-in law.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, I have Ghostery and Adblock enabled, but acceptable ads turned on. Have ads that don't get blocked by those and I will happily view them, if not click.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Noah Haders]

I don't think band caps are an issue. even if it's a whole page of comments, it's all plain text. Let's say in an extreme case,

1000 comments x
x 100 characters per comment on average (a sentence or two)
x 1 byte per ascii character
= 100 kB's, less than an image worth.

so I'm not crying over anybody's character cap, understood? no crying!

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

"You must really hate mobile users"

I did not read the rest of your comment. Do NOT use this as justification for ANY change. Fuck mobile users! We should in NO WAY cater to them. Fuck breaking websites so that people can read them on the toilet better!

Where is apps troll when you need him???

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[TigerNut]

If this is done, then also put the moderation history behind a clickthrough access such that you have to be logged in AND select the access button in order to see the moderators. In this way, the folks who reviewed my moderation history can be known to me... if abuse starts you ought to be able to see who's been looking you up.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[arth1]

More: a lot of the Slashdot crowd is hardcore on privacy issues. So you should make it a policy to not retain any more information than is necessary to operate the site - for example, no IP logs or anything like that (except to the point needed for spam fighting).

Yes, this. This also includes not making an unsolicited connection back to port 80 of the IP of poster, requesting unpublished URLs. Don't go knocking on doors.

As for data gathering for advertising purposes, that's going to be a controversial one - as an ad company, you probably have interest in that, but a lot of Slashdotters are going to be uncomfortable with that. If you do plan to pursue that route, may I suggest a middle ground? Make it optional, enable it by default if you must, but make it easy for those who care to shut it off.

And in the name of all that's unholy, get rid of the javascript that auto-scrolls you to the top of the page whenever you hit the back button. Just to serve more ads, I presume, but it really breaks usability when you can't follow a link in a large thread, and go back to where you were. That makes me leave the thread in disgust. Sure, I can open links in a new tab to get around the problem, but I shouldn't have to. Back is to where you were, not where advertisers want you to be.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[bidule]

Indeed. A higher moderation cap is fine

I'd rather make it harder to climb. Something like 1+2+3 to get to +5 and -1-2-3 to push it back down, and keep both separate.

So you need 1+2+3=6 upvotes for +5, but if a single downvote is cast you'll need 1+2+3+4=10 upvotes to return to +5. It also makes group moderation harder since you'll need 3 moderating sock-puppets to shift by 2 if no one else interferes. A controversial post might get 1+2+3+4 upvotes and -1-2-3 downvotes for a +1 shift.

As it stands, too many posts bump to the +5 limit.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Different AC here. You're one of Slashdot's more famous idiots. Some would even go so far as to call you a stupid bitch. So it's my honor to help clue you in.

Downmodding serves a purpose, and abuse is corrected by the "intelligence of the herd."

That's actually funny.

by the same logic, you should have to be logged in to post any comment.

Your logic is severely warped. Anonymous commenters aren't given the ability to moderate.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, slashdot is like a slow moving glacier, very happy it is still around and still feels roughly the same. I wish it was a little more tech heavy, but I'm an old fuddy dutty.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[arth1]

All great points. Will definitely keep these in mind.

Please don't keep them in mind without also engaging same.

- This site is a kook magnet. No doubt about it. It can be charming at times, but can also be a problem when the content to noise ratio gets too low. The last thing we need is for the kooks to see who downmodded them so they can go on a vendetta. They do that enough as is with people who try to talk sense to them.

- The moderation system is not perfect, but it is a heck of a lot better than most (if not all) other systems. Be very careful about changing it, lest you break an advantage that Slashdot has. Sure, it has problems, but I have not seen any better system. They all have flaws. By fixing one, you're likely to introduce another.

Instead of giving users more power over what others get to see, I would encourage giving them more power over what they themselves get to see, without it affecting others. Add a regexp filter to the user control panel, for reducing the score of posts containing certain text, much like we can increase or reduce the score of long texts. I know that with such a filter, I and presumably many others would put .*(APK|GNAA).* in it. And it wouldn't affect any others.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

You must really hate mobile users with a band cap if you want all comments shown by default.

I'm not sure what script foo goes on in the background, but text compresses well, at least if the web server can somehow send it in a compressed packet. Does getting new comments have to result in all the old content being resent, or is a delta sent? For a bit of statistics, gzip of a 21k text file is 8.5k, while bzip2 is 7.5k. For 761k you get 272K and 188K respectively, so perhaps delivering more but hiding it, is not an entirely bad strategy, since you can then reveal it instantly. It is arguably though. Either way, I suspect most of the actual bandwidth is used on third party ads. As far as what is displayed, I'd leave that up to an individual user's settings.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Pablopelos]

I like that the site still feels like it did when it was new. I think other sites attract all the kiddies and flamers and keep the true 'news for nerds' folks here.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really want
http://arstechnica.com/civis/v...
http://www.thorschrock.com/200...

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[whipslash]

Yes we will be extremely careful and transparent about it. I like your idea about letting people control what they get to see

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[ThomasBHardy]

Rather than go after APK I'd like to see the moderation system actually expanded to influence posters.

Unlike some comments above, I do not want to see all posts. One of the core values of Slashdot is it's self moderating community. Don't take that away. I don't have time in my life to ferret out the good posts on every story. The self-moderation does a "better than most" job of controlling this and keeping the most valuable part of Slashdot (the intelligent comments) alive and well. This filter is valuable to people who love the site but who cannot live on the site.

What I'd rather see is that the moderation be expanded to apply a "starting score" to any posts. As an example, we all remember New York Country Lawyer. He has posted intelligent comments on issues that should earn him, from consistent community voting, a weighted "starts as a 5" post rating. Conversely, this same principal would start weighing down on the posts of APK such that they would fall outside of the filters for all.

Overall this expansion of self-governance could help steer the conversation to well thought out commentaries and questions instead of rants and abusive behavior.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[whipslash]

Not a bad idea. Thank you

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

APPZ!

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[lucm]

blablabla

What you describes already exists, it's called "Yahoo! Answers"

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I don't know if he is a spammer in the traditional sense.

If you want to see him post a story that has to do with ad blocking or hosts files. He then shows up like beetleguise after a bender with a unique insistence that the way to keep your computer safe is to use host files. Some of us find him like a quirky amusing acquaintance others see him as the devil himself because when he does show up I am guessing he hits those posting limits.

Honestly the most entertaining thing is when apk and someone pretending to be apk get into an argument. Hilarity ensues.

Google found me this story that is chock full of classic apk arguing with coren22. Expand/load all the comments and then do a page search for apk. He always signs his posts but posts as AC.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/11/30/2046216/http20-opens-every-new-connection-it-makes-with-the-word-prism

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the usual crowd, I though /. jumped the shark a decade ago, and certainly when DICE picked them up. Make up your damn minds.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[el_chicano]

But stopping people like the APK spammer - people who nobody want around - yeah, feel free to do that. :)

There was only one APK and many ACs posting as APK. To be fair most of the spam I saw was due to the ACs posting as APK not APK him/herself.

The best thing this site can do is limit AC comments big time. Better to not get all the crap comments than to have a bunch of them and then have to filter through through all the crap looking for an occasional nugget of gold, a task made harder due to a seriously broken mod system.

It would also help cut down on all the racist trolls, the SJW stuff, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Believe it or not once upon a time you would read a Linux story and people would talk about shell scripting, etc. But Linux has also changed, these days people mainly bitch about systemd on Linux stories.

But them again back then most of the members were adults instead of 13 year-old kids living in their parents' basement.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Not at all. What's mysterious about, "Don't take that post at face value"?

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Zontar The Mindless]

In case you don't see it, the poster's hidden motivation here is that he wants to be able to "get back" at whoever mods him down, probably for pushing some wacko agenda every chance he gets, even when not remotely connected to the discussion. Nobody else seems so very interested in knowing ZOMG WHO DARED MOD ME DOWN!!!

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Oh---in case you missed it--this notion is advocated by none other than APK, which should be reason in and of itself to reject it immediately.

It's basically a means to intimidate moderators.

I submit that most of us—that is, who post in good faith, have lives, and don't suffer from USI—don't give a shit who mods us down, and realise that it's better for them and for us that we don't.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[serviscope_minor]

A higher moderation cap is fine,

Why do you think a higher cap would help?

Judging by the average quality of comments on the internet, commenting systems is one of those things that's really REALLY hard to get right. Whatever one says about slashdot, it has maintained a vibrant user community for a very long time (in internet terms) on the current moderation system.

I'm not arguing that the system is perfect, however, I am arguing that moderation systems are incredibly easy to get wrong (and therefore screw up). A big part of me thinks that something so hard to make is probably best left alone if it appears to work.

A higher cap might help of course, but it might not. Why are you in favour? And how high?

And obviously we want unicode.

It is, after all, ridiculous that none of us can type a thorn here.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[serviscope_minor]

But really, I'm not sure it's necessary to post mod names. I'm not sure what it would do other than allow retaliation.

We get that anyway. After a few of the threads where silly people were hurling round "SJW" like a term of abuse, I found random posts of mine in other threads getting modded down, for a few weeks until I guess they got bored.

Re: The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[cyber-vandal]

I do. It's not a great idea for me to read Slashdot on my work computer given the random nature of the comments.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Opportunist]

Actually, I'm quite sure people are willing to accept a lot more if, and only if, they are told about it up front. If you tell me a story is sponsored by someone it is a whole different matter than me reading through it only to discover later that it's just blatant advertising. There is nothing wrong with stories that are basically press agency reports from whoever the story is about, if we know that they're the source. Would we like to hear about some computer chip manufacturer's new and improved manufacturing process? Sure we would. At least I certainly would love to hear if there is a breakthrough in chip manufacturing. And there's nothing wrong with the company itself launching an ad campaign that's veiled as information. But TELL us that it is. It's usually very transparent that it is, and we react VERY poorly if we get the idea that you try to dupe us.

Same for ads and tracking. You do have an audience here that, on average, knows a thing or two about how computers work. Some are paranoid enough to surf permanently through some kind of intercepting proxy. In short, whatever you deliver with the content we request, we will know. In the past, some huge shit storms happened over little more than JS obfuscation and some "odd" cookies. All thing that could easily be avoided by simply stating what's the deal.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[BESTouff]

As for stories, the biggest complaints people have are 1) the story is inappropriate (not something Slashdotters are generally interested in, something that seems like shameless advertising disguised as a story, etc

I for one enjoy the slashvertisements, as long as they are clearly marked as such.
I enjoy them because of the very nature of Slashdot: lots of knowledgeable people will comment on the product and tell me why it's good/not so good, or will show better replacements, better ways of doing the same thing a simpler way, etc. That's often precious and not seen anywhere else.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[dave420]

APK posts as an anonymous coward, though. He also exploits some loopholes in the site to post many posts in quick succession. He's a different beast. As you can see from my sig we've had our moments in the past.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Hognoxious]

And obviously we want unicode.

I don't, you presumptuous toad.

It's a shit solution to a non-problem.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd also echo this sentiment. +5 is enough that even if a couple of people downmod a genuinely good post because they have an agenda it would still be prominently displayed and quickly voted back up; allowing say +8 posts just means that mod points get absorbed into a smaller number of posts, rather than spread around.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[AmiMoJo]

The other problem with higher scores is that it wastes mod points. That +1 insightful that pushes a comment to +6 could have been used to bump someone else up. All increasing the points cap will do is mean fewer voices are modded up in a discussion and alternative views and ideas find it harder to get noticed.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[jrumney]

I also find that when I get mod points, I often get more (15 usually, sometimes still 5) and they expire faster (1 or 2 days instead of a week) than in the old days. I usually don't use them before they expire, and I don't see any real problem on slashdot that looks like it is caused by not enough moderators, so I'm not sure that more mod points is a solution to anything other than making some users feel self-important because they got lots of mod points to (ab)use.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[AmiMoJo]

To prevent mod-bombing, any given moderator should only be able to moderate a given user once or twice a day. That would prevent people using all their mod points against a single person, making it much harder to mod-bomb them.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[drinkypoo]

Your trolls are subtle. Mine are damned idiots, thankfully. They just modbomb me with five downmods to sequential comments. Hasn't happened in some months, but not so many of them. The system should definitely detect that, it's a bit pathetic that it doesn't really

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Rei]

To be fair, I wasn't actually proposing it, just responding that it was fine by me if they choose it. The person I was responding to proposed it. I'm indifferent.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Rei]

Yes, clearly labeled slashvertisements are fine by me too. But no ads disguised as regular stories.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Rei]

For example, just the other day when someone posted a story talking about pollutants from 3d printers, and there was a huge round of confusion in the comments because the pollution levels were listed in grams rather than micrograms, because Slashdot ate the micron?

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree, and the perfect counter-example is this thread. Every reasonable post is at +4 or +5 already, so that any truly brilliant or remarkable post will be unable to stand out. I think it would be helpful to add an extra >>5 score that only shows if a post score is significantly above the current cap, always showing +5 otherwise.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anne Thwacks]

I posted for a higher cap, but this is what I actually want.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting limits need to STAY. The quickest way to get fewer active users s to allow anyone to crap-flood. 30 posts in 4 hours and 50 posts a day is usually enough. Yes, it's frustrating to hit those limits when you have several heated discussions going on, but let's keep some perspective here - it's only the internet.

How about an extended limit if your post's are upmodded? Thus, if you write sensible in a discussion, you may continue it longer.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Karmashock]

I agree with all that but would add that Anon posts need to go. There's no reason why people can't use a signed account to make posts.

Here someone will say "but the moderation"... yeah, and this fellow just talked about ways to remove all those problems. So once those are gone... no argument for Anon posts remains. Which means a radical reduction in sockpuppet bullcrap.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you want everyone to have to log in? That is dumb. Slashdot is one of the few places around where don't have to sign up for a fucking worthless account. Why would you change that?

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[jafiwam]

And in the name of all that's unholy, get rid of the javascript that auto-scrolls you to the top of the page whenever you hit the back button. Just to serve more ads, I presume, but it really breaks usability when you can't follow a link in a large thread, and go back to where you were. That makes me leave the thread in disgust. Sure, I can open links in a new tab to get around the problem, but I shouldn't have to. Back is to where you were, not where advertisers want you to be.

Links in comments should be automatically tagged "target='blank' so they open in a new tab or window. Hands down full stop just do it. That is the norm for every other comment related site ever, and NOT having it here means forgetting to right click on links.

That would eliminate all sorts of bullshit that has happened here, and solves your particular problem too.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[ThomasBHardy]

Ahh, thanks for the additional details.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Elaborating on this a little.
NewYorkCountryLawyer's score should be weighted 5 in stories with tags he has consistently posted high in before. In his case it would be law related tags.
Similarly an AMD developer has been posting in AMD driver related stories, he should probably have a higher rating in stories with AMD tag.

Identifying these employees or experts would be a nice addition, perhaps an "expert" nomination button could be added to allow editor or moderator to bump their scores.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[arth1]

That would eliminate all sorts of bullshit that has happened here, and solves your particular problem too.

No, it doesn't. Not everybody use tabs or have a browser that deliberately misinterprets TARGET=blank as a new window instead of "re-use any display named 'blank'". Relying on browsers not following standards is not good.
Style guides explicitly warn against redirecting links to other windows without giving the user a choice, because, well, it takes away a choice from the user.

And not all links are external either. There are plenty of internal links on the page you read.
And the back button position still will get overridden.

10+ years of browsing slashdot with following the link in the same window and being able to return to where you came from was broken, presumably by a wish to re-display ads. Get rid of that piece of javascript.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the troll. Everything they said was completely valid and accurate.

Users should not be able to ban other users because they disagree with them as happens now. I suspect your motivation is to retain this power in order to promote your views and silence others.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[MMC Monster]

Double agree. :-)

Capping Mods at 10 will just end up with people trending towards the group think so that they get modded higher.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[dinfinity]

There's absolutely no reason for higher mod scores except to have a "popularity contest," and that's not what good moderation is about

Actually, being able to easily see the best comments in a 1000-comment thread would be useful. Other commenting platforms have this feature and it works really well. One thing it does is make the time and subthread of posting completely irrelevant. Currently, +5 posts at the bottom of a story are read far less often than those at the top, I believe.

The key point is the 'popularity contest' and 'best' part of it. If the moderation process is unable to provide accurate ratings, the final 'ranking' will be inaccurate and unusable. Otherwise, it makes sense to include a 'sort by highest rated (post/thread)' functionality.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[houghi]

I would like a bqsic wisiwig interface, so I do not need to type in bold and then forget it and have it posted like that.

Nothing more than the allowed HTML that is available right now.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[0100010001010011]

Yes! Let us know who positively voted for things I don't like. That way I can go through and harass them off line or in other threads.

There are perfectly valid reasons for anonymity.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[houghi]

I am about 1 to two hours on /. and hit the cap all the time. It makes me go even less. I think it should be linked to your karma. Higher karma, faster posting. Lower karma, slower posting.

A posting a minute for those with a high karma. One every 5 minutes as a standard and 1 every 15 minutes if your level is below 0.

This is, after all, a social platform where people interact with postings. Having that limited is not that great.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

This. I always browse at -1, especially when I have mod points. When you get mod points, it even encourages you to browse at -1 for that reason.

Posting AC myself as I have been voting on ideas I like with mod points in this thread as it is. Like someone above suggested, when looking at this thread after a couple days I'd use the final post score to help determine what the community wants vs. what an individual wants.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[rmdingler]

Heh heh... ironically, /. has continued not because of its own excellence, but because of the utter lack of excellence elsewhere.

The grass may look greener, but the lines ain't.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

If my name is posted next to every mod I do, I just won't ever mod. Or I'll only mod stuff up and never down. I can't think of an easier way to kill the mod system than to require names of who modded what, unless you couple that with the idea someone else had of allowing PMs between users. The first time I got some bitchy PM from someone I modded down would be the last time I ever moderated.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to apply gzip compression

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[chihowa]

There should also be a limit to how many of them are posted. One slashvertisement per day is probably approaching too many.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[sycodon]

I second this:

Fourth of all, this site needs to list who moderated each comment. It should show the username of the moderator, and what rating was given. If somebody's deemed responsible enough to moderate, then they should be willing to have their name attached to any and all moderation they do.

Either that or provide a "I disagree" mod that is neutral.

If you are going to push an agenda by trying to suppress others comments, at least have the balls to put your name on it.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[sycodon]

Oh...and a fucking Edit button.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[mu51c10rd]

They seemed clearly labelled before...just had to filter out anything from Nerval's Lobster.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk posts on topic! He's not same as GNAA! Identifying who issues upmods or downmods would be an improvement.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Jakune]

While I would love the moderating system to change so I might have a chance to one day use that to voice my opinion. I also recognize that changing that could lead to negative consequences (much like many have mentioned already). So... I would have to agree, Move Slowly.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk posts on topic. He's not same as GNAA! Identifying who issues upmods or downmods would be an improvement. If users can't stand behind their downmods backing them with facts they shouldn't get modpoints.

Re: The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk never says that hosts cure all problems. Show us where he did. You can't since apk only says hosts do more against them than any other method does from 1 file for less resources consumed. Apk posts on topic. He's not same as GNAA! Identifying who issues upmods or downmods would be an improvement. If users can't stand behind their downmods backing them with facts they shouldn't get modpoints.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk trashed both: Ars at Windows IT Pro during the memory optimization hoax (dr. russinovich too using MS's documentation showing mem optimizers unstall halted exchange servers) and thorschrock went down to apk when Computer Associates Accounting Fraud scandal came up and CA had to downgrade a false positive on 1 of apk's wares to no threat zero threat level. CA sold off that security suite too. It was lousy which apk also pointed out and CA selling it proved it. Nice try but no dice troll.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk posts on topic. Dave420 your signature shows he's gotten the better of you making you eat your words so many times it's hilarious. You do that to yourself with technical errors you made. That's your childish retaliation Dave420 in a signature? Talk projecting your butthurt! Apk's not same as GNAA! Identifying who issues upmods or downmods would be an improvement. If users with modpoints can't validly back downmods with facts then users who downmod for no good reason shouldn't have modpoints.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[AlinuxNCSU]

- The moderation system is not perfect, but it is a heck of a lot better than most (if not all) other systems. Be very careful about changing it, lest you break an advantage that Slashdot has. Sure, it has problems, but I have not seen any better system. They all have flaws. By fixing one, you're likely to introduce another.

As someone who has been reading /. for over 15 years, and who rarely posts but always moderates when I get points, I wholeheartedly agree with this. I come here to see interesting and informative discussion about tech-related (broadly speaking) topics, and sometimes to get a tech point of view about other issues (like politics, though this is where /. discussions and moderation becomes least functional, which isn't surprising when comparing to similar discussions elsewhere on the internet). To me, the good of the current moderation system outweighs the bad. On the margins, there are changes to be made, but a complete overhaul is unnecessary.

Moderation doesn't have to be perfect. It's about generating a rough ranking of the comments on the question of "does this comment add to the discussion?". Back in the heyday of /., if I was busy, I could browse certain discussions at +4 or even +5 and get the highlights of the discussion. Now, I feel that there are fewer comments and less moderation, so there's more noise; I generally browse at +2. But the basic idea is to roughly separate the best from the worst comments. We don't need more than a -1 to +5 range to make those distinctions, and I don't think moderation abuse is so great that we need to significantly overhaul how it's done. If there are enough people commenting and enough people moderating, things tend to settle out. And that's why I come here -- the signal to noise ratio in the comments is still better than anywhere else.

If you want to "fix" Slashdot, you don't need to change the bones. I think there are two classes of changes to be made. First, attract people back with better content: more interesting stories rather than product placement and random editorials; fewer dupes; better and more clearly edited articles. Second, make it easier to comment and use Slashdot: fix the unicode and JS issues, clean up the UI, and so on. I think the /. herd has been on point so far.

Re: The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's not a great idea ... to read Slashdot ... given the random nature of the comments.

There, FTFY!

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Quirkz]

I have never seen mod points expire in more or less than 72 hours. Admittedly, I haven't been around as long as you have, but it's been 3 days only for the five years or so I've been getting them.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[apoc.famine]

I posted this below, but now in browsing down through deeper replies, I see that the GP's comment is tied to what I suggested about Karma and I'd like to expand on it.

Use Karma to decide starting moderation score. Sure, some people will abuse this by shitposting once in a blue moon because they can, but that will get moderated down. That's really a long tradition here.

I' d forgotten about New York Country Lawyer, but that's a great example of someone who consistently posted amazing stuff, and who should have often started off with a bit higher moderation than he did. It doesn't have to be much either. If most people are browsing at +2, having really high Karma might allow you to post at +3. Then you'd start above the noise.

99% positive moderation? Maybe +4.

If it's easier to lose Karma based off of downmods than it is to gain it through upmods, people will need to regularly post decent comments to stay above the noise. This is going to take some delicate balancing and some trial and error, but it could do wonders for the comments here.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

How come apk made AmicusNYCL eat his words here http://slashdot.org/comments.p... and here too http://slashdot.org/comments.p... if he's such a good poster?

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Noah Haders]

these are good points and something I hadn't considered.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Noah Haders]

APK is my favorite troll. he either has a bot that scans comments for his name, or is a daily reader, cuz summon his name three times and he shall appear!

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk posts on topic. He's not same as GNAA! Identifying who issues upmods or downmods would be an improvement. When users downmod bomb and don't back them with facts they don't deserve modpoints to abuse that way.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Will.Woodhull]

Fourth of all, this site needs to list who moderated each comment. It should show the username of the moderator, and what rating was given. If somebody's deemed responsible enough to moderate, then they should be willing to have their name attached to any and all moderation they do.

I disagree with rest of AC's comment, but this point should be considered. With the present lack of accountability, the moderation system is too much abused.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk posts on topic. I've seen apk make his detractors eat their words many times on lies they told quoted which he validly proved as lies or incorrect technically. Identifying who issues upmods or downmods would be an improvement. If downmodders can't stand behind their downmods they don't deserve modpoints to abuse.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk posts on topic. His detractors don't trolling him and downmodding him but they don't validly back themselves where apk does with facts. Identifying who issues upmods or downmods would be an improvement. If trolls who downmod bomb abuse moderation that way they don't merit modpoints.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk isn't like GNAA. Apk posts on the topic at hand or in response to inferior addon users showing them many ways how hosts is better and no one proved him wrong validly technically to date. That screams of advertisers or inferior competitors bought out by them (ghostery/adblock) doing it with sockpuppets downmodding apk's posts on topic.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[el_chicano]

I post AC because I did not want to lend myself, or my identity in any way, to Dice as they tried to turn /. into their little toy
I post AC because I do not want to wear a brand for a corporate overlord
I post AC because nobody will come after me, my job, my employer, my family because they are a sociopath and disagree with what I am saying

Umm.. OK. So in reality you are telling us you are a big pussy who doesn't have the balls to speak out about important things you care about because you are scared of other people.

I am a socialist from Texas and regularly troll right-wing, gun-toting loons under my real name on G+ and have not been shot yet:

http://userctl.com/BlueVsRed/032.png
http://userctl.com/BlueVsRed/042.png
http://userctl.com/BlueVsRed/043.png

I regularly troll Donald Trump supporters, who are not the most stable people out there, and have not been stalked yet:

http://userctl.com/BlueVsRed/Socialists_for_Trump.jpg
http://userctl.com/BlueVsRed/002.png
http://userctl.com/BlueVsRed/040.png
http://userctl.com/BlueVsRed/044.png
http://userctl.com/BlueVsRed/049.png

Why I even occasionally criticize those on the left with no problems whatsoever:

http://userctl.com/BlueVsRed/012.png
http://userctl.com/BlueVsRed/047.png

I had a big laugh when you said you were afraid they would come after your employer:

Yes sir, massah, I made sure all those bad people did not find out about all the crooked shit you are pulling, can I get an extra bowl of gruel tonight?

I also had to laugh because I am between jobs and I am having a hard time finding a new IT job because of age discrimination not because sometimes I can be a dick on G+.

But my generation was different, we grew up in the 1960s and were taught to confront bad shit, not to go and huddle in the corner of some safe space wailing and gnashing our teeth.

You know what an IP address is, don't you? And there is such a thing called big data? So unless you take great care to hide where your packets are coming from big business, the government, etc. know who you are.

I am much more worried about the shit big business and government pull than that of some random nut-job on the internet.

PS The other poster was correct, you are paranoid and should seek professional help immediately!

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[el_chicano]

That should be a +5 Insightful comment, yet thanks to abuse of the mod system it's at -1.

Then put your fucking name on it and you will get the +5 Insightful you are lusting after.

However, only idiots seek external validation, all my comments are +5 Insightful it is just that you assholes are too stupid to realize it!

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

You must really hate mobile users with a band cap if you want all comments shown by default.

How about a simplified mobile interface then? All the comments on this page (up to around 1200 now) can be condensed to a fraction of the data of a jpeg.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[arth1]

Apk isn't like GNAA. Apk posts on the topic at hand or in response to inferior addon users showing them many ways how hosts is better and no one proved him wrong validly technically to date.

Many have indeed showed him (you? "inferior addon users" seems like something apk would say) to be wrong. What invariably happens then is a barrage of spamming all of those users' posts with incoherent attacks and claims that they are *PROVEN* wrong. By the claim, apparently.

Anyhow,
- hosts files don't support wildcards
- hosts files don't support IP ranges
- hosts files don't support nxdomain
- hosts files don't support location sensitive addresses
- hosts files does not work through proxy servers (who do the resolving on behalf of the client).
- hosts files are parsed linearly and don't scale
- hosts files cannot block only parts of a server

And many, many other problems with it. But that's neither here nor there, as he won't listen to criticism at all; it only strengthens his belief that others are "inferior addon users".
It's all the ad hominem attacks, stalking people to attack them, and repeated spamming that marks apk as a crank. The stalking behavior is especially worrisome. I hope he won't take this to the next level, but I am not willing to bet my life on it. I think he might need help that we're not the right to give.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[KGIII]

I am a FIRM believer in options...

That said, enable you (or I - almost certainly I) to automatically open posted links in a new tab and links in the summaries in a new tab. Yup. I could code that - it might take me a minute to figure out how to do it automatically in Perl and I'm probably going to cache that setting in a cookie but that's because I suck. I'd assume they'll do a better job than I.

But yes, having the option to automatically open links in a new tab would be great. As it is, I use my mouse's center button out of habit. I'd like to see that as an option and would certainly tick the box to try it out. I'm already doing so - I just have to use the center button to do so or use CTRL or right click... Automatic would be nice as an option. Maybe even the default option...

Also, if the poster takes the time to add about='_blank' then adhere to that. If I've taken the time to make a link open in a new tab, do so. I did it for a reason. Obey the code. It's not something that can be malicious (by itself) or harm the server.

Hmm... Seeing as I'm here... Markdown and a GUI (gasp) editor (optional) might be nice. There are whole libraries that do nothing but add a handy-dandy GUI to the comment facility. Even I, yes I, can probably figure out how to add that. Again, I'm probably gonna cache the settings in the cookie 'cause I suck and hopefully they don't do that as their only option. They should tag it in the user's stored settings in the database. I hate working with a DB thus it's getting stuffed in a cookie if you have me do it. Simple solution? Don't let me do it - unless you want it stored in a cookie. You probably don't just want that.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[KGIII]

Hey there, this is APK pretending to be someone other than himself.
http://ask.slashdot.org/commen...

This is not scientific but I searched Google for "slashdot apk ublock" (He talks a lot about uBlock). I clicked the first link. I pressed CTRL + F and entered "APK" and it found 425 instances in this thread:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...

This is an example post - actually, let me get you multiple examples:
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...

Oh, I can go on and dig out more. However, that doesn't even scratch the surface. Really, CTRL + F and search for APK in just that ONE thread. You can then use Google to find many, many more examples.

If you don't understand, click that first link and consider that that's one of THOUSANDS of them. He will respond and pretend to be someone else who is not him. You can tell by verbiage and writing style - he's been booted off of almost every tech site, at least once, and has a bit of a reputation. Just give that one thread a read, using CTRL + F, and have a peek at it and draw your own conclusions.

I'd also add that he claimed he was leaving, recently actually, on a separate site. He did so. He migrated to a new forum but I think they've kicked him out already.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[KGIII]

Dude, you're not fooling anyone. We *know* it is you, APK. This sort of behavior is in line with why people have issues with you. You're given the chance to defend yourself and you're hiding and pretending that you're not you. We can SEE you are you - you use the same verbiage, every. single. time. Hell, we've even told you how to fake it better but you still haven't figured that part out.

And no, no I don't post as an AC. You know that. I also don't hold back and not say what I feel needs to be said. You know that too. You even know how I feel about hosts files, why I don't use them, and how I feel about people causing needless drama, harassing others, and repeating themselves needlessly. So, go ahead and take it out on me, show me whatever it is you think makes you right, or whatever - I can handle it so I don't need to post as an AC. 'Snot like I was doing anything more constructive.

Seriously... The new owner asks who you are and you hide and try to pretend you're not you? You don't even do a good job at hiding. I've raised children. These are not antics you should be proud of, son. Some day, you might have a Mrs. APK and even make baby APKs. Do you REALLY want to subject them to the ridicule they'll face simply by dint of birth?

No? Well, stand up and be a man. Stand up and be counted. Stand up and be who you are. You do it, you're accountable for it. Be accountable - if nothing else. That's where the road to growth starts. I can assure you, we've all got room for growth.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

What an awful idea. It sounds like you just want a list of fellow users you can scapegoat and then harass when your bad modding is called out. To make matters worse, most, if not all, of these people you'd be targeting would have done nothing more than just view your modding history!

You remind me of those social justice types who talk about how bad bullying is, yet they treat alleged bullies (often wrongfully-accused) so much worse than the bullies ever treated anyone else. It's like you want to stop vague "abuse" (which probably didn't even happen) with actual abuse that you'd be delivering.

All modding histories should be made fully public and viable by anyone, regardless of whether they have an account here. If that idea scares or worries you, then you probably shouldn't be moderating at all. If you can't take responsibility for the quality of your moderation, then you should not moderate.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[david_thornley]

I want to be more specific about "unpopular sites". Some sites are way unreliable, or are seen as such by a good many people here. (Example: any site that addresses global warming.) I don't want to discourage those. Some sites are difficult to access, such as paywalls and forbes.com (which apparently requires people to turn off ad blockers before seeing their stuff - it's their call, and may be right for them, but it means a lot of people here are not going to be able to see TFA), and I think those should be avoided. There are sites that run fluff stories about slashdot-worthy things that may link to another site that may link to an actual arxiv.org paper, and it would be real nice to link to something closer to the source and give the arxiv link in the summary if one exists.

As far as advertising goes, I have the checkbox to turn off advertising. I have never been tempted to use it, and I have never regretted not using it. If /. is going to provide ads that don't try to play sound, divert me too much from the content, take focus, leave unwanted windows around, or install malware, I'm fine with them.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[KGIII]

You can use some, a limited subset, but there's a limit as to the insertion methods. For some reason, I do not know why, the U+12345 doesn't work but using the keyboard layout works. © ® € £ ¥ ñ, and more, all work well enough. You can even insert < and have it not get eaten (but that one's a bit trickier) if you want to.

Do we need all of them, including the ones that I'd call emoticons? Where do we draw the line? I'd like to see more maths symbols. × ÷ + and - are there. is there.

Then, we have your thorn... (I guess we could speculate on the verbiage of "I can't" as opposed to "we can't" and all that.) Is that needed? Does it serve any function? No, really. I have no idea - I think of a thorn and I think of things that stick in you or runes. Except, I don't actually know what it is in reference to runes. I do know what raspberry thorns are like. Who does typing a thorn help and what does the thorn do?

Then, we have the micro symbol. I think we can all agree on that. Well, anyone who doesn't agree is a poop-head. I can type it. I can have it on my screen. It disappears when I hit preview. -- That space, right there, is where there *should* be one. It's not. Oh, it's there on my screen (inserted with R-ALT + M which is a dead key or a Gr key - I've no idea which) but it doesn't get to your screen. That needs fixing. That will help "we" and not just "I" - I believe.

Then, we can type microgram. I'm not so sure you can type thorn. I don't actually know what a thorn is - except something to do with pricks and runes. I'm pretty sure you're reference is for the latter or something else entirely. I'm willing to guess that I've seen a thorn. I'm unwilling to state that they have any applicable value to most - because I don't know if they do. They might, but I can'y say that I've knowingly ever wanted to type one before.

You want to type a thorn. I want to type a pile of poop. You probably have a good reason to want to type a thorn. My only excuse is that I'm easily amused and about as mature as your average five year old. Does the inclusion of either of those help people other than ourselves in any meaningful fashion? 'Cause, I don't know... If you ask Slashdot which they'd prefer, the thorn or poop, Unicode supported - I suspect the poop would get a whole bunch of votes. This being Slashdot, it might get more votes than the thorn.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[david_thornley]

- This site is a kook magnet.

You must be new somewhere else.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[KGIII]

I think there's some merit to the idea that no, no the rest of the Internet does not actually want us. As I postulated in the last thread about this... The 'net will always make sure that Slashdot exists even if they only do so in order to keep us distracted and out of their comments section.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[david_thornley]

Unfortunately, trolls generally have no sense of shame. I'm pretty open here, and I'd be embarrassed if a lot of dumb or malicious mods could be publicly traced to me (spoiler: I don't do malicious mods), but that's not true of some people that hang around here. I also don't want to duck out of responsibility by picking a different screen name here, while that wouldn't bother some people. If we're going to have some sort of sanctions, I want them to hurt the trolls more than they hurt non-trolls.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those aren't his points to disprove. These are and you can't prove them wrong http://slashdot.org/comments.p... He trashed yours here http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[el_chicano]

- This site is a kook magnet. No doubt about it. It can be charming at times, but can also be a problem when the content to noise ratio gets too low. The last thing we need is for the kooks to see who downmodded them so they can go on a vendetta. They do that enough as is with people who try to talk sense to them.

Hey new owners,

You thought you were buying a tech website, not Reddit light with a shitter commenting and moderation system.

1) As far as the commenting system, everybody has mentioned unicode. Not being able to include images? Tres lame!

As far as the mod system, I get mod points when there are a lot of crap articles, when there are cool articles I have none available. When I run into a particularly good comment I have no mod points available.

Why do mod points expire? Why can't old timers like me, still hanging around in spite of this site being a pale shadow of its former self, not get a permanent pool of mod points to use in these situations?

If the old timers abuse this then you can remove their permanent mod points, but I have no axe to grind it will not happen in my case. I just get tired of having to scroll down through the 100s of racist, sexist, anti-gay posts without being able to do something to do something about them in order to make this a better site for all.

2) If you want to make this a great tech site why don't you test the users on their IT knowledge and give them privileges accordingly? A 15 minute test with 60 randomized questions about OSes, networking, databases, cloud, etc. If you do well you get a Ferrari license, if not you get a Yugo license.

Those with the Ferrari licenses will drive better and will tend to have more important things to say, those with the Yugo licenses can at least be identified more easily so us Ferrari drivers do not have to waste our time and energy on all the loony racist, sexist, and anti-gay trolls.

A new user with a Ferrari license should also get a permanent mod points unless they abuse the privilege. So together all those with the Ferrari licenses could collectively mod down the trash and up mod the gems.

But like socialism in the US this will never happen because it would mean Slashdot would need to get a better class of users. Which totally goes against Market-Droid 101 more is better than less, which implies that quality should not matter at all at least when it comes to stuff like ad impressions.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wise up dipshit, potential employers can tie together all of your userids and use it to decide whther or not they want some foul mouthed crank on staff or not

looks like it is not working so well for you

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[KGIII]

It's important to add that (in my humble opinion) I think you should avoid defaults. In other words, greater control and choice. If you're going to implement a feature *and* it is reasonable to do so, make it an option. It can be enabled by default *if* that's a goal/requirement.

We're geeks and nerds. We love buttons. You could probably load up 1000 random extra buttons in our control panels and we'd be content for weeks just pushing them - even if they just changed trivial things. You could put in a button to change the capitalization of every letter E and someone'd be flipping that button - constantly, for at least a week before they get tired of it.

Observation: We love options and hate defaults. We like being able to break our own systems - in fact, we insist on that. Options also means it's not being imposed. Options mean we're still able to choose. Options means greater liberty and greater freedom (those are not pseudonyms) and we generally seem to like that.

There's no way that you'll ever make us all happy. It's not possible. Having a laundry list of things to fix? That's not a bad idea. Having a laundry list of things to really change? Well... I think people believe you have access to a giant control panel and can just make sweeping changes by flipping a switch or inserting a new number - both with a clearly labeled manual. I assume you have no such thing, really. If you do then, well, those sound like buttons to me and I'd hardly fault you for poking them.

Oh, I've loads of thoughts on the subject and would happily write them out. I'm not sure what the value would be. I can even write paragraphs about the merits of various choices. Again, I'm not sure what the value would be. I'd do that but I don't really want to overwhelm (or underwhelm), I don't want to add to the noise, and I'm not sure what levels of change need to be considered - at this point.

Conclusion: A laundry list of things to fix is a good idea - but a list of changes to make in the future (including things like moderation policy) is a bit presumptuous. Options are good, when applicable, and might be the best way to guide instead of force. We like buttons but, sadly, not even that is an absolute at Slashdot. I've been watching /. for a long time and we tend to get displeased when someone tries to use force - but we'll probably click a button. We'll even argue about what settings the buttons should be optimal configuration. It's what we do.

That said, don't forget that silly post threshold for posters with maximum karma - if you've ever got time to look into it. It'd be appreciated and there's a dozen or so of us who bounce off that threshold frequently. It's akin to a rev limiter set for 6000 RPMs on something designed to operate at 10,000 RPMs for short bursts. You can do that but it's probably not going to get the best results possible. On the list of things that impact people by number, that's probably pretty low on the list.

If you'd like, someone (I guess I could - but someone more concise than I may be an optimal choice) could wait for this thread to die down and then re-read it. They could take notes and summarize the thread and maybe do some actual research to see what benefits there are and do some sort of "formal" report. I suppose, they could do both an abstract and maybe even format it in a readable format. 'Snot like we don't have plenty of paper authors and administrators here.

I'm still awaiting that picture with the chicken fried steak batter and party hat. ;-)

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

/. need this, add it: Other forums do identifying who issues upmods or downmods. If users can't stand behind their moderations they don't deserve modpoints. They're too easily abused by those using multiple accounts farming karma to mod their main account up and to mod down anyone who gets the better of them somehow adversely affecting their agenda. Everyone knows advertisers have been caught doing it for example.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[sconeu]

I like this one. However, I still think that identifying moderators serves no purpose.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[KGIII]

There are about a dozen of us (that I've noticed) who ping off the rev limiter that is the 50 posts per day limit - even if you've maximized your karma level. I have it on good authority that such limits will be either be removed or increased. I've read a few suggestions on the topic and they sound nice but increase complexity.

The idea that it will mean that crap-floods happen is silly. They might. They might happen for a while. Then that person will quickly lose their karma rating and no longer have as many posts. It's a self-correcting problem. Only a few people are suggesting allowing everyone to post unlimited times. I think they're being safely ignored. I think... I hope... There should be sane limits but one should be able to exceed those limits by gaining in karma - like one already can. Those limits should just be higher than what they are once you reach the highest karma ranking and *only* once you reach the highest karma should it be unlimited or nearly unlimited.

If it helps, I already made such a proposal to the new owners and they've indicated support. (I'm avoiding claiming that they'll do it or that they said they'd do it - they did not exactly say either of those two things.) I'd also imagine that it's trivial to change but not all that important in the scope of things. Hopefully they'll let us know when it changes. Otherwise, I might not notice and might not know to be grateful.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[nmr_andrew]

I'd like to see two additional changes to the mod system myself, I think at least the first has been proposed earlier.

We really need an "undo mod" and/or "change mod" option, I think we've all hit the wrong mod at some point in time, usually resulting in a "D'oh!" moment. Heck, it would only need to be active for 30 or 60 seconds. An alternative that I've also seen proposed is to have an "are you sure?" prompt for every mod, but I would find that quite annoying.

Second, while I can certainly see at least some of the reasoning against being able to both comment and mod in the same thread, the system defines an entire post/story as a single thread. I at least would like to see this change, it often forces one to choose between modding or posting in a story (or at least forces posting as an AC). It's particularly annoying in submissions with multiple hundreds of comments where I may mod near the top but then see something later that I want to correct, add to, or disagree with (and post why).

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[KGIII]

I have a stalker but I think it's meta moderation that killed them. They were bold enough to tell me that they were going to down-mod everything I said. They then tried. They went from 5 points a day to 5 points every few days. Then they went to 5 points a week and then to 3 points. They always did the comments right in a row. Now, presumably, they get no more mod points because they still sometimes leave a drive-by comment to tell me that they hate me for being a whole laundry list of things that I am not. I'm a bit perplexed.

At any rate... I kind of feel sorry for them. Now they don't get any mod points. That has to suck. Besides, I liked the attention. They were giving me their most valuable asset - time. On a good day, I could even get them to respond with just a couple of well-placed sentiments. It was awesome! I've had hate mail but I'd never had a stalker. Well, I'd had stalkers but they were pretty lazy. This one was dedicated to me - and I appreciate that dedication. I also liked the ego inflation. I was so important to them that they'd give me their time. They dedicated a portion of their busy schedule to me. I valued that attention and I did my best to ensure that I kept them engaged.

Alas, they appear to have given up. I don't think they were quite expecting me to have that perspective. I even invited them to go out to dinner with the missus and I. Hell, I went so far as to specify that they were invited, desired, at my New Years Eve festivities. (I did get three Slashdotters to show and two of them brought their families - it was a good time had by all.) I have since learned that our antics were on the "news" (radio) and that's why we had extra company. It turned out pretty well. But, my stalker didn't show up.

I don't really place a whole lot of stock in the whole moderation thing. I have never, not once, considered not saying something because it might be poorly moderated. I will never do so in the future. If I believe something is important, I will say it - moderation be damned. I accept accountability - I actually prefer it for myself. That means that I may not always be right. The moderation may not always be right so that's a consideration as well.

At any rate, when you get a stalker - don't hate 'em. Nah, think about how much power you have over them. Think about how much they're giving you. Think about how important you are to them. It's just a matter of perspective. Of course, treat that power with care. *snickers* Otherwise, you lose your stalker and they start behaving irrationally. That irrational behavior might lead to amusing things like them forgetting to post as AC or going off on a rant in the wrong sub-thread. Maybe we need a book or a guide? "Congratulations and Proper Care for your New Stalker!"

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

KgIII Apk posts ac. He can't pretend to be others! You don't prove him wrong either http://ask.slashdot.org/commen... so defending your bad choice in ublock is your motive here it's very apparent. So go take your shot of heroin you crave and shut up. It's obvious it's scrambled your brain.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a heroin junky. That's all that needs to be said of you. Every ac != apk junky. Smack scramble your brain that much?

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[omnichad]

If you put TARGET=blank you're the one that's not following standards. It's target="_blank"

Style guides explicitly warn against redirecting links to other windows without giving the user a choice, because, well, it takes away a choice from the user.

Citation please. For external links, it's generally agreed to use a new tab/window by default. For internal links (pages within a site), you don't generally specify.

If you want to force to open in the same tab, drag the link to the address bar or copy and paste the URL. But if you plan to go back to the original page, very few people would prefer to lose that context.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

What you like is loading your heroin spike up with good smack. Bet you were so depressed you depressed the plunger fast didn't you? You just love the rush of it don't you? It makes things all better for KGIII the junky!

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[desdinova 216]

simple thing to do is look for the words hosts file

Re: The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[cyber-vandal]

Very good ;-)

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[KGIII]

And this is a great example of the behaviors that people dislike. It's like this thread's gonna write itself. You can find 'em stalking my other posts and denying that they are themselves. You can find them making off-topic, inane, posts. You can find them doing all of this stuff. Sadly, their program would (maybe) stand on its own merits but the author is, well... Like I said, I'll let you judge for yourself...

The best part is that they think they're "winning" something or have some sort of victory with such posts. No, APK... We know it's you. It's okay, you can come out now. You don't need to hide. No, your replies don't bother me, don't worry me, and don't have any impact on my future. That's one of the benefits about being retired. Hell, you can make up anything you want and add that to the list. You could write down that I ax murdered a dozen orphans in a small Canadian village and that's probably gonna just make me giggle a little.

They wanted to know who you are. I showed them who you are and gave them links to see who you are. Meh, I'd do it again. You don't really scare me so that's not an actual concern and post stalking is mostly only going to amuse me. It might distract me but that's fine - I didn't have anything better to do. The wonderful life of retirement means I've got a few minutes to get past any distractions while on my way to doing a bunch of nothing. It's not like I have a busy schedule or anything.

At any rate, if you'd like to continue denying that you're you - that's fine. If you'd like to demonstrate the stalking behavior, that's fine. If you'd like to double down on your dishonesty, that's fine too. You're just doing the things that are the reasons people complain about you and making it easier for them to see it. I can assure you, they're not dumb. They can read a few posts, figure out the patterns, and see who you are - even if you use your proxies. You really might want to consider just standing up and being counted. Then you can speak for yourself instead of having others speak for you.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where no one ever validly technically proved apk wrong on hosts being superior to addons at most every level conceivable? That's what I see when I ran that search.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Show us your hard proof it's apk you replied to. Not speculation from a junky on heroin.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[arth1]

If you put TARGET=blank you're the one that's not following standards. It's target="_blank"

Indeed. I was following the suggestions of the GP.

Citation please.

This is /.
Do your own homework.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[omnichad]

Indeed. I was following the suggestions of the GP.

And they were probably just using shorthand. You were taking it literally and saying it won't work.

This is /.
Do your own homework.

I have. I have been doing web coding since 1998. I'm saying that no citation exists for what you're saying, or if there is, it's not reputable in the web world.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[FatdogHaiku]

...and once in a great while a post is >5 Insightful.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

A few typical examples from the comments on this article alone:

http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8700397&cid=51431219
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8700397&cid=51431235
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8700397&cid=51434497

And there are more. Just load all the comments and search for apk or "hosts file engine". He posts the same stuff all the time.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree apk isn't a good poster. If apk were a good poster he would refrain from spamming Slashdot with ads and he wouldn't engage in petty and bizarre ranting. But apk, unfortunately, does both of those things so he is a bad poster.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[BarbaraHudson]

You seem to think that "mobile user" == "phone with tiny screen."

You might want to look up "smart phone".

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[BarbaraHudson]

100 characters a comment average. Including the Re:title, the User name, number, friend/foe, date and time, comment number, links to the title, user name, number, and friend/foe pages, javascript, css and other html? I just downloaded this page, and it's over 7 mb for 1,500 comments, which, according to your lame figuring, should be less than 150k.

You under-estimated by a factor of over 46. Hope you aren't responsible for designing anything (or implementing it for that matter).

Re: The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Even one vote of non-confidence in a moderator should be enough to immediately and permanently strip that moderator of any and all moderating privileges."

That is a very bad idea.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[BarbaraHudson]

Your excuse is that you "did not read the rest of the comment?" Mobile users include smartphones, tables, and laptops. That's the majority of users now, so F*ck you right back. Those mobile users also now account for the majority of revenue, so not just "F*uck you" back at you, but "F*ck you in the heart, asshole." :-)

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[BarbaraHudson]

Different AC here. You're one of Slashdot's more famous idiots. Some would even go so far as to call you a stupid bitch. So it's my honor to help clue you in.

Downmodding serves a purpose, and abuse is corrected by the "intelligence of the herd."

That's actually funny.

by the same logic, you should have to be logged in to post any comment.

Your logic is severely warped. Anonymous commenters (sic) aren't given the ability to moderate.

Well, well well ... my fame precedes me :-) "Stupid bitch" Sure, I'll cop to that - after all, I'm wasting my time replying to someone who uses their personality as birth control. BTW, did your parents have any children that lived?

I never said anonymous commentators were given the ability to moderate. I'll give you a fail for reading comprehension and another one for logic fail.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Noah Haders]

i don't know what they're doing that would require 4kB per comment... maybe it's an optimization issue?

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[BarbaraHudson]

A page with 1000 comments weights in at a bit under 5 meg (this one, with 1500 comments, is 7 meg). That's with ads blocked. You're not going to get that down to a couple of hundred k no matter how you slice it.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[rmdingler]

Clever. Heh heh... I hope you're mistaken, but I can't deny the theory out of hand.

Re: The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

All hail the Lord of Hosts.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[BarbaraHudson]

That's what karma is for. The crappier the karma, the fewer times you can post per day. IIRC, excellent karma = 30 in 4 hours, 50 in 24 hours.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk's a great poster and I agree he made you eat your words twice AmicusNYCL http://ask.slashdot.org/commen...

Re: The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Their posts look the same; they use the same Monomania(tm) branding.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[jrumney]

You might be right, it might be my perception of time that has changed. Or 16 years ago when I first got moderation points, it was always 5 points, which I would immediately go and use. With 15 points, I tend to keep some of them around longer, so often the time expires before I've used them, and that might be what has made the time seem shorter. And probably I spend less time moderating, as I don't have time for sorting through all the -1 and 0 comments these days.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not AmicusNYCL, but you are apk. Why post in the third person? It's weird.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[KGIII]

I actually seriously considered tendering an offer for Slashdot. In fact, I did offer - it just wasn't enough or wasn't noticed as they never contacted me about it. (I did not offer much. The offer stands when/if it goes up for sale again.) But, seriously... Yes, Slashdot makes some money but not a whole lot. You can be reasonably sure of this because of what is said in public about it. Yet, do you want to own it?

If you answered yes, I'd encourage you to think about that for a minute. The only reason I offered to buy it was sentimental reasons and, maybe, to protect the rest of the internet from us. Can you imagine trying to satisfy all of us enough so that we don't bitch? Think about how vocal our minority is capable of being - over trivial things. We can't even agree with what the layout should be and some of us, a really vocal minority, will complain regardless. I don't want to be in charge of keeping us happy.

Ah well... If you're curious, I'd have put us into a trust. After my loan was repaid (as well as interest) then I'd have removed myself from that trust after setting up a charter to ensure growth and longevity. I'd have installed a community voted board, let them write the charter (with oversight), and stepped out of the way once I got my money back. The goal being, as stated, growth and longevity with a preference for the latter and moderate stability. Staff would have all been fired and it would be run by volunteers with open accounting - including how much I was to get as interest and when that was paid. At this point, the community can keep its own damned self alive and running and that includes administrating the hardware and dealing with vendors. They can be paid a stipend. If that's not enough, there are other volunteers. Put it into a semi-democracy and do what you can to protect it from itself.

I did not do that. Well, I made a "serious" offer and it still stands. I do not imagine they'll accept such an offer. Thus, it will never happen. If it does, then that's the plan. I'm willing to put $50,000 into it. I assume some transfer expenses so I'll offer $40,000. Cash is available in three business days but maybe sooner. I'll settle for 10% (compounded) interest and will take only profits to repay the loan given to the community to buy the site (which is how I envision it). After that's settled, I'll return to my place as a happy user and the site can keep chugging along, doing what it is doing, and do so in perpetuity as a not-for-profit organization. The offer still stands.

No, the rest of the internet doesn't want us. I suspect they'd recoil in horror and flee in abject terror if we all bailed out and went somewhere else. Someone will keep Slashdot going for a very long time. I'm pretty sure that laws and a few treaties actually prevent it from being completely shuttered.

(That was basically much of my post about it in the other thread.)

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[AthanasiusKircher]

Actually, being able to easily see the best comments in a 1000-comment thread would be useful.

Sure. That'd be really useful. Except allowing higher scores doesn't do that on any internet forum I've seen. What higher scores do is show the most POPULAR comments, the ones that maximize groupthink. They do not necessarily enable the "best" comments in terms of quality, and certainly not the ones that will maximize discussion of a variety of views.

Other commenting platforms have this feature and it works really well.

It depends on what you want. If you want to see the consensus opinion of the mods, then yes, it works really well. If you want real discussion and lots of opinions, such systems tend to bury less popular ones.

One thing it does is make the time and subthread of posting completely irrelevant. Currently, +5 posts at the bottom of a story are read far less often than those at the top, I believe.

First, the vast majority of stories don't tend to have a lot of +5 posts... maybe a handful or a dozen. If you're browsing at +5, there's not a lot to see except for the one story each day that might get many hundreds of comments.

But regardless, your proposal not only doesn't solve the problem -- it makes the timing effect worse. Time of post is MORE relevant in forums that permit higher scores, since that one post with gets 175 likes in the first hour will always stay on top of those who browse sorting by highest rating, and people will continue to pile on the likes. There's almost no chance of a reversal when it turns out that person was actually full of crap and spouting inaccurate nonsense that just sounded good to the groupthink. But a +5 post can still be nodded down and its influence decreased -- more importantly, a late post in response can gain ground and get up to the same status at least, whereas in the system with an early post with 175 likes, any rational response often gets buried.

I'm not saying the current system is perfect by any means, but I don't think your proposal actually makes things better.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Megane]

Also keep in mind that that AC may not actually have the best interests of /. in mind. The moderation system may not be perfect, but it works pretty good. You should be putting more weight on user IDs below, say, 500000 or so, because they've been here the longest and have "seen some shit". And maybe we even know how the system works, because we remember when karma points were still visible.

The moderation system here is archaic and broken, and needs an overhaul. Instead of helping to promote discussion, it is often used as a tool of censorship and oppression.

See that? It's an "everybody knows" premise with no support for the premise. From a poster who is anonymous for no good reason. I would like to see some actual examples where the moderation system is causing problems that can be addressed individually, not this "everybody knows" crap that goes along with a call to change everything. Basically, I see a lot of "solutions" here to problems that haven't been demonstrated to exist. So all these other places are "horribly broken", but /. isn't, but yet we still need to make all these changes to fix it? Um, right. "Historic opportunity"? That's more bullshit than you'll find at a cattle yard.

One fundamental part of /.'s moderation system that AC seems to ignore is that you don't get mod points all the time. You have to read a lot of threads, then you get (IIRC) "tokens" on your account that eventually become mod points. If you don't use them all, you are likely to have mod points come back a few times over the next weeks, then eventually the run of mod points ends. This ensures that the same people aren't moderating all the time. There are no "gangs of abusive mods". All the places that have problems let anybody mod anything at any time, and look what that did for Digg. It just causes circle jerks and group think. Now there's some "gangs of abusive mods"! Also, negative mods only go to -1, there is no need to go stoning people into the dirt.

Higher mod score cap? Seriously, what for? The point of moderation score is to allow a reader to choose a filter level, with base comments having a separate filter level from replies. It's not meant to be a reward for the poster (and note that each non-Funny up mod adds a karma point to the poster, thus affecting the balance of the whole system), it's meant so that readers can have a way to sort out the good and bad posts. Anything that reaches 5 would probably be good enough to attract however many points you set the cap to, which only drains the moderation system of points that could be put somewhere else.

Eliminate down-mods? Well aren't we just a big hugbox here! Down mods are specifically to let abusive posts be controlled without needing active moderators who are /. employees. Abusive as in spam, and we do get SEO spam every now and then, and those gibberish junk posts. Speaking of that, when I hit the little report flag next to a message and type "SEO spam", does anyone ever even read that or do anything about the post or its poster?

Non-anonymous mods? Yeah, so the crazies who get modded down all the time can know who to send flames to? It's not like we can mod any time we feel like it. I find it amusing that he wants mods to be non-anonymous, but it's okay for him to post anything he wants anonymously!

Metamod system? It's not working well because the UI is confusing, thus discouraging its use. How about fixing it from "+/-" back to "agree/disagree", or at least explicitly document at the top of the metamod page what + and - mean? As it is now, the +/- is ambiguous, does it mean the post should have been moderated up or down or that you agree or disagree? That's why I quit messing with it years ago. Someone was way too in love with their little +/- buttons from the firehose.

Posting delays? Never been an issue for me as a logged-in user. If you write a message long enough to be worthwhile, you aren't going

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Megane]

Be careful about what you ask for and how you filter. You would have filtered your own message by simply discussing that which you don't like.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[dinfinity]

What higher scores do is show the most POPULAR comments, the ones that maximize groupthink. They do not necessarily enable the "best" comments in terms of quality, and certainly not the ones that will maximize discussion of a variety of views.

Read, man. Read:
"The key point is the 'popularity contest' and 'best' part of it. If the moderation process is unable to provide accurate ratings, the final 'ranking' will be inaccurate and unusable."

But regardless, your proposal not only doesn't solve the problem

What is my proposal exactly? I'm pretty sure I didn't propose a specific implementation.

Your concerns are valid, but your approach is not very constructive. One could imagine factoring in the age of a post or the number of 'views' it has gotten in ascertaining its score. Or perhaps add an element of exploration in browsing by always showing several unrated posts (within their threads) to those with mod points. Both would mitigate 'burial' of good posts.

Another idea is to implement an influence factor, where your (moderation) karma is a multiplier for the moderations you make, thus giving more power to what the community deems its most valuable members. There are some abuse issues with this (improving your karma with an extra account) which are easily mitigated if taken into account, but otherwise it makes sense to improve the quality of the scores of posts.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[arth1]

Be careful about what you ask for and how you filter. You would have filtered your own message by simply discussing that which you don't like.

Hiding one's own messages shouldn't be a problem, except for extreme narcissists. Hopefully, you read it while you wrote it, and if you get a reply, the parent link will still work.
If you filter something you wanted to see, it's your own fault that the filter isn't good enough, and no one else suffers because of it.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too obvious it's you amicusnycl. You've lost against apk. Apk's here to stay and adblock shills like you can prove him wrong or stop him posting how hosts are better than browser addons. His hosts engine ware is so much better than your choices it has you struck speechless with the futility of being unable to disprove his facts with reputable sources backing his points.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[BarbaraHudson]

Already been done - look at the Simply Slashdot app.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Megane]

One more thing about SEO spammers with /. accounts. They can create journals to host their crap, and there is NO way to report or moderate a rogue journal article. (you could report posts associated with one, but not the main article)

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[whipslash]

Much appreciated. Will take your points into consideration

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[whipslash]

True. We will address it

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[JazzLad]

FYI, I believe he means this.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Ikemeister]

Come on! Surely I should be able to upvote this one! :) Perhaps look at automod as "assisting real mods where to look for troublespots?

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[KGIII]

I figured it was some letter that came from runes. I'd heard it mentioned in a documentary or two but now I know what it looks like. Until I forget. My memory is shot.

At any rate, I can type it here. I've got all sorts of characters (keyboard layout) that I don't know or use. I mostly need the Euro, Pound, and things like that. But, when I type it here, it disappears in the preview. Slashdot whitelists certain characters.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the word "obvious" means what you think it means.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for projecting you're a abuser of moderation Megane and you don't want to be identified when you do it.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Zontar The Mindless]

APK makes GNAA look sensible. Also GNAA are occasionally amusing, whereas APK doesn't even know what "funny" is.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Zontar The Mindless]

You forgot the trailing "...=>APK". Or did they add a filter for that, Alex?

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

Still a better poster than Jon Katz

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you feel you're being unfairly moderated, or being forced to see comments from people you feel shouldn't be allowed to reply to your comments, you can always post journal entries instead. Subscribers have the ability to choose who can - and who cannot - write comments in their journal entries.

And of-course, nobody is stopping you from starting a new web site of your own. Free market and all that, right?

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Karmashock]

I just want you to login. If you can't handle using a fake name when you troll and sock puppet legitimate users... then I guess I can stand not seeing your stupid ass.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

who is trolling here? and you might want to know that trolling and sock puppetting are not the same - or even similar - by any reasonable estimation.

the fact of the matter is you just complained about how much you can't stand seeing comments posted ac. the previous ac offered you a solution - in fact more than one solution - to that. you should be thanking that person for their thoughtfulness, even if you happen to disagree with their suggestions.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[strikethree]

About once, maybe twice, a year, I see a post that hits so hard or is just so insightful that it should be +6. Perhaps if a +5 post gets 10 more mod points added to it, it could go to +6? I definitely agree with your main point, I am merely offering a slightly different view on the mod cap idea;

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Karmashock]

... Oh my... you are trying this tactic? Oh well... I can't stop you from sucking on that shotgun barrel...

I didn't say the two things were the same thing. I suggested that people were doing both. What is more, they do tend to go hand in hand in that trolls will often make use of sock puppets and sock puppets are typically trolls. I think that was clear above... so your attempt to claim superiority on that point or suggest I was ignorant of something... is frankly laughable.

As to AC and solutions... I want you to have a record or to not be in this forum making comments.

Re:The moderationg system needs an overhaul.

[Anonymous Coward]

So tell us then, who is forcing you to read this forum that makes you so angry? Do your parents force you to read slashdot every night before you go to bed, in hopes that maybe you'll learn how to communicate like a mature human being by seeing how your immaturity is mocked mercilessly?

Because if nobody is forcing you to read slashdot, then you could just choose to read somewhere else. Or if you really think you can do everything better than it is done here, you are free to go ahead and start your own website and see how that goes.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[Frosty Piss]

Eliminate Anonymous Cowards (yea that's sacrilege here, but we're not the same community we were 10 years ago.)

The problem with that is that while many AC's are trolls, there are still good reasons to want to post relevant and thoughtful and productive comments as AC.

Leave the layout alone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Leave the layout alone. If you need buzzwords to explain why you want to change something, STOP!

Put the "read more" link back, better mobile site

[caseih]

Put the "read more" link back after the story summary. Also put the comment count down there again. See soylent news for an example of how it use to be.

Also a couple of years ago slashdot had a wonderful mobile site that looked very much like the desktop site, but was extremely functional (commenting, moderating, filtering comments, everything). The latest mobile site is useless as far as I'm concerned. In fact I the desktop site is more usable on a phone than the current mobile site. Slashdot is not Ars Technica. Slashdot *is* the comments. The stories are just there to spur discussion.

Some input

[brennz]

Slashdot was "News for Nerds"

Lately though, half the posts are some SJW topic.

Bring back the tech.

Re:Some input

[Out0fAmmo]

Exactly. More tech news, less politics.

Re:Some input

[AmiMoJo]

NO. We don't want to create an echo chamber where every story avoids controversial topics because someone might accuse someone else of being an "SJW". That term just means "someone who offends me and who I wish to censor".

Re:Some input

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't want to create an echo chamber

Which is precisely why we don't need more SJW stories. Those are the kinds of stories that help create echo chambers the most. People don't debate and have meaningful discussions under SJW stories, they just fall into their own camps and echo their tired old talking points past each other. Each article just makes people more entrenched in their beliefs, to the point they don't even post and just try to downmod each other.

every story avoids controversial topics because someone might accuse someone else of being an "SJW".

This isn't about avoiding controversy, it's about creating a space that is conductive to civilized and rational discussion. It's no different than rules against shouting fire in a crowded theater.

That term just means "someone who offends me and who I wish to censor".

And we don't need more stories that cater to people who think like that. They are not people who would help promote civilized discussion on controversial topics.

Re:Some input

[Anonymous Coward]

SJWs need to be evicted. Posting anonymously so they don't try to hunt me down and have me fired for "hate speech"

Re:Some input

[Anonymous Coward]

On a related note, mark every post containing the letter combination "SJW" with a crybaby emoji.

Text Ads

[new_01]

I want you guys to succeed, and I realize that part of that formula is to serve up ads. But currently myself and quite a few others are using adblockers on slashdot because it's pretty crazy how much stuff is going on in the front page without blocking the ads. I'd be willing to turn off my adblocker for slashdot if there were text ads and they were integrated in a smooth way. Maybe a check box or something that we can flip to get a text-only experience.

Re:Text Ads

[whipslash]

Good ideas. I'll take a look

Create an "Devil's Advocate" moderation

[Etherwalk]

It's not uncommon for comments to be moderated down not because they're not sensible, but because they're unpopular.

I would consider creating a "Devil's Advocate +1" moderation. Possibly also a Devil's Advocate badge for people with enough Devil's Advocate points.

Re:Create an "Devil's Advocate" moderation

[techno-vampire]

They already have it. It's called "+1 Underrated."

Re:Create an "Devil's Advocate" moderation

[Etherwalk]

They already have it. It's called "+1 Underrated."

Close, but not quite. Underrates is a catch-all. A Devil's Advocate moderation hopefully makes another mod more likely to think for a moment before modding down by gut reaction.

Re:Create an "Devil's Advocate" moderation

[fnj]

They already have it. It's called "+1 Underrated."

"Underrated" is just a synonym for "insightful". It's silly to have both, let alone add another one to serve the same purpose.

Re:Create an "Devil's Advocate" moderation

[techno-vampire]

I've always considered it to be closer to "interesting," but more useful to counterbalance an unfair troll, or redundant moderation.

Re:Create an "Devil's Advocate" moderation

[Applehu Akbar]

To address this problem I would seriously suggest mods +1, I Agree and -1, I Disagree. It would reduce abuse of the other categories.

Re:Create an "Devil's Advocate" moderation

[WalksOnDirt]

I agree.

Re:Create an "Devil's Advocate" moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

... Or maybe you shoudn't ...

How about a messaging system?

[damn_registrars]

I don't know if there is a reason why this doesn't exist, but there really is no way to directly send a message through slashdot to another slashdot user. There are times when this would be useful, say if you get in a meaningful discussion with someone on a topic and then it gets closed (by passing the time threshold) while the discussion is still underway. This could also be useful for reporting bugs, as currently the only way to do that is by email but that has been hit and miss over the years.

Re:How about a messaging system?

[whipslash]

Yes it's something we're considering which is why I mentioned it in the original story. Someone had mentioned it in the comments of the story about the Slashdot acquisition. It's a good idea

you need better stories

[slashdice]

Every once in a while, I open up the slashdot front page, scan the headlines, then close it. Because there's little or nothing I care about. I don't even care enough to first post. Maybe it's just me. But I used to spend a lot of time here. 1. Fire Nerval's Lobster. 2. Get rid of the video section. Actually, the last video should be a video of nerval being fired. 3. Undo everything dice did. 4. More ESR / RMS flamewars 5. More VI / Emacs flamewars

Re:you need better stories

[whipslash]

1. Nerval Lobster is gone, because DICE is gone. In terms of the front page, what if we showed some stories by default that had reached a certain level of popularity in the firehose?

Re:you need better stories

[OzPeter]

In terms of the front page, what if we showed some stories by default that had reached a certain level of popularity in the firehose?

I always thought that was the whole point of the firehose. But I don't think it has to be an automatic promotion, as some of those submissions can be improved with editing (as long as it is actually editing and not changing things around for the sake of it)

Re:you need better stories

[whipslash]

Well we'd show a few firehose stories by default on the front page, but only if they reached a critical mass of popularity. In this case, they'd hit the front page if there hadn't been a story posted in x amount of time. We'd also make it clear they are different than the regular stories, and perhaps give users the option to hide/show them.

Re:you need better stories

[david_thornley]

I think you have a grammar problem here. "Fire Nerval's Lobster" seems to be lacking an indirect object, presumably introduced by "at" or, preferably, "from a".

Re:you need better stories

[Megane]

Fire Nerval's Lobster.

Nerval's Lobster is (AFAIK) a bot. It was originally used for cross-posting articles from the boneheaded idea that was called "SlashBI", then became used for cross-posting crap from Dice. It's still yet another example of why we need to be able to filter by submitter.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[alvinrod]

Eliminating AC is pointless. As with any other site lacking sign-up fees, you just get throwaway accounts spamming the same crap that would normally be posted by AC's.

Re:Start with removing the malware from SourceForg

[whipslash]

Yes we're committed to serving no unwanted ware. We need more than 4 days to fix this. We're working on a lot of things that we'll let everyone know about soon.

Reputation Modding ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... if there's anything I've noticed on slashdot over the last 5-10 years it's the horrifying levels of historical illiteracy. Many of us older slashdotters watched infant tech industries and media industries grow up and with the new generation of kiddies we've been watching as they've been voting their own rights away to copyright/Intellectual property corporate crime syndicate, we've watched the rise of the NSA and the police state and most of us oldies while we expected the world to go to shit are pretty horrified at uninformed snide indifference that exists in many posts that get rated "insightful". Such uninformed "born yesterday" comments from historically illiterate set need to be able to be able to be marked as such by us old age members that have a deep skepticism about mankind and mankinds politics.

It'd be great to have a system where "superstar" informed members have some kind of power to point out why something is false/not even wrong because its obvious the person has never picked up a history book in their lives and then recommend to readers literature on topics at hand to get them to come to grips with the worlds real complexity. When I see simple minded tribal allegiance to electoral politics and falling right into the marketing of lobbyists that tells me the vast majority are uninformed.

The vast majority of mankind is purely unaware of any history that has happened before the time they were born. On the internet you know right away how uninformed and lacking in the books/perspectives a poster has read about important topics one needs to know to have an accurate and relentlessly critical view of the world.

Things happened historically and politically for good reasons, everytime I see a post that shits on unions, I do my best to remember all the bloodshed lost lives and from the countless books I've read on the topic about past wars for profit while the poor were manipulated by propaganda used as cannon fodder. The reason the world has become humane as it is is because of the little guy, everytime I see someone licking the balls of the powers that be I just shake my head. These people are unaware of the countless faceless people who've been forgotten who really were responsible for making our world more humane, too often the known entities have been rebranded positively or negatively by marketing to prop up the corporate establishment or brushed out of history altogether.

There are people on slashdot who are actually a cut above all the other commenters due to their age and sacrifice of putting in the long hours to deal with the true nuance and complexity of the world. Many lessons of history of been forgotten because the powers that be like fat profits and a nice irrational poltiically uninformed and ignorant citizenry and they are busy remaking the educational system to make sure its permanent.

We should all be skeptical of concentrations of power, when I see people naively put their faith in the government or corporate sector, we should always be relentlessly critical about human institutions when they are not acting in a way that is positive to the interests of the common good.

Re:Reputation Modding ...

[MrKaos]

This++

Re:Reputation Modding ...

[Anonymous Coward]

TL;DR Get off my lawn, dammit!!!

Re:Start with removing the malware from SourceForg

[whipslash]

We're gonna fix the obvious things first (adware, deceptive ads, etc) before we get a separate thread for that.. But yes that would be a separate thread.

First fix

[blackbeak]

I wanted to use this opportunity to get a discussion going on how we can improve Slashdot moving forward.

Let's start by banning the phrase "moving forward" unless you're talking about physical motion in a forward direction. Without a time machine there is no other direction for the "movement" of which you speak.

Re:First fix

[whipslash]

Ok. Done.

Re:First fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me QA this fix for you.

Moving forward, blackbeak wanted the phrase "moving forward" to be banned from Slashdot.

Nope. Didn't work.

Re:First fix

[drkstr1]

I probably over use this term a lot, and your comment made me realize I should probably substitute it for "moving on" where applicable. However, I don't think "forward" is the only way to move, when used in such a general sense. One could "take a step back" to examine the options, for example. Wouldn't this be an equally valid use of language? Disclamer: I am terrible at expressing thoughts as words

Re:First fix

[blackbeak]

Actually, in most cases you're probably better off not using "moving on" either. I'm guessing the misused phrase leaked into popular culture from 1980's "corporate speak", when mid-level managers babbled this sort of faux intelligent gibberish in attempts to cover up the fact that they actually had little or nothing to say.

"Moving forward" is exceedingly annoying in sentences which already address the future (ie; "What we should do moving forward (or on) is x."). Get to the point; "What we should do is not use the phrase "moving forward" where it is only redundant. If you must add something, how about "from here on out"? At least that phrase adds a wee bit of additional meaning to a sentence. Not much though.

Re:First fix

[blackbeak]

And I want it off my lawn.

Re:First fix

[drkstr1]

Ahh, "from here on out," just what I was looking for. I think this is what I'm meaning to say when I use the expression. This sounds a lot better to my ears. Thanks!

Stop dropping deep comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently comments deep in the tree can disappear without even a sign that they are there. That seems to lead to repetition where many people post the same thing.

a) make it so that you can always see if there's a hidden comment and expand to see it.

b) as people type (preview) comments it might be worth having a search that shows similar comments

Re:Stop dropping deep comments

[whipslash]

I noticed this. Great point. Put it on the list.

How about a search function that works?

[damn_registrars]

This is another black eye on slashdot, IMHO. The search function has never been useful. I don't know how they managed to devise such an awful search function - it often seems to return anything but what I am actually searching for - but they did. I remember some time several years back the search function was broken enough that slashdot allowed google to index the site and the searches all went through there, which was a massive improvement.

Re:How about a search function that works?

[whipslash]

You are damn right my friend. This is up near the top of our list.

Re:How about a search function that works?

[AmiMoJo]

To be fair, Google doesn't do any better (try site:slashdot.org and your query). I think the structure of Slashdot pages is just hard for search engines to deal with. It's hard to say if the best option would be a custom search engine, or improving the metadata tags to help Google find stuff.

Re:How about a search function that works?

[damn_registrars]

To be fair, Google doesn't do any better

I'm pretty sure that is because slashdot is actively denying the bots access to certain parts of the site. Years back when the slashdot search function was broken badly enough that they allowed google to index it and users to use that instead, it was a massive improvement. Then they went back to the old way once it was "fixed" and we're back to this.

Re:How about a search function that works?

[Anonymous Coward]

Into google, type whatever you're searching for followed by:

site:slashdot.org

I doubt any site-specific search could beat that.

Re:How about a search function that works?

[whipslash]

Hey- we just released an update to the search today. Try it and see what you think. Any feedback is welcome.

Re:How about a search function that works?

[Lotana]

Please make a separate article once-in-a-while detailing what you guys changed/improved. You will get much better feedback in a much more usable form.

Re:How about a search function that works?

[whipslash]

Yeah we will for sure. We're going to be improving a lot of things so I don't want to flood the front page with improvements. We will summarize them in groups.

Re:How about a search function that works?

[blivit42]

I have been reading Slashdot since the late 90's (I didn't create an account until the filter controls switched to those slider bars and layout changed a lot and became pretty horrid -- an account gave me some preferences to turn off a lot of that crap). Never, in my entire time reading slashdot, has the search function been even remotely useful. I've always had to use google (if it was even around when I started) to do any actually useful searches for content on slashdot.

Polls on the sidebar

[OzPeter]

Polls belong on the sidebar. But don't believe just me. Go back and look at all the prior discussions about it.

Actually just go back and look at /. history. Whenever the old management did something contentious there was always a lot of vocal and well reasoned arguments as to why what they did was BS. The trouble was that nobody at /. actually listened.

Re:Polls on the sidebar

[whipslash]

Good idea. Well we're listening that's for sure

Re:Polls on the sidebar

[aitikin]

Polls belong on the sidebar. But don't believe just me. Go back and look at all the prior discussions about it.

I came here solely to put this comment in. Polls have become even more meaningless/less viewed due to their random placement.

Re:Polls on the sidebar

[OzPeter]

Good idea. Well we're listening that's for sure

And we really appreciate it.

But stop with the lying. At a comment way up there you said you were off to get a low UID. But here you are still using the same UID!

Re:Polls on the sidebar

[hierofalcon]

The CSS used to display the polls in the sidebar needs radically adjusted at least for Chrome. It ends up being a narrow band making the actual question impossible to read without scrolling. I think this issue is a bigger reason that polls are being ignored rather than the consistent placement, although I agree the sidebar is where they belong.

Re:Polls on the sidebar

[Not-a-Neg]

I prefer the polls in the feed, it gets boring seeing stale polls off to the side and makes them less likely to be missed. When they are stuck of in the advertisement side of the screen they are all too easily missed due to mental blocks that make one ignore that area of a site.

Re:Polls on the sidebar

[david_thornley]

Polls also need to always have a CowboyNeal option.

Re:Polls on the sidebar

[Megane]

This. I also don't like the variable article insertion position which is trying (badly) to emulate what the sidebar is for... stuff that appears regardless of what articles you see on the front page.

The door's over there, feel free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you browsing at -1? No, seriously, why? You choose to read those posts. I hate the GNAA nonsense, which is why Slashdot has settings so that I never have to actually read it. But I'm not about to censor ever real post by an anon because of some idiots.

I've gotten much more value out of all the anon posts over the years than I have ever gotten from you, so of the two, I'd be more happy to see you leave than every anon. I mean, frankly, I can live without such wonderful posts as "Let the forking begin" -MouseR cite: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8428869&cid=51051525 I've been reading this site since the 90s and, frankly, I don't really remember you ever posting anything worth caring about, whereas I can find many posters on this very story from whom I can remember useful posts.

So if the choice is you or them? Well, let's just say that I won't miss you.

Privileges, titles, reputation

[Etherwalk]

Give uses privileges and a reputation count based on experience and total mod points received on answers. This rewards positive contributions to the community.

Also give users one or more labels based on how their comments break down. Maybe pick a couple of titles for each and randomize which one is chosen, but let someone remove a label and earn it again. Or maybe use a series of badges for progressively more insightful points earned. Someone who has contributed 1000 insightful points to the community should have something different on his profile, like a badge showing "Grand Vizier" or "Ridiculously Discerning".

Re:Privileges, titles, reputation

[shanen]

I think he should get double mod points on the insightful dimension, either to add or remove. However, this also relates to my belief that karma and mod points should be symmetric, using the same dimensions.

Also logarithmic. Seriously. Capped linear is silly, but you could get a similar effect with logarithmic reporting. Insofar as I personally favor the natural log, that means a score of 1 would be reported for the 3rd mod point, 2 would be reported on the 8th, 3 for the 21st mod point, 4 is 55, up to 9 for 8,104 mod points. Two-digit mod points would begin in the area of 22,000, which is extremely unlikely (assuming robots and sock puppets are blocked).

Re:Privileges, titles, reputation

[whipslash]

These are good ideas

Re:Start with removing the malware from SourceForg

[Kobun]

Thank you for the information. I'll wait to see that then, before getting into it too heavily.

Ditto sourceforge on the bad financial models

[shanen]

There is a separate comment somewhere around here on bad financial models, but that one is focused on slashdot. However, a similar mechanism could be applied to sourceforge, and the "charity share broker" in that version (which might be slashdot or the new owners of slashdot) would reasonably deserve a percentage of the funded projects. Just hosting the projects is not enough. Most projects need support in their preparation and even stronger support in evaluating whether or not they have succeeded.

As regards eliminating malware, I think that the lack of a good financial model naturally results in bad financial models filling the vacuum. However, this is more deeply related to the question of why anyone participates in a project on sourceforge in the first place. My own feeling is that relatively few of the programmers have much idea about a viable financial model, though a significant number are still hoping to 'strike it rich' by creating a great program that evolves into a financially successful story. There are some good programmers who are donating their free time, but most of them are going to get drawn off by more lucrative opportunities. Also a significant number of newbies hoping to learn or get a reputation or both...

One thing about the suggestion of funding projects with charity shares... The project proposal that includes a contributor with a track record will stand out, even if that established contributor wants to include some apprentice programmers in the project.

Re:Ditto sourceforge on the bad financial models

[Kobun]

I did not initially understand what you meant with this post; it was very helpful to go hunt down your other contribution which included the layout of your 'charity share'. I'm not able to fully picture what you mean, but It's an interesting thought. http://ask.slashdot.org/commen...

As for the greedy assholes who signed up for DevShare, they did so knowing full well they were putting a paltry few dollars in their own pockets at the expense however-many person-hours lost to malware infections. Not to mention PII compromises, hacked accounts, etc. I'm sure they justified it with "well it's not like I'm the one writing the Malware".

There are plenty of successful projects that fled Sourceforge to distribute clean software outside the confines of SourceForge's ruined reputation. Notepad++, Gimp, VLC, to name a few. Do you believe that replacing their support-by-donation model with charity sharing would enhance their popularity and development?

I also missed in the charity share description - is this a global pool to SourceForge? If so, who determines (and how so) which projects deserve funding?

Re:Ditto sourceforge on the bad financial models

[shanen]

There are various ways to implement it, but the form I currently favor (with a tip of the hat to rms, who has NO understanding of or interest in money, but who asks the right questions), would involve an entity acting as the "charity share brokerage". I think this is the best approach to avoid dealing with lots of small transactions. The brokerage could obviously be the owners of slashdot in this context.

As a donor, you might donate $100 for a year, and then be able to allocate that money out of your "charity share account" in increments, buying a "charity share" for each project you want to support. The go/no-go decision belongs to the donors. If enough donors support the project, then the money is released from the accounts and the project is funded. If too few agree, then the project never commits. If the project is dropped, then the donors could then re-pledge the money to some other project, but I think there should be a stickiness factor to prevent people from shuffling their donations around too much. Maybe a share-buying window as part of the schedule? (I'm sure the slashdot people can let us know if they badly need a project to commit, perhaps by relating it to other projects.)

This should remind you somewhat of Kickstarter, but I think the careful project preparation and evaluation could make it a much better system. Also, this idea was mostly formulated before I ever heard of Kickstarter... Their basic attitude is let the donor beware, but the thrust of this idea is to bound the project so that everyone can see just what is going on before, during, and afterwards.

Read the .sigs

[Anonymous Coward]

There are enough complaints in people's Slashdot signature lines to keep you busy for a long time.

Re:Read the .sigs

[fibonacci8]

I look forward to someone figuring out which part of mine to fix.

Re:Read the .sigs

[whipslash]

Lol. So true

three suggestions

[epine]

Story title (large font):

CDC: 1 In 10 Adult Deaths In US Caused By Excessive Drinking

The little statistical nodule in my brain that filters credible claims instantly exploded at first glance. Went off to fetch the long-handled mop so I could clean the ceiling, and for that reason I didn't even notice the three half-cap prepositions (does that almost count as shouting?)

First line of story (smaller font):

According to new research from the CDC, 9.8% of deaths in working-age adults (22-64 years old) in the U.S. from 2006 to 2010 were "attributable to excessive drinking." [my emph.]

If you've read anything about the average person's powers of mental discernment, you would know the the patently absurd title does a lot of subconscious damage. It's too freaking late to correct this a sentence later.

Now a few dud stories will probably make it through the firehose no matter what, but we really need some kind of moderation on the stories themselves once posted so that they can be down-voted to "-5 patently absurd" such as this particular submission warranted.

Another thing I would like is to have the subject line character limit increased by another ten characters or so. I've had many perfect subject lines ruined by the current parsimonious limit—and it's always by less than ten characters.

Oh, yes, and the hot pink "cat got your tongue?" dunning should actually show the preview which I might perhaps be using to look over what I've just written to find out whether any subject matter materialized out of my verbal fog, or not.

Re:three suggestions

[whipslash]

Good call here

Re:three suggestions

[Kohath]

Yeah. No clickbait headlines. Editors should at least understand bullshit manipulated statistics. If it seems high, it's probably some form of manipulated bullshit.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure there'd be enough news let tover to make for a viable website if you filtered out the bullshit manipulations and exaggerations.

Consider at least marking this stuff: "CDC: 1 in 10 Adult Deaths (?) in the U.S. Caused by Excessive Drinking"

Can we get an explanation on who gets mod points?

[damn_registrars]

More specifically, it appears that some of us (such as myself) are on a list of people who never get mod points. I have not had mod points in ~2 years IIRC. My karma is consistently excellent here. Others have reported the same.

There also have been times when people have been given differing numbers of mod points. It used to be that people would only get 5. Then some people started getting 10. Some people claimed they got as many as 15. I never heard an explanation for that, either.

Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overflow

[Anonymous Coward]

The best thing Slashdot can aim to do is to not be Reddit, Hacker News or Stack Overflow.

Those sites all cater to the rather wimpy, mentally-soft Millennial/Hipster type of people.

They are the kind of people who just can't handle any sort of worthwhile discussion.

They also tend to be hypocrites, claiming that they support "freedom", yet they go out of their way to limit what others can express.

Dice was trying to push Slashdot in that direction, and it turned out to be a disaster.

Most people here want free, uninhibited discussion.

We want to read the truths that can't be expressed at Reddit, or HN, or SO just because these truths may hurt somebody's feelings.

We want to be exposed to a variety of views, from all sides of the political spectrum, rather than the extreme leftist views that are prevalent at Reddit, HN and SO.

We aren't interested in feeling naively happy with everything we read; we want to be subjected to the reality of the world, even if it's miserable and makes us feel horrible.

We are men, women and trannies with guts.

We aren't the type who cry when somebody expresses something we disagree with; we'd rather discuss it in depth, and argue with one another if necessary!

So when making changes, go the opposite way of Reddit, Hacker News and Stack Overflow.

Reduce the amount of moderation here to next to nothing.

Make it extremely painful for one person here to limit what another can express.

Promote discussion, even if it gets heated, by getting rid of the posting limits.

Make Slashdot known as a place where we can dive deep into controversial issues, rather than just throwing around useless platitudes.

If a Millennial or Hipster type would like the change you're thinking of making, don't do it!

What they think is a good idea is not good for Slashdot; it's the surest way to destroy Slashdot.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been reading (and posting on) /. daily since 2001 (I guess) ... membership won't make anything different to me, and I know a lot of people who comes to this site as ACs for many different reasons. Even as AC I can tell you a couple of things:

- Instead of banning ACs why not ban people who always posts funny comments never to add something relevant to the discussion ?

Comment quality is way down (funny comments sometimes count up for 50~75% adding nothing like 'In Soviet Russia blah blah blah ...') ... I meaning I have (a lot) sense of humor but when non-relevant comments are the norm this site misses the point to begin with ... even then, among the trash you'll find a couple of comments that pays for (if you have a lot of time and patience). I post a comment when the subject is my own field of expertise and I have something useful to say, otherwise I keep reading. Posting to ask/pretend somebody else to google and/or research for you etc is everywhere.

- People come here to READ not to youtubing:

Please, remove (or make optional) the video bar. It's exasperating..

- full UNICODE

- full HTTPS

- keep the look and feel as flat basic HTML as possible (this site is for reading, everything else is secondary): sites like postgresql documentation coded as the old web are a premium these days of 2.0 apps.

All in all (degraded as it currently is) /. is second to none ... and this is why many of us will still come to this site :)

Give me back my button to hide advertising

[bleh-of-the-huns]

As a long time user, I used to have an option to turn off advertising... I want that back

Science Coverage is Not Thoughtful

[paradigmsareconstruc]

There is a common pattern with aggregator sites today which deal with scientific press releases to simply regurgitate press releases that other sites are posting. These stories are typically chosen because they fit a narrative which the Slashdot community already believes. But, such "news values" are not in the spirit of Silicon Valley, which has a strong tradition of leading the world on issues related to science and tech.

Modern aggregator sites today are increasingly realizing that there are two types of stories: those stories which exploit the users by feeding their worldviews back to them (directly termed "exploitation") and those stories which encourage users to learn new ideas which might challenge their preconceived notions ("exploration"). Slashdot has since the beginning focused entirely upon exploitation, which satisfies the user base, but also makes the tech community more insulated from competing views. This is most obvious with regards to what is happening at the geographical center of the tech world, in the Mission in San Francisco (where there have been some high-profile incidents with regards to gentrification and overall disrespect for the native culture), but the effects of such policies are also -- perhaps more importantly -- observable in the world of science.

Why not try a bit harder to educate the tech community on some of the most vocal critics of both science and tech? There is a rather long list of such critics to work with, some of them have very impressive CV's, and some of the claims they've made have been really quite extraordinary.

Martín López Corredoira is an astrophysicist, philosopher and academic whistleblower. He has published more than 50 cosmology and astrophysical papers on subjects like the structure of the Milky Way, stellar populations, and observational astronomy topics which required analytical calculations, computer simulations, statistics, photometrical and spectroscopical observations and analysis. He wrote in The Twilight of the Scientific Age ...

"A superficial view may lead us to think that we live in the golden age of science but the fact is that the present-day results of science are mostly mean, unimportant, or just technical applications of ideas conceived in the past."

"There are several reasons to write about this topic. First of all, because I feel that things are not as they seem, and the apparent success of scientific research in our societies, announced with a lot of ballyhoo by the mass media, does not reflect the real state of things."

"Science is not a direct means for reaching the truth. Science works with hypotheses rather than with truths. This fact, although recognized, is usually forgotten. It gives rise to the creation of certain key groups within science which think that their hypotheses are indubitably solid truths, and think that the hypotheses of other minority groups are just extravagant or crackpot ideas ...

all through history, and even now, there have been many instances of discussion about how to interpret aspects of nature, with various possible options without a clear answer, in which a group of scientists have opted to claim their position is the good or orthodox one while other positions are heresies."

Or, how about Jeff Schmidt, who published a scathing critique of the physics graduate program titled Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-battering System That Shapes Their Lives?

"My thesis is that the criteria by which individuals are deemed qualified or unqualified to become professionals involve not just technical knowledge as is generally assumed, but also attitude -- in particular, attitude toward working within an assigned political and ideological framework."

"At the end of the week the entire physics faculty gathers in a closed meeting to decide the fate of the students. Strange as it may s

Re:Science Coverage is Not Thoughtful

[phantomfive]

I like your comment, but:

at the geographical center of the tech world, in the Mission in San Francisco

this is some kind of cognitive bias or something, because the Mission in San Francisco is definitely not the geographical center of the tech world.

Re:Science Coverage is Not Thoughtful

[james_gnz]

There is a common pattern with aggregator sites today which deal with scientific press releases to simply regurgitate press releases that other sites are posting.

Isn't that the nature of aggregation?

Why not try a bit harder to educate the tech community on some of the most vocal critics of both science and tech?

Like democracy, science is the worst at what it does, aside from (at least) everything else that's been tried. Devise a better system, then use it to discover something significant and verifiable about the world, that science has not discovered, and I'll be interested.

In the mean time, would you like to hear my ideas about what's wrong with democracy?

Re:Science Coverage is Not Thoughtful

[splashbot]

This is a good line of thinking, without a marketplace of competing ideas in science, it becomes hard to do any innovating in science. I logged in for the first time in a while just because I think this post deserved a reply. All theories, Caloric, Newtonian Mechanics, Biological Evolution from inanimate matter, all of them should be allowed to be criticized in a way that cites supporting evidence, after all the sacred cows make the best burgers.

Re:Science Coverage is Not Thoughtful

[Anonymous Coward]

+5 Funny, that's some funny shit, must be hard to breath sucking on your own dick.

Manual choice to Post or Moderate

[OzPeter]

I don't have a problem with either moderating or posting in a story, but there are times that I don't want to post but where I would love to moderate. But the moderation gods only seems to come my way ever so often. So I would love to be allowed to make my own choice between posting and moderation.

However perhaps limit that choice to high karma individuals?

Re:Manual choice to Post or Moderate

[whipslash]

good idea

Re:Manual choice to Post or Moderate

[dbc]

Yes, I like that idea.

Also... perhaps there should be some new form of meta-moderation that is triggered by multiple conflicting moderations. It almost never fails that if I post actual, real-world, data that is in conflict with someone's world-view, I will get both up-modded and down-modded. Sorry, there should not be a "-1, uncomfortable truth" moderation. Perhaps posts that accumulate a large number of conflicting moderations should cause a form of meta-moderation that concentrates on uncovering biases in the moderators.

Redirect users to Goatse.

[Anonymous Coward]

Goatse links is the only content worth coming for on Slashdot.

Re:Redirect users to Goatse.

[whipslash]

nice play on words

Mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit forcing my phone browser to the mobile site. It's a terrible user experience, having to select Force Desktop mode every single time, just to avoid the hard to read, gigantic crap ad layout. It makes the entire site look like it doesn't care about it's readers.

I'm sure there are plenty of comments from the previous Slashdot blog, or whatever they called it, when the redesign happened, which would provide valuable insight into what changes are actually desired. All if them fell on deaf ears.

Re:Mobile

[whipslash]

Mobile will be addressed ASAP. The suggestions here will not fall on deaf ears.

Re: Mobile

[danomac]

Regarding mobile,while I've found reading the actual articles is easier, I've noticed these issues on my nexus 7:

-sometimes the hot topic / most discussed is blank.
-often tapping the article to show comments does nothing. Eventually after tapping all over the place the stars eventually align and the article loads.
-there should be an interface option to load all comments. Accidently moving back to the main site loses your progress in the comments and it's frustrating having to go through and load comments every. single. time.
-often the 'load more comments' button doesn't do anything
-moderation was supremely broken last time I tried it on mobile.
-scrolling is painfully slow. View desktop mode works fine.

For the main site: fire the UI person responsible for removing the 'read more' button at the bottom of the summaries and put that damn button back where it belongs. Also, quite often I see the title going under other objects on the page.

Re: Mobile

[whipslash]

Thanks for all of this

Re:Overhaul comment system.

[whipslash]

This is true. Good point. Will look into it.

Fix the advertising so it isn't so slow/crashy

[Anonymous Coward]

Loading the slashdot.org homepage + a few tabs on my Intel Core i5-2520M shouldn't bring my computer to a crawl, burn up my battery, and then crash Flash.

That tends to happen when you are trying to render however many flash ads/videos/whatever at once.

I get you need to monetize it somehow, and I'm ok with that concept. But making the web site so ad-heavy that it borders on useless sometimes isn't helping any. I don't want to see any videos just from loading the homepage.

As an example, reddit.com has some advertising, but runs great on my computer without any serious slowdowns.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[techno-vampire]

At this point, https is probably just breathing hard.

Collapsing Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

For the casual user that isn't deeply engaged with the comments, the comment section is overwhelming and time consuming to sort through. If you simply collapsed threads by default and had a button to uncollapse them one at a time I think casual users could more quickly navigate to comments that interest them without having to endlessly scroll through replies.

Also, for the users that like the old style or just want to see all threads, a checkbox to "uncollapse all" that they could leave on.

Re:Collapsing Comments

[MrKaos]

NO. Change your viewing threshold

Re:Start with removing the malware from SourceForg

[wbr1]

As a side note for sourceforge, can you allow direct download links instead of a redirecting landing page? There are sure to be other reasons for other people but for me I remotely manage via a command line many (1000s of) windows boxes. It would be nice to be able to easily download tools without hitting redirect roadblocks. On linux I can wget or curl around that but not so easy on windows.

Remove ads

[danbob999]

Remove the "slashdot deals" as well as "slashdot newsletter" from the top right. Just like it was before.

Re:Overhaul comment system.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Nope, I'm still here.

I'd like to explore ways of helping Slashdot.

[Futurepower(R)]

"There's no doubt that the Slashdot community is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and prolific communities on the web."

I agree with that. Unfortunately, there are people who use Slashdot comments as a way of acting out their anger and wasting everyone's time. I have some ideas about how to help improve that situation.

I'd like to help Slashdot, as a volunteer.

Slashdot has a higher percentage of stories interesting to me than any other site I've been able to find. To choose stories interesting to technically-knowledgeable people, it is necessary to understand their sub-culture. Dice Holdings didn't seem to have anyone who even began to understand that culture.

I've seen ads on Slashdot from IBM, for example. The person who wrote those ads obviously didn't understand how to get technically-knowledgeable people interested. One opportunity for Slashdot managers is to help technology companies improve the quality of their advertising. Too often ads are designed and written by departments that have no one interested in the product. Better ads would draw more customers and would make Slashdot more popular with advertisers.

I was an advertising copywriter for technology ad agencies in Los Angeles. This is an ad I wrote to get business: Professional writing is more than just writing. (That sentence is a Service Mark.)

Let me know if there is some way to have a discussion about how I might be able to help.

Re:I'd like to explore ways of helping Slashdot.

[whipslash]

These are great points. I may reach out.

Re:I'd like to explore ways of helping Slashdot.

[Linkreincarnate]

One way to help is to not allow anyone who asks for power to have said power.

Expand the idea of "news for nerds".

[Anonymous Coward]

There is actually quite a large breadth of nerds and things that interests them.

Not saying go down the Gizmodo or Buzzfeed route, but as well as F/OSS concerns, things like Sinking a Mexican Navy Battleship to create artificial reef was pretty cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFQAQQlwKmw

Open Source

[bill_mcgonigle]

It's pretty popular around here - /. should look into it.

Soylent already fixed Slashcode - sync and send pull requests. They haven't stolen this community and they're not going to with their editorial style, which doesn't fit the folks here.

Slashdot Inc. or whatever has done a very poor job of stewardship of Slashcode for over a decade. It's silly, really - keeping all the bugs secret is never what kept people here.

Re:Open Source

[whipslash]

Yes this is something we're looking at.

Way to browse top comments across all stories

[Anonymous Coward]

Would be nice to have a page that showed top comments from across the site. The comments are what makes Slashdot great, so being able to look at some daily digest of top comments, or a somehow filterable list of top comments, grouped by story would be a welcome addition. This would be a way for me to get a pulse of Slashdot commentary on the news, and then jump off from their into discussions that really grabbed my attention.

Re:Way to browse top comments across all stories

[whipslash]

Yes good call

A pony

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that everything anyone asks for here will be improved by adding "and a pony" to the end, so let's cut straight through and just ask for the pony up front.

So, how about it? Can I have my pony?

Re:A pony

[whipslash]

Ponies aren't coming until next year

Re:A pony

[lucm]

Can I have my pony?

What for? interspecies pedophilia?

Fix the mobile site

[Deef]

I often read Slashdot using Safari on my iPhone 6+. The mobile site has several very intrusive problems. Really, it's the most broken website I regularly browse. Many features that I can take for granted as working on other websites due to the nature of web browsers (e.g. the browser "back" button) simply don't work. I often resort to using the iPhone's features to bypass the mobile site to go to the desktop site instead. (If anybody is wondering how to do this: Hold down the "reload" button, and then choose "Request Desktop Site"). Specific problems with the mobile site include:

1) The 'back' button is broken. If I am on the home page, and I click on an article title, and then click some sort of option (e.g. "Outstanding") to filter down the returned articles, and then want to go back to the home page, the browser's 'back' button does not work. (Clicking it typically takes me to the site I was browsing before I started browsing Slashdot.) This is hugely irritating. If I want to go back to the home page and pick another story, I typically have to use the on-screen keyboard to type slashdot.org into the URL control again. Please Don't Break The Back Button!

2) In a situation such as described in 1), the "Stories" button at the top of the page doesn't work either. Clicking the "Stories" link to go back to the homepage only seems to work if no other links have been clicked since the story was clicked on from the homepage. If other options (e.g. "Outstanding") have been clicked, the Stories button either does nothing, or my click goes "through" it to whatever was under the button (which may be a random link from within the story comments, resulting in some surprising destinations.) The fact that the Stories button doesn't work is actually kind of ironic, since a simple link to "slashdot.org" would be trivial to implement, work just fine, and not have the problems that the current implementation does. Instead, it seems to be trying to keep some sort of memory as to what the previous page was, but whatever it's doing doesn't work.

3) The set of default filtering options when I enter a story page, even without logging in, should be such that I see a small but reasonable number (say, 20-30) of top-rated comments. As things currently stand, I usually have to click something like "Outstanding" to get to a resonable filtering state, which triggers problem #2 that I mentioned above.

4) When I attempt to use filtering on a story's comments, the site attempts to filter out comments that are too low for the currently set threshold. However, the header of the filtered-out comments are displayed quite large, and the text "Filtered due to preferences" is also displayed quite large, with excess whitespace around it. The net effect is that the filtered-out comments take up almost as much space as they would have if they hadn't been filtered out, which defeats the purpose of filtering them out in the first place. I think filtered out comments should have their headers displayed in font large enough to be (barely) legible, but otherwise use minimal space, and preferably be displayed completely on one line. They should not try to draw attention to themselves: They should be unobtrusive so I can focus on the comments that haven't been filtered out, and click on the filtered-out ones only if I want to get more details on a particular thread.

Re:Fix the mobile site

[whipslash]

Copy pasted these suggestions verbatim onto our mobile priorities list.

Rate of new material

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems that almost everything I see on /. was on reddit the day before.

Granted, reddit emphasizes user voted submissions, which can provide a very quick feedback loop... but it means that my time spent on /. is reduced by about 90% or more.

I don't have an answer... reddit's fast feedback loop has also given credit to misinformation... but I suppose I accept the risk for the reward... Perhaps /. can have a way to change the style of missed articles, like changing the block from teal to red or something.

I just felt it was worth pointing out my observations.

also, congrats on the seemingly genuine interest.

Re:Rate of new material

[whipslash]

What if we showed articles automatically on the front page that had already reached a certain threshold of popularity in the firehose? Not all the articles on the front page would be like this, but just a certain percentage, and they would be color coded so people know they are firehose popular articles.

merging threads

[roman_mir]

Well, I am going to throw it out there, I actually came up with this idea years ago but only implemented a version of it for a client of mine, who decided not to use the feature in the forum that we created for their system. However just a thought, maybe it could be done here and maybe it could have a positive result.

The idea is that often the same question is posed or a statement is made across multiple threads and the answer to all of those could be the same exact one, so why repost the same comment over and over?

The design idea that I came up with and we implemented was to mark a number of comments and then write one reply instead of many replies. Then each one of those parent comments would have a reply to it, that would indicate that this is a merged reply.

Leaving more comments on this merged reply actually moves the conversation to the merged thread instead of keeping individual replies to the merged comment in their individual threads.

I think it's useful, others may disagree.

Oh, also metamoderation - it doesn't work here. People really should have to justify 'Troll' or 'Flamebait' or 'Overrated' because it's easy to use those simply to shut down an opinion.

Re:merging threads

[Anonymous Coward]

People really should have to justify 'Troll' or 'Flamebait' or 'Overrated' because it's easy to use those simply to shut down an opinion.

Roman it is well understood that the vast majority of all comments you have ever written on slashdot have been in the interest of recruiting more followers to your religion. Being as they are injected into conversations that are not spiritual in nature, they are by definition offtopic (at least) and often also flamebait or troll (depending on how abrasive you are in said recruitment messages).

So while indeed the overrated tag is overused, there are times when it is appropriate.

hmmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

How about getting rid all of the non tech threads. Better yet, no more political crap.

Stop Auto-Refresh.

[Futurepower(R)]

Another thought: Stop Auto-Refresh. If I have to do something else, I want to come back to a Slashdot page the way I left it.

Re:Stop Auto-Refresh.

[whipslash]

Also something we're looking at

Re:Stop Auto-Refresh.

[Hansu]

Yes, this. Nothing more annoying than autorefresh on slashdot. Except users, but you can't do much about that :)

Re:Stop Auto-Refresh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell yes, kill it with fire. My slashdot bookmark:
http://slashdot.org/?source=fuckoffautorefresh
I've been hoping someone is watching the log stats.

Re:Stop Auto-Refresh.

[lanroth]

That used to annoy me too. So I found it, killed it using Adblock Plus and wrote it up here:
http://webapps.stackexchange.c...

Re:Stop Auto-Refresh.

[MurukeshM]

Seconded. The only practical use I have for auto-refresh is to know if my connection failed while I was away.

Re:Stop Auto-Refresh.

[lyran74]

mod parent up to 65535

Re:Stop Auto-Refresh.

[godefroi]

Thank you thank you!

Re:Stop Auto-Refresh.

[Specter]

Interesting, I didn't even know there was auto-refresh on /. Perhaps I have the .js blocked somehow. In any case I'm glad not to have it. If you feel like it's necessary, I'd suggest something like Disqus' feature where it shows a visual indication there are new comments but doesn't actually insert them in the thread.

Not to mention the Wu Tang Clan...

[Frosty Piss]

...The nonsense about some 2 million dollar CD that Wu Tang Clan made. News for Nerds? Really?

Re:Not to mention the Wu Tang Clan...

[whipslash]

Yes that won't happen again

Re:Not to mention the Wu Tang Clan...

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome all Wu-Tang news.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't eliminate AC posts - some of us have been coming here for years and have NEVER created an account, because we usually just want to read.

Intentionally separate post

[q4Fry]

(C) I don't think everything about Beta was bad. However, it screwed up the moderation system, and depending on whether posts used <p> tags, the formatting was different. Those two things killed it for me. If you fixed those, I'd take another look.

Some How-To Articles

[zenlessyank]

scattered in with the usual postings. Maybe 1 or 2 a day would be good to get the community involved in useful banter and encourage newer members who might be looking for something more than arguments. Learning is new(s).

Re:Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overfl

[whipslash]

I agree with you here. We're not going to make Slashdot a Reddit clone. I'd like your take on how we can keep the front page more timely (ie. very interesting breaking news making the front page), without relying 100% on an editor who might post it too late. Should we show some stories automatically on the front page that have reached a certain level of popularity within the firehose?

News content is slowwwww...

[jofas]

Always 1 to 2 days behind. I see articles here that Engadget gets first! All the time! They're not smart. /. Can do better. And if there's a way to keep submitters a little more selective in their choice of story, that would be great. And by selective, I mean know your audience. And by know your audience, I mean don't pass off a nonsense story about vga being dead as weekend fodder for admission who have been running servers for 15, 20, 35+ years. I guess it boils down to quality for me.

Re:Start with removing the malware from SourceForg

[whipslash]

Thanks. Definitely appreciate the concerns though.

short list of suggested improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

1. shorten the synopsis. They are getting too long.

2. Don't allow growth of javascript code on web page.

3. significantly reduce the links to other sites and tracking.

4. make an arrangement with lwn.net to let them analyse
more linux technicalities and you link to their linux
articles. Cooperate !! They are great technically.

5 Figure out a way to have two separate list of comments
( selectable ) : one list of all logged-in users and a
separate threaded list for anonymous. This will enourage
participation and give users more control. If they wish
to wade thru thousands of anonyous, fine... Otherwise,
log-in users can read shorter list. However ALL comments
should be READABLE by all.

6. Keep the general layout you have. It's easily readable
and usable.

beg taco to come back

[ghinckley68]

put it back to its glory days and be done.
there is not money to be made here

Not putting globalist propaganda all over the page

[pecosdave]

Slashdot used to be a technology site. Under Dice it became a collectivist yes-man only question what we tell you to question navel-gazing tool.

I personally grew tired of all the Gamer Gate articles exclusively from the "men are bad" side of things.

I got tired of all the "We already have accepted that climate change is 100% man-made now how do we convince the idiots" articles.

I got tired of the "You're all bad people because women chose to go into job fields other than technology" articles.

The Slashvertising I wasn't 100% against - I completely understand - the site needs to earn a little money to stick around, but come on, a lot of it was lame and much of it was sneaky by trying to pass itself off as an article.

Slashdot actually became anti-science during the Dice years since they actively discouraged doing what scientist do - questioning everything - by posting globalist slanted crap.

Of course I among others enjoyed calling them on it.

If you go back to what Slashdot did in just about any iteration before Dice you're doing a good thing.

Better editing...

[NormAtHome]

I mean really, a day doesn't go by without an article with serious spelling and or grammatical mistakes. But then again it wouldn't be Slashdot without those features.

beg commander taco to come back

[ghinckley68]

put it back to its glory days and be done.
there is not money to be made here
get rid of all the third party JS so we can turn adblock and no script off. And all that is holy dont show us a beta that was like the old beta ever ever ever again.

Editing should be Job #1

[Anonymous Coward]

The dismal state of the editing on Slashdot needs turning around. So-called editors here have failed for years now to copy-edit any content for simple errors, let alone do any actual editing of summaries to clean them up, add useful info (such as throwing in a few of those acronym's meanings as mentioned above), correct grammar, or simply re-write them to make logical and meaningful sense.

http://it.slashdot.org/story/16/02/02/2343238/severe-and-unpatched-ebay-vulnerability-allows-attackers-to-distribute-malware
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/02/02/2225210/barracuda-copy-shutting-down

3 lines is not a summary, its a soundbyte. Its a summation. I don't need to go read the article because yes, everything I technically need to know is right there already. These stories need "more" to spark real discussion. How long has it been there? At least put the very important last line "However, on January 16, 2016, eBay stated that they have no plans to fix the vulnerability. " in there. The discussion should be jumping because of just that!

When you post a notice about some cool software pa

[Ricdude]

Give us a hint as to what it is, and why should care about it. Preferably with no unexpanded acronyms.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[Anonymous Coward]

HTTPS

Eliminate Anonymous Cowards (yea that's sacrilege here, but we're not the same community we were 10 years ago.)

I beg you, whiplash, don't eliminate the ability to post AC!!! I always post as AC on /. and on SN. Many times, my comments have been modded up as "Insightful" or "Interesting", so I do think I add something to the discussion. I can only think of one or (possibly) two times when I had been down modded, and one of those times I am sure I was down modded because I tripped someone's political correctness filter. One of the chief reasons I always post as AC is that I have noticed a tendency of others responding not so much to the actual content of the comment but as an attack against the person; it seems that too many just can't let an old grudge go. Why should it matter if you can identify who made the comment? Does the content of the comment change depending on who said it? Is this not the very definition of an ad hominem attack? So please don't eliminate the ability to post as AC. I think it does have it's place.

m.slashdot.org

[rickb928]

Just fix it.

In Android Chrome;

Footer ads cover the edit window.
Most keyboards cover the edit window.
Can't move the edit window.
Moderating works when it feels like it, which is 10% of the time.

I don't care about iOS.

Force a developer to use it on a phone and tablet for a day. They will understand.

Bring back Rob Malda

[mykepredko]

At least in an advisory position to explain his vision on how Slashdot was created and is expected to work.

Re:What's up with the system logging me out at ran

[whipslash]

Anyone else having this issue?

Bug with hyphens in domain names causes word wrap

[Anonymous Coward]

In story title bars if the domain has a hyphen in it while using chrome there is a word wrap.

I use CJS to inject a style for making it no break but its still super easy to fix.

On Topic

[EzInKy]

Complaints about AC posts are nearly always off topic and I usually reserve a point to mod them as such.

Re:Put the "read more" link back, better mobile si

[whipslash]

Will definitely take a look at this.

Oh, that's easy...

[Pseudonym]

Just run beta on top of systemd. Slashdot will improve no end.

Eliminate April Fools Day Submissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Eliminate the "April Fools Day" submissions. They represent poor attempts at humour and make this a place to avoid for a day or two.

Re:Eliminate April Fools Day Submissions

[Kohath]

Agree. They're not funny. April fools day on the internet was played out 15 years ago.

Re:Eliminate April Fools Day Submissions

[Pseudonym]

It doesn't help that half the world sees it a day late.

Re:Eliminate April Fools Day Submissions

[Fireflymantis]

I don't know about this. Barring any sort of tragic world shaking event, what April 1st means to me is getting a solid chuckle by visiting Slashdot. It is the prime aggregation of unfunny things companies are doing trying to be funny.

Re:Eliminate April Fools Day Submissions

[Quirkz]

I know a lot of people don't like them, but I've always enjoyed a day of silliness.

absolutely nothing

[holophrastic]

it meets every need I have, and every desire I, err, desire. Don't change it at all.

Re:absolutely nothing

[whipslash]

No https or unicode support?

Re:absolutely nothing

[holophrastic]

It's a public news feed. It needn't be secure.

It's english, it needn't any more than ascii.

Re:absolutely nothing

[holophrastic]

There's absolutely nothing new here, it's a BBS, nothing more. It worked on my 2400 BAUD. New technology doesn't make old content any more valuable. It's just shinier. I like a matte finish -- they show fewer fingerprints.

Re:absolutely nothing

[ChunderDownunder]

While discussions may be in English, foreign terms and placenames are frequently mentioned.

Re:absolutely nothing

[holophrastic]

Was good enough for 50 years. Not worth risking screwing it up. There's a cost, in terms of compatibility and memory and glitches and anomalies. You've admitted that 99.99% of it is english, there simply isn't enough value is the proposed benefit.

Markdown Support

[PatientZero]

Allow the use of Markdown for comments. I rarely even hand-write HTML in my day job.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with removing AC's. Can't comment and moderate in the same thread, and occasionally as I spend mod points in a thread, I see something I absolutely need to comment on. Like right now.

Lighten up

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, the web pages are too freaking heavy. The general MO is /. is something that should still be possible with a 15-year old browser without crashing and without downloading large CSS and JavaScript files for whiz bang eye candy. Maybe we can just build /. in emacs *ducks*

Re:Lighten up

[whipslash]

Yea we will lighten them up

Re:Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overfl

[Anonymous Coward]

The best thing Slashdot can aim to do is to not be Reddit, Hacker News or Stack Overflow.

Those sites all cater to the rather wimpy, mentally-soft Millennial/Hipster type of people.

They are the kind of people who just can't handle any sort of worthwhile discussion.

They also tend to be hypocrites, claiming that they support "freedom", yet they go out of their way to limit what others can express.

Dice was trying to push Slashdot in that direction, and it turned out to be a disaster.

Most people here want free, uninhibited discussion.

We want to read the truths that can't be expressed at Reddit, or HN, or SO just because these truths may hurt somebody's feelings.

We want to be exposed to a variety of views, from all sides of the political spectrum, rather than the extreme leftist views that are prevalent at Reddit, HN and SO.

We aren't interested in feeling naively happy with everything we read; we want to be subjected to the reality of the world, even if it's miserable and makes us feel horrible.

We are men, women and trannies with guts.

We aren't the type who cry when somebody expresses something we disagree with; we'd rather discuss it in depth, and argue with one another if necessary!

So when making changes, go the opposite way of Reddit, Hacker News and Stack Overflow.

Reduce the amount of moderation here to next to nothing.

Make it extremely painful for one person here to limit what another can express.

Promote discussion, even if it gets heated, by getting rid of the posting limits.

Make Slashdot known as a place where we can dive deep into controversial issues, rather than just throwing around useless platitudes.

If a Millennial or Hipster type would like the change you're thinking of making, don't do it!

What they think is a good idea is not good for Slashdot; it's the surest way to destroy Slashdot.

AC who knows what the "Cowboy Neal" option might mean; really, go with "common carrier" and go with "freedom of speech." So I'm posting AC, so "nobody cares." At least it's one more barrier to me getting "stazi-ied" for speaking my mind. When you choose to moderate, then you become liable... well wasn't that what "common carrier" was about?"

By the way, less than 1% of AC posters here get any upmod, ever. Whatever. We don't have to even post here. I guess we're "under the radar." :) Maybe AC posts normally don't get an upmod? Capeesh?

Sure, a whole sizable portion of posters here could probably use a little ban-hammer education, but when one truly tries to enter in adult and intelligent discussion about real issues, the issues of disruptors and griefers come into focus. A few words used here at Slashdot involve things like (shill, astroturfer, troll,) but understand these words don't mean the same thing. How do we wrap our heads around a topic without proper introduction and brain power going into this thing? What about that cool guy that said that really cool thing? What about retributions and employee leaks? Did you really want to silence that?

  If only 10 unique users a day came here, then Slashdot is truly dead.

What was that sell-name? BixX SEO? Just wondering what the new name is and why only one ID is posting all of the content?

DJ Bizzle with dat 2016 diiiiiiiiiisc?? Make it a good one.

Hey, a post today not from Timothy!

[jc42]

(I wonder how many others noticed.)

Re:Hey, a post today not from Timothy!

[mdsolar]

I did. Timothy has been drinking jolt since the sale.

Simple is better

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of sites redesign with good intentions but often just make a complete mess of things. Take wimp for example. I never visit that site anymore even though I loved the content because the new UI is too horrible to look at or use. Keeping it simple was the key to their success, same with Slashdot.

Acceptable advertising and sock puppetry

[Okian Warrior]

I understand the need to make revenue, but advertizing portals also serve malware and misleading scams, and use up a ton of bandwidth.

You could lead the way to a workable advertizing policy by allowing ads which are "image and link only".

Only allow advertising which is a clickable image link. Make it their job to count click-through, and don't bother with counting impressions. Or if you do, supply them with the impression count instead of letting them do it through javascript.

Only allow advertising images hosted from your own servers, make a "no flashing, blinking, annoying" policy and stick to it. Set up a directory of images and choose one at every page view.

A lot of advertisers will balk at doing this, but if you hold firm and initially seed your stash with free advertizing to a few open source projects (such as SourceForge or Mozilla or Apache), advertisers will begin to see the light and want in.

(I would totally accept ads under those conditions!)

======

Slashdot should be a high-class establishment. Try to vet your ads with an eye towards clarity and simplicity, with a theme that doesn't insult the intelligence of the reader.

For low class examples, do a google image search on "go daddy ad". Seeing a beautiful woman in underwear is appealing, but it makes the site look like trash.

For high class examples, look at some of the ads in Scientific American (googling doesn't work for this) or the New Yorker.

Again, you may have to dig your heels in and "lead the way" before advertisers begin to see the light.

But if you can make it work, the rest of the internet might follow suit...

======

About 2 weeks before the November elections things go to crap on this site. If it's a presidential election, it goes to crap about 6 weeks beforehand, and reaches insanely fevered pitch starting 2 weeks before.

It will *definitely* happen this year, due to the non-typical candidate choices.

Tamp down new accounts registered during these times, so that a hundred paid "candidate XXX" supporters and congressional aides don't waste all of our time.

Maybe if accounts formed during that time only posted at level 0 until after the election, or maybe turn off new accounts (with an informative message) for a couple of weeks, or maybe allow accounts but defer activating them until after the election.

Note that I am referring to NEW accounts, and only those NEW accounts which are registered during the runup weeks! Regular accounts and long-term readers should be unaffected.

======

On the subject of high class, it would be nice if you limited yourself to ONE April fool's prank on April 1st.

And if you do even that one, note that an "this is obviously absurd" article is NOT an April Fool's prank. A good prank actually fools people, and the best ones fool people for more than a minute. It should be completely believable, and preferably engage the reader emotionally. Like the Piltdown man.

Because you're asking...

[Hussman32]

I appreciate the openness and candor of your post. My guess is others see that too. Most will recognize that you bought the site as a business, and are fine with clear advertisements; spam stories have a smell that some (like me) don't like.

Others may not like my requests, but here goes...

1. The ability to edit a post after final submission. I know you're supposed to have it perfect, but sometimes you scerw up.
2. If mod points are awarded, let the user keep them so there is no need to rush and use them. Also a little transparency about how they are awarded...sometimes I'm on a trip and I don't log in for a week and I don't get mod points for a month.
3. A certain person who shall not be named received preferential status to post incredibly long, banal, and tedious analyses that would really bring out the worst in the crowd. If that person had to have the posts make it on merit, it would be appreciated,

Good luck.

Re:Because you're asking...

[whipslash]

Good ideas. Will take them into consideration. I appreciate that you appreciate the candor of my post.

Re: Because you're asking...

[Hussman32]

Sure. One more feature request that probably won't happen: Allow the user handle to be changed once while keeping the UID.

Re: Because you're asking...

[whipslash]

Not a bad idea. Will look into it

Re:Because you're asking...

[Anonymous Coward]

/. needs this: Other forums do it - Add ability for all users to see who issued up or down mods since they get abused either way by karma farming sockpuppets with an agenda upmodding their main account using sock puppet fake secondary accounts to do it or abuse in unjustifiable downmod bombings of valid posts that affect their agendas and when users can't stand behind their moderations they deserve no moderation points (which does not go for users that can back up their moderation with facts).

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[whipslash]

Yes we need to be more transparent about this

Open source.

[ancientt]

Open source the code. Allow code enhancement submissions. Don't be afraid of competition, be afraid of not keeping the quality high enough.

Never would have happened under Dice. I wouldn't have even bothered asking. I'm actually expecting no change on this front, but I can't help but ask.

Re:Open source.

[whipslash]

Something we will definitely look at

Re:Overhaul comment system.

[phantomfive]

This could be improved somewhat by changing the default sorting order, so older comments appear at the bottom.

Edit comment size display limit

[sims 2]

I would like to be able to adjust the displayed comment size so when gnaa decides to post it doesn't take up two pages.

I like browsing at -1 a lot of stories on here just don't get that many comments.

Also I would like a way to search my own comments.

An option to set the default text type. Although I may have just not found that one yet. I always use plain old text.

Re:Edit comment size display limit

[whipslash]

Yes these are good ideas thanks

Re:Edit comment size display limit

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what /. needs it: Other forums do it - Add the ability for all users to see who issued up or down mods since they get abused either way by karma farming sockpuppets with an agenda upmodding their main account using sock puppet fake secondary accounts to do it or abuse in unjustifiable downmod bombings of valid posts that affect their agendas and when users can't stand behind their moderations they deserve no moderation points (which does not go for users that can back up their moderation with facts).

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[NotBornYesterday]

I can't believe I'm saying this, but yeah, what AC said.

I've seen a couple comments requesting no downmods, eliminate trolls, get rid of AC. All have some valid reason for saying so, but to give in to that would be detrimental to preserving one of the more important features of /. - the opportunity to come here and not be too coddled. I get that we want to favorably alter the signal to noise ratio, but I don't think that's the way to go about it.

When I hear someone say "Get rid of AC," I interpret that as "Children should be seen and not heard,' where adults == people who have taken the time to register, and who have some form of local reputation on the line. You're not wrong, but you're missing out on some priceless truth from time to time if you do that.

You will never eliminate trolls as long as you have the internet. Wasting too much energy in that regard is unwise.

Think carefully before tweaking the mod system. It ain't perfect, but it has achieved a remarkable balance.

"Slashvertisements", articles buffing some *amazing-cool-new-product-service-thing*, need to be reduced. There is a big difference between a new technological discovery or application for said discovery, and the latest gizmos that somehow involve technology.

Get the polls the hell out of the main article feed.

I've seen whipslash respond to the Unicode and HTTPS requests, so no need to drum on those.

Re:Stop Auto-Refresh. Load on sroll!

[Anonymous Coward]

In conjunction with killing auto-refresh (or at least giving it an off switch) would be the automatic loading of newer stories when scrolling upward past the top, and of older stories when scrolling down past the bottom.

New for nerds, stuff that matters

[Anonymous Coward]

Is missing on the main site

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[Applehu Akbar]

My own suggestions on AC are in the sale thread.

Law Enforcement Access

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't grant "backdoor" account access to dipshit law enforcement muppets. I'm lookin' at you, Yakima Police Department.

Re:Start with removing the malware from SourceForg

[Brama]

Color me impressed, I look forward to changes like these.

Death to Anonymous Cowards

[Latentius]

Seriously, get rid of the Anonymous Cowards. 99.999% of the time, they're just posting trolling or inflammatory comments and not adding anything whatsoever to the community.

Re:Death to Anonymous Cowards

[EzInKy]

So, don't read those comments. It's not like you can't filter them out by browsing a +2 or something. Slashdot was founded by the intricate details ACs provide.

editing and others

[Darinbob]

We need ability to edit and delete posts. Too often there's a minor typo and you can't do anything about it except wait for the inevitable grammar nazis to question your English abilities. This doesn't mean ability to delete days later, but some limited amount of time would be great.

Oh, and unicode support (UDF8 please, not that other rubbish).

And return to having real news and not advertisements disguised as news, no blogs repeated word for word as a "summary", no links back to ad filled crap, no links to paywall sites, and no links to "the ten most annoying things to click through" sites.

Personally, I'd get rid of videos and instead add the occasional static pictures. It seemed strange that there was never a middle ground between plain text versus full boring video.

Re:editing and others

[whipslash]

Yes good ideas. The ability to edit posts is a high priority for us. As is unicode support. If we decide to do videos in the future they will be much higher quality than in the past.

Suggestion

[the_Bionic_lemming]

I read. I do not listen, or watch on the web.

Please focus on science and tech - no more videos, no more polls.

Everything that's been added on from the original /. chased people away.

I don't want a mobile or tablet experience. I want articles submitted by geeks, for geeks.

I don't need fancy layouts, I don't need dancing icons - heck, I adblock story icons because I just want text.

Oh, and an edit feature - give me a "Oh shit" minute timer to fix typos.

Re:Suggestion

[whipslash]

Thanks for the feedback. Edit feature will be addressed soon I hope. We will look at eliminating some of those "frills" that we aren't doing effectively

Re:Suggestion

[dwsobw]

I really hope your extremely careful about edits ...

Re:Suggestion

[dwsobw]

Also I would have used it now ;)

Enable Bitcoin tipping

[patluri]

Please integrate with ChangeTip.com or Coinbase.com to enable Bitcoin tipping of commenters.

Re:Enable Bitcoin tipping

[whipslash]

This is a good idea

Re:Enable Bitcoin tipping

[DerekLyons]

No thank you. Karma whoring for +1's is bad enough.

IPv6 support

[unixisc]

For a tech site, slashdot should be an IPv6 enabled website

Re:IPv6 support

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

Re:IPv6 support

[Kohath]

IPv6+1=IPv7

Make baitclicking obvious

[idji]

I shouldn't have a click a link to see it is a paid(?) baitclick from Forbes. Be honest and tell me it is Forbes. If i post a link in the comments you clarify the link to users - do it in your main articles as well.

Re:Make baitclicking obvious

[whipslash]

Yes we should do this.

Re:Make baitclicking obvious

[ChunderDownunder]

No submissions that link to paywalled sites.

"To read the full article, please subscribe for only $1/month"

How about some little things...

[fahrbot-bot]

Like simply passing through text enclosed in < and > that is not in the list of accepted HTML tags, so we don't have to explicitly type &lt; and &gt; all the time.

Re:How about some little things...

[whipslash]

Yes this is on the way

Re:How about some little things...

[fahrbot-bot]

Like simply passing through text enclosed in < and > that is not in the list of accepted HTML tags, so we don't have to explicitly type &lt; and &gt; all the time.

Yes this is on the way

Very cool - thank you. Can I have a pony? :-)

Ditch the stained glass windows icon.

[westlake]

The stained glass icon for the Windows OS is long overdue for retirement. It is --- to speak plainly --- nothing more than a license to troll.

1. don't sell out

[CaptainStumpy]

Seriously, just don't sell out. Don't change the site for monetary reasons. Things will slowly work in your favor, and you will profit for a long time.

Re:1. don't sell out

[whipslash]

That's the plan

Allow subscription to individual moderators

[patluri]

I would like to be able to subscribe and unsubscribe from individual moderators, so my view of the comments reflects the moderators I've chosen.

Secondary sources

[Michael Woodhams]

NASA discovers little green men on the moon. NASA makes a 2 page press release. Bob writes a blog post where he condenses the NASA press release to 1 page, mostly by deleting every second paragraph. (Alternatively it could be a Javascript and advertising heavy commercial news site.) Slashdot posts an article linking to Bob's blog, rather than linking directly to NASA as they should. One of the first comments provides the direct link (with title something like "This is the link you should be using") and instantaneously gets modded to +5, in reward for having done what the Slashdot editor should have done.

I'm not saying never use secondary sources - sometimes Bob has summarized 50 pages to 1 page (and done a good job of it), or added some insightful commentary. Just don't use secondary sources unless they add significant value, and always include a link to the primary source in the summary.

Re:Secondary sources

[mdsolar]

Unless the source is GreenPeace. Always use them if available. Fair and Balanced.

Primary news source

[Okian Warrior]

I don't know if you are interested in this but...

During the 2nd war in Iraq, one of the most interesting accounts was a lone blogger in Baghdad who made nightly posts about what was going on and his views on the situation. He wasn't a journalist or anything, just a guy in an apartment watching missiles destroy buildings in his city. Sadly, he wasn't allowed to continue his reporting after the fall of the regime.

Since we're nerds, it should be possible to get interesting views from conflict areas around the globe in an anonymous manner. Perhaps partner with WikiLeaks to get anonymous interviews and points of view from these areas.

They say that the first casualty of war is the truth, but we're now living in an age where the average reader can dig down to find original sources for some of the media bias and spin.

I would love to read the (anonymous) views of a Chinese engineer, or Indian customer support person, or a Cuban hacker, or Ukranian spammer.

I would find it much more interesting than a talking-head video of some software package founder.

If you're interested in being a primary news source, having the occasional "scoop" where the MSM refers to Slashdot as the breaking story, and have the courage for a high-level of journalistic integrity, then you could do this. Let WikiLeaks handle the anonymity and authentication, you just post the interviews.

It's not for the faint of heart, but it's something you could do.

Re:Primary news source

[whipslash]

Great ideas

Re:Primary news source

[ausekilis]

While this is certainly an interesting idea, i fail to see how this is "news for nerds". I'd combine this thought of "breaking on slashdot" with the idea mentioned above about scientific coverage not being thoughtful.

Instead of regurgitating a press release, have someone reach out to those scientists and ask thoughtful questions. I've always liked the "Ask Slashdot" posts, these could be precursors to that. The flow would be something like:

1. Slashdot user posts (or you guys find it yourself)
2. Slashdot interviews researcher(s) about topic
3. Ask Slashdot
4. More knowledge sharing

Make Slashdot a go-to place to learn about interesting things and share ideas with other smart people. Don't worry about dumbing things down, I'm sure the crowd can put things in Lay-mens terms (or worse).

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[NotBornYesterday]

Sorry to reply to myself, but just after I posted, I recalled one of my pet peeves - please don't allow any autoplaying ads. I promise I'll allow you guys through adblocker (hell, you guys need to recoup your investment somehow ... ) if you'll just get rid of those damn things.

They are nothing but disruptive bandwidth wasters. I actively avoid companies who use them.

Any ad network exec that wants to inflict those on someone should be kicked squarely in the crotch.

Fire editors that can't read or spell.

[_Shorty-dammit]

As if catching typos weren't easy enough, so is searching to see if a story was already submitted and accepted the day before. Knock it off!

Reposting my comment from the original article...

[Jon Abbott]

Being one of the greybeards who still reads Slashdot, I'll add a few:

- Add the ability to edit comments until they are moderated or have a reply
- Stop linking to Forbes articles and posting Slashvertisements
- Stop running articles about Martin Shkreli or other things that have nothing to do with "News for nerds"
- For the love of all things absurd, please add CowboyNeal back as the final poll option
- If you need money to operate the site, try asking for it from readers. That way you can reduce or eliminate advertising useless junk that nobody wants

Multi-dimensional ratings

[ka9dgx]

I'd change the rating system so that there were multiple dimensions of ratings. Humor, Insightfulness, Correctness, and Offensiveness could all be orthogonal to each other.

Don't change the sidebar when logging in.

[Futurepower(R)]

Another idea: The sidebar should be the same whether the reader is logged in or not.

Firehose stories on front page

[whipslash]

Would anyone be interested in the option to see the most popular stories from the firehose on the front page? They'd have to hit a very high popularity threshold and also would be marked/color-coded as such.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[dbarclay10]

Would anyone be interested in the option to see the most popular stories from the firehose on the front page? They'd have to hit a very high popularity threshold and also would be marked/color-coded as such.

Yep, this seems like a change worth trialling.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[whipslash]

I think so too. Thanks for the feedback. Anyone else got an opinion on it?

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[phantomfive]

That seems worthwhile.
Related bug: it's hard to figure out what the colors mean in firehose (and I clicked on a color, and half the colored stories disappeared, and now I can't get them back).
Other related issue: it's kind of hard to find firehose in the UI, I use Google to find it now.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[whipslash]

What do you mean it is hard? Do you mean you just google "slashdot firehose" to get to it quickly?

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[phantomfive]

I don't see a link to it on the front page anywhere. Maybe it's there and I'm missing it, but I just looked again right now and can't find it. Maybe I'm blind.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a cool idea, but one that history indicates will be abused. A few years ago, Slashdot was repeatedly flooded with comments by a group called the GNAA. They abused open proxies to submit hundreds of anonymous coward comments to articles. That's why Slashdot to this day, I believe, scans IPs submitting comments to see if they're unsecured proxies. If you allow firehose stories to automatically post to the front page, you're opening the door for GNAA spam and goatse links to end up on the front page. People will find a way to abuse the feature, and probably in the most obnoxious way possible. The damage from a single comment intentionally modded incorrectly is far less than a story incorrectly voted onto the front page. I'm not saying you shouldn't implement this feature, but I think you need to seriously think about how to prevent abuse.

By the way, I have a question a lot of people have asked... are Soulskill and sampenzus still employed by Slashdot? They haven't posted in a long time.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[whipslash]

It's in the main menu next to the Slashdot logo and "Stories" menu item. You have to hover over the word Firehose and then you can choose All or Popular. (This is on desktop)

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[phantomfive]

Ah, I see. It shows up in Safari, but not in Firefox. Browser bug.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[whipslash]

Weird. I am still seeing it in Firefox.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[phantomfive]

Screenshot. Maybe it's only a problem on Firefox on OSX? I can check a different OS later........

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[whipslash]

I'm on Firefox on OSX. I think the issue is your browser window is too small. I can see it disappear in chrome and safari if I shrink my browser window. Perhaps try zooming out (Command - ) on mac.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[phantomfive]

You're right, that did it.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[Anonymous Coward]

What I'd like much more is a link to the original firehose submission.
This way it's easy to see what, if any, contributions the editor has made, and what was actually said by the submitter.

And if there were multiple submissions for the same story, they could all be linked!

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, from an Anon whose been reading for a decade.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[rastos1]

Right. Some time ago I was unsuccessfully searching for Firehose on the frontpage. The word itself was not there. Eventually I resorted to manually adding "firehose.pl" to the URL bar. Which seems to lead to the same as "recent". The word "Firehose" that I see now at the top of the page is not link - unlike all other words in that box. Confusing.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[rastos1]

Isn't this what Firehose Slashbox does?

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[rastos1]

He means that the color of the Erlenmeyer flask icon in firehose does not indicate the level that the submission achieved. Is green better or worse than red? Also once filtering is applied, you can't easily revert.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[Trailer Trash]

I like how you modded your post.

Seriously, though, this has been mentioned elsewhere on the page: yes. I think as long as it's implemented as you say it'll work. Might also want to work it out to minimize dupes that this might cause.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[asvravi]

That is definitely welcome, just the way you described it.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[apoc.famine]

Yes, with one condition. That you don't automate this, and reserve the right to prevent them from showing up.

Why?

Because I've been here long enough (refused to sign up and posted AC for years until signing up was sort-of necessary to be visible) to know that we will always have a bunch of stupid yahoos with too much free time on their hands dicking around. Internet posters have a serious quality problem that's fine when you have checks in place (moderation isn't half bad here, e.g.) but which destroy sites when you don't. You can't count on enough 'News for nerds, stuff that matters' people to counteract a bunch of morons with a lot of free time when it comes to what gets posted on the front page.

The firehose is a great asset, but only if you leverage it properly and put some limits and checks on it. You can't rely on us doing that for you.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[whipslash]

Yes absolutely there would be limits and checks on it, and a human present. Thanks for the feedback

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[whipslash]

Great thanks for the feedback

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[whipslash]

Red is the most popular and black is the least popular. I know we need to fix this to make it more obvious which stories are popular, as well as the filtering system.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[whipslash]

Yeah the firehose is split into slashdot.org/recent and slashdot.org/popular. I think we need to make this more obvious

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[snarfies]

I would, yes.

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[whipslash]

Ok thanks for the feedback

Re:Firehose stories on front page

[kwalker]

Make that an option in the user account and the default for ACs and those not logged in.

it's not broke

[johncandale]

don't fix it. Also keep the normies out.

Vertical whitespace

[Okian Warrior]

Over the years, Slashdot has changed it's style sheets to introduce lots and lots of whitespace.

The site *used* to present a lot more information in a lot less space, and the signal-to-noise ration was much higher. You could see many more articles on the front page, see many more comments on one page and so on.

Every time the style changed, people complained.

We're now at the point where the information is watered down so much that about half the front page is vertical whitespace.

Get rid of some of it! Make the front page more information dense, so we can quickly see if there is something there of interest without having to mouse around the page.

Re:Vertical whitespace

[whipslash]

Not a bad idea

Re:Vertical whitespace

[omnichad]

Use more than one sentence per paragraph. That ought to help.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of banning ACs why not ban people who always posts funny comments never to add something relevant to the discussion ?

I always post funny comments, you insensitive clod!

Support for IPv6

[Midnight Thunder]

Add support for IPv6. Perl now has improved IPv6 support, especially in libwww, so that should no longer be a blocker?

I realise there are people who will express that we are still a way off, but this is a "news for nerds" site, so surely this would fit the 'nerds' element?

Re:Support for IPv6

[whipslash]

On the list

My Thoughts

[Ol Olsoc]

First off, despite what some may think, Slashdot is a pretty good site. As the rest of the internet trends toward intellectuzlly challenged people, we can still get a good discussion going among intelligent people. The moderation system is good even if it has some faults.

I would suggest that for anyone modding another as troll be charged 3 moderation points if the person they are moderating as troll is not an AC. Too many people have been moderating simple disagreement as trolling.

Avoid clickbait. It's really easy to get clicks when you have: Gun control or not gun control.

Third wave sex negative feminism.

There are a few other clickbait issues, but in general the clickbait stuff works to turn to sites into Yahoo.

The mobile site is horrible. I don't bother to visit unless I am at a desktop. So even though I note that, I don't have much advice o that matter.

Re:Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overfl

[lgw]

Should we show some stories automatically on the front page that have reached a certain level of popularity within the firehose?

I like that, if done only in the absence of timely editing. Too much voting on what stories make the front page is what killed Digg, but as a fallback it sounds great - and in any case, have it as a way to call the attention of the editors to certain stories!

More timely stories is great, but too many stories means not enough comments on any of them.

Other gripes:
* Fix the way /. breaks stories over pages in certain views. It's frustrating to see the same thread in 3 consecutive pages with maybe 1-2 changed posts at the very bottom.
* Allow editing of posts, at least for a limited time to fix embarrassing typos - we'd all seem more literate.
* Fix the bulleted lists! They work worse than manually typing "*"s last I checked. :)

Thanks for taking an interest.

Re:Permaban users

[EzInKy]

Why not just not read those posts? Seems a simple enough solution to me.

Ignore 99.9% of the recommendations

[fnj]

I just waded through this whole mess of comments. 99.9% of them are stupid ideas. By far the most important way to KEEP slashdot good is DON'T FUCK WITH IT. It doesn't NEED "fixing", and these ideas would ruin it.

Re:Ignore 99.9% of the recommendations

[whipslash]

How about https and unicode support? For or against?

Re:Ignore 99.9% of the recommendations

[Clomer]

In general I agree. Major changes should be avoided, but minor tweaks here and there would be good. I support adding Unicode support, as that doesn't change the nature of the site at all but adds some useful functionality. HTTPS support should be there as well.

I also feel that the site should be IPv6 enabled. This wouldn't change a thing about how the site operates, as most users (even those that understand the difference) won't know whether they are connected to it with IPv4 or IPv6 unless they specifically check, but as a tech site, it should be blazing the way on this, not lagging behind.

In any case, I'm glad the beta site has been scrapped.

Re:Ignore 99.9% of the recommendations

[BESTouff]

Definitely for ! But that's technical and doesn't mess with the behavior of the site. Be careful if your tweak the modding system, which is the very soul of slashdot.

Re:Ignore 99.9% of the recommendations

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the UTF-8 support is probably the best recommendation.
Most of the other stuff I don't care for at all.
Reducing the time limit between posts seems like a bad idea to me.

Re:Ignore 99.9% of the recommendations

[c]

Actually, there's a certain amount of necessary "fucking with it". In many cases, it just amounts to rolling back braindead decisions made by the previous owners. Kill any lingering vestiges of beta and other beta-like Web 2.0 tendencies, drop anything involving video, and for the love of all that is good do not foist another idiot like Haselton on us. There are some longstanding technical issues that should be fixed (https, IPv6, mobile, etc). I'm on the fence about Unicode; quite frankly, if it's not ASCII I have no interest in writing it or reading it, but I guess there's some people who might like to write their real name or something...

The majority of changes need to be made on the content side. Editors that edit, dropping the rants^H^H^H^H^Horiginal content (cf. Haselton), video reporting, Dice.com clickbait (if the new corporate overlords want to post something, don't insult our intelligence), etc. Promoting more tech and far, far less blogspam and contentious clickbait. I'm not entirely against blogspam, but I think it should be recognized, flagged as such, and I'd like to see slashdot charge money for promoting it. The other thing is having some actually reading and acting on comments when genuine abuse is called out; readers can see patterns (i.e. Microsoft's corporate PR games a couple years ago) and aren't shy about pointing it out. Shut that stuff down.

Re:Ignore 99.9% of the recommendations

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI: I'm still using the old D1 comment system.
It's not that I'm against "Web 2.0", but D2 just doesn't support my way of reading /.
Which is: set the Treshold to Nested, and the level to something that has at most 20-ish comments. Then I just read those comments and click on the N replies link for the threads that seem interesting. These threads open fully at -1, so I dont have to click constantly to open posts as with D2.

As for Unicode support : If I were you I would only add support for select blocks of code points (commonly used accented latin characters and symbols), or people will start posting in Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, ... . Also remember that things like emoji depend on the client side font, so people might not see certain parts of the post on their system. The full Unicode range is huge, and most fonts only contain a subset.

Re:Ignore 99.9% of the recommendations

[coldsalmon]

I agree that Slashdot has a generally excellent format. Any changes should be made with great care, and with an eye to preserving what is good about the site. Slashdot has reached its current form after many years of refinement. It's unlikely that a "large overhaul" will improve more than it breaks. The users will tell you in comments what they dislike, even if you don't ask them to. They will tell you a lot. Welcome to Slashdot!

But for realzies, thanks for asking. I have been seeing some of the same complaints in comments over and over again for months, and nothing has been done about them. I am glad that you are listening to the users.

Re:Ignore 99.9% of the recommendations

[chihowa]

In general you're right, but there are some things that are actually broken and need fixing. Most of them are technical, though and fixing them shouldn't bother anyone.

• (Limited) Unicode support
• The subscription system
• HTTPS
• IPv6
• The mobile site (trashing it, that is...)
• Adding bullets to unordered lists!

Re:Ignore 99.9% of the recommendations

[strikethree]

I just waded through this whole mess of comments. 99.9% of them are stupid ideas.

Not true. Only 87.6% are stupid.

Offering HTTPS and IPV6 are super excellent ideas. That already drops below the 99.9% threshold that you set. Putting Metamoderation back to the way it used to be drops it even further.

Unicode seems like it could be nice and/or useful but I am an American and the world revolves around me so ASCII is just fine as far as I am concerned. (tongue in cheek)

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[Anonymous Coward]

I consistently get 15 mod points when I get points. I go through spells where I got mod points frequently. The batch I got today is probably the 5th or 6th time in the past month or two

slashdot

[longchuot]

more information

allow all posts to be viewed without javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

don't fuck it up by requiring javascript and allow anon users to continue to post without IP bans.

oh, and fuck javascript. seriously, get rid of it anywhere on the website. just in case you were thinking, fuck flash too. and cookies.

Some ideas

[AHuxley]

Just going back over what many have said. The login and moderation system is fine. Keep AC's the way they are.
Add https.
Ensure any link is clear, green links on a green gui might need some thought.
Watch for efforts by the security services eg:
"GCHQ Created Spoofed LinkedIn and Slashdot Sites To Serve Malware"
http://news.slashdot.org/story...
Other than that slashdot is doing great, the wider community seems to be able to moderate the more direct sock puppets and other junk posts.
Ensure slashdot keeps working over all emerging OS's, platforms and is still usable by all people with an interest.

Re:Some ideas

[whipslash]

Thanks for the feedback. Https is coming for sure. I've taken note of the rest of your suggestions

More Tech, less SJW

[Anonymous Coward]

Get rid of the click-bait global warming, gender inequality in IT, Elon Musk fanboyism and general airhead stories.
16 years ago this was a site for autistic, highly technical, nerds. Post the invasion of "web creatives" it's been on a steady slide down the SJW sink-hole to join so many other "trashed by Liberal Arts J-school majors" tech sites.

Learn from their mistake.

The basics

[dbarclay10]

The basics:

* Continue making posts about good content worthy of discussion
* Avoid the trolling and pandering that's been too obvious in too many posts/stories
* Avoid the Slashvertisements (and if you have to do them, tell us about it and why you're doing it - even if you just want to make more money to gilt your monocles)

If there's anything you can do about the obvious astroturfing that happens in the comments that would be nice, but I think that's playing with fire. The moderation system seems to work reasonably well most of the time, maybe just tweak the weights a bit (so anybody who positively moderated an obviously astroturfing or trolling comment has less karma).

Feel free to change the UI some, but don't try to differentiate via the UI. And please nothing 'flat' :)

Re:The basics

[whipslash]

Thanks for the feedback!

FIXME

[technosaurus]

The stories that slashdotters seem to prefer (myself included) are the ones with lasting impact on society as a whole. If you had to choose between a story about a new programming language that would allow programming of virus/yeast DNA to accomplish distributed computing tasks and a story about another school shooting or giant tsunami disaster, the tech advancement story will always win (unless the byline for the tsunami story is "Linus Torvalds may be among the dead" ... or Hans Reiser is the school shooter after escaping from prison)

Aside from that just put this wannabe BBS code on github and let the community help fix things like:
1. Edit capability
- stackexchange style edit history would be nice
2. Mobile interface
- the current m.slashdot.org is awful #@$@#$^ sliding ads that say my device is infected
3. Horrible configuration
- no configuration with sane defaults would almost be better - worst UI I've seen since libXaw
4. Page speed
- since "Beta" and the huge video/flash ads, I typically read the latest headlines which takes ~10s but have to wait 2X that to load
- allow configuration to show "posts since last visit"
5. Better use of vertical space
- move the author etc to the same line as the post and some of the data, such as time posted and the post number into its popup on a link icon
6. Some sort of markup/down

Replace annoying in-your-face ads with:
1. a sponsored article model of revenue (and mark them as such).
2. affiliate accounts with select sites to have (mutable for registered users) daily deals.
3. a daily sponsor

Video ads are only acceptable on video content.
Audio ads are only acceptable on audio content.

Re:FIXME

[whipslash]

Good stuff. Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully we can address all of this

Re:Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overfl

[whipslash]

Cool thanks for the feedback. Yeah the idea of posting very popular stories from the firehose to the front page would keep the content flowing, but also let people comment on the submission as a story (instead of having to find the URL on the submission and comment). We'd make these look different (by color code or some other means), and also have the option to hide these of course. We'd make sure to cap the the popular firehose stories that got posted to the front page to a certain amount in a given time period or day, ie. you wouldn't see 10 get posted in the same hour or small window of time.

Your other gripes have been noted as well.

bad comment system

[Anonymous Coward]

The comment system is much clearer in Reddit than in slashdot.

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[Anonymous Coward]

^^ What pecosdave said.

kill files

[ooloorie]

Foremost, I'd like kill files, both by user and by keyword. Kill files should kill either postings or whole subthreads. There are some people I simply don't want to read anything from, ever.

Other suggestions: better threading, better mobile support, mobile app, Markdown default, Unicode support, and opt-in/opt-out direct private messaging.

Re:kill files

[Megane]

Add a kill files option for article contents too. This should include the submitter name.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't eliminate AC posts - some of us have been coming here for years and have NEVER created an account, because we usually just want to read.

To expand on this, some of us got fired. :( Never create an account. Change your MAC and IP regularly. VPN is your friend.

Metamoderation

[techno-vampire]

Back when I first registered here, metamoderation consisted of examining how posts had been moderated and judging it was deserved or not. That is, you'd be given a post and told that it had been given a +1 Informative, and asked if it deserved that. I really enjoyed helping out that way and almost never failed to metamoderate.

Now, you're shown a set of posts that have been moderated and asked if they're good posts or bad posts, with no idea of how they were originally rated. You have no context, no way of knowing if you're being asked to judge an upmod or a downmod (For all I know, you're being asked to judge all the mods a post received in one lump.) and no way to tell what effect your decision will have.

It's been years, now, since I've even bothered with metamodding, but if you went back to the old style where people knew just what moderations they were checking, I'd gladly start doing it again, and I doubt I'm the only person here who feels that way. Metamoderation used to serve an important function here, and I'd like to see that come back.

Re:Metamoderation

[Orgasmatron]

I don't mind the current system.

If a comment is worth having here, why not ding all of the moderation that marked it down at once? And if it is junk, why not reduce the moderation power of the users that marked it up?

Showing a specific moderation example gives you a bias, an anchor. It also diverts your attention away from the big issue and towards the small specifics. Think of the difference between "Do I want more comments like this here, or fewer?" and "Should this have been +1 Funny, or should it have been +1 Interesting instead?".

Re:Metamoderation

[techno-vampire]

Back when I was metamodding, I never worried about distinctions that didn't make a difference. If somebody gave a post a +1 Informative that didn't tell me anything new, I wouldn't say that it was a bad moderation if I found the post insightful or interesting; an upmod is an upmod. And, of course, the same went for downmods. However, if a post was given -1 Flamebait and nobody had responded to it (or at least, nobody took the bait) I'd give it a downcheck on general principles.

Re:Metamoderation

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear, hear. I had been asked to metamoderate before, but did not quite grasp it then. I was hoping that I would be asked again, but something happened to my user ID that must have knocked it out of contention. But he has described the process better, and I believe this keeps slashdot from being just another digg or reddit.

Re:Metamoderation

[bhiestand]

Back when I was metamodding, I never worried about distinctions that didn't make a difference. If somebody gave a post a +1 Informative that didn't tell me anything new, I wouldn't say that it was a bad moderation if I found the post insightful or interesting; an upmod is an upmod. And, of course, the same went for downmods. However, if a post was given -1 Flamebait and nobody had responded to it (or at least, nobody took the bait) I'd give it a downcheck on general principles.

So YOU'RE the one who disagreed with my Flamebait mod for a post with no replies that said something like "Fuck you asshole!" ...

Re:Metamoderation

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely agree. Moderation is the lifeblood of this site, and good metamoderation is what makes it work. I've personally had comments moderated in the past where the moderator simply didn't get it, calling something "flamebait" when it was a thoughtfully expressed point, or "off topic" when the moderator was apparently too dense to grasp the connection. And lest you think I'm just whining, I've also had mods such as "overrated" that didn't bother me at all, because that was someone expressing a legitimate opinion. When I see a mod that makes me just think "WTF?", my sincere hope is that metamoderation with eventually dampen out the dullard with mod points.

Re:Metamoderation

[StormReaver]

Metamoderation used to serve an important function here, and I'd like to see that come back.

I also stopped metamoderating some ago for mostly the same reasons. Metamoderation went from serving a well defined, understandable purpose to being overly confusing and seemingly pointless.

Re:Metamoderation

[david_thornley]

The worst time I have with metamodding is when I'm looking at a perfectly ordinary post. One I wouldn't mod up or down if I had unlimited mod points, and which I wouldn't know how to moderate anyway, because nothing applies. If you ask me if a +1, Eclectic mod is justified or not, I can give a definite answer.

Re:Metamoderation

[techno-vampire]

Yes indeed. Knowing why the post was modded up or down in the first place can help, because you have at least a little idea what the moderator saw in it. This way, you have nothing.

Re:Metamoderation

[Megane]

I stopped when it became "here's a random post, +/-". What does that mean, + "I agree" / - "I don't", or + "I think its good post" / - "I think it's a bad post"? The metamoderation FAQ still mentioned the agree/disagree buttons for YEARS. Bring back old-school metamoderation!

Re:Metamoderation

[Thelasko]

Metamoderation can be very difficult without context. Sometimes a post can seem "Offtopic", but after seeing the post it's replying to, it makes sense.

The Bubble

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey everyone,

I came to /. for years before signing up for an account. I currently don't use one because passwords are complicated.

I joined when the tech bubble was on and I was still young and working awesome student jobs. One PhD and a real Internet research job later, and I'm still hitting /.

Here is why: I am an addict.

That's it. I'm not a sophisticated user. I don't really want my name attached to anything on the Internet because it will be there forever and forever is a long time. To me, /. is a news fix with a side order of snark, and it's built into my muscle memory.

If I see a browser, I type in slashdot.org. I don't know how many hours I have lost to it. Sometimes I wonder what I could have done with that time.

I do wish the political trolls would disappear. I might actually use a login if that's what it took to get ride of them. But I might not.

To build the site, I suggest bringing back the late 90s tech bubble. That ought to do it.

Re:The Bubble

[whipslash]

We are glad to have you. I'll work on that 90s tech bubble thing

If you're serious...

[dbarclay10]

If you guys are serious about turning Slashdot around I wish you all the luck, and if there's anything the community can do to help, please don't hesitate to ask us. That might include asking us to change our behaviour (both to improve things from first principles, and if we need to change our behaviour to adapt to a change to the system).

I've been reading (and rarely contributing to :) Slashdot for a long time, and over the past year I've been looking for alternatives. I still haven't found any that were better; I'd even considered starting a new one. I will be very pleased if it turns out competent people acting in good faith have taken the helm.

Re:If you're serious...

[whipslash]

Thanks. We hope you stay here. We are serious about turning it around

Have more fun

[mdsolar]

It's been a long time since the site turned pink on April 1. Maybe commission some emeritus editors to do some projects like that. Some sharp slashumor might scare some trolls away as well.

Re:Have more fun

[whipslash]

Haha good idea

go back

[tloh]

I feel that revenue seeking / advertising on slashdot has gone too far and needs to be pulled back. I'm not explicitly against it, but the stuff is far more intrusive now than it was back in the days when this site was good. My 2 main peeves are 1) the auto playing videos that distract me with noise when I'm trying to read and 2) the flash ads that always crashes my browser. Other changes I can put up with, but these two are the main reasons why I mostly browse reddit now.

Re:go back

[whipslash]

Where are you seeing the auto play videos?

Back to OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

The original base of Slashdot used to be open source. Open up the source again and let us fix things.

Going a little further, the site can be designed so people could use their own custom version. All the posts and articles would run through a standard Slashdot API, so everyone would still be using your back-end, but they would be hosting their own front-end if they wanted to try out new UIs or features before accepting them to the mainline branch.

Re:Put the "read more" link back, better mobile si

[EzInKy]

Please yes!! The read more link at the bottom of summary actually motivated me to read more. Combining it with the article title just made me afraid to click on article titles.

Kick out the liberal activists

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot went the way of Digg, by allowing organized liberal political activists to take over the content to push an agenda.

Slashdot stopped being a tech-related site long ago, and is now just a sewer of left-wing propaganda.

I got so fed up with it that I stopped following it, and now just come when something seems interesting in my RSS feed.

Re:Kick out the liberal activists

[Anonymous Coward]

I could not agree more. Dice is constantly pushing a very specific political agenda, filling the site with crap articles about how all men are evil, anyone who questions the status quo is an idiot, etc.

Keep it to science, technology, and geeky stuff please. There's enough political agenda echo chambers out there. We don't need another one.

Re:Kick out the liberal activists

[whipslash]

Dice is gone

Re:Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overfl

[camperdave]

I agree with the bullet lists, both

and
and some of the other HTML that slipped through the cracks over the years.

Additional navigation buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it is just me, but I would like to see the option for 'Newer / Older' at the top as well. I tend to want to read the articles in order of publish time, and if it has been a few days (like over the weekend), then I might have to go back several pages. That isn't so much a big deal, but then I read the articles from the bottom up, to be in order, so when I am ready to go to a newer page, then I have to scroll to the bottom... click newer page... scroll to the bottom... and start to read up again. Obviously not a huge deal, but you asked, so I am suggesting. Thanks!

two words

[John_3000]

New Coke

Drop Auto-refresh

[Anonymous Coward]

Please drop the automatic auto-refresh feature Dice added. (slashdot.org/?source=autorefresh) I don't like it when a web pages decides to change on me.

Posting Anonymously

[Cantankerous Cur]

Posting anonymously should automatically post the IP address used. It makes it significantly easier to track the people trashing the site. Yeah, people might use Tor but I have full faith in the laziness of humanity.

Moreover, how about better tracking of the people spamming messages like the infamous 'hosts' one.

Editing comments within 2 minutes of posting.

AC

[Anonymous Coward]

All Anonymous Coward posts must be displayed in Comic Sans.

Collapse comment threads

[Anonymous Coward]

Please add the ability to expand/collapse comment threads. I don't know how many times I have seen the conversation go into Neverland where I don't care to go, but it's not easy sometimes to scroll to the proper location to skip that thread.

Support long-running discussions

[MobyDisk]

Sometimes there is an interesting discussion, but aftera bout 12 hours people move on to other articles. It would be great if there was a way to flag a discussion as worthy in some way that it invites people to continue it. Someties I reply to a comment and say "Why?" or "Hey, can you post more information on that?" But the system, being news-based, puts a damper on discussions that last longer than the duration that the item is newsworthy.

Re:Support long-running discussions

[whipslash]

Can you elaborate on how we might do this? Right now you get notifications of replies...

Re:Support long-running discussions

[MobyDisk]

Two thoughts:
1) Really? Are they email notifications? If so, I probably turned those off 18 years ago and forgot about it. Maybe the notifications need to be somewhere else. Or maybe I've been missing out on something key, since I regularly scan my recent comments for new replies. I guess I've been doing it the hard way.

2) Notifications aren't sufficient anyway. Let me share a vision:

Stop thinking of Slashdot as a news site. Instead, consider it to be the exact inverse of StackOverflow. SO is focused on specific questions and specific answers, while cutting-off discussions. Slashdot is about impromptu discussions, with no end, based on current events "News for nerds, stuff that matters." If I just wanted news, there are 5 billion news aggregators out there. Heck, half the time Slashdot links to some other news aggregator or blog site anyway. It's gotten so meta that people make it a goal to find the "real" story and post a link to it. Some of this is about editors, but there is something bigger going on.

The joke on Slashdot is that nobody RTFAs. They come here and click on the comments. I do it too. It's because half the time, the story is garbage, or overblown, or misrepresented. I don't mean the Slashdot summary is wrong (it sometimes is), but that the news article itself is a troll. But this is a good thin, and it should be the focus of Slashdot. It has lots of really smart geeks who want to prove everyone else wrong. Lets use that! For example: There was a story something like "Germany produced half it's power from solar." I click the comments, and learn that really it was "For 45 minutes one summer day, Germany reduced the gas-fired plants down to almost zero. So baseline nuclear imported from outside the country + and solar was sufficient." Wow, that's very different. So in 3 minutes I'm already the local expert because I know the truth. I can debunk the overblown headline when someone brings it up over lunch. And with 15 more minutes of reading high-rated comments, I know what I'm talking about on what is baseload power versus peak and the economics of solar.

What if we could take the best rated comments, and aggregate them into a summary? Almost a real-time semi-automated Wikipedia? Ever read https://alterslash.org/ ? It kinda does that.

So now we get to the problem with notifications. Someone posts some revealing insightful thing about the article. Someone else posts a question like "Can you provide a link to that?" or "Hey, but what about this other thing..." and.... no replies. Because the incentive to reply is gone once the story is off the front page. The discussion got cut-off. Is there a way to change the site to be discussion-centric, where highly moderated threads stay up there and people are more inclined to see them and continue talking about them? I almost want a moderation of "+5 Nailed it" that applies to a whole thread. That's for comments that aren't snarky one-liners, they are those "Ohhh.... NOW I get it!" moments. Those times someone made you change your mind. That's what keeps me coming back.

On a similar vein, I want to be able to see all my comments, in context, for all time. I get into some discussion in real-life, where I think "I read about this on Slashdot, and I posted a reply that I feel like really explained the issue." I wanna find that again. I also want to see how much my positions have changed. I imagine running for office one day, and wanting to go back over my comments to understand why I thought something. It's almost a mind-map of my own thoughts and opinions.

Sometimes, I've thought about taking a comment and turning it into a blog entry or article on my own site. This is because there is an "answer sniping" mentality on Slashdot, which makes people try to limit their posts to a few minutes. So you can't always post the entirety of your thoughts. If you post within 5 minutes, odds on a +5 are good. If you post within 15 minutes, you probably

Re:Support long-running discussions

[whipslash]

Yes these are all good ideas and we need to consider how to make notifications work more transparently and functionally. Right now when logged in you should see a box in the right rail that has message reply notifications. You might have gotten rid of it in your settings at one point.

Re:Support long-running discussions

[MobyDisk]

What if users could edit the story summary, like how StackOverflow works with answers? People post complaints about summaries all the time. Perhaps instead, there should be a system where moderators or some other class of people can edit summaries, and another can approve edits. Then Slashdot becomes the best source for story summaries.

Re:Support long-running discussions

[whipslash]

This is something we're exploring

Stop the echo chamber.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop the echo chamber.

The comment section for some topics is like reading the same comment put a thousand different ways, but with the same message.
Its the main thing that makes me not want to come here.

Fixing this in a building/house/room is easy.
Add absorbing materials to stop the frequencies bouncing back and/or
Add diffusers to spread the reflections around the room making them less powerful.

Perhaps allow one or two devils advocate category posts to the comments for the topic.
Here people who argue the echo chamber argument attempt to argue for the opposite of the echo chamber.
Everyone can then vote how good their argument was shooting down the majority.
The best devils argument get some mod points!

This will give people place in the comments to defend a non popular point and not feel like they are going to get picked on by the crowd and
encourages people to try out the other side, even just for fun.

Or not, but try something. Anything.

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[Anonymous Coward]

This! I've probably had 500 comments the past 16 years moderated to a +5, but only once have I received moderator points. It makes me want to just stop trying.

Shutter "Ask Slashdot"

[Anonymous Coward]

The comments section is occasionally funny, frequently snide, and all too often terrible--and that's besides the recurring trolls who post the same spam on every article. The absolute worst is when some well-meaning soul asks a question and gets ripped apart for being stupid in the first two posts before the third post takes a tangent and ignites a flame war that derails the rest of the discussion. For this reason, I never read Ask Slashdot because the questions never get answered. Now, I anticipate the jackals who frequent this site will tear this post apart. Have at it, guys.

Re:Shutter "Ask Slashdot"

[jafiwam]

The comments on this site are occasionally funny, frequently snide, but all too often terrible--and that's without the trolls who spam the same thing on every story. The worst is when some well-meaning soul asks a question and the first two responses ridicule him before the third takes a tangent, igniting a holy war that completely derails the topic. For that reason, I never read Ask Slashdot because the question never gets answered. Now, I anticipate the jackals who frequent this site will begin tearing me a new one. Have at it, guys.

You can change your settings so you don't see them. If you bother to get an account and log in.

On the other hand, Ask Slashdot is one of the better sections as it is a reflection of what people are thinking / doing... often nerdy stuff like we all want here. But, true, people do ask stupid or have un-workable, contradictory, or impossible projects and THOSE people really should be told "what you are doing is unethical or impossible" when the situation warrants.

In short, don't click on those submissions.

easier https, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Am unable to get https on mobile browser.

Some issues with ads

[frovingslosh]

1) Get rid of the "clickbait" ads that are frequently at the bottom of the page. Clickbait ads may not be the most offensive (that honor goes to either pop-ups or forced videos) but they are pretty hated and pretty offensive.

2) If you're going to tell a long time user that they have he ability to disable ads and "Thanks again for helping make Slashdot great! ", then really disable ads, not just a subset of the ads. Makes us feel like you can't even do that right.

3) Quit including ads that look like content (even with the different color).

Re:Some issues with ads

[whipslash]

Good points. We're going to address the disabling ads feature soon

A guess

[mdsolar]

If you use all your mod points, you get more.

Re:A guess

[damn_registrars]

Well, I've either used all or none (depending on your concept of the solution of 0/0) of the mod points I've been given for the past 1-2 years.

No more posts from Bennett Haselton

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not as bad as last summer, but he still sneaks in every now and then with ridiculously overblown nonsense.

Article Dates

[sweintraub]

I'd love to see publish dates on headlines of links to related and "You may like to read:" links. They are often ancient and can be alarming when they look like new headlines. Tonight, "EU Proposes End of Anonymity For Bitcoin and Prepaid Card Users " had its top "You may like to read:" link set to " Greece Rejects EU Terms". Really, that hapopened agaion? Oh, no, never mind, thats 7 month old news.

Re:Article Dates

[whipslash]

Not a bad idea!

Re: Can we get an explanation on who gets mod poin

[Anonymous Coward]

For over ten years I've been trying to get at least one +5 a week, and I've succeeded most weeks. Despite that, I've never gotten moderator points.

no, discussion (moderation) is what made Slashdot

[raymorris]

The discussion is what makes Slashdot what it is, and the moderation is a major reason Slashdot's discussion is special. Don't muck it up. Some very minor adjustments might be okay, but it most certainly shouldn't be completely revamped.

Having said that, this comment is interesting.
http://ask.slashdot.org/commen...

  It might be worth considering something along those lines 6-12 months from now, after frequently requested items are done and the community has some trust of the new ownership.

The bottom line?

[EzInKy]

Return Slashdot to what it was, not what it is now.

Re:The bottom line?

[whipslash]

Care to get more specific?

reevaluate moderation

[frovingslosh]

Rethink the moderation system. Perhaps you could rename "troll" and "flamebait" and even "over rated" to "I don't like what he said but I don't have a good argument to post against it". Or at least actively moderate so that this type of improper moderation can be caught quickly and aggressively discouraged.

Political nonsense in the summary

[Anonymous Coward]

The one thing that made me toss my account, give up on moderation, and cut down my time spent browsing slashdot, was ridiculous political bias in the article summaries.

I don't mind politically charged discussion, but when the summaries... which reflect the editorial stance of the slashdot... take juvenile potshots at political stances that a large percentage of the country holds, it diminishes the site.

Re:Political nonsense in the summary

[whipslash]

We will cut down on political bias.

Re:Permaban users

[JustOK]

Holy hairy cunt hole of transsexual Jesus, that's funny.

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[Kohath]

Yes. These topics are ok occasionally, as part of a balanced approach that allows for all sides. Nothing wrong with open discussion. Dice-Slashdot seemed crazy-obsessed and absolutely adamant that we hear one perspective constantly, endlessly, exclusively.

Also, tone down the anti-religious bigotry (and the dog whistles) on Science! topics. I get it, you disagree with religious people. So do I sometimes. But endorsing bigotry, and being an asshole generally, is uncivilized. You don't want Slashdot to be the Science! version of Stormfront, do you?

Re: Can we get an explanation on who gets mod poin

[Anonymous Coward]

The system is broken. Trolls seem to always get mod points and mod up terrible posts, but in 17 years here, since I first met the /. Guys at the Atlanta Linux Expo and have been posting several times a week, I have never gotten med points despite having six 5 point posts in a row!

Shutter "Ask Slashdot"

[Anonymous Coward]

The comments on this site are occasionally funny, frequently snide, but all too often terrible--and that's without the trolls who spam the same thing on every story. The worst is when some well-meaning soul asks a question and the first two responses ridicule him before the third takes a tangent, igniting a holy war that completely derails the topic. For that reason, I never read Ask Slashdot because the question never gets answered. Now, I anticipate the jackals who frequent this site will begin tearing me a new one. Have at it, guys.

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[Anonymous Coward]

I am also sick of the Social Justice Warrior articles that tell me that I am evil incarnate because of my genitalia. Those are the kinds of stories that get ratings on clickbait sites, but they don't belong on Slashdot.

Under the abuse of Dice, Slashdot has moved away from being a site about technology and science and has been moving steadily to being an agenda-driven political mouthpiece.

That is one of the reasons I don't check in as often as I used to. I am force-fed enough of that tripe by other sites, thank you very much.

Re: Can we get an explanation on who gets mod poin

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll never get it since the system is broken, and I don't think anyone knows how it works.

Put the users first

[Soulskill]

1. It's nice to see you're already communicating with the users. It's something I could never get previous leadership to do. Keep it up! You won't be able to bring them everything on their wishlist -- but don't let that stop you from telling them what you are bringing them, and why the other stuff got pushed lower on the priority list. They're reasonable folks; as long as you're working with them, they'll be on your side.

2. Small changes are better than big ones. Don't push ahead with a massive, grand plan and assume the community will jump on board (like video and beta). If they tell you they don't want it, they don't actually want it. When in doubt, trust Tim L. and Tim V. Nobody cares about the site and its users as much as those two.

3. Build for the community you have, not for the one you want. Don't chase the hockey stick. It's not going to happen. But there's still a path for evolving Slashdot to support an incredibly broad tech/geek community.

4. Nobody should make decisions about the site without being an active user.

5. Ask the community for help more often. The biggest area that needs it right now is submissions. They're the base from which all content flows, and they've been slowly drying up. Submission needs to feel less like screaming into the abyss. Consider reviving the IRC channel to give people direct, instant access to editorial. Try to find ways to solicit particular submissions from known experts. (For example, a submission about a new C++ release from an actual C++ engineer is worth its weight in gold.

6. Reward readers for doing things that benefit the site. Used a mod point? +1 subscriber (ad-free) page. Got a score:5 comment? +10 pages. Accepted submission? +10 pages. Or more. Be generous; these are your most valuable users.

7. Empower and invest in editorial. It is literally their job to know and understand the community, so they shouldn't lose fights centering on the community.

8. Ads have been in a bad place for a couple of years. Pulling it back will cost you revenue in the short term, but may ensure the site's sustainability in the long term.

9. Slashdot's founder, Rob Malda, still cares deeply about Slashdot. I'm sure he'd be willing to offer some advice.

You've been saying a lot of the right things about Slashdot an SourceForge. I sincerely hope you make it all happen.

Best of luck,
Jeff

Re:Put the users first

[whipslash]

Thanks for the feedback Jeff. Much appreciated. We will address every point on your list eventually in one way or another. I've reached out to Rob also. Stay tuned and hopefully you'll see some good changes.

Re:Put the users first

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeff,
as apart of the problem and not the solution, your comments are hyperbole..
your management of this has been abysmal, whether or not it's due to DHI, or what ever, its because of YOU and the Staph at the time that almost drove me away in tears..
I appreciate you fighting what you perceived as "the good fight" but at the same time you must be open to criticism as an occupational hazzard..

Re:Put the users first

[Megane]

Listen to this guy. And if you (whipslash) don't know who he is, stop right now and find out. I'm going to make you look it up.

Re: Can we get an explanation on who gets mod poi

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. I have probably fifty 5 point posts in the past year, which is hard to when starting from 0, but I have never received mod points.

Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Make the UI work on a touchscreen.

Back button...

[TypoNAM]

One thing that has annoyed me for years is that using the browser's back button the site always causing the browser to scroll to top of the page and appears to be intentionally done via javascript somewhere. It's time that annoyance was removed.

Re:Back button...

[jafiwam]

One thing that has annoyed me for years is that using the browser's back button the site always causing the browser to scroll to top of the page and appears to be intentionally done via javascript somewhere. It's time that annoyance was removed.

Links in comments need target="blank" in them period.

No need for back button then. That's basic first five minutes of "how to make a web site" class.

If the discussion is good enough, people will come back and re-see the ads anyway.

Re:Reposting my comment from the original article.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be more than willing to drop $10 a year into the Slashdot Fund. It's a lot more money than they're getting out of me with AdBlocker and Privacy Badger. Give me a cute little icon or something so that I feel special, remove ALL tracking and advertisement crap when I'm logged in, and I'll be a happy guy.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[goose-incarnated]

Please ignore all those users calling for bans, either banning users or banning ACS. Slashdot has long promoted totally free speech and banning users for what they say is exactly the reason that other sites have fallen.

Fire Timothy

[Lawrence_Bird]

Can you cut lose whomever Timothy is/are? And maybe hire somebody who will actually take the time from their very busy day to make sure posts are not duplicates, are not clickbait, are reasonably coherent submissions... basically all those things you expect a person with editorial responsibilities to do?

Re:Fire Timothy

[oneiros27]

And the links actually go to the correct story.

I'd say that one of the problems that's come up over the years is that the 'community' aspect has been stripped away --CmdrTaco would actually post & contribute to discussions. Back when RobLimo was hired, there was posting introducing him, so we had a clue who the hell he was. And his username was unique enough that you could find other stuff that he had done to get an understanding of his personality.

These days, /. often seems more like a zookeeper throwing food to the monkeys -- wait, no, that's unfair -- a zookeeper actually monitors the monkeys to see if anything's wrong. I suspect that the current /. editors rarely read the comments that people post, as we'll often point out problems with the articles that then sit for hours without getting fixed.

It often feels more like the editors are suckered in by the clickbait titles & summaries ... but why? Those approaches are to try to trick people to visit site ... as you're not doing the whole 'related stories' linking from other sites stuff, at most the only benefit here is extra page views as people discuss just how lazy and stupid the current /. editors are.

Re:Fire Timothy

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

It seems he's the only one posting at all; he probably doesn't have time to do much else than post and pray lol

Re:Fire Timothy

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be great to see an occasional "behind-the-scenes" post about what all is going on to keep Slashdot up and running.

Try again.

[Anonymous Coward]

The incessant disagreement prevents actual conversation. Giving people more ways to do that will make the problem worse. This is the exact opposite of what we need. Your post isn't just wrong, it is an example one would use to demonstrate just how much stupidity a wrong post reveals.

Idiot.

Actual Editors

[phizi0n]

Someone needs to proofread the terribly written submissions and actually edit them to be better grammatically like what used to happen here in the 90's. For the past 10 years stories have been posted with what appears to have been zero proofreading and editing.

good start whipslash

[globaljustin]

whipslash, you are doing yeoman's work...

I know absolutely nothing about the company that just bought slashdot, nothing, but judging by your comments on this post you understand the slashdot system and are trying to fix it by tweaking things like firehose weighting...I'm glad you're not trying to re-invent the site.

I've relied on slashdot for *no bullshit* and "see-it-here-first" techie news...what they call "stuff that matters"

More than anything, slashdot for me has been educational. I learn about the issue reading through the comments. Haha, yeah lol, there are trolls and idiots but I just ignored that...the good comments here can be from phd's researching the topic or the engineers who actually code the AI gadget in the article under discussion!

I've been reading since 2001, but didn't even log in to comment until 2006, because I honestly didn't think I had anything to contribute because the level of discussion was so high and relevant. True story!

As long as slashdot has the user-base and maximizes the capabilities of the slashdot CMS to foster productive discussion this will be one of the best techie news sites anywhere!

Re:good start whipslash

[whipslash]

I appreciate it. Thanks for the kind words. I think people will understand as time progresses that we mean well and we will actually listen to you all.

Re:good start whipslash

[globaljustin]

hey one last thing,

a piece of advice...

women are the secret to success in tech...you want the women in tech who can actually do tech work to come to slashdot first...

*I don't know how* but if the new wave of techie women come to slashdot and find a thriving, positive community they will participate and more importantly promote it to their friends

women in tech want no bullshit news and stuff that matters just as much as the rest of us

slashdot isn't reddit...it's not the worst MRA-nest by far, and i think it's actually a fairly open place, and I don't know how to advise specifically how to to it, but when techie women see a place of respect they will add value to the community like absolutely no other thing in the universe can add

Re:good start whipslash

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen to this and add it. /. needs it. Other forums do it: Add the ability for all users to see who issued up or down mods since they get abused either way by karma farming sockpuppets with an agenda upmodding their main account using sock puppet fake secondary accounts to do it or abuse in unjustifiable downmod bombings of valid posts that affect their agendas and when users can't stand behind their moderations they deserve no moderation points (which does not go for users that can back up their moderation with facts).

Re:good start whipslash

[Anonymous Coward]

More than anything, slashdot for me has been educational. I learn about the issue reading through the comments. Haha, yeah lol, there are trolls and idiots but I just ignored that...the good comments here can be from phd's researching the topic or the engineers who actually code the AI gadget in the article under discussion!

That may be true, some of the time, but there are plenty of +5 Informative posts which are just garbage to anyone with real technical knowledge on the subject.

Re: good start whipslash

[Anonymous Coward]

Identifying moderators while allowing anonymous comments is a bad imbalance of power. I wouldn't want to lose the anonymous comments (well except for apk's adrantathons, they take so long to scroll past).

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[whipslash]

Agreed

Linking back to Slashdot

[camperdave]

One thing that kind of grinds my gears is stories that link back to previous Slashdot stories. A good example is this one. Near the end it says "SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral in December." I would expect to be able to follow that link to a relevant news site, not a Slashdot discussion. (Obviously, if the line went "As we discussed here, SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral in December.", that would be a different story.)

Perhaps if the links in the story were post-fixed with the sites in square brackets the same way that they are in the comments...

Re:Linking back to Slashdot

[whipslash]

Good idea

Wait...what?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"There's no doubt that the Slashdot community is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and prolific communities on the web."

Awww, garsh, (shuffle, shuffle). And it's a well-known fact that Slashdot users are uncommonly attractive, witty, and humble, too.

Anyway...

How about letting users edit a post for, I don't know, maybe 30 minutes after posting? I can't count the number of times I've made a typo or screwed up the HTML for italics or whatever, turning the whole post into a block of italic crap.

Re:Wait...what?

[whipslash]

Yes editing is on our list

Re:Wait...what?

[Hognoxious]

But that enables bait & switch trolling.

If you must do it, don't put a time limit - lock it once there's a reply (or if someone is in the process of replying).

If that's too hard, keep the history.

Re:Wait...what?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

But that enables bait & switch trolling.

I think that's a relatively minor concern. If this happens it'll be called out, modded down, and the troller will be exposed.

Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad, and personally I think the benefit of being able to edit a post outweighs the potential disadvantages.

It's 2016- virtually every forum, discussion, and comment platform in the world has the option to allow editing except slashdot. It's one of the only things I feel is a real deficit here. If necessary, make it a short 5-minute grace period, but please allow editing.

Re:Wait...what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Add this. /. needs it. Other forums do it: Add the ability for all users to see who issued up or down mods on a post as they get abused either way by karma farming sockpuppets with an agenda upmodding their main account using sock puppet fake secondary accounts to do it or abuse in unjustifiable downmod bombings of valid posts that affect their agendas and when users can't stand behind their moderations they deserve no moderation points (which does not go for users that can back up their moderation with facts)!

Re:Wait...what?

[Midnight Thunder]

As mentioned above if the thread is moderated that should also be a condition to prevent editing. The other approach is to allow editing, but undo positive moderation.

Re:Wait...what?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I'm fine with whatever they want to do to prevent moderation abuse, but editing one's post seems to be a basic bit of functionality dating from about 1998 or so. A site like slashdot has no real excuse not to allow it in some form.

Re:Wait...what?

[Hognoxious]

If this happens it'll be called out, modded down, and the troller will be exposed.

Yeah, that works really well for APK, cows guy, and all the others.

Re:Wait...what?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Yeah, that works really well for APK, cows guy, and all the others.

Nothing is perfect, but restricting everyone because of a few bad actors seems unreasonable.

No, slashdot will never be free of pukebags like APK, but why should you suffer or be hobbled because he's an asshole? Why should you pay for his bad behavior?

It's like saying you can't use your yard because your neighbor's yard is a mess.

Re:Wait...what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk merely proves his superior skills and intelligence in computing by ghosting his way through any barrier with no limits as well as his programming which users here like http://slashdot.org/comments.p... have you done better? No. It's become apparent to me that several of you wish you were APK but you have to accept the fact you trolling do nothings will never be in his league in computing, or life. It's just the shitty cards you were dealt and your inability to play what little you have into more. That's your fault you dwell in less than mediocrity while apk shines so much you idiots have to talk about him behind his back showing us your whimp weasel selves and strengthening his position and favor among us. I had to tell the truth to you deluded wannabes. You're just not as good as apk at anything and you know it.

Don't make it "social" media

[future assassin]

Keep it what I use to be, a news site with almost forum like feel.

Re:no, discussion (moderation) is what made Slashd

[arth1]

The discussion is what makes Slashdot what it is, and the moderation is a major reason Slashdot's discussion is special. Don't muck it up. Some very minor adjustments might be okay, but it most certainly shouldn't be completely revamped.

I have to agree. If anything, do more to encourage meta-moderation, and perhaps make it easier to see the parent post of the post you meta-moderate. Often it's just a line or two, and it's hard to tell what the moderation is.

For the actual moderation, the only change I'd like to see is that anyone who spends all their five mod points on downvoting someone gets no more mod points for a year.

add a favorite button

[victorsosa]

Hi, We need to add a favorite button, so we can save every favorite story we like.

Re:add a favorite button

[whipslash]

Oh this is a good idea

Comments duped on multiple pages

[gnupun]

In nested mode, some comments are duplicated on multiple pages whereas other comments are not shown at all! This bug has been around for a decade... please fix.

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Please fix these annoyances

[burningcpu]

I really, really dislike the whole "from the foo dept." thing, such as this:
Posted by timothy on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @04:45PM from the you-love-surveillance-we-see-you-say dept.

Also, the mobile interface displays something along the lines of "this post is hidden due to filtering preferences" or something wherever a filtered post would have appeared. Oftentimes there's more space taken up in the thread by these notifications than by comments. Please turn the filtered post notifications off :)

Re:Please fix these annoyances

[whipslash]

You don't like the tongue in cheek departments? What about the department on this story?

Story Title Links split when dashes are in URL

[SgtKeeling]

On some of your stories, the link in the title will wrap to two lines if there's a dash in the url. This results in an ugly, inconsistent look on the front page.
To see an example of the problem, go here: http://slashdot.org/?fhfilter=... One of the first results should be "Ruby 2.3.0 Released", and the green title bar is twice as tall as normal. Another example is here: http://slashdot.org/?fhfilter=...
I think I have a fix for you. In your app.css file, at line 720, simply apply the following to your "a.story-sourcelnk" class: "white-space: nowrap;"
Please make this easy fix and improve your site. It's only an extra 21 bytes (19 if you minify your css).

Re:Story Title Links split when dashes are in URL

[whipslash]

Yes i've noticed this. We will fix this.

A short list of improvements.

[OneTimeUseAccount]

1. The comment ranking system is much worse than reddit, even though reddits algorithms were published (and then withdrawn) by a famous internet nerd who created them while working short-term for reddit. I personnally could make a much better comment scheme than reddit. 2. The comment system is spammed and often flooded with PR agents trying to get a point of view about a story across. The comments also allow farm based downvoting, as a form of trolling, that is aimed at ppl who put effort into this site. Both these things mean people use slashdot less as a whole. 3. Why isnt slashdot being paid to publish those stories directly. Many of the major stories are paid stories on sites like anandtech or arstechnica etc, which put people to another site. Everyone knows those are advertising false benchmarks or facts. Even the editors of slashdot. It also makes ppl less likely to value or read slashdot. As i said, why isnt slashdot being paid, rather than helping a competitor? 4. Currently the stories are poorly targeted, and also poorly written. Please compare to how competitors in both the IT and other fields do online media. Slashdot has fallen behind the times. Therefore you get much less views. 5. The story and comment systems are managed poorly. You dont need many editorial staff to manage slashdot as a whole. Also goodthings about slashdot: it was the first major website to use web2.0 (dynamic webpages). But this was 2000-2001, not 2016. Many other good things. Also goodthings about slashdot: it was the first major website to use web2.0 (dynamic webpages). But this was 2000-2001, not 2016. Many other good things.

Refuse posts by known liars, shills, and crackpots

[Anonymous Coward]

The frequency of posts from the likes of mdsolar is horrific. Arstechnica has a similar problem with John Timmer, who is another prominent renewables cheerleader. They parrot nonsense from disreputable sources, which is at best deceptive, and usually filled with lies. The Church of Renewables may be the most popular environmental sect, but no discourse is even possible with such dogmatic people, as they have no respect for facts or rational arguments. Even well respected scientists like James Hansen are now labeled as "deniers" by the faithful.

Free speech is one thing, but providing a platform for nonsense that drowns out reasoned discourse is damaging to slashdot and society as a whole. The moderation system and firehose need work to prevent abuse by ignorant zealots and those with deep pockets. The value of the system itself is questionable, when moderators are drawn from the masses of people who are often hopelessly misinformed and partial.

A short list of improvements

[OneTimeUseAccount]

1. The comment ranking system is much worse than reddit, even though reddits algorithms were published (and then withdrawn) by a famous internet nerd who created them while working short-term for reddit. I personnally could make a much better comment scheme than reddit.
2. The comment system is spammed and often flooded with PR agents trying to get a point of view about a story across. The comments also allow farm based downvoting, as a form of trolling, that is aimed at ppl who put effort into this site. Both these things mean people use slashdot less as a whole.
3. Why isnt slashdot being paid to publish those stories directly. Many of the major stories are paid stories on sites like anandtech or arstechnica etc, which put people to another site. Everyone knows those are advertising false benchmarks or facts. Even the editors of slashdot. It also makes ppl less likely to value or read slashdot. As i said, why isnt slashdot being paid, rather than helping a competitor?
4. Currently the stories are poorly targeted, and also poorly written. Please compare to how competitors in both the IT and other fields do online media. Slashdot has fallen behind the times. Therefore you get much less views.
6. The story and comment systems are managed poorly. You dont need many editorial staff to manage slashdot as a whole.

Also goodthings about slashdot:
it was the first major website to use web2.0 (dynamic webpages). But this was 2000-2001, not 2016.
Many other good things.

Re:A short list of improvements

[whipslash]

Thanks for the feedback. Will take a look at all these issues

Re:A short list of improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen to this and add it. /. needs it. Other forums do it: Add the ability for all users to see who issued up or down mods since they get abused either way by karma farming sockpuppets with an agenda upmodding their main account using sock puppet fake secondary accounts to do it or abuse in unjustifiable downmod bombings of valid posts that affect their agendas and when users can't stand behind their moderations they deserve no moderation points (which does not go for users that can back up their moderation with facts)!

News For Nerds Who Never Left Mom's Basement

[westlake]

Slashdot was "News for Nerds"
Lately though, half the posts are some SJW topic.
Bring back the tech.

You can't have news sections of general interest like "Your Rights Online" and ignore gender issues in tech. You can't be a professional in tech and ignore gender issues in education or in the workplace.

Re:News For Nerds Who Never Left Mom's Basement

[Kohath]

You could ignore "gender issues in tech" as a generalized broad-brush complaint against (or attack on) everyone in tech with a specific anatomy.

If you wanted to post specific articles about specific events, specific places, and specific people, instead of generalized "gender issues" complaining, then that would be something called "News".

Re:News For Nerds Who Never Left Mom's Basement

[sciengin]

>You can't have news sections of general interest like "Your Rights Online" and ignore gender issues in tech.
True, unfortunately what the SJW pushes are not at all 'issues' but merely whining about imagined grievances and mistaking correlation for causation.
That is in the best cases. Most of the time its just plain bullying.
As of now there are no real issues with gender in tech: On the internet no one knows that you are a dog. The tech community is one of the most tolerant and open on this planet.

Re:News For Nerds Who Never Left Mom's Basement

[dave420]

Those stories are published and then buried under a wave of people dismissing the entire notion because it's too "SJW"-y. I think it's probably worth Slashdot not running any story relating to gender issues in technology, as this audience doesn't seem capable of discussing them without being drowned out by the loud muppets (on both sides of this particular discussion).

Re:News For Nerds Who Never Left Mom's Basement

[Kohath]

I don't think there will be very many specific news stories about gender issues. Are women working at Google getting raped? I don't think so. So we end up talking about someone's hurt feelings and about "microaggressions" because there's nothing of genuine substance to talk about.

If Slashdot stuck to reporting genuine news about gender issues in tech, we'd see a few stories a year about it. That would be good.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you give me my karma back. Some jackass mod modded my down 15 years ago so all my logged in posts stat at -1, and I'll be dammed if i'm going to give up my low UID for a fresh account.

Kill auto-reload

[Porkwich]

Seriously the single worst thing about the site is the auto-reload. It is an abomination and only a decade of ingrained habit has kept me coming here despite it.

Re:Kill auto-reload

[whipslash]

Yes we are looking at removing it

Re:Stop Auto-Refresh. Load on sroll!

[justthinkit]

I personally hate auto-scrolling of stories. (1) it turns a page into a performance dog, (2) I want to read every story on this site. Sometimes I get behind, so I go through the older posts until I am caught up. All very precise. Auto-scrolling equals I never feel caught up.

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[Anonymous Coward]

All articles on AGW will always be biased in favor of the truth, which is that it is 99% man-made. If you think otherwise, yes, you're an idiot.

I don't recall GamerGate getting quite the attention here that it did other places. Pretending like tech (generally) and gaming (specifically and especially) aren't poisonous hellholes of testosterone-driven douchebags is at best wishful thinking.

It's really very simple. In order for AGW to be wrong, everything we know about radiative physics would also have to be wrong. What will happen due to this warming is an open question, but the physics that says that the Earth *must* warm is not disputed even by climate contrarians. The "skeptics" have no idea what the theory actually says, they're too busy picking away at the models and thinking the theory has anything to do with that. Like a bad virological model would somehow make Ebola not infectious. "But the pause!" didn't affect the energy balance. "But the sun!" doesn't change enough. "But we just don't know!" you can test the theory in your basement -- water, CO2, and IR are easy to come by. Are you "open minded" about the laws of thermodynamics too? Gravity? Compound interest?

Get the fuck out. Retire, go vote Republican, and bitch about "kids these days" to your golf buddies.Your views are obsolete and your brain seems to have died prematurely. Your alternative is to get increasingly pissed off at the news and commenters here, and eventually you will be nothing more than a troll, if indeed you have any humanity left. You're on the wrong side of truth, empiricism, and history, and too dumb to know it.

Moderation, Editors, ditch the Firehose

[itomato]

Tweak the algorithms responsible for moderation point assignment. Give more points. Give them more frequently. Abandon the 5 point ceiling.

The Firehose is a disgrace. Destroy it.

Implement Have you Meta Edited lately?

Hire Rob Malda as a Consultant. He's bored and unemployed.

Re:Moderation, Editors, ditch the Firehose

[whipslash]

Can you elaborate on why you don't like the firehose? A lot of people here have mentioned letting a few of the firehose articles through to the front page if they reach a critical mass of popularity. Any thoughts for or against this idea? They would be differentiated by color, and users could hide or show them.

Re:Moderation, Editors, ditch the Firehose

[oneiros27]

If the firehose is what's responsible for all of the crap that makes it to the front page these days, I'd agree that it needs to go.

The problem is, 'wisdom of the crowd' really sucks. Anyone who's been in a meeting of 20+ people to redesign a website knows that. Sometimes you actually *do* need an editor. (and by that, I mean someone to make real choices about what to promote through ... although someone who can actually fix bad links / typos / make the summary actually readable would be a skill that a few of the current 'editors' seem to be lacking).

The firehose is a way of taking less responsibility in what gets posted to the front page. (although we've also had past editors mention that they post stuff that will 'generate discussion', which I suspect is why we end up with so many front page articles that are basically trolling these days). It might've had good intention -- it seemed to come in around when Digg was getting crazy valuations, and most of the first posts here were 'this was on Digg 2 days ago'.

But Digg also did policing of its users to keep certain voting blocs from taking over the front page. I'm not aware of /. doing the same, as we end up with so many posts that seem to come from relatively few people. It's changed over the years, but the ones that stand out to me these days are the coondoggie ones (rewrite of some press release, w/ only links back to Network World ... at least Ronald Guillemette started adding links other than just to his blog)

Although I can only assume it's the editors that turned /. into a soapbox for Bennett Haselton -- I could understand CmdrTaco using this as his personal blog once in a while, but maybe the firehose isn't such a bad approach if it stops the uninformed editorial ramblings from showing up.

(Note: I was formerly an admin on Fark, and have moderated other online communities; currently a moderator on StackExchange's Open Data site and admin for a few moderately sized (50-500 people) mailing lists)

Re:Moderation, Editors, ditch the Firehose

[itomato]

Problem: Not enough content on the main page.
Solution: Make everything be on the main page.

Problem then becomes quality of submissions in the pipeline and how to filter at submission time (the lameness filter should be applied to this junk)
Solution: Remove the artificial barrier between Firehose and Main content.

Re:Moderation, Editors, ditch the Firehose

[whipslash]

The firehose is not responsible at all for what makes the front page now. This would diversify who the content is coming from in some occasions on the front page, and there would of course be a lot of checks and balances to prevent abuse, and only some would get posted each day, and not *too* frequently

Story quality!

[dwheeler]

I think a key part is simple: good story quality. Key steps:

1. Eliminate duplicates. The submission system should quickly warn of potentially duplicate URLs or subject words.
2. Quick review. Find a way to have a quick review of the story summary before posting. You don't want to slow down the flow too much, but it'd be good to have someone check for missing "not"s, URLs that don't work, and so on. I would assume you already have a spelling and grammar checker, but it's not clear it's always working. That sort of basic for a few sentences really shouldn't take that long.
3. Try to find good topics. That one in some sense is the hardest.

The discussions are sometimes interesting - and sometimes not. But I think if the stories start higher-quality, the follow-up discussion is more likely to be better.

In the longer term, the system for entering text is... quirky. Has someone considered using Markdown? Yeah, Markdown processors vary, but lots of people know Markdown (e.g., via GitHub), and specs like CommonMark and libraries like Red Carpet make it fairly painless.

Good luck!

Re:Story quality!

[whipslash]

Yes we will address the ideas you listed ASAP

Nested comment bug

[Jiro]

As I pointed out in the last thread, Slashdot has a bug where articles containing large numbers of nested comments don't display the later pages correctly. It's common to find articles where comment pages 1, 2, and 3 actually show the exact same comments. The bug is probably ten years or so old by now.

Re:Nested comment bug

[gnupun]

Can we get confirmation this bug is getting fixed? The duplicate posts are okay, however, the bug also hides 70% of the posts while repeating the remaining 30% posts over and over.

How can such a severe bug (hiding comments) not be fixed for 10 years? Are there no developers available at /. to fix issues? AFAIK, this bug has existed ever since /. decided to split comments into multiple pages.

Bird?

[AndyCanfield]

Many of the stories, including this one, show a capital "T", then a bird, then "irfs", then a drawing of a little dummy. I live in rural Thailand. For those of us who do not live in Sunnyvale, you should label it better.

FYI I hate icons. Icons are just another language to learn. I already know English. I don't wamt to see German or Chinese or Icons on Twitter. Thanks.

Also, whi isn't a blank line good enough for a paragraph break? Like here: This is the last paragraph.

Re:Enforce login to post - NOT

[Anonymous Coward]

I've posted several anonymous articles that have made the front page. I'm a privacy nut who doesn't own a smartphone and never registers at any web site.

People Love Getting Rewarded

[EEPROMS]

I used to love posting to comments on Engadget years ago because your up votes got added to your overall community score. This enticed me to be more involved with the community thus more screen views. Engadget changed ownership and they removed this feature and ever since I have lost interest. So what I am suggesting is every time someone gets +5 votes irrespective of the final tally of up or down votes ie controversial comments you get a [STAR ICON] 1 score next to your name. The reward part of this is accumulating points by interacting with the slashdot community more thus getting a higher and higher score. This would also entice people to port more relevant comments and even controversial ones.

Re:People Love Getting Rewarded

[EEPROMS]

port = post oops, also add an edit comment feature that works for 5 min after the initial post.

Re:People Love Getting Rewarded

[whipslash]

Yes we're going to look at something like this

If any of this has been said...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, it bears repeating.

1. Drop the SJW bullshit, period.

2. Require submitters to actually have RTFA. In waning years, Slashdot has become infamous for submissions that make claims that are refuted by the very articles they cite.

3. Don't pander to the morons - you know, the ones who see a story about a widely known open source project used by household names, and then shit up the place with, "HURR WAT DIS". Tech news. If you can't Google, you shouldn't be here.

Re:If any of this has been said...

[jafiwam]

3. Don't pander to the morons - you know, the ones who see a story about a widely known open source project used by household names, and then shit up the place with, "HURR WAT DIS". Tech news. If you can't Google, you shouldn't be here.

On the other hand, there's a fine line between using technospeak mumbo jumbo language only relevant for some small sliver of some small OSS project where no explanation is given about what the heck the article is about and spoon feeding people a back story on basic physics that they should already know on some NASA project. They don't need to link to a Wikipedia article about what a lifting body is, but on the other hand a HDFOJ nozzle chroming chamber should be explained or at least linked in the submission.

Recent years have submissions that need Googling for acronyms, terms, company names, etc. where it's just simply sloppy submission writing and sloppy submission editing. Those should stop. The submission should be enough for the user to decide to read or not. If it isn't, it sucks, or it's click bait or it's not finished.

Editors should simply press a "we like it but the writing sucks" rejection button that sends feedback to tell people they suck and to get people to actually put effort into the original submission. They'd be able to edit and re-submit. Realistically, the burden is both on editors and submitters, but the submitters seem to be getting an undeserved pass on this issue.

Basically, the editors need a big red pen and smiley face stickers.

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[Orgasmatron]

Thank you for demonstrating his point. Now back in your cage.

mostly happy

[clovis]

I've been here for a while and am mostly happy with slashdot then and now.

Some of the things I don't like are not unique to slashdot but are rather a problem inherent in forums.
I don't think they can be fixed.
For one thing, it's obvious to me that in recent years there are many more children/teenager trolls on slashdot than there used to be.
What can be done about that? I have no idea.
I know many of them will grow up, but I don't want to wait for that. It's kind of like how you know I'm going to die before you and will stop posting then, but you wish it would stop now.

I wish there could be a way to have a separate fact-checker/ research section listing links to information on some of the things that people make assertions for that keep coming up such as what the metric system is, what the first computer virus was, what and why are females, common climate change assertions, links to data on energy production, and so on. But not things like "what's the best tank in WWII"
Posters could add links below the topic and a one-line comment why it's relevant. It could have it's own mod system, and someone would have to weed out the goatse links.
Sure, one could use a search engine, but not really. Google/Bing is becoming almost worthless.

I think we should be able to auction off our UID's on slashdot for gold coins. The site could take a cut.

I would like some articles to be AC only with no moderation and the post time limits reduced.
Look at any of the women in the workplace articles or gamergate kind of submissions.
You know it's going to be a shitstorm and the moderation is just going to be revenge mods anyway.
Maybe we could have a vote tab (so /. doesn't blamed) so if enough people vote "free-for-all" (or shitstorm) after 250 posts, then it all gets converted to unmodded AC with the timer limits set to 1 or 2 minutes for everyone. And maybe get thread-locked after 12 hours. What fun that would be.

Re:mostly happy

[whipslash]

Appreciate the feedback. You have a legendary UID.

Random collection of suggestions

[Nemyst]

I haven't seen those mentioned elsewhere so here goes:

• The ability to subscribe to any given comment (with automatic subscription for your own comments, if desired), sending replies to your inbox.
• Markdown support. I don't like WYSIWYG, but I also don't like having to write in monospace or raw HTML. Markdown is a great middle ground that's already used everywhere.
• Remove all of the "Slashdot Deals" crap. This is a tech site, you won't trick the users into buying in that sort of stuff. Also kind of hypocritical to show them even when you check "No Ads".
• Make the mobile site a downscaled version of the desktop site. The mobile site's comment display is atrocious, its filtering options are barebones, and navigating between stories is annoying because the site takes over page loading and tab history.
• Hire more editors. I'd like to think that it'd be feasible to get volunteer editors to work here for free, which would significantly reduce costs while increasing quality and turnaround time for stories.
• Make sure editors actually edit. There should be internal rules to follow (we as users don't have to know them, but they need to exist) and if they are broken there should be consequences. Rules should at least include basic proofreading, making sure the story is not a dupe, clearing out potential confusing statements and, as much as possible, removing bias/spin in submissions.

I like how you're acting on the site already. Please show us that you can make this site great again.

Re:Random collection of suggestions

[Nemyst]

Oh, and apparently, proper unordered list support.

Re:Random collection of suggestions

[whipslash]

These are all great ideas, and will be addressed in some manner as soon as possible. What do you think about popular firehose stories being promoted to the front page if they reach some sort of critical mass of popularity from the user base?

Re:Random collection of suggestions

[whipslash]

Oh, and apparently, proper unordered list support.

Yes this too..

Re:Random collection of suggestions

[Nemyst]

I like it. It should remove some pressure off the editors and make Slashdot somewhat more reactive in the face of very quick news and large events.

Assign a number to ACs

[Forever Wondering]

Require all ACs to have a valid login [or have a way to differentiate them internally].

On a given page, the first AC poster is known as AC#1. The AC second poster [if different] is AC#2. And, so on ...

That way, we can see if different ACs are having a conversation [which is fine], or we just have one AC running amok and creating a phony conversation with themselves, just to stir things up.

On another page, the numbers start from 1 (i.e. _no_ correlation between AC#1 on page X and AC#1 on page Y).

This preserves anonymity but also gives a particular page more sanity. It might cut down on the anonymous trolling that seems to have taken over Slashdot.

Let users leave

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to delete my existing account. Any plans to introduce that?

Editing

[PAjamian]

Get some better editors. While it seems that poor editing and constant dups are a Slashdot tradition, I think that better editing will improve the /. experience greatly. If you don't have the budget to hire better editors then you could get volunteers from the Slashdot community (based on karma), or even integrate some rudimentary editing into the firehose so that the readers have a chance to clean up the stories before they hit the front page.

Re:Editing

[whipslash]

Yes we will get the community engaged in some way or another. I think giving the community greater control over the firehose is a good place to start. We're also going to build a system to detect duplicates

Limit Mod points to those 1,000,000.

[EzInKy]

Newbies here seem to focused more on restricting free thought rather than encouraging it. Us old timers understand the importance of free speech and the open exchange of ideas. I'd recommend an mandatory -5 for anyone who asks to limit A/C posting. The only reason to request that is retribution.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[Anonymous Coward]

Gojira Shipi-Taro is a pedophile who rapes negro boys.

My 2cents

[MrKaos]

I browse at -1, some comments from the gutter.

• A way to tag AC's who spam the site, not to ban them, but to automod them to -1
• a tagging option so that an AC can be tagged as a spammer by a logged in user

Allow Moderating and Posting in the same story!

[quantaman]

I think /. has this view of moderators as impartial judges of comment quality but I don't think that's the case.

The times I'm most impartial and unbiased are when I'm not remotely interested, and in those cases I don't moderate because I don't even open the article.

The times when I'm most interested and read the most comments are also the times when I'm really likely to post myself. I don't know how many times I've had to choose between remaining silent when I have an important post to write or writing that post and undoing all my mods.

By all means stop people from moderating the specific thread they're involved in, but the story itself? Give the users who are most involved in the discussion the ability to moderate the discussion.

Better dashboard

[Forever Wondering]

On stackexchange, any user can see upvotes/downvotes/comments/etc within 10 minutes [automatically updated on the top bar]. No waiting a day or two to see replies, comment moderation, etc.

Re:Better dashboard

[whipslash]

Yes we need to improve the dashboard

Re:Better dashboard

[Forever Wondering]

I've been on slashdot for years and just started with stackoverflow/stackexchange three months ago. I did about five other posts here and they're somewhat based on my SO experiences. SO's code is proprietary, but they also base it on markdown. Maybe cut a deal?

Re:Overhaul comment system.

[Anonymous Coward]

That has the same problem, someone makes a good comment early, then no one sees it because it's lost at the bottom.

Re:Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overfl

[reub2000]

We aren't the type who cry when somebody expresses something we disagree with;

Frequently that is exactly what slashdotters are prone to doing. Slashdot has turned too much into an echo chamber. And posts that go against the hive mind quickly get buried under commenters complaining that it was posted in the first place. "Stuff that matters, durh durh."

Reduce the amount of moderation here to next to nothing.

If you want intelligent discussion, you need some form of moderation. Posts that are uninformed, off topic, spam, or just plain trolling can easily derail a discussion. Moderation needs a light touch, but it's still invaluable.

Strikethrough tag support.

[Hadlock]

I would really like support for the [s] strikethrough tag [/s]. I sent off an email to feedback@slashdot.org almost four years ago to the day:
 
 

Are you guys ever going to implement strikeout ( [s] strikeout [/s] ) HTML tag support for slashdot? Or [strike] tag? As the average age of slashdot continues to hover around 22 (I think?) the old say somethin^H^H^H^H joke is going over more and more people's heads. Many online sites now support the [s] strikeout tag, tag. I realize it's technically depreciated in the 4.0 spec, but all the major browsers support it.

 
And two days later imagine my suprise when I got back this reply(!) from Vladyslav K. at geek.net:
 
 

Hi [hadlock],

Thanks for reaching out to us, I just checked the specs and don't see why we should not support it, it's redefined but still probably in proper context.

I created a ticket for this to be addressed.

Thanks,

Vlad

 
So... A) did that ticket ever get created? and B) will you please implement it?
 
Thank you!

Re:Strikethrough tag support.

[whipslash]

Ha... I wouldn't know about the ticket. But we should support it so I will add it to the list

Re:Strikethrough tag support.

[oneiros27]

What's wrong with ^H jokes?

I'd personally be afraid of support for <strike> leading to an increase in the 'there, I fixed it for you' jokes.

Lurk from the old days says...

[Anonymous Coward]

/. has been my daily "quick feed" of what's not in the papers or other main-stream press since I 'discovered' it in the late '90s. It was nerd news. I'd +1 anyone saying that, but I let my account go defunct >8 years ago. Lose the FUD, cruft, and non-nerd news (I already got that on NPR and I don't care what everyone else rants about). Keep the OS & vi/emacs wars! Cheers, -T

Trolls ok, Slashvertisements bad

[MikeTheGreat]

I agree that the moderation system largely takes care of the trolls.

I think that 'Slashvertisements' are much, much worse. You'll see a string of articles for some product/service/etc over a couple of weeks or so that are clearly being paid for by somebody, and then their budget is spent and the articles stop. Bitcoin had a run like this, as did solar power, and a couple of others.

Continuous improvement

[phorm]

You already have polls. Why not have monthly suggestions from which the top ones can be voted on?

Re:Continuous improvement

[whipslash]

Yes this is a good idea. We will implement something like this

Please mod up ^

[lucm]

That "Slashdot Deals" box is extremely annoying. On desktops and laptops it shows up 1-2 seconds after the page has loaded, bringing down the right sidebar a few inches. I often click by mistake on it as I'm about to click on something else in the sidebar.

Also I think it's the reason why I can no longer read Slashdot on my android phone using Firefox. It makes the browser crash. I would have to switch back to Chrome and it's not going to happen.

Per thread/message collapsibility/message hiding

[Forever Wondering]

Right now you can only set a message visibility level based on score for your entire account.

On a given page, usually the first posted threads are _long_ and usually off-topic to TFA [or drift that way quickly]. This is more prevalent the more difficult the [scientific] topic is. Fewer people understand it, but still want to post.

For example, a post about a discovery at CERN might generate a long thread about the merits of government funding of research. Fair enough. But, for someone looking for a discussion of the true scientific data, etc. would have to scroll through all that. That's a lot of work to get to the more germane posts/threads that usually appear nearer the bottom of the page.

How about a collapse/expand button on _each_ message that will collapse/expand [expose/hide] everything under it.

This would help reduce the effect of the "early posters" that "shanghai" a page with topics that are only obliquely connected with the central topic of a given page.

Now, I'm _not_ against oblique threads. Some are actually interesting. If people wish to reply under these, all to the good.

But, we should give users more ability to filter out the threads they're _not_ interested in reading, or more importantly, scrolling over to get to the threads they _are_ interested in.

add a no cookie mode

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello,

I live in France, and in France, you are not allow to track us using cookies without our permission.
This sounds like a good law at first sight...

BUT, what happen is that website have just added a click through: "please give your permission" banner and not changed their behavior.

I use slashdot to read the main page and comment pages. I do not see why cookies are compulsory to do that.

This is why I would like to see slashdot be the first site ever to pop-up a banner saying:
- You are in France, we do not have to cookie you without permission, do you want to: use cookies, or not use cookies (in this case, features x, y and z will not work).

This would make slashdot a true leader on the web and a site respectful of its users!

Thanks for listening.
Cyrille

Re:add a no cookie mode

[whipslash]

Good idea. Will look into it

Learn to count

[lucm]

Right now the "Comments" badge shows 744 but there's 250 comments in the filter box. Where are the other 499 comments? Is there an amazing underground Slashdot I don't have access to?

Re:Learn to count

[whipslash]

I see what you're saying. Click the "Show 500 more comments" or "Load all comments" button and then the numbers above the filter should add up to the comment count.

Rewarding users for good posts

[Anonymous Coward]

If Slashdot is strict about not allowing malware, deceptive, and otherwise harmful ads through, I'd be willing to turn off my ad blocker and whitelist those scripts with noscript. But I have to trust that it's going to be safe and not consume enough resources with flash animations to grind my computer to a halt.

Here's an interesting idea that I don't think has been mentioned. You're looking for good comments that promote interesting discussion. You also want users to submit stories that are interesting, and perhaps even write some original content (like the old features section that I'd love to see brought back). Those drive views, ad impressions, and even subscriptions.

What if users with good enough karma were rewarded with a small percentage of the revenue for highly rated comments with good discussion (lots of replies with good scores), for submitting stories that get voted up on firehose and are posted on the front page, and for submitting features? It rewards users with a bit of money for writing good features. I'd also suggest that for blogging interesting comment in journals, and perhaps a good way to feature journals in one of Slashboxes on the side of the front page.

There is precedent for this. YouTube users can get a cut of the ad revenue (and subscribed viewers) for videos they post. Some places like wordpress.com have features like Wordads. I'm not aware yet of sites rewarding users for comments, but it would be interesting.

By the way, whipslash, you had reached out to me on the article about BizX purchasing Slashdot and wanted to discuss some of my other ideas (also posted as AC) off of Slashdot's comments section. I didn't get back to you then because I've been traveling for work, but I'd be interested in taking you up on that if you still are.

Re:Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overfl

[Cylix]

I personally don't like the firehose, but maybe it's a good idea.

Years ago we tried to make topics actually work. It never really gained traction because there just isn't that much attention in those dedicated areas.
Years ago we also tried tagging articles, but mods tended to be upset when we tagged many terrible articles as 'slow news day.'

Perhaps, the two could be combined to form not terribly specific communities that have a lower threshold for publishing and could be surfaced to the main page if it gets enough discussion. It's not quite a reddit implementation where communities are established with their own moderation bland, but more of a sorted version of firehost.

Right now, I don't use any of those and there are a large number of not really 'news for nerds' articles I don't care to read. Perhaps if I could just surf the 'newsfornerds.slashdot.org' or 'linux.slashdot.org' with more frequent articles then it would help both flesh out more articles and bring back a little niche.

It's something to think about... I don't really see a need to self moderated communities like reddit because of of the shit hole that can become, but realistically you need a way to lower the barrier to news aggregation. These side channels could be filled faster and maybe carry a disclaimer about the frequency of publishing.

journalism !

[swell]

- look at this headline: "Ask Slashdot: How Can We Improve Slashdot?"

How many of these words need to be capitalized? Headlines have always been this way in /. Sometimes it is difficult to tell when a word is a proper noun or just a word. It's embarrassing to have that on my screen when someone walks by and assumes I'm reading some tabloid trash.

If you go to news.google.com you will find headlines from the world's best news sources and some also rans. Some are like this but many use caps only when necessary. Which are more meaningful to you? Which are aimed at mature readers? Which are aimed at morons?

The days of massive bold newspaper headlines is gone. "Extra extra, read all about it!" sounds childish in this century. Let's have headlines that are functional, less hype. BTW, I like the clarity of this particular headline and whipslash's recent interactions.

if it ain't broke - don't fix it.

[Anonymous Coward]

as per the subject line.

Less "PharmaBro"

[Anonymous Coward]

...more news for nerds? You know, stuff that matters?

My suggestions

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of the posts talk about the tech. I am going to talk about the J word (thats JOURNALISM)

1. Understand the audience. This is a tech site. We come here for news on tech topics. SJW topics do not fit the bill, especially as we question EVERYTHING and the whole SJW thing is against that.

2. Hire some actual journalists. People that understand the who, what, where and why of journalism. People that can look into things from time to time. People that know how to use a lead to get people here talking about the subject. This is a skill set in its own right.

3. Highlight important shifts in the OSS community. Helping us stay current on what is going on in the industry would do a LOT to bring people back.

4. Bring back slashbacks. Those were articles that look back at a bunch of stories. This was extremely valuable.

5. Publish a monthly briefing. What were the big stories of the month, what were the best comments?

6. What are the new howtos that the community needs to know about? This makes the site relevant to keeping up of skills.

7. summaries of other important sources of nerd news would be very helpful.

steven@stevensantos.com

Ability to edit posts

[Forever Wondering]

Provide the ability to edit posts [possibly for a fixed period of time, say 5-10 minutes]. The edits should be discoverable by anyone (e.g. "show older versions" button). And/or allow the ability to _append_ to posts.

There are many scenarios where a poster forgets some trivial detail and posts [it happens a lot]. They reply to their own post with a correction. This adds to clutter. Also, many repliers never see such corrections and the poster gets hammered based solely on the first message, even though they've already done their "mea culpa".

Also, someone who is quite knowledgeable about a given topic may not be able to provide all the relevant knowledge they have in a single sitting. They may wish to trim one post, reorganize it, to make things more clear, without having to do a separate post [which probably won't be seen anyway].

Right now, slashdot is _just_ a chat room of sorts. Except for the links to the TFA, there is no long term value to the thread posts. Very few people will revisit a slashdot page, looking for reference material. Even the "ask slashdot: how do I handle this situation?" pages that can have a lot of useful advice [and do not have a TFA] are difficult to use for that purpose.

Re:Ability to edit posts

[whipslash]

Yes we will add editing

Re:Ability to edit posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Add the ability to see who issued up or down mods since they get abused either way by karma farming sockpuppets with an agenda or abused in unjustifiable downmods and when users can't stand behind their moderations they deserve no moderation points (which does not go for users that can back up their moderation with facts).

Mix mobile + no java-script

[Anonymous Coward]

My phone has JavaScript disabled, but by default is directed to the mobile page saying to load the desktop page, with a link to it. Go to that link and it works, but the next internal link is redirected back to the mobile page and the java script message. I have to force the browser to request the desktop version.

Also, even the desktop version sucks without javascript. It likes to lose the comments you wrote without posting them, and even just reading comments works poorly.

NO CloudFlare + Retain original urls

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't use anything like CloudFlare.

Please retain all original story urls and comments and don't turn into something like Digg which IMO lost it's way.

A bug and a couple of suggestions

[Wolfrider]

--There's a bug in the "Threshold" dropdown that has probably been there for years. Try setting it to Threshold: 2 and mode "Flat" and before you hit the Change button, it will list ~500+ comments (for this article, for instance) to be displayed. After hitting Change, it only displays ~100+ comments.

--Proper behavior should be displaying all comments in the thread that are scored +2 or above, in Flat mode.

--Suggestions:

o Give us some way to track in real-time how many posts we've modded up or down so far. Currently I have to do this in my head, or write down a tally. (Slashdot browser plugin? Nah)

o If we get Mod points, make them either non-expiring or give us like 2 weeks to use them. Half the time I get Mod points on days that I don't/can't access the site, and never have a chance to use them.

--BTW, thanks again for being constructive/proactive and listening to us. :-)

Re:A bug and a couple of suggestions

[whipslash]

Good points and thanks for the bug catch.

Papers, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Enforce login to post"

Papers, please. Fuck that type of on-line forum.

Re:Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overfl

[whipslash]

Yes good ideas. We will explore something like this and of course monitor it with an actual human so that it is not abused. Point is to give the community more control and fill news gaps with actual interesting and popular stories promoted by users.

TOR and Banned IPs

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we finally have a TOR hidden service? I would have expected Slashdot to get that before Facebook at least.

On that front, the system for blocking IPs is old and stupid. Basically, it blocks all the TOR IPs. This means people cannot login from TOR. Sometimes merely reading from TOR gets blocked. All user accounts should be whitelisted. All logged in users should be whitelisted. A login option should appear on the ban page.

I understand that this was a very good system 15 years ago. But many political changes have caused Slashdot's ban system to become inappropriate for this community. There is constantly discussion about these topics in relation to other websites, but it appears that Slashdot has done nothing to implement many of the most popular tools used by a large portion of its users. Am I the only one who finds this odd?

I believe that Slashdot serves a genuine democratic purpose by getting discussions started on very important topics, but this is meaningless without support for anonymity. The way web tracking works nowadays, everyone knows that simply posting as an Anonymous Coward no longer provides any protection. A lot of important speech is certainly being lost.

Thank you, once again, for creating an amazing web experience. I look forward to it continuing to help protect my freedom in the coming decades.

Too many shill stories

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the most hated moves that DHI made in running Slashdot was embedding a bunch of blog posts from Dice.com in the normal news feed. Low in information, high in self-advertisement.
As a result, I have started using SoylentNews as my main tech news source. I have very little patience for that sort of behavior, and if I catch you doing it too, I'm permanently blacklisting Slashdot from my feeds.

reputation system and moderation

[Forever Wondering]

Adopt a reputation system similar to stackexchange. Right now, _everybody_ [who has been on slashdot for any length of time] gets posts started at +2.

The highest a post can is +5.

But, why not allow posts starting at +10 for users who have earned that by having a history of making good posts

Allow anyone with sufficient reputation to be able to cast unlimited votes [ala reddit or stackexchange]. The same rules should apply. If you post on a given page, your moderation doesn't count.

Ironically, of late, when I have mod points to use, I can't seem to find a page I wish to moderate [or feel qualified to do so]. When I _don't_ have mod points, I find pages I _would_ like to moderate.

Moderation should _not_ be completely anonymous. If a person upvotes/downvotes, anybody should be able to agree/disagree. This is like fine tuned metamoderation and the result should accrue to the moderator's reputation in some fashion.

Users should also be able to moderate as to whether the post is on topic or not. The post may be brilliant, insightful, etc. but not really related to the TFA. So, how about "on topic"/"off topic" votes.

This should have gone in my other post: http://ask.slashdot.org/commen... but how about allowing users to sort posts dynamically based on different criteria for each page

Improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

I have two suggestions:
1. Do not fix that which is not broken.
2. See suggestion 1.

Bring in experts

[Harlequin80]

I would love to see the return of the experts in the comments section. Once upon a time slashdot attracted them directly. Now not so much. To try and restore that I would love to see slashdot reach out to people in certain fields to comment on articles. They don't need to be famous people, for example an articulate Maths PhD would contribute so much to those discussions.

But I think slashdot would have to approach them as I really don't want another MDSolar nuclear bad sun good or StartsWithABang I'm talking crap article.

Re:Bring in experts

[whipslash]

Yes you are right

Re:Reposting my comment from the original article.

[Astro Dr Dave]

- Add the ability to edit comments until they are moderated or have a reply

This would have to be done carefully, i.e. you can't post an edit after someone has clicked the reply button (not actually posted the reply). And the person replying would need to be notified if the post had been changed since the page was loaded.

Earlier in this discussion someone suggested to allow appending comments to your own post with a timestamp, but not editing the original text. That might be a better approach.

Re:Per thread/message collapsibility/message hidin

[whipslash]

Interesting. Yeah I agree with you about the first comment stuff

JavaScript and Login

[Anonymous Coward]

I regularly use Operamini to browse /. and cannot login to my account without JS. Please add login support without JS. I've no problems login in on my desktop and with mobile browsers that support JS.

Re:What's up with the system logging me out at ran

[deek]

If my IP changes, then yes, I have to log in again. It is pretty annoying.

I assume it was introduced to stop accounts from being hijacked through stolen cookies. If you have to keep that function, it would be nice for Slashdot to recognise that I log in often from 3 or 4 unique IPs, not just one. Also, allowing the cookie to work from a subnet of IPs, rather than a single IP, could help those who are often assigned different addresses with their internet connection.

How to improve Slashdot?

[Trogre]

Fix its reputation, by first acknowledging that there are problems and then resolving to fix them in consultation with the community.

You have just done this.

Thank you.

Re:How to improve Slashdot?

[whipslash]

Thanks. This was our hope

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[GuB-42]

If you really don't like AC, just set a -6 modifier to anonymous posts.

Re:Overhaul comment system.

[phantomfive]

It means everyone's comment gets a chance to be moderated at the top.

2016: A Slashdot Odyssey

[deek]

I want Slashdot to greet me every day with an audible "Hello Dave, you're looking well today". But I don't want Slashdot to go crazy and try to kill me.

A like button

[umafuckit]

Other websites have a like button. So we need one here too. Whilst you're at it, you can make the site blue. That would make it better also.

non-linear moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

Discussion works better if we can block the spam without causing bland groupthink.

The solution is non-linear moderation. Count the upvotes and downvotes separately, apply a non-linear function (squaring for example) to one of them such that the upvote wins out when votes are numerous, and then subtract the adjusted downvotes from the adjusted upvotes.

For example: effective = upvotes*upvotes-downvotes

In that example, it takes just 1 downvote to offset 1 upvote but it takes 25 downvotes to offset 5 upvotes. Interesting controversial stuff survives the moderation.

Better Interface

[RespekMyAthorati]

You should be able to edit a comment after you post it, as you can with reddit.
I've often typed something in late at night, only to realize that what I typed was the opposite of what I meant.

Also, use something simpler than lessthan-br-greaterthan to mean newline (like two newlines).

Account Removal?

[nametaken]

How about letting us destroy old accounts, so the inevitable future db exposure or ownership changes don't put our information in the wrong hands, years after we've stopped using them.

Easy

[angel'o'sphere]

First: remove that "auto reload", it is really annoying if you scroll down the page and read a lengthy summary and it is auto reloading ...
it is even more annoying if you are on a mobile device and it is killing your download limit
and it is even even more more annoying if your mobile device is not on the internet then

Secondly: remove the stupid "switch to mobile" version if you load /. with an iPad. Honestly I did not pay $500 for a superb browsing experience with Safari to let /. decide that it is only a "mobile device" with a "crippled browser".
Again: having to request the "normal" page after getting the mobile version served, it simply kills the internet contingent for nothing.

Third: once we could configure the side bars more or less freely. Now, I guess due to bugs, half of the stuff on the sidebar does not show up.

Fourth: the configuration page is now a kind of overlay div that is heavy using JavaScrip, probably one more reason for the bugs under "three" ... why not having an ordinary HTML page again?

Five: unicode support (you can still filter out random writing direction changes, but I should be able to use european special chars like german umlauts and norwegian thorns, or greek letters and jap./chin. Kanji etc.)

Six: yes, direct messaging would be interesting. But if you do so, have an option to do it via mail, too. (Mail notification about new messages, and/or receiving the message via mail and answering, too!)

Seven: Journal, it should be editable and work more like a wiki. Probably with a simple mark up. Point is, I like to repeat myself less on /. and e.g. write some small articles about energy production/renewables and programming. Those "articles" / "journal entries" need to be editable so I can cross reference them and update them or add interesting links. Yes: that would transform /. in a small "tech blog", imho the way to go. (I right now keep such info on a tiddly wiki, but don't like to link to that one)

Re:Easy

[whipslash]

Yes we will address all of this

Slashdot on FB is sad to witness

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop treating your fb page like it's nothing and put minimal effort (and text) when posting stuff.
Righg now it looks scripted.

Re:Slashdot on FB is sad to witness

[whipslash]

It is scripted. We will improve on it

Slashdot Anniversary Meet Ups

[Fireflymantis]

Hey, I'm late to the party, but speaking of parties: Slashdot has traditionally hosted massively distributed meet up events every 5 years. Please don't forget about this as another one is due for 2017!

I've been to two previously now, and they have been great and are an awesome way to meet interesting people that one would otherwise never get a chance to.

Get rid of the 'accept cookies' page

[brianmotzen]

As a French /. user when I click on some stories I end up on a page asking me to 'accept cookies' where I have to click an 'accept button' in order to read the story. Not only it's not a pleasant browsing experience, but it is the only part of this site where I am forced to enable Javascript in order to browse (I usually disable Javascript on my mobile browser in order to save battery). I understand that you want to comply to local laws and such, but many other sites have a way less intrusive way to remember me about cookies (usually some text at the top of the front page).

Explanations in firehose

[rastos1]

When looking at the firehose - it would be helpful to see what the rating colors means. I'm talking about the icons that look like Erlenmeyer flask. Is green better then red? Also what do the tags(?) mean. What does firehose tag "maybe" mean?

When looking at the mobile version - the link to the comment itself (the cid link) and link to the parent post are missing. The slider for adjusting the mod threshold was never working.

When writing a comment - add a button that encloses the selected text into <blockquote> . If the post does not contain any other html elements automatically wrap paragraphs separated by double newline into <p>.

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[oneiros27]

There was a post years ago when they (CmdrTaco? it was a long time ago) mentioned that people who post too much, or post too little don't get points.

I assume I'm right on the edge of not posting enough, as I'll post something for the first time in a week or two, and then suddenly get mod points.

(and I've *never* gotten more than 5 ... this is actually the first time I've heard of it)

Mod Points

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if it has been said up before somewhere, if so i missed it.

Mod points - i'm usually totally fine with a limited amount of modpoints. Also i think it's fine not to 'always' have them, and have them limited.

But. Every so often, i'm at a thread where i really wished i had just a single modpoint, but don't.

A 'magic mix' would be nice, where, for example, for every day visitors always have at least 1 modpoint. Just in case you need them, pretty much like how you bring a tire repair kit when you go out cycling. Have a spare 'last resort backup modpoint' tied to your account would be nice.

Not that i care too much, usually i have plenty modpoints more often than not i don't finish using them all, and when i run out within a day i have some again. But just count the number of posts that say 'wish i had modpoints now' or 'mod parent up'.

Graceful degradation could help here

[Anonymous Coward]

Make sure the thing stays usable with non-unicode non-javascript non-html5 non-whateverisfancythisweek browsers. In the end, it's about some text, some links, some more text and maybe links. Visitors should not need to have any of the webdev crowd favourite features just for a bit of text.

Since /. already effectively requires javascript (and does some other stupid stuff) there is some room for fixing. But to see this you'd have to look at a bigger picture than those expressed in wanted or unwanted features. To me, the thing is (like I said) about text and discussion. Facilitate that and make all the extras obviously optional extras, since not available to every visitor, or cut them out entirely.

Unicode is a point in case of something that looks like a good idea but really isn't. EG. "mixed race happy family emoticon" (11 code points) seems a no interest group left behind inclusivity SJW circle jerk that has little connection left with text and as such doesn't really belong. Indeed, I do think the unicode guise have gone off the deep end. Nice idea turned out to be a massive pain to support properly and now has gone bonkers, becoming a goal in itself for nothing but its own sake. We can do without that.

In fact, you, dear comment reader, should make a choice as to what you prefer /. to be: A platform for user-submitted link aggregation and discussion, as most people see it, or a platform for spielerei, for goofing around. You know, like most of the "webforums" around where you'll find the most readable snippets in the big-ass "signature" and avatar BMPs and most of the discussion content can be summed up entirely, if it isn't already, with "lol". Only for techies so much more intricate. Personally I prefer /. to be the former, and to my mind unrestricted unicode belongs to the latter category, even if you suppose it amounts to a better kind of spielerei.

Besides, the majority of code points are well outside the expected skillset of the readership; all you can really do with them is copy/paste that nice Arabic, Chinese, or whichever language them thar squiggles are, and hope google translate spits out something halfway cogent. So I don't really see the point of unicode support, other than all the webmonkeys are doing it. The only thing it does for the (three, all western) languages I can read is cause trouble because "smart quotes" fsck up my copy/paste "experience" in various interesting (Chinese sense) ways. And since this site is an American language site, there's very little point barring "DWIM" examples. Unless I've missed something, but you'll have to explain this to me without the use of unicode.

But hey, maybe there is a way to support both latin-1 and utf-8-encoded unicode restricted to latin-1, with automatic fall-back depending on what the browser supports. Though of course that's not what's really being asked for.

Which stories make the front page?

[tetraverse]

"Slashdot community is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and prolific communities on the web."

That's past tense, for what ever reason the type and quality of story has gone down over time. What's left is mostly marketing waffle. There's even a name for this, it's called slashvertisment. In consequence of which, some of the best commentators have left, maybe you could reverse that.

"put more weight on firehose voting to determine which stories make the front page"

The choice of stories as well as the the stories that don't make it off the firehose leaves much to be desired. Highly topical and current technical stories are dropped while some marketing waffle get top billing.

Create SJW bullshit section

[Anonymous Coward]

so that I can filter it.

Re:Put the "read more" link back, better mobile si

[oneiros27]

The problem w/ the article title is that when you click on it, you never know what you're going to get.

On some pages, it'll collapse the article to just the title. (maybe I clicked on the background, and not the text?)

If you're looking through a user's page, it'll take you the specific comment, not the article as a whole.

'Read more' was unambiguous. Clicking the title is the equivalent of mystery meat navigation.

no javascript

[jjohn_h]

Get rid of javascript from here to eternity.

Second, advertising only on demand. That means no advertising where there is content.

Put a link to advertising where you want, readers can click on it when they are in the mood.

Re:Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overfl

[serviscope_minor]

Since you're listening to gripes: I'll second the thread splitting thing.

I'm sure I've begged you to keep classic mode already. I love using it. It's like the old fashioned internet where everything is very fast and very snappy, and works perfectly on even old/slow machines. In other words, everything that AJAX promised way back in the day before it failed to deliver and then just became part of the normal web. Only thing is, I never seem to get mod points any more. I'm guessing that has to do with moderating being unsupported in classic now(?).

Another gripe, which may be classic only: once comments get nested too deeply, the nesting structure is no longer visible, even if you go to the sub-sub-sub thread level where it would fit on the screen. Is that a bug or a feature? It makes good conversing hard since one can't follow the thread of conversation.

Speaking of classic, I like it precisely because of the lack of javascript. Yeah, I know... but it does make slashdot actually really nice to use. Did I mention how snappy it is? I never see ads though. I don't run adblock, but your ads require javascript which I don't like using. If you make them statically served I'll see them and won't block them (if they're not obnoxious). That is, after all, your business.

When it comes to the front page: as it stands if you have too many stories, then they disappear quite fast and don't get very many comments. I think you need to maintain the quality over quantity, or have some method for maintaining some stories higher up the list for longer. Or, possibly just lengthen the front page a bit to contain more stories.

Re:no, discussion (moderation) is what made Slashd

[Opportunist]

Well, there can even be a good reason for this. It's not like you can't spend 15 Modpoints exclusively on trolls without using a single one in bad faith...

Use English properly, for a start

[wonkey_monkey]

Ask Slashdot: How Can We Improve Slashdot?

That's not "Ask Slashdot," that's "Tell Slashdot."

Syntax highlighting

[BESTouff]

Add modern features like syntax highlighting for code snippets (of course make that switchable for old-time whiners).

Take the political and pro-American bias

[Anonymous Coward]

and throw it the f**k out, that would help an international community like Slashdot. Doing this would involve firing that "timothy" guy.

Re:Start with removing the malware from SourceForg

[Anonymous Coward]

Sourceforge could be better than Github as it does project information front pages right. I don't want to present people with a directory listing the first time they come across my project, I want to present them with information about it like Sourceforge does, then they can look at the code if they like. The fact it also allows you to choose your version control system of choice (I prefer Mercurial myself as it is designed for humans) is also a major benefit, keep this.

Fix the version control interface (like viewing changes, branches) easier merging and branching with other users, or at least make the controls for this easier. If you had a backend which lets git users use git and mercurial users use mercurial and accept merge requests from each other this would be a major benefit as well.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[Anonymous Coward]

Naah, it's just the foreplay.

Let us own it

[Anonymous Coward]

Let us publish news, let us vote them.
And the points we add to comments, should weight proportionally to the points we have in our profile which should also be proportional to the upvotes we've had for our comments.

Re:Let us own it

[whipslash]

We are going to implement some version of this

Re:Let us own it

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful with this...

I can speak from experience, being a very old member of AntiOnline (another site that got bought and sold too many times...), and remembering how fondly their moderation system failed. Those with higher "karma" had more mod power. It was a clusterfuck of echo chambering. I argue that anybody given the power to moderate should be given the same power as everyone else, that the current +1 or -1 is quite sufficient. Meta moderation works very well here, as it stands.

Don't screw with the moderation system, unless perhaps to add a tag or two. Slashdot has IMHO the best moderation system to ever exist.

-posting anonymously from a tablet again

-Striek

A functional, minimalist mobile site/app

[bistromath007]

Slashdot's mobile site is ugly hot garbage, and I only use it because the only Android app I've found that even works half the time (and only half the time) doesn't allow posting. The ad at the bottom consistently obscures the login button, which means that every time I want to post something, I have to fight with it to avoid pressing whatever stupid trash it's hawking that I don't care about because I'm the opposite of a businessman and have no use for any of the products or services regularly advertised here.

Also, "Informative" and "Insightful," as well as "Troll" and "Flamebait," are too similar to each other. It'd probably be better to consolidate them. We could probably also do with a "-1 Incorrect."

Four technical interests

[Morgaine]

I'll add my +1 for putting Slashdot on IPv6 quickly, and then Sourceforge too when you have time. Virtually all ISPs, colos and hosting providers offer IPv6 already, and all the well known CDNs have done so for many years. With IPv6 uptake at 10% and growing ever faster, it's beginning to look bad for a tech site not to have IPv6 enabled. (It works perfectly, seamlessly and effortlessly, by the way.)

While many good ideas have been suggested in this thread, 4 of them stand out for me as very clear technical interests for many techies:

- HTTPS.
- Javascript optional and decreasing.
- Unicode.
- IPv6.

The huge interest in security and privacy among Slashdot readers make the first two items of special importance. It's no longer an innocent world of academics and enthusiasts like yesteryear, and readers need to protect themselves and the companies from which the site is often read with link encryption and effective script restrictions.

It's no surprise that use of NoScript is huge among the technical readership, nor that the JS orgy of forbes.com was despised so much.

My best wishes for this new era of Slashdot. I'm looking forward to another (almost) two decades of interesting technical discussion. :-)

Re:Four technical interests

[Midnight Thunder]

One other site, that I'll name drop as 'Tumblr', has no official IPv6 policy, but they use a CDN that does have IPv6 nodes. The issue is that without an IPv6 policy, they won't be monitoring for IPv6 brokenness, causing issues for people coming from IPv6 enabled domains. I have seen some people mention they have been experiencing slow downs seeing content for this reason. Not a great show.

One other site that needs help is Ars Technica, that really needs to push its parent company to get with it.

I think we are beyond the point where we can let popular sites have a free pass with IPv6 readyness.

freshmeat/freecode style coverage of stuff release

[Anomalyst]

I would like to see "freshmeat" resurrected, maybe as a /. category., maybe as a sourceforge feature I found it to be a useful source of new/interesting programs that were often outside my usual focus. Cover sourceforge, git and any other founts of FOSS releases

Re:no, discussion (moderation) is what made Slashd

[Hognoxious]

If anything, do more to encourage meta-moderation, and perhaps make it easier to see the parent post of the post you meta-moderate.

Sometimes there's a link to the post. Sometimes, almost randomly, there isn't. A "see in context" button would be good.

For the actual moderation, the only change I'd like to see is that anyone who spends all their five mod points on downvoting someone gets no more mod points for a year.

Perhaps downies should cost double an upper? So you could do 5 downs or 10 ups or 2 downs and 6 ups.

P.S. I haven't had modpoints since I criticised all the Roland Niquepaille posts back in the day. That Sims twat, I suspect.

Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

- bring back Cowboy Neal
- do NOT change the look and feel of the site

Higher Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

To start out, editors and the technical side of the site should be subject to a higher level of quality. Primarily this means journalistic integrity, fact checking and coherent sentences. Unicode, IPv6, HTTPS, and a more modern design also matter, but are minor details.

The second major problem is the shitty community. I don't know how to solve this; I've been reading Slashdot for 15 years and the quality of comments has degraded so much that I finally deleted my account a few months ago. Sometimes it's seems like just immaturity and angry ignorance, but once in a while you get stories where I feel like half the highly rated comments must be paid shills or part of some coordinated force to push an agenda.

One big example is the systemd stuff - it would be better if you just never posted stories about it, because it's detractors are a small but very vocal minority of the Linux community. The discussions are predictably useless.

Anyway, I consider it your job as editors to understand the psychology of the audience enough to encourage intelligent discussion. It worked much better years ago and maybe it's possible to bring it back.

Re:Start with removing the malware from SourceForg

[AmiMoJo]

Just a thought, you could really compliment GitHub by being the user facing site for projects hosted there. Less glamorous perhaps, offering binary downloads (maybe even automatic nightly builds), user forums, a basic web site etc...

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't seen much of a difference in quality between AC and logged-in comments.

I agree. I find it quite amusing that the same crowd that complains about the invasion of privacy, and discusses methods of surfing anonymously, is somehow against slashdot users who practice what they preach and post AC. I do have a user ID but I never use it, for (in my opinion) obvious reasons.

True Story...

[Anonymous Coward]

When I first came to Slashdot I thought that Anonymous Coward was an actual user who posted prolifically in every article at a quite high quality. It took me a while to catch on.

As for getting rid of AC, no. I am not a troll, and nor am I a simpering yes-man determined to keep up reputation or karma (or mod points or whatever weird system you logged in users have) at the expense of saying what I really mean. I am a person who wants my opinions to be judged on their their own merits!

You also misunderstand the nature of trolling. It is largely a feature of logged in users. Have you actually observed what happens with trolling AC posts? They appear with something inane like "kill all the jews" and are instantly modded into oblivion and ignored, which is the only correct way to deal with troll posts anyway. What is the point of making them log in? So they have a name that they can use to get angry, personal responses? So that the /. investigative journalists can give a triumphant expose on the past trolling behaviour of whatever lonely 15 year old is making the comments, giving them the validation they so desperately need?

Look at trolls on other web forums, and you will find them quite successful despite a complete lack of AC options. There is someone to get angry at. There is someone for well-meaning but counterproductive posters to give attention to. There is continuity for the stupid narrative they build up in their heads about how important they are and what they are saying is to people.

See, even though I'm AC and you will never trace this back to me, I explained this to you rationally instead of giving my intial response, which was, simply, "Fuck you, Pseudonymous Coward".

Re:True Story...

[jafiwam]

I see the value of making them log in where "kill all the jews" becomes a daily, boring, no value adding AC comment that people have to spend their mod points to filter out.

When staff could simply kill the user account and they are gone for a while.... so nobody has to bother dealing with it.

Re:Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overfl

[jrumney]

It could also work if it was limited to a single story posted in a standard place on the page, so if it gets too spammy (anything that relies entirely on upvoting can be manipulated) it is easy to ignore. That way, real breaking news doesn't have to wait for an editor to make the front page, but the whole front page does not become full of spam. Human editors are really one of the things that distinguishes slashdot from a lot of other similar sites.

This works if the real intention is to fix the fact that slashdot is often old news, not so much if the intention is to automate away the editors to reduce cost.

Get rid of the following:

[Anonymous Coward]

- Articles that are mainly about someones opinion
- Stories about any of the following (except when actually relevant):

• Gender/skin colour/sexuality in tech
• Elon Musk and Tesla
• Uber
• Health care in the United States
• Sports

Posts involving:

• GNAA
• APK (except when legitimately discussing it)
• "niggers" and similar racism

Anything linking to or citing a blog entry by any of the following:

• Bennett Hasselton

Furthermore, it would be great if Unicode support were to be implemented and if there were a system that automatically translates imperial units to SI units. Otherwise, it is a remarkebly good site compared to much of the interwebs these days, partially because of the community, but mostly because it has changed so little over the years. While many sites felt the need to adapt to changing trends, thereby sacrificing much of what made them good, Slashdot kept firm to its base. In fact, most of the changes over the years are summarised by the above annoyances list.

Re:Get rid of the following:

[Anonymous Coward]

Apk isn't like GNAA or racist posts. Apk posts on topic or in response to inferior addon users showing them many ways how hosts is better and no one proved him wrong validly technically to date. That screams of advertisers or inferior competitors bought out by them (ghostery/adblock) doing it with sockpuppets downmodding apk's posts on topic.

Login via OpenID and GitHub

[Anonymous Coward]

Allow users to login via OpenID and GitHub.

Slashdot like it's 1999

[Dr.Saeuerlich]

* unicode support
* more nerd news: *nix, programming, architecture, networking, star trek, star wars... the nerd stuff!
* I wouldn't mind if news would become a bit less US centric, especially those US politics news. Aren't there any other outlets for Americans to get their political news from... like late night shows or whatever?
* bring back the CowboyNeal option in the polls
* don't touch anything else! If anything, a move back in time would do Slashdot as good as a move forward... at least when turning the wheel of time back, I know how Slashdot felt back then, and that's the way I liked it. Now get off my lawn...

A counter visible to posters to see times read

[twosat]

One thing that I would like to see is a counter showing how many people have clicked on a particular post of mine. I often take the time to compose a good reply to a post, I post it, and nothing seems to happen. Sometimes, I go back to a particular post after a few days and find a few replies and/or mods. Would be nice to get some feedback on whether people actually bothered to click on my posts to read them, even if they did not reply or modded them.

Pony surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Pony received and banked. Thanks!

What pony, you say? Well, as an experienced Anonymous Coward (been posting anonymously since the 90's, yes since the beginning, and yes I made an account at one point but forgot the password before I got around to posting, so fuggit I say) I'm happy to see my 0 score hasn't meant my comment has been ignored by the New Slashdot Overlords.

I take this as confirmation that AC is here to stay and that I'll stick around. I'll take that pony for a spin round the yard soon.

More curated content, more editors, more global

[Qbertino]

I've been a Slashdotter since the 90ies and I still think it's one of the best examples of user-generated and user curated content in existance. The moderation system might be improvable but it is pretty good and does a useful job of filtering rubbish. And its way better than everything else out there.

That been said, slashdot has been thinning out lately, probably mostly due to social networks and such. I think this time is a good time to admit what slashdot is: an online news classic driven by it's community. A global (!!) community of digerati. I would whish for more editors (globally, remote ... like automattic, the WordPress company), more curated special articles by professional or semi-professional writers/online-journalist specifically written/made for slashdot and a more global and globalised feel to slashdot. WE are the bridgehead of digital globalisation - it shouldshow in our favorite online medium.

I'm confident that slashdot could become a news-brand in itself and stand the test of time and survive the social media onslaught - slashdot justpart-time improve on the things it's good at and extend on those.

I've written books of content and comments on slashdot - if there were a possibility to write and publish essays and well-produced multimedia blurbs, perhaps with a global part-time virtual editing departement, that would becool and definitely bring slashdot forward and revive it again.

My 2 cents.

Small, iterative changes

[trawg]

The biggest screaming here over the many years I've been reading has undoubtedly been because of beta. I've been involved in a bunch of web projects where there was direction for a "new fresh design" so I understand the process - but /every time/ it resulted in massive community backlash.

Never more so than on Slashdot where the community is really the most significant part of the site.

There were some really confusing design decisions - removal of the 'read more' link to replace them with the social media bar, for example. I'm sure other /. readers would agree this really demonstrates a lack of understanding about the userbase & how people used the site.

For comparison though there were a few minor design touch-ups that I thought were quite nice - simple little aesthetic changes that DID NOT affect usability.

Ultimately I think very little change is required. Maybe winding back some of the recent changes. Ditching beta in its entirety.

Re:Small, iterative changes

[whipslash]

The changes will be small and iterative definitely

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[pereric]

Slashvertising should go, for sure.
And try to go to whatever source, not a Forbes article if there is a perfectly fine Arxiv article or even original blog post.

I found articles on Gamergate interesting (didn't know about it otherwise). I hope we can accept that there is a problem with the views on gender by far too many gamers, without claiming that "all men are bad". All men are *not* bad. But I hope we can discuss social structures - like far too wide-spread particularly toxic gender roles of masculinity - as well as software structures. It *is* for example also interesting reading about when CS - pretty recently historically - started being a "mostly for boys" thing, also.

And we should certainly be able to question anything. Including what causes climate change. Thoose questions *are* raised in the science community all the time. I hope we can discuss even if many popular media "AGW sceptics" seems to be as close to normal "sceptics" as "evolution sceptics".

"tech" > conservatism, i hope.

Re: More curated content, more editors, more globa

[Qbertino]

Sorry for the crappy formating. Posted on my tablet, and autocorrect was fuckung things up.

Stick to the nerd stuff. not the USA stuff

[RinkSpringer]

I live in the Netherlands (that's in Europe :-) and I'm getting pretty fed up with the overall trend on USA-related topics in here. We have local new coverage of all major US presidency-events, and /. covers so much more of them its annoying (note that this applies to non-presidency-events as well, I'm just giving examples) Disclaimer: I don't mean any disrespect, I'm sure such topics are important for many USA-citizens, but ask yourselves: do they really belong on a tech website fronting 'news for nerds' ?

Re:Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overfl

[Crowd Computing]

I agree with you here. We're not going to make Slashdot a Reddit clone. I'd like your take on how we can keep the front page more timely (ie. very interesting breaking news making the front page), without relying 100% on an editor who might post it too late. Should we show some stories automatically on the front page that have reached a certain level of popularity within the firehose?

Does this mean the new owners aren't interested in significantly growing, say 3x, the Slashdot user base? Because in its current form Slashdot cannot scale to a Reddit dimensions.

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[AmiMoJo]

In the past people who mod-bombed were preventing from getting more mod points. My understanding is that it was a manual operation, based on admins responding to complaints and looking at patterns of moderation where someone spent all their points attacking one person.

This is the unfortunate down-side to moderation and karma. Someone mod-bombing you can destroy your karma pretty fast, and then you are limited to posting something ridiculous like 5 posts/day so it is hard to recover. For that reason, people who mod-bomb need to be treated harshly. Maybe indefinite shadow-bans are not the answer, but there has to be some process to deal with it.

Cease manipulation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop labeling Samuel Clemens an Anonymous Coward.

Font size on mobile

[Kevster]

I use an iPhone 6, and the fixed and small size of the font is annoying. Viewing in landscape mode is no different, and just makes the lines longer. Compare this to IFLScience, where rotating to landscape leaves the line length the same but the text gets bigger. I can't even pinch to zoom on Slashdot!

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[AmiMoJo]

I personally grew tired of all the Gamer Gate articles exclusively from the "men are bad" side of things.

I got tired of the "You're all bad people because women chose to go into job fields other than technology" articles.

The problem with those stories was the summaries. TFAs didn't say "men are bad" or "you're all bad people because..." Sometimes the summaries implied that, sometimes, people just assumed it.

Some of us are interested in equality issues. Some of us had had these problems ourselves. If you don't want to discuss it, fine, feel free to ignore those stories. But there is often some insightful commentary in both TFA and the /. comments.

You need better content

[Punto]

You don't need to fix bugs or change the user experience. You need better content. You know what that means, people have been complaining about bad summaries, things that don't make sense, things that are obviously advertising, etc. Make that good again, then the users will start to complain about the irrelevant stuff like bugs and user experience.

Fix the mobile view

[Anonymous Coward]

It is aweful.

Where is the 'Parent' link?
Inline comments?
Hyperlink to comment?

Beta.. should die a dishonourable death.

Just ditch & remake it

[Anonymous Coward]

The old slashdot must go. It's a horribly designed site with non-WYSIWYG interface, dated look and the overall user experience is bad. It also needs professional editors, active moderation and a working voting system. It needs mainstream content, the old "nerd" side must go. Nobody is really interested in that. Make it a place for Real People to visit. The gentrification of the Internet is a good thing. It must go forward.

Get more "editors"

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Or whatever you call them. Timothy seems to be doing a decent job keeping articles on here, but he's only one person. He's been posting every few hours for several days now. How many days can a single person scan the web and keep posting before they basically fall over?

javascript and meta-moderation

[Spazmania]

1. Less javascript in the stories list and the story pages. Preferably none. We don't need or want a spiffied up interface.

2. The current meta-moderation system is completely ineffective. Years ago Slashdot hat a workable meta-moderation system which kept moderators more or less honest by denying moderation points to users who mismoderated posts. With the current system, nobody blinks at down-moderating folks simply because they disagree. Bring back the old meta-moderation mechanism.

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[damn_registrars]

In the past people who mod-bombed were preventing from getting more mod points.

I have definitely been the target of mod-bombing before, and generally taunted the bombers in my JE afterwards. I have never myself actually committed an act of mod-bombing, which suggests there is more than one way to end up on the list.

Please don't auto-scroll

[Anonymous Coward]

At some point in the recent past, Slashdot started "remembering" where I was on the page, and when I'd come back, it would auto-scroll down to the last article I read... well, actually, it would only get fairly close to the last article read. It wouldn't be exact, so I'd have to do some pretty annoying searching to find out where I'd left off.

PLEASE turn this off, or at least allow us to turn this mis-feature off.

clean out the trash (low quality news sources)

[Anonymous Coward]

Get rid of Hugh Pickens, Forbes, InfoWorld, and all the other low-quality stuff that clogs up Slashdot.

Re:When you post a notice about some cool software

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

We must all efficiently / Operationalize our strategies / Invest in world-class technology / And leverage our core competencies / In order to holistically administrate / Exceptional synergy

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

good question, I seem to have 15 mod points at least once a week if not more often. My UID is only 2,613,107 which is over double yours...logically you should be getting mod points far more often than I am.

Slashdot satellite?

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't Bill Nye put a satellite into orbit on the cheap? Throw a big party, get the News Nerds together for a weekend and build our best Linux box. Get Musk on the phone and have him stick it into orbit (surely he owes us fanbois a favour by now). Live stream everything to the Dot. Then we can watch the Aliens come and go without the Government censors, and collect our own data regarding climate schenanigans.

Or how bout a section for discussing inventions and solving real problems? The smartest people on the planet all hang out here on the weekend in their pajamas sipping caffeinated beverages - a powerful group indeed. We'd need some kind of an agreement where anything brought to market is profit shared with everyone involved in the original discussion. Between all the EE's, Hams, and Programmers here we could probably have a dozen viable alternative energy sources within a week.

tweaks.

[AntEater]

I'm a little late to the party. Since I've been here a little while, I thought I'd throw in my $.02. Hope you're still reading this thread. What I'd like to see in no particular order:
1. https support
2. Beef up YRO with more posts - there's absolutely no shortage of material on this one.
3. More Free software/OSS news. Remember, it's news for NERDS.
4. Less politics unless it applies to #2
5. Overall, the site seems to have trended to more superficial posts over the past several years - I'd like to see more depth in the articles.
6. Clean up the spelling and grammar. Seriously, it's not that hard to proofread a paragraph or two before going live. We're mostly adults here and it makes the site look very unprofessional. This was better 15 years ago than it is now.
7. I, for one, welcome our new overlords. Please, don't kill the trolls. The hot grits, Natalie Portman, ...in Soviet Russia, goatse links etc. all add to the unique culture of the site. Seriously.

Re:tweaks.

[whipslash]

Thanks for the feedback. I hope we can address all of your points soon.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[LaurenCates]

Indeed. I don't mind using the AC while moderating a thread so I can contribute even though I'm modding things.

Also, there are things that I'd like to say without having my name connected to them.

Cut down on the political articles

[Anonymous Coward]

I come to Slashdot for the News for Nerds, the stuff that matters.

I do not come to Slashdot for political articles.

It doesn't matter how earth shattering it is, if it isn't news for nerds, I don't want it on Slashdot. Because, you know, I do go to other sites as well. When I want to read about politics, I'll go to the BBC or somewhere like that, not Slashdot. Having political articles on Slashdot diminishes the whole site.

Oh, and Uber. For pete's sake, they are not a tech company. And most of the stories about them really just boil down to politics. There is no nerd value there. I don't want to read another two articles about them every freaking day. They're doing the taxi business a bit differently from everyone else, but that isn't nerd value. Oh, and they've got an app. Yeah, of course, *that* must mean they're nerd worthy. Not. Just quit going on about them already. I've had enough.

get back to being first with news

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot used to be the primary source of tech news. It was always the first to lead stories and a constant source of revelation.

Now it's two or three days behind everyone else, especially Reddit. At least half the stories are now old news, with only the very obscure being fresh.

I still read Slashdot several times a day, but now I just sigh instead of clicking through.

Be first with the news; have some original content

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the old days, Slashdot used to be regularly one of the first sites to report major tech stories. Now, all we get are regurgitations of stories from other sites, ages after the story has happened, and without any additional info. It gets to the point that I may as well just read the five or six other sites that supply the majority of the stories, because to be honest I'm reading most of them already pretty regularly.

And that ties into my other point: You need more original content. Virtually all of the articles posted here are cut+paste jobs from another site. That's fine, because it does provide value to share stories from elsewhere, and there's often plenty of value in the comments it generates. But Slashdot could really use having some original content of its own as well. I don't remember the last time I even saw a book review here.

fix the spelling ability of the editors

[lkcl]

over the past two years there was a drastic increase in the inability of the editors to spot the most basic of spelling errors. "it is" instead of the relative pronoun "its" and so on. these errors - presented to technically-competent people whose careers critically depend on ensuring that code and documentation contains absolutely no errors of any kind - generally tends to piss them off and leaves them with no respect for slashdot.

the second thing: as mentioned previously, there's not enough good content. "powered by your submissions" only works if you have a large enough threshold of people willing to "power the submissions". given that so many people have been pissed off at various stages of slashdot's lifetime, those people that used to submit stories no longer do so.

the third thing: the advertising, despite being a long-term contributor who clicks the "ads disabled" button, really really pisses me off. i am NEVER going to buy a product from slashdot. EVER. deal with it. respect my right to not be advertised at and put to inconvenience, and i will continue to help with moderation and submissions. otherwise, if you continue to irritate me i will either look at adding extra manual rules to u-block, or to junkbuster, or i will just quit using slashdot entirely [after 20 years of continous reading and contributions].

Re:Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overfl

[Llamalarity]

Problem with allowing editing of posts is getting metamoded. Happened to me with a signature which can be edited. Live goatse link which I moderated as troll, they then changed their sig and I got slapped. Meta moderators should be able to see both the post and signature as they were when the moderation was applied. If the original moderation no longer applies it should be removed with out penalizing whoever made it.

Re:Reposting my comment from the original article.

[argStyopa]

Can I just add: no more Bennett Haselton or wtf his name is.

He can bloviate on his own blog, tyvm.

Back to the old days

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back to the old days, drop the political stuff, the flamebait ( climate change, feminism, etc ), and start posting stuff that can foster a proper technical discussion.

People come here for the comments, it's your job to guide the comments through articles.

I miss the days when I learned things on slashdot, now, partly due to the articles it has degenerated into nerd rage.

Engrish

[Rich_Lather]

Stop hiring ESL posters. Their writing style is difficult to understand.

Re:Engrish

[whipslash]

There are no ESL people on our staff now

RSS Feeds

[Anonymous Coward]

Lately, the RSS feed has been terribly out-of-date. Right now this is what I see at the top of my list, for example:

Harvard: No, Crypto Isn't Making the FBI Go Dark
  1 day, 13 hours, 10 minutes, 54 seconds ago

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[jafiwam]

Please ignore all those users calling for bans, either banning users or banning ACS. Slashdot has long promoted totally free speech and banning users for what they say is exactly the reason that other sites have fallen.

It was promoted.

It wasn't always practiced.

There were some phases where the politically correct crew was in control of the ban hammer.

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[AmiMoJo]

Sure. I never get mod points now either, but I seem to recall that people who post a lot generally don't. It would be really nice to have some transparency though.

How about making Slash open source again?

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[goose-incarnated]

Please ignore all those users calling for bans, either banning users or banning ACS. Slashdot has long promoted totally free speech and banning users for what they say is exactly the reason that other sites have fallen.

It was promoted.

It wasn't always practiced.

Agreed, but "Only sometimes practiced" is not a good enough reason to remove it altogether.

Re:Overhaul comment system. NO. If I wanted Reddit

[jafiwam]

No. If I wanted reddit and that kind of crap, I'd be over there participating in that kind of crap.

Re:Overhaul comment system.

[jafiwam]

That IS a good idea.

Plus, the refresh see to see new comments at the top would work for more ads results of that would benefit the site owners somewhat, and people would be doing it willingly.

There's a happy medium between total ad block (where I am at now) and "that ad was useful and it didn't pop up in my face"

Also, if Slashdot EVER takes over my whole browser window, darkens the whole page, and shows me some fucking bullshit notice, I am out of here.

Mobile bug

[pellik]

I'd like to see the comment filter work under safari. I got sick of seeing hundreds of posts replaced with a message that the post is below my filter value or whatever it said.

Re:Mobile bug

[pellik]

Also, bring UID to mobile.

Re:Reposting my comment from the original article.

[lazarus]

If you need money to operate the site, try asking for it from readers. That way you can reduce or eliminate advertising useless junk that nobody wants

I completely agree (fellow greybeard). I would prefer a [donate] button rather than a subscription though so I can choose when and how much to contribute. I will also second your suggestion to allow editing until moderation or reply.

Allow comments/discossions on paid posts

[Wycliffe]

I know most people probably hate paid posts but I understand that they are a necessary evil. I actually don't mind them much and I like that they are differentiated from regular posts and I occasionally see one that is interesting but why are comments disabled? Allowing comments would allow discussions on the topic at hand and would allow advertisers to see what people actually think. Sure, you might have more people posting stupid comments but I think there could still be some good conversations on some of the paid posts.

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[azadrozny]

I can second this. I haven't logged in for a while for various reasons. One reason was because I never get mod points any more. Why login if I am not rewarded for positive contributions to the community?

Re:Start with removing the malware from SourceForg

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean I can stop harassing Tim Kosse about FileZilla being bundled with spyware?

Get rid of the comments!

[Anonymous Coward]

You should get rid of the comments! They detract from the real news story too much!

Lose the video

[Overzeetop]

Okay, maybe not - you can keep the videos, but on one condition: you provide a transcript of the video so that those of us who can read more than 20 words per minute don't have to sit through 10 minutes of blather when all we want is the information we could skim in 30 seconds.

Sensible unicode support.

[petermgreen]

IIRC slashdot tried wide open unicode and quickly turned it off again (and even broke 8859-1) when people started doing weired shit with control characters related to right to left text.

My suggestion would be a whitelist but a reasonablly open one. Let us use greek letters, accented latin letters, curvy quotes, mathemetical and technical symbols etc but forbid any blocks that have strange rendering rules (explicit control characters, RTL text, scripts with different physical verses logical order) etc.

Bring back adding tags

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember the days when all you had to do was read the story tags to see if it was worth reading the story. Bring back those tags!!!

RSS Feed with Links

[dregev]

It's annoying when Slashdot is the only feed that I read that actively strips out its links from the feed. So, when I want to see something referenced in a story, I need to open the Slashdot post in my browser, wait until I have a Wi-Fi connection, re-read the story to refresh my memory, find the right link, click on it, and finally see what I wanted to see (assuming I'm not on the subway and haven't lost the connection by the time I've clicked on the link).

The user experience would be far more humane if I could just click on the link directly from my feed reader. I might actually be inclined to comment more when I don't have to waste so much time just to find a link.

Re:RSS Feed with Links

[Megane]

It is not clear to me what you mean by "feed". Do you mean RSS?

vi commands

[Anonymous Coward]

Change the post message textbox to accept vi commands.

Allow to rename user accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 5-digit user ID, but I chose my name 20 years ago. I'd like to have the option of renaming it to fit my mindset now.

Re:Allow to rename user accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS

Re:Allow to rename user accounts

[whipslash]

Yeah we might implement this

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[jafiwam]

Yes we need to be more transparent about this

There are two ways rules will get you what you want.

First one is, obviously, they form a rigid framework that everything fits into.

The second is, that it encourages people to do more of what you want!

Not being transparent about it, completely ignores the second aspect... one which in my opinion is likely to be more powerful.

Old School Advertising

[8086]

This may come a little bit from left field and won't get upvoted much, but I really hope whiplash et al get to read this. Why is it that the #1 news source and forum for scientists and engineers, etc gets sold for chump change to the highest bidder? Profitability. For some reason, a me-too job site (Dice) makes a lot more money than good old Slashdot. The new management team has got to do what it takes to keep Slashdot profitable for their own sake and for the sake of this community we've got brewing for decades now. Two more sales like this one and Slashdot will be practically dead. The feature set has been rich enough to keep so many of us hooked to the site for years and that is not where the problem lies. Yes, you need to do something about Unicode and the quality of submissions here, but on the whole the content and features of this site are fine the way they are. You just need some more continuous improvement and keeping up with the times (i.e. Reddit). What slashdot needs is more ways to make revenue without appearing to have sold out. The problem with this site is that even though there are lots of visitors, there aren't as many ads sold because most of the people who come here are technologically adept enough to use AdBlock or avoid Ad networks some other way (DNS). What you guys need to do is to come up with ways to advertise on Slashdot that don't use popular ad networks because network Ads simply don't reach most of your audience. Maybe it takes the form of sponsoring individual stories or sections, or the whole site for a number of visitors, but it has to avoid the major ad networks. I post this not for Internet karma but because I truly care about this site, so please feel free to contact me if you need more input.

Re:Old School Advertising

[whipslash]

Yes you are right. We will address all your thoughts. And yes I am reading every comment on this thread.

Feature Request: Post-reply editing

[Anonymous Coward]

I only have one request: the ability to edit a reply after you have submitted. This could be a timed-window of editing ability (30-60 seconds to click an "Edit" link) and be tracked by cookie so that people who post anonymously can edit as well. I do read what I am going to post before clicking submit but have some form of mental block where my mind is seeing words that are not there until after I have clicked submit, only to realize I used the wrong word or forgot a word (mind was filling in a blank).

Re:Feature Request: Post-reply editing

[whipslash]

Yes we will do this

Ditch the PC parade

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, I have been visiting this site since the 1990s. Over the past few years I stopped logging in due to the increase in clickbait politically correct mess. Borrowing the writing style of those people: This site used to be a "safe space" for nerds, but when you have people trying to hammer leftist political agendas into an uninterested user base, you just lose those users to sites like Reddit where the nonsense headlines can be more easily filtered.

Re:Ditch the PC parade

[whipslash]

We will get rid of clickbaity headlines

Systemd?

[Pascoea]

Anything you can do about getting rid of systemd? That seems to be a popular request around here.

Re:no, discussion (moderation) is what made Slashd

[Dins]

Yep. To completely butcher Walter White's famous quote: "If you aren't sure how to fix Slahdot, then maybe your best course would be to tread lightly."

no javascript, no cookies

[Anonymous Coward]

Make slashdot look good and usable for users who aren't using JavaScript or cookies.

Obvious benefits ensue.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[Merk42]

I hope you organize all these suggestions into another area that you can refer to on your next update.
Given the large userbase of a site like this, you're going to have diametrically opposed ideas. Inevitably you'll piss off some non-zero amount of people by changing (or not changing) any given thing about this site. Those people will then fill up comments with basically "UGH they didn't listen to me, which means they didn't listen to anyone. If I had my way I'd make the perfect utopia of a site, but I won't actually do it."

Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[whipslash]

Yeah we're aware of that

Change of Username

[digitalchinky]

Feature request: Change User ID.

I don't mind if it's restricted in some way, once a week, month, year, etc., I really would like the ability to change my user ID though.

I would also like to see ponies return once in a while, and I want a lower UID :-) I never realized just how important that number would be in the real world.

Re:Change of Username

[whipslash]

Yeah interesting idea. We'll look at this

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt...

[ConceptJunkie]

whipslash, you seem earnest about improving /. and interested in listening to what people have to say. I appreciate that, and will overlook your mid-7-digit UID. ;-)

Seriously though, I sincerely hope that your tone reflects the desires of the new owners, because /. has been a great resource over the years and something I still check out most days. I understand the need to make money with the site, but it seems you (and by extension the new owners) are interested in preserving/restoring what makes /. great.

Good luck.

Re:I'll give you the benefit of the doubt...

[whipslash]

Thanks for the kind words

I love moderation system but not tags

[sinij]

I love points moderation system, but not tags. We need better tags, especially one for factually incorrect.

We also need "-0 disagree" tag so you could show displeasure at some dipshittery without necessary down-voting it.

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[pecosdave]

I'm a religious person - not in the stereotypical sense, but I'm a believer in a higher power, and I embrace science, no I don't think those are mutually exclusive.

Quite frankly I'm tired of both the anti-religious bigotry I see everywhere I go and I'm annoyed by religious holy than though religious assholes too. Having faith or not does not mean you have to be an ass-wipe.

Show all comments

[Anonymous Coward]

You can start by showing all the comments. When I post a comment I expect for it to be seen. If I log out or revisit the site I expect to see my post that was previously added. I should not have to login and specifically go an look and "My" posts to see a post.

Less Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

As with everything else, it seems that the longer a forum exists, the more it becomes a tool of political hacks ( mostly left leaning ) to advance a point a view via that audience type. For instance, there was an article on here asking why Donald Trump is not banned from twitter. While I'm no Donald Trump fan, I have to ask myself "is this really news for nerds, something that matters?". No - it was a political hack piece. This type of thing has become more prevalent as a of late and if that is what this site is going to become, I might as well go read an opinion piece from either Salon or National Review instead of coming here.

Please stop this crap that I can read anywhere else.

Just say no to flash and yes to IPv6

[Anonymous Coward]

Dump flash, it crashes browsers and is 90s tech.
Get an IPv6-capable CDN. its 2015, not 1993.

Email Notifications like Google Alerts

[DanielIcart]

Provide email notifications like Google Alerts. Allow people to setup different categories like tech, science, politics etc. Word or phrase matching. Make it an easy setup. It will entice infrequent users to visit more frequently ($$$)! It will also help infrequent users not miss anything of interest.

Comment tree

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell if it's been posted in the above 1100+ comments, but you need to have comment trees. So many times I can't get to the next top-level comment because there are pages and pages of child comments branching of the first.

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[damn_registrars]

How about making Slash open source again?

I often wondered if they were ever going to release a newer version of slashcode. You likely know that what is available is several years old. Not to plug another site, but it is impressive - especially considering the age of the code - how much the guys at soylent news have accomplished with that code base once they forked it for themselves.

Identify who issues upmods or downmods.

[Anonymous Coward]

Identify who issues upmods or downmods.

Re:Identify who issues upmods or downmods.

[penandpaper]

Says the AC.

Let's not add a mechanism for retaliation.

New comment visual cue.

[penandpaper]

A visual distinction for new comments loaded, if I "Check for New Comments". I would like it to be a little easier to find the new comments that were added. A shading change on the subject line or on the border would suffice; something small. Just some visual cue to let me know that this comment was added after the initial page load and/or "Load all Comments". I would think it would only work for "Check for New Comments" because (like this thread) 250+ comments be marked as "new".

A number of times I read all the comments on an interesting subject and at the end I want to see what was added after (could be a lot or few). I "Check for new Comments" and I spend most of my time re-reading the same stuff to try and find the new comments.

Cheers and best of luck.

Re:New comment visual cue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at the commenting system used by SB Nation blogs, for example www.celticsblog.com. Unread comments are shaded yellow background. Read comments are white. But the killer feature IMHO is that you can use 'Z' to go to the next unread comment. So if you come back to an article you can quickly go to the unread comments, even buried in replies. (There are other features of that commenting system that may or may not work for ./, check it out.)

my 2 cents

[Simulant]

1.) Slashdot contains far more general click-bait than it used to be but so does most every site on the internet. Please try to limit the sensationalist bullshit.
2.) Slashdot is pretty consistently scooped by other sites. Important news for nerds stories frequently don't show for a day or more after they appear elsewhere.
3.) Hacker News seems to be the new Slashdot, quality wise.

Re:my 2 cents

[whipslash]

Hacker News stories are voted for entirely by users. Should we implement something to incorporate firehose stories onto the front page if they reach a certain level of votes in the firehose?

Bring GNAA First Post

[fadethepolice]

I think we should allow and encourage bringing back GNAA first post competitions and give trophies / toys to the person who gets first post every year.

Less Tech-Specific Subjects

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to enjoy reading political results and current (relevant and important) news on Slashdot but b/c of naysayers ("What does this have to do with 'News for Nerds'?") there is a glut of hardware and super niche-specific tech stories.

Bring back (some examples):
- Meteorology (Hurricane Patricia with 200 mph winds)
- Important political events in major nations (Iowa caucus results, polling and statistics implications, rise of far-right and anti-refugee rhetoric in Europe, etc.)
- Important world events (Putin Litvinenko inquiry results, Syrian civil war events, press freedom in Turkey, etc.)

Honestly I'd like to say Slashdot aims more to the polymathic and not to the "nerdy" pejorative.

Let's not live in a solely helpdesk-level myopic and Dice-driven narrative.

Oh, and proper Unicode support.

kthxbai

thanks for not really changing much

[HongPong]

I appreciate that this site has barely changed since I was in high school. There are some good ideas here like better submission process, shifting some link colors for readability, and adding HTTPS and IPv6 capability. Maybe a larger sense of reviewing and bringing a spotlight to smaller free software projects - it's always been a thing but could be approached more thoroughly. And maybe ask for ad-free subscriptions to help stabilize revenues. IRC chat for editorial.

Keep it old school and lightweight design, don't mess with it for the sake of it.

You've convinced me to log back in....

[apoc.famine]

So I haven't had the time recently to participate as a commenter, but I still skim a bit. This opportunity made me log back in - well done. Check my sig from 2-3 years ago - I've hated what /. has become for a long time, but I'm still lurking. Thanks for reaching out to try to make this place better.

Consider leveraging Karma much more.

* Karma impacts posting frequency limits and initial comment moderation level upon post
* Gain Karma for upmods, lose for downmods
* Gain Karma for metamoderating and voting on the Firehose
* Lose Karma for moderating
* Sell a little Karma to support the site
* Trade Karma for Ad Views. View to get Karma, spend Karma to not see Ads

As long as you can get 90% of the benefit from participating, nobody will bat an eye at being able to buy 10% more Karma to help support the site. If you go too far into 'pay to say', you'll find a hostile crowd.

Re:You've convinced me to log back in....

[whipslash]

Thanks for the feedback. Glad you logged back in. We will consider these suggestions

Re:Enforce login to post - NOT

[dave420]

I forgot to add - I also don't seem to understand why having an anonymous but unique identity is a good thing. Without that, anyone can post anything while pretending to be another AC.

News for nerds, stuff that matters

[Anonymous Coward]

News for nerds, stuff that matters .. nuff said

subject

[Anonymous Coward]

Make the comments system better. Get rid of the Subject requirement for messages, make it easier to responses to your comments, etc.

White space and "Read the XX comments"

[Avacar]

During the whole beta slashdot fiasco, a few changes did push their way onto the site. None of them were 'chase me away' bad, but I think two of them deserve to be reassessed.

1. 1. The "Read the xx comments" (and its predecessor, the "Read More..| XX comments") link was removed to a "speech bubble" on the far right, giving the number. Aesthetically, that is fine, but the problem is that I have 15 years of muscle memory that want to click a link at the bottom of the article abstract to view the comments; now I have to click the article title or the bubble. Worse yet, a bunch of red-herring social media buttons are exactly where that used to be. My proposed fix is easy: leave the social media buttons (if you really like them), leave the comment count speech bubble on the far right, but add back in a regular hyperlink saying "Read the XX comments" just to the right of the social media buttons. There certainly isn't a lack of whitespace to place it there. This solution will keep anyone who wants to use the social media buttons happy, and yet restore the link that I am still, a year and a half later, instinctively trying to find every day. As a reference, this is what it looked like before the social media buttons.
2. 2. Tighten up the unused vertical whitespace. I used to be able to easily read 4 full articles "above the fold". While the ~2010 redesign definitely cleaned up clutter (removed the left sidebar, etc.) it somehow wasted more space than it saved. Here it is back in the late 2000's form vs. where we are today. I'm fine with the improved article width and the removed left column; good riddance to the unnecessary background splash colours, but can we just pull the articles a bit closer together, so that 4 full articles can nominally fit at a time?

Also, I just wanted to throw in that I was really happy to see your responsiveness in the original announcement article, and this Ask Slashdot so soon is a great sign.

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[pecosdave]

I'm interested in equality too.

So let's present news objectively instead of slanted-only men are bad articles at least weekly, usually more.

Improve readability

[Anonymous Coward]

Reduce the width of the content area from 100%, to a max of 700px.

Reading (scanning) online becomes much easier at that max-width, as the eyes can find the next line faster to continue reading.

Apologies - I know this will be heresy to traditionalists -- When /. started, few had large monitors, let alone HD 1920+ resolution. The technology has advanced, but the layout hasn't adapted.

(Interestingly, that the TextArea I'm typing this message in, is approx. the suggested width.)

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[chihowa]

It doesn't appear to just be posting that counts against you. I generally check the site at least once a day, but I've noticed that if I go on vacation or have a crazy busy spell at work and don't check for a few days, I invariably have mod points when I return. If you have good karma and haven't received mod points in a while, try staying away for a few days.

No more PC!

[Anonymous Coward]

Put an end to this politically correct social justice warrior touchy feely outrageism that is starting to infect the site.

Every other site on the net is turning into that. I don't CARE about women in tech anymore. Women in gaming.
Why i should be outraged about this or that slight injustice or percieved sexist thing but really dont give a damm.

just because it's stupid shit + a computer! doesn't make the article any less stupid.
leave that crap to tumblr.

Sauce Must Flow

[Lullabye_Muse]

I've been reading Slashdot most days, and very rarely writing and posting to it, since I was a teenager.

I don't think I would be working in IT, and at least not doing as well, if I didn't read all of the deep and wonderful insights about the future, diatribes about obscure unix commands, and why I shouldn't let a corporation bully people or other companies.

These are the kinds of things that need to let flourish, and in bringing in more people to the fold the real hook is letting people feel okay to ask questions. The ability to post as an AC here is one of the greatest features I've ever found in any forum. I've asked hundreds of stupid questions on Slashdot over the years, and the really stupid ones were almost always AC, but they always got an answer.

I don't feel that comfortable on Reddit or StackOverflow, or anywhere else on the web.

If you can keep holding onto that ability to let people ask questions, you'll always be able to have this forum, even if the colors change,

Put Functionality Ahead of Board Room Glossiness

[edibobb]

Slashdot has followed many internet companies in sacrificing efficient transfer of information in favor of superficial looks and clickbait. While not as bad as many sites, it is definitely a problem. One example is that in nested comments, the lines along the left side that show the nest level of the comments were pulled from Slashdot. There many other issues with the "new and improved" Slashdot. I'd be glad to elaborate, but I expect it would be a waste of time.

persistent default comment threshold

[Bobtree]

I always want to read freshly opened pages at score 5/4 for full/subject comment thresholds, but if I modify the slider to see more, future pages will open at the last slider setting, not the 5/4 originally set in my preferences. Please prevent the per-page slider form changing the D2 comment threshold option, or add a mode that does this.

I agree

[Okian Warrior]

Another fine idea.

I too would find these types of articles interesting. It would contribute to making Slashdot a primary news source instead of a regurgitator/aggregator.

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[AmiMoJo]

Can you cite one of these articles? I'm pretty sure none of them say or imply that "men are bad".

tuppence

[stridebird]

Design a better comment tree navigation system. On the sly, sneak it in as an inobvious option that has obvious benefits and let the awe flow from there. Nobody has solved comment tree yet, why not be the first? Incidentally, your keyboard shortcuts don't work well for me and are not re-configurable (outwith greasemonkey). Make it easy to skip the dross, please.

There's moderation, tricksy stuff like redundant et al, but then there's "get this shit off of here". We should all have a downvote option that triggers deletion above a certain threshold of non-AC users. Some shit is obviously crap and if enough of us think so, then you should trust us and delete it. I should be able to browse fairly safely at 0.

SD has remained always in my top 5 new sites, for well over 10 years. Almost all good tech stories are here, and the comment threads can be of the highest interest, with many spin offs and detours to visit interesting links or research interesting concepts. The register has better tech content but the commentary is single-child nested which stifles proper BTL discussion. Slash is all about BTL. Just keep the stories focused and let the conversation flow.

Content

[watcher-rv4]

Bring back good quality news. Some years ago I used to spend a lot time reading here. Now I barely pick one news to read.

Eat your words Rei: /.'ers disagree quoted

[Anonymous Coward]

"stopping people like the APK spammer - people who nobody want around" - by Rei (128717) on Tuesday February 02, 2016 @09:49PM (#51426611

Real /. users, not almostalladsblocked shill sockpuppets, say different LOUDER:

"his hosts program is actually pretty good" - by xenotransplant (4179011) on Monday August 10, 2015 @03:34PM (#50287195)

"I like your host file system." - by Karmashock (2415832) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:57PM (#50489401)

"APK is kinda right. I've given up on JS based adblocking and gone to blackholing in /etc/hosts, just like it was back in the 90s. The computational load has gotten intolerable for any ad-blocking using JS. I've tried his hosts file generating software. It works." - by bmo (77928) on Thursday October 15, 2015 @11:30AM (#50736071)

"APK is totally right on this count. Adblock Plus on Firefox mobile is a dog on older, or lower end, phones. A hostfile based adblocker makes for a much better experience in this context" - by chihowa (366380) on Saturday May 16, 2015 @11:40AM (#49705641)

"his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources" by alexgieg (948359) on Friday September 25, 2015 @09:57AM (#50596461)

"I find your hosts file admirable." - by vel-ex-tech (4337079) on Tuesday November 24, 2015 @10:27PM (#50999097)

"APK isn't wrong" - by cfalcon (779563) on Sunday October 04, 2015 @05:11PM (#50657891)

"No complaints from me, I like APK's spam. Reminds me to use a host file. Also, his stuff is free." - by aaaaaaargh! (1150173) on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @09:31AM (#50947415)

APK

P.S.=> Which of these are you, or representing:

1.) Advertiser
2.) Webmaster
3.) Inferior competitor
4.) Malware maker/Botnet herder

(Real users like my program. It gives more speed, security, reliability & anonymity - enumerated list above doesn't)

... apk

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[Kohath]

Yeah, some religious people are assholes about it. Just like some anti-religious people are assholes about it. People should stop being such assholes.

Slashdot shouldn't cater to assholishness in general. There are ways to report news that respect even disagreeable views. But you can also report news as "Look at what these [insert slur here] people are doing now". If Slashdot doesn't want to become the Stormfront for the Science! crowd (clan?), they should choose their communications style accordingly.

"Look at what these [people who are not like us] are doing now" is an uncivilized and divisive way to report on any topic. Slashdot shouldn't use that tone. No one should.

AdBlock+ = inferior & 'souled-out' vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

Can adblock+ do 16 things hosts do 4 speed, security & reliability:

1.) Protect vs. bad sites (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C talk
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C talk
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C talk
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (4 reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoning
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get past dns blocks
12.) Keep off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing (adblock & hardcoded favs)
14.) Works on anything webbound multiplatform.
15.) EZ data control
16.) Block ads better vs. addons more efficiently

* ANSWER ="NO" on ab+ doing it as well or @ ALL + hosts = on devices natively.

APK

P.S.=> Ab+ does less vs. hosts less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN operation (as 1st resolver).

---

Ab+'s a 128-151mb memory hog http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte... (hosts use 3-11mb w/ my program initially). Even FireFox 41 adblock eats 65++mb http://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/...

---

ClarityRay defeats it seeing addons via native browser methods!

---

Ab+'s bribed not to work by default http://www.businessinsider.com... & ABP bought out adblock http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

---

Ab+ adds complexity in slower usermode (w/ more messagepassing overhead + context switch vs. hosts in kernelmode).

---

AdBlock's SLOWER: http://superuser.com/questions...

---

What's best?

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee who verified its source is safe http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... ) hosts & recommends it http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

It's safe per 57 antivirus programs in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

a 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

& Installer -> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

Ghostery = 'souled-out' & inferior vs. hosts

[Anonymous Coward]

Can ghostery do 16 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:

1.) Protect vs. malicious sites (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C server talk
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C server talk
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C server talk
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phishing
10.) Protect vs. bandwidth caps
11.) Get dns blocks
12.) Keep off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded fav. sites
14.) Work on anything webbound multiplatform.
15.) Ez data control
16.) Block ads more efficiently in cpu + memory use vs. addons

* ANSWER ="NO" to each on Ghostery doing all or @ all + hosts = on devices natively.

APK

P.S.=> Addons do FAR less than hosts do & FAR less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ the IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver queried):

Ghostery (Advertiser owned) - "Fox guards henhouse" -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

---

Addons add complexity/room for breakdown/exploit + from a slower mode of operations (usermode = more messagepassing overheads vs. hosts in kernelmode).

---

ClarityRay defeats addons like Ghostery via native browser methods.

---

Better than ghostery by FAR = APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee who verified its source is safe http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... ) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

GUARANTEED safe & clean per 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

In its 32-bit model also https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

So is its installer -> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

... apk

Having created and moderated several Fora...

[CAOgdin]

...over the years--particularly successful one's, I find /. a rude, juvenile environment where putting someone down with nastiness is encouraged and applauded. How many legitimate questions have "well, get off the Internet," or "go read a book" or "use Linux" responses that are clearly intended to insult; I'm sure their authors are grinning at their own creativity, while the rest of us wish that would just go away.

A thread with posts from angry people is not a post I care to read. Moderators are desperately needed, who can simply "Hide" the offensive, off-topic stuff. If you really need your fix of dumb and nasty, you can still have it, but it wouldn't impede others from dealing with real substance.

The original poster at the top of a thread should also be a moderator for that thread: If responses are off-topic, nasty or just serve no useful to the purposes of the thread can be hidden so only those primarily interested in helping and sharing can play, and those of broken brain can still get their jollies with an extra click.

crap ads

[drwho]

get rid of taboola. serve only appropriate ads,

Re:Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overfl

[Chelloveck]

* Fix the fscking comment page code so it doesn't break the 'Back' button. I hate it when I click to view "X replies beneath your current threshold", then press 'Back' and lose my place in the thread because the main comments page refreshes back to the beginning.

What to change

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing.
Leave it alone.

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[dave420]

If you think pointing out some examples of poisonous, exclusive behaviour is attacking all men, I don't think you being shielded from such staggering truths will help you. Seriously. You seem to be incredibly defensive about this. I'm a guy in technology, and I've seen some terrible behaviour, but I know that not everyone in technology (regardless of gender) is responsible. If you figured that out, your life would probably be a lot more enjoyable.

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[dave420]

The truth is that it is 100% man made, as without human GHG emissions the Earth would be cooling... Just saying.

Display controversial posts - yes!

[MikeTheGreat]

I just wanted to support the idea of detecting & displaying controversial posts - it's a really good idea!

I could imagine an implementation wherein readers might have a checkbox available to them (perhaps right next to the 'what level do you want to browse at?' slider) to turn the display of controversial posts on / off.
But having a checkbox vs. always showing them vs. something else is just details - the main thing is that this is a really good idea.

the speed of a Craiglist/Hacker Nees forum

[peter303]

Craiglist forums are fast enough to be real time discussions, like the dialup bulletin boards of old. Slashdot is a place where you type something and come back hours later to see if there are any responses. Or wait for an automated email message. Craigslist probably does this by being primitive 1990s html with almost no formatting and zero re-edit ability. Slashdot is unnecessarily ornate with filtering, accordion displays and so on.

Human story-selectors is a good idea

[MikeTheGreat]

I want to support the idea of having actual humans choosing the stories.

My understanding of the firehose is that it's supposed to automate/crowd-source the stories we see, but when you've got valid accounts used by spammers to place their stories/comments then it no longer works. Even if the firehose is used to make something more noticeable to the editors we still need actual humans preventing stealth slashvertisements, etc.

Get Rid of Autorefresh

[Anonymous Coward]

It is so annoying to have your screen jump around while your are trying to read an article, during autorefresh, that I turn off java script just to read Slashdot. Sorry if that it affects your ad income but it is just too damn annoying to try to find the place I was reading after an autorefresh.

Users quoting liking my ware & posts... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject - Real /. users, not almostalladsblocked shill or advertiser sockpuppets quoted:

"his hosts program is actually pretty good" - by xenotransplant (4179011) on Monday August 10, 2015 @03:34PM (#50287195)

"I like your host file system." - by Karmashock (2415832) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:57PM (#50489401)

"APK is kinda right. I've given up on JS based adblocking and gone to blackholing in /etc/hosts, just like it was back in the 90s. The computational load has gotten intolerable for any ad-blocking using JS. I've tried his hosts file generating software. It works." - by bmo (77928) on Thursday October 15, 2015 @11:30AM (#50736071)

"APK is totally right on this count. Adblock Plus on Firefox mobile is a dog on older, or lower end, phones. A hostfile based adblocker makes for a much better experience in this context" - by chihowa (366380) on Saturday May 16, 2015 @11:40AM (#49705641)

"his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources" by alexgieg (948359) on Friday September 25, 2015 @09:57AM (#50596461)

"I find your hosts file admirable." - by vel-ex-tech (4337079) on Tuesday November 24, 2015 @10:27PM (#50999097)

"APK isn't wrong" - by cfalcon (779563) on Sunday October 04, 2015 @05:11PM (#50657891)

"No complaints from me, I like APK's spam. Reminds me to use a host file. Also, his stuff is free." - by aaaaaaargh! (1150173) on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @09:31AM (#50947415)

APK

P.S.=> Ask yourself WHICH of these my detractors are or representing:

1.) Advertiser
2.) Webmaster
3.) Inferior competitor
4.) Malware maker/Botnet herder

(Real users like my program. It gives more speed, security, reliability & anonymity - enumerated list above doesn't)

... apk

Thank you for doing this!

[MikeTheGreat]

Thank you for doing this! I didn't realize how much I loved and missed this site until I finally, finally admitted to myself that it's just not the same place anymore. This first step has me more hopeful for /. than I've been in years!

Re:Thank you for doing this!

[whipslash]

Thank you for sticking with us

Editable Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Often the summary has some grammar error, or better links related to the story are found and posted in the discussion. I think it would be good for users to be able to post suggested summary edits, for those edits to be voted on, and for those edits becoming the default summary once reaching a threshold.

Comment sorting

[hrimhari]

I'd find sorting based on score much more useful than first-come-first-served. The score would have to be unlimited for it to work, or sorting score be somehow separated from the -1 to 5 scoring system.

Maybe supporting both sorting methods would make everybody happy.

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[Anonymous Coward]

Add the ability for all users to see who issued up or down mods since they get abused either way by karma farming sockpuppets with an agenda up modding their own posts of their main account through sockpuppets of theirs or abused in unjustifiable downmod bombings of valid posts and when users can't stand behind their moderations they deserve no moderation points (which does not go for users that can back up their moderation with facts).

Easy

[nospam007]

It would be nice if we could use umlauts and accents without the text getting ruined. It's no longer the century of the fruitbat.
Kill the dupes, can't be that difficult.
Also, tell those couple of morons doing the videos that they can use external microphones so that we don't have to listen to the camera motor instead of the talking people.
Throw out spammers like Piquepaille and his goons.

PS and kill Beta dead!

Just say no to the unicode ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, this is BY FAR an English-speaking, text-based message forum. We don't need smiley spam. We don't need foreign language spam (how and who will moderate?) We don't need new unicode-based penis pictures to replace the old ascii-based penis pictures we used to see back in the good old days.

Seriously, the use cases for unicode can be better met via other methods (folks can paste a link to a github if they REALLY need to post code, for example).

wrong side forming a plan

[Anonymous Coward]

shouldn't there have already been a plan on how to improve it before the new owners made an offer?

what are your plans for slashdot?

Comment Scores

[Anonymous Coward]

Separate comment score from comment type/tag. Funny +1 Why not Funny -1?? As in not funny. In this method, I could ask to see only Funny and its rank in that class.

Allow for using multiple mod-points on ONE comment. So Funny +5 would be allowed as well as Funny -5.

Allow for mixed mod-ing. Funny and Interesting give +1. So one point used with two tags associated.

Allow to belong to a Groups of Users (or view by a Group), so HARDWARE group, may find General News boring, so no HARDWARE Group tagging or -1 will reduce that article for that Group. Think like a super V-Chip. If HARDWARE generally likes something, then I would like it. If HARDWARE does not like it, then I may not. So I amy belong to HARDWARE and MATH, so my main page would show at the top a ranking by those two groups of think that I may like. This way news gets filtered and sorted by all.

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[Kohath]

If you think pointing out some examples of poisonous, exclusive behaviour is attacking all men, I don't think you being shielded from such staggering truths will help you. Seriously. You seem to be incredibly defensive about this. I'm a guy in technology, and I've seen some terrible behaviour, but I know that not everyone in technology (regardless of gender) is responsible. If you figured that out, your life would probably be a lot more enjoyable.

No one was poisoned. Please stop exaggerating and use truthful descriptive words. Thanks.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[LWATCDR]

I disagree that it is pointless, it would stop the a lot of the trolling ACs but not the hard core Trolls.
Personally I would like to see no ACs and no profanity on Slashdot. The problem is that many users don't agree with me. They for some reason think that not allowing ACs to post would prevent some profound comment from being made. Same thing with limiting profanity. I have never seen a single post where profanity increased the informational value of the post. However a large number of users think that would be a terrible idea.

Probably best to keep the ACs and profanity vs the potential loss of community members based on principal.

Re:Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overfl

[whipslash]

No it doesn't mean that. I'm just trying to get feedback on ideas

Use modern technology

[RR]

For a technology site, Slashdot is ridiculously behind the times.

UTF-8. IPv6. HTTPS. DNSSEC. DKIM and SPF. Perl 6. A favicon that doesn't look like pixel art.

I think it would do the editors some good to have working experience with the field that they cover.

Re:Use modern technology

[whipslash]

All of this is coming

Key personalities

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring back cowboyneal. 'Nuff said.

Minor tweak: Posting in moderated stories

[T.E.D.]

I don't have huge problems with the theory behind not allowing people to both post and moderate in the same story. There's an inherent conflict of interest there. However, since the software is threaded, it shouldn't be difficult at all to allow moderating and posting in different threads of the same story. I almost never end up using my mod points, because if I'm interested and knowledgeable enough to moderate, invariably I'll eventually find a comment I want to respond to.

That makes me wonder about the nature of the people who do end up moderating. I suppose I could be optimistic and tell myself they are shy experts.

Hosts do more for less vs. blockable addons

[Anonymous Coward]

Can adblock+ do 16 things hosts do 4 speed, security & reliability:

1.) Protect vs. bad sites (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets + stop C&C talk
3.) Protect vs. dynamic dns botnets + stop C&C talk
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets + stop C&C talk
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (4 reliability)
6.) Protect vs. DNS redirect poisoning
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get past dns blocks
12.) Keep off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing (adblock & hardcoded favs)
14.) Works on anything webbound multiplatform.
15.) EZ data control
16.) Block ads better vs. addons more efficiently

* ANSWER ="NO" on ab+ doing it as well or @ ALL + hosts = on devices natively.

APK

P.S.=> Ab+ does less vs. hosts less efficiently - hosts do MORE w/ less + Hosts start w/ IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN operation (as 1st resolver).

---

Ab+'s a 128-151mb memory hog http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte... (hosts use 3-11mb w/ my program initially). Even FireFox 41 adblock eats 65++mb http://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/...

---

ClarityRay defeats it seeing addons via native browser methods!

---

Ab+'s bribed not to work by default http://www.businessinsider.com... & ABP bought out adblock http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

---

Ab+ adds complexity in slower usermode (w/ more messagepassing overhead + context switch vs. hosts in kernelmode).

---

AdBlock's SLOWER: http://superuser.com/questions...

---

What's best?

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit http://start64.com/index.php?o...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee who verified its source is safe http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... ) hosts & recommends it http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

&

It's safe per 57 antivirus programs in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

a 32-bit model too https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

& Installer -> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[Kohath]

http://linux.slashdot.org/stor...
http://developers.slashdot.org...

Search on mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if I'm the only one with this problem, but I've never found a way to search on the mobile version. That would be a nice to have. I use the full version when I'm looking for older posts for now but I would prefer the mobile version when using tablets/phones.

No More "Today's Free Apps"

[Anonymous Coward]

Get rid of the "Today's Free Apps" when viewing on Android mobile.

That shit takes up half the screen and shifts the comments I'm reading when it finally loads.

If /. must keep it, hire competent Web developers that know how to pre-allocate space on the page for content. It's not as bad as Make Magazine on mobile but it is just as annoying.

6 mistakes, errors & untruths from you

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject, your 1st mistake: Proximitron proxy does. There's others also.

Your second error is firewalls do ip ranges but most malware today doesn't use ip addresses. It uses host-domain names and hosts files stop those. Windows firewall doesn't.

Your 3rd error = Hosts scale VERY well, & I have a 4 million line hosts file that speeds me 2 ways (hardcoded favorite sites where users spend most time online at the top of hosts cached in RAM for faster immediate resolution that also avoids DNS security issues) to prove it.

Others here have stated the same and like my program. Would you like proof of that too? Ask & YE SHALL RECEIVE!

Lastly - of course hosts DO FAR MORE for FAR LESS resource consummation in CPU/RAM + messagepassing overheads vs. inferior redundant sold out crippled by default inefficient browser addons -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

APK

P.S.=> Additionally - Hosts block domains/subdomains. If they're bad on 1 part, they're most likely further exploited in ALL their parts... you fail/lose as usual arth1 - should I put out all the other times you have, ignoring my points above by stating them here again, false as they are or in error on your part? Ask & ye SHALL receive... apk

My suggestions

[Espectr0]

Whatever you do keep the classic interface. I don't like the modern javascript version.

I don't understand why if i moderate on a story if i post i lose the moderation. As long as i can't moderate myself this should be fine.

Put more moderation categories, such as -1 wrong

Want sponsored stories? Just label them like android police does.

Simple text ads or non animated images are fine. NO FLASH.

Minimalist design for mobile users.

Maybe auto remove a story if the users label it as dupe. Also, for editors, auto search before approving stories to the front page to avoid dupes (like some bug trackers do before allowing you to create a new bug)

No more politics

[colin_faber]

I come here looking for tech news, and that's really it, I'm very tired of the constant political issues disguised as a science article (I'm looking at you global warming / climate change posters). There's many other sites which provide quality political discourse, theres no need for a dedicated tech site to do so.

Not sure ??

[Archfeld]

Can a commercial proprietor actually improve the culture on a site ? I doubt it. You can do some technical fixes, several of which you apparently already have a handle on, but I am convinced the crowd that hangs here is the only way to improve interaction. Implementation of any sort of restrictive rules will just drive the core further away...

Off the top of my head I'd say STOP astro-turfing lousy commercial ads pretending to be articles, but that would likely drive down the $$$ value of the site in its' new overlords eyes and thus be an unacceptable solution.

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously because I've moderated a lot of this discussion already, but here's a datapoint: I get 15 mod points every time I get them. And I get those mod points once every week or two. I probably post a couple times a week on average.

Just dont fuck things up.

[Anonymous Coward]

With authoritarian BS like a swear filter and banning the ACs

Re:Just dont fuck things up.

[whipslash]

Okay

two more things

[slashdice]

1. get rid of the lameness filter. As they say, a lameness filter on slashdot is like a shit filter on my ass.

2. better tor support. as it is, many tor exit sites are banned (pink banned page). Either remove the bans -or- better yet, create a dedicated, slashdot.onion address.

Anon b/c of Mods

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite often the discussions I'm interested in contributing in are found after I mod, therefore restricting access to inject my opinion without resulting to AC. I should be able to start or contribute to a line of discussion that is independent of the [sub] discussion trees I've modded in.

As well, would it be possible to tag the base of a discussion with the total positive and negative mods within it?

-Lodlaiden

Re:Reposting my comment from the original article.

[chihowa]

You can do that here: http://slashdot.org/subscribe.pl. It even gives you a special symbol: *

If only it worked anymore. Seriously, Dice neglecting the means to directly collect money from the users was more than a little stupid.

[It stops embedding ads in the site, but I don't remember it disabling the third party tracking code.]

Why Unicode?

[kackle]

Although I have a high user ID, I have been reading since the late 1990s. Thank you for reaching out to your readers for feedback.

I often use older devices (~3 GHz) to view your site. Rendering Slashdot's web pages on such machines is usually painfully slow. Viewing web pages in the dial-up days, on much slower machines, was less arduous. I assume this has to do with the Javascript filtering of the hundreds of posts (I'm an embedded programmer, not a web coder). Can anything be done about this? It's a sour trend that the machines over time get faster and faster, but the ability to read text is getting slower and slower. I figured a tech site could actually do something about such silliness.

As a postscript to fellow users, what huge advantage does Unicode bring? Doesn't it have many downsides?

Re:Why Unicode?

[neminem]

Uh... the fact that sometimes people like posting things in languages other than English, or even just using borrowed words from languages other than English, some of which thus have non-English characters in them?

OK, But Seriously...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if this site can be fixed. It's pretty obvious that Dice brought it, thinking it could be turned into a clickbait feed.

Not sure how well that worked out. At one time, I used to really enjoy reading the comments. I often learned a great deal, and was genuinely impressed by the caliber (and wide variety) of commenters here.

Then CNN started modding out their trolls, and suddenly we started getting outright racial and misogynist posts; ones clearly written by ignorant 15-year-olds, out for nothing more than to get a rise. These weren't the "pro" comment trollers, which actually get weeded out pretty well by the triage process. These were lulz trolls (still are -read above).

What is clear, however, is that this site started circling the drain at that time. It has been decomposing since. It is now little more than a slombie (slashdot zombie), lurching around, in a[n obviously] fruitless quest for BRRRAAAAAAIIIINZZZZ.

One cannot help but notice that almost every "Ask Slashdot" selected for FP has been fairly clearly designed for maximum comment churn. In many cases, the headline and teaser were deliberately changed from the original submissions in a manner that can only be described as "clickbait."

This has obviously been a deliberate editorial decision by the folks that ran this.

I think that you have crossed the Rubicon.

Alea Jacta Est.

I think that you may need to euthanize the site for its own good.

My, how the mighty have fallen.

One thought

[wyattstorch516]

Allow people to moderate and post in the same story.If you are going to moderate somebody up or down why can't you post an explanation?

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[AmiMoJo]

Neither of those say or imply that "men are bad".

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[Kohath]

What's the story then? "Linux Kernel developer I never heard of rage quits over hurt feelings"? What makes it news at all?

More tech

[Anonymous Coward]

less politics

HTTPS, keep JS to a minimum, and unicode support

[Anonymous Coward]

Those three would be a good start.

Ban APK & Edit Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

APK posts spam, pure and simple. I'd much rather read first posts and GNAA and hate speech posts than see one more APK crap flood.

Free speech but BAN APK!

-----

It's been decades! Add the capability to edit a comment after it has been posted.

Re:Ban APK & Edit Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

APK is a pretty nice guy

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[AmiMoJo]

The story is "Linux kernel developer quits because some people on the LKML are arseholes". Note how it doesn't say "50% of the human race are bad" or anything like that.

Can you explain how you came to think it said "men are bad"? I'm genuinely curious to understanding your reasoning. No joke, I'm serious.

Re:Reposting my comment from the original article.

[FunkSoulBrother]

I'd be happy to do this too. I've gotten a ton out of Slashdot over the past 17 (geez) years and would be happy to pay for its upkeep for a cool icon and no ads/tracking.

There might some holes you are using to track my currently but I'm damn sure I'm not currently seeing any ads.

Stories are often too old

[Anonymous Coward]

Stories on Slashdot often appear seem to appear long after they've appeared elsewhere. Days later. This is a disincentive to visit, because too much of what I see here I'll already have seen elsewhere.

ELIMINATE PAID SHILLS

[Anonymous Coward]

The site is infested with people being paid to push political and economic agendas.

Re:Aim to not be Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overfl

[Coren22]

I have to say, AC has some good points here. I would not want to be part of the Reddit community because of the way they treat people who don't blindly agree with them.

Get out the politics

[Anonymous Coward]

Edit out political comments!

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[pecosdave]

Stuff like this, it opens up with a weasel words statement while not explicitly saying "men are bad" it is saying "men need to be displaced" or "men have no business dominating a professions that doesn't require massive amounts of safety gear and filth".

Is the lack of diversity an issue? The article without a doubt states that it is - so why are there no articles about the shortage of male daycare workers, or the lack of female sanitation workers?

I'm not going to say I don't like green M&M's, but we really need to up the count of brown, blue, red and yellow M&M's in a bag, everyone knows that green M&M's are over-represented.

social justice war

[vel-ex-tech]

I didn't read the other 1200+ comments.

My suggestion would be to stop accepting social justice war bait. It may generate clicks and comments as everybody reposts the same conversation once more, but on the other hand it makes me seriously wonder why I even come here anymore. The topic itself is toxic. For a while it was mildly amusing at least.

This site is close to going back into my hosts file. I forgot if I left it in my bio, but I am trying to get out of tech as fast as I can because of the social justice war. I am simply sick of being presumed a sexist. It makes me uncomfortable when others presume I hold beliefs I don't and try to shame me to my face (not just this site but IRL) without even asking about my beliefs because the media and other sources for whatever reason have decided to throw programmers under the bus. I can't change how I was born or which fields are popular among women, but I can change how I make a living and switch to a career like burger flipping where I won't be presumed to be a sexist. I've also been on the receiving end of sexism that had very real material consequences for me many times. etc, etc.

It also distresses me that tech has lost 2 women I know because of asshole managers, and it will lose another one when I'm ready to leave tech due to the social justice war itself. Yet, nobody seems to be worried about the asshole managers or the fallout of this war.

Another alternative would be to categorize it somehow and give me an option to hide it. I know we can do that with different topics, but I don't for example want to hide all political stories or all video/board game stories. I think the trouble with that would be that the category may wind up too broad (like topics are) or too narrow to be of reliable use for my purposes.

I don't mind the occasional "yay, we made progress!" article. It's the "so-and-so is a sexist!" and "so-and-so hates women!" and "everyone can code!" and "programmers are pro rape!" articles that get under my skin.

this is great!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

So, my suggestion would be to carefully think out whats posted??

It seems the individuals at "DHI" lost sight of that early on. Which really hurt the credibility of the publication severly..
I have been an avid reader since 1998, the last round of "editors" almost drove me away..

I hope the new individuals in charge, dont follow the same suit.

But so far, I can definately notice an improvement over the "tools" in place previously..

Thank YOU!!!

here's looking at you, kid

[Anonymous Coward]

I think slashdot would be improved by the public nonlogin pages being cgi generated without javascript and the rich features of slashdot viewing be accessible by only star users or pre-payed as an application server content delivery. This would integrate as a Slashdot privileged function much the same manner as a profile page having a stock or bean counter. Domain functionality could extend to a desktop in the same way as Cloud computing, and accessible peers could participate as a form of distributed cluster meshnet application servers; we will call it The Freeway.

Bingo!

[laurencetux]

i think that filled about 3 different lines on my buzzword bingo card

a tweak to modding for you

[laurencetux]

unlock less than -1 moderation but to make it harder to game rig it so that you need the SQUARE of the absolute number to get pushed to that level (so 4 downmods from -1 to get -2 9 downmods to get to -3).

also have Karma depend partly on the number of down mods you do

but yes Unicode support with a filter for the more "interesting" type characters would be a good idea

Prove it KGIII & Ublock= inferior imitation

[Anonymous Coward]

Can ublock do 16 things hosts do 4 speed, security, & reliability:

1.) Protect vs. malicious sites (past ads)
2.) Protect vs. fastflux botnets/stop C&C's
3.) Protect vs. dyndns botnets/stop C&C's
4.) Protect vs. DGA botnets/stop C&C's
5.) Protect vs. downed DNS (4 reliability)
6.) Protect vs. poisoned dns
7.) Protect vs. trackers
8.) Protect vs. spam
9.) Protect vs. phish
10.) Protect vs. caps
11.) Get by dns blocks
12.) Keep off dns request logs
13.) Speed up surfing by adblocks & hardcoded favs
14.) Work on anything webbound multiplatform.
15.) Ez data control
16.) Block ads better than addons more efficiently

* ANSWER ="NO" on UBlock doing 'em as well or @ all + hosts = on devices natively.

* UBlock Origin NOW USES HOSTS - imitation = sincerest form of flattery - it's NO resolver & can't do DNS stuff in my list above hosts can!

APK

P.S.=> Hosts do MORE w/ less vs. UBlock + Hosts start w/ IP stack before REDUNDANT inefficient addons BEGIN to operate (as 1st resolver):

Ublock's inefficient:

Hosts @ 3mb-11mb w/ current data vs. threats + ads - test yourself.

UBlock uses 63++ MB -> http://www.ghacks.net/2014/06/...

Proof-> http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-conte...

---

ClarityRay defeats it via native browser methods!

---

UBlock adds complexity/room for breakdown/exploit + from a slow mode of operation (usermode = more messagepassing overhead vs. hosts in kernelmode).

---

The best = APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit -> http://start64.com/index.php?o...

MalwareBytes' hpHosts Admin (MalwareBytes employee who verified its source is safe http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... ) hosts & recommends it -> http://hosts-file.net/?s=Downl... & MalwareBytes = BEST antivirus http://www.av-test.org/en/news...

It's GUARANTEED safe & clean per it being checked by 57 antivirus programs recently in BOTH its 64-bit model https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

+

Its 32-bit model also https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

&

Installer -> http://f.virscan.org/APKHostsF...

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[AmiMoJo]

You are reading things into those articles that just are not there. You realize it's impossible to discuss these issues if you ignore what is actually said and just assume stuff, right?

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[insanecarbonbasedlif]

I suspect there's a line of code in the "assignModPoints" function that says something like

if(freaks.contains("pudge")) return 0;

I haven't gotten mod points in a long time either, though I suspect in my case that I had turned off the "willing to moderate" option when it existed in the user options, and unrelated to that pudge foed me at a later time.

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[david_thornley]

I haven't seen many Gamer Gate articles on Slashdot since it was actually going on and at least moderately interesting.

I haven't seen any "We already have accepted that climate change is 100% man-made now how do we convince the idiots" articles. Articles on the effects of anthropogenic global warming do count as news for nerds, stuff that matters. There have been articles on new developments, IPCC reports, and other significant events.

I haven't seen "You're all bad people because women chose to go into other job fields other than technology" articles. I have seen articles on studies of gender balance in technical fields, and attempts by some companies to see if they can affect that. That's important news for nerds, at least for the ones who haven't completely given up on getting laid sometime. It doesn't do quite as well on the "stuff that matters" metric.

I have seen comment threads that argue about Gamer Gate long after I ceased to care even as much as I once did. I have seen comment threads by AGW deniers. (There are darn few AGW skeptics, and they generally don't have strong opinions.) I have seen comment threads that reacted strongly to attempts to poke at gender distribution in tech, including people who seemed to think that the current status quo is FSMly ordained and should not be questioned.

There's been plenty of lame articles on the front page, but you seem to be objecting to comment threads. That's not something our new organic overlords have much control over.

Re:Reposting my comment from the original article.

[david_thornley]

There's going to be data races with multiple asynchronous connections limited by lightspeed, so it won't be possible to tell if somebody's clicked the reply button in actual real time. (There will be other delays in the process that goes from a browser UI event to a TCP/IP notification and to a server wherever the heck Slashdot keeps its servers, which will probably be more significant than the speed-of-light ones, but I'm fairly sure that's at least several light-milliseconds from here.)

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[Kohath]

Did any other Linux kernel developers ever quit? Maybe because they felt bad about how they were treated? Was it news at the time? Why not?

If you can explain why it's news, then I can explain why it's only news because some people have an agenda to divide people and promote an attack against one side. If you want to claim ignorance, then no one can explain anything because it's all a big unknowable mystery.

Would it matter if Jesus Christ posted it?

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: Was it not true KGIII? If you say it's not I will crush you easily with facts in my finding documentation from MS that put away Mark Russinovich AND ALL OF ARSTECHNICA easily (as well as my finding a ROOKIE LEVEL HARDCODE IN Mark Russinovich's pagedefrag which HE THANKED ME FOR by email no less).

The part on Schrock's PUREST truth too - especially on CA his partner in crime libeling me who had to rescind a false threat on 1 of my apps & it was Schrock who submitted it - I loved making them EAT THEIR WORDS, it was very easy to do (1 of many false positives with at LEAST 10 antivirus companies I've disproved over time on a few programs of mine no less)... above all else, they're birds of a feather flocking together (accounting fraud is a major crime pal).

APK

P.S.=> I can EASILY back anything I say or have said as truth with backing facts from reputable sources backing me!

Including showing how poor UBlock is like all addons are in:

1.) Abilities hosts have addons don't
2.) Inefficiency in cpu/ram/messagepassing overheads
3.) Redundant useless as hosts operate as 1st resolver
4.) Addons being clarityray/blockiq/pagefair detected and blocked
5.) Addons being SOLD OUT so they don't work (not yet with UBlock though) by default fully which advertisers know most users won't change
6.) UBlock = a paper rose IMITATION USING HOSTS (but not as fully so they don't work vs. DNS tracking or to avoid DNS security issues)

Care to dispute that? Didn't think so!

(Yes - you'll AVOID IT TO NO END & I know it - you have to - it's NOT debateable validly since it's nothing more than facts & truth & YOU KNOW IT!)

... apk

Re:Would it matter if Jesus Christ posted it?

[KGIII]

Well, at least you owned up to that post. That said, you seem to have me confused for someone who's unaware of the technical benefits to using a hosts file. I appreciate that you feel obligated to instruct me on their usage but there's a good chance that I was using a hosts file before you were born.

That said, it's even more amusing that you seem to indicate that you are aware of my goals. Security is about accepting a certain level of risk and hardship in order to achieve a goal. Security is a process, not an application. The greatest security (or privacy) tool you have available to you is in the operator's seat. Unfortunately, that can mean that such is also the least strong tool.

Not only does your program not work for me (and probably never will as you're a Windows user) but it doesn't support things like wildcards. I *like* being able to selectively allow or disallow access to my system based on my goals and what risks I'm willing to accept to reach those goals. I do not rely on uBlock to do anything more than block ads. I have multiple tools in my toolbox. One of those tools is uBlock.

I don't need to prove you factually incorrect. I only need to demonstrate that you're not salient. Not one damned thing you've said actually matters. I know what my tools do. I know how to use them. I've been doing so since the days before you actually had a computer. Your rant has not one damned thing to do with anything I said - not even a little. You're trying to tell me to use a hammer when the actual goal isn't to pound anything in at all.

That, good Sir, is the entire point. I don't HAVE to prove you incorrect. Why would I? I need only demonstrate that you're irrelevant, off-topic, and unable (unwilling?) to actually understand the goals. You're a direct representation of the things you profess to dislike, up to and including sending unsolicited advertisements and refusing to understand the benefits of alternatives.

I've no interest in adding the curating of a hosts file to my day. It does not do what I want it to do for the goals that I have. No, I've got enough compute cycles that enable me to afford them and use multiple approaches to achieve a blended security solution that allows me the greatest amount of refinement and enables me to do so with the least amount of effort. I have zero interest, at this time, in using a hosts file as one of those tools but I am not unfamiliar with the use and have used such in the past. Furthermore, your program is of zero value to me as it simply can not work with my operating system - not even in WINE.

Tags

[hierofalcon]

How about increasing the detail of the tags and turning each detailed tag into an easy to browse discussion group that isn't tied to news stories. Let the editors figure out some tree hierarchy that would be sane to select from.

Depending on their visibility, they may or may not be used, but having a computers/operating systems/linux/systemd tagged discussion group that reduced even a few percent of the flame wars about it in stories about new versions of linux would be a good thing.

Don't allow AC posting in the discussion threads. Limit the posts each person can make per discussion group to x per week so people have to think a bit more about what they say. Actively monitor the discussion and news threads and if it looks like a new subject is being started assign it a new tag and add it into the tree as its own thread. Alternatively add a new topic flag similar to the report abuse tag that would alert an editor to examine the thread for this activity.

Too many stories devolve into the same general discussion - many examples given in the posts in this thread - climate change, use of natural resources, solar power, electric cars, creation, politics, privacy, elections, .... Provide forums for discussing the basic topics and maybe the story threads would remain more pertinent to the story at hand. If they started overlapping a discussion thread, the editors could move that part of the thread over to the proper discussion thread for continued comments.

Re:Start with removing the malware from SourceForg

[gfunicus]

thanks!

Mess with moderation at your peril

[Puff_Of_Hot_Air]

The moderation system, more than any other singular thing, is what defines Slashdot. Getting a +5 insightful on this forum means something, and that can't be said of many forums. Every rule of the moderation system, every quirk, has been thought out and refined over a long period of time. It's much like software; "why does this legacy thing do this craziness?" And then you look through the history and see the strange edge case that it solves. There would be no quicker way to destroy this place, then to move too quickly on the moderation system.

Having said that, there are things that could improve (such as enforcing the "no down mod because you disagree rule"), but slow down cowboy, slow down.

First, FIX your sites' code.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about start by fixing your sites' HTML & CSS to properly define text AND background colours, not just one or the other? It looks as if someone did a lazy-ass copy & paste from someone else's half-assed code, just like every other lazy-assed website designer. Right now you blame users (if you deign to respond at all) for your failures to conform to standards and proper styles. No one should be forced to change their browser settings to accomodate lazy coding. It's not their responsibility.

Re:First, FIX your sites' code.

[whipslash]

Yes we will. Give us more than a week.

No more shilling stories

[EmperorOfCanada]

I am sick of these breathless reporting of products and services that have zero substance. I would say 90% of the stories with MIT in the title are after funding and the slashdot story is part of their social media campaign. The same goes with pretty much any product that relates to the Java market. New Mansanga on track to replace Hadoop 50% of fortune 500 companies this year. Hasume allows Java developers to deploy to over 30 mobile platforms.

And don't get me started on MS Surface. Those words should be spam banned from slashdot.

On the other-hand I haven't read a good story condemning a single product of a major chemical or pharmaceutical company in a few years. I wonder how they are suppressing those on Slashdot?

Re:No more shilling stories

[whipslash]

We're not receiving any money for stories, that I can assure you. I will make sure to keep a close eye on your suggestions

Re:No more shilling stories

[EmperorOfCanada]

Not so much /. getting the money so much as professional PR people manipulating accounts and votes to push/suppress things that they are paid big bucks to work on. How much do you think it would cost to create enough accounts to be able to get a story onto the main page? How many accounts would it take to suppress one?

With some nice automation, some solid VPN work; how many people would actually have to work at this?

My personal guess is a few thousand a month in VPN fees spread across some of the better and less detectable VPNs. One crappy server that keeps an eye out for keywords. A staff of one or two (time shifting). Plus the occasional update to the automation software.

Then the person would spend most of the day writing pretty useless vote-getting bandwagon comments that were spread across maybe 500-1000 accounts to keep them seemingly obvious. Then when a new PR article came in needing promotion it would be fed into the machine whereupon it would receive a steady stream of votes along with an assortment of non voting accounts writing praiseful comments.

On the flip side any negative comments on this or other "protected" issues would have a combination of downvoting accounts along with well crafted talking points.

Obviously it would be stupid to answer this but I suspect it would only take maybe 20-50 votes to get an issue front and center and even less to kill a topic that just popped up. Maybe 5.

The beauty of Slashdot's random karma issuing is that it would inherently disguise any group voting as there would have to be a large number of accounts so any group of accounts would be unlikely to show up as always voting on the same issues. Plus a good system would burn off any extra votes it had by some bandwagon jumping and voting up anything at a 4 and voting down anything at a 0.

If I were building such a system I would completely narrow it down to a much simpler interface where I would only see filtered comments and when I took actions they would be very simple. I would choose how many votes to go for or against any given comment, and I would choose the rate so emergencies would have the votes come in over a few seconds where others might take 10 or so minutes. Also the system would take care of such issues as more positive votes coming in at a later time also being shot down fairly quickly.

The same with any issue that I want to support. I would basically say, keep voting until this ends up on the front page.

Plus any comments that I just added would also have a level they should be voted to and maintained. Again the system would give various options such as replies coming from the original account or if they were to appear to be someone else piling in.

Again what I am describing wouldn't be brutally hard to build. The primary problem with such a system is that it would take a while for the accounts to age nicely. Ideally such a system would continue to accumulate accounts.

Then slashdot would not be the only target. Reddit to just name one other would be wildly susceptible to such a system. Thus a PR company could pretty much offer a professional level of sock-puppetry that would be extraordinary yet I can't see their per article costs being that high. The value to fortune 500 companies would be very high.

For an interesting hamfisted attempt at this you can look at what the Canadian Telcos did when Verizon was rumoured to be coming to Canada. An actual competitor scared the crap out of them so they instructed their employees to all go onto any internet commentary and blast their point of view. It was amazing. Newspaper commentaries would have maybe 20 comments that would run "Great, I can't wait to see what happens with actual competition." Then where these telco people were using some kind of collective hub to identify places to assault they would find that newspaper comment section and there would suddenly be 200 comments saying, "It would be un-Canadian to support a job eating monster. Where is your loyalty to the grandfathers who died for your freedom to have a Canadian Telephone company?"

I suspect that they were contacted by the various PR firms that do this "properly" and very quickly sold.

My two cents

[Anonymous Coward]

Never, ever, abandon the two column format. I loves it and all web pages should have be restricted to two columns.

Never pop-up or pop-under. Only the spawn of Satan does this.

Never start streaming audio or video without asking.

videos

[amlu]

Get rid of the videos from front page. Especially mobile edition (takes like 3 screens of scrolling on Opera Mini browser).

Re:videos

[whipslash]

We very well might

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[damn_registrars]

I have been on pudge's perma-hate list longer than I've been on the no-mod-points-ever list. Pudge proudly added me to his perma-hate list back in 2008, though I definitely had mod points at least as recently as 2010 (and likely quite a bit more recently than that as well).

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[pecosdave]

Really?

It seems like people are ignoring the fact that overall women just don't want to do these things for a living and assume that it's a problem.

Who's reading things into situations?

I've worked with women in my field, I've got in-laws in my field that are female, they chose to do this sort of work and I don't see a problem with it. I like it.

Having at minimum one article a week calling it a problem is reading things into reality that just aren't there. Yes - having an occasional "why don't women want to work in STEM field?" article or "Here's why women shy away from STEM" is great - it belong on this site. At minimum one a week from a defacto position that it's a bad thing is doing exactly what you're accusing me of.

Add 'Parent' button back in to comments on mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was it removed from the mobile app? It's extremely important. It provides 100% necessary context to the discussion.

Fact: Your evasion = you can't prove me wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: ... & you know it - hence your evasion! Hosts = superior on these grounds vs. your inferior choice of UBlock:

2.) Inefficiency in cpu/ram/messagepassing overheads
3.) Redundant useless as hosts operate as 1st resolver
4.) Addons being clarityray/blockiq/pagefair detected and blocked
5.) Addons being SOLD OUT so they don't work (not yet with UBlock though) by default fully which advertisers know most users won't change
6.) UBlock = a paper rose IMITATION USING HOSTS (but not as fully so they don't work vs. DNS tracking or to avoid DNS security issues)
* 7,) BUT UBlock = SLOWER TOO just like adblock was found to be over @ superuser.com since iirc, it's adblock code it's based on largely & regexp's are EXPENSIVE on cpu/ram + messagepassing overheads addons have slowing browsers!

For someone "so old" allegedly in you (which means shit)?

I don't see YOU doing anything better in software than I have that BEATS THE HELL out of your poor choice in UBlock!

UBlock = A paper rose inefficient redundant easily detected & blocked, lesser in abilities but USING MORE RESOURCES imitation!

(Especially now that its using hosts but not as fully as hosts itself does from a faster level of operations in kernelmode vs. layering on MORE stupidly in a browser eating RAM + CPU like mad & increasing messagepassing overheads).

Don't TRY to tell me about security until the likes of CIS Tool takes security fixes from you as they have from myself & until you've written guides you were PAID FOR in security as I was based on the highly esteemed CIS tool (including 24++ yrs. professionally on all levels in this field almost over that timeframe with a GOOD trackrecord & resume in it)

APK

P.S.=> What you've demonstrated is EVASION... apk

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[dyslexicbunny]

My mod points number just says Oprah. Or at least it feels like it. I get them all the damn time.

I had quit reading for a while and came back still getting a bajillion of them. Always 5 to spend but once I use them, they're back in a couple of days. I guess it's fine cause I generally have nothing mod up worthy to say and I guess the metamod keeps giving me good scores. It just seems weird to get so many mod points as a rather lackluster contributor. But maybe that's what one wants in a system.

People don't like evasive doubletalkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's what wrong w/ UBlock vs. hosts - validly prove it wrong:

1.) Less abilities vs. hosts for speed, security, reliabilty, & anonymity online
2.) Inefficiency in cpu/ram/messagepass overhead
3.) Redundant as hosts operate as 1st resolver
4.) Clarityray/blockiq/pagefair detected and blocked
5.) Addons = SOLD OUT so they don't work (not yet w/UBlock) by default fully & advertisers know most users won't change it
6.) UBlock = paper rose IMITATION USING HOSTS (but not as fully so they don't work vs. DNS tracking or to avoid DNS security issues)
7,) UBlock = SLOWER like adblock was found to be over @ superuser.com since iirc, it's adblock code & regexp's are EXPENSIVE on cpu/ram + messagepassing overheads addons have slowing browsers!

For someone "so old" allegedly in you (which means shit)?

I don't see YOU doing anything better in software than I have that BEATS THE HELL out of your poor choice in UBlock!

UBlock = A paper rose inefficient redundant easily detected & blocked, lesser in abilities but USING MORE RESOURCES imitation!

(Especially now that its using hosts but not as fully as hosts itself does from a faster level of operations in kernelmode vs. layering on MORE stupidly in a browser eating RAM + CPU like mad & increasing messagepassing overheads).

Don't TRY to tell me about security until the highly esteemed CIS Tool takes security fixes from you as they have from myself & until you've written guides you were PAID FOR in security as I was (including 24++ yrs. professionally on all levels in this field almost over that timeframe with a GOOD trackrecord & resume in it)

APK

P.S.=> What you demonstrate = EVASION vs. a fair challenge + trying to use "I'm older" bs. vs. me - is that supposed to be an "appeal to authority" (invalid in debate)? I'm the authority on security & hosts BY FAR vs. yourself if that is valid per you using it, not you, mathman... apk

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[Anubis IV]

I remember there being a setting many years ago that allowed you to turn off being given mod points. It was for people like me who wanted nothing to do with moderating and instead preferred to just respond. I enabled it years ago, but in looking for it again over the years I've been unable to find it, and I haven't received any mod points in at least 5 years, despite having Excellent karma the entire time. So, I'd assume the setting is still somewhere, but that I just don't know where.

Let us ignore comments by keyword

[supabeast!]

I almost never post on Slashdot because I don’t want anything to do with the comments pages. And I don’t want anything to do with the comments pages because it’s always the same tired old arguments about stuff like systemd, women programmers, immigrants taking jobs, and politics—often even when the topic has nothing to do with those things. I’d love to be able to create a list of words and have Slashdot just not show me those comments, similar to how I was able to block John Katz stories in a previous epoch.

Your arrogant mouth = your undoing again

[Anonymous Coward]

"I was using a hosts file before you were born." - by KGIII (973947) on Wednesday February 03, 2016 @03:38PM (#51433899)

Hosts were invented WHEN, KGIII? I was around BEFORE there was an IP stack for them to be added to, bigmouth!

Retired? Heh, I've BEEN RETIRED (only consulting on contract to Fortune 100-500 for a GOOD decade now completely independent with my money working for me, vs. the other way around with my own businesses doing well in that timeframe - how about you?)

APK

P.S.=> Keep RUNNING "Forrest" - you're doing wonders for your 'credibility' (along with your habits I've read about in heroin, which face it - makes you stupid to do it in the 1st place - & trying to use "I'm older" bullshit when you haven't done what I have in security or computing & yet TRY tell ME how "security is" when the likes of CIS Tool took my fixes AND I was paid for guides in security) - you keep running you ARROGANT blowhard, from this -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Re:Your arrogant mouth = your undoing again

[KGIII]

Well, son... It's time to teach you a lesson. See, hosts were around before we had the DNS system. Allow me to show you when we started to move past them, in December of 1973...
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/...

You're in your 30s, Alex. Being unemployed does not make you retired. It makes you unemployed. Collecting disability doesn't make you retired, it makes you unable to work.

As for your other posts, I see you failed to read mine and understand it. That's okay, APK. I'm kind of used to it. You failed to address any of my points. I do not *need* you to tell me about hosts. I'm well aware of what hosts do and the benefits of using them or not using them. I've never denied the technical merits of using a hosts file - ever. We've been over this before. Let me know when hosts can be refined as well as a whole host of other options. At this point in time, I have better choices for me. At this point in time, I have an effective system that's efficient with my time. It does everything I need it to do in the ways that I want to do them. I do things that the hosts file simply can not do. If the hosts file were a better tool for the job I want done, I'd do it. That's what you're continually not understanding. It's not even a difficult concept.

As for the rest of your many posts... Do you seriously think that crap-flooding and pretending to not be you is believed by anyone? If mildly amusing is your goal, you've managed.

/.'ers quoted liking my ware & posts

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: You try "downtalk" me? Here's quoted proof from fellow /.'ers:

"his hosts program is actually pretty good" - by xenotransplant (4179011) on Monday August 10, 2015 @03:34PM (#50287195)

"his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources" by alexgieg (948359) on Friday September 25, 2015 @09:57AM (#50596461)

"I like your host file system." - by Karmashock (2415832) on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:57PM (#50489401)

"No complaints from me, I like APK's spam. Reminds me to use a host file. Also, his stuff is free." - by aaaaaaargh! (1150173) on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @09:31AM (#50947415)

"APK is kinda right... I've given up on JS based adblocking and gone to blackholing in /etc/hosts, just like it was back in the 90s. The computational load has gotten intolerable for any ad-blocking using JS. I've tried his hosts file generating software. It works." - by bmo (77928) on Thursday October 15, 2015 @11:30AM (#50736071)

"Actually, APK is totally right on this count. Adblock Plus on Firefox mobile is a dog on older, or lower end, phones. A hostfile based adblocker makes for a much better experience in this context. Of course, your phone has to be rooted, which isn't the case with Firefox + adblock." - by chihowa (366380) on Saturday May 16, 2015 @11:40AM (#49705641)

"In a footnote, I would like to note that I find your hosts file admirable." - by vel-ex-tech (4337079) on Tuesday November 24, 2015 @10:27PM (#50999097)

"APK isn't wrong" - by cfalcon (779563) on Sunday October 04, 2015 @05:11PM (#50657891)

APK

P.S.=> Keep running, arrogant BLOWHARD -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... as it's all you can manage (I don't see anyone saying your posts on ANY WARE YOU'VE WRITTEN (none) is good + on security (which you have ZERO to your credit in also)... apk

Re: /.'ers quoted liking my ware & posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Many aliases you have, hmmm?

Re:Put the "read more" link back, better mobile si

[omnichad]

Isn't Read More redundant when the headline's already a clickable link?

Need more ponies

[mdhoover]

And hot grits

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[AmiMoJo]

Evidence suggests that women are interested. I'm yet to see a peer reviewed study that says they are not. People latch on to studies that say men and women are different, especially as young children, but never any that show gender equals a lack of interest in male dominated careers as a (young) adult.

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[AmiMoJo]

Well, yes, a few men and women have given up contributing directly due to the problems on the LKML. Alan Cox comes to mind.

Story categories

[steveg]

I use the YRO feed as input to a class I'm teaching, since it parallels much of the subject matter of the class. I go over interesting tidbits with the class to inject a bit of "current events" into our discussions.

Even before Dice took over, I'd scratch my head over some of the completely unrelated articles that made their way into the feed, and some obviously pertinent ones that got left out. Under Dice it got worse, to the point that I ended up writing a filter to block things that obviously didn't belong and add in some were left out but should have been there.

While *I* am interested in MIT's ARC reactor, what *possible* relationship does it have with "Your Rights Online"?

When the new management took over, I was hoping I could retire that filter. No such luck -- the "irrelevancy" score is now approaching 50%, and since the choice of what to block and what to add is all manual, it's become a real pain in the butt to maintain.

On the other hand, I'm glad I have the filter, because the raw feed would be unusable.

two points.

[edibobb]

1. There have been pop culture articles invading Slashdot, probably to generate clicks. This throws away Slasdot's competitive advantage. Don't dilute the good stuff and become CNN or Huffpost. It will never work. 2. If I have something to say, I can often type it in time to get a stupid "slow down cowboy" message. Time between posts is a reasonable limit. But "time to type a post" is counterproductive, ignorant, sexist, racist, and fattening. 3. Did I mention you should lose the off-topic articles?

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[MachineShedFred]

Anonymous posting is still incredibly useful - I've seen a lot of comments from people inside the organization that TFA was about, where they wanted to clear up a few points, but couldn't do it in a way that is traceable back to them because they aren't authorized to speak on any kind of official record for the company.

Anonymity should be celebrated, rather than abolished.

Re:Not putting globalist propaganda all over the p

[pecosdave]

If they're interested they should do it. Motivating those that are isn't going to do a lot for those that aren't.

Articles on Slashdot trying to guilt trip me over it isn't going to do anything. We are the choir - send the missionaries to Pinterest where those that aren't hang out.

Autorefresh must die

[Anonymous Coward]

For pity sake, get rid of auto refresh - it sucks golfballs through garden hose.

Re:Overhaul comment system.

[MachineShedFred]

Yeah, cloning Reddit isn't useful, as you just throw out the good that this system has in favor of the widely-documented bad that Reddit has.

There are ways to improve upon both, that don't involve a wholesale rip and replace of one for the other.

Re:Overhaul comment system.

[MachineShedFred]

I would absolutely LOVE a "-1, /dev/null" moderation option. It would increase the usefulness of the mod system, and be of a flavor that this site would immediately recognize.

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[c]

My UID is only 2,613,107 which is over double yours...logically you should be getting mod points far more often than I am.

Trust me on this... it doesn't work that way.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[DerekLyons]

When I hear someone say "Get rid of AC," I interpret that as "Children should be seen and not heard,' where adults == people who have taken the time to register, and who have some form of local reputation on the line.

I read it as "and get of my lawn and take those dirty [epithets] [object of hatred] with you!".

Virtual +1

[DerekLyons]

I've already commented, and so can't use my points here... but consider yourself virtually modded up.

Disable automatic page reloading

[SoftwareArtist]

It's such a little thing to fix, and it drives me crazy. I'll be looking at the front page, reading a story, when... bang! The browser window goes blank, then reloads, jumps around a few times in the process, and after 5-10 seconds finally settles down somewhere that's different from where I was, so I have to scroll back to find the story I was reading. If I want to reload the page, I'll hit the reload button!

Do a web search for "prevent slashdot automatic reloading", and you'll find lots of pages with people complaining about this problem and suggesting not very satisfactory solutions to it. For example, https://webapps.stackexchange....

My suggestions

[jonwil]

1.No more stories that link to pay-walled sites or sites that wont load if you run an ad-blocker. This includes stores that link to Forbes and also stories where the primary source of the information is a journal article that costs money to read.

2.Get rid of (or at least make it possible to totally hide) the "slashdot top deals", "video bytes" and "get the slashdot newsletters" boxes.

3.Have a box in the firehose for "mark this as SPAM" where people can mark things that are clearly SPAM rather than a legitimate firehose entry so it can be removed or hidden (and we have less SPAM cluttering up the firehose)

4.Focus more on stories that are actually "news for nerds". The Tesla story a few stories above this one isn't "news for nerds" just because its about Tesla. The story about the democrats in Iowa isn't "news for nerds" either. Nor are stories about labor issues at Uber or the fact that some company (technical or otherwise) is firing a bunch of people.

5.Get rid of all bundled downloads and adware and stuff on Sourceforge. Every file Sourceforge sends out should be the exact file uploaded by the projects owners.

6.https support with all the latest security stuff. If it doesn't get the highest possible mark on https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltes... you are doing it wrong IMO. This includes doing everything possible to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. (I believe at least one of the Snowden leaks pointed to Slashdot by name)

7.Make the site more lightweight (anything that can be done to reduce the size of page downloads is a good thing)

8.Completely end the use of Flash or any other closed-source plugin anywhere on Slashdot. Yes that includes getting your ad provides and those who advertise on the site not to use Flash (or getting new ones if they wont agree).

9.Do everything possible to prevent the site (including the ads on the site) from serving up any kind of malware. (ending the use of Flash and Flash ads will help with this since Flash is the #1 malware delivery system on the web)

10.Editors who do their job. No more stories missing a link to the actual article or with spelling mistakes everywhere.

I don't DO that - you weasels do... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject - keep projecting your modus operandi along with failing vs. me @ every single turn, lol...

APK

P.S.=> You know that I've just GOT to say this, now don't you? Ah, but of COURSE you do & "here 'tis" as usual (as per my inimitable style):

THIS?

This was all just "too, Too, TOO EASY - just '2ez'" & it always IS vs. limited dolt trolls on /. (who have the Intellects of carrots & are "ne'er-do-well" trolls)... apk

Please offer non-volatile pagination.

[PJ6]

First up, I have never, ever seen your "mobile" site... it's blank. Always. Both on my phone and on my main machines. I've had to change my phone's browser UserAgent just to get the links I open to stop redirecting to "m.slashdot" even though I have an "always desktop mode" plugin.

Anyway, I read Slashdot mostly on my phone when I'm out and bored. I try to review every summary that I haven't seen yet, and open a new tab for each article I want to read as I go. Sometimes I get interrupted, and when I come back, slashdot auto-reloads and annoys the hell out of me by making me lose my place. Sometimes, it will auto-reload while I'm in the middle of reading a summary and every time I wonder why the hell anyone would want such an annoying feature.

This is, however, a symptom of the underlying problem that your pagination always changes every time an article is added. I would like the option to browse with URLs that use constant pagination. The simplest would be by day.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[dgatwood]

When I hear someone say "Get rid of AC," I interpret that as "Children should be seen and not heard,' where adults == people who have taken the time to register, and who have some form of local reputation on the line. You're not wrong, but you're missing out on some priceless truth from time to time if you do that.

Agreed. Eliminating AC would be bad, m'kay.

Sometimes there are valid reasons to post as an AC, like when you work for a company that's being talked about or whose product/technology area/business model is being talked about, and you want to correct other people's mistakes without taking the risk that something you say might get quoted by the news media as "a(n) [insert company here] employee said". Yes, some people abuse that privilege for shilling, but lots of people take advantage of that privilege to avoid risking their jobs when they're saying something critical of those companies, too, or saying something neutral that still might be taken the wrong way.

The same goes for sensitive topic areas (though these tend to be kind of outside Slashdot's normal focus area). Sometimes, an AC post might take a contrarian devil's advocate position to encourage people to dig deeper and form a more nuanced opinion, without taking a huge risk of personal embarrassment if someone thought that the poster actually believed that position. The poster might even be willing to share certain personal insights anonymously that he/she would be embarrassed to post in an attributed fashion because of the stigma associated with it, such as talking openly and honestly about having been sexually abused or something.

And heck, sometimes an AC post might even be a whistleblower. Obviously, without any way to verify the authenticity of that person, there's the risk of abuse and even libel, but on the flip side, there's also a very real possibility that an AC might say something that gets people looking in the right places to find out about something really bad that a company is doing.

So I think that eliminating ACs would be a really bad idea. With that said, I wouldn't mind limits on how many times you can post as an AC from a single IP without logging in, nor would I mind stronger spam filters/redundant content filters on AC posts. There are probably a fair number of things that you could do to reduce the most egregious AC abuse without affecting its legitimate use much at all, and I'd be in favor of those approaches.

My list

[EdwardFurlong]

Probably things that have already been said, but...

Sometimes there are so many links in a summary there is more text linked than not. (Do we need seven links in a summary)?

Links should go to the original source, why link to a press release that links to the homepage that does not directly link to anything?

No links to Forbes.

Re:My list

[EdwardFurlong]

Also need a way to see what posts I have already looked at. I don't usually come back to reread the comment section because I do not want to reread everything to find the 25% new.

I don't watch videos here.

I don't really care about the moderation system, I view all. I would leave AC posting, leave out editing, it's good practice, not like this is a typo going to the CEO or anything.

Maybe some different content, seems most of what I see here I can see on google news yesterday in the science/tech/health/politics section.

Would be good to see that someone from /. is at least reading the comments and acknowledges concerns, not moderating and replying to every post, but at least knowing that someone sees the concerns.

Mod parent up!

[Astro Dr Dave]

I absolutely agree. Given the choice to reply or moderate a misleading or erroneous post I'll moderate every time, for exactly this reason. I don't think it's because the reply is wrong, rather it isn't seen due to having a low initial score, and coming at a later time when it is more likely to get overlooked.

Long List of Suggestions

[penguinoid]

Definitely want:
*Unicode.
*All slashvertizements should be clearly labeled.
*Get rid of the redundant page when viewing messages.
*If you must link to a paywalled or adblock-walled site, at least put a warning.
*When you decide what changes you want to make to the site, let us know, preferably before developing them. Especially the ones you're undecided about.
*Have someone literate check each story for spelling and grammar.
*(Read More) should have setting for activation threshold and shrink-to size.
*Tracking mod abuse, specifically multiple downmods targeting a particular person, especially with sock-puppet accounts.
*Allow stories to be moderated troll/flamebait/offtopic, so you have something to point to when your evil corporate overlords demand more comments/pageviews at cost of quality.
*Anti-spam, check for near-identical posts that have been downmodded.

Maybe want:
*Display more comments for stories with few comments, less when there are many.
*Lower mod cap when story has few comments, larger mod cap when there are many.
*Moderation and posting in the same story, but prioritizes such mods for metamoderation. And maybe not in the same thread.
*Display comments that have been modded up and down a lot, even if at low score.
*Visual cue for new comments (since last page load)
*Edit button, but treated with extreme paranoia. All edits have to be vetted by humans before they become the default view of that post, can be voted to revert back, and even then a link to the original version(s). And for good measure, all replies get marked as replying to an edited post, or perhaps no edits when there is a reply. Less paranoia acceptable if comment has not been modded nor has anyone clicked "reply", or if it consists only of appending "Edit(on date/time): blah blah". Failure to treat with enough paranoia will result in +5, Informative links to goatse.

Don't want:
*Don't make too many big changes at once, especially of the vernerable old ways.
*Don't eliminate Anonymous Coward posts. Would just result in throwaway accounts. And there is no free speach without anonymity.
*Don't allow inline display of images. It would require a lot of brain-bleach.
*Don't allow editing posts, not without extreme paranoia. It will be abused and people will ignore preview even more.

A few ideas

[cold fjord]

Make story submissions anonymous to anyone voting on them except editors. Ideally you would also prevent anyone visiting the firehose from visiting the home page of individual users for several hours (maybe six) to see if a particular person submitted a story. The summary and links contain all the key information needed to make a reasonable judgement as to the suitability and quality of the submission. Showing the user that submitted the story just leaves it open to abusive voting. I'm reasonably certain that a number of my stories have been voted down over time simply because I'm the one that submitted them. Submitting the same story anonymously resulted them not being voted down or it took much longer for it to occur. There is an example today. I submitted three stories. The John Cleese story was done anonymously and and went into the home page despite touching the topic of SJW which many people oppose as a topic. It was highly commented on. I also submitted a story on Hillary Clinton's email anonymously and it seems to have gotten a few votes and hung around for quite a long time. I submitted a story about Canada stopping cooperation with the NSA three times. Twice it was with my user account, and it was quickly voted down, the third I did it anonymously and it lasted much longer although it seems to have eventually been voted down. This is additionally interesting since many people on Slashdot rejoice in any sort of pullback, failure, or limitations on or by the intelligence agencies. If the voting were fair and even handed I would expect it to at least linger, or maybe be selected. However at the same time that story was being quickly voted down, a story on a Barbie doll animated movie lingered in the queue. If it is still considered important to have some contextual information about the author you could use color codes for different levels: first time/new submitter, under 10, experienced submitter.

You might think about splitting up the submission queue or voting in some fashion to make manipulating story votes tougher. From time to time I've seen stories quickly down voted (even when all were submitted anonymously IIRC) when the story might be considered to reflect poorly in some fashion on a country. One story was regarding cybercrime and Brazil. This happened at least two, maybe three times. My assumption is that it was some sort of coordinated down vote by citizens of or advocates for those countries, or maybe even criminal hackers with puppet accounts. The story itself as as good or better than a fair number that get into the home page. I think I've also seem something similar for Russia. There are many different ways this might be done.

There are no doubt many pluses and minuses to having anonymous coward posts. I think some of the less agreeable aspects of them could be mitigated by the following: Require the first 5-10 posts to a new story be made by someone logged in, with their username, and with at least positive to good karma, or maybe higher. That should help reduce the incentive and ability to engage in "first post" nonsense, as well as the initial blocks of posts being trolls of various sorts. It could also establish a better foundation for other comments.

Some people are proposing removing various posts altogether, such as the "GNA" toll posts. Another possibility might be to subject them to ROT-13, or collapse them so that you have to click a button to reveal it. Trolls want to be seen and offend. Removing their power to do so helps remove their incentive to post. (Pure ROT-13 might not be the best since I have little doubt a creative troll will simply include the ROT-13 version with the original.)

The typical handling of stories is posted on front page today, gone tomorrow. People tend to jump in immediately to make initial posts without really reading the story so many of the comments are uninformed, irrelevant, or pointless. There are tw

web page compatibility

[The_Revelation]

A while back Slashdot decided to redesign its web page resulting in the website being broken. I mentioned to CMDR Taco a number of times of browsing the site in anything but Internet Explorer being broken, which was always ironic in my mind, being that /. is famously so anti MS. I called the redesign /. - Digg edition, but I think /. called it 'version 2.0'

Anyway, enough changes were reversed from the roll-out of 2.0 or whatever, except for the mobile component. Usually, you CAN make the /. work on a mobile device still, but you first have to put up with it long enough to find the 'view desktop site' button. I'm unsure why /. serves the broken mobile version at all - it doesn't work properly - particularly on mobiles.

Also, I kind of wish /. was able to divorce Sourceforge - that place will never recover its reputation.

One more for now

[cold fjord]

There seem to be a number of people that operate like this in fact and just intention. I hope you find some way to make useful reforms. I could probably find plenty of examples.

Adding some transparency to AC

[cold fjord]

I seem to recall from some Slashdot doc or post that raw IP addresses aren't logged, but only MD5 representations of them. It might be interesting to put either that hash, or some salted one, into the header of a post, especially for ACs. It seems clear that some ACs are conducting "conversations" with themselves. Throwing a little light on that might be good for Slashdot.

Re:Reposting my comment from the original article.

[dgatwood]

This would have to be done carefully, i.e. you can't post an edit after someone has clicked the reply button (not actually posted the reply). And the person replying would need to be notified if the post had been changed since the page was loaded.

I would suggest instead:

• Modify the non-JavaScript post page to show the post to which you're replying in addition to your own post, as I think it used to do years ago.
• Can't post an edit after someone has posted the reply.
• When anybody else clicks any of Reply, Preview, or Post, if someone has edited the original post at that point, show a "the comment you are replying to has been edited", and update the original post above your comment immediately. If they clicked "Post", treat it as "Preview" instead when this happens.

This simplifies the logic by not needing to globally track whether anybody is currently replying to a post, whether they've cancelled that reply, etc. It also maximizes the window for edits.

How to improve slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine as it is, leave it alone. Eject bosses who think "its time for a revamp" - they're a blasted nuisance everywhere.

Re:How to improve slashdot

[whipslash]

There won't be a "revamp". Just small iterative improvements based on user feedback

Improve comment code.

[rew]

I wrote an elaborate comment the day before yesterday. I had to leave and when I came back to it yesterday, I finished it and hit submit. Poof! gone!

What a higher mod cap achieves

[GPS Pilot]

The current score cap of 5 is an arbitrarily chosen number. Because of that arbitrary cap, we end up with some +5 comments that are much better than others.

Lift the cap, and users will be able to see what the Slashdot community truly thinks about each comment. Then we will see, for example, the occasional incredibly profound comment attain a score of +10, and we can filter accordingly if there are a large number of +5s and we don't have time to read them all.

Direct messaging? He is NOT kidding you.

[GPS Pilot]

Allowing Slashdot members to send private messages to each other is a vital need. There are times when

* members want to continue a conversation with each other, while drifting into off-topic territory
* one member wants to pick the brain of another and/or collaborate on Something Big
* member A is so impressed with member B's posts, that A wants to offer employment to B.

Currently, if you want to contact another Slashdot member, you use the kludge of replying to one of that member's comments. And of course there's no guarantee that member is even checking to see whether any replies are coming in. Furthermore there's no way to privately exchange phone numbers, etc. Put my email address into my profile? Are you kidding me??

Slashdot is a collection of really big brains, who are unbelievably handicapped by the lack of a way to communicate with each other. Unleash the potential! By doing so, Slashdot would attract even more really big brains.

Re:Direct messaging? He is NOT kidding you.

[BarbaraHudson]

Why are you so afraid of putting your email address in your profile? Oh, right, Paranoia strikes deep, Into your life it will creep, It starts when you're always afraid, Step out of line, the men come and take you away.

My email address is in my profile, and people have contacted me that way, no problem. I've also posted my physical address in discussions a few times when people (read: Idiot named Brianna Wu) started whining about "OMG they have my address, they have pictures of where I live", etc. My phone number is also on the net in several places. Big deal ...

You're not so smart if you're overthinking the problem.

Comment editing and Likes

[srijon]

TLDR version: I spend a lot of time on Xenforo. On Slashdot I really miss the ability to edit comments, as well as a low-friction Like button. I think /. needs that.

The /. commenting system and Mod points (or God points as I call them) are antiquated and its hurting the community.

Here's why:

Slashdot's commenting system evolved in a time when a typical story had 1000-1500 comments. The comment moderation system was both necessary and innovative. Today it isn.t. There isn't a story on the front page of /. right now with more than 130 comments. A rare story spikes with several thousand comments, but that is atypical. We have lost commenters. The needs of the comment moderation system have changed. Web conventions have shifted but /. has not kept pace.

New Voices
I believe contributors come to /., write a comment or two, don't receive any mod points, nobody responds, their comment disappears, they get disappointed and leave. (this is a guess - it would be interesting to back this with actual data).

A low-friction Like button would be a way to acknowledge or reward a post without needing M[G]od privileges - it would be a way to encourage users to participate, and to recognize new voices.. A "Like" could be treated as e.g. 1/4 of a Mod point for filtering purposes. Fleshing out a Like feature could be part of a way of making /. more social, along with building out better Profile page feature (come on - when was the last time any of you read another users profile page here? They are very broken.) I'd also love Alerts, so you can see when a comment has been responded to. Showing a users karma / level next to their comments would be valuable. Heck, why not just port /. to Xenforo! Ok, that's going too far, but you asked for ideas.

The Long Read
The fact that you cannot edit a comment or delete it means users have to get a comment just right first time. You cannot fix typos, add new ideas, refine your argument, or withdraw a point. It promotes rapid fire one-liners and trolling --- but this is already well served by Facebook and Twitter. The /. approach doesn't encourage longer-form commenting and intelligent discussion. And this is where /. is most needed.

Comment editing would I believe mostly be used by users to fix errors and refine their points or to add extra material. Obviously users could also abuse the system - get a highly modded comment, then modify the text to be offensive or completely change their argument, for example. That can be addressed by clearly indicating when a comment has been edited and offering a link to see the full edit history. Adding a "Report Abuse" button would help to out trolls and poor community players.

I'd like to see Slashdot evolve to better serve its existing users, but also to find new kinds of audiences and discussions. Embracing the editable social web is a step towards that.

Filter by article submitter

[Megane]

Allow us to filter by article submitter name. Old timers will surely remember the name "John Katz". Fortunately for our sanity, he always posted as an editor, and we were able to filter articles by the editor who posted them. (I can't find that filter option any more though.) Really, I'm only half joking, but it would be nice if we could do something about the clutter of all the articles by the usual suspects, like mdsolar, theodp, StartsWithABang, etc. I would be happy enough if you could set a config option to a list of names, and it folded the front page view of the article to just the title bar and who was the submitter. (People with no account can go stuff themselves, by the way. "Lazy ACs" are not good for /.)

LMAO - wrong AGAIN, arrogant imbecile... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not in my 30's moron - I'm well into my 50's, see subject & in the field of computing you are MY junior by far!

For all YOUR alleged years (which means SQUAT if you haven't done anything evidenceable with them), which I doubt are that much greater than my own, maybe, MAYBE a decade more?

You haven't done squat by comparison to myself in computing, much less security, AND CERTAINLY WITH HOSTS... & YET YOU "SEE FIT" to TRY "preach to me" or get "weight on me"?

You pitiful ARROGANT do-nothing motherfucker - you need to get OFF YOUR HIGH-HORSE & realize something, HEROIN JUNKIE - you haven't done SHIT by comparison to myself in the field of computing!

After all:

1.) Where's YOUR PROGRAM that manages them better than anyone else's under the sun?

2.) Where's YOUR submissions to SECURITY TOOLS like CIS Tool taking your fixes to it??

3.) Where's your SECURITY GUIDES you were paid for as I was (yet you *TRY* vainly to "preach to me" on hosts AND security in computing?? That's a laugh!)???

4.) Where's YOUR CODE IN COMMERCIALLY SOLD SOFTWARE by Certified Microsoft Partners as mine is (via EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com that was a FINALIST @ Microsoft TechEd 2000-2002, 2 yrs. in a ROW, in its HARDEST CATEGORY SQLServer Performance Enhancement??? It's NOT!)????

5.) Where's you being featured in a dozen++ newspapers, books, magazine trade journals?????

THEY'RE NOT!

APK

P.S.=> That "high horse" (heroin) of YOURS has SCRAMBLED YOUR BRAIN if you are so ARROGANT as to think the LOW LIKES OF YOU can preach to me junky - you're FAR from my "superior" & your FURTHER ERRORS EVIDENCE IT AGAIN FOR ME, bigmouth nobody... apk

Wrong AGAIN junky - you're amusing... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: In a court-jester with jingling bells hat on way - #1: I'm not disabled either you STUPID junky bastard (& yes, being a HEROIN JUNKY like you is STUPID)! I run my own businesses & have successfully for a decade now... haven't had to work for my money since 2007, MY monies work for ME... not the other way around!

* LMAO - if ANYONE is disabled, MENTALLY DISABLED, it's YOU opiate ADDICT - It makes me REALLY LAUGH @ U when you say things like "nothing really bothers me" etc. - et al, when the truth is, SURE YOU'RE RIGHT - you KNOW you & "your kind", thieving lying LOWLY monkey man JUNKIES have no pride - you KNOW YOU'RE SHIT & TOTAL LOSER CREEPS who threw their lives away on a NEEDLE, motherfucker!

(You pitiful little self-important done nothing FUCKING ZERO - the rest of what I had to say to a zero like you was here and like this? It is 100% TRUTH on you JUNKY -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... )

APK

P.S.=> You are a CLASSIC FUCKUP & this further proves it along with my last post, you ARROGANT fucking junky... apk

Re:What's up with the system logging me out at ran

[alantus]

I have also noticed strange session problems since a few months.
Sometimes you think you are logged in, but you are not. And you can't log in again, no matter what.
Right now I can't log in from work, and I'm afraid of logging out from my home computer, because I won't be able to log in again.

Re:Permaban users

[Anonymous Coward]

There is so much zen in this post that my brain exploded.

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[Megane]

I only see 5 and 15 these days, never 10. I don't know why. I'll usually get 5 once, then 15 multiple times, each a week or two apart, then nothing for a couple of months.

Back when slashcode.com was still being updated with the current /. code (hey whipslash, want to bring that back?), I remember that there was something called "tokens", which accumulated as you did "good" things. I think one of the things was to read a lot of articles, but I can see how posting is useful too. Get enough tokens and you'll get mod points. Don't use up all your mod points within the 3-day window and you are likely to get mod points again soon.

Re:What's up with the system logging me out at ran

[Megane]

Maybe you have some cookies blocked? I've never had to log back in on any browser after the first time.

The multiple 3LDs is because back in the old days (early 2Ks?) it was the trendy way to sort site content by category, and made it possible to have a slightly different "skin" for each category. I'm not sure it's bad enough to bother getting rid of it though.

This isn't reddit

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop the censorship and the SJW feminazi articles.

Turn Slashdot into what it use to be... place for techs to get news that relates to us.

Re:This isn't reddit

[Z00L00K]

As it is stated elsewhere - Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so find worthy stuff and submit it.

Advertising preferences selections per user

[Slacker]

I understand that there needs to be ad revenue, and I never use adblockers. That said, I have developed a full blown case of banner ad blindness. If I am not the target market for light up keychains or any book that has "For Dummies" as part of the title, it would be useful to have some input on that. It might even boost your CPM or click through rates if the ads for say networking equipment went to those who's interest and dollars went to networking equipment companies. A dozen or so check boxes about the kinds of ads that may be more relevent to you in the account prefs would probably benefit everyone involved.

Visual: Underlying Code Faults

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all have 14-year-old eyes, so 78-year-old fogies like myself use Ctrl-+ to make Slashdot readable (Iceweasel, Linux). Have you even seen what happens?

The item title becomes a narrow strip down the side, often one word wide, instead of filling the screen. Note that the comments themselves behave properly, reformatting lines so they fill the screen without running off the sides.

The subject symbol overlays and obscures part of the item title, often making it unintelligible. I might also add that this symbol is merely pretty clutter and can be done without.

When the text is enlarged it stretches downward, so that scrolling back to the title to click for comments is a pain. Please restore the "Read More" button. A count of comments would also be useful, since a click is seldom worth it for just a few.

Don't Turn Off the Daily Mailer

[tmjva]

We old timers may prefer the read the old fashioned email broadcast. It used to be early in the AM way back when. Some years back about the time of the previous purchase it got pushed back to noon Eastern U.S. time. That was a disappointment. Always being behind the posting curve.

And this first Monday after being bought it didn't show up at all. I was almost worried you'd turn it off.

Stop breaking what isn't broken

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Updates need to happen from time to time. But for a site like slashdot, it pays to pour enough money in to have a real QA team.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The solution

[mj24]

All of slashdot's problems stem from inadequacies of the voting model, including the influx of competitors (hackernews@ycombinator) into its domain of "news for nerds".

There's been considerable new work done in this domain. Stackexchange has been leading the pack here. In short, all + and - 1, and then a vote-to-top and vote-to-bottom. In absence of a long conversation of how to do this perfectly, I'll give you the imperfect short-cut: add or subtract the voter's total reputation from that item's vote count.

The other thing is to clean out your tag system. Make a sensible hierarchy of topics.

Done.

Re:The solution

[mj24]

Sorry for the typos, a restart of the third sentence in the second paragraph: :In short, all you need is + and - 1 and then a >>vote-to-top and vote-to-bottom button (use something like tape recorder symbol for fast forward, etc).

And to clarify the last sentence of that paragraph, add or subtract the voter's reputation when they use the vote-to-top and vote-to-bottom buttons.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

A new color

[Anonymous Coward]

The color needs an update. The general direction of blue-green is fine, but dang.

Sorry I'm so far down the list ..but

[doccus]

The biggest improvement you can make could well be to not force "improvements" like the new format , for one , on anyone. I have noticed that if it works people here REALLY don't want it "fixed". I think the thinks you mentioned such as unicode are nice tweaks that probably could make it more readable.. which is of course a good thing, but the Big Changes don't go over too darn well, and frankly aren't neccessary. If it woiks don fix it, eh?.
If 'm wrong somebody like an old timer, (not a week long /. member please ;-) please say so. !

Re:Sorry I'm so far down the list ..but

[whipslash]

Yes we won't force "big changes" on anyone

Stories pushed

[Z00L00K]

What's posted on the front page is as far as I see primarily provided by what's going on in the Firehose.

Some of what I suggest may actually already exist, so bear with what I propose.

But I think that using some algorithm to filter out spam there would make more people appreciate and be present there for up and downvotes of reasonable stories. Look at for example the spam filter that Mozilla Thunderbird has and do something similar so we don't even need to see spam posts like "Latest Jobs in Chhattisgarh " in the Firehose - that's obvious spam.

The Feed articles seems to be somewhat interesting, but the really interesting articles aren't usually scraped from the feed sources, they are submissions by real users.

Submissions by registered users with a good history should get a bit higher ranking than those by ACs and newly registered users.

Maybe also put in some filtering so that upvotes for stories in the Firehose aren't possible from same IP address series as the submission and possibly domain on reverse-lookup.

When editing submissions I have seen that text quoted from the linked site is sometimes mixed up with text manually entered causing the summary to be confusing or misleading. I have suffered that myself recently.

Improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

Very simple. Space out the headlines so they're easier to read on mobiles.

Close /.

[AES84]

It's a start.

Mod Points

[Anonymous Coward]

I think one of the biggest changes is to improve the moderation system. Right now its only a few points every couple days. While I do not necessarily believe in unlimited mod points I have seen many discussions turn into shit shows pretty damn quick. Even just voting down the Anon Coward posts (frosty piss / gay wigger assoc. / soylent / apk/ etc spam crap) means that mods have to decide between up-voting good content or just removing the bad. This is even worse when there is multiple threads! Why not a more fluid system? Say X upvote / X downvote points per thread or even just per day? Trying to keep it vague and posting as anon as I dont think I have all the answers to this problem... but this would be a step in the right direction!

Sily Beginning

[Anonymous Coward]

I would start by getting rid of the silly beginning of all stories "From the .... "
They are annoying.

Noooo! Please DON'T change what isn't broken!

[Helldesk Hound]

Shashdot is working perfectly fine. A great easy to use forum filled with intelligent perceptive people.

Please don't destroy what is a perfectly fine, easy to use, thing.

Gender Equity & Moderation

[sampson7]

The one place where /.'s moderation system completely fails in on gender equity issues. Even interesting posts chock full of citations pointing out gender-related issues are routinely down-voted. The quality of the content does not seem to matter. It's pretty depressing to see how meaningful debate and idea sharing just gets completely squelched. Of course, the deep irony is that the tech industry is one of the places where gender issues are front and center. But read /., and you'd think there's a unity of thinking, which of course, is simply untrue.

Listen you stupid JUNKY loser

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: You KNOW that's what YOU are HEROIN JUNKY - LOWEST of the thieving LYING low in life & stupid + weak!

APK

P.S.=> You worthless piece of SHIT... fuck you! apk

an option to hide stories + better stories

[rp]

For logged-in users, put a 'hide' button next to every mention of a story. When clicked, no more links to the story will be shown. The quality of the stories appears to have improved sharply. If this continues, I will return to reading Slashdot on a regular basis.

Re:an option to hide stories + better stories

[whipslash]

Good idea thanks

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm, interesting,
This post is an experiment. do commenting AC gives you mod points?

go go gadget post.

Links in the write up

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

The links to the stories are often not in the write-ups now. Having light-green text on top of a dark green bar is VERY DIFFICULT to read, and the text itself is pretty small. The a class="story-sourcelnk" needs to stand out, especially if that is now going to be the only link. The idea is called contrast...many sites fall victim to not understanding this. It's #3 on the Biggest Mistakes list.

Email summary

[Anonymous Coward]

The email summary is very hard to read. More space or remove underlining?? Or redesign.

I've made a program users here like... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See them quoted JustAnotherOldGuy http://slashdot.org/comments.p... you've done better? Not that I've seen.

* Thru that & your puke? Thanks for projecting AND PROVING who the PUKEBAG "ne'er-do-well" is you ball-less no skills viagra addict OLD prune penis... lol!

APK

P.S.=> No small wonder your ex-wife tried to KNOCK YOU OFF, you're purest shit - trolling shit with NO BALLS, lol... apk

Re:What's up with the system logging me out at ran

[RockDoctor]

Otherwise, looking forward to our new overlords :)

At least our overlords are asking us which side we want to be whipped on first.

Ask Slashdot: How Can We Improve Slashdot?

[gzuckier]

So... ask slashdot in the sense that slashdot is asking us. OK, first suggestion, make headlines that have sensible relationship to article.

Argh

[peetm]

Stop changing the fucking interface.

Superfreakin' EDIT/APPEND function please

[TheRealHocusLocus]

Posted messages have two status: UNRESPONDED immediately after post, and RESPONDED after someone replies to or moderates it.

If a message is UNRESPONDED the full text of the message can be edited at any time until the whole thread is locked weeks later.

If a message is RESPONDED, then when the original poster selects 'edit' the poster is informed in the edit screen that only append is available. They can enter any amount of new text, which will appear at the end of the original message after the tag: "[username] added:"

Whenever any 'edit' transaction is posted or previewed, the system should check the status of the message again to see if it is (or has become during the edit text entry) RESPONDED. In that case, show a message saying that its status has changed and only 'append' is available, presenting the poster with an empty text area for append text.

If you really want to get fancy consider the other race case too, every time someone hits reply and is entering text then hits post/preview, the system should check to see if the revision of the message they are responding to has changed. If it has, the system returns with a message informing them that the original has been changed, supplying their input again just like a preview and giving them a chance to re-read the original and (perhaps) back out.

All messages that have been edited or appended show a additional clickable tiny unobtrusive '+' symbol in the header, which links to a log listing date/time of original post and subsequent edit/appends. I suggest no 'reason given' field, this is not paranoid Wikipedia and should not be treated as such. The fact that something was edited is only of concern during conflicts, this information should be available but should not clutter up the normal header with whole words, the '+' symbol would suffice.

________

Implementing it this way should take care of the most common and aggravating reasons for edits. You can 'silently' correct grammar, spelling or spell-checker mistakes, fix rotten links.

In RESPONDED messages, the appended text would give the poster the ability also to fix rotten links by having the corrected link appear at the end of the original message: "Oops, that link should be ____", avoiding the need for the poster to post a reply that gets shuffled way down the screen. Appends to RESPONDED messages can also be used to communicate with those replying in a manner more fair to the author: "[username] added: Yes I know I the message says 'stenography' instead of 'steganography', I know what I meant, my spell checker didn't and you should have been able to figure out what I meant."

This would also add a new dimension to discussions from the perspective of those browsing them late in the cycle. If authors have the ability to append to messages that incited a reply-riot, they have a new tool to re-visit previous comments insert post-comments to enhance the flavor. For example if the original message says "I'm certain Trump will/won't win Iowa" the append could say "[username] adds: So Trump didn't win Iowa. We're screwed/saved!"

Other good reasons for editing/appending besides the obvious:

Fix MSWORD special character pastes where WIN1252 and UTF-8 charsets collide. If you know what I mean then you know what I mean.

Recipients of +5 Insightful messages with good links have incentive to append more. People who feel they have been unfairly awarded -1 Troll have an opportunity to explain why that might influence subsequent moderators.

New types of humor will arise: "[username] adds: well fuck you all! I'm outta here!" and new opportunities to subtly game and cleverly abuse the system will arise, helping us to evolve as a species.

I think it would be a win. I have at least one bad link and embarrassing spelling to fix.

Digest Emails are Poor Compared to the Old Ones

[ralph.corderoy]

Hi whipslash, Great job you're doing. Obviously, all these small improvements will take time, but here's another for your list.

I receive the daily digest email, and then visit selected stories based on its content. Over the years this email format has been mucked with for the worse. Making it multipart/alternative with text/plain and text/html was OK, once all the bugs were fixed, but the text/plain's content is still poor. (I don't read the text/html so that could be as bad.) Poorly organised, information missing that would help when the headline doesn't give a clue as to the topic, etc. If you want detailed suggestions then I'm happy to correspond.

Re:Digest Emails are Poor Compared to the Old Ones

[whipslash]

Thanks for the feedback I'll look into it

Fix the hyperlinks in the RSS Feed

[allo]

The links in the article are not linked in the RSS feed, which is quite annoying, when you do not want to load the full article, just to visit one of the links.

Reconsider "read rest of comment" thresholds

[TheRealHocusLocus]

People like me who rant on a lot feel genuinely slighted when the final paragraphs of our wordy treatises are axed suddenly, often mid paragraph, with a "Read rest of comment" sentence of doom. I'm not sayin' it should be unlimited, just perhaps increased again by half or even doubled from what they are now. Slashdot has its origins in USENET where any such cloaking devices resided completely on the client side.

If the split-threshold is based on some estimation of vertical page height that allows the presence of many shorter comments to affect the display of the longer ones, please consider removing it.

There is also an APPARENT BUG that manifests itself at times where you see an incorrect and annoying "Read rest of comment" at then end of a comment that has been completely displayed. Whether it is a logic fault or the posted text contains white space after the end, the code that decides whether a split is necessary should be reexamined, even if it is so little as a single trailing CR that puts length over the threshold by one. All trailing white space should be trimmed anyway.

Being one who communicates paragraphs at a time, when time only permits skimming I naturally pause at longer comments, and I wish more other people would also.

I wouldn't go so far as to bring karma metrics into it, but specifically AC might be exempted or given a smaller split-threshold because there do exist certain ACs who routinely drop massive paste-a-thons regarding Yoda and butt-plugs. I have researched these topics independently and can attest that those posts add little information or insight.

Some attention to lameness filters may be in order also. There is a filter that seems to be in place to discourage ASCII art, and recently it also discouraged me from posting something regarding WIN-1252/vs/UTF-8 character sets where I attempted to show a simple table of problem characters. Even the those few characters nailed me to the lameness filter. I finally gave up completely. Maybe if I had dropped in a bunch of Yoda butt-plug text at the end it would have posted, sorry I didn't think of it.

Nerd Business Owners from the Community

[DivinIT]

Hi All,

I'm glad we have some new Slashdot overlords! I would like to make an important suggestion. In 2010 I created a business DivinIT.com for IT training built on the insights I gained from the Slashdot community since 1999 (and through experience). Yes I was a long time lurker. I used to spend hours a day on the site and the comments were amazing. When I submitted a thread (like you have done) about what the community wanted my company to be like, it was lost in the flood of submissions, because there was no editor to pick it out from the cruft.

Why is this important? This community wants more responsibility from companies and more engagement and for their feelings to be heard and cared about as well as their epic knowledge and logic. That opportunity came and was ignored. We created more than 300 jobs and were setting new standards for training and IT services. We closed down now for many reasons. Partly because there was lots of negative forum posts in other forums who just hated and trolled away our customers. I feel if the Slashdot community even knew what we were trying to do, some of them might have helped against 700+ unfounded trolls. It's history now.

So what I'm saying in a general sense, is can we use the strength of our community to advise, defend, share and CREATE new businesses and organisations? Slashdot walked hand-in-hand with Open Source and we could just as easily have open source businesses.

I think this can be a "killer app" that helps make slashdot great again.

Thanks for trying to save Slashdot :)

NO!! FORCE PEOPLE TO EDIT THEMSELVES!!

[Anonymous Coward]

'nuff sed.

Breaking Vs. Static News

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot needs a better way of managing breaking news stories. For instance, the most recent thing about Assange is outdated. Maybe have breaking news and features or something like that.

Re:Breaking Vs. Static News

[whipslash]

I think we will implement something that if users vote a breaking news story up high enough to a "critical mass" point in the firehose, it will auto post to front page

Re:Breaking Vs. Static News

[Anonymous Coward]

Apologies, posting from my tablet and so, anonymously.

Don't auto-post. At least have it sit in some sort of "thou shalt post this" queue somewhere in your offices, and wait for editorial review, check for paywalled links, typos, formatting and whatnot, before promoting it.

One thing I've always hated about submitting a story here is that there's no "don't worry, they'll catch it in editing..."

-Striek

Make it easier to moderate and score

[MoarSauce123]

I'm on /. for quite a while now and despite several attempts to figure out what the heck I should do with my moderator points and how to impact the score of comments....I came up empty. Maybe I am just too dumb for this. In any case, it will be nice to be able to flag some comments for removal because they are useless or nothing else than personal attacks. They are zero value to any discussion. If people are angry get a sand bag and punch it.

Re:Start with removing the malware from SourceForg

[0100010001010011]

Set up a round robin single download link. I don't want to worry about if corp.university.cs.sf.mirror.001.net is down.

Re:Some of this has already been said, but my top

[0100010001010011]

I think you finally hit the nail on the head on why I have an issue with Reddit.

Sometimes the adults get voted up. But mostly its kids, voting like kids and then when someone tries to tell them something that hurts their feelings they get their panties in a bunch and down vote.

free the freecode dataset, please

[karmaflux]

I haven't logged in in years. I logged in to post this because I feel strongly about it.

The freshmeat/freecode website was invaluable to me for many years. It died, and I would love to have it back -- preferably just the data, so can add my own API and keep it up to date. The 'trove' system was itself a great idea and there's nothing that stepped in to replace it.

The world's only getting bigger, and we are going to need more tools to navigate. Opening up this dataset would go a long way toward helping us build them.

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[DaAdder]

I have excellent karma, and have had that for most of my many years on /.
I consistently get mod points almost daily, as long as I'm actively reading the site.
If life takes over and I only stop by once a week or so, the frequency drops.
I always get 15 points to spend.

Re:Can we get an explanation on who gets mod point

[DaAdder]

As long as I am actively/daily reading the site, I quite commonly get 15 points daily to spend. Sometimes back to back as soon as I spend the first 15, a new batch is handed out.

frequent reader, infrequent commenter/modder

[nachtkap]

I read /. quite a lot but seldom participate in discussions. Main reason being that with my initial score(1) I can seldom contribute in a meaningful way. A couple of decent comments and one submitted story have gotten me mod points from time to time. The difficult thing here is that most of the time I don't notice that I have mod points. I just dont look at the area of my screen that tells me so that much when reading /.. That's why I would like mail notifications for mod points when I get them.
At times I use /. as a knowledge/source base to back up my opinions with sources. That doesnt always work however. When trying to find a older story the /. search often returns to many result. For many clicks I cant be sure if I indeed searched for right words/phrases. This leads into the problem that the search parameters have to be quite narrowly defined to return good results. The biggest problem on that front is that related terms often dont get included in the search. E.g.: optical astronomy/telescopes/visible light [..] OR solving hunger/nutrition in the 21st century/using algae to reduce environmental footprint of food production. With those three queries I might look for the same story but I would expect results from such related search terms.