Slashdot Mirror
The State of Slashdot: Https, Poll Changes, Auto-Refresh, Videos, and More
As of yesterday, Slashdot now serves over https. In addition, the polls have been moved exclusively to the right rail, and will not show up with the other stories any longer. We've also disabled auto-refresh, and fixed various issues with search and other features. In the last few weeks, we've also discontinued videos, and removed the "Jobs" section of the site. You can follow all of the changes on the Slashdot blog.
All moves in the right direction. To ensure lights are staying on, how can I give you money?
Meet the new boss: so much better than the old boss. -- The Who
Good, good, good, good, good... Wait, what is this? Positive changes, nothing to complain about?
I don't even know what to do.
Good job Slashdot, keep it up.
Okay you know what, the changes around here--including responsiveness to user opinions--are getting really, really nice. Thank you.
Glad you like it. We appreciate the support
Thanks for getting rid of auto-refresh. It sucked to have the page refresh while typing or scrolling.
Be careful when you do unicode. I know that's often requested, so it'll probably be done, but be aware it makes protection from injection attacks (including sql & script) much trickier. You probably want do do encoding on output and bound parameters on input, rather than trying to filter input.
The last day or two I had error saying I was posting from an open proxy, on multiple devices and networks. It seems something went wrong with that detection- possibly detecting your own load balancer.
Please restore the redundant "comments" link at the bottom of the summary. If I decide after reading the summary that it's worth reading the comments, it's annoying to have to scroll back if the top link has already scrolled past.
Whiplash,
When the company you work for took over SlashdotMedia and therefore Slashdot, I kinda flipped out and talked a whole lot of doom and gloom bullshit. No less, I was downright mean about it. In fact, I was mean and rude to you directly. As someone who has been here since day one, I was kinda panicked about Slashdot's continuation. In turn, your replies to my flaming were level-headed and even kind. It did not take me long to realize I was wrong about all if it and apologize. After reading this, I apologize twice over.
Hey, can you find me three digit ID account? It was attached to a long gone ihatehotmail1979@hotmail.com - I know that is a long shot of a question.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
I'm sure a few people will come out of the woodwork asking for removal of the Anonymous Coward account. Please do not do so. There are times when folks around here have something to say that will genuinely add to the conversation. Something that should be +insightful or +Interesting. But anyone and everyone around here knows that the culture is so unpredictable, it is sometimes safest to post as AC. Without AC, we would be missing a lot of really good comments that in fact do get modded up. There are also times when someone has something relevant to say, but do to the nature of the story and their comment relative to working for a particular institution they do not dare post otherwise. Among a number of other things. Besides, we have meta-moderation for a reason.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
You say that, but as soon as there's any code logging/recording IPs it'll need changing to handle IPv6 as well (is that field now so much longer that it has knock-on effects on other things?). And if there's any code that tries to do checks/manipulations on the addresses then you have a load more work to do as well.
These recent changes are a superb start. Things are really starting to look better around here!
Has there been any progress made on greater moderation transparency here? While something like Unicode support sounds hellish, especially if shitty and/or outdated technology like Perl and MySQL are involved, increasing the moderation transparency would likely just involve showing more data that should already be easily available.
At the very least the following should become public knowledge, easily accessible to all users regardless of whether they do or do not have an account here:
1. Who moderated a comment. This includes anybody affiliated with Slashdot in any way, including editors such as timothy.
2. When the moderation took place.
3. The mod rating that was given.
4. Any related metamod ratings of the mod, including who performed the metamodding and what the outcome was.
The score of each comment should link to a page showing this information.
Additionally, it should be possible to download bulk dumps of the moderation data. This would allow anyone to perform analysis of the moderation that goes on here. Using this data we could find new ways of identifying abusive moderations and moderators, for example.
Some people will wrongly claim that such transparency will just scare people away from moderating. If that's the case, then that's a good thing. Anyone who will censor others but will not put up with scrutiny of that censorship should not be moderating. After all, if somebody is responsible enough to moderate, then they should be responsible enough to allow this to be done fully in the open with complete transparency.
Others will probably cast doubt about the motives of people who want greater moderation transparency here. Sorry to burst their bubble, but there's no conspiracy here! It's as simple as too many excellent comments ending up with scores of -1, and too many low-quality comments getting modded up. Instead of working for us, the moderation system here is used as tool to suppress opinions that are deemed "unpopular", and often it promotes misinformation.
Something is truly wrong when one has to constantly browse this site at -1 just to get a reasonably wide variety of opinions regarding the matter being discussed, rather than the narrow view that we tend to get when bad moderation happens.
This is where Slashdot can set itself apart from its competitors. Instead of being a site like Stack Overflow, Reddit or Hacker News where censorship is the norm and discussion is highly controlled, Slashdot could become the tech discussion site where real in-depth discussion happens. It doesn't have to be like SO, where vague community standards are applied in an haphazard manner. It doesn't have to be like Reddit, where mod squads prowl and attack. It doesn't have to be like Hacker News, where anything resembling negativity is stomped out because it might hurt the feelings of some thin-skinned hipsters or Millennials. Slashdot can be the place where ideas are exchanged freely, without members of the community going around unjustifiably suppressing and censoring one another.
The future is looking bright for Slashdot, and an easy win like greater moderation transparency would be a huge boost to this community.
Just as much as I would love to factor out you. I have been here 15 years and don't have an account.
If you don't like the comment, DONT FUCKING READ IT. I'm sick of little pussies like you with their hurt feelings blaming your Facebook "sad face" sticker situation on the ACs
Is there an option to re-enable auto-refresh on a per-user basis? I actually appreciated that feature.
Just want to say that your presence in some of these threads reminds me a lot of the old days, when Taco et al. would post about what was going on, what they were doing, even comment in stories. It's been sincerely missed, and it's a VERY welcome return.
Thanks for buying this place. It will be nice to have /. actually turn back into the awesome site that it once was. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
A few years ago (before the last buyout) /. was my main technical news source. I came primarily for the community, then for the content, and lastly for some humor at the polls. No, not reporting on current political campaign polls, although I do remember watching the politics section go live.
I want to share a little bit of my story: When I was a wee lad not yet in highschool my family got dial-up. I was so excited! The internet was new and so amazing. It was a very short time until I came across slashdot and for some reason I got hooked. I think it was the engineering humor and conversation (or perhaps jokes about a gritty Natalie Portman), but something about it stuck. This site tremendously sparked and influenced my love of technology. I'm now a successful fully-employed member of society (in an IT field no less!) and I can honestly blame ./ culture for much of my development.
I've learned services, like friends, come and go. I was active in, and then watched, Digg dissapear. I saw some of the glimmer of Kuroshin. I've piddled around in Reddit. Slashdot was always in the back there though, if sometimes only because of distantly fond memories.
I watched as certain strategic decisions ticked the "she's not going to make it jim" flag in my mind and I began to write Slashdot off. Recently however there is a new light behind the community. There is a new vibrancy. It's because you who are in charge are like us once again (one of us, one of us!). You understand that this isn't about the monies, it isn't about pageviews and numbers, it's about technologists by day who can take a few minutes to just be nerds and talk and discuss with each other. It's about having slashdot as hobby, an interest, someplace where I can hang up the coat and hang out for a while. You've started to remember that and it is showing. We, the community, see it. I feel at home here once again.
Keep up the good work - here's to hoping ./ and it's community can be a home for the geeks, the nerds, the techies and all those inspiring to be. Thanks guys, she's looking good again!
Most of the time, when people say "Slashdot isn't the same as it was 15 years ago!", I reply with "You're not the same as you were 15 years ago!". Things change, and they can't always be like they were in the beginning. But this is one of those things that I miss too - having people who actually run the site comment on what's going on. And, although he probably won't see this reply due to nesting, I totally admire whipslash for diving into these threads like he/she has.
Posted from the wireless couch.
Don't confuse "having a conservative viewpoint" with "having a conservative viewpoint and spouting bollocks", as while the two overlap, the criticism you receive is usually due to the bollocks-spouting and not the conservatism. This is patently obvious judging by the plethora of conservatives who are not regularly down-modded into oblivion. It's clearly not your being a conservative that is causing the backlash, but what you are doing with your conservatism. It's rather disingenuous to ignore the highly opinionated stance you've adopted over these last few years and simply blame everything on people hating on conservatives.
Any user on Slashdot who goes out of their way to repeatedly promote some narrative in the way you have should expect the ghosts of said narrative to follow them around.