I doubt we'll ever offer direct DB access. Besides security issues, the potential
for huge queries makes it a messy proposition at best. We have a nice stats system in place that we could potentially make more public. Maybe someday we'll have the time to do so.
As for better ways to rate comments and friends, I'm always open to suggestions and/or patches. The code is all available from the SourceForge project page. Unfortunately, writing code to work on 2.2 million pages a day, a third of a million users, and our hugely limited hardware resources is a lot harder than it sounds;)
If you want "Professional", read CNN. Slashdot is the trenches. Its down and
dirty. It has typos and dupe stories and flamewars. We do our best to avoid
mistakes, but we're mistake prone humans, trying to get news out in real time.
So, sometimes things will go wrong.
Suppressing ads from servers is a fairly common practice. Probably 2-3% of our users do it. And that number will likely grow as browsers make it very easy
to do so. Thats why we're adding plums unrelated to advertising on Slashdot.
We knew that the Ad Suppression filter was really more of an Honor System kind
of thing since using Junkbuster or even Mozilla's built in blocking is trivial
for even the most competant of users.
However we hope that enough of our users will think beyond that and try
to support us. Programmers, Editors, OC3s and Racks of web servers cost money.
Well frankly "OSDN" doesn't really have much to do with this thought process.
It's pretty much Me and the rest of the Slashdot folk making decisions.
YES we want you to use up your pages. However we set it up so that you
need Max Pages of 10... which means that you will still have 100 days of subscription for $5. I always targetted our subscriptions to be comparable to the cost of a magazine subscription... $20 a year. This is still true. The ads
were just an obvious counter.
As for liking the ads, well I guess we'll address that in the future- its not
a bad idea. ALthough, depending on your reading habits, you could enable ads on the Homepage, but see them on articles & comments, which would probably allow you to still see a few ads every day. Course if you don't read comments, then that doesn't help. And most of our users don't read comments.
Users can always make suggestions to stories by emailing the author.
We do hope that subscribers will be likely to alert us to typos and stuff.
No story on Slashdot is really ever set in stone. But I would consider a story from the mysterious future to be totally plastic- I will be editing and updating stories during that window without spelling out changes or putting in
little "Update" comments. We've always used the last few minutes before a story
goes live to make updates and corrections. This won't change, but users will
be able to alert us to issues before it goes public.
(1) This is a big issue and one that we would need to consider. I guess what it
would probably mean is that you post to future-dated stories at your own risk.
You're seeing Slashdot behind the scenes, you should expect some dust.
(2)Moderation is already based towards early posters. But since subscribers
will likely only represent a small percentage of all posting, I can't imagine
more than a few dozen comments making it inside this window. And right now,
the first couple dozen posts are almost always disposable anyway.
We already know pretty reliable that subscribers are statistically better
moderators. (we've done a bunch of internal reports, and basically according to
M2 results, they are several percent more "Fair" then the population as a whole.
I don't think we've ever done any reporting to see if subscribers are better
posters. I'm guessing they would be less likely to crapflood, but beyond that,
I really would only be speculating.
Funny, I can't wait until CowBoyNeal becomes CowManNeal. When he achieves his true form, his power level will be so powerful you're gonna want his
likeness in the public domain so you can write fanzines!
I woke up early, planning on getting some work done and having lunch with a
friend who was visiting from out of town. Ironically, her husband was stationed in Saudi, so she was home visiting her family. I first got a message
on IRC from a friend saying a plane hit. Then I heard on Stern that a 2nd
tower hit, and posted on Slashdot.
I felt like a zombie for the next few days. All of Slashdot's team worked together to update stories and struggle against traffic that spiked to 3 times
our usual peaks. Spare boxes were stolen for the cause and brought online.
Meanwhile we did our best to make sense of what was happening along with
everyone else.
I'm still very proud of how we handled our tiny share of that day and the
aftermath. I know that what we did helped some. And I seriously feel honored
that I was able to help.
I've actually been on edge all week knowing that this story was going to be
posted on Slashdot. It forced me to reread much of our original coverage. It
forced me to relive those frantic first minutes, and the hours, days, and weeks that followed it.
I hope this story manages to help some others too. It has already helped me.
I agree with you on the Lone Gunman thing- I read a spoiler about it a few
weeks ago so I already knew what was going to happen. But Chris blew it.
He knows it. He got the shit flamed out of him. He deserved it. But
he apologized, and you can't un-say things. It's not like we're posting
headlines every day with shit like 'Vader is Lukes Father' or something. It's
a rarity.
Heh. No, you're missing my point. Slashdot is supposed to be an
informal source for news. If we sanded off all the rough edges, Slashdot
would cease being the site that I want to read. And I've been running this
thing for 4.5 years now with the goal being to create a site that I wanted
to read. If you disagree with me, don't read. I don't mind!
I really want to get ThinkGeek involved with the Slashdot subscriptions.
Buy $X worth of stuff, get a Slashdot Subscription free... or else if
you subscribe, you get a dollar back as a TG gift certificate. I
don't know what the numbers would be, but I'd love to do it.
I don't happen to know how much we make off ads off the top of my head, but I
do know that we only sell a relatively small percent of the 2 million pages
we serve each day. Subscriptions are fairly similiar to a tip jar... we're
just giving you banner ad free pages instead of a tote bag or whatever;)
I'm not saying we won't do that. I'm saying that "This is how it works for now".
We broke things down by perl script. Comment viewing and posting happens in
the same script.
I'm not opposed to doing this. But such a decision needs to be carefully
thought through. There are many problems with the moderation system when
all that is involved is words and karma. I'm sure you can understand that
this would only get worse if people started thinking that they had an economic
incentive to karma whore.
That said, while I don't mean to dismiss the value of comment posters, the
percentage of readers that read comments is small. Yes comments draw readers,
and keep them coming back. But half of readers don't care! An accepted
story submission provides a benefit to hundreds of thousands of Slashdot readers.
A Score:3 comment is read by 1/50th of that. So if we decide that an accepted
story submission is worth 1000 page views, you would need to post perhaps 50
Score:3 comments to affect the same number of people:)
Unfortunately we're keeping the tracking to a bare minimum so I don't believe
that we can do that. We're trying to keep updates to the DB to a bare
minimum so we don't have a new bottleneck.
As I have said several times now, by default, comments display ads. Users
can choose to turn ads off, but by default we leave them on so that we don't
have to deal with all those issues. We figure anyone clicking through on
comments pages is gonna be loading a lot of pages and probably doesn't
want to use their subscriptions up on it.
Currently it breaks down by Index, Article, Comments, and "Other". By
default, we leave ads on Comments and suppress ads on Index, Article, and Other
for subscribers. THe bulk of page views for the hardcore reader ends up being
comments, so the only negative is that they will see ads on those pages.
We hope people will give it a try- the system has enough options to let a
hardcore two-hundred-page-a-day user chip in $5 a month to suppress ads from
Articles and maybe the homepage... but again, this group is by far
a minority. 82% of Slashdot readers read 10 or fewer pages a day.
By default we are leaving the ads on for comments (subscribers can turn
them off if they so choose) so it'll be purely up to the individual to
decide.
We don't expect users to pay a half cent for every page. We expect that
what will happen is that users will suppress ads on just articles or the
homepage effectively costing a few cents a day.
No doubt. But we're not doing anything that makes them "Go Away". We're
just provided ad-free pages to those who want it. We're not punishing
people who choose not to subscribe... well, they will see the new
ad format, but thats just an inevitable part of trying to survive in
the post hype net.
Slashdot Mirror
As for better ways to rate comments and friends, I'm always open to suggestions and/or patches. The code is all available from the SourceForge project page. Unfortunately, writing code to work on 2.2 million pages a day, a third of a million users, and our hugely limited hardware resources is a lot harder than it sounds ;)
Personally, I think that this is half the fun ;)
However we hope that enough of our users will think beyond that and try to support us. Programmers, Editors, OC3s and Racks of web servers cost money.
YES we want you to use up your pages. However we set it up so that you need Max Pages of 10... which means that you will still have 100 days of subscription for $5. I always targetted our subscriptions to be comparable to the cost of a magazine subscription... $20 a year. This is still true. The ads were just an obvious counter.
As for liking the ads, well I guess we'll address that in the future- its not a bad idea. ALthough, depending on your reading habits, you could enable ads on the Homepage, but see them on articles & comments, which would probably allow you to still see a few ads every day. Course if you don't read comments, then that doesn't help. And most of our users don't read comments.
Users can always make suggestions to stories by emailing the author. We do hope that subscribers will be likely to alert us to typos and stuff. No story on Slashdot is really ever set in stone. But I would consider a story from the mysterious future to be totally plastic- I will be editing and updating stories during that window without spelling out changes or putting in little "Update" comments. We've always used the last few minutes before a story goes live to make updates and corrections. This won't change, but users will be able to alert us to issues before it goes public.
(2)Moderation is already based towards early posters. But since subscribers will likely only represent a small percentage of all posting, I can't imagine more than a few dozen comments making it inside this window. And right now, the first couple dozen posts are almost always disposable anyway.
We already know pretty reliable that subscribers are statistically better moderators. (we've done a bunch of internal reports, and basically according to M2 results, they are several percent more "Fair" then the population as a whole. I don't think we've ever done any reporting to see if subscribers are better posters. I'm guessing they would be less likely to crapflood, but beyond that, I really would only be speculating.
She designs Slashdot's topic icons ;)
Funny, I can't wait until CowBoyNeal becomes CowManNeal. When he achieves his true form, his power level will be so powerful you're gonna want his likeness in the public domain so you can write fanzines!
I felt like a zombie for the next few days. All of Slashdot's team worked together to update stories and struggle against traffic that spiked to 3 times our usual peaks. Spare boxes were stolen for the cause and brought online. Meanwhile we did our best to make sense of what was happening along with everyone else.
I'm still very proud of how we handled our tiny share of that day and the aftermath. I know that what we did helped some. And I seriously feel honored that I was able to help.
I've actually been on edge all week knowing that this story was going to be posted on Slashdot. It forced me to reread much of our original coverage. It forced me to relive those frantic first minutes, and the hours, days, and weeks that followed it.
I hope this story manages to help some others too. It has already helped me.
I agree with you on the Lone Gunman thing- I read a spoiler about it a few weeks ago so I already knew what was going to happen. But Chris blew it. He knows it. He got the shit flamed out of him. He deserved it. But he apologized, and you can't un-say things. It's not like we're posting headlines every day with shit like 'Vader is Lukes Father' or something. It's a rarity.
Heh. No, you're missing my point. Slashdot is supposed to be an informal source for news. If we sanded off all the rough edges, Slashdot would cease being the site that I want to read. And I've been running this thing for 4.5 years now with the goal being to create a site that I wanted to read. If you disagree with me, don't read. I don't mind!
Lighten up: Life is just to damn short to worry about grammar on Slashdot!
Especially considering Hemos is in Japan this week, and probably sleeping right now!
I really want to get ThinkGeek involved with the Slashdot subscriptions. Buy $X worth of stuff, get a Slashdot Subscription free... or else if you subscribe, you get a dollar back as a TG gift certificate. I don't know what the numbers would be, but I'd love to do it.
I don't happen to know how much we make off ads off the top of my head, but I do know that we only sell a relatively small percent of the 2 million pages we serve each day. Subscriptions are fairly similiar to a tip jar... we're just giving you banner ad free pages instead of a tote bag or whatever ;)
I'm not saying we won't do that. I'm saying that "This is how it works for now". We broke things down by perl script. Comment viewing and posting happens in the same script.
If only that were true, believe me we would be doing it.
That said, while I don't mean to dismiss the value of comment posters, the percentage of readers that read comments is small. Yes comments draw readers, and keep them coming back. But half of readers don't care! An accepted story submission provides a benefit to hundreds of thousands of Slashdot readers. A Score:3 comment is read by 1/50th of that. So if we decide that an accepted story submission is worth 1000 page views, you would need to post perhaps 50 Score:3 comments to affect the same number of people :)
Unfortunately we're keeping the tracking to a bare minimum so I don't believe that we can do that. We're trying to keep updates to the DB to a bare minimum so we don't have a new bottleneck.
As I have said several times now, by default, comments display ads. Users can choose to turn ads off, but by default we leave them on so that we don't have to deal with all those issues. We figure anyone clicking through on comments pages is gonna be loading a lot of pages and probably doesn't want to use their subscriptions up on it.
Just follow the link and it takes care of it.
Someday we may in fact give free pages for accepted story submissions. As always, one step at a time.
We hope people will give it a try- the system has enough options to let a hardcore two-hundred-page-a-day user chip in $5 a month to suppress ads from Articles and maybe the homepage... but again, this group is by far a minority. 82% of Slashdot readers read 10 or fewer pages a day.
We don't expect users to pay a half cent for every page. We expect that what will happen is that users will suppress ads on just articles or the homepage effectively costing a few cents a day.
No doubt. But we're not doing anything that makes them "Go Away". We're just provided ad-free pages to those who want it. We're not punishing people who choose not to subscribe... well, they will see the new ad format, but thats just an inevitable part of trying to survive in the post hype net.