This is somethign we struggle with. When you see that happen tho, feel free to email. The problem is there is a spectrum here that ranges from "Factually wrong" to "Focuses on Some Detail that is not the focus of the article". Where the teeter totter tips on that scale is a subjective thing.
That whole thing is laid out light crap. It's all ugly legacy stuff. On our TODO list is to rewrite all the code associated with posting comments, including cleaning up the layout. It's an awful mess and I definitely would love to see it fixed up. The problems are more than just cosmetic.
This has been discussed over here as well. At our core, we tend to exclude those who are outsiders. We assume a basic level of knowledge, and tend to write to that. If you lack that, you might be lost.
There are things we could do to address that: linking wiki entries, breaking down acronyms, including definitions on strange words. I think these things might add value to some, but to do so would shift our focus. It would change the nature of what Slashdot is. So it's not something I really want to do.
It's like "Footnotes". Sometiems a footnote could be pulled right up and placed in-line in the body text. Other times, it could simply be skipped and ignored. These decisions are essentially about writing for your audience.
I choose to write Slashdot as if I'm writing to my friends. Always have. My friends know certain things about encryption or microprocessors. And I think that a large reason slashdot succeeds is because many people have that shared base level of knowledge. Change that now is one of those things that I think change Slashdot on a molecular level.
We save a number of submissions for various reasons: Poll Ideas might be saved for months. Or an Ask Slashdot about some question. Many submissions are timeless. Well, they might matter to YOU because you want your question answered now, or your poll polled now. But since our primary goal is to spawn a fun/interesting/useful discussion, it might not matter if we post it now or in 2 months.
Then we get backlogged since we get a hundred such submissions, and yours is in the queue.
Personally I don't think it hurts anything having a hundred poll ideas in the queue. It just means someday if I want a new poll I can read 10-15 and pick one. Some are time dependant, but many are just fun ideas without any connection to the real world timestream.
This is a user preference. Log in and toggle it. I choose to not activate year by default because 99% of Slashdot content is read within a few hours or days of posting... or "This" year. So the year display is redundant almost always because it's "This" year. Yup, it's annoying for old articles. Someday a user will contribute a Slashcode Patch with 2 date formats- one for datestamps in the last 72 hours and one for older content.
Completely lost on you, and any number of readers who chose to contribute to this discussion by commenting on the minutia of the english language and not the substance of the article itself. Bam! I deserve the flamebait mod. Give it up.
This does happen. Most stories are posted several minutes and read by subscribers. When they choose to contact us with typos or URL fixes or other notes, we often include those chages.
I would probably link with #5. Decline in proper anchor texting.
Geekery Times is not the story.
"Reporting" is not the story. "Reporting" is sorta implied by the fact that we are linking. It means the same as "Saying" or "has an article" or "Writes". These are all words that tell you that on the other side of the link, there will be words. And thats pretty much implied on the glorious web by the fact that we're mostly a text based media.
The focus, the meaning, the point is 'a decline in proper anchor texting' which is probably what I'd link.
I appreciate that you regard Slashdot as larger than I do. I absolutely have some level of disconnect since I'm inside of it. I realize that a half a million people might read my little link. It's really hard to wrap the mind around that many people. But that said, I believe they come here because we do something we like. I assure you that this site is hugely valuable to me. Far more than it is to you. But what aspects of the site we choose to think matter most will vary from person to person. I think grammar is secondary.
As for adding my own words, it varies from article to article. If i have a really strong opinion, I'd like to share it with people. I don't necessarily think I'm more qualified, but that doesn't stop me. My ego says that having done this for 8 years now, I'm entitled to get to say my bit whenever I choose. The truth is that I don't feel that need very often.
And here you see the classic Damned if I Do... Damned if I Do't clearly illustrated. One hand accuses me of never communicating with the community, and then the other accuses me of bloating up the page with meta discussion!
Amusingly enough, a professional editor DID read my editorial and correct the typos before it was set to post. I chose to keep my typos to prove a point.
I think that you are talking about 2 seperate issues here, and it's easy to blur the lines: You are saying that because I am commercial, I can't be a community? I think that is untrue personally. This place costs a lot of money to run. Bandwidth, Servers, Programmers and yes (gasp) editors aren't free. And even to run the site for-profit doesn't really need to be a contradiction.
I think most anyone who works in the money part of OSTG would admit right up front where my loyalties lie on Slashdot. Hell maybe I should get marketing or sales to write the article explainign all the times I've put the needs of the community ahead of the business needs. I value this site and the needs of the readers above all else, because I believe it makes long term sense to put those needs first.
Where we simply disagree is on style. I think Slashdot is informal, and therefore typos don't matter that much. Obviously a good number of readers disagree. They print out pages and mark them out with red pens and post in the forums that we are awful. But I don't think that a stylistic decision like that is really that important in the grand scheme of things.
Have patience! I have a half dozen of these editorials in various states of completition. This one was finished first, so I posted it. It's going to take me several months to get to every major problem on Slashdot. After that, we'll be perfect and I can take a break;)
Unfortunately the closest thing we have to 'Sticky' is an update to the FAQ... and very few readers bother to actually read FAQs. In my experience, the only real use for a FAQ is approximately so I can say "STFUN00b" in a *slightly* more polite way (Your question is addressed in the FAQ! Please read it! Oh, and STFUn00b);)
But I am a human being, and being told repeatedly that I suck tends to wear a human being down, especially when, on the whole, I think the work we do here is very good.
That said, my intent here is to address specific concerns of the Slashdot user base. To be more directly accountable. To share more of the guts that help make the site work from day to day. I think it's important to tell readers what I think matters when i'm formatting an article. They are welcome to disagree, but at least I've been clear on the matter.
#1 is a silly idea. A factory doesn't switch first and third shifts on alternate months;) #2 is a bad idea too- while we often do post stories out for the evening hours ahead of schedule, someone still needs to be around to make sure things are cool. Fixing last minute typos, or to post a breaking piece of news that just happens as it happens.
Thats actually a valid point that I never really thought about. I guess the only thing I can say is that we have these book reviews. People mail us books. We mail books to readers so they can review them. They are on-topic and appropriate books for Slashdot. We have to link the book somewhere, why not include a B&N link while we're at it? Honestly if we yanked the link it wouldn't really matter to us. It's not like we're making millions of dollars from it. But then we'd just be giving 1% more profit to B&N, so I guess we might as well have it on our end:)
And comments like your pretty clearly illustrate why, on most days I'd rather just worry about posting stories than post comments. It doesn't matter what I do- it's always not enough for SOMEONE. It is more than a little disheartening sometimes. Despite what people say in the forums, we do care. we do try. we do work hard. It will never be enough for a casual observer witnessing from the outside with no context from the inside.
I imagine this is exactly the same problem dealt with by anyone who creates something that succeeds, and then lasts more than a few days.
I philisophically disagree with that- I've taken 2 submissiosn and mashed them together. I've taken one and cut it in 1/4th. I've taken another, dumped it, rewritten it, and saved only a URL 3 clicks away from the one included. I'm not trying to teach anyone to do anything here. I just want good links on the homepage. Yours. Mine. The bins. Your words. My words. Whatever!
But this is part of my struggle too-- I hate meta discussion. I hate naval gazing. I don't want to read about Slashdot on Slashdot. I want to read tech news. Geeky gadgets. Things that I think are important. I don't want to read a front page story on the NY Times about them changing their paper stock. I don't want to watch a segment on CNN about the CNN Make Up lady. I just want my news!
This goes back to a fundamental struggle for me. Maintaining the feel and nature of Slashdot, while preparing and improving it for the future. What things can be removed? What things are essential to being "Slashdot".
I think at the core of Slashdot is the fact that our homepage is created by a small group of editors, following submissions from thousands. I think it is the moderation of the comments attached to the stories. I think it's that particular green color that I'm so fond of. And I think that it's 'A reader writes' and the start of every story line.
I just think some things are core to what Slashdot is, and changing them is a bad idea.
Then submit the code that does it! We have something and it doesn't work well. We're not perfect here. We don't claim to be. But it's not "Just use a bayesian filter" I assure you;)
Actually we got curious about that so Jamie ran some numbers... BB posts 91.6% of his submissions between 5pm and 1am. Guess who usually works the evening shift around here?
We link what we think is interesting. Some days we have less to choose from.
What is good one day isn't another because we have more to choose from. Some days we're stuck with "Infomercials" or "Press Releases" or "Boring Corporate Mumbo Jumbo". I'm trying to post a story every 45 minutes or so. They can't all be fantastic.
As for gaming stories, we like 'em. We'll keep posting them. There is no revenue associated with them that I am aware of. In fact, it is my understanding that "Gaming" stories are almost worthless since there are SO MANY gaming websites out there, the money made on ads associated with video games is a pittance. Again, I really don't know much about it. I probably should, but I don't. And as you say, anybody who doesn't like gaming articles can turn them off in their user prefs.
And you hit the key point- every editor has their own interests and their accepted submissions OUGHT to reflect that. Every editor posting right now has proven to me that they have interests appropriate to Slashdot. Some of us have different areas of interest, but if it's appropriate for Slashdot, I encourage Hemos or Samzenpus to post sciencish stories- they know more about that stuff than I do. And Zonk and SM know more about gaming than I do. It's all the omelette baby;)
Slashdot Mirror
This is somethign we struggle with. When you see that happen tho, feel free to email. The problem is there is a spectrum here that ranges from "Factually wrong" to "Focuses on Some Detail that is not the focus of the article". Where the teeter totter tips on that scale is a subjective thing.
That whole thing is laid out light crap. It's all ugly legacy stuff. On our TODO list is to rewrite all the code associated with posting comments, including cleaning up the layout. It's an awful mess and I definitely would love to see it fixed up. The problems are more than just cosmetic.
There are things we could do to address that: linking wiki entries, breaking down acronyms, including definitions on strange words. I think these things might add value to some, but to do so would shift our focus. It would change the nature of what Slashdot is. So it's not something I really want to do.
It's like "Footnotes". Sometiems a footnote could be pulled right up and placed in-line in the body text. Other times, it could simply be skipped and ignored. These decisions are essentially about writing for your audience.
I choose to write Slashdot as if I'm writing to my friends. Always have. My friends know certain things about encryption or microprocessors. And I think that a large reason slashdot succeeds is because many people have that shared base level of knowledge. Change that now is one of those things that I think change Slashdot on a molecular level.
We save a number of submissions for various reasons: Poll Ideas might be saved for months. Or an Ask Slashdot about some question. Many submissions are timeless. Well, they might matter to YOU because you want your question answered now, or your poll polled now. But since our primary goal is to spawn a fun/interesting/useful discussion, it might not matter if we post it now or in 2 months.
Then we get backlogged since we get a hundred such submissions, and yours is in the queue.
Personally I don't think it hurts anything having a hundred poll ideas in the queue. It just means someday if I want a new poll I can read 10-15 and pick one. Some are time dependant, but many are just fun ideas without any connection to the real world timestream.
This is a user preference. Log in and toggle it. I choose to not activate year by default because 99% of Slashdot content is read within a few hours or days of posting... or "This" year. So the year display is redundant almost always because it's "This" year. Yup, it's annoying for old articles. Someday a user will contribute a Slashcode Patch with 2 date formats- one for datestamps in the last 72 hours and one for older content.
Completely lost on you, and any number of readers who chose to contribute to this discussion by commenting on the minutia of the english language and not the substance of the article itself. Bam! I deserve the flamebait mod. Give it up.
This does happen. Most stories are posted several minutes and read by subscribers. When they choose to contact us with typos or URL fixes or other notes, we often include those chages.
Geekery Times is not the story.
"Reporting" is not the story. "Reporting" is sorta implied by the fact that we are linking. It means the same as "Saying" or "has an article" or "Writes". These are all words that tell you that on the other side of the link, there will be words. And thats pretty much implied on the glorious web by the fact that we're mostly a text based media.
The focus, the meaning, the point is 'a decline in proper anchor texting' which is probably what I'd link.
Thats it i'm wiping the raid every chance I get now.
As for adding my own words, it varies from article to article. If i have a really strong opinion, I'd like to share it with people. I don't necessarily think I'm more qualified, but that doesn't stop me. My ego says that having done this for 8 years now, I'm entitled to get to say my bit whenever I choose. The truth is that I don't feel that need very often.
And here you see the classic Damned if I Do... Damned if I Do't clearly illustrated. One hand accuses me of never communicating with the community, and then the other accuses me of bloating up the page with meta discussion!
Amusingly enough, a professional editor DID read my editorial and correct the typos before it was set to post. I chose to keep my typos to prove a point.
I think most anyone who works in the money part of OSTG would admit right up front where my loyalties lie on Slashdot. Hell maybe I should get marketing or sales to write the article explainign all the times I've put the needs of the community ahead of the business needs. I value this site and the needs of the readers above all else, because I believe it makes long term sense to put those needs first.
Where we simply disagree is on style. I think Slashdot is informal, and therefore typos don't matter that much. Obviously a good number of readers disagree. They print out pages and mark them out with red pens and post in the forums that we are awful. But I don't think that a stylistic decision like that is really that important in the grand scheme of things.
Have patience! I have a half dozen of these editorials in various states of completition. This one was finished first, so I posted it. It's going to take me several months to get to every major problem on Slashdot. After that, we'll be perfect and I can take a break ;)
Unfortunately the closest thing we have to 'Sticky' is an update to the FAQ... and very few readers bother to actually read FAQs. In my experience, the only real use for a FAQ is approximately so I can say "STFUN00b" in a *slightly* more polite way (Your question is addressed in the FAQ! Please read it! Oh, and STFUn00b) ;)
That said, my intent here is to address specific concerns of the Slashdot user base. To be more directly accountable. To share more of the guts that help make the site work from day to day. I think it's important to tell readers what I think matters when i'm formatting an article. They are welcome to disagree, but at least I've been clear on the matter.
#1 is a silly idea. A factory doesn't switch first and third shifts on alternate months ;) #2 is a bad idea too- while we often do post stories out for the evening hours ahead of schedule, someone still needs to be around to make sure things are cool. Fixing last minute typos, or to post a breaking piece of news that just happens as it happens.
Thats actually a valid point that I never really thought about. I guess the only thing I can say is that we have these book reviews. People mail us books. We mail books to readers so they can review them. They are on-topic and appropriate books for Slashdot. We have to link the book somewhere, why not include a B&N link while we're at it? Honestly if we yanked the link it wouldn't really matter to us. It's not like we're making millions of dollars from it. But then we'd just be giving 1% more profit to B&N, so I guess we might as well have it on our end :)
I imagine this is exactly the same problem dealt with by anyone who creates something that succeeds, and then lasts more than a few days.
I philisophically disagree with that- I've taken 2 submissiosn and mashed them together. I've taken one and cut it in 1/4th. I've taken another, dumped it, rewritten it, and saved only a URL 3 clicks away from the one included. I'm not trying to teach anyone to do anything here. I just want good links on the homepage. Yours. Mine. The bins. Your words. My words. Whatever!
But this is part of my struggle too-- I hate meta discussion. I hate naval gazing. I don't want to read about Slashdot on Slashdot. I want to read tech news. Geeky gadgets. Things that I think are important. I don't want to read a front page story on the NY Times about them changing their paper stock. I don't want to watch a segment on CNN about the CNN Make Up lady. I just want my news!
I think at the core of Slashdot is the fact that our homepage is created by a small group of editors, following submissions from thousands. I think it is the moderation of the comments attached to the stories. I think it's that particular green color that I'm so fond of. And I think that it's 'A reader writes' and the start of every story line.
I just think some things are core to what Slashdot is, and changing them is a bad idea.
Then submit the code that does it! We have something and it doesn't work well. We're not perfect here. We don't claim to be. But it's not "Just use a bayesian filter" I assure you ;)
Actually we got curious about that so Jamie ran some numbers... BB posts 91.6% of his submissions between 5pm and 1am. Guess who usually works the evening shift around here?
We link what we think is interesting. Some days we have less to choose from. What is good one day isn't another because we have more to choose from. Some days we're stuck with "Infomercials" or "Press Releases" or "Boring Corporate Mumbo Jumbo". I'm trying to post a story every 45 minutes or so. They can't all be fantastic.
As for gaming stories, we like 'em. We'll keep posting them. There is no revenue associated with them that I am aware of. In fact, it is my understanding that "Gaming" stories are almost worthless since there are SO MANY gaming websites out there, the money made on ads associated with video games is a pittance. Again, I really don't know much about it. I probably should, but I don't. And as you say, anybody who doesn't like gaming articles can turn them off in their user prefs.
And you hit the key point- every editor has their own interests and their accepted submissions OUGHT to reflect that. Every editor posting right now has proven to me that they have interests appropriate to Slashdot. Some of us have different areas of interest, but if it's appropriate for Slashdot, I encourage Hemos or Samzenpus to post sciencish stories- they know more about that stuff than I do. And Zonk and SM know more about gaming than I do. It's all the omelette baby ;)