The response is essentially "we don't care about dupes, if you do, fix it yourself".
No, the response is, "We've got something, it doesn't work well. We've tried. If you think it's so easy, prove it."
Besides, your #6 was to claim that he's not replied, and yet he has replied. You just don't like the reply.
Many people could probbably fix it, but Slashdot is a commercial site, not a free community project. Why should I fix Taco's crappy system when he could pay someone to do it?
Because everybody knows it could be done with a simple little script.
Even newspapers have a "letters to the editor" section where you can criticize the newspaper. Where's the slashdot equivalent?
here, and he intimates it will be a semi-monthly or weekly activity. Honestly, were you even here last week?
Considering that you don't know how much they're paid, and considering you haven't personally tried to code a dup eliminator and thus have no idea how much it would cost, it seems a little ridiculous to say that it should be fixed since they are paid. Rob's real point is to challenge people to prove it is trivial by coding it. He's claiming it's not trivial. If you think it's that cheap to create, prove it. I'm speculating that there's a reason why you can't, though I haven't drawn a firm conclusion on the subject.
Also, considering that you're not one of the people paying them, it seems a little ridiculous for you to decide where that should be on their list of priorities. I know my employer has more work for me to do right now than I can accomplish, so it is up to them to decide what goes at the top of the list. Perhaps dup-elimination is not priority #1 for the parent company of slashdot.
Regardless, I was addressing the idea that Rob has never responded to the dup issue, rather than affirming that his response was completely adequate. I even explicitly mentioned that he could be outright lying. The idea that they refuse to answer questions about the subject is clearly wrong, and that's all I was trying to get at.
4) It's primarily a technical problem, and the audience is tech-heavy; thus many of us can think of (and sometimes suggest) potential solutions, and it's frustrating that nothing seems to be being done about it
6) As you note, there are many, many complaints about dupe articles, yet I have not seen any official reply to any of these. While it's entirely possible that I've just missed it, it does seem that our comments are falling on deaf ears. People don't like to feel ignored.
Feel better about #6 now? At least a little? I mean, I realize Rob may be completely off base, or even lying or something. But that is his official reply to your #4. And it's been the official reply for quite some time now, actually, although I think the recent comment is more informative.
Am I the only one who read Taco's entire posting history the day of that "meta-story" about slashdot, where he actually got down and answered our questions for once?
In 2003 I tried to arrange an interview with Nick Corcodilos.. The story stayed in the queue as "pending" for about six months (!) before it was finally rejected. I think they tried, but it fell through.
I do not agree that #1 is a silly idea. Maybe it wouldn't work for your employees, and it probably isn't the most important idea, but I don't believe it is silly.
Why is it that it is just ScuttleMonkey accepting?
I turned off all of SM's posts this morning and discovered that the only reason SM is accepting BB's posts is because SM is doing _most_ of the posting to slashdot right now. Try it. You'll suddenly think you're facing a slashdot full of dupes, because you'll be looking at yesterday's stories.
I just made a longer post, but I'm worried it might get lost and hopeful that you'll read this (assuming you get messages for replies to your posts).
The one sentence summary of what I said was "If it's really good, post it anyway, but if we decide to go offtopic grousing about the submitter, don't sweat it." You might or might not want to read the longer post. (And you might or might not have time, I suppose.:) )
Kudos to CmdrTaco for having a meta-discussion! Because of this excellent show of good faith, I am going to remove my new sig which I installed today. Previously, it said:
I actually noticed when I did what I recommended in the sig (and I'm about to undo it) that slashdot basically went away. The fact is that right now, ScuttleMonkey is doing all of the work. Now, when the Beatles-Beatles goofball (may I pause to say that I'm the only person in the world who hates the Beatles? I even had a dream about hating them just two nights ago. That's pathetic) started coming up, SM was posting his stuff all the time. It's clear to me now that we aren't getting BB stories multiple times a day any more. We're just getting a slashdot that's put together mostly by SM, and he's approving BB stories that he thinks are appropriate, and so therefore all BB stories that have been approved (save one, last I checked) have been approved by SM.
Now, CmdrTaco, some responses to your questions and statements:
Or I could post the story and watch as half of the discussion is simply about the submitter and not the URL that i wanted to share in the first place. Damned if I do, damned if I don't, right? I'm seriously looking for feedback here. What should I do with a good submission from a reader with a reputation?
Now that I've thought about it awhile, my answer is go ahead and post a story if you think it's good, but don't sweat it if we want to talk about something else. Let the linkscammer get his reward... but let us despise him all we want. I don't think it should ever be a big deal to the slashdot powers that be if we run a few threads into the ground discussing something besides the subject itself. As you noted, you have a moderation system in place to control these things. Let that system control it, so that we can self-select the level of offtopicness that we want on a particular day in a particular discussion. Allow us to have these off-topic vents, and I think you will find we feel a lot more charitable toward you. (I know that I immediately felt better just seeing that you posted this story.)
As a side note, I'm really going to try to write more articles addressing Slashdot matters on to Slashdot.
This is really cool! I know that for years you've stated that you didn't like meta-discussions, that you didn't like slashdot to talk about slashdot. And people have constantly disagreed with your stance. The really weird thing for me is that, for my part, I did think you were wrong to avoid meta-discussion for a long time, but finally came around to mostly agree with you. And by the time I agreed with you that a site should avoid meta-discussion, I was running my own webforum elsewhere, where I more or less took the same tactic. Now you're shifting back to what people want you to do, so I'm going to be watching closely.
Kudos for being bold and expressing this intent to encourage periodic meta-discussion.
We can talk about digg or moderation or whatever issues are of most interest next week.
Aw, can't I say just a little bit now? Because what I want to say is I hate it when I see people shilling for another site here. Whether it's kuro5hin, Bruce Perens's forum, digg, or whatever, there's always somebody screaming that slashdot's sky is falling, that it's terrible here, that you've repressed and oppressed me, and that I should go to some other site which is allegedly better (but which never seems to have the needed software features to work right). I have no account on any of those other sites. I'm not just a fanboy; slashdot is still the best. Those folks are just annoying me. Thanks for the chance to vent about them.
If I read him correctly, what he said was to go to the optometrist but then purchase your glasses cheap at Costco. That's more or less what I do, except I go to a full-fledged opthalmologist.
Wow! The think I immediately noticed, on my next visit to slashdot, was that ScuttleMonkey is doing nearly all of the work! Turning off his stories results in a page that looks like it's full of dupes... but they are not dupes, they are just the few stories from yesterday that were posted by anybody besides ScuttleMonkey.
I've been irritatedly reading through this thread trying to think what I could do, knowing posting wouldn't accomplish anything productive. But that will. It's the obviously solution, but it hadn't occurred to me. Thank you for reminding me it was an option.
Are bloggers and blog readers willing to accept rocky performance from popular services?
I figured the answer was "clearly not, since the services have chosen to upgrade to stop the problems. Seems like if the bloggers were willing to accept it the service providers wouldn't feel any obligation to do that.
I count five screens of information, not counting the "Selected adaptations and references" section, which certainly references more than Star Trek. Meanwhile, I went searching on britannica.com and found that there was no article at all on Moby Dick. There was an article on Herman Melville, though. It's 2845 words long. I admit that beats Wikipedia's, which is 883 not counting the bibliography. But combined with the text of the Moby Dick entry, that's 2672 words total, again not counting the (not just Star Trek) references section.
I was just thinking of that. That movie came out when I was in high school. I wanted to see it, but missed it. I never have gotten the chance to rent it or see it broadcast. In fact, I had completely forgotten the name. I had to use Wikipedia's "what links here" to figure out what movie it was.
The only thing I remember about that movie was the product placement. I can't for the life of me remember why I wanted to see it. People do not talk about it, list it in their favorite movies, or write critical essays about its plot.
Apparently, that movie wasn't art. At least, not significant art, not to many people. Apparently I really didn't need to see it, because my life certainly hasn't been any less complete for not seeing it the past thirteen years.
As business models change, as the revenue goes out of advertising as a means of supporting creative works, and as freely distributable content improves to the point of being able to compete with the copyrighted works, I think we'll begin to see more of a divide between truly artistic works and those that are basically paid advertisements. We'll see the truly great works are created by those people that love to create something of high quality. Those will stand out from the rest; those will be the ones we remember after thirteen years.
It has already had some chilling effects and looks like it will be setting a standard that students at private universities aren't guaranteed free speech online.
Sure they are. It just means that private individuals and institutions don't have to continue to be your friend or accept you or do business with you if they don't like their speech. Your freedom does not in any way curtail theirs.
(Yeah; I know. Some private institutions are accepting public money. That's wrong, too.)
Weird. Sounds like there's even more policy problems there than in my giant national corporation with thousands of employees. (And we've got some pretty severe communications difficulties, let me tell you.) But I think it's policy problems, not technology problems.
Around here no marketing guy has the right to schedule the techies for meetings. You want me in a meeting you better be somebody I am working with regularly or my manager or somebody who consulted with my manager. Otherwise you will get a decline. Or more likely a pocket veto.
There is nothing intelligible visible in my schedule. The only thing anybody's schedule shows is phone meetings and in-person meetings and out of office days, and everybody knows that the real work gets done outside of those meetings.
Around here a meeting request is simply a very convenient shortcut to calling someone up and saying, "Hey, are you available at 2?" I know my computer won't screw up and mistranscribe the time or mistranslate the timezone. (I work in US/Central, have worked with people in US/Eastern since 2003, started working with people in US/Pacific last year, and just this last week began working with someone in US/Mountain. My boss is the only person I know in my timezone, but he's not in my city, and we rarely communicate.) I also know my computer won't forget the meeting.
People have items on their schedule that, for policy reasons, can't be put on the publicly-visible calendar.
That's already handled. You just click "decline." Policy dictates whether or not you have to tell them why, not the application. The application still gives you a chance to send an acceptance or decline message; it's just automated and integrates with your calendar. It provides the chance to view some or all of other people's schedules as an added feature, but that's not the only criteria for whether or not appointments are accepted. In my company people reject appointments all the time with no explanation other than "otherwise occupied."
I don't know if it's true or not, but honestly my first reaction was: "Great. More encouragement to feel like I'm hopeless.:(" But my second was, "Ah, well, it probably isn't fully true, anyway, and in any case I know it doesn't take superhuman effort to get out and take a walk every day or lift weights. I just have to want to and to schedule my time." I know I enjoy going out to walk every night at Christmastime, at least.
I also wondered (though of course I didn't actually read the article!) if the case wasn't being overstated a bit. We went from "genetic predisposition" to "becoming active may be difficult." I just have trouble believing genes are that hard to overcome. Environment and personal choice play a huge factor, as well.
when these types of quotes get posted on sites like ZDNet, this only contributes to the fact that people think Linux is poorly maintained and has a low software quality
That's an odd thought; it contributed to my impression that Linux is being well-maintained, since the position Linus is taking is the position that must be taken in order to maintain software well.
Slashdot Mirror
The response is essentially "we don't care about dupes, if you do, fix it yourself".
No, the response is, "We've got something, it doesn't work well. We've tried. If you think it's so easy, prove it."
Besides, your #6 was to claim that he's not replied, and yet he has replied. You just don't like the reply.
Many people could probbably fix it, but Slashdot is a commercial site, not a free community project. Why should I fix Taco's crappy system when he could pay someone to do it?
Because everybody knows it could be done with a simple little script.
Even newspapers have a "letters to the editor" section where you can criticize the newspaper. Where's the slashdot equivalent?
here, and he intimates it will be a semi-monthly or weekly activity. Honestly, were you even here last week?
Considering that you don't know how much they're paid, and considering you haven't personally tried to code a dup eliminator and thus have no idea how much it would cost, it seems a little ridiculous to say that it should be fixed since they are paid. Rob's real point is to challenge people to prove it is trivial by coding it. He's claiming it's not trivial. If you think it's that cheap to create, prove it. I'm speculating that there's a reason why you can't, though I haven't drawn a firm conclusion on the subject.
Also, considering that you're not one of the people paying them, it seems a little ridiculous for you to decide where that should be on their list of priorities. I know my employer has more work for me to do right now than I can accomplish, so it is up to them to decide what goes at the top of the list. Perhaps dup-elimination is not priority #1 for the parent company of slashdot.
Regardless, I was addressing the idea that Rob has never responded to the dup issue, rather than affirming that his response was completely adequate. I even explicitly mentioned that he could be outright lying. The idea that they refuse to answer questions about the subject is clearly wrong, and that's all I was trying to get at.
Cool. We're all amused.
4) It's primarily a technical problem, and the audience is tech-heavy; thus many of us can think of (and sometimes suggest) potential solutions, and it's frustrating that nothing seems to be being done about it
We can at least check what Taco has said when this has been brought up recently
6) As you note, there are many, many complaints about dupe articles, yet I have not seen any official reply to any of these. While it's entirely possible that I've just missed it, it does seem that our comments are falling on deaf ears. People don't like to feel ignored.
Feel better about #6 now? At least a little? I mean, I realize Rob may be completely off base, or even lying or something. But that is his official reply to your #4. And it's been the official reply for quite some time now, actually, although I think the recent comment is more informative.
Am I the only one who read Taco's entire posting history the day of that "meta-story" about slashdot, where he actually got down and answered our questions for once?
In 2003 I tried to arrange an interview with Nick Corcodilos.. The story stayed in the queue as "pending" for about six months (!) before it was finally rejected. I think they tried, but it fell through.
I do not agree that #1 is a silly idea. Maybe it wouldn't work for your employees, and it probably isn't the most important idea, but I don't believe it is silly.
Do you think you could arrange an interview with BB sometime soon? That, IMO, would make for a really cool story.
Cool. I have just bookmarked this post and am going to post it ad nauseum in response to people who grouse here that you don't care or don't listen.
Why is it that it is just ScuttleMonkey accepting?
I turned off all of SM's posts this morning and discovered that the only reason SM is accepting BB's posts is because SM is doing _most_ of the posting to slashdot right now. Try it. You'll suddenly think you're facing a slashdot full of dupes, because you'll be looking at yesterday's stories.
I just made a longer post, but I'm worried it might get lost and hopeful that you'll read this (assuming you get messages for replies to your posts).
The one sentence summary of what I said was "If it's really good, post it anyway, but if we decide to go offtopic grousing about the submitter, don't sweat it." You might or might not want to read the longer post. (And you might or might not have time, I suppose. :) )
Kudos to CmdrTaco for having a meta-discussion! Because of this excellent show of good faith, I am going to remove my new sig which I installed today. Previously, it said:
Turn off ScuttleMonkey's stories.
Now, it is gone entirely.
I actually noticed when I did what I recommended in the sig (and I'm about to undo it) that slashdot basically went away. The fact is that right now, ScuttleMonkey is doing all of the work. Now, when the Beatles-Beatles goofball (may I pause to say that I'm the only person in the world who hates the Beatles? I even had a dream about hating them just two nights ago. That's pathetic) started coming up, SM was posting his stuff all the time. It's clear to me now that we aren't getting BB stories multiple times a day any more. We're just getting a slashdot that's put together mostly by SM, and he's approving BB stories that he thinks are appropriate, and so therefore all BB stories that have been approved (save one, last I checked) have been approved by SM.
Now, CmdrTaco, some responses to your questions and statements:
Or I could post the story and watch as half of the discussion is simply about the submitter and not the URL that i wanted to share in the first place. Damned if I do, damned if I don't, right? I'm seriously looking for feedback here. What should I do with a good submission from a reader with a reputation?
Now that I've thought about it awhile, my answer is go ahead and post a story if you think it's good, but don't sweat it if we want to talk about something else. Let the linkscammer get his reward ... but let us despise him all we want. I don't think it should ever be a big deal to the slashdot powers that be if we run a few threads into the ground discussing something besides the subject itself. As you noted, you have a moderation system in place to control these things. Let that system control it, so that we can self-select the level of offtopicness that we want on a particular day in a particular discussion. Allow us to have these off-topic vents, and I think you will find we feel a lot more charitable toward you. (I know that I immediately felt better just seeing that you posted this story.)
As a side note, I'm really going to try to write more articles addressing Slashdot matters on to Slashdot.
This is really cool! I know that for years you've stated that you didn't like meta-discussions, that you didn't like slashdot to talk about slashdot. And people have constantly disagreed with your stance. The really weird thing for me is that, for my part, I did think you were wrong to avoid meta-discussion for a long time, but finally came around to mostly agree with you. And by the time I agreed with you that a site should avoid meta-discussion, I was running my own webforum elsewhere, where I more or less took the same tactic. Now you're shifting back to what people want you to do, so I'm going to be watching closely.
Kudos for being bold and expressing this intent to encourage periodic meta-discussion.
We can talk about digg or moderation or whatever issues are of most interest next week.
Aw, can't I say just a little bit now? Because what I want to say is I hate it when I see people shilling for another site here. Whether it's kuro5hin, Bruce Perens's forum, digg, or whatever, there's always somebody screaming that slashdot's sky is falling, that it's terrible here, that you've repressed and oppressed me, and that I should go to some other site which is allegedly better (but which never seems to have the needed software features to work right). I have no account on any of those other sites. I'm not just a fanboy; slashdot is still the best. Those folks are just annoying me. Thanks for the chance to vent about them.
If I read him correctly, what he said was to go to the optometrist but then purchase your glasses cheap at Costco. That's more or less what I do, except I go to a full-fledged opthalmologist.
Wow! The think I immediately noticed, on my next visit to slashdot, was that ScuttleMonkey is doing nearly all of the work! Turning off his stories results in a page that looks like it's full of dupes ... but they are not dupes, they are just the few stories from yesterday that were posted by anybody besides ScuttleMonkey.
THANK YOU for reminding me I could do that!
I've been irritatedly reading through this thread trying to think what I could do, knowing posting wouldn't accomplish anything productive. But that will. It's the obviously solution, but it hadn't occurred to me. Thank you for reminding me it was an option.
Are bloggers and blog readers willing to accept rocky performance from popular services?
I figured the answer was "clearly not, since the services have chosen to upgrade to stop the problems. Seems like if the bloggers were willing to accept it the service providers wouldn't feel any obligation to do that.
I count five screens of information, not counting the "Selected adaptations and references" section, which certainly references more than Star Trek. Meanwhile, I went searching on britannica.com and found that there was no article at all on Moby Dick. There was an article on Herman Melville, though. It's 2845 words long. I admit that beats Wikipedia's, which is 883 not counting the bibliography. But combined with the text of the Moby Dick entry, that's 2672 words total, again not counting the (not just Star Trek) references section.
and at some point, marketers are going to start expressing interest in the ability to freely edit Wikipedia articles on their products.
You're new at Wikipedia, aren't you?
The answer is that the web is a medium where you should focus on content and let me and my browser decide how to display it.
I was just thinking of that. That movie came out when I was in high school. I wanted to see it, but missed it. I never have gotten the chance to rent it or see it broadcast. In fact, I had completely forgotten the name. I had to use Wikipedia's "what links here" to figure out what movie it was.
The only thing I remember about that movie was the product placement. I can't for the life of me remember why I wanted to see it. People do not talk about it, list it in their favorite movies, or write critical essays about its plot.
Apparently, that movie wasn't art. At least, not significant art, not to many people. Apparently I really didn't need to see it, because my life certainly hasn't been any less complete for not seeing it the past thirteen years.
As business models change, as the revenue goes out of advertising as a means of supporting creative works, and as freely distributable content improves to the point of being able to compete with the copyrighted works, I think we'll begin to see more of a divide between truly artistic works and those that are basically paid advertisements. We'll see the truly great works are created by those people that love to create something of high quality. Those will stand out from the rest; those will be the ones we remember after thirteen years.
It has already had some chilling effects and looks like it will be setting a standard that students at private universities aren't guaranteed free speech online.
Sure they are. It just means that private individuals and institutions don't have to continue to be your friend or accept you or do business with you if they don't like their speech. Your freedom does not in any way curtail theirs.
(Yeah; I know. Some private institutions are accepting public money. That's wrong, too.)
Weird. Sounds like there's even more policy problems there than in my giant national corporation with thousands of employees. (And we've got some pretty severe communications difficulties, let me tell you.) But I think it's policy problems, not technology problems.
Around here no marketing guy has the right to schedule the techies for meetings. You want me in a meeting you better be somebody I am working with regularly or my manager or somebody who consulted with my manager. Otherwise you will get a decline. Or more likely a pocket veto.
There is nothing intelligible visible in my schedule. The only thing anybody's schedule shows is phone meetings and in-person meetings and out of office days, and everybody knows that the real work gets done outside of those meetings.
Around here a meeting request is simply a very convenient shortcut to calling someone up and saying, "Hey, are you available at 2?" I know my computer won't screw up and mistranscribe the time or mistranslate the timezone. (I work in US/Central, have worked with people in US/Eastern since 2003, started working with people in US/Pacific last year, and just this last week began working with someone in US/Mountain. My boss is the only person I know in my timezone, but he's not in my city, and we rarely communicate.) I also know my computer won't forget the meeting.
People have items on their schedule that, for policy reasons, can't be put on the publicly-visible calendar.
That's already handled. You just click "decline." Policy dictates whether or not you have to tell them why, not the application. The application still gives you a chance to send an acceptance or decline message; it's just automated and integrates with your calendar. It provides the chance to view some or all of other people's schedules as an added feature, but that's not the only criteria for whether or not appointments are accepted. In my company people reject appointments all the time with no explanation other than "otherwise occupied."
I don't know if it's true or not, but honestly my first reaction was: "Great. More encouragement to feel like I'm hopeless. :(" But my second was, "Ah, well, it probably isn't fully true, anyway, and in any case I know it doesn't take superhuman effort to get out and take a walk every day or lift weights. I just have to want to and to schedule my time." I know I enjoy going out to walk every night at Christmastime, at least.
I also wondered (though of course I didn't actually read the article!) if the case wasn't being overstated a bit. We went from "genetic predisposition" to "becoming active may be difficult." I just have trouble believing genes are that hard to overcome. Environment and personal choice play a huge factor, as well.
Okay, the Beatles-Beatles guy is getting old. Step on him.
Also, the subject line of the article is misleading.
I hate Beatles, anyway, of both the musical and the insectoid varieties.
when these types of quotes get posted on sites like ZDNet, this only contributes to the fact that people think Linux is poorly maintained and has a low software quality
That's an odd thought; it contributed to my impression that Linux is being well-maintained, since the position Linus is taking is the position that must be taken in order to maintain software well.