Want to wager on it? We need some metric of disappearance, but I think it is absolutely safe to say the story will not last as long as Snowden's.
As regards the anonymous and spineless fascist who gave my comment the overrated mod: You're supposed to wait for it to get a mod point. You're only showing your willingness to abuse the rules, such as they are.
The troll question is actually related to this topic via their abuse of anonymity, but it is again philosophically complicated. I think "troll" is actually a multidimensional concept. Since I think the dimensions of evaluating comments (and their authors) should be defined as positive axes that allow for negative values, I'm going to word it in those terms. For example, if there were a dimension of "sincerity", I think most trolls are negative, though there are few who are lying to themselves, too. Most trolls are negative on the dimensions of "constuctive", "supportive", and "friendly", but not always at the same time.
There is a flip side, however. Sometimes trolls can be "stimulating", but I see that as a dimension that should be split out of the currently ambiguous "interesting" dimension. Right now "interesting" fuzzily seems to include "stimulating" and "well written" and several other matters of opinion. They can't even translate it cleanly into Japanese (on the Japanese slashdot), which reminds me of something Dijkstra said about translation. Paraphrasing, but something like 'If I can't translate a new idea to my other language in a natural and straightforward way, then that is strong evidence there is something wrong with the idea.' (Pretty sure I heard him say it live before I left Austin.)
Actually, I don't think they will shoot Assange immediately. I think he will disappear into a black hole of some sort, unless they can use him for a show trial a la Stalin. Doesn't even matter anymore what he did. What matters is putting the fear of gawd into anyone else who is thinking of doing something that causes similar embarrassment to sufficiently rich and powerful people.
As regards the comments here, I'm not at all surprised to see the attacks on Assange. I just wonder why are they such big fans of corporate secrecy and government secrecy? (Same thing now, given our corporatist overlords.)
Occam's Razor says they are shills, probably professional abusers of your privacy, and mine.
Secrecy and anonymity are funny things, but it's a tough philosophic topic. On principle, I think that secrecy is wrong, because the truth is eventually going to come out, but it turns out to be quite easy to justify anonymity in terms of prior secret crimes and the anonymity of the perpetrators... No reason to protect the whistle-blowers if the crimes were already known to the public, eh?
However, the criminals are not worrying about eventually. They just want to die with the most toys. Their planning horizons are limited to statutes of limitations or death. Preferably the whistle-blower's death.
Any trace of privacy will soon be the ultimate luxury good. The rest of us peasants will be naked on the podium, with all our weaknesses and mistakes well known and used as sticks to threaten and control us. However, that's only the half of it. Our interests, tastes, and even our strengths will be used to manipulate and control us, too.
Returning to Assange, I actually think it was his taste in women that was used to set him up. I would say he's losing his freedom for being a sucker, but he actually lost his freedom years ago.
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.
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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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).
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...
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?
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.
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?
Thanks for the clarification, but it makes me feel like I failed to make my suggestion sufficiently clear. Yes, I certainly think you should give priority to new features that users want, but I think you should give the highest priority to features they want badly enough to help pay for. My suggested mechanism to implement this approach would involve "charity shares" at a suggested 'retail' price of $10 per share. (However, one of the viral mechanisms that might be worth considering would be to allow overselling of shares (within the schedule constraints) to drive the per share cost down while pushing the priority up.)
By making the linkage between new features (or ongoing costs) and the people who use those features (or incur the costs) more explicit, then you have a fundamentally different economic model. Rather than paying with our privacy in the usual push-driven advertising models, we would be rewarded by appearing on the donor page associated with the project documentation of the features we funded. Yeah, it's a small thing, but I think it would be enough for me to justify donating some of my money, small though my wallet be, and in a sense you can compare the smallness with the small value of a click on an ad...
Of course the real question is whether or not there are a lot of people who might be similarly motivated by a convenient way to make slashdot better. I don't think you can judge by my poor salesmanship of the idea. How about if I offer to put up some seed money? (However, in that more substantial case I would want to see a pretty solid business plan... I'd need to believe there is some chance I'd recover my capital--but I am willing to gamble on the idea.)
Only mention of "financial models" in the thread? But that is the key.
IF (the big "if") the financial model depends on protecting your privacy, then your privacy might get protected.
If the financial model depends on abusing your privacy, then you are firetrucked.
Small solution: Persuade the google (good luck, Mr Phelps!) to add a financial model tab to Google Play. The developer would explain what the financial model is, and the google would add a secure annotation about any part of the financial model they can confirm. This would give us some basis to decide which apps might be legit. (However, as regards the google, remember that their operative motto now is "All your attention are belong to us.")
Big solution for the push advertising part of the problem: Turn the entire system on its head with a privacy-protection intermediary for a pull-driven advertising system. (Details of one possible implementation available upon polite request.)
Upon reflection, I think I'm more than discouraged by your reply. "More of the same" is definitely not the answer for the ongoing problems... Actually, one part of your answer could be interpreted as "But even less so", which seems to be a tacit admission that things have been going in the wrong direction.
(Of course, we already had the explicit evidence of the transfer of ownership itself. Not even sure it should be called a sale, since I've seen too many cases where such a deal was actually just a transfer of debt...)
If I had a mod point to my name, I'd give you an extra insightful, even though you didn't mention the key word I was searching for, privacy. Also, I'd refer you to my comment about the business models in relation to gnawing the arms off the makers...
I've been posing (and pondering) this question ever since I was convinced that Microsoft was not charging money for the upgrade to Windows 10:
Why?
One of the major business model innovations underlying Microsoft's "success" is ignoring the end user. Microsoft has increasingly focused on selling to the makers and the end users are basically forced to go along. Yeah, Apple survived (after a near death experience), but I'm still doubtful that the most creative accountants can show profits from the OS side of their business model. Linux remains a niche player for lack of any good business models, but MS got fat from the manufacturers.
Now Microsoft suddenly bites the hands that have been feeding it? Actually, more like gnawing off the arms at the elbows. The makers are in a commodity business of the nastiest, lowest-profits sort, and many of them can't afford to skip the new-box sales for a year or so, just because so many older machines suddenly become like-new again.
MS has plenty of cash in the bank. "Honey badger don't care" which makers survive. There will be at least a couple of makers around to sell new computers, and Microsoft will just pick up where it left off. However, it has also become pretty clear they are trying to muscle in on part of Apple's business model, and maybe the google's, as well.
Thanks for the reply, though it was a kind of a discouraging answer, especially the mentions of "little" and "invasive". Kind of a tough combination to buy into.
My suggestion of the by-feature-payment system would be to get a little money as a fractional revenue stream from a relatively large number of sources... The limit is basically how many projects you can get into motion and how fast you can evaluate the results.
Seriously, glad to hear you like the idea. So how to make it happen?
Actually, there have been a small number of people who have liked various aspects of the idea, but I am NOT a leader type. I basically don't like people trying to tell me what to do and I don't like telling other people what they should do. Perhaps "I have no dog in your fight" could be my motto?
(Incidentally, I was trying to translate that expression into Japanese this morning... There must be a for it?)
There in another tab, already bookmarked, and I'll seriously study it soon. If it really is what I'm looking for, then I thank you greatly for calling it to my attention, and the project I want to fund now is one that will help more people find it...
Let's go seriously viral about making the world better.
I am not new around here, but I AM picking on sourceforge as one of the biggest graveyards.
My actual point is that it is mostly the economic model that is failing. There is a critical gap between the large number of people who might benefit from the completion of a project and the people who are sufficiently motivated to work on it. My suggested financial model is a way to bridge that gap...
Hmm... I'm going to have to look into this "breakdown of the overall rating" thing... Is it a new aspect of the user's account information? My fuzzy recollection is that my research into how karma worked was pretty much disappointed and disappointing.
Let me clarify that the way my suggested funding model would work, the powers-that-be-making-slashdot wouldn't do or change anything unless they already had a good estimate of how much it would cost and the funds had been offered by sufficient donors to make it work. No risk, since they would be holding the money anyway pending the donors' active encouragement about how to spend it.
However, this particular feature does offer a pretty good example of an ongoing-cost project of a feasible size. The extended karma would incur some extra server costs, but not too large. The way the feature should be implemented, if the extra server runs out of funding, then the feature would become disabled. Attempting to use the feature would instead trigger a pitch to help fund the server for the next year. There is also a special marketing pitch in this case. You could allow the pledge to enable a single or limited use of the feature, pending full enablement when the ongoing costs are funded.
Perhaps a "lost and find" feature for dormant IDs? Not important enough that I would chip in to pay for it, but if there are a lot of people in that boat, and the implementation project was small enough, they might be able to fund it at my suggested charity-retail price of $10/charity-share. However, I'm dubious that you could design an implementation of such a feature that wouldn't have serious ongoing costs, too.
Maybe if you limit it to situations where the email account is still valid and uncompromised, so the confirmation email is sufficiently reliable to revalidate the account without human intervention? In that form, the "lost and find" feature would basically be limited to a mechanism that searches dormant accounts and attempts to reclaim them?
Hmmm... Perhaps an alternative project that might address the same situation using the algorithm toddestan suggested would be an enhanced time-window search? Is there currently any way to search for comments within time windows? The advantage of this feature (and therefore a reason I might support it with my little wallet) is that it is a more flexible tool that could be used for lots of purposes...
Slashdot Mirror
Want to wager on it? We need some metric of disappearance, but I think it is absolutely safe to say the story will not last as long as Snowden's.
As regards the anonymous and spineless fascist who gave my comment the overrated mod: You're supposed to wait for it to get a mod point. You're only showing your willingness to abuse the rules, such as they are.
The troll question is actually related to this topic via their abuse of anonymity, but it is again philosophically complicated. I think "troll" is actually a multidimensional concept. Since I think the dimensions of evaluating comments (and their authors) should be defined as positive axes that allow for negative values, I'm going to word it in those terms. For example, if there were a dimension of "sincerity", I think most trolls are negative, though there are few who are lying to themselves, too. Most trolls are negative on the dimensions of "constuctive", "supportive", and "friendly", but not always at the same time.
There is a flip side, however. Sometimes trolls can be "stimulating", but I see that as a dimension that should be split out of the currently ambiguous "interesting" dimension. Right now "interesting" fuzzily seems to include "stimulating" and "well written" and several other matters of opinion. They can't even translate it cleanly into Japanese (on the Japanese slashdot), which reminds me of something Dijkstra said about translation. Paraphrasing, but something like 'If I can't translate a new idea to my other language in a natural and straightforward way, then that is strong evidence there is something wrong with the idea.' (Pretty sure I heard him say it live before I left Austin.)
Actually, I don't think they will shoot Assange immediately. I think he will disappear into a black hole of some sort, unless they can use him for a show trial a la Stalin. Doesn't even matter anymore what he did. What matters is putting the fear of gawd into anyone else who is thinking of doing something that causes similar embarrassment to sufficiently rich and powerful people.
As regards the comments here, I'm not at all surprised to see the attacks on Assange. I just wonder why are they such big fans of corporate secrecy and government secrecy? (Same thing now, given our corporatist overlords.)
Occam's Razor says they are shills, probably professional abusers of your privacy, and mine.
Secrecy and anonymity are funny things, but it's a tough philosophic topic. On principle, I think that secrecy is wrong, because the truth is eventually going to come out, but it turns out to be quite easy to justify anonymity in terms of prior secret crimes and the anonymity of the perpetrators... No reason to protect the whistle-blowers if the crimes were already known to the public, eh?
However, the criminals are not worrying about eventually. They just want to die with the most toys. Their planning horizons are limited to statutes of limitations or death. Preferably the whistle-blower's death.
Any trace of privacy will soon be the ultimate luxury good. The rest of us peasants will be naked on the podium, with all our weaknesses and mistakes well known and used as sticks to threaten and control us. However, that's only the half of it. Our interests, tastes, and even our strengths will be used to manipulate and control us, too.
Returning to Assange, I actually think it was his taste in women that was used to set him up. I would say he's losing his freedom for being a sucker, but he actually lost his freedom years ago.
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.
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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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).
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?
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...
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?
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.
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?
Thanks for the clarification, but it makes me feel like I failed to make my suggestion sufficiently clear. Yes, I certainly think you should give priority to new features that users want, but I think you should give the highest priority to features they want badly enough to help pay for. My suggested mechanism to implement this approach would involve "charity shares" at a suggested 'retail' price of $10 per share. (However, one of the viral mechanisms that might be worth considering would be to allow overselling of shares (within the schedule constraints) to drive the per share cost down while pushing the priority up.)
By making the linkage between new features (or ongoing costs) and the people who use those features (or incur the costs) more explicit, then you have a fundamentally different economic model. Rather than paying with our privacy in the usual push-driven advertising models, we would be rewarded by appearing on the donor page associated with the project documentation of the features we funded. Yeah, it's a small thing, but I think it would be enough for me to justify donating some of my money, small though my wallet be, and in a sense you can compare the smallness with the small value of a click on an ad...
Of course the real question is whether or not there are a lot of people who might be similarly motivated by a convenient way to make slashdot better. I don't think you can judge by my poor salesmanship of the idea. How about if I offer to put up some seed money? (However, in that more substantial case I would want to see a pretty solid business plan... I'd need to believe there is some chance I'd recover my capital--but I am willing to gamble on the idea.)
Only mention of "financial models" in the thread? But that is the key.
IF (the big "if") the financial model depends on protecting your privacy, then your privacy might get protected.
If the financial model depends on abusing your privacy, then you are firetrucked.
Small solution: Persuade the google (good luck, Mr Phelps!) to add a financial model tab to Google Play. The developer would explain what the financial model is, and the google would add a secure annotation about any part of the financial model they can confirm. This would give us some basis to decide which apps might be legit. (However, as regards the google, remember that their operative motto now is "All your attention are belong to us.")
Big solution for the push advertising part of the problem: Turn the entire system on its head with a privacy-protection intermediary for a pull-driven advertising system. (Details of one possible implementation available upon polite request.)
Upon reflection, I think I'm more than discouraged by your reply. "More of the same" is definitely not the answer for the ongoing problems... Actually, one part of your answer could be interpreted as "But even less so", which seems to be a tacit admission that things have been going in the wrong direction.
(Of course, we already had the explicit evidence of the transfer of ownership itself. Not even sure it should be called a sale, since I've seen too many cases where such a deal was actually just a transfer of debt...)
If I had a mod point to my name, I'd give you an extra insightful, even though you didn't mention the key word I was searching for, privacy. Also, I'd refer you to my comment about the business models in relation to gnawing the arms off the makers...
"Free from Microsoft" is an oxymoron.
I've been posing (and pondering) this question ever since I was convinced that Microsoft was not charging money for the upgrade to Windows 10:
Why?
One of the major business model innovations underlying Microsoft's "success" is ignoring the end user. Microsoft has increasingly focused on selling to the makers and the end users are basically forced to go along. Yeah, Apple survived (after a near death experience), but I'm still doubtful that the most creative accountants can show profits from the OS side of their business model. Linux remains a niche player for lack of any good business models, but MS got fat from the manufacturers.
Now Microsoft suddenly bites the hands that have been feeding it? Actually, more like gnawing off the arms at the elbows. The makers are in a commodity business of the nastiest, lowest-profits sort, and many of them can't afford to skip the new-box sales for a year or so, just because so many older machines suddenly become like-new again.
MS has plenty of cash in the bank. "Honey badger don't care" which makers survive. There will be at least a couple of makers around to sell new computers, and Microsoft will just pick up where it left off. However, it has also become pretty clear they are trying to muscle in on part of Apple's business model, and maybe the google's, as well.
Evidently all the makers can say is "That hurts."
Thanks for the reply, though it was a kind of a discouraging answer, especially the mentions of "little" and "invasive". Kind of a tough combination to buy into.
My suggestion of the by-feature-payment system would be to get a little money as a fractional revenue stream from a relatively large number of sources... The limit is basically how many projects you can get into motion and how fast you can evaluate the results.
A convert! Hallelujah! We're saved!
Seriously, glad to hear you like the idea. So how to make it happen?
Actually, there have been a small number of people who have liked various aspects of the idea, but I am NOT a leader type. I basically don't like people trying to tell me what to do and I don't like telling other people what they should do. Perhaps "I have no dog in your fight" could be my motto?
(Incidentally, I was trying to translate that expression into Japanese this morning... There must be a for it?)
There in another tab, already bookmarked, and I'll seriously study it soon. If it really is what I'm looking for, then I thank you greatly for calling it to my attention, and the project I want to fund now is one that will help more people find it...
Let's go seriously viral about making the world better.
I am not new around here, but I AM picking on sourceforge as one of the biggest graveyards.
My actual point is that it is mostly the economic model that is failing. There is a critical gap between the large number of people who might benefit from the completion of a project and the people who are sufficiently motivated to work on it. My suggested financial model is a way to bridge that gap...
Hmm... I'm going to have to look into this "breakdown of the overall rating" thing... Is it a new aspect of the user's account information? My fuzzy recollection is that my research into how karma worked was pretty much disappointed and disappointing.
Let me clarify that the way my suggested funding model would work, the powers-that-be-making-slashdot wouldn't do or change anything unless they already had a good estimate of how much it would cost and the funds had been offered by sufficient donors to make it work. No risk, since they would be holding the money anyway pending the donors' active encouragement about how to spend it.
However, this particular feature does offer a pretty good example of an ongoing-cost project of a feasible size. The extended karma would incur some extra server costs, but not too large. The way the feature should be implemented, if the extra server runs out of funding, then the feature would become disabled. Attempting to use the feature would instead trigger a pitch to help fund the server for the next year. There is also a special marketing pitch in this case. You could allow the pledge to enable a single or limited use of the feature, pending full enablement when the ongoing costs are funded.
Perhaps a "lost and find" feature for dormant IDs? Not important enough that I would chip in to pay for it, but if there are a lot of people in that boat, and the implementation project was small enough, they might be able to fund it at my suggested charity-retail price of $10/charity-share. However, I'm dubious that you could design an implementation of such a feature that wouldn't have serious ongoing costs, too.
Maybe if you limit it to situations where the email account is still valid and uncompromised, so the confirmation email is sufficiently reliable to revalidate the account without human intervention? In that form, the "lost and find" feature would basically be limited to a mechanism that searches dormant accounts and attempts to reclaim them?
Hmmm... Perhaps an alternative project that might address the same situation using the algorithm toddestan suggested would be an enhanced time-window search? Is there currently any way to search for comments within time windows? The advantage of this feature (and therefore a reason I might support it with my little wallet) is that it is a more flexible tool that could be used for lots of purposes...