As a person who's spent thousands of hours participating in a wide variety of online discussion forums, I can say that the killfile is the greatest invention ever, slightly eclipsing sliced bread in sheer usefulness.
Katz doesn't like filters because they block critics that would otherwise provide valuable feedback. Filters do sometimes do that. Very, very rarely do they do that. 99%(warning: number pulled forth from ass) of the time the critics aren't even critics, they're off topic flamers, or trolls, or that particularly lame breed of online idiot that like to pollute forums with their inane unreadable chatter and think they're being artistic.
Without any kind of filter system, an online forum will have a very short lifespan. At some point in the development of any forum, the signal to noise ratio drops rapidly, usually becuase of a flamewar, but sometimes just one person can post enough off topic or hostile information to drive away the core of the group. Once the noise starts going up, the signal starts to drop. Then the flamers get distracted by other bright shiny things, and leave. At that point a lot of groups simply cease to exist. A lot of mailing lists die this way, when the administrators of the list decide that it's not worth it to continue working on them if there's nobody around to discuss anything. A lot of mailing lists are simply forgotten, running along on forgotten servers in the corners of university computer labs and corporate IT shops.
By giving people the option to filter, however, the group can often survive the tribulations which tear apart other groups. It does two things: It provides the users the ability to block out flaming, and it can reduce flaming by giving those prone to whipping out the flamethrower the abiltiy to filter out those who annoy them. That way, the signal to noise ratio can remain at a higher level, and the group will continue to be useful to its memebers.
Katz doesn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and that's fine. He will have to put up with a lot of abuse, but if his skin is thick enough to tolerate that, more power to him. For most people, however, the killfile can make otherwise useless discussion groups into useful sources of information. It is a tool, perhaps not for everyone, but for those who need it, it can help increase communication levels, which is ultamately good.
We handcuff the two of them together, and drop them off in the middle of the wilderness with nothing but a bag of nacho chips and jar of salsa.
By the time they make it out, they'll be best buds.
Either that, or they'll get eaten by a pack of hungry racoons.
One of the two.
Either way, we won't have to put up with these rather senseless flamewars, which are beginning to drag on a bit long, and no longer appear to have anything to do with what they were orignally about (what were they originally about again?)
Folks, it's great technology, but pretty much useless to the average guy.
This is news for nerds, who cares what the average people want? Let them be happy with their average little lives, while we quitely take over the WORLD! Hahahhahahahhaahahahahahaha, ha... um...
er.
Sorry.
Got a little maniacal for a second there. It's been a long day.
-Lungo "You know how dumb the average person is? Well, by definition, half of them are even dumber than that." J.R."Bob" Dobbs
Ladies and Gentlemen of the board, I would like to introduce the following excerpt as an example of Pure, Unadulterated FUD (PUFUD): Worse yet, the crunchy-granola crowd would hi-jack the open-source movement and turn it into the free-software movement. That's fine and dandy for dusty academics living on NSF grants, but Ayn Rand would never approve of such munificence. If the open-source movement is to prove itself, it will need to produce a commercially viable product. Declaring the K Desktop Environment (KDE) apostate because it contains some proprietary code from a Norwegian company is beyond belief. For a dynamic market to grow up around an open-source software product, the open-source movement will have to be unencumbered from all of the left-of-Leningrad socio-economic claptrap.
I'm actually having difficulty believing that this isn't a brilliant bit of satire written by an open source advocate, especially since the server barely managed to get the text out, much less the images, after a dozen or so hits of the reload button. The guy even refers to Ayn Rand, for chrissakes! Gawd, I wish I had thought of doing something like this.
Oh, this is too funny... I'm lucky I wasn't drinking anything when I read it, or it would now be coming out my nose right now.
We recently bought a a flat panel display at work, and it's been a major pain in the ass. The technology has some pretty severe handicaps. Like the fact that you can't tip them more than a few degrees off vertical, or you'll blow the display (even when off). And unlike most displays made in the past 10 or so years, they will burn in, so don't leave them hooked up to a windows machine overnight, because when the screensaver bsod's, you're going to be reading that debugger info for weeks to come.
And this one costs $25,000! There are already several companies that make 50 inch flat panels, and they're all orders of magnitude cheaper. Maybe for your 25,000 smackers you can acutally tip this one on its side for a couple of seconds. They don't mention that on the website.
I think large panel LCD displays are more likely to be the future of flat panel displays, not plasma. IMHO, that is.
Still, it is pretty cool looking, once you've hung its 100 pounds on the wall with a dozen togglebolts, and the drywall holds.
Slashdot Mirror
As a person who's spent thousands of hours participating in a wide variety of online discussion forums, I can say that the killfile is the greatest invention ever, slightly eclipsing sliced bread in sheer usefulness.
Katz doesn't like filters because they block critics that would otherwise provide valuable feedback. Filters do sometimes do that. Very, very rarely do they do that. 99%(warning: number pulled forth from ass) of the time the critics aren't even critics, they're off topic flamers, or trolls, or that particularly lame breed of online idiot that like to pollute forums with their inane unreadable chatter and think they're being artistic.
Without any kind of filter system, an online forum will have a very short lifespan. At some point in the development of any forum, the signal to noise ratio drops rapidly, usually becuase of a flamewar, but sometimes just one person can post enough off topic or hostile information to drive away the core of the group. Once the noise starts going up, the signal starts to drop. Then the flamers get distracted by other bright shiny things, and leave. At that point a lot of groups simply cease to exist. A lot of mailing lists die this way, when the administrators of the list decide that it's not worth it to continue working on them if there's nobody around to discuss anything. A lot of mailing lists are simply forgotten, running along on forgotten servers in the corners of university computer labs and corporate IT shops.
By giving people the option to filter, however, the group can often survive the tribulations which tear apart other groups. It does two things: It provides the users the ability to block out flaming, and it can reduce flaming by giving those prone to whipping out the flamethrower the abiltiy to filter out those who annoy them. That way, the signal to noise ratio can remain at a higher level, and the group will continue to be useful to its memebers.
Katz doesn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and that's fine. He will have to put up with a lot of abuse, but if his skin is thick enough to tolerate that, more power to him. For most people, however, the killfile can make otherwise useless discussion groups into useful sources of information. It is a tool, perhaps not for everyone, but for those who need it, it can help increase communication levels, which is ultamately good.
We handcuff the two of them together, and drop them off in the middle of the wilderness with nothing but a bag of nacho chips and jar of salsa.
By the time they make it out, they'll be best buds.
Either that, or they'll get eaten by a pack of hungry racoons.
One of the two.
Either way, we won't have to put up with these rather senseless flamewars, which are beginning to drag on a bit long, and no longer appear to have anything to do with what they were orignally about (what were they originally about again?)
-Lung
The C|net article was posted
on: February 25, 1999, 11:35 a.m. PT
The Slashdot article was posted on:
Thursday February 25, @04:11PM (EST? central?)
The race is on to see who can update sooner!
Place yer bets!
My personal prediction is that C|net deletes
the story and never mentions it again, but
not till after Rob updates this article with
a "whoops".
+=Lungo;
"Manos" is a classic, a must see.
"Mitchell" was good too.
My personal favorite was "Time of the Apes"
though.
a cape!
This makes me want to go and hunt down
the Torgo screen saver I had a long time
ago.
Folks, it's great technology, but pretty much useless to the average guy.
This is news for nerds, who cares what the average people want? Let them be happy with their average little lives, while we quitely take over the WORLD! Hahahhahahahhaahahahahahaha, ha... um...
er.
Sorry.
Got a little maniacal for a second there. It's
been a long day.
-Lungo
"You know how dumb the average person is? Well, by definition, half of them are even dumber than that."
J.R."Bob" Dobbs
I love that one. With the orignal poster's permisison, I'd like to have it work its way
into my fortune database.
Thank you, and good night.
-Lungo
Ladies and Gentlemen of the board, I would like
to introduce the following excerpt as an example
of Pure, Unadulterated FUD (PUFUD):
Worse yet, the crunchy-granola crowd would hi-jack the open-source movement and turn it
into the free-software movement. That's fine and dandy for dusty academics living on NSF
grants, but Ayn Rand would never approve of such munificence. If the open-source
movement is to prove itself, it will need to produce a commercially viable product. Declaring
the K Desktop Environment (KDE) apostate because it contains some proprietary code from a
Norwegian company is beyond belief. For a dynamic market to grow up around an
open-source software product, the open-source movement will have to be unencumbered
from all of the left-of-Leningrad socio-economic claptrap.
I'm actually having difficulty believing that
this isn't a brilliant bit of satire written
by an open source advocate, especially since the
server barely managed to get the text out, much
less the images, after a dozen or so hits of the reload button.
The guy even refers to Ayn Rand, for chrissakes!
Gawd, I wish I had thought of doing something like
this.
Oh, this is too funny... I'm lucky I wasn't drinking anything when I read it, or it would
now be coming out my nose right now.
-Lungo
We recently bought a a flat panel display
at work, and it's been a major pain in the
ass. The technology has some pretty severe
handicaps. Like the fact that you can't tip
them more than a few degrees off vertical,
or you'll blow the display (even when off).
And unlike most displays made in the past
10 or so years, they will burn in, so don't
leave them hooked up to a windows machine
overnight, because when the screensaver bsod's,
you're going to be reading that debugger
info for weeks to come.
And this one costs $25,000! There are already
several companies that make 50 inch flat panels,
and they're all orders of magnitude cheaper.
Maybe for your 25,000 smackers you can acutally
tip this one on its side for a couple of seconds.
They don't mention that on the website.
I think large panel LCD displays are more likely
to be the future of flat panel displays, not
plasma. IMHO, that is.
Still, it is pretty cool looking, once you've
hung its 100 pounds on the wall with
a dozen togglebolts, and the drywall holds.
-Lungo