Please stop posting these awful videos. You're not reporters. Slashdot is a news aggregator, so stop trying to ruin it with these atrocious video vanity projects. If you *must* create them, don't clutter the front page with them. The majority of users hate them, so please, just stop!
OK, here's an actual, real solution to the "video problem". Since you're creating summaries and transcripts, post *those* on the front page and either have a video link in the story or just leave the videos on the video tab. This isn't perfect, because all the videos you keep making are atrocious, but at least alleviates part of the problem.
The solution, of course, is to STOP MAKING THESE AWFUL VIDEOS.
More terrible timothy videos. The editors continue to post this drivel on the front page. timothy continues his quest to ruin slashdot, and create the most awful videos he can. These gyroscope things have been around for many years, and were even sold by thinkgeek. You call the guy a huckster right in the article, the whole thing is completely not "stuff that matters".
If you're going to make these horrific things (a huge mistake) at least tag them as videos and let us have the option to filter them! I can filter Idle, why not videos? You seem determined to cram these things down our throats. Are you afraid we'll all filter them from the feed and ruin whatever crazy plan you guys have that involves these videos?
I disagree with your assessment that "most slashdot users aren't competent enough to figure out how to block the video", if anything they're more likely to know how.
Sure. They're poorly produced. They reek of being advertisements. The content is terrible. They're a waste of time and money slashdot could be investing in fixing the performance problems of the site as well as the bugs that have been dragging the site down for years. Videos are strongly disliked by a lot of readers (you can go back to the comments from previous video debacles to see evidence of that claim). They refuse to give us a way to filter them from our feeds.
Again with a lame video on the front page. Are you just determined to ignore all the negative comments and feedback on your slashvertisement video junk? You sem totally oblivious to the flags people are putting on the firehose entries. Why are you so persistently ignoring the readers?
Just *stop* with the videos. If you really want to do this, put it on youtube like all the other lame vieo makers. Stop screwing up slashdot. I mean, stop screwing it up more than you already have over the past two years.
After the last blowup over videos, you even made a big post about how you had made missteps, and you'd listened to the feedback, etc. And yet here you are, wit hmore incredibly lame CES junk. If something is notable out of CES, you should be posting articles referring to a real news source that discusses the story. You're not even posting stories about notable things! You're wasting your time, money, and the front page on such incredibly lame things as earbuds and lamps!
This is a vanity project, plain and simple, and needs to stop.
If the slashdot crew themselves hadn't created the video, do you think this "article" would have made it out of the submission queue? This is more of the insane slashdot video vanity project. More of the hoodie, more of the slashvertisements. Every time they do this, they drag slashdot farther from being a useful site, and farther toward something like Gawker. They need to start acting like editors, and stop posting their little videos where they have the fantasy that they can be reporters. They need to curate the site and seek out good stories. They need stop posting drivel like these videos, or the garbage that Hugh Pickens spews across the page, or the corporate submission feeds.
This stuff doesn't belong on the front page of Slashdot. You aren't a news source, you're not reporters, and you never will be. How about you spend more time actually editing and curating decent submissions, instead of the political tripe you've been doling out? Stop with the videos. Just...stop.
Don't blame Logitech for this. They inherited this model when they bought Intrigue Technologies, the company that created the Harmony Line (when it was called EasyZapper).
Slashdot has suffered such a serious decline in the past 4 years that it's remarkable someone actually bought it. The constant off-topic posts by professionals: Hugh Pickens (mostly not tech related), judgecorp (Techweek), mikejuk (i-programmer.info), the laughably bad slashvertisements, the terrible video missteps, and the apparent lack of any actual editing by the "editors" have reduced the once mighty Slashdot to a mere footnote.
Part of the problem is I never played SC2 (I never buy games for more than $20) so I didn't know they'd already adopted that model until after I'd paid for my WoW subscription. A part of why I paid the WoW subscription was that with the included Diablo III, it sounded like a pretty good deal.
But I'll never use the multiplayer or auction house features...if I do play Diablo III, it'll be purely single player. So I really object to Blizzard requiring a Battle.net account and an internet connection to play a single player game, just like I don't want to play Ubi games that act the same way.
Well, best of luck with that for them. I know I'll never buy another Blizzard game that is built that way. I got Diablo III as part of my 1 year WoW subscription, so I didn't even bother looking into the DRM aspects, otherwise I'd have never purchased it (in spite of being a huge fan of the other Diablo titles). I haven't bothered playing it since I discovered it was online only.
I never, ever buy new games at full price. I've commented on this many times in the past, but I just don't feel that modern games give appropriate gaming value for their high $60 price tags. So I always wait until the game is discounted, either in the stores, on PSN, or on Steam, before I buy. That means that all DLC will have been out for a long time, and will also be cheaper. I only recently (as in, the last month) started playing Fallout 3, because it was on sale with all the DLC on Steam. Same with Oblivion, New Vegas, etc.
Not only that, but if you wait, you can sometimes get extra items that were originally pre-order bonuses, or dealer exclusives, bundled in a "game of the year" edition. No DLC or special item is worth actually buying something from Gamestop or Best Buy, but it always irks me to see game comapnies screw over their customer base with that sort of divisive BS.
So they can put DLC out on day 1, on day 1000, and it doesn't matter to me. I'd much rather wait for it to be cheap, bug-fixed, and thoroughly reviewed before I put down some money.
The only exceptions are my favorite franchises, Half-Life and Portal. But I'm OK with paying full price for those, because they're great, and it only happens once every 3 to 5 years...
Here we go again...a completely off-topic post, with video, cluttering up the front page because it's a pet project of the editors. Hasen't the Slashdot readership made it clear about this? If you must waste your time making bad videos, at least have the decency to keep them in the "Video" ghetto where they belong, and where the readers (and it's "readers", not "watchers") can safely ignore them. How long will your little vanity project keep going on, distracting you from doing your real job, and dragging Slashdot into the sewer?
I've never paid more that $30 for a game, normally won't buy a new game for more thatn $20, and usually wait for sales or other discounts. I've got the money, but I find games rarely deliver the entertainment value for the cost. I've never purchased a game at the current $60 price point, so I'd expect more gamers to start passing on the triple-A releases, or DLC driven games.
As much as I loathe Microsoft and everything they do, it’s silly to post this as a news story. Who’s Mike James, a.k.a. “mikejuk”? What’s this other than his opinion? Does he have any design and usability chops to speak of, so we can treat this as anything other than trolling? I’m willing to believe that they actually conducted real usability studies and decided to try this because it worked better. Even the Ribbon, which I personally hate, was a hit with most users.
Is it generally considered appropriate for authors to submit their own “stories” to Slashdot?
Notability isn't the issue. The issue is the type of story. That story was already covered to death in the regular press. Slashdot is for tech stories, and this doesn't have *any* tech angle at all. Unless you count someone using a cell phone?
Seriously, you guys either need to stop posting his spam as stories or just give him the keys to the store and get out of the way. Why is this even considered for a Slashdot story? There's no News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters angle AT ALL. And that's typical of the spam from Hugh Pickens. You ban other spammers, now do the same for him.
What happened to "we listened" over the slashdot tv blowback? Why is this retarded piece of garbage on the front page at all? If it has a place *at all*, it should be in idle, or just in the TV section, where I can safely ignore it.
The editors seemed earnest enough last time they posted a lame video that blew up in their faces. Did you guys just hand the keys to some marketing morons and give up? It just seems so ridiculous to take all that heat, answer back with promises of improvements, then shoot *another* of these dumb things, and post it on the front page instead of where it belongs!
STOP WITH THE IDIOTIC VIDEO STUFF! If you must create videos, put them on youtube where they belong. YOU ARE NOT REPORTERS. You are editors, and if you're wasting your time creating (bad) videos, then you're not spending the time you need to effectively manage the submissions and post News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters.
I blame the editors for not doing their jobs. I watch the submission queue, and I'm always amazed at the things people submit. While it's pretty easy to weed out the obvious spam off-topic spam, the editors should definitely be eyeing every submission through the "News for nerds, Stuff that matters" filter and simply rejecting stuff that doesn't reach that bar, regardless of the ratings on the firehose.
Slashdot Mirror
Yours is the first positive comment I've seen about these things.
Please stop posting these awful videos. You're not reporters. Slashdot is a news aggregator, so stop trying to ruin it with these atrocious video vanity projects. If you *must* create them, don't clutter the front page with them. The majority of users hate them, so please, just stop!
OK, here's an actual, real solution to the "video problem". Since you're creating summaries and transcripts, post *those* on the front page and either have a video link in the story or just leave the videos on the video tab. This isn't perfect, because all the videos you keep making are atrocious, but at least alleviates part of the problem.
The solution, of course, is to STOP MAKING THESE AWFUL VIDEOS.
You make a compelling argument. I think we should just merge our positions and get him to stop doing *anything* with slashdot.
More terrible timothy videos. The editors continue to post this drivel on the front page. timothy continues his quest to ruin slashdot, and create the most awful videos he can. These gyroscope things have been around for many years, and were even sold by thinkgeek. You call the guy a huckster right in the article, the whole thing is completely not "stuff that matters".
If you're going to make these horrific things (a huge mistake) at least tag them as videos and let us have the option to filter them! I can filter Idle, why not videos? You seem determined to cram these things down our throats. Are you afraid we'll all filter them from the feed and ruin whatever crazy plan you guys have that involves these videos?
I disagree with your assessment that "most slashdot users aren't competent enough to figure out how to block the video", if anything they're more likely to know how.
Sure. They're poorly produced. They reek of being advertisements. The content is terrible. They're a waste of time and money slashdot could be investing in fixing the performance problems of the site as well as the bugs that have been dragging the site down for years. Videos are strongly disliked by a lot of readers (you can go back to the comments from previous video debacles to see evidence of that claim). They refuse to give us a way to filter them from our feeds.
Man, I almost wish it would have really been Roblimo posting this.
Again with a lame video on the front page. Are you just determined to ignore all the negative comments and feedback on your slashvertisement video junk? You sem totally oblivious to the flags people are putting on the firehose entries. Why are you so persistently ignoring the readers?
Just *stop* with the videos. If you really want to do this, put it on youtube like all the other lame vieo makers. Stop screwing up slashdot. I mean, stop screwing it up more than you already have over the past two years.
After the last blowup over videos, you even made a big post about how you had made missteps, and you'd listened to the feedback, etc. And yet here you are, wit hmore incredibly lame CES junk. If something is notable out of CES, you should be posting articles referring to a real news source that discusses the story. You're not even posting stories about notable things! You're wasting your time, money, and the front page on such incredibly lame things as earbuds and lamps!
This is a vanity project, plain and simple, and needs to stop.
If the slashdot crew themselves hadn't created the video, do you think this "article" would have made it out of the submission queue? This is more of the insane slashdot video vanity project. More of the hoodie, more of the slashvertisements. Every time they do this, they drag slashdot farther from being a useful site, and farther toward something like Gawker. They need to start acting like editors, and stop posting their little videos where they have the fantasy that they can be reporters. They need to curate the site and seek out good stories. They need stop posting drivel like these videos, or the garbage that Hugh Pickens spews across the page, or the corporate submission feeds.
This stuff doesn't belong on the front page of Slashdot. You aren't a news source, you're not reporters, and you never will be. How about you spend more time actually editing and curating decent submissions, instead of the political tripe you've been doling out? Stop with the videos. Just...stop.
Don't blame Logitech for this. They inherited this model when they bought Intrigue Technologies, the company that created the Harmony Line (when it was called EasyZapper).
I've been telling people to get off of Windows XP since 2001!
Slashdot has suffered such a serious decline in the past 4 years that it's remarkable someone actually bought it. The constant off-topic posts by professionals: Hugh Pickens (mostly not tech related), judgecorp (Techweek), mikejuk (i-programmer.info), the laughably bad slashvertisements, the terrible video missteps, and the apparent lack of any actual editing by the "editors" have reduced the once mighty Slashdot to a mere footnote.
Part of the problem is I never played SC2 (I never buy games for more than $20) so I didn't know they'd already adopted that model until after I'd paid for my WoW subscription. A part of why I paid the WoW subscription was that with the included Diablo III, it sounded like a pretty good deal.
But I'll never use the multiplayer or auction house features...if I do play Diablo III, it'll be purely single player. So I really object to Blizzard requiring a Battle.net account and an internet connection to play a single player game, just like I don't want to play Ubi games that act the same way.
Well, best of luck with that for them. I know I'll never buy another Blizzard game that is built that way. I got Diablo III as part of my 1 year WoW subscription, so I didn't even bother looking into the DRM aspects, otherwise I'd have never purchased it (in spite of being a huge fan of the other Diablo titles). I haven't bothered playing it since I discovered it was online only.
I never, ever buy new games at full price. I've commented on this many times in the past, but I just don't feel that modern games give appropriate gaming value for their high $60 price tags. So I always wait until the game is discounted, either in the stores, on PSN, or on Steam, before I buy. That means that all DLC will have been out for a long time, and will also be cheaper. I only recently (as in, the last month) started playing Fallout 3, because it was on sale with all the DLC on Steam. Same with Oblivion, New Vegas, etc.
Not only that, but if you wait, you can sometimes get extra items that were originally pre-order bonuses, or dealer exclusives, bundled in a "game of the year" edition. No DLC or special item is worth actually buying something from Gamestop or Best Buy, but it always irks me to see game comapnies screw over their customer base with that sort of divisive BS.
So they can put DLC out on day 1, on day 1000, and it doesn't matter to me. I'd much rather wait for it to be cheap, bug-fixed, and thoroughly reviewed before I put down some money.
The only exceptions are my favorite franchises, Half-Life and Portal. But I'm OK with paying full price for those, because they're great, and it only happens once every 3 to 5 years...
Here we go again...a completely off-topic post, with video, cluttering up the front page because it's a pet project of the editors. Hasen't the Slashdot readership made it clear about this? If you must waste your time making bad videos, at least have the decency to keep them in the "Video" ghetto where they belong, and where the readers (and it's "readers", not "watchers") can safely ignore them. How long will your little vanity project keep going on, distracting you from doing your real job, and dragging Slashdot into the sewer?
I've never paid more that $30 for a game, normally won't buy a new game for more thatn $20, and usually wait for sales or other discounts. I've got the money, but I find games rarely deliver the entertainment value for the cost. I've never purchased a game at the current $60 price point, so I'd expect more gamers to start passing on the triple-A releases, or DLC driven games.
Why is "mikejuk" allowed to just post his own opinion pieces as news?
As much as I loathe Microsoft and everything they do, it’s silly to post this as a news story. Who’s Mike James, a.k.a. “mikejuk”? What’s this other than his opinion? Does he have any design and usability chops to speak of, so we can treat this as anything other than trolling? I’m willing to believe that they actually conducted real usability studies and decided to try this because it worked better. Even the Ribbon, which I personally hate, was a hit with most users.
Is it generally considered appropriate for authors to submit their own “stories” to Slashdot?
Notability isn't the issue. The issue is the type of story. That story was already covered to death in the regular press. Slashdot is for tech stories, and this doesn't have *any* tech angle at all. Unless you count someone using a cell phone?
Seriously, you guys either need to stop posting his spam as stories or just give him the keys to the store and get out of the way. Why is this even considered for a Slashdot story? There's no News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters angle AT ALL. And that's typical of the spam from Hugh Pickens. You ban other spammers, now do the same for him.
What happened to "we listened" over the slashdot tv blowback? Why is this retarded piece of garbage on the front page at all? If it has a place *at all*, it should be in idle, or just in the TV section, where I can safely ignore it.
The editors seemed earnest enough last time they posted a lame video that blew up in their faces. Did you guys just hand the keys to some marketing morons and give up? It just seems so ridiculous to take all that heat, answer back with promises of improvements, then shoot *another* of these dumb things, and post it on the front page instead of where it belongs!
STOP WITH THE IDIOTIC VIDEO STUFF! If you must create videos, put them on youtube where they belong. YOU ARE NOT REPORTERS. You are editors, and if you're wasting your time creating (bad) videos, then you're not spending the time you need to effectively manage the submissions and post News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters.
I blame the editors for not doing their jobs. I watch the submission queue, and I'm always amazed at the things people submit. While it's pretty easy to weed out the obvious spam off-topic spam, the editors should definitely be eyeing every submission through the "News for nerds, Stuff that matters" filter and simply rejecting stuff that doesn't reach that bar, regardless of the ratings on the firehose.