Interview: CmdrTaco and Hemos Tell All

You asked the questions Tuesday. Today, in response, Hemos and CmdrTaco spill their guts. Click below to learn what's going on at the world-famous Geek Compound in scenic Holland, Michigan.

1) Development issues
by dr_labrat

What important changes do you plan on making to the whole discussion thing?

Isn't it about time the moderation abuses and "first posters" are addressed?

Will we ever be able to moderate or score the articles themselves?

CmdrTaco:

I'm toying with removing anonymous moderation, but I'm concerned about the moderation becoming the topic instead of the topic. Maybe that's good.

I'm also looking into the idea of spinning off discussions repeatedly marked as 'offtopic' into a "Related Threads" sorta thing. Mainly I'm trying to encourage people to stay on topic, but also to allow people who want to move offtopic to be able to do so... but without cluttering up Slashdot for those who want things more ordered.

I also would like an internal messaging system so that the system can send users notes. This would be really useful so that the system could alert users that a comment they wrote had been replied to. Or maybe that they have just been meta moderated. And it would be fun for message passing too.

A lot of the other changes are backend: Optimizations to make it easier for us to post stories more efficiently. Right now we have 4 to 6 people working in the middle of the day, and we need better communication to make that work better.

- Isn't it about time the moderation abuses and "first posters" are addressed?

I think they are being addressed. Try reading at Score:2 and see how many first posts you see. Even at Score:0, the vast majority of First Post comments are caught minutes after they are posted. Moderation abuses happen, but they usually are caught.

- Will we ever be able to moderate or score the articles themselves?

I've been trying to figure out a clean way to generate a composite rating for articles, but it's tricky. I mean, what do I weigh into such a metric? It has to include traffic, comments posted, and average rating of posts, as well as some sort of rating of the Slashdot story itself. And then in the end, what do we have? "This story was a 6, but that story was a 9?" I don't think that it would really help.

Whenever I think about adding a feature I try to think about the problem it is trying to solve. I don't think this solves a problem. What would you use this new metric for? Setting your user preferences to say "I only want to read stories with a metric of 5?" That seems pretty pathetic since these numbers would have great fluctuation.

In the end, such a metric would be neat only to settle curiosity. I don't know if it would be useful so I don't know if its worth the work.

Wordy way of saying that I'll probably do something like that at some point, but since its only for curiosity, I don't see it ending up on the front burner for awhile.

Hemos:

We've been talking about a variety of issues - one of the things that's been tossed around is creating a system to let people know that their comments have been replied to. This would be an interesting addition, as I think it would promote longer discussions.

One of other areas that's been suggested is giving a way to look at how much comments have been moderated without having to look at the comments, like a scoring index or something. That'd be an interesting touch, if nothing else, to see how controversial particular comments are.

- Isn't it about time the moderation abuses and "first posters" are addressed?

I think that the revoking of auto-long comment bonus has done substantial work on that. My general feeling is that logging in and reading the comments at Threshold 1 goes a long way towards helping to sift out the abuse comments.

- Will we ever be able to moderate or score the articles themselves?

That's an interesting concept, but one that's difficult to implement. What do you take into account? Comments? Click-thrus to read the comments? Rating the story itself? And should the author be rated as well? Morever, what point does this accomplish? The same as reading comments, in that you don't read some below a certain level? But I don't agree that comments and stories are the same thing - I think that sometimes stories that wouldn't get much as much traffic, and thus a lower metric, should still get attention from readers.

So, long way of saying, yes, something could/will be done, but it's difficult to decide what exactly "it" is.

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2) Editorial Independence
by JordanH

Other media take steps to separate the Editorial from the business functions so as to maintain Editorial Independence.

What will Andover be doing to make sure we can continue to trust that Slashdot Editorial policy is not in thrall to advertisers' concerns?

Hemos:

Well, early on we had a couple struggles with that particular issue, but since they were settled things have been wonderful. They understand that we've got the vision for the site, and that if we compromise our vision Slashdot will suffer. They don't want Slashdot to suffer because it would hurt the amount of banner ads that can be sold on the site, plus the fact that they're simply being moral human beings.

Morever, we had a really good lawyer who worked with us on the deal. We've created a contractual situation to run things as we always have. Frankly, I don't like dealing with advertisers - even though I sold the banner ads for a while. It's not because I don't like selling the banner ads, but the notion of compromising is one that makes me squeamish inside.

I also get a huge amount of flame mail if anyone thinks we're compromising. Considering asbestos is hard to get your hands on these days, for my own self-protection I'll avoid it at all costs.

Closing: Basically, you need to trust us. You also need to tell us if you think it's happening. I don't think it will because of both Rob's and my non-desire for it, as well as, honestly, Andover's really good and sharp people, who actually have an understanding of Slashdot.

CmdrTaco:

Take our word for it? Part of the Slashdot contract with Andover guaranteed that Hemos & I would be given editorial control over Slashdot. Our editorial independance is very important... I had to explain this one a few times in the early days at Andover when sales folks would try to get me to post stories for advertisers. Once I explained the concept of integrity they backed off.

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3) Slash 0.4
by kuro5hin

For a long time now, those who want to use and improve the slashdot code have been wondering, and waiting, and hoping for the much promised 0.4 tarball. Many of them have in fact become quite irate about the lag between code releases, the lack of a CVS server, and the overall appearance that the slashdot gang doesn't practice what it preaches ("release early, release often"). How would you respond to these criticisms, and do you intend to change the development practices in any way in the future?

CmdrTaco:

I get a nice flamey email about once a week from some ass who calls me a hypocrite and slams me for not getting out a new release. My usual response is to tell them that I delay the release by 24 hours each time someone asks me when a new Slash tarball will be out.

Seriously, there are only 3 people who really know how much work a source release for this is: CowboyNeal, Patrick and Me. And the three of us have been working on a lot of stuff. As I write this, we are bugfixing and documenting and preparing for a source release. There is a private CVS server that one day soon will be publicly read only.

This isn't like other projects: it has been custom fit to our hardware and to our needs. It doesn't have install scripts or help or even comments in the code. We're just too busy to play tech support helping dozens of people compile mod_perl and tune Apache. We've decided to squash the bugs and make a clean release rather than rush it.

It's really easy for someone to complain that I didn't release a new version of the source code every week. Its also easy to forget that in the last 6 months we've doubled in traffic and we've had to optimize our code and hardware to handle that. A new source release is secondary: Our job is running Slashdot. We want to release new versions of Slash, but it is a definite second priority to keeping Slashdot moving.

Finally, it's coming soon. It'll be out when its finished. And if you ask me again I'll postpone it again.

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4) Meta-Moderation
by Royster

How well is Meta-Moderation working? What pergentage of Meta-Mods are unfair? Do you think that it has improved Moderation on /.?

Hemos:

I still meta-moderate on occasion, although the percentage of time that I do it has been dropping off. Why? Because in the beginning I was rating at least a few unfairs in every screenful, but at this point the percentage of unfairs I rate has really dropped off. I think that's a credit to the readers, really. We had huge numbers of people going through and rating the moderators, and we eliminated quite a number of moderators. The number of fairs is well north of the 90% range.

CmdrTaco:

Informally I've gone in and meta moderated myself several times over the last few months and found the percentage of bad moderations dropping. When I started, every page of 10 M2 moderations I loaded had a couple of unfairs on it. These days I can occasionally load a page and get only fair moderations. I definitely think M2 has improved Slashdot.

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5) Critical Person Insurance
by jsm2

How crucial are the two of you to Andover's vision of /.? Do you have a clause like Charles Schultz' that says that nobody else can edit slashdot? What happens if the whole thing stops being fun for you (as it very well might)? Do Andover suck in the loss, or do we get introduced to "Scrappy-Doo and SuperGeek, the ALL NEW slashdot crew"? Has Andover.net taken out critical person insurance on you in case something dreeadful happens? Could they, in principle, fire your asses, or force you to resign on matter of principle?

CmdrTaco:

Our contract says we're staying at Andover for quite awhile, and I'm cool with that. I spent 2 years tailoring a job to be exactly what I wanted to do, and now Andover pays me every other week to continue doing it. As long as I'm involved with Slashdot, I have creative control. And they can't fire us without 'just cause'. And we have a good lawyer! So I'm not really concerned about that.

Hemos:

Well, as I said before, we've got a really nice contract. Rob and I are both on contract with Andover for quite some time yet - it's over 2 years that we are going to be there. Frankly, both of us really like it here and wouldn't want to go anywhere else. Our jobs involve doing what we love to do. As for the insurance question - yes. That's under control.

Like I was saying above, Andover recognizes how critical we and our vision of Slashdot are to Slashdot itself, and that makes for a good working situation. That, and we can only be fired for just cause, which as far as I can figure means that I need to be convicted of a felony, shoot Rob, or reshape Slashdot into an interpretative dance site.

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6) One for all those grrls out there...
by kimflournoy

After going back and reading the archives from After Y2K, I have only one question, which I'm sure many of the women around here would like the answer to as well:

When will we finally see the "Men of /." pinup calendar at Think Geek?

Hemos:

I think the black-market calender has already surfaced on eBay. If I remember correctly, that's the shaved-and-baby-oil calender. The other, the one with the motorcycle picture, has been sighted as far as Beta Teugue and as close as 7-11.

CmdrTaco:

Just as soon as someone decides to start randomly gimping my face onto pictures of the hunks from Baywatch or something. Quite frankly, my real body ain't quite pinup-worthy, but with a little doctoring I could be super hunky.

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7) Personal life?
by Mark A. Storer

I guess this is a question for both of you:

How's life in meatspace?

Lets just lay all technical issues aside for a moment. I want to know Who You Are, as people, not webmasters.

We have a pretty good idea of the comings and goings of your professional lives, but what about your friends, family, and groupies?

Mmmm... groupies.

CmdrTaco:

Thats a big question for a little interview, isn't it?

I think anyone who reads Slashdot (or who has read Slashdot since Chips and Dips) has a really good idea of what I'm into: Linux, Hacking, Movies. CmdrTaco.Net shows a lot of my art. I'm into ceramics. I spend my free time with my girlfriend, who also is a homebody. I watch South Park and the Simpsons and the X-Files. I obsessively play my guitar whenever I possibly can (and drive hemos nuts: I keep my Les Paul in the office and play it far too loud whenever possible). I don't leave the house very often (I've put 2,200 miles on my car in the last 6 months) except to go to the airport for conferences. Most of my friends live here at the geek compound too.

Hemos:

Frankly, I've had the best year of my life. Slashdot's been doing really well, which makes me happy. I'm going to be getting married in June (24th, for all you wedding present purchasers. :)) and have moved comfortably into psuedo-parenthood of my fiancee's daughter.

At some point in the next six months I'll probably be moving. There's a couple of places in mind right now, one East, in the Boston area, while Ann Arbor, MI is also a contender.

Besides my recent housefire, I've had a really good year. I work with some of my closest friends, and have had more time recently go out hiking and spend time in the room-with-blue-ceiling. I think I'll be taking a vacation sometime in the next few months and may not even bring a computer.

Plus, Moby released "Play" which is one of the best albums ever.

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8) What About the Slashdot Story Submission Queue?
by nullspace

I think it would be interesting to be able to view the story submission queue. That is, what type of stories are being submitted, which stories are being rejected and why, and other interesting trivia. Would you allow users to be able to view this queue, and if not, why?

Hemos:

One comment: Having us write rejections is probably impossible. I've tried to do the math, but considering the sheer amount of submissions we get, the people-power to write the rejection reasons won't work. Perhaps as a drop-down box, but still - we're dealing with hundreds per day.

CmdrTaco:

This is in the FAQ dammit! I don't wanna answer it again! Thats what the FAQ is FOR! AAAAGGHHH!

Seriously, there are a lot of reasons that it would make sense to do this. Unfortunately there are a lot of reasons not to do this too. The reason is abuse. If you saw some of the crap that gets submitted, you'd understand. Besides that, I don't want the submissions bin to be littered with noise like "First Post" and "Meept". We're already really busy sifting through 300 odd submissions each day, and we don't need it to be a game.

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9)What happened to browser and os stats?
by John Ratke

There used to be a slashdot page where we could see the daily hit count by browser and OS. While sometimes depressing (2/3's browsing from Windows!), it was very interesting. Is there any chance we will see this again? Is this now information that you feel you need to keep private for some reason? What about the number of registered slashdot users? Could we find that out?

CmdrTaco:

I stopped logging it. I could stick it back in someday, but since I wasn't logging browser info, I couldn't generate those numbers. Maybe we'll do that again someday. Its fun trivia if nothing less.

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10)DeCSS
by Col. Klink (retired)

The DVDCA named /. as a John Doe in the DeCSS case. Will you guys be personally fighting this battle, or letting others? Will you be donating $ to EFF to help fight this battle?

Hemos:

We aren't personally fighting this. Because the case is based in Santa Clara, and Rob starts gibbering whenever he's taken outside, we won't be doing shuttle commuting to the hearings. Chris DiBona has been keeping an eye on it, and Andover's lawyers are obviously interested in what's going on. I think because of our corporate involvement in it, we won't be contributing money to the EFF, but will be using our own resources to help in the fight.

I think after the upcoming Jan. 14 hearing we'll take stock of where things are then, and if the situation is such that we need to get personally involved, than by all means.

CmdrTaco:

I don't really know what we're gonna do quite yet. As it stands, I really don't think they have much of a case: the First Amendment gives us freedom of speech. It means we can talk about things. It means we can share information. And it means that simply talking about a piece of code is no more illegal then talking about how you feel about Chechnya or how your Senator voted on something.

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11) One Definitive Day
by Effugas

It seems like whenever we embark on some crazy job, there ends up being one day we always remember, one set of circumstances that we could never have experienced without beginning that journey but never have predicted in advance.

Since the creation and subsequent explosion of Slashdot, what one day stands out in your mind as the most randomly odd of them all?

CmdrTaco:

I can't pick just one. Here are the most critical:

1. The day Mozilla's Open Source announcement hit. Many people were crediting Slashdot along with ESR for the big news. It was definitely a defining moment, and a major publicity thing. We doubled our traffic in the following weeks. That was when the mainstream media started skimming Slashdot for story ideas.

2. The day I quit my "Real" job and started work on Slashdot full time. I was freaked out for a week.

3. The night I changed the moderation system from 20-odd people to 500 people with a single database query. I knew that it was a major step towards creating a scalable system to encourage group discussion.

Hemos:

I think there's a few times that really stand out:

-One of them is the Hellmouth series. The post-Columbine writing really brought an outpouring of writing and people to Slashdot, as well as a lot of attention from the outside world.

-The Mozilla Story was one of our first stories that really got a lot of the outside world interested in Slashdot and what we were doing. This was probably our first stepping stone to building what we've currently got.

-Comments. The day that comments really started is when this whole sense of community really developed. Without comments, this interview wouldn't exist, and this site would not be what it is today.

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12) More "News for Nerds" Please...
by djohnsto

While others have commented on the degrading S/N ratio of the user comments, I would like to bring attention to the degrading S/N ratio of the stories.

I believe Slashdot got much of its "mature" geek following back when most of the headlines were apolotical in nature. A couple years ago, the biggest threads were generated while discussing new microarchitectures, physical limits of the lithography process, the size of the universe, and other *real* high-tech news.

Since the stories were less subject to political debate, the S/N ratio was good. Now, the only "tech" stories are about nanotech (thanks hemos!) or the Aibo.

With Andover.net now owning Slashdot, am I just SOL? I know that most of the stories are going to be Linux/GPL/Open Source related, and that's fine. But please, Please, *PLEASE*, don't forget that many of your readers are well educated, and would like to spend time thinking about something new and exciting in the tech world rather than reading 500 posts ending with M$ $ucks...

Hemos:

Thanks for the nanotech props. I love my nanites, as everyone well knows. It's a hard question to answer, though. I guess I think that there's stories that go up that I wouldn't really want to be on there. That's been an on-going struggle to define what we want to appear and what we don't want to appear. Remember, as well, that we are limited by what people submit to us, so we're choosing from that bin. We've been trying to do less on the main page, and more in the sections - like YRO, Apache, BSD, and now a Science section.

I'm open to suggestions as to how to keep that up - and please, submit all the stuff that you think is good signal - but remember that it might be someone else's noise.

CmdrTaco:

I don't think what we've posted has significantly changed in the last few years... I think that what happens is that each person only remembers the stories that mattered most to them. The brain has a fuzzy compression algorithm... so the thing that you remembered as being the best on Slashdot was microarchitecture and lithography... but I get email from other people complaining that we should post less of that sort of stuff and more about Linux "Like it used to be" when Slashdot never was just about Linux... they apparently are just remembering the Linux stories with more clarity.

The facts are that we post what people submit. If nothing cool happens in an area, then nothing gets posted. If nobody submits when something cool happens, well, then it won't get posted.

But when the sun sets, we've posted 10 to 15 stories that we think are interesting and we hope you do too. We've done this 8000 times (I've posted over four thousand stories alone!) in the last 2.5 years. Sometimes they're all good. Sometimes there are a few that aren't so hot. Other times so much cool stuff happened that we just couldn't squeeze it all in. But in a year, you're only going to remember the stories that hit you the hardest.

-------------------

Tomorrow: Steve Wozniak answers.

MS bashing

PLEASE*, don't forget that many of your readers are well educated, and would like to spend time thinking about something new and exciting in the tech world rather than reading 500 posts ending with M$ $ucks...


Amen to that. Of course, it's more like 95% of the posts on here are anti-MS from every single angle. It's getting real old, especially how it creeps into almost EVERY single story, and for some reason they get moderated up, and constructive criticism about Linux gets moderated down to "troll"

moderation question

since i'm not a moderator and have never seen how it works, thought i might throw this out to the crowd...

do moderators get to use their moderation points when they have their threshold set > 0?

the reason i ask is that it seems that there are fewer and fewer comments from AC's getting moderated up. is this a result of less interesting AC comments, or because moderators aren't seeing them because of all the hot grits? i think it would be a shame if ACs were (effectively) eliminated in this way (or any way for that matter. i like being able to post as AC. but if no one will ever see it, than what's the point?)

Re:Article Overflow

That's the point I was trying to make about the sections - there's stuff in there that doesn't appear on the main page.

Knowing when you've been replied to

also would like an internal messaging system so that the system can send users notes. This would be really useful so that the system could alert users that a comment they wrote had been replied to.

Note that Slashdot currently has a feature that makes this reasonably easy, although it's a "pull" rather than a "push" system. Although the page deprecates itself, the list of one's comments available if you go to 'User Info' -- most immediately by clicking on your user name in tiny type on the front page -- also counts the responses. I check it periodically for responses to my postings.

Re:Is it just me...

"Ever been repeatedly asked the same questions over, and over, and over again? If you were tech supporting some luser who called you three times a day asking which mouse button to use, and you taped a BIG sign to his monitor that said "USE THE LEFT MOUSE BUTTON", and he still called you, how would you behave? :) "

Yea...you grin, bear it and tell them again. It's called being a professional.

You have drinks later and then bitch about the id10t.

Various thoughts

Ok, I'm going to start on the controversial one, just for the hell of it. :)

I would, personally, like to see newer Slash code appear in the code directory. To this end, I would like to openly offer my time and computer resources for any and all development and/or testing and/or technical support that the Slashdot crew are having trouble doing, due to other commitments.

This is not, repeat -NOT- a request or demand for a fresh Slash release, now or at any other time. It -IS-, however, a sincere offer, in the hope that the folks at Slashdot can concentrate on the work that they -want- to be doing, rather than spending time on maintenance work, installer candy and other side issues.

I hope this offer will be considered, whether or not it's accepted, at least for the sake of the sanity of CmdrTaco and Hemos. You're good people, and don't deserve to be pestered/flamed for having lives, doing real work, and not cheerily diving into mindless trivia every time someone starts World War III over the perceived slowness of something or other.

Now for the other issues. The moderation of subjects. Hmmm. I can see the point that the stories would be too much in flux to be useful to the readers, but I also agree that it might give a good indication of what people want to those submitting stories and to those selecting stories to post.

My view would be, instead of simply extending the current moderation idea, it might be useful to have some kind of binary switch - enjoy or not enjoy, which never got displayed to the general user, but which updated a page only visible to the editors. The editors could then see the current tallies for each story and each subject area, and get a feel for which direction Slashdot readers are generally in.

Lastly, as for some kind of feedback on when people reply to posts, most of that information exists already on the User page. All you'd really need, to get basic feedback, is simply record what the values were the last time you visited the page, and display the difference.

source release

Not to be a jerk about it, but perhaps if the process were more open, there'd be someone who would write the install scripts and whatnot for you. Making huge projects managable is part of what open source is all about, isn't it?

--

Article Overflow

How about an "Article Overflow" page where stories that just didn't quite make the main page get sent to. These stories could be graded/moderated by the readership and possibly moved to the main page if enough interest is generated. I think there are many articles that we geeks would be interested in that are not being posted to the main page. Obviously, you can't post every story to the main page, but it seems that there are many stories that are submitted and not being posted. I might or might not be interested in reading about them, but please let me decide. :-)



Otherwise, great job on all fronts. Keep up the fantastic work and thanks for allowing us the opportunity to post our ideas and critques.

----------------

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein

Re:source release

You forget the fact that Malda and crew are the only people smart enough to understand the code. That's what I see when I read:

We're just too busy to play tech support helping dozens of people compile mod_perl and tune Apache. We've decided to squash the bugs and make a clean release rather than rush it.

This is the attitude that makes people write you flames about not turning your code loose. You aren't the only people who can compile mod_perl and support Apache. And, believe it or not, there are people out here who are intelligent enough to understand your code without you having to explain it.

Release the code as extreme alpha, refuse to support Apache and mod_perl, and put your money where your mouth is about being a member of the OpenSource community.

Calling people who question you an ass really illustrates that you have no logical leg to stand on in your arguments.

Re:Replies

I just thought I'd mention that it is already possible to track replies to your comments by going to the preferences->user.info page.

That's what I use but it requires an extra page load. What I'd like is a Slashbox with that information. I wrote to CowboyNeal about it but never heard back. Do other people think this would be useful?

Open Source???

We've decided to squash the bugs and make a clean release rather than rush it.

Isn't this one of the MAIN reasons Open Source is supposed to be so good?

Let the community fix the bugs. Obviously if it's good enough to serve the number of pages you do a day, it's good enough for Joe Schmoe to run it on his server.

-Hypocricy

Re:Is it just me...

"Since this is a written medium, it's often hard to detect someone's 'tone' by what they're typing. Ever piss someone off because they misinterptreted something you emailed them? Without all of the vocal intonations, it's easy to have the meaning lost in this medium."

This is totally true. My post is just my reactions to the article, but you're right about the fact that you can't tell with the written word. Usually, people use the :) emoticon to tell you that they're not really serious if they say something harsh, and he didn't. I'm not attacking him further, just saying that those were my impressions

"Ever been repeatedly asked the same questions over, and over, and over again? If you were tech
supporting some luser who called you three times a day asking which mouse button to use, and you taped a BIG sign to his monitor that said "USE THE LEFT MOUSE BUTTON", and he still called you, how
would you behave? :) "

Sure, I can relate to that feeling, I just don't think it applies in this situation for several reasons:

1.) It was posted later on that indeed that is NOT a FAQ. :)
2.) It obviously must be worth answering, because since it was asked of him, it means that it was probably moderated to 5 and enough people thought it was interesting enough to warrant asking Rob about it.
3.) When Rob in this case acts pissy at being asked the same thing several times, he's not being rude to some random luser that asked a FAQ, he's being rude to everyone simulateously on slashdot. Usually there's a higher threshold for people before they'll act that way towards however many THOUSAND people are on slashdot
4.) Hemos seems to have restrained himself like a regular human all through the interview so it's hard for me to think that it's not possible for someone else.

Again, I claim no factual content at all to that, just my impressions.

Is it just me...

Is it just me or is CmdrTaco sometimes act like a real ass?

I know this is definately going to be an unpopular opinion, but I really think that sometimes he just acts like an ass for its own sake. I can understand getting frustrated with script kiddies and first posters and the natalie portman statuette mafia etc. etc. etc. but his tone just seems so short and contentious when he writes things sometimes.

Maybe I'm picking nits. But when I see Hemos answer the questions, even when he's probably answered the same thing 10,000 times, he at least answers it graciously. From malda, you get things like "If you ask me again, I'll delay it 24 more hours" (which for me translates to, "If you ask me this question, I'll purposely do something to spite you that isn't productive for either of us") and also the moaning about the fact that somebody asked a FAQ. People ask FAQs all the time, but only elitist flamers from USENET seem to jump all over people who ask FAQs.

I can understand being strung out or busy or even flat out annoyed at the readers of slashdot, but there's no reason to not be at least a little bit gracious or patient with an interview that he decided to submit to himself. I've never met EITHER hemos or cmdrtaco in person, but I just get the feeling that hemos is probably more laid back and personable.

These are only my opinions, hate them as much as you want. (Which I'm sure plenty of you will take me up on)

Re:source release

It appears that the obvious conclusion of this thread is that "slash" is following the Cathedral method of development -- it isn't being a successful "open source" project. That being so, it's time to stop asking them for further source releases and just move on.

The good news is that the released source has already forked, and several viable alternatives have already been developed that are feature compatible with "slash". So, rather than asking for a new "slash" release, simply pick one of those actively and openly developed systems to use and contribute back to. This _is_ the whole point of open source. Vote with your use.

The "slash"-similar systems mentioned in this thread were:

• PHPSlash [netuse.de]
  DOINS [sourceforge.net]
  SquishDot [squishdot.org]
  

Looks like they all have either open CVS servers or frequent snapshots.

Your secret is out, Rob!

According to Whatis.com, "Slashdot, the Web site, is named, according to Slashdot originator Jeff "Hemos" Bates, as "a play on how terrible it is to say domain names out loud.""

URL: http://www.whatis.com/slashdot_effect.htm [whatis.com]

So, all along, Rob has been bullying Hemos into letting him take the credit! Of course, Whatis.com could be confused, but... let's face it... what are the chances of that happening?

--

They got M2 wrong...

It doesn't work as well as CmdrTaco and Hemos believe... it worked well in the beginning because wed get Karma points for m2ing... but after that was killed off it lost its glamour. I used to do it if I feelt like being a moderator, but then that stopped too. Theres just no reward for meta-moderating.

• Problems:
• no accountability
• no reward
• no visible effect
• easy to abuse
• time/benifits ratio too low...

Well those are just my opinions on it. For all I know I could be abnormal...

Moderate this up

If I were a moderator right now, I'd do it myself. I asked that question, knowing that this is the answer I'd get. We've all seen this before, but I thought that perhaps other people reading the site who wouldn't know what to do with the slash code if they had it might not have.

Now, I'm all for people's right to do what they want. And if they don't want to release, well, there's nothing we can do abut that. But in this case, the attitude is one of such deep and abiding rectal-cranial inversion that it still never fails to piss me off, as it's pissed off and alienated the rest of the potential development comunity as well.

I get a nice flamey email about once a week from some ass who calls me a hypocrite and slams me for not getting out a new release.

Does that maybe tell you something? Maybe some of those "asses" have a point. I know you also regularly get reminders which are not in the least "flamey" and which merely seek to point out that you are, in fact, giving a big fuck you to the very community and ideals that support you.

You know what the first thing I would do if I had the code is? Write an install script. We're not as dumb as you think, Rob. There are many people out here who can understand even YOUR terrible code.

Basically, the above poster said it. Grow up. Get your head out of your ass and look around. You're not important because people read your website. Start acting like you believe what you preach. And fuck you, too.

"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall

Why Rob and Jeff are right to slow 0.4 release

Rob Malda wrote:

It's really easy for someone to complain that I didn't release a new version of the source code every week. Its also easy to forget that in the last 6 months we've doubled in traffic and we've had to optimize our code and hardware to handle that. A new source release is secondary: Our

job is running Slashdot. We want to release new versions of Slash, but it is a definite second priority to keeping Slashdot moving.

I'm really glad Rob said this.

For those of you who don't know, Temple Hoff is running a mailing list called Slash-help [asu.edu]: the Slash Code Support Group. This is for anyone who is trying to take the 0.3 release of the code and make it work on their own server.

The list has been a little slow for the past couple of months now. But, it's gotten more lively in the past week or so, because many of the people who have made postings critical of Rob and Jeff here today have been refining their arguments.

It's sort of funny that people are complaining about the delays associated with a 0.4 release because these same people would be complaining loudly if 0.4 were out now and the main Slashdot site was suffering repeated outages.

Another thing that seems to be getting lost is that releasing a new version of the code in an OpenSource project is a two edged sword. Sure, you can put out a partially functional application -- some would say that's a good description of 0.3. But, if they put 0.4 out in an incomplete state, and people responded with fixes for problems, many would complain about the speed at which changes were incorporated into the CVS tree.

I've invested a lot of time modifying 0.3 to work in a different environment. It's been one of the best learning experience I've had in years. I recommend it highly to anyone who is really interested in how a content management system works. A lot of the techniques they use in 0.3 are available elsewhere, in systems like Vignette and Interwoven. The only thing is that they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement.

When 0.4 is released, we will evaluate it and probably incorporate some of its features into what we are doing. Most people who have some real investment in the Slashdot architecture will have to do that also.

If you are sitting out there observing this, trying to figure out who's right, ask yourself this question: Do the people who are shouting the loudest for releasing the latest source have anything invested in understanding, operating, and enhancing the Slash environment? If not, have they seriously evaluated what is available, or do they come from the "Boycott {insert evil capitalist enterprise name here}!" School of Idealism?

You are entitled to any opinion about this process that you want to assert. But, I guarantee that 0.4 will have as many support issues as 0.3, if not more. It's going to be more complicated. Regardless of how many people are involved in the enhancement process, it will be some time before you can install and operate this in anything close to a turn-key fashion.

At the end of the day, I come from the school that believes in an author's right to determine the circumstances underwhich he releases his code. If Rob and Jeff want to go slowly, that is their right and we ought to respect that. And, the fact that there has been a long gap between the 0.3 and 0.4 releases does not suddenly make the Slash engine a Closed Source product.

--

Dave Aiello

I question I never got to ask.

By the time I saw the atriclte to post questions, it was already off the main page.

Have you every thought about a monthly Slashdot magazine? Have editorials, some of the funnier UF comics, and stories that don't quite fit in the space for an article. Could also have a "geek jobs" section for people looking for linux/open source programmers and other interesting jobs. Not to mention a good source of ad revenue. Think of the $$ from a cross-promotional webiste/print campaign =)

Think a /. Monthly is something we will se in the coming future? If so, I want to be the first to sign up.

Re:source release

I think of Slashdot as being the twenty-first century equivalent of the newspaper. I have no doubt that Slashdot has a relatively large influence on the active agenda of the internet geek community by helping to shape opinion, mobilise popular support etc. Maybe the reason Rob and Jeff don't want to open up the submissions queue is because they'd lose editorial control. After all, it's a very big thing to own your own newspaper and have that amount of influence.

So why am I mentioning this here? Bear with me a moment.

It just occurred to me that a similar sort of thinking could be behind their reluctance to release the current version of the Slash source code. The currently available version is missing all the whizzy moderation features etc that make Slashdot different from other sites.

Now if the dynamic duo did release the current version as Open Source, I'll bet you space credits to navy beans that within a couple of weeks there would be at least one Slashdot-alike up on the net with the very features that so many readers seem to want but Rob and Jeff don't want to implement.

And the Slashdot crew would then be forced to follow suit or else risk seeing their readership melt away as they abandon Slashdot for a more open, democratic news site.

To put it more succinctly, if the above scenario is likely then opening up the current source would inevitably (i) lead to (i) stiffer competition (ii) force Slashdot to evolve according to public demand and (iii) cause a major loss of editorial control.

Even if Rob and Jeff were prepared to take the risk, Andover might not be.

Of course this line of reasoning assumes that readers would want moderation-style influence over the selection of headline stories. But there's plenty of evidence that this is in fact the case, just read the rest of the comments to see for yourself.

And just think what evolution in that direction would mean. The Slash system with added open submissions moderation system would provide a truly open forum along the lines of Usenet, but with active moderation. It would be what Usenet was meant to be, what it could have been if not for the terrible signal-to-noise ratio and the horrible time lag between post and response. It would be the Usenet that we always wanted.

However, Rob and Jeff and Andover at large have their own interests to protect.

For that reason, I don't believe we will see the current version released under the GPL until someone else releases an open sourced and functionally equivalent system thus making the issue moot.

Who can blame them, really.

Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction

Who wants to be Rob Malda?

I'm sorry, but I do not think that this answer is BS. This is not your web site, so if you want to have a special news site of your own that has user moderation of the submitted articles then go ahead and start one and see if it gets more popular than Slashdot. If for some reason it does, then come back here and say "Told ya so."

But for now, Slashdot is still controlled by CmdTaco and Hemos and I don't think they're going to leave any time soon which means that there won't be moderation of story submissions.

I personally agree with CmdTaco and Hemos because I don't know about you, but I am not the Slashdot Man, I actually spend most of my day working and take a break here and there to check Slashdot to see if any interesting stories have popped up. If the users were allowed to moderate the stories being posted that would cause a large abundance of stories going through the main page causing the amount of time I can spend reading each story to decrease, also causing the amount of interesting conversation on the stories to decrease.

I think that moderation of the stories would decrease my reading pleasure of Slashdot and force me to go find some other new site to get my daily fix from.

I think you need to figure out the difference of something being "bigger than Rob Malda now" and something that you would have if you ran your own cute little Slashdot copycat. This is the original and they are waaaaaaay ahead of any other "open journalism"

My hat goes off to the Slashdot crew!

Re:source release

The software has to run in a specific environment and meet specific needs. If they make the software truly open source, they will be inundated with dozens of patches to either generalize it or make it work in some other specific environment.

Say it with me:

• Code Fork!!
• 
  Code Fork!!
  Code Fork!!
  Code Fork!!
  Code Fork!!
  Code Fork!!
  

Rob doesn't have to add everyone's patches to his version. In fact, he doesn't have to add anyone's. People like what the code does, and as a community, benefit from it. That's the point of Open Source, right? Sure, the code would change to do what other people want, but there's nothing forcing the code that /. is based on to change. This would be more a hinderance than a help to Slashdot, increasing their maintenance. Sure they would have lots of help, but if you think co-ordinating that help is trivial, you're really out to lunch.

That's the point. No one is asking for Rob to be Linux Torvalds. They are just asking for the source. As soon as the source is released, then someone else can step up and take charge of coordinating it. And supporting it. And getting the /. changes integrated.

Rob just has to do a tar cvf slash and post it online. Someone else will step on and start coordinating development on sourceforge.net or something. Rob's involvement is now over, except to drop out new tarballs once in a while. Rob can there on, ignore the work, or he can keep an eye on it and see if there's anything worthwhile to add to slash. No one cares either way, I'm sure.

-Brent

Re:Uhhh...

I must have just forgotten all those pro-MS stories, that's all...and only remembered the Linux stories.

OH Man!! You mean there used to be pro MS stories on /.? The Insanity. How could that be? Oh, wait a minute, what was the last pro-MS story posted on /.?

-Brent

Re:Read Only CVS?

You say in your interview you are soon going to have a "read-only" cvs server to post slash on. Doesn't it seem odd that a site that stands for open source to many people, won't let users contribute code? I think that the messaging system for replies to Comments is a great idea, and I would really love to help implement it, but...

No. Because the CVS repository on /. needs to be the one that Rob uses in the backend of /.. /. Simply isn't a resource for code development. That's what Rob is saying. Sourceforge.net or something like that would be the place to have the real development repository. All we need from Slash is the current code. Rob can then check out the patches and add to Slahs what interests him.

Come on, think of other Open Source projects. Bugzilla is open source, but they don't let everyone modify their "live" code. Why should Slash be any different?

-Brent

Re:Sorry Rob, but that's BS

Dude, I don't get you...
Rob and co. built this site up from nothing, put in all the work, all the money (at first), and are only lately recieivng the rewards of their work. So why on earth do you think it's it's time for them to "give it up"? How could that make sense?

If you give /. to the masses, it will ruin it. Are you aware how stupid the masses are? These are the people that make Jerry Springer a hit. If /. is given to everyone to run, it will quickly sink to the lowest common denominator, as people who have never had anything to do with it, will take over.

I have been reading /. for a very long time now, and I enjoy the way it is (as do most of us here, or we would not be here). I don't want joe blow to come in and say what he thinks should be posted, then it WILL change. If you think the public needs a discussion forum, then make one, but leave /. alone. I an many others like it. If you don't like it and the stories posted here, perhaps you shouldn't be here.

Finkployd

Re:source release

Do you really want to sort through poorly documented
Perl code?

Let them clean it up first.

If its as hacked together as they make it
sound, then everyone will be better off that way.

Ugly code is no fun to play with. And I
I understand why CT has things he would rather do than clean
his code.

Re:source release

Some excellent points but one other reason for not releasing I've always considered likely is the security angle.

I would not be surprised if right now there is all sorts of security through obscurity hidden in the code. I think that is their major concern because the arrogance and lack of understanding of open source principles does not fit well with what I have seen of them.

The rather angry response from Rob to these sorts of questions is uncalled for. Due to their (well deserved) success and the commercial nature of Andover, their lack of true participation in the open source community will become more and more controversial.

License?

Taco, Hemos,

I feel that you have skirted an important point that was included [slashdot.org] in the original threads that addressed the release of Slashdot source code. Specifically, which license will you be using to release your code and what is your reasoning for choosing that license?

bnf
---

Re:Article Overflow

How about an "Article Overflow" page where stories that just didn't quite make the main page get sent to.

I think this is a great idea, at the very least, we could have a little section (slashbox?) devoted to links submitted that day that didn't make the main page. You could visit them, but you couldn't comment on them.

However, I see some problems with this. One is abuse. You can't just plop all rejected links into one area, as I'm sure some of the crap that gets submitted is along the lines of "check out my cool home page!". Thus sorting through things that make the front page, those that "almost" make the front page, and those that are utter crap and aren't shown, just give Taco and Hemos more to do, and decide upon. The other is all the crap mail that those two would probably get from people thinking that a "rejected" story should have been a headliner. Let's face it, right now, we don't know what's rejected, so we can't really bitch a whole lot, but if someone loves Beanie Babies, a story about that gets moved to the rejection bin, Taco and Hemos will still get crap mail from some idiot. All in all, I think it may make things worse for our brave admins.

Re: More "News for Nerds" Please...

12) More "News for Nerds" Please...

If you like more tech news
Check out http://sunsite.auc.dk/FreakTech/
The last headlines is

* Powerline Area Network
* Personal aircraft
* 140 gigabytes CDROM
* Molecular-based logic gates
* 10 Gbps optical though air.
* Magnetic spacecraft propulsion
* Ferroelectric Optical Storage
* Microflown
* IEC fusion
* Magnetic RAM
* Rotary rocket
* Phaser device
* Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata(QCA)
* Impulse Radio
* Motor Shatters Torque Ceilings

Haven't read the whole thing, but....

"What would you use [story moderation] for?"

So the editors know how much the users like this topic. Sort of a "more articles like this" rating.
---

Re:MS bashing

You might consider the fact that a large portion of Slashdot's community are using *BSD/Linux. Slashdot became a rallying point for the open source community, whether that was intended by Rob Malda or not.
Also, most of the /. community are technically oriented (to say the least). They loathe MS products. I for one put up with a lot of additional work/suffering at my last job due to shoddy MS products. I consider the MS-bashing on /. to be a welcome balance from all the pro-MS hype you see everywhere else. So-called "news" sites simply echo MS PR verbatim. This is something I hope we will never see here.
Additionally, after Judge Jackson's FOF, I noticed that /. was overrun with pro-MS posts and trolls, spreading FUD and starting flame wars. Slashdot's moderation system served us well there.

Instead of whining at Rob about poor Microsoft getting picked on, go start your own pro-Microsoft site, please!

Thanks, and congrats

This sounds like the perfect opportunity to thank you guys for what you've done.

Slashdot stands out in my eyes, and I'm sure in the eyes of many others, as a site that shows what the 'net can do when used properly.

Lots of free web-page hosts like to call themselves communities, but that's a farce. Slashdot is a community. Like all communities it has its problems: unruly neighbors shouting "First Post" at the crack of dawn, pompous fools who talk because they like the sounds of their own voices, and of course the neighbors who seem nice, but whose opinions are simply wrong! (*grin*). But it's also got the best parts of a community, some celebrities living just around the corner who will come over for a bbq, skilled neighbors who will come help you fix your lawnmower, and buddies who love to get together and cheer on the home team.

As a place to spend/waste time, it's nearly impossible to top Slashdot. If you're really busy, you can skip it one day (theoretically speaking of course) and still catch the news in "older stuff". If you're really bored, you can lower your threshold, follow all the links, and contribute. While you can do a lot of the same things with other sites, It's hard to top Slashdot in how easy it is to get what you want out of the site.

So thanks to you guys and to everyone else who has made Slashdot what it is. And let's hope things only get better from here. Thanks, and congratulations.

Re:Haven't read the whole thing, but....

The impression I had after reading the whole interview is that the editors get the ideas for stories from us as opposed to going out looking for stories on their own. In that sense, they will get a feel for what more people want to see posted because they'll get more stories about that given area.

They said Linux wasn't always such a popular topic but other things were. Maybe down the road Linux won't be so popular anymore either. The point of the site is cool geek/nerd stuff. As a group geeks are pretty diverse.

As for story moderation, I think there is already too much moderation on this site as it is. Some of us long for the old free-wheeling days of the net you know. I also agree with CT and H's concerns. I don't think they want to get into "Well, this story was great but since it was posted by Katz I'm going to rate it down because I don't like him", moderation to the nth degree.

Re:source release

Well, assuming Rob isn't just being an asshole, maybe Slashdot is under directive from Andover not to release the code. After all, he said he had editorial control, but since Slashdot is owned by Andover, so is it's code. Maybe *they're* the one's that don't want it released. Rob might just be helping to cover it up.


-----------

"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

Re:source release

But isn't that what Open Source is about? Some additions to the Slash code may fix /. bugs --some maybe additions that don't interest the /. folk, but there are plenty of sites that can use/need a /.-like format and would love to add them --like mine [aegeantimes.net], based on PHPSlash [netuse.de] --a PHP port of Slash.

I haven't changed PHPSlash significantly yet, but when I do, I will surely roll back my changes to the CVS --that's what open source is about: a few hobbyists joining forces to produce something better than what they can by going at it alone. This is what this forum has been preaching all along, yet its own engine is closed source.

If the /. overlords are so short-sighted as to be afraid of releasing Slash, why are they preaching Open Source to begin with? Let me tell you: I've been running a /.-like site (on a totally different subject BTW) for 2 months now, and I can tell you that the back end has nothing to do with how popular a site is. Content, word-of-mouth, links, willingness of people to come out and post comments (where I am failing right now BTW) are vastly more important.

Technology is not the end-all-be-all. Technology (i.e. code) is a tool, a means to an end. The end is service, entertainment, ideas, what have you. Not some KBs of Perl code.


engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.

Re:source release

I gave up on waiting for a Slash release. I was looking for a similar /.-like engine for my site [aegeantimes.net], and after some research I settled on PHPSlash [netuse.de]. It's at least a generation behind /. --no user accts, no dynamic homepages, no moderation-- but: a) it's Open Source, with a decent enough following, b) it's based on PHP [php.net], which I wanted to learn.

FYI, there's also Squishdot (sorry no link in my RAM ;-) based on Zope and a coupla interesting projects on the Java Apache [apache.org] pages.

I agree with the other comments though. The /. overlords should be releasing Slash, even as a rough draft, just so to put their code where their mouths are.

engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.

Re:Live with it.

The huge software industry we enjoy today is due in no small part to the HATED microsoft.

No. The parts of the software industry that we don't enjoy are largely due to Microsoft.

Let me tell you a story:

I'm a second-generation programmer. My father has been working with computers since the late 1960s. I used to tag along with him when he went to work on weekends, carrying his boxes of punch cards. I have since gone on to earn an M.S. in Computer Science and am a well-payed software developer.

I've been using the Internet since 1989. I wrote my first HTML page back in 1993, have a reasonably involved personal website, and have helped a few friends set up sites of their own. Point being, I know my ass from /dev/null.

My father doesn't have the net experience I do, so while I was visting home on Christmas he asked me to help him set up a webpage with a scanned image of a basecall card he was auctioning on eBay [ebay.com]. No problem, I figure, I can whip this out before dinner.

I didn't count on the joys of Windows 98 on our end and Windows NT on the ISP's end. The rebooting of his PC when it crashed for reasons unknown and unknowable, the weird FTP behavior, the braindead binding of IE to view JPEG files, the lack of a good standard tool for simple image manipulation...ah, such fun.

After an hours' effort, two men with with over four decades of combined programming experience and a decade of net experience could not publish a simple web page - a task I could have perfomed in five minutes on my Linux box and Unix-running ISP.

FEATURE: Spell check button

I would do anything for a spell check button as an optional part of the Preview process. You could hit Submit, Preview, or Preview with Spell Checking It's very easy to implement. Essentially just run the submission through striphtml | ispell -l | sort -u, and then put those words in a separate little list in the preview output. Heck, maybe even put blink tags around them in the shown output, or red coloration or something.

This is very easy to do. If we had more up-to-date source, I would happily do it myself and give it to them. Actually, as soon as we have it, I shall.

Hemos waxes poetic

Have you ever noticed how when you read in `light' mode, the darnedest things happen? :-)

--tom

The computer *is* the game

[ Reply to This [slashdot.org] | Parent [slashdot.org] ]

Re: More "News for Nerds" Please... (Score:7, Brilliant)
by Hemos [mailto] ([e-mail]) on Thursday January 06, @05:08PM EDT
(User Info [slashdot.org]) http://hemos.net [hemos.net]

Recently disturbed by News for Nerds thread, but inspired by Tolkien, I wrote this:

I sit beside the screen and think
Of all that I have seen
Of flaming trolls and clueless nerds
And topics that have been.

I sit beside the screen and think
Of how Slashdot shall be
When programs come without a source
That I shall ever see.

Simply Brilliant, eh? I can't wait to see my score. I think it gets a 7!

[ Reply to This [slashdot.org] | Parent [slashdot.org] ]

Re: More "News for Nerds" Please... (Score:3, Funny)
by Tom Christiansen [mailto] ([e-mail]) on on Thursday January 06, @05:15PM EDT
(User Info [slashdot.org]) http://language.perl.com/ [perl.com]

Sure, Hemos, rig it so you get a 7. Sheesh! That's what happens when *you* have the source code. :-)

Hmmm....Was This Interview Neccessary?

From the tone of previous comments, it seems that CmdrTaco has managed to piss of a lot of people with his hypocritical stance on releasing the code for slashdot. I wonder if this interview will come back to haunt them. The slashdot gang used to garner nothing but love from you guys. Is the tide turning now? Are Rob and Hemos taking their patrons for granted? Time will tell.

Sorry Rob, but that's BS

Rob on the issue of a "Story Submission Queue":

This is in the FAQ dammit! I don't wanna answer it again! Thats what the FAQ is FOR! AAAAGGHHH!

Seriously, there are a lot of reasons that it would make sense to do this. Unfortunately there are a lot of reasons not to do this too. The reason is abuse. If you saw some of the crap that gets submitted, you'd understand. Besides that, I don't want the submissions bin to be littered with noise like "First Post" and "Meept". We're already really busy sifting through 300 odd submissions each day, and we don't need it to be a game.

Sorry Rob, but that is a weak excuse at best, and I think the incessant clamoring for this feature from slashdotters suggests there is a consensus on the user side that you should at least respect, even if Robert Malda doesn't agree.

A story queue would be a form of Moderation extended to the posted topics. Now, moderation has its critics. There are people who evidently are lashed into a fury by the notion that Linux Rulez! is prominent at +5 and their comment about FreeBSD or whatever is buried at -3. But all in all, I can't think of another method that allows me to browse both the Insightful cream of the crop when I want something somber AND Naked and Petrified when I want something funny, but also allows each user to hide those posts if they find them uninteresting.

Story moderation would have a major effect upon the slashdot model, one I think that you and probably Andover fear in your secret heart of hearts. It would remove you from editorial control of your baby. C'mon Rob, admit that this prospect makes you uneasy.

But hell, you say yourself that you are drowned in submissions. And we all know that your team of five (or two or six or whatever) can never produce news that is as timely as the dozens of staffers at CNN. So why not distribute the process of filtering? Why not live up to the inspiration you had when designing post moderation?

You argue, essentially, that we "don't really know what we want". That, if we were to see the garbage posts that make it into your box, we woudl be horrified and/or disgusted with slashdot. So fine, delete the ones that are obvious SPAM or clearly misdirected. But let us have the helm. Post the rest of them to the submission queue.

If I don't want to see Hot Grits, I browse at 2. If I didn't want to see SPAM that makes it into the submission queue, I would do the same thing. But the fact is, while you retain control of this site editorially, you are stifling its full potential. We will always have the uneasy fear that you or Andover is pulling strings and filtering out stories that don't fit your personal biases. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I'm sure you're doing this.

Yes, story moderation might mean that Slashdot drifts away from its obvious pandering to Linux "revolutionaries" that I'm sure brings in a great deal of advertising revunue. Yes, you might not be able to recognize it in a few years. But this is bigger than Rob Malda now. If that is the path of /.'s evolution, then it will only be because its users want it so.

It's time to let go, Rob...

-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!

On "Related Threads"

I like this idea of putting related threads somewhere else too. So how would this best work from a user perspective?

I think it'd be cool to see something like this:

a checkbox for a user to self-acknowledge an off-topic post; the post stays in the original article forum but is also copied to a separate "area" where all followups to that post are added. This provides a "voluntary" offtopic redirector. While truly offtopic posts should go elsewhere (and will continue to be moderated down), this is useful if the poster wants to recognize that followups are better suited outside the main discussion tree without requiring the system to moderate him down.

add a moderation feature such that if one (or two?) moderators moderate the post as "offtopic", all follups are redirected to a separate area as above. (The post shows up in both places, but the followups only in the second area.) This is a "moderation-based" offtopic redirector. Useful for insuring that offtopic threads don't pollute the forum. Metamoderation prevents abuses.

Interesting?

--LP

Story rating

Two ways I see this as being practical (as cmdrtaco and hemos both, imho, are taking the wrong approach):

1) Moderators may use their mod-points to moderate the stories (and possibly the stories could be listed in order of score, much like comments, configurable et al.)

OR

2) Have segfault-style story ratings, which work quite effectively. You read the story and have a How do you rate this story? [Funny, Stupid, Brilliant] and the average and total are shown after you rate it.

Either takes a fair bit of code though - unless the slashdot-poll engine is used.

I have an idea

Disclaimer: I just woke up so apologies if this sounds garbled.

Regarding story submissions. I know I've heard Rob and co. complain about how many submissions there are, and the large amount of just crap stories among other things, so that's where my idea comes from. Perhaps they could pick a group of about 20 trusted people to 'rank' incoming submissions, based on quality and relevance and whatever else, so the people who really post the stories have less noise to browse through to find the real stories.

This isn't like having the story queue public. Only those 20 people have access. I don't think this would affect us much, but it would make the crew's job a lot easier in finding which stories to actually accept.

so, thats my idea.

Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.

NO COMMENTS IN THE CODE!?!

You guys said:

"It doesn't have install scripts or help or even comments in the code."

Anybody that develops any kind of software that does anything useful _and_ does not comment it so that should the original developer drop dead someone else might be able to understand it is either a young dumbass with no mature development skills or and old dumbass that should know better. The excuses "We're in a big hurry!" or "I'll comment the code later after it works right" are not acceptable.

Software in the Open Source movement must be BETTER than the commercial stuff in the "coding style and comments" category, because the source will ultimately be inspected by both friends and foes of the Open Source movement alike. If the source looks like spaghetti code shit, it makes the reality of Open Source software start to look like spaghetti code shit.

I shit you not.

The use of mysql and the creation of a slashdot

Ok here's a little bit of trivia for you. What database does slashdot use for its' engine? Well I guess I kind of let the cat out of the bag in the subject: mysql. Last time I checked it was a little less than full GPL. Dosn this put a little damper on being able to do many of the really interesting things in an free an open manner anyway?

How exactly does one actually cheaply create a slashdot site. I have looked at various hosting places and they don't exactly do anything of this nature cheaply. And as far as a I can tell doing it yourself would be hard as well. Can anyone tell me what would be the cheapest option to creating a site with the existing slash code in a reasonable way.

Comment on moderation

One comment on moderation. I have the sense that when a story generates 200 comments the first fifty get much more moderation than the last 150 (both positive and negative). It would be good if moderators could be given a random list of say 20 comments with the suggestion that they read this list first.

Alternatively if moderators make a point of always reading with "Newest first" set, that would help.

Re:source release

> Linus releases whole kernels faster than rob can
> get a source release out... And he handles 15
> megs of source rather than 0.3's 65k....

> No... Slashdot and Andover are just about on the
> same plane as LinuxOne, so far as business
> legitamacy goes. And as far as holding up the
> opensource ideals? forget it...

Oh get off it already.

You need to realize something, its his code. His
main concern is this site and keeping it running,
if that wasn't the case, the code wouldn't even
exist in the first place.

When you run a high profile site like slashdot,
running the site takes alot of time. That means
making bug fixes "on the fly", reading emails
(which musrt take alot of time), sifting through
stories, etc...maybe you don't always have time
for working on the code tarball

Slashdot is in the buisness of posting news and
fostering discussion, NOT releasing software.
That part is extra...its the gravey.

You have no RIGHT to his softare code. Now, if he
was in the buisness of writting software, and
released software to be run, THEN I would argue
that you do have a right to see the code (not
a legally recognized one but...in my eyes a right
none the less), however this is not the case.

Some ideas

1) Rateing Articles:

How about for a simple idea... just put a meter
on each article...bunch of radio buttons to
"Rate How muh you liked this article".

The idea not being as much of use in moderation
of articles but just for yourselves to gauge
what the community likes to see. More of a
simple feedback mechanism than anything else.

2) Source Code:
Most websites don't release their code...hell I
love that your even trying to do it. Its a
great idea. If some people don't like that you
take too long doing it, that is their problem
uite litterally. I think people need to realize
that they have no "right" to see your code.
(if you were in the buisness of writting and
distributing software, I could see an argument for
a right of the users to see the code, I would
even argue in favor of it, but your not)

3) I would like to see the ability for a person,
within reasonable amount of time, to moderate
down their own posts without penalty. That way
if a person realizes after they post that
something is offtopic, they can go and moderate
themselves down.

Perhaps once something is marked offtopic..have
all replies to it autmatically marked offtopic
unless moderated up (without penalty to the
repliers). that way they can still discuss
without bothering others too much.

3) I like the idea of forums where people can
take offtopic discussion and discuss it outside
of the article. Perhaps have a way for an author
of a message to "replace" his own posts into
one of these forums to get it out of the way
of others.

4) Private messages

great idea and could foster longer discussions.
Personally, I check users.pl daily to see if any
replies to my messages were posted, so that I
can continue discussion. However after the
article is a day or two old, it is highly
rare to see a new reply. (happend recently
though)

Could be coupled with idea of mine #3. If a
poster "re-places" his post, it could be initally
"copied" (or "linked") into the forum...then
all repliers sent a message that would lalow them
to do the same to their replies...if all (or most)
say ok...then have the whole thread moved over
and removed from the original articles posts
(maybe a simple pointer added)

thats it...comments?

-Steve

Re:So you are basically saying is...

this is NOT a Linux advocacy site. It is NOT an open-source rally site. It is a "News for Nerds" site.

Perhaps Andover lied on their SEC filing then?

From the filing
Our Business: Andover.Net is the leading Linux/Open Source destination on the Internet.

More from the filing Our network includes:
LINUX/OPEN SOURCE
- Slashdot


This is probably more about Andover now than CmdrTaco. Despite what Andover's EMPLOYEES might be saying or have said in the past.. Their stock holders have a right to expect Andover to adhere to what they claim to believe in.

And on a side note... Andover's stock is down nearly six and a half percent today... Part of a steady decline. If I were Andover, I would be seriously worried about my employees making statements which reflect as badly on the company as Taco's statements today do. Calling their users (hello stockholders) "asses" when they request that the company live up to their SEC filing.

Taco is obviously now just a paid code monkey in the grand scheme of things. Complaining to him does about as much good as complaining to the tech support guy at RoadRunner.

In closing and in relation to my above statement I must apologize for my original post. I see now that I'm complaining to the wrong person. I must complain to his boss(es), the stockholders, if I expect any progress on the situation. Which I suggest anyone with an interest in this company do.


They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen

So you are basically saying is...

re: the Slashdot source: Finally, it's coming soon. It'll be out when its finished. And if you ask me again I'll postpone it again.

Translates to Fuck you and your open source ideals

Taco, I for one think you are giving us the big fuck you with this one. I/we do not care about comments.. I/we do not care about slop. I/we only care about learning from your successes (and failures) and further improving the global programmer community as a whole.

We are a technical group. Do you honestly think that the lack of comments and the addition of platform specific code is going to hamper our ability to understand it as a whole and use it to benefit both the programmer community and slashdot? I'm offended.

From the comments/questions posted it is quite obvious that people are demanding you release the source. People are seeing that Slashdot is NOT about OpenSource!

Being too busy, lazy, whatever is a piss poor excuse. Your sucess is a direct result of you getting hte Slashdotters hyped up over a site which preaches OpenSource, Linux and "news for nerds" but you choose to shit on our ideals.

It's good enough for us to want to come here. Not good enough for you now that you have us here? I for one say "FUCK YOU TOO!"


They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen

Odd people

... The night I changed the moderation system from 20-odd people

20 very odd people :-)

(Sorry, I couldn't resist)

An interview with Bill Gates

(it's funny, laugh)

Bill, a lot of people want to know when we can expect Windows 2000.
Seriously, there are only 3 people who really know how much work a source release for this is: Linus, Woz, and Me. And the three of us have been working on a lot of stuff. As I write this, Microsoft employees are bugfixing and documenting and preparing for a release.

Why the delay, Bill?
This isn't like other projects: it has been custom fit to our hardware and to our needs. It doesn't have install scripts or help or even comments in the code. We're just too busy to play tech support helping dozens of people. We've decided to squash the bugs and make a clean release rather than rush it.

Why does it take so long to patch bugs in Windows?
It's really easy for someone to complain that I didn't release a new version of Windows every week. Its also easy to forget that in the last 6 months we've doubled in traffic and we've had to optimize our code and hardware to handle that. A new release is secondary: Our job is making money. We want to release new versions of Windows, but it is a definite second priority to making money.

So when can we expect Windows 2000 on the store shelves?
It's coming soon. It'll be out when its finished. And if you ask me again I'll postpone it again.