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Slashdot Subscribers Now See The Future
from the well-isn't-that-special dept.
So while subscribers won't see news posted at the last minute before everyone else, most of our stories will be available to them 10-20 minutes before everyone else. This means they can click through and beat the Slashdot Effect.
Another possible feature addition that we're discussing is to allow subscribers to post during this window. We haven't decided if that's a good idea or not. Since subscribers are still subject to all the same restrictions as anyone else in the forums, they could still be moderated into oblivion if they were jerks about it so it's probably not subject to all that much abuse, but this is still something we're only considering. Feel free to discuss it in this forum, or to contact me with opinions.
A couple of notes here:
- Subscribers have a variable on their subscriptions preference page that tells us how many banner ads they wish to "Spend" per day. This number must be at least 10 for you to be eligible to see the Mysterious Future plum. This means that your $5 subscription will last 100 days- or, $15-20 a year.
- You also need to hit the checkbox to disable ads on the Index. Once you hit your Max Pages for the day, you will see ads again, but you will also be eligible for the plum.
- These notes will be clarified on both the subscriptions page and in the FAQ very soon. Your feedback will help us decide how best to explain this since it's not exactly black & white here. Give us a couple weeks and it should all be blazingly obvious from the documentation how everything works.
In closing, this is a new feature and we appreciate all your feedback, both good and bad. We decided to implement this after tons of feedback from you, and we're really excited about it. This is a really great incentive for users to subscribe, but it also can give subscribers a chance to alert us in advance if stories have mistakes in them. We'll likely be expanding this sort of functionality in the future.
Now please go subscribe and help support Slashdot!
Update To clarify the timing. Right now the mysterious future is set to 20 minutes. That number is not a promise tho, since a story posted 11 minutes before "Air time" would be seen slighter later. A story posted 30 minutes in advance will be visible 20 minutes early.
Hah! First! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hah! First! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Hah! First! (Score:5, Funny)
FPP: First Paid Post!
and
FUP: First Unpaid Post!
All it takes is a few trolls with some available cash...
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Re:Hah! First! (Score:5, Insightful)
I could start reading at zero again.
FWIW, I did subscribe. It wasn't much. I just wanted to get the ads out of the story pages. Banner ads don't bother me. I went back and checked before I posted, and I've still got like 400 out of the 1000 pages left. It's been worth it, I think, and this will just convince me to renew when the time comes.
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But... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)
No. Only information wants to be free. Slashdot has managed to avoid that for a looong time.
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Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)
Soko
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/. effect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:/. effect? (Market opportunity) (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Subscribe to the Mysterious Future via
2. Contact Web site owners and warn them politely of impending future slashdotting
3. Offer to sell them (short-term?) service on a Content Delivery Network
4.
Commercial sites would love this. Academic/government ones probably wouldn't care as much. You could sell them a contract with an existing CDN (Akamai, Mirror-Image, etc.) or build out your own special purpose service, just to handle slashdot-like effects.
-Mark, founder of Clearway Technologies (now owned by Mirror-Image Internet)
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Re:/. effect? (Market opportunity) (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:/. effect? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, if you can't hang with the ping flood, you're screwed. But for those who aren't Dossed but merely hosed, this could be a great thing.
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WOW! (Score:5, Funny)
-34th post!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Great! Now I can see dupes before they are posted! (Score:5, Funny)
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Future Messages? (Score:5, Funny)
Old news... (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Think of it, http://boobies.slashdot.org/
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Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Another possible feature addition that we're discussing is to allow subscribers to post during this window. We haven't decided if that's a good idea or not. Since subscribers are still subject to all the same restrictions as anyone else in the forums, they could still be moderated into oblivion if they were jerks about it so it's probably not subject to all that much abuse, but this is still something we're only considering. Feel free to discuss it in this forum, or to contact me with opinions.
I don't think that is a good idea. I think the fact that users can read ahead of time and then they can prepare their posts. This might make better prepared comments.
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Funny)
That's a silly thing to say in a comment with a score less than 3. I guess it's working.
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well golly (Score:5, Informative)
Still, this offering may finally make me a subscriber. And I do like the idea of a subscriber getting to post first. The types of people that would subscribe are probably not the same ones that post the goatse.cx links and such. I'd even go so far as to maybe allow a subscriber another +1 bonus to karma, or maybe allow a subscriber a higher karma cap, or even let a subscribers post get modded to +6... but what do I know...
paying for what ??? (Score:5, Interesting)
ergo: they pay you to help you doing your job ?
(just a question : not a flamebait)
So compelling!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Must find my credit card, quick!
Comments on Subscriptions (Score:5, Interesting)
And pay to PARTIALLY disable banners? Very lame. I never see them anyways, since I have gotten so accustomed to ignoring them... It's amazing at how trained you can get at ignoring pretty much all graphics on all sites.
But, to top it off, I read ALL of the comments to this article so far. Not a single good one -- doesn't that hint at something?
Malachi
Maybe allow subscribers to moderate stories? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why can't subscribers get a chance to mod stories during this "preview" time, and possibly even keep silly stories and dups from getting posted to the "real" slashdot.
Allowing posting would be bad! (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) If a story gets pulled, lots of comments could already be posted. This would be pretty annoying if you had spent some time posting.
(2) Moderation is biased torwards early posters, and as such it would provide a disincentive for non-subscribers to post, thereby reducing the amount of discussion. This could be a good thing, since subscribers (hopefully!) provide more worthwhile reading.
Re:Allowing posting would be bad! (Score:5, Insightful)
(2)Moderation is already based towards early posters. But since subscribers will likely only represent a small percentage of all posting, I can't imagine more than a few dozen comments making it inside this window. And right now, the first couple dozen posts are almost always disposable anyway.
We already know pretty reliable that subscribers are statistically better moderators. (we've done a bunch of internal reports, and basically according to M2 results, they are several percent more "Fair" then the population as a whole. I don't think we've ever done any reporting to see if subscribers are better posters. I'm guessing they would be less likely to crapflood, but beyond that, I really would only be speculating.
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Ummm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ummm... (Score:5, Funny)
My only tech problem used to be trying to crimp patch cables, now I have to worry about reading slashdot right.
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Re:Ummm... (Score:5, Interesting)
This colorblindness test [umds.ac.uk] illustrates the problems I have recognizing the difference between these colors. In plate 2 I read the number "3" and in plate 3 I see "70." Try it for yourself.
If people who are red/green colorblind could really not distinguish any difference between the two, traffic lights at night would be really confusing.
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No Anonymous early posts (Score:5, Insightful)
But anyway, that is not the point of this post. I just wanted to say that if they do allow early posters, that they should NOT allow these early posts to be anonymous. This should help keep the quality of the early posts up. Maybe even have another modifier that increases any negative moderation by 1, again to try make the privilage of early posting a true privilage and keep abuse down.
Beating the slashdot effect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps now there will be a little bit of warning. When you start seeing the first referrals from slashdot on your web server, those are the subscribers -- the advance guard before the real assault.
a microcosm lesson for everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
unfortunate, but true
for healthcare, for the legal system, for media/ information
equality is an illusion
true in life, true in not-real-life internet communities
sad but true
A sneak preview at Denial Of Service attacks. (Score:5, Funny)
Something is wrong when a subscription incentive is to see a site before Slashdot launches a distributed denial of service attack against it: That's right, subscribers, click on the link now because we are about to DDoS the site!
Pre-posting is a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a bad idea, because earlier posts tend to be moderated higher than later posts, simply because more people see earlier posts. This will give subscribers a much louder voice in the forums, while potentially degrading the quality of the discussion.
Reasons for not subscribing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Having said that, my lack of subscription is for a very simple reason: it's not professional.
I won't subscribe until I never see a dupe or typo. Really, for all of our vaunted technology, if Slashdot cannot surmount these two very simple obstacles, it doesn't deserve any real monetary support. It just doesn't. And again, I say this as a real fan.
Fix that, Taco, and you've got my money. And maybe even a little more credibility.
Re:Reasons for not subscribing. (Score:5, Informative)
Personally, I think that this is half the fun ;)
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Re:Reasons for not subscribing. (Score:5, Funny)
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Corrupting the time line (Score:5, Funny)
BSD section? (Score:5, Funny)
The BSD section is already red. How would stories from the future be posted to the BSD section?
I can see the replies already to this post: "*BSD is dying; it has no future!"
sounds like the coke machine fiasco (Score:5, Insightful)
"Slashdot subscribers - you get news quicker!" Sounds a lot better than "Cheapskates: you get delayed news!", doesn't it?
New DDoS Alert Service Unveiled Today (Score:5, Funny)
Web site operators worldwide are encouraged to sign up for advance notice of port-80 DDoS attacks. "If you see it coming," said co-founder Hemos, "at least you have a chance to take down your web site before your ISP prepares a gigantic bill for that web site you put up to show your friends what you've been doing with your Lego kits."
Slashdot is a subsidiary of OSDN is a subsidiary of VA Software Corporation.
Immediate "Contact the Author" form? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about putting a simple little form underneath the stories for these previews? Something like:
Story is:
[] dupe (enter orig. url: ______)
[] fake (rebuttal url: ______)
[] mis-filed (better section: {popup})
[] mirrored (enter mirror url: _____)
Misc. Comments: [__________________]
[submit comment to editor / author]
Something like this would make it trivial for people to immediately help with the editorial process -- as opposed to having to write up a full email, etc. Plus, by allowing previewers to voluntarily announce a mirror this way, a list of mirrors could be presented once the mirror goes live, right at the top of the article. (come to think of it, it might be good to keep a mirror link list / submission form for all users, even once it's posted...)
You know what would make me subscribe? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll be more likely to subscribe when I see:
Being able to see articles "early" just doesn't motivate me to send money.
Re:Is this going to be like K5? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:But I don't see any ads now ... (Score:5, Insightful)
However we hope that enough of our users will think beyond that and try to support us. Programmers, Editors, OC3s and Racks of web servers cost money.
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