Slashdot Subscribers Now See The Future

We're pleased to announce the newest reason for you to subscribe to Slashdot. Besides the ability to suppress banner ads, limit journal postings to friends, and a few plums, Subscribers now see stories posted on Slashdot from The Mysterious Future! These stories are recognizable by the red title bar, and the lack of a time stamp. Subscribers will be able to beat the rush and read the links before everyone else. You can hit the link below and I'll explain exactly what this means. If this appeals to you, you could read the subscriber FAQ or just go subscribe.

First off, this feature doesn't change anything for non-subscribers. All Slashdot stories are put into the story queue before you see them. The time stamps on these stories vary tremendously. Sometimes the story is posted days in advance (like, say, a Book Review or an Ask Slashdot where time isn't critical and we post a set number a week) Other stories are "Breaking News" and are posted just seconds before they go live. But most stories are posted 20-30 minutes before they go live. This time window gives other authors a chance to take a look at them. To fix spelling, to check for dupes (HAH!) or even to reject the story outright!

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.

well golly

[JeanBaptiste]

Thats a pretty good idea. I would still think the /. effect would be better suppressed if slashdot would mirror stories, especially if its running off of somebody's mother's DSL connection.

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...

One more benefit.

[gokulpod]

...could be to let suscribers vote on stories, suggest spelling mistakes, notice dupes etc. Not only will it attract more suscribers, it will also help raise the quality of slashdot postings.

(yes, i do read k5)

Re:It seems to me..

[cascino]

Also, the more subscribers you get, the smaller the benefit is for each subscriber. I would think that before long, the /. effect will just start when the red bar appears. Am I missing something?
The only difference between the above hypothetical situation and the current situation is that in above, everybody's paying a /. subscription. That's the intended effect.

Good Idea!

[jconley]

I think this is a good idea- At least it is a unique approach to funding an on-line news source. I would much rather have the choice to subscribe and get this than have even more ads...

J

Re:Reasons for not subscribing.

[CmdrTaco]

If you want "Professional", read CNN. Slashdot is the trenches. Its down and dirty. It has typos and dupe stories and flamewars. We do our best to avoid mistakes, but we're mistake prone humans, trying to get news out in real time. So, sometimes things will go wrong.

Personally, I think that this is half the fun ;)

Re:Hah! First! [privoxy, transproxy, and regex]

[mrhuman]

Why pay to block ads? They are dead on the web! Simply run Privoxy [privoxy.org]. Combine it with Transproxy [nlc.net.au] and you'll be able to block all ads on the web. Especially combined with the regex know how of Regular Expressions Tutorial [zvon.org].

Re:But...

[Kallahar]

Actually, during an interview last year they said that the major costs were not bandwidth, but personnel. It takes a lot of money to employ people full time to administer the site.

But yeah, bandwidth ain't free :)

Travis

Re:Hah! First!

[MCZapf]

Nope. You can't post a comment until the story goes "live." I checked.

Re:/. effect? (Market opportunity)

[kriegsman]

(Hi Matt!) In the Clearway days before Mirror-Image, we went as far as starting to register "slashdotted.com" for just such a service. Got lost in the CW/MII shuffle, I believe.

The difference here is that the customers can be identified a few hours or days before the deluge of traffic hits. And by the time ./ subscribers start clicking on the site, the Webmaster will already be seeing a good-sized surge of traffic; it's much easier to sell traffic surge protection when the customer sees a surge actually starting, and they know that they have only a few days or a few hours (or minutes!) to make a decision.

The two biggest problems in the CDN business are (1) finding high quality new customer leads, and (2) convincing people that they'll actually need the service and that they'll see real benefit. This scheme addresses both, head-on. And the cost of this marketing program? Just a basic ./ subscription, and having a specialized sales rep make a couple of phone calls a day.

Of course, if MII doesn't want this business, I'm sure there are others who do. And besides, they always say if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself... *gr{i|oa}n*

-Mark

Re:Reasons for not subscribing.

[CmdrTaco]

Am I being defensive? Heh. Maybe. It's just that I've been running Slashdot for five and a half years now, and trying to keep it as an Informal news source. It was built on that very premise, and I think that this is core to its appeal. But there's always a group of people who think that this is a flaw. I just don't get it! I'm not trying to be defensive, I just feel like people who make these arguments want to fundamentally change the very nature of what Slashdot is!

Re:/. effect?

[CmdrTaco]

If we enabled posting for subscribers during TMF window, we definitely would not allow AC posting.

Re:Circumvention?

[Khalidz0r]

This shouldn't be the case,

It only takes a single conditional statement checking if the user is a subscriber and let them in, or tell them that this page isn't allowed.

I don't think Slashdot coders would miss this.

Khalid

What if (max # ads to block == 0)?

[wowbagger]

I have my max number of banner ads set to 0 (block all banner ads and damned be the cost!)

Is the code written as

if count >= 10 || count == 0

or just as

if count >= 10

Logically, it should be the first, but I'll bet it is the second.

Re:What if (max # ads to block == 0)?

[jamie]

It's the first. To be precise, the code in Subscribe.pm is:

if ($user->{hits_bought_today_max}
&& $user->{hits_bought_today_max} < $today_max_def) {
return 0;
}

So, you're cool if you set it to 0. And thanks! :)

There's an easier way of avoiding ads ...

[snowtigger]

Get a host file that associates ad servers names to 127.0.0.1 to get a connection failure. Works with most websites.

Here [everythingisnt.com] is an example.

Doesn't cost you anything and works on most platforms (windows, Unix ...)

If you run a webserver that binds to 127.0.0.1, just choose another non-occupied IP number.

"Besides the ability to suppress banner ads"

[rudy_wayne]

Mozilla: right click; select "block all images from this server".

No more ads.

+5 Informative.

Re:Immediate "Contact the Author" form?

[zerocool^]

it might be good to keep a mirror link list / submission form for all users, even once it's posted

As slashdot has covered this NUMEROUS times [slashdot.org] (obviously, as it's in their FAQ).

They DON'T want to do mirrors - a couple of reasons.
Slashdot hosted mirrors: Bandwidth != free.
Slashdot supported user hosted mirrors: legal and/or statistical reasons (banner ad displays, click thru's, page views, etc.)

Mirrors probably aren't going to happen on an official level, folks. Just keep posting them in the stories, like ya do now.