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.

mho

[Anonymous Coward]

this is too confusing to become successful.

/. effect?

[Lothar+0]

Will this now result in a pre-/. effect? Maybe the subscribers will be nice enough to mirror /.-ed sites on their own sites before the rush, but I'm not holding my breath.

Re:Hah! First!

[gmuslera]

If you see the article hours before most of slashdot readers, I think that yes, this will be a subscriber benefit. For the others a lot of discussions will start half full just when the article is widely available.

Hmmmm

[ZaMoose]

Didn't TotalFark already go this route? What's next, Slashdot Photoshop contests? *grin*

Awesome

[RedWolves2]

But..
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:Hah! First!

[idiotnot]

Actually, it would be, and AC's (unless they're logged in, posting anonymously) would be 30 minutes and 100 comments behind.....

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.

Allowing posting would be bad!

[DavidpFitz]

Another possible feature addition that we're discussing is to allow subscribers to post during this window.

But this would mean 2 things:

(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:unfair

[adamruck]

well.. it seems to me that for a news orginization that promotes open source, there would be some sort of mentality that information should be free, to everyone, at the same same time, in the same context, etc.

Also what are the implications for karma whoring... how long before we have subscribers getting all of the karma(mirroring and other methods), and the non-subscribers all being modded redundant.

No Anonymous early posts

[binaryDigit]

I'm a bit ambivilent about the early posting idea, since having an early post is directly related to the number of people likely to see your post, that "privilege" suddenly becomes a paid one. So people who might actually have something worthwhile to contribute suddenly have to become paying members.

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.

Re:well golly

[leviramsey]

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.

Maybe make the Slashdot mirror only for subscribers?

One problem I see with this...

[Champaign]

Is the fact that if subscribers post first, their postings will always be read first. If their postings are read first (or potentially the only comments read as I often get bored when reading tons of comments and stop half-way through), they will be moderated first. Assuming positive moderation, they will get the mod points and higher karma.

In a round-about way this is a bit like selling karma (something I think you've avoided).

Good show! Could I purchase 1.25 kg of enlightment please?

Beating the slashdot effect?

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

Gee, I'm sure all the web sites that are suddenly and violently knocked off the web will be happy to know that slashdot is doing this for their subscribers. This seems a little like saying, well, my movie theater is quite flammable, so if you pay me $5 more, I'll make sure to seat you by an exit so you can get out before everyone else dies. It doesn't change the core problem, i.e., that slashdot is posting stories where they know from the outset that the effect is going to be a massive web server smackdown, and providing neither a mirror or a warning to anyone that this is about to happen.

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

[circletimessquare]

if you pay more, you get more

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

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Hmmmm

[sweetooth]

Farks a touch differant in that a lot of the total fark news items never make it to the front page at all. So you are paying more to see the list of ALL of the submitted stories and not just what's being published before it goes live. Also with Total Fark you could get a head start on the photoshop contests.

Re:Awesome

[k_187]

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.

Since when is this a bad thing? I don't know about you but most of the posts around here are pretty pointless or just plain wrong. I've personally got my prefs set at +3 just to weed out the silly stuff. I think anything that would contribute to the discussion would be a good thing (tm). Of course, the real downside to that would be the trolls subscribing so they would be guaranteed first post status, but then again the Mods would hopefully catch all that stuff.

Re:But...

[gallen1234]

Information may want to be free but bandwidth is another story.

Re:Bad

[leviramsey]

Try Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org]. Reader supported (even the bulk of the ads are by readers).

Why the griping?

[Quill_28]

I don't understand why folks are saying that SlashDot is selling out.

While you may not like the editors, they have t o be paid somwhow. Banner ads aren't what they used to be.

And how much does the computer equipment cost? The bandwidth?

And you gripe about those who pay get benefits and gripe about banner ads. I don't understand.

It costs a good bit of money to run a site like slashdot why should it be completely free?

Re:Allowing posting would be bad!

[CmdrTaco]

(1) This is a big issue and one that we would need to consider. I guess what it would probably mean is that you post to future-dated stories at your own risk. You're seeing Slashdot behind the scenes, you should expect some dust.

(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.

Pre-posting is a bad idea

[techmuse]

"Another possible feature addition that we're discussing is to allow subscribers to post during this window."

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.

[thatguywhoiam]

I like Slashdot a lot. I come here every day. Despite the common flames (and downright freaky displays of human frailty around -1), I think the group consensus here is fantastic. It's often very funny, and I like knowing what all the really smart mf'ers think about certain issues and topics. I feel smarter for reading Slashdot.

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:No Anonymous early posts

[binaryDigit]

How lame is that. If you had something interesting to say, it would be modded up no matter when you posted.

Not true. If you're post is the 748th on an article, the odds of any appreciable number of moderators seeing it are very slim. Esp. since by then, you'd be buried in amongst a lot of other non-moderated posts. You can see this effect all the time. This is esp. true for things like redundancy.

Re:Rich people can afford things shocker!

[vrai]

Hey, I resemble that comment!

Don't be so hard on yourself, I'm sure you look nothing like a line of text.

slashdot subscription system is too complicated

[truffle]

I just read over the subscription FAQ. I know we're geeks, but does slashdot need such a complicated subscription system?

The system seems to revolve around you buying add-free pages, and then spending a certain number of pages a day.

Get a grip Taco! Just make it ten bucks for a year's subscription with no ads and unlimited usage! Simple simple simple.

And if you think $10 isn't enough, think again!

suggestion

[sigxcpu]

Maybe Slashdot will locally cache the sites they are about to slashdot.
I think people would be willing to subscribe to such a service.

sounds like the coke machine fiasco

[cheesyfru]

Good marketing, Slashdot! It reminds me of the Coke machine fiasco a few years ago. They tested machines that had temperature controls -- when the temperature got hot, it would automatically raise the price of the bottles. The media caught wind of this and had a field day. If Coca Cola had only beaten them to the punch and billed it as a "machine that discounts soda in cold weather", they'd have been heros.

"Slashdot subscribers - you get news quicker!" Sounds a lot better than "Cheapskates: you get delayed news!", doesn't it?

Re:But I don't see any ads now ...

[CmdrTaco]

Suppressing ads from servers is a fairly common practice. Probably 2-3% of our users do it. And that number will likely grow as browsers make it very easy to do so. Thats why we're adding plums unrelated to advertising on Slashdot. We knew that the Ad Suppression filter was really more of an Honor System kind of thing since using Junkbuster or even Mozilla's built in blocking is trivial for even the most competant of users.

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.

Re:Hah! First!

[JPriest]

ISP's figured out a long time ago that people would rather pay for one month of unlimited access than a bucket load of hours that would probably take them over a month to use. People, like information want to be (feel) free.

no kidding

[Pave Low]

My take on these new "plums": big whoop. These things do not really change the way I feel about slashdot, that it's an amateurishly written site, and run by a group of dictatorial editors. I like to come and see what other people write, but it's almost never because of the "news" content, or the uninsightful commentary from the editors.

Here's some easier ways of actually getting more subscribers without writing a single line of code.
Spell check.
Correct grammar.
News that is actually timely and relevant.
Lose the inane commentary from paranoid jerks like michael, who add nothing new to the discussion and only serve to trollbait the users.
Listen to the readers, instead of waiving all the criticisms as trolls.
Lose the moderation system. It doesn't work, and never has.

That's a good start to people paying. Run it professionally.

Allow Early Posting!

[strook]

If you don't let people post in the first 20-minute window, then the subscribers who see the post in that window probably aren't going to come back later to post. But these people are probably more likely to make quality posts overall. We wouldn't want the quality of posting to go down even further... And I'm not a subscriber so don't go thinking I'm personally biased here.

Re:Well...

[Kallahar]

More importantly, the trolls will have to use a real account, so when you mod them down it'll actually do something!

travis

Immediate "Contact the Author" form?

[dschuetz]

...to fix spelling, to check for dupes (HAH!) or even to reject the story outright!

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...)

Re:well golly

[MojoRilla]

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...

Features like letting people see stories early or giving them extra karma for money will cheapen and ultimately ruin the site.

Having money doesn't mean you are more intelligent, or have more important things to say. By giving people time to prepare their posts, or giving them higher karma for paying, we are saying that what they say is more important than other people.

Following these trends, ultimately the quality of slashdot posts will decrease, which is the whole reason for the moderation / karma system in the first place.

You know what would make me subscribe?

[ChaoticCoyote]

I'll be more likely to subscribe when I see:

• Professional Journalism
• Proper use of English
• Less flippant editorializing by the staff
• More in-depth, investigative reporting

Being able to see articles "early" just doesn't motivate me to send money.

I just don't understand Slashdot ...

[pgrote]

I am a Total Fark susbcriber and the only reason I did it was to get access to EVERYTHING that was submitted.

The enjoyment in using Fark comes from the ability to see what other people think is unique and newsworthy.

Slashdot is a great clearinghouse not only for technical news, but of technical thought as well. How many times have articles been submitted that the editors don't think are relevent to their vision, but that I'll get value from?

Isn't that what Slashdot should be selling? Access to the stuff other people consider important?

When I read Taco's explanation about the early preview the only thing it does is:

1) Offer the community the ability to check dupes.
2) Offer a headstart on crushing a site.

If a site is going to get slashdotted what is the big deal if it's slashdotted by the first 100 or the last 100? It's still going to be slashdotted.

If anyone from the Slashdot editor team is listening ... why not open up the whole queue for people to read? No comments, but at least let us check out what other people think is important and relevent.

Right now your model is focused on avoiding ads. Why? Focus on the CONTENT and you'll do much much better.

Re:Reasons for not subscribing.

[dasmegabyte]

Allow me to rebutt this.

I don't care about dupes and I don't care about typos. I've seen much worse than this on so-called professional news sites...in fact, I'd have to say that when compared to our local fox affilitate, Slashdot looks like the goddamn BBC.

I don't visit slashdot for the regurgitated, puree'd content. I visit slashdot for the clout. I visit for the semi-high profile interviews and the "insider" info.

And most importantly, I visit for the posts. If slashdot were just Drudge for technolosers, I wouldn't come back. But we have millions of intelligent people with degrees and experience chomping at the bit to respond to everything that gets posted. At the same time, we have a bunch of assholes waiting to post the funniest eye-opening responses they can. And we've trolls willing to play devil's advocate and to hell with karma, they're going to counterargue just to get us talking.

Slashdot is like a giant block party for subversive loner technology geniuses. It's hip, it's grooving, and if they want $15, they'll get it from me.

This BS about dupe checking, typos? Come on. It's not that important, and it adds to the "news of the second" quality that makes /. so appealing.

Re:well golly

[siskbc]

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.

Nah. How often is the site slashdotted before some karmawhore has pre-emptively de-slashdotted the site sometime in the first 5 posts? Pretty much always? So the /. effect doesn't really affect us that much - only the poor non-/. bastards trying to reach a site.

And this new deal is lame. Other than beating the /. effect, (which I obviously believe to be minimal), what do you get? You get to self-edit the site? Yeah, that's great - you can see firsthand just how half-assed half these editors are by which stories make it through and which don't. You can see *just how* outdated the site is from lag. And let me guess - they'll now make absolutely NO effort to post stories in a timely fashion, in an effort to drum up more "subscriptions." Sounds like a mob protection racket.

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

Yep. Just in case the moderation system didn't quite suck enough already with people modding by opinion. Send Taco $10, get a permanant +2 - now *that* is the ultimate in karmawhoring! Yay!

All in all, I would have had more respect for a plea of, "I have no bandwidth, this site is about to /. ITSELF." That would have gotten me to cough up some ca$h. But don't give me this "pay money to get avoid having the version of the site that goes to shit" stuff. And how long until "subscriber-only" stories Taco?

Isn't this self-defeating?

[selan]

Sounds like the benefits of viewing stories before the /. effect kicks in only apply if there is a small number of subscribers. The more subscribers, the more slashdotting a link takes even before the story goes live. If the goal is to have everyone subscribe, then you just wind up with a pre-/. effect. So the more subscribers, the less incentive to subscribe. Or something like that.

Re:Allowing posting would be bad!

[CmdrTaco]

We've considered such a ranking system, but we're scared that we'd create another video game out of Slashdot. We learned a lot from Karma. Users started abusing it. It's purpose was misunderstood and turned into a game. It was never really intended to be that- it was intended to be a useful indicator for moderation eligibility and a few extra features on the site.

So any ranking system we designed would have to be very carefully thought through. Frankly I don't really care to see "The top 100 Slashdot Users" on a web page... but I would like to see "The Top 100 Recent Good Journals" or something. Personally I'm not interested in "Is Joe Good or Bad" I'm interested in "Is this journal a good journal and worth my time to read". Hence the threshold based moderation system. Someday perhaps we'll apply that to journals somehow.

ads huh?

[sewagemaster]

as a subscriber, do i get to filter out slashdot ads.... like this entire story? ;)

Re:-34th post!!!

[Rick the Red]

Actually, allowing subscribers to post before other people might greatly reduce the number of non-subscribers who bother to come here (other than the ACs, of course). I've found that those who post early are far more likely to be moderated up than anyone who posts late, no matter how insightful or informative (or funny) their (late) post may be. Therefore, subscribers would be far more likely to achieve excellent karma than non-subscribers (excepting those of us who gained excellent karma prior to the policy change). This, of course, means subscribers would be more likely to have mod points than non-subscribers, and they'd be able to moderate before non-subscribers could even post, so you'd get an effect where the subscribers would mod each other into higher karma at the expense of non-subscribers.

All that's missing is removing the karma kap to totally exclude non-subscribers from any dialog, but most of us non-subscribers would probably be long gone by then. I'm curious enough that I'd probably check back once a month or so to see if they ever do remove the karma kap -- I'm betting they will, because it's such a pretty bullet that they probably can't reist shooting themselves in the foot with it. Or maybe they'll just remove the karma kap for subscribers. Hell, why not ban non-subscribers from posting and moderating and be done with it?

Hey, Taco! How much are you gonna be able to charge for banner ads if the only people who come to Slashdot are subscribers who never see them?

Re:/. effect? (Market opportunity)

[evilviper]

I don't think it would REALLY be coercion... After-all, the webmaster COULD just remove the page... I don't think anyone will be going over their bandwidth cap if they are just serving up a "Click HERE to help pay for my bandwidth" page.

Re:Awesome

[Chasuk]

I'm going to be honest, I don't know what you don't think is a good idea: subscribers being able to post ahead of time, or the fact that those posts would be better prepared.

I like the idea of allowing subscribers to post early 'cuz we might eliminate a lot of those "frist post" losers (also flames and trolls). Perhaps impose a special levy so that these posts are still allowed, but the otherwise wasted bandwidth might actually makes /. money.

Considering the amount of diarrhea posted on /., this might generate substantial revenue.

Wait, before you implement this penalty levy, Taco, let me patent it...

Re:Reasons for not subscribing.

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's not serious, how can you charge money for it? Anyone could do the "editors" job at slashdot in about 5 minutes from home. No need to bother reading old stories, just look at what ends up in your email box and post 3-4 random items. Your charging for this??? Right.

Re:/. effect?

[terraformer]

Maybe, but one thing is for sure, Karma whores will need a subscription to be the first to post mirror sites.

Re:Great! Now I can see dupes before they are post

[EinarH]

Great! Now I can see dupes before they are posted!

You are probably closer to the truth than you are aware off.
AFAIK, this idea of giving subscribers the right to see the stories before everyone else popped up in CmdrTaco's journal [slashdot.org] after the "Tomshardware 2 hours dupe thing" two weeks ago.
Quoted from his journal:

So what I was thinking is that we'd allow subscribers to see these stories a little early. This has 2 benefits (1) They can get to the sites before they are crushed by the Slashdot Effect and (2) They could warn us of typos, dupes etc. Thats why they are posted like this. I post a story 20 minutes before it goes live so that Jamie or Hemos or Timothy or someone can read it if they are around. Course Timothy doesn't work this morning, and Hemos is in mtgs. But if we let subscribers see these stories a few minutes early, they would have a chance to warn us.

Serious Problem Here!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a serious problem here. Slashdot discusiion will now be limited to slashdot subscribers only, for practicle purposes. I mean, in 20 minutes you get 100 comments, so the rest of us are at the bottom of the totem pole.

As if the moderation system wasn't bad enough....

Re:well golly

[dr_eaerth]

Maybe make the Slashdot mirror only for subscribers?

That would miss the point. The point of Slashdot mirroring content is not a service to the Slashdot readers, but to the poor sites that get linked. Limiting the Slashdot mirror to a small number of people wouldn't help at all.

Earning Karma is not Slashdots main function

[Syncdata]

I like my excellent karma as much as the next guy, but this is silly. I think nothing would be better than to have fewer hot grits, frist prosts, and the like.
If the sole reason you visit slashdot is to earn karma, then you are missing the point, which is reading the articles, and the intelligent responses that follow. Just because you're not going to get the same chance to earn the karma as subscribers doesn't mean you should stop coming, and if Karma is THAT important to you, then shell out the 20 bucks per year, and you'll have that much more of it.

Re:-34th post!!!

[Slime-dogg]

Most people here are not motivated by karma, contrary to what you may believe. If you've found that you are ruled by karma, you in effect have become a karma-whore. You'll do anything for karma, including:

• Blah blah : ??? : Profit!!!
• Natalie Portman / Grits / AYBABTU
• Posting the text of the article as a comment
• Mirroring high karma posts higher in the page, to hoodwink people who don't look at post times

I've seen my fair share of high moderated posts that fall into those categories. It just seems that people care less about voicing thoughts and opinions, and more about turning /. into a popularity contest.

I personally could give half a crap. I read /. because it gives the news that I usually care about.

Re:Circumvention?

[peterpi]

I'm sure such a post would get modded fairly (i.e. -1 Offtopic). I guess most subscribers are keen posters too, so they care about their karma.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to disallow A/C posting during the subscriber-only period?

Re:no kidding

[rela]

Lose the moderation system. It doesn't work, and never has.

And obfuscating it doesn't make it work.
A post is not "50%" funny or "10%" off-topic.
Nor is Karma "Positive" or "Excellent".

Re:Earning Karma is not Slashdots main function

[Rick the Red]

You missed my point; perhaps I wasn't clear. All I meant was that if the subscribers -- as a group -- have more karma points than the non-subscribers -- as a group -- then the subscribers will dominate the discussion and non-subscribers contributions will fall below the threashold and not be seen. Yes, you can adjust your personal threashold -- to -1 if you like -- but if you go with the default settings then before long all you see are the higher-moderated posts. Under this proposed new system, those posts could easily become dominated by subscribers. As a non-subscriber, I oppose that. If my comments are not valued by the editors simply because I don't subscribe (because the system they establish favors subscribers), then I'll spend my time elsewhere.

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

[Bill Privatus]

Look, it's the spirit of the thing, y'know?

Go ahead and block slashdot ads if you want. I'd like to think slashdot isn't evil, like x10.com.

If you don't want to subscribe, don't. But I don't think it's virtuous to not subscribe, to kill ads, *and* to post saying "I'm bright - and you can be, too!".

Do the first two, and you're fine. The last makes you an anti-slashdot fanatic and you'll no doubt be visited by the proper authorities any time now (knock, knock...).

Just my $0.02. Very much tongue-in-cheek. CmdrTaco will be sending me the usual check for $0.02 at the end of this month...

Re:well golly

[jtheory]

Well, if you allow subscribers to post against the story while it's still "plastic", you're going to get a lot of silly comments about errors in the story that are fixed by the time is hits the "present" and everyone else sees it.

But if you do let them post, at least make sure they can't post anonymously, please! That will at least keep the quality up (and punish the silly comment generators described above...).

Pay Rob Malda or we'll ddos the site before you

[t0qer]

can read it is basically what this plum means. I think it sucks personally. Why didn't you implement a cache system?

Re:Hah! First!

[Daetrin]

That's what was said above, they're considering it, they haven't implemented it yet.

Re:-34th post!!!

[Lord Ender]

I find it amazing that you think the point of slashdot is to 'achieve excellent karma'. I am a non subscriber, but I don't give a damn about karma. I will still come here. Your claim that "most of us non-subscribers would probably be long gone" is silly. Most non-subscribers are not karma-crazy like you are. Get a grip.

Re:/. effect? (Market opportunity)

[allism]

/. doesn't automatically send users to the /.ed webpages, /. just says 'you might want to go here'. Each individual user chooses whether they want to click the link, and the pages actually get viewed by an interested (?) reader. And who the hell is gonna sue over free publicity? If they didn't want anyone looking at their pages, they shouldn'ta posted 'em.

do -NOT- allow early "normal" posting

[Splork]

if you allow paid subscribers to post comments in stories early you are asking for trouble. your moderation system does not work. whoever posts first always has the best chance of getting rated up no matter how stupid they are.

don't allow people to pay to sway the masses.

take a hint from kuro5hin, early posts into stories should only be -editorial- comments meant to make suggestions to the editors. they should disappear when the story goes live.

Re:Pre-posting is a bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

What would be neat would be a subscriber-only web community; it would be horribly elitist, but at least it would keep some of the trolls out.

People tried it back in the BBS days and it really didn't work. Don't forget that the "trolls" and the "insightful" people are often the same. Some of the most ridiclous trolling on this site comes from Party-Line "Linux is the Best; M$ Sux" people, and nobody really cares.

Also, when any community becomes tired and incestous, it will decend into trolling, pay or no. $5/month or whatever wouldn't be enough to stop dedicated trolls like "$$exySue" and the like.

Re:Reasons for not subscribing.

[pjrc]

Informal news source ... is core to its appeal.

Yes, that's a big part of the appeal. But, spell_check != formal_news. You need to do so much more to be a formal news site. You're so far away from being a formal news site that the tiny incremenatal change of spell checking really is a tiny drop in the ocean of change needed to become "formal". But it would make reading slashdot less irritating (and there's spell checking software that make this easy, unlike avoiding dups...)

I just feel like people who make these arguments want to fundamentally change the very nature of what Slashdot is!

You're saying that integrating a spell checking into the story posting process would fundamentally change the very nature of slashdot.

Now if you were to investigate all stories, use a formal writing style, write your own copy instead of primarily using the submission text, and dozens of other things... then you'd be talking about changing the nature of slashdot. Integrating a spell checking into the story posting, and even into comment posting and posting to the story submission just isn't going to change the fundamental nature of slashdot.

Re:no kidding

[Wraithlyn]

I agree with most of what you said, except this:

"Lose the moderation system. It doesn't work, and never has."

If you don't like it, ignore the mod scores. You can just read at -1 unsorted if you want.

And IMHO, if you think reading at -1 unsorted is the same as reading at +2, highest first (which is exactly what you're saying by stating "It doesn't work"), you're on glue.

Re:Circumvention?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh?

There is nothing keeping a subscriber from posting as anonymous coward from another IP and MAC address on a different thread. I do this all the time albeit not as a subscriber, because I want to post as AC (I think it's hypocritical to categorize value of posts by previous posts--ideas count, not the reputation; you'd think all the geeks put down in high school would realize this by now but no...) but I hate the 10 limit/24 hour thing (that's like a comment a thread on a regular /. day, and if you read /. only on weekends, you can't post helpful URLs).

I have 1 MAC/IP, and simply rotate the IP and machine connected to my cable modem (this doesn't always work, probably because it goes by the cable modem's MAC) or link into a relatives or friend's network and run a browser through there to do my posting (they are not /. readers). I can get up to 30 AC postings a day this way, but rarely go beyond 12.

No amount of decent code can verify against this, unless /. intends to stop all URL posting or such in that window. You could even use PGP signing to verify such URLs and stories ahead of time and build a comment scanner to pick them up.

This is sort of a silly feature--typical how something generally community driven has evolved into haves and have nots based on all things, money. For all the anti-PAC and payola stuff out there, I find this hypocritical of those running /..

But hey, their site and other people's loot. They want to make people believe this is a worthwhile feature, all the stupidity to them and those that believe.

Plums??

[BollocksToThis]

From the 'plums' link:

• You get a "More Comments" link on your user page and on other users' pages. Going through comment history might be a bit DB-intensive but we trust subscribers not to abuse the privilege.
  
• You can add up to 400 friends and foes, instead of being limited to 200.

So, one plum is a next to useless feature, that will probably cripple slashdot if you use it, and the other is increasing a maximum on something that's a goddamn waste of time in the first place?

Although, I have to admit, in the face of non-subscriber features like "duplicate stories", "biased editor comments", "april-fool stories any time of the year", and "complete inability to learn fucking english", these plums come up a little sour.

Re:Hah! First!

[Jucius Maximus]

A benefit of this SHOULD be that paid subscribers should be able to mark a story as a dupe before it goes live, giving the editors time to take it down.

Re:Pay Rob Malda or we'll ddos the site before you

[shyster]

Sure, it's a great idea, but it has a lot of implications.

As do most great ideas...so, what's your point?

But what happens if I cache the site, and they update themselves?

The cache could easily check for updated content...or just put the original link there for people to check themselves if they're all that interested. The story got posted on what WAS there, so isn't it a safe assumption that thta's what we want to see?

I could try asking permission, but do you want to wait 6 hours for a cool breaking story while we wait for permission to link someone?

Like Slashdot's stories are all that breaking in the first place! How about the submitter could ask the site, and they would have until the time the story was posted to opt-in (if you're all that worried about permission).

It would make things a lot easier when servers go down, but it's a complicated issue that would need to be thought through in great detail before being implemented.

And exactly how much time will it take to think through this idea in great detail? I've been reading Slashdot for about 3 years now, and I'd say that's plenty of time to think through just about any idea short of the meaning to life.

The FAQ is woefully inadequate in explaining the reasoning behind the no cache directive. It's time it was updated with new reasons (or excuses) or just admit that it's not something you want to do because (a) it's too hard, (b) there's too many legal issues, (c) you think the /. effect is funny and adds to /.'s prestige, or (d) all/none of the above.