Slashdot Subscribers Now See The Future 1018
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.
Is this going to be like K5? (Score:4, Interesting)
By that I mean, will readers be able to make suggestions, corrections, etc. to the stories? Or, once submitted, the story is "set in stone" and won't be updated?
Also, will someone begin "karma whoring" and mirroring pages and posting links to the mirrors?
It seems to me.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Subscribers are probably the ones to load
Also, the more subscribers you get, the smaller the benefit is for each subscriber. I would think that before long, the
Do subscribers... (Score:2, Interesting)
if everyone subscribes (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Let this day be marked. (Score:3, Interesting)
paying for what ??? (Score:5, Interesting)
ergo: they pay you to help you doing your job ?
(just a question : not a flamebait)
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.
Slashdot Liability Prevoked (Score:2, Interesting)
By having a system with a financial incentive with a major goal being the avoidance of the Slashdot Effect you have now acknowledged it; and are financially reaping rewards for it.
Congrats.
Re:Let this day be marked. (Score:4, Interesting)
Money hungry pigs.
Why? Did you lose any benefits as a non-subscriber? Ummmm... no. Did you gain better quality of service as a non-subscriber? Ummmm... yes (less dupes). So are they giving subscribers an extra benifit while actually positively affecting your
So why are you saying your going to leave
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)
Re:/. effect? (Score:2, Interesting)
heck.. are the subscribers forbidded to tell everyone the links and the story? (no)
how about putting up a site with slashcode that fetches automatically these pre-stories and reports them in a fashion "slashdot just reported that there is something intresting regarding issue x at url:x"
but i guess this is just something 'extra', stupid, bad extra in my opinion but still.. hell, i won't be paying to get to pre-slashdotted sites, maybe i'll say i'm doing everyone a favor by NOT subscribing and causing pre-slashdot slashdots..
no i wont be subscribing because of this.
heck, i could easily put up something to keep eye on the sites most of the slashdot stories originate from, i could live very well without the comments too.
pre-slashdot effect or not, slashdotted still. and i wouldnt hold me breath that a site that can survive this subscriber-slashdot would keep up with a 'real' slashdot..
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
It works well for Fark, and I think Slashdot would benefit from copying it more fully. I.e., allow access to all *proposed* links, not just those about to be posted to public page, and allow discussion before posting to the public page.
I also think this would work well for traditional news sites. While you wouldn't want to unveil all communications within the organization, it would be fascinating to see unedited reports from New York Times field correspondents, and see the different revisions as it goes through the editing process. The legal liability (slander lawsuits etc.) would probably be cost-prohibitive, but if the service were offered, I'm sure it would garner a lot of subscribers.
Clarify? (Score:1, Interesting)
Is it just me or is that even less clear than it was before?
Sweet Idea, Ugly Fallout (Score:3, Interesting)
That aside, I think this is a pretty cool incentive to subscribe. I'm not against subscription models or for paying for things I use, so long as they're not absurdly priced. And yes, my attitude is that if I wasn't going to buy it anyway, nobody lost anything. No blood no foul.
Are subscriptions helping the bottom line? (Score:4, Interesting)
How well are subscriptions doing for slashdot? Does anyone know if this feature was added because subscriptions are doing well or because subscriptions are doing bad and they need more incentives to subscribe?
At $5, slashdot is getting $0.005 per ad-free page view. What does slashdot get paid per page view with an ad?
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.
Re:Is this going to be like K5? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:well golly (Score:3, Interesting)
What?! Now you want people to be responsible when they could use their own irresponsibility to generate money for them?? What is the would coming to... That's just downright unamerican.
idea for subscription in general (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd like a cookie that would allow me to use my "ad-free" views in one location (home on my slow dialup) but not in another (work on the fat pipe). I don't mind seeing \. ads, and have actually found a couple interesting things I never would have discovered otherwise. But skipping those bandwidth-hogging ads at home would be useful, and might prompt me to subscribe.
As far as early posting for subscribers, I'd vote against it. The cardinal rule on \. is "post early" or you get drowned out, regardless of how insightful|informative|interesting|funny you are. Non-subscribers logging into a discussion with 100 posts and a couple dozen 4's and 5's already will likely not contribute as much. That would be a shame, and would reduce the quality of the forum for everyone, IMHO.
Re:Allowing posting would be bad! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:unfair (Score:3, Interesting)
Open Source code is, by definition, free. But Information is not, nor need it be, nor should it. Whatever made you think that?!
As for karma-whoring, etc., sure, the subscribers have a leg up. They'll be the first to post the mirrors, spew the obvious (but funny) jokes, and generally have an advantage in racking up k-points over the non-subscriber. What's the problem? Taco and posse *invented* k-points, and are responsible for their continued and prevalent (albeit bizarre) value in the "Geek Community." I'm glad to see somebody finally figuring out a way to make an extra buck from that (eerie) invention.
If
Personally, I'd pay quadruple the subscription rate for a site without AC's which also allowed me to filter by a subscriber's age. It's all just a little "too free" for my tastes. Here's hoping that, after I subscribe today, the pre-general release climate is a little less noisey.
I'll let you know!
Re:/. effect? (Market opportunity) (Score:4, Interesting)
"Hey, I'm calling about your impending doom... I have a way out. Deny my offer, and suffer..."
Re:/. effect? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:/. effect? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:/. effect? (Market opportunity) (Score:5, Interesting)
Subscription glitch? (Score:4, Interesting)
Then, after the initial 1000 ran out, I looked at ads again for a while. About three months ago I got sick of it and tried subscribing again. No soap.
Paypal showed my payment as unclaimed for days, and I was still looking at ads. No replies received from the relevant OSDN address after sending two emails... not even a vacation message. I eventually cancelled the payment and am back to looking at ads.
Attn: Taco and team: I want to support you, I really do. But blowing off paying subscribers is BAD. How do you expect to retain your paying customers when someone is asleep at the switch? Why should I subscribe now?
Re:Disable ads on the Index? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd rather see all the ads, and just pay $20 a year. Perhaps you could offer 2 subscription methods. I just feel that if I turn of ads, I'll miss something someone wants to sell me that I like.
-BrentThe circular file (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Allowing posting would be bad! (Score:5, Interesting)
It clearly is not a coincidence, but doing anything with that information would have to be thought through very carefully- just because a user is statistically more likely to moderate fair, that doesn't mean that they aren't going to. Every now and then you see someone who uses all 5 mod points to mod up 1st posts. They get killed in M2, but it does happen. We have to keep that sort of thing in mind when we make any changes in moderation.
Instant Business (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Disable ads on the Index? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:/. effect? (Market opportunity) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Reasons for not subscribing. (Score:3, Interesting)
(pssssst! Taco! You're asking people to pony up more money! Ixnay on the efensivenessday!)
Re:Reasons for not subscribing. (Score:4, Interesting)
As for a magazien or DVD, I'd love to see it happen. I just don't have the time and expertise and budget for it. If everyone clicks on banners and subscribes, then I bet such a thing would be quite possible.
Circumvention? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is this going to be like K5? (Score:1, Interesting)
You could keep track of the ratio between page views and Dupe Moderations. You could also make the Dupe Moderation subject to M2 so it doesn't get abused.
Re:Mozilla block ads (Score:3, Interesting)
Come to think of it, this shoulds suspiciously like a judging event or a grading session with multiple judges. They all grade independently, then you average the scores.
Moderators (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Comment Ranks (Score:4, Interesting)
Other more interesting ideas... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nearly every change made to Slashdot over the last several years has made it harder to offer any real diferentiation in a premium service. People buy totalfark subscriptions to get more time to "win photoshop contests" - while slashdot has hidden it's equivalent karma system (and most regulars have topped out anyway). The delay from story acceptance to publication isn't all that long - it can't be: Slashdot is primarily a news site. The sophisticated readership could avoid ads if they really wanted to (I suspect most don't because it's part of the social contract). Finally, there are too many people who have run afoul of Malda's notoriously thin skin to have built up a "save salon" type of outpouring. (Setting special flags on people's accounts just because they dared mod up a critique? How juvenile -- but I digress).
Still, there are a number of ideas that haven't been tried that might be of interest, if done right:
Have a special premium queue for stories, plus the promise that one story will be picked a day. Suitable markings to differentiate stories drawn
from "preferred" queues ala google.
Allow premium users additional access to html. IMG tags anyone? Maybe combine this with small level of image storage.
The ability to "challenge" a mod down. Automatic if the mod is "overrated" which doesn't get metamodded; better yet, get rid of "overrated" it's an invitation to abuse.
The option of mirroring any content mentioned in slashdot (except ads) for any site owner who is a premium member. Most site owners love the attention slashdot brings them, it's just the slashdot effect that's so hard to deal with.
The ability to be modded to a value of "6". (The post still has to earn that value from the mods on it's own merits though.)
The ability to read from low karma to high. For fans of "alternative humor".
The ability to start at a +1 karma level (editable, of course, for those so unamerican as to believe money != speech). This would be especially attractive to people with "high uid" accounts.
A higher bandwidth channel to premium customers.
A java plug-in that downloads slashdot incrementally in the background, making those annoying page-load/drill-down delays go away.
Allowing edits of your own posted comment, so long as it hasn't been modded or responded to. If it has, you can still edit it, but a link is added to the original version.
I think this is a good start on you offering enough differentiation to make a "premium" view worth money without cutting into your site's popularity.
The bill for my business advice will arrive in the morning.
Error every time (Score:2, Interesting)
I just got sucked on and subscribed.
For the last two 'red' posts, (Austin and China's CPU) every time I click on 'Read More' I got a hung browser with a title of 'Error'. Is this supposed to be working?
Re:Is this going to be like K5? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hah! First! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:But I don't see any ads now ... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's what I've determined. I prefer to read slashdot in "advant/LYNX" style where everythiong is just plain text (with exception of ads and friendship meter). I'm also passively ignoring images due to disabling the showing them.
If I'm porn/schematics/image surfing, images go on with filters. If not, Poof! they're not displayed.
If you look at kuro5hin's model, they use text messgaes. They also allow you to post stuff in the "ad space posting". Very cool. You even end up with word-to-word advertising (Which CmdrTaco, you should already know that's the best advertising bar none...).
I can tell you, I'd abaondon my account by putting my login/passwd on a high ranking post I make if you disable the use of "plain text site". Altavista did that for a while and I just didnt use them. I ended up using Dogshit for full metasearching until Google came around. I heard of Google from my friends/usenet community.
Suggestion to lower dups... (Score:3, Interesting)
--LP
Corollary (Score:3, Interesting)
Preslash.com is available.
Re:But I don't see any ads now ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't lie. You don't have racks of webservers!
As I'm referencing the FAQ [slashdot.org], I see:
5 load balanced Web servers dedicated to pages
3 load balanced Web servers dedicated to images
1 SQL server
1 NFS Server
The 8 webservers are described as:
PIII/600 MHz 512K cache
1 GB RAM
9.1GB LVD SCSI with hot swap backplane
Intel EtherExpress Pro (built-in on moboard)
Intel EtherExpress 100 adapter
Now, I know all of those could be 1U very easily (only one hard drive and one PCI card), but let's say they're 2U's.
The NFS server is described as:
Dual PIII/600 MHz
2 GB RAM
(2) 9.1GB LVD SCSI with hot swap backplane
Intel EtherExpress Pro (built-in on motherboard)
Intel EtherExpress 100 adapter
Again, this could be a 1U, but let's say, since it's a Dual system, it's a 2U. I know for a fact, this could all fit with acres to spare in a 2U (we have 3 of them on our network with dual PIII-1.4's, 4GB ram, and 6x73GB SCSI drives).
In fact, just for the sake of arguement, let's call this a 4U.
Now, the SQL monster server:
Quad Xeon 550 MHz, 1MB cache
2 GB RAM
6 LVD disks, 10000 RPM (1 system disk, 5 disks for RAID5)
Mylex Extreme RAID controller 16 MB cache
Intel EtherExpress Pro (built-in on motherboard)
Intel EtherExpress 100 adapter
In this one, you've not only got Quad procs, but you have 2 full size PCI cards you have to deal with, as well as you have to find somewhere to put 6 hard drives. We'll call this one a huge, massive monster at 8U's.
After all that, we have to add the Cisco equipment:
[quote] All boxes are networked together through a Cisco 6509 with 2 MSFCs and a Cisco 3500 so we can rearrange our internal network topology just by reconfiguring the switch. Internet connectivity to/from the outside world all flows through an Arrowpoint CS-800 switch which acts as both a firewall load balancer for the front end Web servers. [/quote]
I don't know how big these cisco's are, but let's say these 2 cisco pieces and the arrowpoint are 10U's (say, mabey 4 for each cisco and 2 for the arrowpoint). I see this as very reasonable.
And now the tally!
16U for 8 webservers
04U for 1 NFS server
08U for 1 SQL server
10U for equipment
--------------
38U total.
Most racks are 42 U's. With this, you even have space for a 3U APC battery backup and a 1U power octopus. So, unless you're just keeping your single proc, single hard drive systems in 8U servers, and putting your leftover pizza in there to keep it warm for lunch, you're wasting space!
You slashdot editors: you're always braggin!
~Will
Re:Mozilla block ads (Score:3, Interesting)
True. But I wonder how many queries are actually different. I'd guess most queries would actually be in the DB cache, but it would be interesting. If anything, maybe we could submit queries to be run and maybe someone would get around to running them? A weekly or monthly run of a few queries with an associated JE/Story ought to be interesting. Hmm... I'll have to think more about this one.
We have a nice stats system in place that we could potentially make more public. Maybe someday we'll have the time to do so.
That would be cool.
As for better ways to rate comments and friends, I'm always open to suggestions and/or patches.
Well, basically, I don't like the current system. What are friend's and foes for? To moderate their comments and journal related items. But, the problem is, I can only rate people as a group, either all friends or all foes. I want to rate up some people's comments, even though I care little for their journals. And the opposite is very true as well.
Take for example, the case where I find someone's journals offensive, but not their comments. In that case I unfriend them. This way their journals don't show up, but their comments are not hit by my foe modifier. Well, the issue is that I don't remember that I unfriended them, and I sometimes end up re-friending them. I guess a history would answer that, but it just seems to point a flaw in the system itself.
Hmm.. a good question would be to find out how many people use the system, and what they use it for. Then maybe something that directly does that would be good.
The code is all available from the SourceForge project page.
Very true. You've got me on that one.
Unfortunately, writing code to work on 2.2 million pages a day, a third of a million users, and our hugely limited hardware resources is a lot harder than it sounds
Now, that could only come by working with it. How could I even know?
Re:Hah! First! [privoxy, transproxy, and regex] (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:-34th post!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
While this is very true, I think you are forgetting something... early subscriber posts are only going to be moderated by early subscriber MODERATORS, which will be proportionately small. When the story opens up to the public, then you get the full flood of moderation. Yes, early posters will have the advantage of already being in there, but if you get a good post in when the story goes public, you should still be seen by the vast majority of mods.
Re:Hah! First! (Score:2, Interesting)
For the others a lot of discussions will start half full just when the article is widely available.
...which is much the best place to join them anyway. It's enough time for the (frequently tangential) themes and discussions to emerge and for the moderation system to subdue some of the early noise.
L.
Re:valuable rankings (was Re:Allowing posting...) (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now the Hot 10 Comments box is simply the N comments the DB pulls out first, when ordered by score.
We could change it so that the 10 Hot Comments is actually the shortest time frame between the 1st and last moderation for all Score:5 comments. A comment with 15 moderations would have a long time frame between #1 and #5... but a comment that went zip straight up to 5 would have a relatively small gap. If a comment goes up really fast but is moderated down, then that time lap would increase... eventually falling off the list.
We would also need some sort of absolute limit on this... like only count comments posted in the last 24 hours. Alternately, I could see this as being a useful factor when we rework scoring. Certainly 2 mods in 3 minutes are worth "More" then 2 mods in 3 hours. Since we start "The Clock" at the first mod, Score:0/1/2 starting comments are relatively equal anyway... although Score:2 have the edge since they only need to get 3 mods... but a really good Score:0 comment could conceivably get up there fast if it was good.
If someone submitted patches, I'd probably take 'em.