IRC Forum w/ CmdrTaco & Hemos Tonight at 8pm Eastern

Tonight on irc.slashnet.org in #Forum Hemos & I will be hanging out answering users' questions. This is your chance to ask about the moderation system, story selection, or the technology upon which Slashdot is built. (No Biz questions please ;) It's been a long time since we last did this, and we're hoping we can answer questions and get some feedback on some new ideas too. We'll see ya there.

Log-File?

[hemabe]

I would like to see a log-file. Is this planned?

Help!

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I'm a dummy. I'm vaguely aware of the acronym irc but how would one participate in this, specifically? I'm on a Linux box if that makes a difference.

Stats and background

[BWJones]

Hey, what I have always wondered about Slashdot is some of the stats and demographics of the Slashdot crowd. Not from a business perspective (although I am sure some would kill for that info), but from a purely academic perspective. Additionally, I've wondered if there is any social science thesis work behind the growth and evolution of the friends/foes dynamic of the Slashdot crowd.

Why not have an actual slashdot interview?

[autopr0n]

And why no biz questions? Is this only to protect you from enbarasment, or what?

Supply a log...

[Speare]

It's valuable to hold a scheduled live event, but not everyone can attend. Could someone (official or not) please capture a log and post it for others to read (and flam... er, respond).

My own question would be why no technical aids have been implemented to avoid reposting articles ("has this URL been posted in the past X time?"), offer basic grammatical assistance (highlight the article via pipe through aspell or better), or assist Editors in other obvious ways. If I used slash for my own projects, I'd offer help, but I don't use slash. Someone ask. :)

And by "business questions," are you saying you won't talk about NYT &partner=SLASHDOT?

Re:Log-File?

[Aneurysm]

Perhaps written up in the style of a slashdot interview

Bad timing, but..

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I'm sure I'll end up sleeping through it (sleep schedual is a bit off currently), but I'd love to know why they never publicly announce when/what they change? Many users would love if there were a slash.slashdot.org or something to just post storys whenever slashdot.org syncs with the newest slashcode, whats changed, etc.

curious why no biz questions

[ron_ivi]

would q's like "when a slashcode site scales does it (HW, bandwidth, etc) become prohibitively expensive / would a lighterweight discussion framework scale more cheaply" be too close to a biz questions?

I don't think anyone doubts slashcode's technical scaling merits; so for a high-traffic web site the main issues are scaling financially.

eh eh eh eh eh ...

[SuperDuG]

Okay here goes ...

1.) Why do any negative slashdot comments automatically get nailed with a moderation of -1 redundant or overrated?

2.) If you want a moderation system that is open to the public why the hell do you let editors have unlimited mod points?

3.) Why can't we edit comments after posting (and have it posted in the subject (chg'd) or something like that)?

4.) Is there a plan to have "staff meetings" or something of that nature to try and prevent dupes and maybe having some articles with more content.

5.) Besides book reviews and the Late Jon Katz it seems the "read more" link is pretty much useless, is slashdot ever going to have some type of "meat" to their content?

6.) Google has no legal recourse for caching, why don't you do it?

7.) Ever thought about contacting link'd site administrators before killing their servers by a front page story and then getting charged for bandwidth?

8.) Most websites go through a "layout" change every couple of years, the "slashdot style" has been pretty much worn out, especially with not being w3c compliant, any changes in the future?

9.) Ever thought about publishing all stories in a public bin where the users decide what makes the front page? Like when an article gets 100 "post points" it is then sent to the front page where it's live and ready for commenting on?

10.) Have any of you ever thought about maybe bringing on some "professional" journalism type people? Someone who knows how to write the news and doesn't abuse the editor function as a place to put comments (michael comes to mind).

11.) You all ever think maybe this is getting a little old and it's time to get out?

Music section on /.

[teamhasnoi]

Since we are coming up on the TWO YEAR anniversary of the last time the Radio section was updated, how about we put a bullet in it, and have....
...
A Music Section!
...
As I have mentioned before - /.ers all have one thing in common. They all listen to music. I would like to see RIAA-free bands, reviews of new independent albums, geeky stuff for the aspiring musician, news of places to see, buy, and make RIAA-free music.

With 250,000+ /.ers out there, I think we benefit the artists who have decided that the RIAA is NOT for them, and also make our voice heard.

If it was made available to subscribers only, that might be enough to make me go for a subscription (of course, since I thought of this great idea - I should get a free pass, or edit the damn thing.)

Rock Me, I'madumbass! I'madumbass! I'madumbass! ... I'madumbass!
I'madumbass! I'madumbass! ... I'madumbass! OhOh, I'madumbass!

Daylight or standard?

[HowlinMad]

So is it 8pm EST? or 8pm EDT?

IPV6

[daserver]

Sorry can't be there so I'll just ask here. When will slashdot be reachable from ipv6? ipv6.slashdot.org works but it points to a ipv4 adresse. Couldn't find any AAAA records with dig :(

Editor Abuses and Trolling

[Pave Low]

Why is it that you guys are constantly tweaking and fiddling with the closed moderation system with the purpose of improving discussions, and yet you continue let the editors (namely michael) troll their way around it?

Face it, some editors (michael) constantly put up wild, hysterical headlines with their own two cents in the story that concludes the world is coming the an end. Isn't that the definition of flamebait? You guys are essentially baiting users to read and respond, in a very Enquirer/NY Post way.

Why is trolling from the editors less worse than trolling by the users?

And it seems to have gotten worse lately. Just look at the Red Hat story today.

In short, don't you think you guys should follow some set of standards or professionalism?

Re:The question I'll ask if I'm around...

[babbage]

Based on what I heard on the radio [bu.edu] last night, Jon Katz has gone to the dogs [onpointradio.org]:

Man's best friend? Author, dog owner and trainer Jon Katz says that the relationship between dogs and their owners has gone way beyond master and pet; that increasingly we're treating them as family members and human surrogates.

Katz says that in America today we give our dogs human names, they sleep on our beds, we spoil them with gifts, and turn to them more and more for emotional support, helping us through loneliness, isolation, divorce and aging.

In his latest book, "The New Work of Dogs," Katz looks at the relationships between 12 dogs and their owners in his hometown of Montclair, New Jersey, a town that he has dubbed "Dogsville, USA" to show just how much we're asking of our dogs today for attachment and emotional support.

Guests
Jon Katz, author of "A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me" and "The New Work of Dogs: Tending to Life, Love and Family"

Yes, I too would like to know if it's the same guy. I didn't hear the whole show, and don't know if that ever came up.

Re:The question I'll ask if I'm around...

[Davak]

Isn't this the same? Is he working at Salon, now?

[salon.com]
Jon Katz's media criticism has appeared in Wired and the New York Times. He is the author of the mystery novels "Last Housewife" (Doubleday) "Death by Station Wagon" (Bantam) and "The Family Stalker" (Bantam). He can be reached at [e-mail].

Davak

Why is Slashdot un-indexable by Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the links on Slashdot point to places on the site Google is forbidden from crawling by robots.txt. As a result, only the few items Google catches on the main pages, plus pages linked elsewhere, end up in Google. Try searching for some of your old stuff. I bet you don't find a lot of it. Google should also allow journals to be indexed.

Feature requests okay?

[kbielefe]

I have to work tonight, and may not be able to join in. Can someone ask my question (more like a feature request) for me?

Can we get the ability to have different settings depending upon whether we have mod points or not? For example, I normally read at +2, highest scores first, but when I have mod points I read at +1, newest first. It's annoying to have to change those all the time.

Serious Question, Not a Troll

[Goody]

I'm one of the folks that got $rtbl'ed for modding up the forbidden post awhile back. As a result I have never gotten moderation rights and metamoderation went away. About two months ago or so, metamoderation came back, but I still have never gotten moderation rights, so I assume I'm still $rtbl'ed.

Was some code changed that $rtbl'ed users can now metamoderate, or is this a bug ? How are $rtbl'ed users worthy of metamoderation rights but not moderation ?

Don't give them an excuse to duck good questions

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to take a wild guess here that very few people will be 'voiced' in the channel and that there will be some sort of lesser deity accepting questions for taco and hemos.

Don't give them easy questions like

"why is 'Overrated' there, I hate it!?"

If you do that then they have an excuse to not accept any other question about that mod. They'll use some stupid meaningless numbers about how often 'Overrated' is used. The question that needs to be asked is:

Why is 'Overrated' immune to M2? A context for M2 could show that this moderation was used on a default scored post or a +5 funny (that isn't).

Better yet, don't make 'Overrated' a mod option for posts at or below their starting score.

Re:The question I'll ask if I'm around...

[Eil]

I heard through the grapevine (actually, from a slashdot editor) that once he started writing up infrequent movie reviews instead of actual regular articles, he was basically told to go away quietly.

Re:Supply a log...

[Anonymous Coward]

are you saying you won't talk about NYT &partner=SLASHDOT?

Dude, you can use partner=ILOVENIPPLES and it still works. Slashdot doesn't have a deal with the NYT or anything.

Another great timekeeping feature

[zapp]

I'm not quite sure where this would fit in (server, HTTP protocol, browser, ???) or if it already exists and just isn't widely used...

But I am *really* tired of going to webpages (particularly linux HOWTO pages .. *cough*v4l*cough*) that have NO mention of date on them. I have read through howtos that refer to a 2.0 kernel patch... and I don't know if just the patch is irrelevant, or the whole piece of software (again, *cough*v4l*cough*).

Wouldn't it be nice if webservers would timestamp a page and say when it was last modified, and the browser would show that date?

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