On the Subject of Slashdot Article Formatting

Every day we post dozens of stories on Slashdot. Every day we read hundreds of submissions. And as most of the people who work behind the scenes are in fact human, we occasionally make mistakes, posting typos, or grammatical errors. Today I address matters of article formatting. What I think matters before I click 'save', and what I don't.

I'm not talking here about "Should a story be posted" or "I have 9 submissions about the same thing, which is best." Today I'm talking entirely about what I try to do when I decide that some story is good for Slashdot. What changes I think matter before posting it. Picking which stories to post is a big part of our job, matters of style and formatting matter too. Today I try to address what things I think are important before I click 'Save'.

The most important thing is what I'll call my most-important-link rule. Often submitters submit stories with like 8 links. I try to remove any link that doesn't substantially add to the article. For example linking ZDNet.com directly, and then a second URL to an article on ZDNet is redundant. Or if your link is to Joe's Blog, where he essentially says nothing except "I found this article". I'm not opposed to having several URLs in a story, but I want to make sure that they each serve a real purpose.

Next is proper anchor texting. I fix the hyper text on the vast majority of submissions. People link the word 'Here' or 'Article' or 'CNN' and I find that very frustrating. I want the hypertext to be the most appropriate 2-3 words that tell you exactly what you're clicking on. I think that is absolutely essential. Every URL should matter, and every bit of hypertext should tell you exactly what it is you're going to get when you click that mouse button.

Another key component in Slashdot article formatting is to strip off the extra text in a submission. I have a mental image of how long a Slashdot story is. Many submissions are to long or to short. So I get out the scissors and start looking for sentences to cut.

Often a submission starts with a clause that says something to the effect of "Hey guys, I found this URL that says...". I'd much prefer to cut that out and get right to the meat. Likewise many submissions end with a call to action... "We should get those guys" or "Lets show them what Slashdot can do about it!". I yank those sorts of things. As a general rule, I want the story to be short, sweet, and direct. Anything that distracts from that, I want to chop out.

Likewise some submissions are simply a URL and a single sentence. Since I want my articles to be around the same size, this is my chance to put in my own words. I'll try to add a joke or opinion. Or just a fact that I thought was worth sharing from the article itself. It's often these phrases that comment posters get most up in arms about: irate readers commenting that I should not be allowed to post my views.

I consider this opinion to be simply ludicrous. Slashdot was spawned from what today would be called a blog. To be more precise, it came from MY blog. Where I posted almost nothing but my own opinions. But more blatantly, I could simply rewrite the entire thing, say exactly what I want to say, and post it as an anonymous reader. Or as a made up nickname. I don't do any of those things. I simply add my 2 bits at the end to the occasional story. Not only do I think this is desirable on Slashdot, I think it's essential.

Now let us talk about one of my secondary concerns: spelling and grammar. Let me be clear. As you are probably well aware, I don't think these are as important as the things I mentioned above. I want a Slashdot story to be focused, directing your attention to the URL in question. It needs to be not to long, not to short. Links should be clear. Spelling and Grammar are secondary issues.

Slashdot is not the Wall Street Journal. It is not The New York Times. Slashdot is an informal meeting ground. A town hall. A pub. A bulletin board in the quad on campus. Here people might not properly capitalize a proper noun. They might transpose letters in 'thier'. They might use jargon that isn't in oxford. And all of that is OK with me.

Now sometimes a sentence doesn't parse to me. I'm not opposed to correcting the grammar in a sentence if it just doesn't work. But I simply don't think that a typo or grammar error is a make or break problem for a Slashdot story.

Many users routinely email me to complain about such errors. I'm usually fairly flexible on these matters. If the error is blazingly bad, I will often correct it. Of course some users like to email me to tell me how much Slashdot sucks, how fat and lazy I am, and how the most terrible thing in the history of Slashdot is the fact that the 4th story down contains the word 'to' when it ought to contain the word 'too'. That missing 'o' is the greatest travesty on-line today! It's hard to take that seriously. Especially when people are rude.

As an aside, for awhile we actually had an editor reading Slashdot articles and correcting grammatical mistakes. Turns out it doesn't really matter much. People found other things to complain about. It's almost as if some percentage of the population wants to complain. And they will find something to complain about no matter what. Perhaps by leaving a few typos on the site, I am making their day a little easier! Leave them some low hanging fruit I guess.

A a further side note to anyone who ever wants me to look at anything on Slashdot. If you e-mail me, include the URL. A comment mismoderated? A user who is misbehaving? A story with a typo? Include the URL. Don't say "The article about Novell" because there might be 3 in the last 2 days. Don't say "The last comment I posted" because it might be 2 hours and you might have posted since then. It takes you 3 seconds to cut and paste a URL. It might take me 3 minutes to find the content in question if you don't. That doesn't sound like much, but if it happens a couple dozen times, it adds up really fast. Do you want to stay an hour late at work today?

But back to the topic at hand, You are welcome to disagree with me on matters of grammar and spelling. And many of you do, very vocally in the forums. I would hope moderators would see such commentary as offtopic. A story about a new motherboard chipset has nothing to do with the proper use of "Its" and "It's".

The moderation system serves many purposes, but perhaps the most important is to provide a user, 24 hours later viewing at Score 2 or 3 an accurate pulse on the topic at hand. If the comment is not about the new motherboard chipset, that comment at least should not be modded 'insightful', and in many cases, ought to be modded offtopic of flamebait.

As with last week, I'm going to try to participate as best I can in the discussion. If major points arise I will update here. I think the real topic of this article is the formatting of Slashdot Stories: not moderation, the story selection process, and or story selection criteria. Please help by staying on topic so I can try to address these matters efficiently. And please don't email me directly- lets keep the discussion here in front of everyone so i don't have to answer dozens of you individually. Moderators, feel free to moderate good questions up to help me find them, and likewise if my answers are good, give those the thumbs up too so that readers can find them and save me from having to re-read questions i've answered already. Once again, I plan to do this as regularly as I can. If you have ideas for future discussions here, e-mail me... but I beg of you, wait until tomorrow!

Update Here is a further clarificatio on typo and grammar errors on Slashdot. I believe that Slashdot is a somewhat schizo place. A dozen voices stand side by side on the main page. Some of them will have proper grammar. Others won't. Just like a mailing list. Just like crappily written comments in some ancient piece of source code. Just like that email jotted out in seconds. Just like some bit of IRC chat you just read a few minutes ago.

Simply hiring a copy editor to purge these changes fundamentally alters the personality of the site, and my opinion is that alteration is for the worse. It might improve clarity to some percentage of readers who truthfully can't parse bad grammar or spelling. Likewise it might cut down on some offtopic meta threads in the forums. But the I think that it changes the flavor. The feeling. The tone of Slashdot.

Some people disagree with me. You are welcome to do so.

Another note about URL formatting. An interesting thread spawned in there about what text makes a proper hyper link. Given the example string:

CNN has an article about a sticky widget

What text should be linked?

There are 2 potential URLs in here, a CNN article, and the text 'CNN'. Some users think the words CNN should link to an article. Other users might link CNN directly to CNN, and the word 'article' to the article in question.

My stylistic preference is to only link 'a sticky widget' to the article. Not to link CNN directly to CNN.com (that link is redundant- I want only the most important links. And not 'article' because that tells you nothing about what you are clicking on.

Meta discussion on Slashdot is a substantial issue we intend to address in the moderation system redesign. Things like typos and grammar have a place on Slashdot, but today that place can only be described as 'Offtopic'. (And I think all moderators and meta moderators should keep that in mind). Our plans for dealing with 'Meta' discussion are best left for another editorial. In fact, I have one half written. Maybe next week.

don't short shrift grammar

[yagu]

Bravo Taco! Good points well made.

I would like to take slight issue about the importance of spelling and grammar, especially in the slashdot article itself. To your main point, the article is about something, not spelling and grammar. That is true. But correct spelling and grammar lend accuracy to the article and are not ancillary niceties. Too much carelessness around grammar and spelling leads to muddier thinking and sometimes requires extra interpretation from the readers.

Case in point from this very article, ninth paragraph, describing how long a slashdot article must be:

It needs to be not to long, not to short.

While it's mostly clear what you mean, the sentence could take on different meaning. For example, the "It needs to be not to long" could (easily in fact) be interpreted to mean the length of the article should be appropriate as not to leave the reader "longing" for more. And, the "not to short." could mean the article should have appropriate length to assure you have not "shorted" the reader. Nuances, yes, but appropriate (not perfect) grammar is important.

Again, thanks for the illumination of publishing policy. It really is useful!

#1 issue I have.

[Quasar1999]

Next is proper anchor texting. I fix the hyper text on the vast majority of submissions. People link the word 'Here' or 'Article' or 'CNN' and I find that very frustrating. I want the hypertext to be the most appropriate 2-3 words that tell you exactly what you're clicking on. I think that is absolutely essential. Every URL should matter, and every bit of hypertext should tell you exactly what it is you're going to get when you click that mouse button.

This is the single most frustrating thing I hate about the modification of stories submitted to slashdot. Half the time a link of 'Here', or the website name would be much better than you trying to make it part of the context of the sentence. I've clicked on links that lead to nothing at all pretaining to the word you anchored it against. Heck, I'd even be happier if the links were just a list at the end of the story, not embedded within it. It's supposed to be a summary, not a webpage.

Spealing n Grammer

[ergo98]

Now let us talk about one of my secondary concerns: spelling and grammar. Let me be clear. As you are probably well aware, I don't think these are as important as the things I mentioned above. I want a Slashdot story to be focused, directing your attention to the URL in question. It needs to be not to long, not to short. Links should be clear. Spelling and Grammar are secondary issues.

Slashdot posts, what, maybe two dozen "stories" a day? To support this Slashdot has a crew of paid, therefore professional, "editors". Is it really that much to ask that rudimentary spelling [yafla.com] and grammar rules are obeyed?

Hey CmdrTaco

[tekiegreg]

Not meant to be critical, but I'm wondering if you're letting the flames and hate mail about posted articles get to your head. A good book to read is the 7 Habits of Highly effective people (ISBN: 0743269519 at your favorite bookstore). However in short from that book, I'm wondering whether or not you're letting outside factors you can't really control get to you. Unfortunately there will always be people who will simply not choose to read or ignore what you have to say and will always send you hate mail and flames regarding this. Don't let it get to your head, ever, or they've won.

Post the articles you enjoy, and others will follow; It's that simple really...

Is this really a problem?

[Kethinov]

I mean, who's complaining about your article formatting? The only thing I see people complaining about in this dept are mistakes in grammar, spelling, and whatnot. And as you said yourself, you're human and make mistakes. I'm just not seeing a relevant discussion here... Your FAQ already states your good reasons why you reformat people's submissions.

I'm glad you're making posts "on the subject of Slashdot matters" but this one is a total non issue IMHO. Why don't we talk about more pressing issues like giving people reasons for their story's rejection so as to better improve that person's submissions in the future, or the problems with moderation, or other ACTUAL hot topic Slashdot issues?

Re:Hey CmdrTaco

[CmdrTaco]

But I am a human being, and being told repeatedly that I suck tends to wear a human being down, especially when, on the whole, I think the work we do here is very good.

That said, my intent here is to address specific concerns of the Slashdot user base. To be more directly accountable. To share more of the guts that help make the site work from day to day. I think it's important to tell readers what I think matters when i'm formatting an article. They are welcome to disagree, but at least I've been clear on the matter.

Oh, come on

[ColonelPanic]

How would I react to a television broadcaster saying that lighting and focus weren't all that important? Or a radio station claiming that static was okay? Proper spelling, grammar, and usage are easy compared to the syntax of a programming language or shell. Get them right and I'll take you more seriously.

Trolling in the story

[FortKnox]

My biggest complaint is when the submitter blatantly trolls in the headlines. Not just an opinion, but an opinion that draws the ire of others. I'm not saying the opinion had by the editor, but the original submitter. I really wish you guys could consider rewriting or simply removing that stuff.

Oh, and bravo on all this communication stuff, Taco. You really kill conspiracy theorists when you are open with us. That way we get to see the people behind the curtain, instead of just the black box.

The job of Slashdot Editor

[Shimmer]

I have for a long time thought that being a Slashdot editor is one of the world's easiest jobs, but held back due to the possibility that there was more to it than I thought. This long description of a task that anyone with a high school degree should be able to perform confirms my original impression.

Rob, with all due respect, I am not impressed. Slashdot would be so much better if you all would either a) act like real editors (e.g. fact check, give feedback to submitters, spelling/grammar check), or b) admit that you are basically superfluous and get out of the way (e.g. like Digg).

At the very least, please improve your writing skills. Even in a "pub" like Slashdot, communicating well is important.

Re:The /. effect on Taco?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps their paid subscription renewals are dropping off, because people are tired of Slashdot's trend toward amateurish presentation.

Re:Low-hanging fruit

[chrisspurgeon]

Dude, *everything* is reserved for those who can reach it.

Re:The /. effect on Taco?

[Anonymous Coward]

/. is feeling the heat from digg.com. End of story.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[metlin]

You're right. It's hard for some of us not to look at grammatical or spelling errors and wince. Quite honestly, just how hard is it to read through something and check for the odd mistake? An occasional mistake or two is not a big deal, but the fact that Slashdot editors seem apathetical to this practice is what annoys me.

As a subscriber, there have been several times when I've pointed out mistakes, but they're seldom corrected.

The reason some of us hate errors is not because they are occasional, but because it's become a habit for Slashdot editors not to care about those errors.

Delay posting that article by five minutes - paste the content in a spelling and grammar checking tool, and you can eliminate a good chunk of the mistakes. How hard is that, really?

Re:Spealing n Grammer

[Concerned Onlooker]

Is it really that much to ask that rudimentary spelling and grammar rules are obeyed?

Indeed. When it comes to spelling and grammar we are always quick to excuse ourselves, but what would you think of your favorite newspaper if you started seeing headlines and articles that confused your with you're? I'm pretty sure you might start wondering what else it was the editors were missing.

If your busines is in words then proper spelling and grammar are part of being professional.

A few guys' blog or true journalism?

[idiot900]

It looks to me like the fundamental disconnect here is that the editors of Slashdot still perceive the site to be their blog. Many of the users believe it to have graduated from that to a legitimate news source, and complain when it doesn't live up to the mechanistic standards of, say, CNN. Google News thinks it's a news source and treats it in the same manner as it does CNN - but those who run Slashdot apparently don't hold it to that high a standard.

There's nothing wrong with this, but it might shut people up if they were reminded of the purpose of the site as intended by its makers. So, CmdrTaco, what exactly is Slashdot?

Please read the article before posting it!

[Universal Nerd]

This may be obvious but sometimes it's painfully obvious that the editor just doesn't bother actually reading the article and will submit an article that isn't a short blurb but plainly false and/or flame bait.

It may be hard work but a quick glance and a short two paragraph read isn't gonna kill anyone.

Re:The /. effect on Taco?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can confirm this.

Here is a suggestion: try reading your own site. Having editors submit the same story multiple times shows a complete lack of interest.

But... It's not HARD, so why not?

[larsoncc]

You're choosing mediocrity.

Since there are a million grammar / spelling checkers out there, and they can be programatically applied (aspell perl library is one example), why NOT use them?

It's far more difficult to come up with reasons NOT to do the right thing. The paragraphs of effort that you just expended to discuss spelling errors, the countless comments you've read about spelling errors...

They're bits of your life that you've whittled away.

Now, compound that by adding in MODERATOR TIME. Now compound that by adding READER TIME.

Yes, people may have started to complain about something else. YES, that might always be true.

I don't care that there are complainers about topic X. I care that it's the same complaint, for years, and that it's a relatively easy problem to solve.

I have to wonder why you don't.

Re:The job of Slashdot Editor

[Overly Critical Guy]

Agreed, I just posted a comment elsewhere commenting about this. Skimming a short three or four sentence paragraph of submission text doesn't really warrant a long ten-paragraph essay describing the thought process behind it.

This would have been a much more relevant and interesting essay if Malda explained exactly why so many dupes keep appearing on the front page. No editor wants to answer the question of if they read the site or not. God, even just browsing the RSS feed would show you what's been posted. My RSS reader is where I always notice the dupes. I'm sure they have to go through a ton of stories in the article queue which might make things confusing, but it's not rocket science to follow the front page of your own news site so you recognize stories that are dupes before you post them. It's things like this that make Slashdot's closed editor system feel obsolete and stagnate.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[Slightly Askew]

Also, it'd be nice if comments weren't able to be modded down after 2 or more people mod them up, this will help prevent political and ignorance bias. I've had a couple comments go from +5 to -1.

I disagree. What happens more often is that someone posts something that, at first glance, seems Insightful or Informative, only to be debunked as speculation or an outright fabrication.

Re:Spealing n Grammer

[Cutriss]

Who gives a shit about whether this is a professional business or not?

The point is that your audience is filled with people who are generally regarded as "above-average" in terms of intelligence. If you want them to take you seriously, you need to play the same ball that they do.

When you refuse to acknowledge our intelligence by ignoring spelling and grammar, you basically disrespect us as geeks. We went to spelling bees as kids, we got beat up for knowing big words in high school. If this is "News For Nerds", then treat us like we really are the Nerds you are supposed to be a member of.

Re:Hey CmdrTaco

[smallpaul]

I think that what bothers us complainers is the claim that professionalism just doesn't seem to matter on SlashDot. It would be one thing for you to say: "I try hard on grammar and spelling but sometimes I slip up. I keep working on it and I'm getting better every day." It's another thing for you to say: "I just don't think that being a professional-quality editor is my job."

I make computer programs. People don't buy those programs for the spelling in dialog boxes. But I try hard to make the spelling correct. That's just professionalism, and professionalism shows respect for my customers. If a customer reports a grammar or spelling mistake in my software then I apologize and correct it. I don't try to say tht professionalism isn't my job. If you're providing a service for people then you should strive to do it right rather than claiming that it is good enough to get some aspects right and ignore others.

As an aside, for awhile we actually had an editor reading Slashdot articles and correcting grammatical mistakes. Turns out it doesn't really matter much. People found other things to complain about. It's almost as if some percentage of the population wants to complain. And they will find something to complain about no matter what. Perhaps by leaving a few typos on the site, I am making their day a little easier! Leave them some low hanging fruit I guess.

Nobody is asking you to be perfect and therefore shut up the complainers. They are asking you to acknowledge that professionalism is important and that perfection is something that is worth striving for. The frustrating thing is that your opening position is that getting things right (especially spelling, grammar and dupes) is not even a goal. Nowhere in your essay did you say that it is even something you are working on or concerned about.

If you started putting effort into these areas, then over time it would become just second nature. That's what happens with "real-world" editors. Being able to instantly notice spelling and grammar mistakes is a skill to be proud of, not to denigrate. (and no, I don't have that skill, editing is not part of my job)

I see you differently than you see yourself?

[AtariDatacenter]

I think the greatest disconnect here perhaps is that I see Slashdot as something bigger and greater than you see it as. I see Slashdot as an important site that really matters to the tech community. Actually somewhat prestigious. I would want the editor to try to care about too vs to. (I mean, as an editor, you gotta go at least for the low hanging fruit.) Now I understand that spelling/grammar isn't a top priority, but the feel I got from your post was that it was of low value. I really wish it was of more value to you, because your site is of value to me.

As far as the rest of the stuff, like the cleanup on articles, it all sounds like good common sense stuff. You really should put that on the Submit Story page [slashdot.org] if it is not already there.

In fact, if you wanted to save yourself time, you could add checkboxes (default: unchecked) with the things you are looking for users to do, and have them check them off before submitting (to at least confirm they've read it). The small individual items you mentioned, like lead in, length, anchoring, etc. That part is my opinion, and I can understand it being controversial.

So I guess what I wanted to say is, thanks for the insight on the story massaging process. +5, Informative. I just wish our expectations matches as far as some of the importance of grammar/spelling. (Given, you're right about complainers.)

BTW... do you like adding in your own words, or would you rather we submit larger text with our stories and let you trim?

Re:"A communal meeting ground"?

[Gaewyn L Knight]

So are you trying to say that a bar or bowling establishment are not communal? What about World of Warcraft?

Things that are "for-profit" don't exclude communities.

This is CmdrTaco's site... he is payed to maintain it but it is still HIS and he has designed it around a community that can sustain itself via moderation. Most of the people, in this community that has been created, realise that hundreds of thousands of people can't all be happy all the time and that the editors can in no way listen to every individual.

Here he is attempting to listen in just such a way and all you can do is bash him about it and not address real issues.

Arrogance so often claims to be humility

[ianscot]

Get them right and I'll take you more seriously.

Exactly. Dead fricking on.

Essentially Taco's argument here is that the site started as his blog, and that he wants to continue to regard it as the equivalent (to use your analogy) to a cable access talk show, rather than a polished source of news.

There's a middle ground, but the effort to clean up language would be so very, very beneath him. Apparently he wouldn't care how the picture quality was on his cable access station, and it's so very cool and informal of him not to give a rip, because he's really a content man.

I'm not a paying subscriber. Paying for a service entails certain expectations that Slashdot isn't meeting at the moment. The glaringly apparent laziness of the editors is the biggest mark against the site.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[slughead]

I disagree. What happens more often is that someone posts something that, at first glance, seems Insightful or Informative, only to be debunked as speculation or an outright fabrication.

Or, more likely in some cases, different demographics come on at different times during the day and disagree.

Moreover, if someone posts it and it looks convicing, chances are someone believes it and it should be up there to be debunked. Let people decide what to believe, modding down is equivelent to censorship in some cases. Many issues do not have a "correct" answer that we know of, yet reading slashdot comments modded +4 or 5 would lead you to believe that there is almost always one.

Often, the more gray an area, the more hotly disputed the viewpoints are.

Re:"A communal meeting ground"?

[smallpaul]

I think Slashdot is informal, and therefore typos don't matter that much.

"Baseball is just a game and therefore dropped balls don't matter that much."

"Nordstroms is just a retailer and therefore cleanliness doesn't matter that much."

"The Daily Show is just a comedy show and therefore a nice set doesn't matter that much."

In this economy, we all provide services to each other. In order to show respect for each other, those providing services strive for perfection. They don't achieve it, but they strive for it. You do not. You publically state that professionalism is not important to you. You aren't striving to be like "professional" sites like the New York Times. In my opinion, that's what annoys people. That you may fail (given your limited resources available) is acceptable. That you refuse to even try is not.

Proper attribution is key!

[geeber]

One of the things that drives me crazy is when the Slashdot article reads something like "Soandso writes 'blah blah blah etc etc blah blah blah'..." However, on closer inspection one sees that Soandso did not actually write the original text "blah blah blah" but rather pulled it directly from the linked article without paraphrasing.

This may seem a small thing, but I work in a field where one lives and dies by one's word and original ideas. It is anthama to take someone elses words and I would hope that the editors here try and correct the attributions whenever it is at all possible.

Re:"A communal meeting ground"?

[shdragon]

If this is a communal meeting ground, why is it owned by OSDN (a for profit corporation last I checked) showing ads and completely opaque to most of its readers (who get quite frustrated when the admin's answers don't add up or when they're not present at all)?

Face it, Taco: This is a FOR PROFIT site. Once you've transformed something into a business you can't take it back or plead that it's "communal" in some way. Is it too much to expect that you make no more than one typo a week-one more than BBC News seems to make?

You bring up a good point & I hope it gets addressed directly. Once slashdot became property of OSDN, it could no longer be held to the same standards. When slashdot started taking subscriptions, anything less than professional became inexcusable. I don't think the most readers are looking for perfection, but even compared to other sites that started out as blog type pages, slashdot has been slipping.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[thewiltog]

And don't forget those readers for whom English is not their first language. What may be an obvious mis-spelling or grammatical error to a native english speaker may render the article (or reply) incomprehensible to someone who's having to look words up in a dictionary.

Re:#1 issue I have.

[cloudmaster]

You're wrong, and will remain that way until you provide a couple of actual examples (actually, examples comprising 50% of the links posted, since you did say "half the time"). It is *never* correct to link something like "click here" - unless you're linking to the Click Here(R) Inc. home page. If the article is on CNN about flying monkeys, "flying monkeys" should be linked because that's what the link is about - it's not about CNN.

Re:Editing submissions

[MythMoth]

Actually this is the one and only thing that bugs me. Everything else comes under the "your site, your rules" heading.

But to change an attributed quote (as in "MythMoth says: blah blah blah") is wrong to the point of being actionable. There's an accepted way of making such changes, which is why in the normal press you'll often see "Johannes Smythe says: blah blah [blah] blah" The square brackets are there so we all know who said what - that third blah was added by the editor for clarity.

Slashdot is no longer Commander Taco's private blog. It sells advertising, and is associated with OSDN which is (AFAIK) a commercial group. It therefore has that much in common with the normal commercial press and should take on some of the virtues while it's aping their faults.

Re:The /. effect on Taco?

[Jaseoldboss]

It's a good thing I would say, although I bet story formatting doesn't score as many comments than the last one about 'frequent' submitters.

Anyway, I think the material from these should end up in a FAQ somewhere on the site. It would be too bad to lose it in the archive of old articles.

Re:Bloggers -- use this advice for your site!

[geeber]

Anything that distracts from that, I want to chop out.
If you're a blogger, definitely listen to the part of Taco's "review" that talks about making generic comments like "I found this" or "Let's get these guys!" I hate blogs that write these little side comments. If I go to a site because of an opinion, I like to stick with sites that offer non-fluff text written by the opinion writer. I've seen newspaper columns that are all fluff content like that, and it drives me crazy.

And yet Taco also talks about how he likes to interject his own opinion just to fill up space if the submission is too short. Isn't this exactly the sort of text he stripping out in some cases because it "distracts".

I guess it only distracts if it is not the editors opinion.

Summary Accuracy

[HalB]

Please take this as constructive criticism. Slashdot is great - but all things have room for improvement.

The only problem I have with Slashdot is that sometimes the article summary (both the one-liner and the submitter's summary) don't accurately summarize the article. It's often something subtle. The summary would be something like "Security hole in X causes billions of dollars of damage" when the article actually said that an analyst estimated up to a billion dollars of damage could be caused by a well-written exploit (i.e. no actual damage had occurred, but the potential is there).

This is a major problem because readers often don't follow the links (myself included), and thus get bad information. Then the information gets passed around the water cooler, etc.

I haven't ever emailed you to alert you of them, so it's my fault as part of the community. However, by the time I read something, it often has already scrolled off the front page and the damage is done.

Also, just for some perspective, I think the most basic spelling and grammatical errors are as annoying to many readers as linking "here" and "article" are to you (and me). Maybe someone so annoyed could submit a patch for spelling and grammar checking.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[SIGFPE]

It's not just about wincing. The process of reading is pipelined. Humans can scan through text very quickly because while the eye is scanning one word you're parsing the sentence from a few words before and thinking about the meaning of what came before that. When you hit a grammatical or spelling error you cause a pipeline stall. If an incorrect word is used you can often continue for several more words before you discover that the sentence is impossible to parse forcing you to backtrack. Good writers intuitively know how to construct a sentence to lead you towards the correct parsing and make the process of reading as effortless as possible. The Slashdot editors often make reading a chore with readers being forced to scan sentences over and over again in an attempt to find a sensible reading.

People have been endeavouring to write well for centuries. It's funny how the Slashdot editors can suddenly decide that this entire tradition is worthless. Have they not noticed that writers have been trying to convey a message other than "I can spell" for aeons and yet still make the effort to spell correctly as a courtesy to their readers?

When you write text on a forum like Slashdot every minute you spend writing translates into thousands of minutes of reading. People would do well to remember that.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[cloudmaster]

Presumably you have a URL for that good quality spelling *and grammar* checking tool that runs on Linux? Make sure it's one that differentiates between too, to, and two; you're and your; etc. Oh, and it should know that Milwaukee's reciprocating saw is called a Sawzall, not a "sawzaw", as well as knowing that the expression is "peace of mind" not "piece of mind". Oh, "for all intensive purposes" should be replaced with "for all intents and purposes" too - unless the context refers to actual intensive purposes, whatever those are.

Anyway, AFAIK there isn't a good grammar checking tool for Linux - and the one in MS Office VersionOfTheMonth doesn't catch things like the last few gripes I have up there either.

What about context?

[balster neb]

(Sorry, I'm reposting this under my user name. For some reason my earlier attempt [slashdot.org] got posted as AC.)

While these above points are important, there is one issue I feel Slashdot must address properly: the context and background provided along with the story summaries.

Too often I see stories that mention a particular person or a particular piece of software without actually giving any context. For example, there was a recent story about Blender which didn't mention what Blender actually is. Now, in my case I knew perfectly well that Blender is an open source 3D modeller and renderer, but there were too many people posting comments in the thread saying "Err.. what's Blender?".

I feel that it is important for a story summary on Slashdot to provide the basic information a user would be looking for. In the Blender example, a user shouldn't have to click on the link simply to figure out what the software does. If the fact that Blender is a 3D modeller is briefly mentioned in the summary, the user is in a much better situation to decide whether or not to click on the link. This is important, as users usually skim through the headlines and summaries on the front page to decide what interests them.

Now, in many cases the summary doesn't need to provide any background. Your typical Slashdot reader would know that GNOME is a desktop environment, or who Richard Stallman is. But in other cases, I think it would be very good if the Slashdot editors can add a few words of background if the original submission didn't have any. They can use their own discretion to decide what needs background and what doesn't.

It's a comparatively small point, but it's one that's been irking me a bit. I feel a lot of users will agree with me on this, and there should be no reason for anyone to post "BTW, What on earth is (X)" type comments.

Literacy Is Important

[Petersko]

(An old rant of mine. it was originally written to address the habits of forum posters, but most of it applies. Yes, I know the grammar isn't perfect.)

"I got a reely importent point to make with regurds to the pollitikal sityewation."

Guess how much stock people will put in my opinion if I start my diatribe with such a statement?

That's right. None.

Thanks to the internet we can be bombarded with thousands of opinions daily. Weblogs, message boards, and Usenet give the average person a podium from which they can reach the masses.

You have the attention of many people when you post in an active forum. So you tap the microphone, prepare your thoughts, and weigh in.

"I dont think ur rite, lol!"

Well done, Potsie.

Look, I realize that North American schools have left a great many of you with substandard language skills. I know that the spelling of many multisyllabic words is beyond the grasp of at least a quarter of the population. In some cases it's not even your own fault, although for many it comes down to a lack of study and poor parenting.

I just can't help but think that when you are online, your words are your avatar. They help to determine what people think of you. If you can't spell, use numbers for words, make acronyms out of everything in sight, and think that this means you are "plugged in" rather than uneducated, then be prepared to be ignored by anybody who doesn't come in at, or below, your literacy level.

Want respect? Learn to spell. I don't care if you're out of school. Education doesn't end when classes are over.

I've heard people say, "Well, spelling and grammar shouldn't matter. It's the idea that's important." To them, I say, "f you can't grasp the basics of language, why should I pay attention?"

Take care when you communicate in writing. Use punctuation, capitalization, and real words. Acronyms should be reserved for organizations and industry terms.

We're a society of substandard communicators. Do your part to help raise the bar.

Cranky

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[Golias]

Taco's comment here is quite telling:

As an aside, for awhile we actually had an editor reading Slashdot articles and correcting grammatical mistakes. Turns out it doesn't really matter much. People found other things to complain about.

So, what he's saying is, in his view, the complaints are the problem.

Headlines on his site which look completely moronic are only a problem because they generate complaints, not because they are a mess to read. Were it only not for these troublesome "Squeeky Wheel" users who dare to be critical of our piss-poor use and abuse of the English language, Slashdot would be perfect.

What a shitty attitude!

(But his attitude is only a problem in the sense that it provoked me to complain, of course. Clearly, I'm the real problem here, and if Taco ran this site like a professional, I'd find something else to bitch about.)

Re:Spealing n Grammer

[AVee]

You do prove a point. Spelling errors distract from the content. It's happening right here...

"As a general rule, I want the story to be short, sweet, and direct. Anything that distracts from that, I want to chop out."

Thus spelling errors should be avoided. For that reason and that reason alone.

Disclaimer: English is not my native language, I really miss most spelling errors, I don't care about correct spelling, not even in my own language. But the only way to avoid spelling meta discussions really is to avoid spelling errors. Sad, but true.

Literacy is the editor's job!

[EmagGeek]

What the hell, Taco? Why are you trying to make it okay to let spelling and grammar errors slide by? If you look at any journalism outlet, the summary job of the editor is to make sure these mistakes do not get through, and that there are ZERO spelling and grammar errors. NONE. If you are letting errors through, then you are not doing what they are paying you to do, end of story. It would be one thing if this were some guy's blog, but slashdot asks for money, and sells advertising, and claims to be a journalism outlet, although simply cutting and pasting from original news sites and calling it original work is plagiarism, not journalism. How many times have we followed a link just to read the slashdot summary as the first paragraph of the cited work?

If slashdot weren't such an entertaining moderation war all the time, I wouldn't even bother to read it.

Re:Spealing n Grammer

[pomo monster]

Whatever your opinion or mine, the fact is that shit like this drives a lot of people away from this site who would otherwise be contributing to the discussions, moderating comments, subscribing and viewing ads, and generally improving the quality of Slashdot as a whole. You could argue that people who are turned off by the editors' carelessness and lack of attention to content are exactly the nitpicky types of people you don't want around in the first place--that's fair, I suppose. Just realize that this is what you're doing.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[1u3hr]

Taco might note also that the only way we can judge him is by what he writes. If he posts illiterate garbage, many will judge him to be an illiterate, and undeserving of respect.

Re:Spealing n Grammer

[Anonymous Coward]

The substance of the article is the minutiae. The misspelling of "too" would not have mattered if you had successfully argued that spelling does not matter. You did not. My local newspaper would never claim that spelling does not matter because the reader should interest himself only in the articles' information. Even my junior high school newspaper would not have made that claim. By making these trivial mistakes, you merely make yourself look stupid.

Re:His own example is a train wreck

[Golias]

Indeed. There are 18-year old bloggers out there who keep a copy of Strunk & White handy, or at the very minimum paste things into MS-word and look for red & green squiggly lines.

I normally don't play "grammar nazi" with the stories on Slashdot, because all such rants are more or less off-topic, but now that you've opened the floor to discussion on the matter, CmdrTaco, I don't mind telling you that I count myself as one of the people who thinks it's pathetic that your editors can't be bothered to at least fix the very basic and (what should be) obvious mistakes in every story that you run.

Re:Spealing n Grammer

[pclminion]

The English language has both a "to" and a "too" because they have completely different meanings. It causes a hiccup in understanding (regardless of intelligence, and your subtle innuendo that someone would have to be dumb to be caught up by that is inane), distracting from the fluidity of comprehension, when someone needlessly transposes them.

In spoken language you don't get to see the letters. Yet you somehow easily distinguish "to," too," and "two." When it's written, suddenly it's impossible? Yes, I think that if it hangs you up, this indicates a lack of noise-filtering ability.

How is it that we sit here on Slashdot wishing for a computer language that could just "figure out what I really mean," but when it comes to real humans there is zero tolerance?

In any case, the defeatist "don't complain!" mantra bleating from the Slashdot is pretty tiring. "Suck it up and like it, or go elsewhere!" Are you people from Soviet Russia or something?

The point I was trying to make is that complaints get you nowhere around here. What is it they say about a person who does the same thing over and over and expects different results?

Re:His own example is a train wreck

[IngramJames]

I'm much more concerned about the fact that taco can't differentiate "to" and "too". Even assuming it's not very important - usually, I admit, it isn't - it does take some time to parse incorrectly formed sentences.

I half to disagree. Misuse off gramma, spelling and/or punctuation make's every reader waste a few second's while they work out what it actually mean's. Well all have to do a double-parsing, if you like.

So every reader waste's about as much time as it would have taken the writer to check that what they had written was correct in the first place.

Of course, some people just don't know the rule's; but that is the precise definition of an editors job; too correct. Too correct and amend exactly the sort of ambiguous things which mislead. Thats why these thing's annoy people; because they mislead, and say thing's they don't mean to say - not because off an anal demand that all rule's be obeyed without question and unerringly.

My favoutite examples of misleading mistakes:
    "I helped my uncle jack off a horse"
          -- which letter(s) should have been capitalised?

    "To my parents, Mary and God"
        -- an Oxford comma would prevent the author from claiming to be Christ

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[jacobito]

I would have been happier if CmdrTaco had simply admitted that copyediting for spelling and prescriptive grammar just isn't one of his strengths. I know plenty of engineers, programmers, artists, and even writers who can't spell to save their lives, but who are unequivocally intelligent and talented. Poor written language skills aren't reliable indicators of low intelligence, and anyone who happens to have a knack for spelling and grammar should humbly bear this in mind.

Having said that, the web is a predominantly textual medium, and poor written language skills are as much of a disadvantage here as the inability to catch a ball is a disadvantage on a football field. I wish that Slashdot's editors would at least make a minimal effort to watch for simple errors such as misspellings.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[Golias]

Rob, you said at that time that Slashdot is like a bunch of people talking at the local pub, so spelling and grammar isn't important.

But if you go to the pub and someone there is constantly speaking with poor grammar, you still judge him negatively because of it.

Not only that, but most bartenders would not leave a sign hanging out front which says "Rob's Rilly Gud Tavurn."

They would also check their menu for spelling errors.

There's a difference between what you expect of the patrons and what you expect of the establishment.

Acronym tag?

[shadypalm88]

Still, isn't it possible to use the <acronym> or <abbr> tags? For those that need the acronym's meaning, they can hover their cursor over it for a second. For those that know what it means, the flow of reading isn't interrupted.

Re:What about context?

[CmdrTaco]

Everyone knows what CVS is... a pharmacy or a coder tool. Duh ;)

Seriously this sort of discussion just strikes me as to meta to be interesting. Slashdot has always been a place to discuss things we think are interesting/fun/important. I don't find it interesting to discuss "Do people know what this particular acronym is". It's just boring. Now we could create places to have that discussion, but it would be uninteresting and people wouldn't use it. I know I would dread reading it!

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[CmdrTaco]

Again, we do this. Almost every story is posted to Slashdot 30 minutes early to subscribers, during this time they can message us glaring flaws, and we can (And do!) fix them.

In most cases a thousand+ eyeballs vet a story before it hits the main page, and in many cases the story that DOES finally hit the main page has had corrections made.

It's such a good idea, we've been doing it a loooong time now ;) But it doesn't correct every typo or grammar error. It sands off blatant stuff. Catches a few dupes. But not all of them. And it never will.

Repeating the first paragraph

[Kupek]

My biggest complaint with posts is when the submitter simply copy and pastes the first (relevant) paragraph from the story. That's redundant; I generally decide from the headline alone if I'm going to click through on the linked article. I read the submission text to get the submitter's brief analysis of the article itself, not an article teaser.

There's also this wierd effect when I read the paragraph again in the article. It's like an unexpected echo that throws me off from the article's topic.

Holy Christ, Taco

[grimharvest]

They're at it again. I hope you don't take all the whining and bitching TOO seriously because that's what Slashdotters do best. In between the occasionally truly inspiring or insightful remark, they like to complain about shit...politics, videogames, sex, whatever. Throw it up there in an article, and they'll complain about it or complain that others are complaining about it or complain that it was even posted at all. With all the grammar Nazis lurking here, you'd think this was a Shakespeare forum. Must be a lot of lit majors out of work and lingering around here. You said it right when you compared this to a to a pub. Do people watch their grammar in a pub? Not in any of the ones I've been in. I mean, we even have people in here bitching about geekspeak, and if you can't use geekspeak here than where?? Seriously, don't spend too much time or effort trying to make people happy in here because a whole lot of them never will be. They come here JUST to spout out all that grief. No reason for you to make yourself a target for it just so they can feel better or about themselves or whatever other trivial reason they like to run their mouths (figuratively speaking, of course).

Re:Correct speeling is for teh weak

[SIGFPE]

Do i have above average reading comprehension skills or something?

Below average I suspect. If you've never managed to reach the stage where your reading is pipelined then you won't be impacted much by grammatical errors.

i take that to mean that you implicitly accept all of thier points, as you only can basically nitpick their arguments.

Clearly you are one of those people who see discussion and argument as something to win rather than a way to share knowledge. Instead of trying to figure out how to communicate effectively you have instead invented a new rule for the game that allows you to 'win' the game if someone has trouble reading what you have written. You remind me of those kids who shout "but that was the practice game, the next one is the real one, don't you remember me saying that?" when they lose a game.

Moderation

[DerekLyons]

The moderation system serves many purposes, but perhaps the most important is to provide a user, 24 hours later viewing at Score 2 or 3 an accurate pulse on the topic at hand. If the comment is not about the new motherboard chipset, that comment at least should not be modded 'insightful', and in many cases, ought to be modded offtopic of flamebait.

Taco; you brought up moderation last week, and again this week - in both instances complaining moderation is not being used the way you think it should be.

Moderation is the tool that a portion of the community uses to tell the remainder of the community which comments it feels are the most useful. The fact that R.P. comments get modded up, and so do grammatical comments should tell you something. Instead, both this week and last, we (the community) are told were are wrong because we don't share your vision.

Really you have two options; 1) limit the moderator pool to people who share your vision, or 2) live with the fact that the community and you disagree on fundementals.

The second one really is a key one - you want Slashdot to be a pub, etc... etc... The community wants a source of quality news.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[TiggsPanther]

When you hit a grammatical or spelling error you cause a pipeline stall. If an incorrect word is used you can often continue for several more words before you discover that the sentence is impossible to parse forcing you to backtrack.

This is a very valid point. I know that checking through someone else's sentences can be really time-consuming, but that's exactly why I know how much of a wall bad spelling or grammar can be.
I've been checking through a friend's writing for about a year now and, yes, at times the editing feels like a chore. However it's because of this that I know why I prefer writing to be checked. Quite often the changes I suggest are where a word or a piece of grammar suggest something other than what the sentence actually means. It can take me two or more additional readings to work out what the sentence actually means and even then sometimes I have to ask.

There is also the issue about the word "editor" implying, well, someone who edits submissions if necessary. Yes, Slashdot is basically a glorified Blog and not a high-brow newspaper. But it also reaches a lot of people. And it is nice if an article has better spelling and typing.
Plus although many people can easily parse bad English, not everybody can. Some people are dyslexic. Some are grammar nazis. Some of us are neither, but still have problems parsing bad English. Also anyone who has to check writing for legibility, whether as a job or othewise, will have a "Bad English Alarm" more or less hardwired.

I also speak as someone who has a rather high typo-rate. I know that there's usually at least one error that I miss, which is why I always get someone else to check through important documents and stuff before I send or print them. But that does mean that if I were to submit an article to /. then however hard I checked there'd still be something likely to slip through. Especially as I know what I meant to write, so my brain will parse it correctly.

Re:Hey CmdrTaco

[lmh2671772]

I think that what bothers us complainers is the claim that professionalism just doesn't seem to matter on SlashDot.

In short: If it mattered that much, nobody would come here.

In long: I'd rather have timely articles several times a day than to have them go through a spell- and grammar-checking process. As well as CT said that the articles have to be just the right length, everything else has to be just right for folks to show up here to read.

So here we is.

Meta-discussion

[Deviant Q]

I really think you're looking at meta-discussion the wrong way. My opinion: because people moderate up spelling/grammar corrections, you should take them seriously. The fact is, more people think that a comment correcting spelling is "insightful" than think it's "off-topic."

That should tell you something: we value correct spelling and grammar. While you may think we're abusing the system, I think we're using the system to tell you something. The moderation system is designed to highlight comments people think are worth our time. Well, we've decided correctness is worth our time.

Finally, I found it pretty disgusting reading your earlier post that you kept spelling and grammar mistakes in the editorial just "to prove a point." What point are you proving? That you like cultivating an unprofessional image?

Re:Spealing n Grammer

[Mad Dog Manley]

The problem with sloppy grammer isn't in the comments or during discussions. The problem is on the main page. No one cares if some comments are in error; it's just like casual conversation. However, millions of people around the world know what Slashdot is and what they can expect to find on the main page.

Slashdot's articles are a reflection of the issues that concern its readers. Therefore, Slashdot's main page is a reflection ON its readers. When we see careless typos and grammatical errors, on the main page, blatant and obvious, people get upset because at some level perhaps they consider it a reflection of themselves. At the very least, Slashdot readers believe in the site, and to see careless errors made, not corrected, and then listed as a low priority, well. You can imagine the result, and I can see that a vast majority of Slashdot readers agree.

Yes I could hire a copy editor. Yes every typo and grammar error could be removed. And I think that the tone of the site would be different. I personally don't believe that particular change to be an improvement.

Wrong. The quality of the site would improve. The only message that would change, is the message that the owners and editors of Slashdot actually care. Note that even newspapers, with multiple editors, still get make typos. But at least they TRY.

Re:Correct speeling is for teh weak

[nolife]

If you've never managed to reach the stage where your reading is pipelined then you won't be impacted much by grammatical errors.

So a higher level of reading comprehension is now causing confusion by a simple spelling or error in grammar? I hope I never reach that level ;)

I really do not like getting involved in these threads because it really is a no win situation for either side and opinions are not going to change. I can show an opposing view to your thoughts though.

I believe the problem is not really one of comprehension or pipelines at all, but a mental trigger that you simply get frustrated when you see errors and that disrupts your thinking. I know my neighbor does not like jake brakes (those engine breaks that large trucks use). He often gets so worked up after a truck drives by he even run over to the road side to complain about it as they went by. Meanwhile, the rest of the neighborhood simply ignored it and moved along, not even realizing that a truck just went by. Why is one person bothered and disrupted but others can block it out and without even knowing it just happened?
To add even more useless crap to my theory..
The problem may be the fact that you feel that what bothers you is controllable and the frustration may be an attempt to exercise some control over the situation. I lived right in the landing path of a commerical/military runway in the past. The planes were MUCH louder then the jake breaks. I do not recall anyone ever really complaining or get worked up by the noise. If they did not like it, they left much earlier. It was a fact of life for everyone in that area and everyone living there accepted it. Running outside and trying to yell at a passing aircraft would be useless.

Who knows.

I'd bet I'm about average english skills but I've never been tripped up or confused by basic mistakes and I've never had a hard time communicating with people or comprehending less then perfect communications. I would not even to tell you what errors were in a slasdot post unless I was specifically looking for them or someone else pointed them out.

This post was not spell checked!

Re:Spealing n Grammer

[tarsi210]

I think that slashdot is stylistically more akin to a mailing list or blog than to the NYT or WSJ. We are informal. Which is what I want Slashdot to be. Casual. To hire a copy editor and purge all these things from Slashdot changes the tone of the site.

Fair enough -- I can understand that argument. You're quite right when you say that "professionally" formatted news sites project a certain tone, much like "professional" news channels use a "professional" accent and formatting. I can understand, from your perspective, why you do not want this to change.

That being said -- I often wonder if it is an inevitable progression of Slashdot to advance to a more formal news site, despite the desires of its founders. The massive exposure and influence in the world is clearly evident, whether being quoted in major publications or taking out major websites from the sheer momentum of the community. Many eyes -- many important eyes -- fall upon these hallowed, green-trimmed pages each day. Professionals in the IT industry and others regularly use, "I saw it on Slashdot", as a reputable source for their current knowledge on a subject. I know I often do so myself.

With such a weight of responsibility thrust upon this medium to present not only the content of the article in a good light but the entire site in a favorable way, I look for Slashdot to move more towards professionalism rather than away from it. Does it change the tone? Yes. Will it move beyond the designs and intentions of the founders? Most likely. Sites that boom often progress far beyond their original visions.

I think this is the crux of the matter that grammar/spelling freaks tend to harp upon -- the site has already moved beyond "downtown pub" because now instead of 15 well-known people coming to drink beer every night, you now have the entire population of Manhattan showing up to have cocktails and weenies. The site has evolved and progressed despite your wishes to the contrary, and now the community wants to see the editing and attitude progress as well. Whether or not this is a desireable progression or not is, I think, beyond the scope of the reality of the situation.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[truesaer]

Maybe subsribers should be allowed to edit and post alternate text for stories, which can then be moderated by other subscribers. If a certain threshold is hit, the change is assumed to be good and is automatically used on the main-page posting. That way the editing will get done by your users since you've decided it isn't worth the time to do by the paid staff.

Re:Summary Accuracy

[analog_line]

I think that entire spectrum is important for you guys to take action on.

When a summary focuses on a small detail within a story that isn't the focus of the article, nothing really stops the editor from making a small comment to that effect after the submission text. Often these small extra details in an article are more important than the bulk of the article, but some recognition of the context in advance would be helpful to the more casual browsers of slashdot.

As to summaries which make factually wrong claims about the linked article, I don't see how there is any real excuse for them being posted at all. If you don't actually read any of the articles, how can you ever be certain that any of the links are real? If a submitter has a summaries that makes false statements about the content of the link, then that summary should be removed. I've seen plenty of articles posted by editors with "JoeSchmoe was the first of many submitters to alert us to a story in X" with none of JoeSchmoe's actual summary text. I don't see why attribution of the interesting and valid submission can't be kept with the editor writing a generally accurate summary of the linked articles contents. If nothing else, it will avoid many of the "Update: we were alerted to the fact that the article didn't actually say that, it said this" corrections the editors are forced to do.

I understand that people will find something else to complain about if this particular issue gets fixed, but if I were an editor, I'd much rather these complaints be about issues I find no need to "struggle with."

Re:Correct speeling is for teh weak

[SurgeonGeneral]

The question you ask is, why should we care? Whats the big deal anyways?

Language is critical to our world, and careful attention to its components - spelling and grammer - is not something that we should just "get over", as you would suggest.

Language is a gift. It is one of the greatest gifts that humankind has. To use a cliche, it seperates us from the animals. The complexity and versatility of our language is incredible and powerful. Nothing in this world would exist but for language, including the software you are using right now. In a situation where thousands of people are reading what you have written, to not pay attention to spelling and grammer is therefore somewhat of a tragedy.

More importantly, however, is that spelling and grammer is a matter of respect.

In that vein, constistently bad spelling and grammer is insulting. You know thousands of people are going to read it, you know they would like to be able to read something written well, but you don't take the 20 seconds to check for errors? It says you dont care about the readers. It says you cant be bothered to make it perfect for us. You are going to put it up as fast as possible and get it over with. You dont respect the reader, and this is an insult.

In addition, bad spelling and grammer shows a lack of self-respect. You cant be bothered to perfect that art which you purport to undertake? Why even bother in the first place then? Oh, right, you are getting paid. Not taking that time says to me that you have no respect for what you are doing and for the work you are completing. Therein lies the tragedy.

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[Eric S. Smith]

The Slashdot editors often make reading a chore with readers being forced to scan sentences over and over again in an attempt to find a sensible reading.

I wonder if it's the case that they're not very good readers. If reading is a chore for you no matter how good the writing is -- if, in the worst case, you're sounding each word out as you go -- you mite just knot no any bedder. We all, even the best readers among us, can see this at work when it comes to 3L1T3-5P34K: it's all one massive typo anyway, and there's no right or wrong to it.

But Commander Taco isn't suffering from illiteracy. In the case of Slashdot, I'm going to suggest that it's actually down to an under-developed sense of aesthetics. Bad spelling, bad grammar, bad punctuation, and bad typography all jump out and stab you in the eye if you care about them. Since just about every Slashdot story features at least three of those faults, I think that it's safe to say that when it comes to what many of us consider basic courtesies of written communication, Rob is just an Insensitive Clod.

Re:Spealing n Grammer

[Z0mb1eman]

I think you have a very valid point about keeping Slashdot casual compared to traditional print media. However, "casual" versus "formal" means a lot of things: word choice, sentence structure, clarity, objectivity, amount of effort to remove bias or avoid controversial phrasing. Remove spelling and blatant grammar mistakes, and all those differences remain. It's very easy to have casual text without spelling or grammar mistakes. Leaving them in doesn't make a submission any more "real".

Let me use a very simple analogy: when you're hanging out with friends, I'm sure you dress casual. Jeans, a t-shirt, running shoes, whatever. I can only assume, however, that you DON'T pick a t-shirt with stains on it over a clean one. Doesn't make you any less "real", it just means you're showing respect for your friends. Think of spelling mistakes as stains on the language, and you'll see why all the +5 posts in this story saying that Slashdot would be better with some basic article spell checking don't actually disagree with you or with keeping Slashdot casual.

links in articles

[illuminatedwax]

Can you also make sure that it's not impossible to tell where the link to the story is?

You'll usually get stories like this:

Did you ever want to eat mashed potatoes [notthearticle.com] without using your hands? Stupid Shit tells us [thearticle.com] that they have such a device [morespecif...tspage.com] that runs on Linux but violated the GPL and infringed patents blocking the DMCA from geek overlord insensitive clod Mircosoft sucks geeks don't have girlfriends. (there should be a slashdot loren ipsum)

that tends to be pretty confusing. the links aren't always in the order that I put them in and it gets pretty ambiguous. Sometimes the first or last link in that paragraph will be the Real Link.

Re:Spealing n Grammer

[Reziac]

I believe you're correct about the Slashdot environment. We come here because it's like a coffeehouse, not because it's like a high school English class. Similarly, we don't expect to find ourselves in the linguistic ghetto of the average unmoderated teenage blog.

And while sound grammar and spelling are important for ease of parsing, it's also necessary to know when to bend or break the rules. Fiction that's written with exact grammatical correctness, where no character ever speaks in the vernacular, is a dusty, boring read. Likewise, Slashdot wrung dry of its naturally-casual flow would be a dry and dull place. Nitpicking over every grammatical flaw isn't interesting in slashdot's context.

(Actually, I've left other forums, even some I'd been with for years, where discussion tended to devolve into nitpicking....)

Re:don't short shrift grammar

[Golias]

While I may be annoyed by some of our host's personal habits, I don't *have* to be here. So whatever he wastes of my life, I've effectively consented to.

Obviously, but that doesn't change the fact that Slashdot would be even better if attention was paid to such editorial details.

Taco is rightly proud of the many improvements to Slashdot he's got in the pipeline, but I would contend that proper editing would be a greater improvement to the site than any of those tweaks.

Re:Correct speeling is for teh weak

[PitaBred]

Then I don't want to hear about you ever complaining about something like IE not following the standards. It's the same thing. Having a standard makes communication more clear, succinct and useful. When I read "looser", I parse it as something coming undone. But when it's "the looser of the game went home", I (and many others) reach a cognitive stop, and have to re-parse the sentence and try to find the word that the typist meant to use, rather than the on they did use.
Mostly, it just makes people look lazy and stupid. Kinda like being homeless because that's what takes the least work. Ever read anything that Einstein wrote? Churchill? They all have impeccable spelling and grammar, as well as gigantic vocabularies.

*before anyone bitches about the homeless comment, I never said it wasn't a hard life. I simply implied that it's what happens when you stop working.

Re:Correct speeling is for teh weak

[lawpoop]

You don't understand the point of standards.

We have these grammar rules so that we are all on the same page. You're overlooking the point of grammar which is exactly to make sense.

The example you use is a red herring. "I went too the store." is easy to understand. However, once we decide we can break the rules, then it's up to each individual poster as to what rules they want to follow, and what rules they want to discard. The replier says "Earlier you said that ..." and the original poster says "No, you misunderstand me..." It's everybody's personal preference for what is a meaningful grammar rule, instead of having an objective ruleset.

Yes, some of the rules are crufty and old, like "its", "it's" and "its'". However, the vast majority of grammar rules are here so that we can understand each other. Let me repeat that, ignoring a few grammar rules:

can understand vast that we each so majority the of rules are here other. grammar

So we have a few dumb spellings and grammar rules. Suck it up and learn them.

Re:Correct speeling is for teh weak

[bitslinger_42]

Having been born the son of a man whose idea of a good hobby is proof-reading the Encyclopedia Britannica, I'm afraid I have to differ with you. While there are times where an occasional misspelling or grammatical error does not drastically alter the meaning of the sentence, there are a lot of times where the mistake is substantive. Consider, for example, the following sentence:

last week frank helped his uncle jack off his horse.

Depending on capitalization and punctuation, that could either mean that Frank assisted his uncle, named Jack, to get down from a horse. Or, it could mean that Frank assisted his uncle in one part of an animal husbandry function. The meaning is changed drastically by one letter and two commas.

The rules of grammar are akin to the rules of any activity. While it might be technically possible to play a game similar to baseball in your back yard using whatever materials are available, were one to show up at Wrigley Field with a basketball and a golf club expecting to play a quick game with the Cubs, the only reaction from observers would be laughter or incredulity. Auditioning for American Idol without being able to carry a tune gets you laughed off the stage. Similarly, attempting to engage in a serious debate on technical topics but being unable to demonstrate even a basic understanding of the rules of English degrades the impression the message leaves with observers.

Is it possible to be understood by competent readers even if you break the occasional grammatical rule here or there? Certainly. Is it possible to appear anything but a buffon or a dullard when trying to counter a well-reasoned and well-written argument with l33t-sp34k? Probably not.

Re:Anchor Texting

[vrt3]

I'd choose #4 without any doubt, since that shows what the link points to: an article about a decine in proper anchor texting.

CmdrTaco prefers #5, but I think that's suboptimal. It leaves out an important part of the story. It says what it's about, but not what it is.