Ask Rob Malda

We last interviewed CmdrTaco, along with Hemos, in January 2000. Slashdot's 10th anniversary seems like a good time to put Rob back on the hot seat. He's older now and married, his former hobby site now has well over one million registered user IDs, and Linux has gone from "upstart" operating system to a normal part of the IT landscape. So ask away, one question per post. Expect to see answers to at least 10 of the highest-moderated questions next week. And if you miss your chance to participate in this interview, don't worry. We'll probably do another one with CmdrTaco sometime between 2014 and 2017. CT: Also the clock is ticking if you want to sign up for a Slashdot 10-Year Anniversary party if you want a T-Shirt or a shot at the $1k ThinkGeek gift certificate.

Re:Why has /. turned into Digg?

[debilo]

Why has the number of technical articles dropped so much over the years? IOW - why are you trying to turn /. into Digg?

Oh, come on. Slashdot may suck at times, but Digg is an utter mess. The majority of the stories posted on the front page of Digg usually resembles an exclamation mark orgy, whoever posts the most wins automatically. The comment system is irritating at best, and really useful comments are rare. Someone once said that he reads Digg for the stories, and Slashdot for the comments. Basically, Digg is Fark.com without the humor, and Slashdot is lightyears away from turning into Digg.

actual real news story?

[mihalis]

When will Slashdot stop posting unsubstantiated, or (sometimes) completely merit-free stories with a question mark at the end, as if that was some kind of excuse?

Chris

who of course reads such things anyway

Re:Why haven't you fired Kdawson yet?

[EggyToast]

I think the bigger question is why these (and other) editors love to link to blogs aggregating other blogs posting about articles talking about news, rather than just the original news reports.

Re:Why haven't you fired Kdawson yet?

[Hatta]

Do you really need to ask? Inflammatory headlines cause flamewars. Flamewars cause page hits. Page hits sell ads.

Re:Over/under

[Anonymous Coward]

I get mod points every three to five days.

What affects it? Your karma, login frequency, post-to-lurk ratio, and of course metamoderation.

Mis-use mod points and eventually you will be called on it.

Moderate FAIRLY and OBJECTIVELY. If someone posts a very well-reasoned, civil post mod it up even if you disagree with it. Don't use mod points to bias a discussion. Otherwise, eventually your moderations will be meta-moderated as unfair and you will not get mod points as often, or editors or full-time moderators will spot your bad mods and spank you in response.

Re:What is this crazy tags thing?

[Fear the Clam]

I have a problem with them because they're completely arbitrary.

I see a set of tags like--oh, what's on the front page right now--diabeetus, viewtoakill, goodbyecalifornia, and arizonabay--and I know they're bullshit. It's not like 5000 people all decided that they would tag something "arizonabay," so I'm left to think that it's one or two people who crank these things out. That little in-joke is useless to any sort of tag reading software and takes up room on my monitor. How cute and funny and clever.

Re:Moderation Tranparency... When?

[Joaz Banbeck]

How about an 'explanation' field on downmods? So when a person wants to know why he got modded down, with one click he can read "you called parent a fucktard." This tend to promote more polite behavior, IMHO.

Re:Why has /. turned into Digg?

[abigor]

I too wonder about this. I miss the old articles about how to hack this device or how these proposed changes to language X work. All of these RIAA articles, for instance, seem to pander to teenagers, while there are very few articles for technical people anymore.

Re:Moderation Tranparency... When?

[jollyreaper]

How about an 'explanation' field on downmods? So when a person wants to know why he got modded down, with one click he can read "you called parent a fucktard." This tend to promote more polite behavior, IMHO.

For the ones of mine that get downmodded it's usually "I disagree with what you say and am too inarticulate an arse to argue my counter-point. Have a downmod."

Re:when will you allow image posting?

[Ant P.]

Imagine what Slashdot would be like if people could post images.

Now imagine if that was real [4chan.org].

Still want it here?

The Comment Database

[Shadow Wrought]

10 years worth of comments, at thousands a day, seems like it could be a potential treasure trove of data for geeks if not academics. What do you think about a possible mechanism for people to be able to have access to it beyond the amount that subscribers have?

Posting comments

[Petrushka]

How often do you post comments on Slashdot? I guess I mean: do you post under sockpuppet accounts?

Time's effect

[Maximilianop]

10 years is a long, long time... How much would you say time has affected your personal feelings and drives related to slashdot content?

Year stamps.

[6350']

This has always bugged me since (my personal) day one: why don't slashdot articles display a year, along with the month and day, in their date? Every now and then I happen upon a link to an article on slashdot (or search back) and have to try to guess at what year the article is from. What gives?

Re:Slashdot v. Digg

[saskboy]

"why doesn't every community use the same model?"

Every large online community I assume you mean, because if every community did, my online communities probably wouldn't mod me a troll nearly as much as Slashdot mods who don't like me. :-)

Variety is the spice of life, and besides, having inferior (or different/wild west) mod systems like Digg help give web users choice.