Ask Rob Malda 405
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.
Silly Question (Score:5, Interesting)
Active users? (Score:5, Interesting)
Q: How many of those one million registered user IDs are active?
Explanation: I have seen a fair number of folks that have defected to other platforms/communities to find resources or tools that Slashdot does not provide. I've continued to hang around as I appreciate what Slashdot has to offer, but are there any plans to change anything?
Oh, and congratulations on 10 years.
Why haven't you fired Kdawson yet? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why did you turn off the new comment system? (Score:1, Interesting)
Did you not think we would complain about that abomination?
/. Polls (Score:3, Interesting)
Do it again (Score:5, Interesting)
Why has /. turned into Digg? (Score:5, Interesting)
Any mutual "I can't belive it's ...!" moments? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wil Wheaton has written about meeting a famous author, I think it was Larry Niven, and being completely blown away that Niven was at least as jazzed about meeting Wil as vice versa.
I'm sure you've met lots of folks that us normal mortals only see on TV. Anyone in particular that you were really excited to meet who hyperventilated when they realized who you were?
Re:Why haven't you fired Kdawson yet? (Score:1, Interesting)
What is this crazy tags thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering the FAQ hasn't been updated in almost a year, could you explain exactly what tags do these days? At one time, it seemed to be a vote-based system, now I have no idea how tags show up on articles. Frankly, since I didn't understand it and my tags didn't seem to affect anything, I gave up on using the feature.
Could we get a definitive answer to how tags work?
Okay, I'll bite (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you talk a little about how you experienced some of the dotcom insanity, specifically as it unfolded here at Slashdot? For a while, it seemed like Slashdot was about to become wunderkind central -- the sale to VA, the infamous ESR post about uber-wealth, etc. I'd be interested to hear about how that experience translated from your side of the ball.
Thanks. And nice site you got here.
mysql vs postgres (Score:4, Interesting)
any annoyed or happy /. effect stories? (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you have any stores of annoyed sysadmins writing/phoning you and complaining that a link on Slashdot crushed their machines?
Alternatively, anyone whose exposure on slashdot boosted their popularity/traffic enough that they could retire/change jobs/make a major job change?
Mistake (Score:4, Interesting)
Related follow-up/Put another way: If you could go back and do one thing differently what would you do?
Most-visited sites.. (Score:5, Interesting)
What the hell do you do all day? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just what the hell do you do all day now, anyway?
What is your actual job? (Score:5, Interesting)
Show Me the Money! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why haven't you fired Kdawson yet? (Score:3, Interesting)
what was the "oh my god" moment? (Score:5, Interesting)
poll answer (Score:5, Interesting)
I bet it's Soviet Russia. (In Soviet Russia, CmdrTaco bets on you!)
Thoughts of giving up? (Score:5, Interesting)
When were you most tempted to give up?
Dealing with a bunch of creative, resourceful, tenacious, stubborn, and sometimes outright hostile nerds, I'm sure there were MANY times when you were tempted to just give up on the whole thing. e.g. page-widening trolls; Church of Scientology; Microsoft source code, or even the release of slash code to the community and the barrage of insults.
I'm really glad you held on and persevered, but I'd like to know when you were most tempted to throw in the towel, and even more importantly, I'd like to hear the story around how you held on and kept things going.
Decade (Score:4, Interesting)
I was thinking what with a family on the horizon plus a lot of other side projects you may bow out after a time; but then again it was kind of inevitable as there's a lot to life besides Slashdot. But nonetheless your insight over tenure is appreciated.
Anyway, thanks for this site Rob; the amount of laughs and great reads it has given in the four years I've browsed here is beyond measure and a lot of people here would agree that despite flaws this place is unique.
Re:Ask Rob (Score:5, Interesting)
Infrastructure (Score:5, Interesting)
I know this is more than one question, but my MAIN question is just: "What does it take to run slashdot, hardware/software/bandwidth wise?"
In and out of Slashdot. (Score:5, Interesting)
What is a normal day at slashdot like? How much time do you spend improving slashcode vs picking stories vs the normal computer admin tasks vs other stuff. How are the workload/responsibilities split up among the different staff members? How has this changes over the years?
I also remember back in the old days, the work you did with Enlightenment, as well as the animated short you made (Duckpins?). I was wondering if you get the chance to do much programing outside of slashcode, or what other hobbies you spend your free time doing now (besides being married).
Re:any annoyed or happy /. effect stories? (Score:5, Interesting)
What sites are you most proud of slashdotting?
Re:Active users? (Score:5, Interesting)
What was the turning point? (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you any regrets? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, been here a guest since 1999, and a member for the last seven. Enjoyed being part of this community, every single day (or when its non-xenophobic).
Simple Question (Score:5, Interesting)
If Google comes to you with a huge pile of cash and says "we want to add Slashdot to out stable of products," perhaps as some kind of competitor to Digg, would you a) be tempted but decline because this is, after all, your baby, b) talk to them a while, negotiate, but ultimately call it off, or c) buy that island you've always wanted and start your own country?
What are the biggest threats to /. success? (Score:5, Interesting)
Two/three part question: (Score:5, Interesting)
If so, what are your favorite and least favorite things about the community?
Re:What is this crazy tags thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
By 'failure', I mean that the tags we see are generally ridiculously useless (like a "science" tag on a story in the Science section) or otherwise simply degenerate ("haha" seems to be the most common tag). It's hard to imagine what purpose the system would serve even if people were honest with it. Further, the idea of tagging comments as a future moderation system now seems completely horrible.
Re:Over/under (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you like Slashdot discussions? (Score:5, Interesting)
My question originates from the fact that, apparently [slashdot.org], you've only commented 368 times. Considering that you've been here "since the beginning," that's not a lot of comments. Avid Slashdotters make about that many comments per year.
So why don't you participate more in the discussions? Do you not like Slashdot discussions? Or is it just because you prefer reading? Is it because you're too busy? (Aren't we all?) Is it because you worry that any comment you make will be unduly scrutinized, because of your peculiar status within this community? (Do you sometimes post under a different name?)
Do you run a Linux desktop? (Score:5, Interesting)
If so, which distro? If not, what do you run?
A real question about the editors (Score:3, Interesting)
Years ago, it was JohnKatz and what we considered his pointless inflamatory articles that were rewritten 5 times yet all 5 said the same thing.
Nowadays, it's people like Zonk and his complete lack of editing, posting the most slanted version of an article or a version which gets the summary completely wrong.
My question is how to do deal with these complaints? Do you deal with these complaints in any way with more than the filters in preferences that allows you to block articles by a certain editor?
"Overrated" and "Underrated" (Score:2, Interesting)
Taquestions (Score:4, Interesting)
Just a few questions:
1. You oversaw the "internet revolution." Beyond Al Gore inventing it, beyond the dot-com hype, beyond the spam and the sockpuppets, what do you think is the future of networked communication? Is it the cloud OS and social networking, or are we rounding another bend?
2. You've mentioned liking Postgres DBs. What other underrated hardware and software do you enjoy and employ on a regular basis?
3. What emergent technologies do you watch?
4. In the Wired interview [wired.com], you mention a balance between wise crowd tendencies and dumb crowd tendencies:
"When you're building a system like this you're balancing the wisdom of the crowds versus the tyranny of the mob. Sometimes a crowd is really smart, but some things don't work so well by committee. Crowds work when you have a tightly knit group of people with similar interests, but when you have a loosely knit community you get 'Man Gets Hit in Crotch With Football.'"
What have you learned is the balance of this duality? For all of its attempts to be crowd-wisdom propelled, Slashdot does lean on the theory of exceptional individuals, because it has picked editors to filter what makes it to the front page, which cuts down on the "site-rhymes-with-bigg" tendency to put rosy garbage on the front page. Are you satisfied with the balance of your responses to whatever psychological fulcrum keeps a crowd wise and not mobbish?
5. What if any fiction authors do you enjoy?
6. I'm a technical writer [dionysius.com], and am curious what you think about the current state of software and hardware documentation. Is it getting better? What are its common failings? Does anyone read it? Will single-sourcing (documentation that appears in print, online help, web sites, flash cards and text messages but uses the same text) change documentation's effectiveness radically?
7. In the CNET article [news.com], you talk about Slashdot as a community.
"But to some of our readers, it's a community that's here to discuss issues that are relevant to this community. There is a lot of value. The bulk of our content comes from other people. There are 6,000 or 7,000 comments on a busy day that other people write and just a dozen stories of just a paragraph or two that we actually generate, that are ours."
As you started out in BBSs, you probably had a prexisting idea of this being important to a resource on technology. Why do you think this is?
8. In the same interview, you talk about the ability of low-tech websites to take on big roles:
"I think that it really comes down to the content. If you have content people want, they will tolerate a system that is inferior. Now our system is solid, but back in the day, it wasn't. Look at eBay: That system is the most hodgepodge and clumsy user interface that you will ever find. People use it because it was first and it worked."
In the world of advertising, people call this branding [wired.com]. What do you think Slashdot's brand represents, and is it something IT workers will always have in common?
9. In the Network Administrator interview [thenetwork...trator.com], you compare Slashdot to bulletin board systems favorably.
"Strangely not that far. It's all just a matter of scale. At some level it's all identical."
You mean in twenty years, not much has changed except the technology? I'd like to hear more on this if you find it compelling.
10.
Re:Over/under (Score:5, Interesting)
I get them every two weeks or so now. I didn't get them at all, even though I had excellent karma, until I metamoderated a few times.
Re:What is this crazy tags thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually kind of like them. When I see an article slathered with "flamebait", "badsummary", "inaccurate", etc. then I have a pretty good idea that it's not worth getting worked up about and that I'll probably read its debunking a few comments down. I think that's a fairly nice service.
Re:Over/under (Score:3, Interesting)
Question: Trends (Score:5, Interesting)
Based on that, what are your predictions for the next 10 years?
Some technology is obviously going to die a quick and painful death. Some of that technology will be good and some deservedly bad. What's going to catch on? What has staying power? Google has been a golden child the last few years, will that continue? Are there any big turnarounds coming? Who's got good stuff in the pipeline? Don't you dare tell me 2008 is the year of Linux (and I know you won't) - we've both been hearing that marketing crap for the past 10 years.
Was slashdot ever... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ever want to try doing something else? (Score:2, Interesting)
Thanks.
Yeah, mutual geeking out is awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
I wrote about it in my blog [typepad.com], thusly:
Around 1987 or 1988, I saw Larry Niven at a convention. I was officially there to be the Star Trek guy, but I didn't have to go on stage for a few hours, and rather than sit in some suite with the rest of the Star Trek people who didn't want to get too close to the masses, I grabbed my backpack and wandered around the convention as nerdy fanboy number 42.
I bought a ton of crap in the dealer's room (mostly FASA sourcebooks, and some bootleg anime videos IIRC) and on my way down a hallway toward the gaming room, I saw this guy who was dressed in a Space Shuttle flight suit (blue) sitting behind a table that had some books on it.
Holy shit, it was Larry Niven.
I walked up to him and the conversation went something like this:
Me: OMG YOU'RE LARRY NIVEN!
Him: OMG YOU'RE WESLEY ON STAR TREK!
Both: CAN I HAVE YOUR AUTOGRAPH!
Both: YOU WANT MY AUTOGRAPH?!
Both: YES!
Me: I don't have a pen.
Him: It's okay, I have several.
He pulled a pen out of the shoulder pen-holding pocket thing on his blue Space Shuttle flight suit. I was so out-nerded, it wasn't even funny. I tried to counter-attack by producing my own copy of Ringworld that I had in my backpack, because I carried it with me everywhere in those days, just in case, you know, I felt like reading it. (I am not exaggerating at all. I loved -- and continue to love -- that book that much. For reals.)
Re:Active users? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've never been a very active poster but every now and then go through phases. I think most of us with the low uids have moved into positions where we don't have as much time to post anymore. And of course others have just moved on from
Whatever happened to the "Ask a person" articles? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Roland Piquepaille (Score:5, Interesting)
Nah, I bet most posters couldn't care less. Don't mistake a noisy 5% for the whole. I wonder if that's a seed for a question?
Mr. Taco: You have access to stats, such as number of pageviews, active posters, and so forth. This lets you objectively measure a lot of things that we can't see. What do you think are some misconceptions that we have about slashdot? Maybe we're really still mostly IE users? Is 'videogames' the most read section? Perhaps the tech and science articles that everybody seems to clamor for are really the least read?
Re:Infrastructure (Score:2, Interesting)
Ok, so you've nailed me almost to a 'T'.
But, seriously, were being deaf just a choice - such as being coked up, or screaming into a can - I could see this being an acceptable slam. But, in my case, I didn't do anything - of which I'm aware - to end up deaf; it just happened. And, frankly, it's not really as much of a drawback as you think. For example, when I need to communicate with others, I can use my cochlear implant. When I want quiet solitude, I just turn it off. Stuck between screaming babies and the engine on a flight? No problem: set volume to 0. Or plug into my MD player with a 1/8" jack and shut out all of the other noise. Sweet.
Oh, of course, I can't let you get away without the obligatory, "you insensitive clod."
Slashdot v. Digg (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't subscribe to the notion that we should only have one account in one place, and participate in one community. That attitude is one of the myriad reasons I don't waste my time on Digg any more. In addition to that annoyance, the comments and interaction at Digg is worse than useless, and even as an aggregator it's become inferior to Reddit and Propeller (where I'm a scout - full disclosure.) Digg could have been really cool, if it had the kind of leadership that Slashdot has via editors. Instead, those who would lead Digg seem more content to cash the checks and let the Digg Mob run out of control down every tube on the Internets.
For truly useful and worthwhile discussion and insight, nothing comes close to Slashdot. In fact, if I were to ask Rob a question, it would be about the commenting and moderation system: does he agree that Slashdot has the best moderation online, and why doesn't every community use the same model?
You're still a pathetic fucking loser (Score:2, Interesting)
You're a pathetic fucking loser dawson."
You're still a pathetic fucking loser dawson. Keep censoring people because you hate that they're right, while pretending you're anti censorship."
Modding it down doesn't make it less true you cunt.