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Special Interview: Rob Malda and Jeff Bates 364

Posted by Roblimo from the breaking-the-veil-of-silence dept.
The Andover.net IPO quiet period is finally over. A lot of you have had questions about Slashdot; what's happening, what's going to happen, and so on, that we weren't allowed to answer. Now those questions can be answered, and no one can answer them better than CmdrTaco and Hemos. They're already starting getting stacked up with interview requests from other media, but we decided that you, the loyal Slashdot readers, deserved first crack at them. Submitted questions will be selected by moderators and the usual hangers-on and will be submitted Wednesday afternoon EST. Answers will appear Thursday. (Friday is reserved for Steve Wozniak, who unquestionably deserves a day all to himself!)
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Special Interview: Rob Malda and Jeff Bates More

Special Interview: Rob Malda and Jeff Bates

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  • Slashdot.org Purchase Agreement from the SEC filings:

    BTW - This is all public information.

    The total consideration that will be paid is valued at $8.5 million and the maximum contingent consideration payable is $3.5 million. All consideration has been or will be paid to BlockStackers, Inc.

    Under the terms of the Asset Purchase Agreement between BlockStackers, Inc. and Andover.Net, dated as of June 18, 1999, Andover.Net purchased those assets of BlockStackers relating to the Slashdot.org web site for $1.5 million in cash paid at closing and maximum future cash payments of $3.5 million payable over the next two years contingent on the continued employment of two key employees.

    Maximum future stock consideration of $7.0 million is payable over a period of two years following this offering. For the purposes of these issuances, the number of shares of common stock to be issued is determined using an assumed initial public offering price of $16.50 per share.

    In June 1999, Andover.net acquired substantially all of the assets and assumed certain liabilities relating to the Slashdot.org web site from BlockStackers, Inc. Slashdot.org is the largest online community for Linux/Open Source developers providing news, commentary, information and reviews.

    The amount of stock consideration that is contingent on the achievement of performance milestones relating to traffic on the Slashdot.org web site and the continued employment of the key employees of Slashdot.org will be recognized upon the achievement of these milestones.

    EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENTS

    Robert Malda In connection with its acquisition of Slashdot.org, Andover.Net entered into an employment agreement with Robert Malda, a director of Andover.Net, on June 28, 1999, for a term of three years.

    Mr. Malda is entitled to customary employee benefits.

    Under the terms of the employment agreement, Mr. Malda has agreed that during the term of the agreement he will not participate in the management of any entity which is in competition with Andover.Net.

    There is even more detail available and I have no intention of spotlighting Rob, so I'll leave some of the digging to you readers! ;)

  • Re:ACs (Score:2)

    by Zack ( 44 )
    > "more adults" ?

    > Can't think of anthing to say, but screw you.
    > Age doesn't change the quality (whether high or
    > low) of my posts.

    No one said age did. "Adult" has nothing to do with age. Never has, really. A 30 year old can be childish and a 12 year old can offer mature insight.

    Would you prefer the term "Mature Individuals" instead of "Adults"?

  • jeremy f wrote:

    Legally, this place needs to change it's domain to slashdot.com -- there's money going into Rob & Jeff's pockets, guaranteed.

    Legally, there's no difference between .com, .org and .net domains. A nonprofit organization can have a .com domain just as lawfully as a company can have an .org domain.

    The difference is a matter of convention, not law. It's reasonable for slashdot to not follow convention because:
    * People are used to the current DNS name
    * There is no pressing reason to switch
    * The slashdot.com [slashdot.com] domain is owned by someone else (A Chris Richardson, in California).

    ----
  • This I like!
    (alan == user id 347) :)

    Something for Rob:
    Dude, I'm still sorry about the ketchup in the box thing, I swear it wasn't my idea!

    As for a question, I'm wondering what you guys see as the next BIG things to watch for as far as software, technologies, and people. Anything that you guys (who see most of this stuff come in) feel will hit it big in the next bit?
  • I agree with you here; the current situation with the moderators seems to foster a sort of "preaching to the choir"-type situation. Of course, you can almost always get an anti-open source message moderated up by prefacing your statements with, "I'll probably get moderated down for this, BUT...". Simple psychology, that.

    The problem is, of course, what to do about the problem. Slashdot could revert to an unscored setup, but then the signal to noise ratio would be unbearable.

    I've been advocating the implementation of "super moderators" for a while now -- a small group of hand-picked moderators who would act kind of like the Supreme Court of moderation. They could do things like yank Natelie Portman or "line noise" posts, assign points to posts at will, etc. You'd have to find the right people -- people who are both extremely good at handling power and who can step back and make "good" calls about unpopular points of view. It would also have to be closely supervised and reviewed, but I think it'd work.

    ----

  • http://www.andover.net/employment.html
  • I agree with you about the SlashDot software, but I don't think it's the whole story. My guess is if I had the SlashDot software (current version, not some old nasty thing) and put up a site it would not get the same response. Why? 'Cuz I'm an old codger and not likely to create a similar community. However, any entity that already HAS a community could make good use of it. I've been curious why the newest source is never posted, but the title reads "SlashDot - News for Nerds" not "SlashDot - News for the FSF". I don't recall ever reading Malda's feelings about open source for everything, but I think the source for SlashDot is the one saleable resource Andover has. They could easily sell it to ZDNET for instance; their "TalkBack" story comment feature is awful. Now, what happens if they do that? The zealots will get ugly, that's for sure. So they're in a weird place. I think this is one of the better cases to watch for the collision of Open Source and marketplace. If you're CmdTaco and company, does it make you happier to toe the line with the open source religion or to see your baby turned into a widely-used standard for discussion groups, each paying a nice licensing fee? My own position is that open source is great for the OS because it allows IBM and everybody to drop their own proprietary versions of Unix without losing face, but for apps like SlashDot the creators deserve fair market price, and they won't get it if they give it away.

  • Yeah, that's an issue. One possibility would be to not even allow comments on the queued stories, just moderation.

    --

  • Code not created for public consumption often contains...ahhh..."commentary on the state of the computer industry in an informal, casual, and often rude manner."

    Assuming that you're not the paragon of Mature and Uberprofessional Coding Practices, I'm sure you have more than a few sections of rather...blistering observations. Seeing as how this is News for Nerds, evil Perl most assuredly counts as Stuff That Matters. I'd like to see some segments of code before they were "Sanitized for Our Protection". ;-)

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com
  • Some (if not many) of the problems I have seen (or heard others gripe about) concerning Slashdot recently have their origin in lack of resources. Do you have any plans to add more people: newsgathers, moderator managers, link checkers, etc? In other words, the equivalent of the publishing world's assistant editor(s)?

    Any thought given to having a few full-time moderators? Just another take on the editor issue, really.

    If no, is part of the concern libel/liability if you do add more editorial supervision to the content?

    sPh
  • CmdrTaco and Hemos,

    If you could change 1 or 2 things about what you have done with slashdot.org, what whould you change, and why?
  • Which of the following would be the most effective course of action to get you to release (current!) Slash source code?...


    4. Procure many beautiful women dedicated to the open source cause

    Are you accepting volunteers yet???

    Sorry, not anymore. I accepted one beautiful volunteer, and now she's positively reluctant to even let me interview additional applicants! Go figure.. *g*
  • Not only is this an idea I've been hunkering over for a while, but I think it's one of the only ideas that will keep Slashdot on top. Let's face it, Slashdot has taken more criticism of late (well, over the past 12 months?) over lack of good content and crappy replies (to which moderation has, for the most part, helped to control). By moderating the incoming news stories, not only could you filter out the bogus stuff, but, by moderation, increase the number of stories relevant to the Slashdot readership.

    Some might claim that Slashdot will then be in the control of the Moderators (of which I participate, if given the chance.) However, I argue that it would give Slashdot readers (of which I am an avid one) more control over what stories they see. Of course, the Slashdot crew would and should have ultimate control of what gets posted, but at least we'd have an opportunity to tell the crew, "Hey, this story is lame. It's not geek stuff. It's not news for nerds and it certainly doesn't matter."

  • This is a very valid criticism. It could be argued that Slashdot *is* the Slashdot crew. Yes, we the readers are very important, but without anything to read or comment on, of what value is this site? So, does Andover have insurance?
  • Aside from the 1.5 mil the "two key employees" of slashdot.org got for the sellout, I'm wondering about that Intangable assets thing. Is the source code "Intangable Assets"? And when andover.net doesn't make money and cuts people out(as they can), do they keep the code? If I'm reading this right, they can. Can you two clairify this?
  • A friend of mine who's a moderator suggested that Slash temporarily override the preferences of anyone with moderator points so they browse at -1.

    The idea is, if those with mod points want to view an article at 0 or higher, they would have to change it manually. This would assist moderators who browse at higher levels and would probably help balance out positive moderation somewhat. Since you mention it in your moderator guidelines, I figure it would be appropriate to put it in the code. How about it?

  • To cut a long story short: I actually agree with you! The standard is a simple one, and conforming to it is simple; so people should conform to it, period. I guess I was responding more to the intensity with which you addressed the issue. But, on second thoughts, your tone *was* appropriate. Non-compliance with standards is a real problem, even when, nay, especially when, "friendlies" are doing it.

    (Creeps off to run his home page through weblint...)

  • Why would the code need to be cleaned up? It looks good in lynx and netscape, which is surely a good enough practical acid test.
  • "just because it looks good on the surface"?! But the surface is all there is to a web page! HTML is a mark-up language; it is supposed to present page content, and that's all. If it does that well -- and /. does look well in any browser I've tried -- then it works. And you can't compare generated HTML code to, say, C code: issues of maintainability don't arise, for example. I don't see what you're getting so worked up about. Does /. work, or doesn't it? What are the practical effects of the generated code not always conforming to the spec? I like /., and I find it neither sloppy, nor incompetent, nor unprofessional. Your attitude seems extreme, compared to what you're actually saying. I should say that if you were criticising the perl code, that would be different.
  • Well, "org" is NOT only for nonprofits... but I agree that "com" is a more appropriate TLD for Slashdot at this point.

    Hey, if sunsite can change, I think we'll survive a Slashdot move, as well. :)
    ----
  • It would be interesting to see the results of others meta moderating my moderations; hopefully all comments ("2 fairs and 3 unfairs"), but at least the aggregate stats. Certainly NOT to include who did the meta moderating to me :-)

    --
  • I find that showing comments highest score first improves the S/N ration dramatically. I only see the grits posts when there are few comments, and it is easy enough to ignore them.

    It's gotten to the point that I can actually rley on useful comments and get info from them.

    --
  • and speaking of that - what is the license and ownership of the code like since andover has gotten involved?

  • Bah, use Emacs and the latest GNUS (gnus?), it has an interface that makes slashdot articles look like a news group, etc etc..

    I haven't posted back from it yet, but it *looks* cool :), and it's great for reading articles. (Gnus scoring on top of slashdot scoring... :)

  • :) Pack the bowie knife and listen up, it's in the Latest release of GNUs (5.8.2 I believe).

    Errr, I'd check but at the moment, the gnus homepage [gnus.org] appears to be replaced with a list of RFC's...

  • http://projects.is.asu.edu/m ailman/listinfo/slash-help [asu.edu]

    The slash-help mailing list. Home of the embittered would-be open-source slash contributors.

    "Moderation is good, in theory."
    -Larry Wall


  • I know you're both nominally involved with Blockstackers [blockstackers.com] and the Everything [everydevel.com] project. My question is, to what extent? Are you funding this, or letting your more involved roommates slide on the rent, or are you actively involved in the design, testing, and coding?

    --
  • I doubt that very much. A month would get you something more or less working but not really much more than a prototype. I'd estimate it at about three months including testing and debugging, possibly more than that to get it almost 100% right.

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction
  • I agree though that its going to be difficult to make money out of the traffic. Traditional per-click banner advertising fees aren't much use, it requires massive volumes. I know the more serious financial web businesses are moving away from that model altogether, in favour of partnerships of various kinds involving referral fees and commissions. However, it's hard to imagine what could generate significant levels of income from a geek demographic. You can only buy so many toys etc. And most of us surely buy our hardware and software from sources we've sought out ourselves rather than on impulse after clicking on an ad.

    Personally, I rarely pay any attention to banner ads at all, and the only way for a hardware or software seller to get *my* business is to be indexed effectively in my search engine of choice (at present that's google).

    Some people commenting on this list have implied that Andover had difficulty getting the IPO because they still don't have the revenue to justify the share price they want. How can this be? Surely they had a *plan* in mind when they bought Slashdot? Was their plan simply to jump on the bandwagon and hope that someone else would figure it all out later?

    I wounder how many internet companies filing for IPO's have done so in the knowledge that their business model was a pipe dream, and with the intention of using the capital thus raised to build a *real* business?

    It's kind of reminiscent of the old story about the soup stone.

    The upshot of all this has to be that unless businesses like Andover manage to find a completely new revenue model *very soon* that no-one's even thought of yet, their investors will surely wake up and realise that their trendy internet stocks have no underlying value.

    Rob and Hemos may well find that they're running Slashdot as a hobby again before the year is out; if Andover owes them money they should try to get hold of it while they still can. Though they're probably going to get worthless stock options instead, that seems to be the way these things work. Everybody's paying each other in promises these days.

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction
  • A few weeks ago there was some MS-Led agitation for an MS friendly section on slashdot, which to those of us who've been hanging out here since the early days sounds akin to Satanists demanding a chapel for ritual human sacrifice in the Vatican. All Microsoft financed astroturfing aside, has corporate ownership increased pressures for this kind of thing, or made more acute the temptation to chase the profits mass markets unpopular or antithetical to the open source movement might offer? If so, what specific strategies do you employ to minimize its impact and keep slashdot true to its open source roots?
  • Let me get this straight:

    Your posts were meant to be mindlessly inane all along, just to prove how flawed the moderation is?

    In that case, good job, man.

    Silly me thought that you were under the impression that your posts really were insightful.
  • Whatever you say... It's just against the whole GPL, is all... To mandate anything beyond returning the code to the community. And rob says it's near the GPL with that one exception, and if you don't agree, send him money... that's not GPL. And nor is the untimeliness of his updates...

    and not all kernel contributors get their due credit. and there's no clause saying if i host a site using linux, that i have to mention the fact, or anything... i think if you beleive what you're saying, you're letting rob set a double standard for himself.

    SO many people here whine when a company opens it's source but creates a new almost opensource license... Corel linux is GPLed, but that didn't stop people from saying they were violating it when they didn't release the source to their beta immediately and for everyone.

    I can give example after example about this, if you desire... Consider Rob payed for his time on slash... in case you didn't notice he's worth at least a few million dollars now... and if that's not enough for him, well, he shouldn't have even mentioned the GPL in his licensing page... Because it's no where near it.

  • Isn't it about time the moderation abuses and "first posters" are addressed?

    Funny... "First post"ing can be considered an abuse of the posting system. Moderation is the answer to that. I read at threshold 1, and never see that stuff.

    Widespread moderation led to abuses, and thus meta-moderation [slashdot.org] was born. Enough meta-moderation, and an abusive moderator will lose enough karma to be unable to moderate anymore.

    Are you suggesting that these systems (moderation and meta-moderation) are totally ineffective? Or are their specific weaknesses you see in them, for which you want fixes?

  • Hi, OK, I still like Slashdot, still waste lotsa time on it, still learn from it. So you've been doing a great job for a long time.

    I usually set my comment level at 3, mostly for time reasons (I don't usually want to spend time reading more than 10-20 comments). One thing I don't like at that level is a kind of uniformity of tone and opinion. I like to read wildly opposing opinions: in combination they're often more useful, not to mention more stimulating, than endless "slashdotically correct" prose.

    So here's my idea to fix that, based on the Amazon.com feature: "people who purchased this book also purchased...", which I often find useful.

    Everybody can moderate, though, like today, only selected people's moderation gets used for the "general" slashdot comment scores. Now that you get everybody's opinion on various comments, you can determine groups of similarly minded moderators (you can also use meta-moderation input for this). You could then propose a view of slashdot moderated by people who think like me, or rather, who think about thinking like me. There'd always be the option to return to the general mass-view, of course.

    This would encourage high-quality moderation and possibly return us to the more personal, small-scale slashdot experience we use to have. Moderation would be more spontaneous, selfish, and less ponderous. Groups might evolve for the politically correct, the humor-seekers, the crude, those who value originality, facts, who knows what? Possibly these self-generating "communities", once identified, could be very valuable, and maybe make you even more money, but I'm sure you'd see that as a side-effect of a neat idea.

    k a i
  • I personally don't think much can be done at all, and not much should be done. Slashdot is not a medium suitable for discussions, there are more apropriate forums for that, such as News and mailing lists.
  • Slash uses a web-based front end for all that jazz, it's located at http://yoursite.tld/admin.pl

    Password protected, and users have access levels, so some can do everything (100000 access level or something) while others can do almost nothing (any access level >1 IIRC).

    The 100000 level allows them to add sections, links, stories, modify posted stories, etc. It all uses mysql, through the DBI perl module.

    I tried to get it working decently, but to no avail. The code is messy, but it works. I, too, am waiting for a 0.4 release, just to play around.

    PHPSlash is not bad at all, but it's very alpha (beta?) and isn't really very functional. There are other, similar web-based alternatives, but most don't have the versatility of slash.

    slash code [slashdot.org]

    -ed fisher
  • Unfortunately, /. is a business (and has been for longer than Andover acquired them). In a business, you have one goal: make the cash register ring. If there's no money coming into Slashdot (through advertising), there is no Slashdot. They need money to run the thing. If you want access to just the content, write some perl scripts that dump the comments into your reader of choice. It shouldn't be too hard. The rest of us will stick with a method that may not be convenient for YOU but is fine for US and also is an adequate balance of convenience and utility.

    -Chris
  • Or, an even quicker fix that would take all of 2 seconds...People who have the +1 bonus must check a box if they want a +1 bonus. Right now, you must check a box if you DON'T want the +1 bonus. I think this is the wrong way to look at it. Make everyone's default score be 1, but those w/ enough karma can check "give me +1 bonus" if they think their post is "good enough" to get that. This way you are WILLFULLY giving yourself a +1 bonus, and can't say "Whoops! I didn't mean to post at default 2, I was in a hurry".

    To the person asking if giving yourself a +1 gives you +1 karma points, no it does not (thankfully).
  • people that post at a default of 2 are not necessarily the people who post insightful and interesting posts (e.g. slashdot-terminal) but instead could be people who whored their way to 25 Karma

    I emailed Rob on this very issue a while back and his response was that if those posting on defult 2 aren't insightful, etc, then the moderators should moderate them "-1 Overrated". The problem is that moderators do not do this often enough. But the fact remains that they shouldn't have to. Users have the option to not give themselves a +1 bonus and normally just opt to get a default score of 2, because people want to be "heard". Since a lot of people browse at threshold 2, this guarentees their comment will be seen.

    These two problems need to be corrected (I admit, I'm not helping that matter with this post) by us, not CmdrTaco or Hemos. However, since this seems unlikely given the amount this site has grown since I started reading, I'd just like to see an option to only view posts that have been moderated up, and nothing else. Right now, when I read at threshold 2, 80% of the posts are from people who have a default of 2. So I have to still weed through posts to read those people have deemed "interresting" or "insightful", etc. By only showing posts that have been moderated up, I can see only what I want, and even view AC posts that got moderated up to 1, but that I would normally miss browsing at 2. This option shouldn't have to be made because we should be able to control ourselves, but given the way things have been going, I think it's a quick solution that could solve a few of these issues (just a few tough ;).
  • Now that Andover has some deeper pockets and slashdot is gaining some pretty good popularity in the mainstream (or at least what seems to be the mainstream to me) do you fear that anything could change?

    For example, you have a rather weak sounding disclaimer and there is a ton of editorial content in the messages that are posted. Yahoo has been involved in several cases where companies have felt wronged by anonymous posting. Do you worry that somebody could try to sue? Have you taken measures to help track down posters, even ACs, in the event that somebody wants to track down a poster of negative comments? I know several sites that do IP tracking and some cookie stuff to try and keep track of the anonymous people. You guys have had a strong record for defending anonymity and making changes to try and keep anonymous posting viable, has Andover or wealth changed any of that? You're a much bigger target now, has that changed anything? (I'm not trying to learn ways to circumvent things or anything, I'm just curious if you guys are really totally free to operate as normal, if you are then I will be the first to say that you may have the greatest job on the planet.) If Bolomag Corp. (Big Oranization with Lots Of Money And Guns) wants to track down that AC that said their products were unsafe and dropped the law suit word, would you help them? What if it was believed to be a Bolomag employee? I think this consists of one question.

    Secondly, I view slashdot and a pretty cutting edge weblog/pseudo-portal. It has really defined the medium to me. I've watched over the years as slashdot has gone from a nerd news index (meta-news?) that essentially pointed to news articles that were about developments that nerds would find interesting in to more content development with the Katz articles, book reviews, and features and interviews and then customizable content with the slashboxes and the custom page creation. Slashdot is becoming a media. Is there any pressure to direct that? Alternatives to the weblog (irc.slashdot.org?) haven't really surfaced but do you think that there will be pressure to move slashdot to the "next thing" when it does? Andover has a hot commodity and they clearly wouldn't want it to lose its edge anymore than they would want to ruin it by making it corporate.

    Then third, how does the editorial process work? From the viewer's prespective, slashdot seems to be fresh, interesting, prograssive and it is continually being adjusted and tweaked. Does someone have ultimate say over what is done? Is it a democracy? Have there been any big rows? Is there a policy or plan for when there is desire to do something that isn't "slashdot?"

  • I am not moaning, merely asking the sites creators opinions on the current standards of commenting.The article is a call for questions after all.

    I'm afraid I can't agree that the discussion content improving over time, I wouldn't make any claims for having read slashdot since day one whenever that was, but I have been reading for a long time and I'm stating my opinion here. I don't expect it to coincide with everyones. I certainly am not moaning.

    I agree with you that moderation has solved certain problems but I feel it has created others. I have certainly seen examples of posts moderated severely by moderators who seem to not have understood the posters point or merely disagreed with its content. The "anyone praising Microsoft is a troll" syndrome.

    I don't believe there is any perfect solution to any of these issues, but there is always room for improvement, and as we have been using the current solution for a while now I merely wished to know what the slashdot guys felt about the current posting standards, the moderation system and any plans to modify it further, given the much higher levels of traffic the site now attracts.

    I'm sorry that my original post seems to have given you so much offence.

  • The recent addition of the special 'sections'(YRO, Ask Slashdot, Apache, etc.), combined with the increasingly custimizable moderation system, raises an interesting question: how diverse can Slashdot become? Rather than just a forum for the Linux/Open Source community, /. seems to be becoming more and more a general geek portal. Is this desirable? Is it something you're deliberately working towards? How far would you want the shift to go?
  • One notable diference between Slashdot and most of the comparable 'community news' sites out there is the absence of any 'standing forums'--ongoing discussions not pegged to any specific news story. Is this something y'all decided against having, or just haven't gotten around to implementing yet?
  • Had I any moderation points, they would all go to this post.

    My observation has been that as the net gets bigger, the more chaff that must be sorted through to get to the wheat. It happened to Usenet, it'll happen here - if left unchecked.

    What sort of ideas do you have to stop this? (I think the moderation is a good idea, but, as already shown, at some critical mass, it too is overwhelmed.)

    Have you considered having a fee-for-service area on the site? As much as I hate this solution, increasing the cost of entry to forums like this tends to be a good filter - in that not many people want to pay to write about Natalie Portman's petrified first-posting beowulf ASCII cluster. And I would be willing to enter such an area, provided the costs of entry aren't phenomenal.

  • Why did Slashdot choose not to either fight the bogus Unisys LZW patent, or to remove GIF images? [burnallgifs.org]

    Did andover.net pay Unisys to use GIFs on slashdot.org and its other sites? And, if so, why is a leading open source news site giving direct financial support to software patents?

  • and how bout opening the slashdot input queue ? So everyone can at least read the stories that dont make the front page.
  • 1) Will slashdot readers that have accounts - be receiving a letter in their mail informing them about the IPO and how it is going to effect them, and will the letter offer them the same options as the letter RedHat sent out?

    2) Will user data stay the same?

    3) Will moderation change in any way, shape or form?

    4) What restrictions do you business guys have?

    5) Will Slash 0.4 be released?

    6) Will the posting ability of AC change?

    7) How well is Meta-Moderation working?

    8) Will this change /.'s position as a member of the press/ or effect its standing as an open source/ editorial site?

  • Privacy, Copyright and Legal Stuff (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @08:17AM (#1406842)
    Hi.

    Firstly, I assume you're running Apache, and it must be generating logs of some such (like, IP address, time stamps, etc.). Is this information stored, and for how long? (Also assume I am anonymous coward and do not accept cookies). If somebody posted something defaming someone else / some other company and they took Slashdot to court to find out who wrote it, would you actually give up the logs? Do you ever process these logs in any way (yes, I know they must be huge, but so are Amazon's and Yahoo's and they do it ...).

    Under whose laws are Slashdot content governed? If the poster is in Australia, is it Oz laws that apply or is it those from somewhere in America?

    Has anyone ever tried to sue Slashdot over content? (libel, etc.). What would be your reaction then, and what would be it now, and does Andover have a hand in this?

    On a totally different note, here is a suggestion: If an Anonymous Coward actually manages to get moderated up, could their comment then rise up to 2 rather than 1, where it is lost in a barage of pointless digressions? I prefer to surf at 3 nowadays, so I miss all people with karma above 30 who set their default level to 2 and are no better than the ones posting at level 1.

    On another note, who took the decision to wipe out the sudden growth of personalised sid=me, and why?

  • How are editorial decisions made, if at all? (Score:3)

    by Tony Shepps ( 333 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @10:24AM (#1406843)
    Within the last few months we've had "stories" concerning Roblimo's idea of what kind of women make good geek wives and several movie reviews from Jon. Since these did not serve to improve the community, were downright poor if they were considered to be editorials, I wonder if there is a /. editorial board or whether you would consider forming one.

    Other folks have written about editorial independence and about the quality of the stories; this is an entirely different question. A related question would be: could you perhaps identify more clearly which items are news, which are columns, which are editorials, and which are fluff? Traditional (i.e., "dead") media is adept at giving this kind of context to their stories, and it would be most helpful to your readers.

  • Is Hemos ever going to become a physician? (Score:3)

    by heroine ( 1220 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @10:30AM (#1406844) Homepage
    It sounds like becomming a physician is what Hemos has always and still always wants to do, whether you listen to Geeks in Space or read the posts. Sometimes a taste of the real world is all it takes to make you realize changing out of something was a bad idea.

  • Change of revenue stream? (Score:3)

    by Jon Peterson ( 1443 ) <jon@@@snowdrift...org> on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:23AM (#1406845) Homepage
    Currently /. generates ad revenue and creates a fuzzy 'brand value'.

    Is there a scheme to move to something else? To move to subscriptions for certain features (e.g. making the ability to filter out AC posts or low moderation posts a subscription-only features)

    Or maybe to do more commercial tie-ins - such as interviews with Major hardware manufacturers, or QA sessions with corporate sponsorship.

    Or to boost the ad revenue by turning /. into a complete geek-focused portal with not just news and trivia but incorporating everything from freemail services and cheesy 'yourname.slashdot.org' web space to a peronsalised geek calendar and movie review service?

    Or, maybe andover.net is just looking to get bought out by one of the media industry's big players like VNU or Disney or ZD or whatever?

  • Let the readers decide? (Score:3)

    by moonboy ( 2512 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @10:51AM (#1406846)
    Obviously, you guys get a lot of submissions for stories everyday, all day long. You, being the entire Slashdot team, have to wade through all of these to find the ones "most worthy" of getting posted to the main page. I have submitted quite a few stories myself that I was interested in and I'm sure other geeks/nerds would have found them interesting as well, yet they were never posted. Obviously, you cannot post every story submitted, but if I've submitted stories that I found interesting and they were never posted, I have wonder how many other geeks posted stories that I would have been interested in and never had the opportunity to read?

    My question: Is there some way we, the readers, could view a larger portion of the submitted stories whether they get posted to the main page or not?

    Kind of an overflow buffer, if you will. Obviously, duplicates and nonsense stories referencing "grits" would have to be done away with, but I feel that Slashdot could provide much more information than it currently does. From the reader perspective, more quality content is definitely better and from a business standpoint, more stories equals more valid page hits for Slashdot. We would all benefit.

    ----------------

    "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein

  • Utopia (Score:3)

    by rawlink ( 5781 ) <rawlink@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:29AM (#1406847)
    Have you thought of moving to a more enlightened state (pun intended) such as California (things like cheap broadband, and more peers)?

  • New Articles (Score:3)

    by nerpdawg ( 6937 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @08:10AM (#1406848)
    Do you see slashdot staying primarily as it's been in the past (collecting links to news on other sites and having discussions), or are you planning on running with the idea of gathering new material as you have recently with the interviews? In short, do you see slashdot doing more original journalism in the future?
  • It's pretty easy to find the answer to the relationship between Rob Malda, Blockstackers, and Andover.Net. The way you find it is to search the SEC EDGAR database [sec.gov] for documents related to Andover.Net.

    For those of you not familiar with EDGAR, this is the on-line database that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission provides so that investors have access to the legally required filings of companies that have gone public.

    I played around with it today, and this is the most effective query that I could compose. You should be able to just click the following link and see all of the documents related to Andover. Some of these documents discuss the how nature of Rob's contract with Andover, the relationship between Andover and Blockstackers, and related subjects.

    http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/sr ch-edgar?ANDOVER+ADJ+NET [sec.gov]

    --

    Dave Aiello

  • Privacy and IPO (Score:3)

    by arivanov ( 12034 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:14AM (#1406850) Homepage
    What is going to be your policy on:
    1.(l)User data.
    2. Advertisements:
    2.1. Are you going to continue to handle advertisements yourself?
    2.2. Are you going to allow companies like doubleclick to handle advertising on slashdot?

  • Will slashdot integrate Andover.net? (Score:3)

    by eshefer ( 12336 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:28AM (#1406851) Homepage Journal
    Yes.. I know that you are thinking I probably got the two sites mixed up in the title...

    Slashdot is, imho, more influential then all the sites Andover owns put together. Untill this linux/Open-source craze came along and Andover.net bought /. and FM very few people actually HEARD of andover at all..

    Andover is now a public company, and as such it holds certain responsabilities to it's shareholders, growth being the most obvious one.

    To do this Andover needs to exploite Slashdot's brand, as I see very little other value within Andover's arsenal. The current situation of Andovers stock is a good indication of pressure that might build on you guys to "sell out" in various ways (some of them might actually be good, IMHO) like expanding the focus of /. to non technical issues and some even more radical posibilities.

    how do you guys see Slashdot and that your small insignificate Andover part collaborating together, through this? what's going to happen? should I buy the stock or not?? (just kidding)


    --------------------------------

  • Here's two questions (Score:3)

    by JamesKPolk ( 13313 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:08AM (#1406852) Homepage
    1) What is the deal with the slash source code? It would pacify a lot of criticism if the current slash code were released, even if it were broken, ugly, and full of syntax errors. I suggested a public CVS setup in another thread, is this something you're looking at?

    2) Has the andover.net acquisiton gone as well as you hoped it would, as far as making the site better?

  • slash code change. (Score:3)

    by quasistatic ( 28072 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @08:51AM (#1406853) Homepage
    have you ever considered changing the base slash code to something other than straight perl? i'm wondering if you've considered changing to a mod_perl or java servlet world which, with some improvements to the html, would result in a much faster slashdot? i check slashdot multiple times a day on a t1 and still have some speed issues when requesting the site. i would have to believe that something like java servlets would greatly increase the speed of the site.

    jesse.
  • Why would the code need to be cleaned up? It looks good in lynx and netscape, which is surely a good enough practical acid test


    <rant quality="weary">



    Is there really any other industry on earth that would put up with sloppy, incompetent, unprofessional workmanship just because it looked good on the surface? I mean, come off it. I like /., but I can quite see why these guys don't want to release their engine. If my engine was producing output as bad as this I wouldn't release it either.



    And it isn't any sort of excuse to claim that the majority of websites (particularly expensive ones) are also produced by sloppy incompetents who wouldn't know what an RFC was if it fell out of a tree on them. This is true. We know it. We can do better. And if we can't do better, what claim do we really have to being techs?


    </rant>



  • Re:Are you changing the domain? (Score:3)

    by jeremy f ( 48588 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:10AM (#1406855) Homepage
    Seriously -- this place is no longer a nonprofit org. They sell advertisements, they hold contests (with $10,000-$30,000 being the prize range), and they hold stock in the web page itself (okay, so they hold stock in Andover).

    Legally, this place needs to change it's domain to slashdot.com -- there's money going into Rob & Jeff's pockets, guaranteed.
  • I'm curious when/if you plan on releasing a newer version of the slash code? How far behind is the stuff that you've released?

  • Katz... (Score:3)

    by CmdrPinkTaco ( 63423 ) <emericle AT chubberware DOT com> on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @12:12PM (#1406857) Homepage
    will we EVER be able to moderate him down???
    ----------------------------------------- ---

  • Moderating bad things up (Score:3)

    by ShaggyZet ( 74769 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:17AM (#1406858)
    Are you going to do anything to make sure that good (valid) points that don't paint a rosy picture of all things Open Source aren't moderated into oblivion?

    I for one really like to be able to browse comments what are sorted by moderation, largely to get rid of the offtopic stuff, but it's gives a distorted view of what slashdot readers really think.

  • No AC's allowed..... (Score:3)

    by Cplus ( 79286 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:52AM (#1406859) Homepage Journal
    I think this is a great idea, but it would be very important that no AC's were allowed to comment on the incoming stories and we would have to control ourselves to commenting on them only if they're a hoax or otherwise not /. material.

    Then when a story was actually posted the comments on its validity as a story could be removed or available separately. This would also give people some lead time on their comments and allow those dedicated enough to do some real research.

  • Slashlag (Score:4)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:18AM (#1406860) Homepage
    I'm not trying to be a prick (or a troll), but I have noticed that a certain amount of lag before stories are posted has begun to appear since /. was bought by Andover.

    For instance, oftentimes there will be a delay of as must as two days (as with the Uri Geller story) from the time that I see an article on Linux Today or another news site and when I see it here. I've been around /. for a while now, and this wasn't always the case.

    Is this just a case of waiting for a "slow news day", or is it something more insideous like ANDN wanting to maintain some editorial control over /.? For that matter, has ANDN imposed any other constraints that we're not aware of? Are there any circumstances where you'd see yourself having to remove libelous posts or posts which violate SEC rules (read here: stock manipulation)? Or has Andover been a benevolant king which is dedicated to protecting the happy-go-lucky days of Slashdot using its deep pockets to keep your legal butts covered?

    ----

  • A question for you (Score:4)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@yahoGINSBERGo.com minus poet> on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:11AM (#1406861) Homepage Journal
    How will this affect the direction of Slashdot? (In other words, will you need to avoid topics which could adversely affect Andover's share price? Will you need to become more "mainstream"? Or will it be more "business as usual"?)

  • Quite Simply (Score:4)

    by !Xabbu ( 1769 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @08:09AM (#1406862) Homepage
    What new and wonderful reasources will andover bring to slashdot. More Hardware? More employees? More slashdot native news articles/"reporters"?

    - Xabbu

  • Re:Slashlag (Score:4)

    by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:28AM (#1406863) Homepage
    I bet they're just swamped.

    Suggestion: make the incoming queue be a page which gets moderated. Then, the editors just have to pick from the stuff at the top.

    --

  • Development issues (Score:4)

    by dr_labrat ( 15478 ) <spooner@g m a i l .com> on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:06AM (#1406864) Homepage
    What important changes do you plan on making to the whole discussion thing?

    Isn't it about time the moderation abuses and "first posters" are addressed?

    Will we ever be able to moderate or score the articles themselves?

  • Source code (Score:4)

    by FascDot Killed My Pr ( 24021 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:13AM (#1406865)
    What is the release date for the (latest) Slash source code?

    What license will it be released under?

    Will it be immediately forked into "public" and "private" versions (i.e., will Slashdot be running the with patches submitted by users)?

    If/When patches are rejected/not-applied to the main tree, will an explanation be given (similar to Linux) or will they just be dropped (similar to Slashdot story submissions)?


    ---

  • BlockStackers? (Score:4)

    by jconley ( 28741 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:37AM (#1406866) Homepage
    What is the status of the both of you with BlockStackers? Is there a relationship between BlockStackers and Andover.net?

    J

  • Are you changing the domain? (Score:4)

    by imac.usr ( 58845 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:04AM (#1406867) Homepage
    to slashdot.com?


    (moderators: not meant as flamebait!)



  • A Question about Article Submissions.. (Score:4)

    by JohnDonagher ( 86927 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:26AM (#1406868) Homepage
    I think the moderation system has been improved to a point where, with my threshold set to 2, I don't see anything I don't want to see.

    I do think there is one part of Slashdot that is still unfairly biased towards the site operators and their opinions. I'm sure Slashdot gets a few hundred article submissions per day, but we are limited to reading maybe 12-15 articles per day, and those are the ones which the folks in charge are interested in or what they think we are interested in. This is a commonplace system, but I still find fault with it, if the site is truly going to be an "open forum."

    Is there any site reorganization in the works, or perhaps an expansion of the moderation system to include the approval and rejection of article submissions?


    John

  • +1 posting (Score:4)

    by Pyrrus ( 97830 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @08:04AM (#1406869) Homepage
    Don't you think that it is unfair that people with high karma post at +1 even when the comments don't deserve that. This forces moderators to waste points to bring comments back down. Shouldn't everyone have to work as hard to post good comments? I'm not naming any names here, though.

    also, please don't take away AC posting, I've posted as an AC for privacy several times and think that everyone should have that right.

  • Slashdot Parodies (Score:4)

    by Da Penguin ( 122065 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:17AM (#1406870)
    There have been many Slashdot parodies (Suckdot...etc). Now that Slashdot is becoming corporate, will you let them continue or will you sue them?

    " A company can be judged by the size of their lawsuits "

  • On a personal note.... (Score:5)

    by mackga ( 990 ) <eatshitanddie@slashdot.org> on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @08:55AM (#1406871) Homepage
    Since most of the technical questions have been asked: how has the whole recent experience affected you guys personally? It seems that being acquired by Andover.net was followed, relatively, quickly by the IPO. I'm just wondering if the whole adventure has changed your overall outlook, future plans, drinking habits,...etc. You know, the little stuff that matters.

  • One Definitive Day (Score:5)

    by Effugas ( 2378 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @08:13AM (#1406872) Homepage
    It seems like whenever we embark on some crazy job, there ends up being one day we always remember, one set of circumstances that we could never have experienced without beginning that journey but never have predicted in advance.

    Since the creation and subsequent explosion of Slashdot, what one day stands out in your mind as the most randomly odd of them all?

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com

  • Slashdot Source Code (Score:5)

    by roystgnr ( 4015 ) <roy&stogners,org> on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @09:02AM (#1406873) Homepage
    Which of the following would be the most effective course of action to get you to release (current!) Slash source code?

    1. Post annoying reminders to every /. article
    2. Using the word "hypocrites" a lot
    3. Slay the Andover Alien Masters and destroy their Mind Control Ray
    4. Procure many beautiful women dedicated to the open source cause
    5. Crack slashdot.org, download source code, leave kewl hAx0r d00d cracked page to brag from
    6. Bribe Hemos
    7. Get a lab insider to "innocently" copy code to an unclassified server
    8. Dress up as Rob, go to Andover, claim "Hello, my name is CmdrTaco. I misplaced my copy of the Slashdot code, can I make another?"
    9. Send the Slashdot gang a free case of beer.
    10. Poison the beer, use the antidote as a bargaining chip.
    11. Cry
    12. Get Nitrozac to cry

  • complete the following sentences.... (Score:5)

    by kevin lyda ( 4803 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:29AM (#1406874) Homepage
    "my college project turned into a huge success, so now i'm going to __________."

    "since the recent monster ipo we've found it much easier to pick up ________."

    "in spite of it all, my parents still wish i would _______."

    "if you had it all to do over again, the name of your site would be ________."

    and lastly, i'm sure it's been asked a hundred times already, but what's you're favourite linux system call and why?

  • What happened to browser and os stats? (Score:5)

    by John Ratke ( 7436 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @09:35AM (#1406875)
    There used to be a slashdot page where we could see the daily hit count by browser and OS. While sometimes depressing (2/3's browsing from Windows!), it was very interesting. Is there any chance we will see this again? Is this now information that you feel you need to keep private for some reason? What about the number of registered slashdot users? Could we find that out?

  • Slash 0.4 (Score:5)

    by kuro5hin ( 8501 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:11AM (#1406876) Homepage
    For a long time now, those who want to use and improve the slashdot code have been wondering, and waiting, and hoping for the much promised 0.4 tarball. Many of them have in fact become quite irate about the lag between code releases, the lack of a CVS server, and the overall appearance that the slashdot gang doesn't practice what it preaches ("release early, release often"). How would you respond to these criticisms, and do you intend to change the development practices in any way in the future?

    "Moderation is good, in theory."
    -Larry Wall

  • What About the Slashdot Story Submission Queue? (Score:5)

    by nullspace ( 11532 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @08:11AM (#1406877)
    I think it would be interesting to be able to view the story submission queue. That is, what type of stories are being submitted, which stories are being rejected and why, and other interesting trivia. Would you allow users to be able to view this queue, and if not, why?

  • DeCSS (Score:5)

    by Col. Klink (retired) ( 11632 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:46AM (#1406878)
    The DVDCA named /. as a John Doe in the DeCSS case. Will you guys be personally fighting this battle, or letting others? Will you be donating $ to EFF to help fight this battle?

  • Lawyers (Score:5)

    by Poe ( 12710 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:22AM (#1406879) Homepage
    I would hope, for the sake of your survival, that you have a certain ammount of legal expertise on board now. Does "all comments are owned by those who posted them" really cover all legal possibilities? Are there still circumstances where you would have to delete a comment? What about slanderous / copyrighted / government secret material? Now that you actually have money, you are probably more of a target for legal action...

  • Re:Here's two questions (Score:5)

    by um... Lucas ( 13147 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:31AM (#1406880) Journal
    I agree full-heartedly with #1 of above.

    It seems strange that the "voice of the open-source community", as Andover has been built up to be in the rest of the media, can't get it's act together and release the source to slashdot on a timely basis. How hard can it be to copy a few Perl scripts into a directory, and export some empty tables from MySQL? Other people could attempt to document it, if you guys are too busy to deal with that.

    Also, in as far as licenses go, it seems that Slashdot has it's own opensource license. It's based on the GPL, but requires you to use the slashdot logo if you actually use the code on a site, with the alternative of paying money.... That seems to fly in the face of the GPL and Opensource.

    (It's funny... i was driving to work this morning and these issues popped into my mind for the last 30 minutes of the drive... show's a little about how interesting my life is, huh? :)

    So anyways... put your money where your mouth is and provide us with slashes source on a timely basis and under the GPL, not the Slashdot Pseudo Public License.

    Thanks.

  • Meta-Moderation. (Score:5)

    by Royster ( 16042 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:13AM (#1406881) Homepage
    How well is Meta-Moderation working? What pergentage of Meta-Mods are unfair? Do you think that it has improved Moderation on /.?

  • Signal to noise (Score:5)

    by scrutty ( 24640 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:18AM (#1406882) Homepage
    I think a lot of longish term slashdot readers might agree with my point that the quality of discussion threads on slashdot has been in serious decline for a little while now. It was bad enough with the first post mania and all, but with the grits guys and the petrified girls and the YAF.. invading every thread now, not to mention the downright obscene garbage posters, the cut and paste merchants and the Beatles guy.

    I am finding it less and less worthwhile and enjoyable to follow the discussions , as well as less coherent.

    Have you any plans to further deal with this sort of thing, above and beyond moderation ?

    Is it time for the end of AC posting, esp seeing as there is the post anonymously option ?

    And lastly, do you find these trends a little depressing?

    I know I do and I'm just a reader.

  • Direct reporting... (Score:5)

    by drenehtsral ( 29789 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:14AM (#1406883) Homepage
    Lately we've been seeing more features and interviews and other forms of Direct Reporting (hint! This is good!). Now that SlashDot has more resources at it's disposal, is this content generation likely to keep increasing? I still enjoy lots of linked stories, but sometimes it's nice to have a geek point of view alongside the normal media...
  • The W3C made a tool to clean up HTML called HTML Tidy [w3.org]. Just for kicks, I tried it on Slashdot. It blew a fuse after logging several thousand violations. :) Usually works great though.

    Any idea if Slashdot's code will ever be cleaned up? Would open sourcing help things?

  • Re:ACs (Score:5)

    by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:44AM (#1406885) Homepage
    It seems like the quality of discussion on /. is going downhill very fast.

    Browse at +1, you'll see the comments. Browse at +2 (or better), you'll see a greater ratio of quality/comments. Just because there are more lame posts, doesn't mean there's less quality. Increase your browse level, and lower the signal/noise ratio.

    The ACs are working very hard to disrupt threads with NATALIE/NAKED/COMMIE/GRITS posts.

    Some do, some don't. I browse at +1, and see none of them (just those who reply to them, and are +1 -- but they're at the end of the comments). Rob has provided, in all his Wisdom, a way to avoid ACs -- but he will not silence them. It's his decision to allow, and your decision on what to read.

    What plans do you have (if any) for bringing more adults into the slashdot fold and to try and make for a more inteligent discussion.

    ... No comment ;)
    ---

  • Editorial Independence (Score:5)

    by JordanH ( 75307 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:09AM (#1406886) Homepage Journal
    Other media take steps to separate the Editorial from the business functions so as to maintain Editorial Independence.

    What will Andover be doing to make sure we can continue to trust that Slashdot Editorial policy is not in thrall to advertisers' concerns?


    -Jordan Henderson

  • Karma Shares! (Score:5)

    by Raffy ( 89138 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:15AM (#1406887) Homepage Journal
    So, now that you guys are on the brink of obscene wealth, and slashdotters have put up with well, stuff for so long (and the Natalie Portman trolls, and the ACs from hell, and. . . and. . . ), instead of granting Mod Points, will you be handing out Andover.net shares, too? ;-)

    Oh, shit, Signal11 is gonna be rich. . . .

    Rafe

    V^^^^V

  • Critical Person Insurance (Score:5)

    by jsm2 ( 89962 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:20AM (#1406888)
    How crucial are the two of you to Andover's vision of /.? Do you have a clause like Charles Schultz' that says that nobody else can edit slashdot? What happens if the whole thing stops being fun for you (as it very well might)? Do Andover suck in the loss, or do we get introduced to "Scrappy-Doo and SuperGeek, the ALL NEW slashdot crew"? Has Andover.net taken out critical person insurance on you in case something dreeadful happens? Could they, in principle, fire your asses, or force you to resign on matter of principle?

    etc, etc, (thud)

    jsm

  • Comment removed (Score:5)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:23AM (#1406889)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • SlashDot, Andover, and Wall Street (Score:5)

    by John Murdoch ( 102085 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @08:02AM (#1406890) Homepage Journal

    The Wall St. Journal, two weeks ago, devoted considerable space to the Andover IPO--strongly suggesting that the only perceptible value in the company was SlashDot, and demonstrating the unorthodox steps that Andover took to get the IPO underwritten. (Notably, the WSJ reports that when Andover initially tried to get underwriting it owed the two of you more money than the entire assets of the firm.) The WSJ has subsequently referred to Andover, by name, as an example of an IPO with a stratospheric share price, but no substance. Nobody, anywhere, has suggested that there is any commercial value to Andover other than SlashDot.

    Much as I appreciate the sense of humor you have, and the contributions of the SlashDot community, it seems to me that the really valuable thing about SlashDot is the software--the database system that permits posting, moderation, meta-moderation, etc. It is a work of genius. And, a very valuable thing.

    The Wall St. Journal has all but called Andover a bubble--(or, to be less kind, a pump 'n dump). The only way to prove them wrong is to achieve corporate earnings that support the current share price. The only real asset of Andover is SlashDot--and the only real asset of SlashDot is the software. And the software is supposed to be Open Source.

    So how are you guys going to make earnings?

  • My Questions (Score:5)

    by Carnage4Life ( 106069 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @08:01AM (#1406891) Homepage Journal
    The first one is related to a thread created by slashdot's worst troll ever [slashdot.org]. Even though I do not like the posters methods the question he raises is interesting...especially since I'm a CS geek. Here goes:
    1.) Right now slashdot is rather inefficient in that we download the same comments over and over again when rereading an article searching for new comments. Is there anything in the works to deal with this inefficiency or will we be allowed to toy with this in the slashdot source (if it ever comes out) and submit these modifications? Will an NNTP slashdot be considered to deal with this?

    My second question has to do with Karma ...
    2.) Is there a chance that the amount of Karma needed for a default posting of 2 be increased to at least twice the current value(25)?

    I ask this because I already post at a default of 2, which implies I must be a knowledgeable member of the slashdot community which I do not believe I am. Especially considering the fact that it is relatively easy to spew dogma for a month or so and get 25 Karma then revert to one's true self (Signal 11 [slashdot.org] has proved the value of spewing dogma and karma whoring for triple digit Karma). I would feel more comfortable if the Karma needed for a default posting off 2 was higher so that there is more chance that the person posting is actually an intelligent member of the slashdot community who posts are interesting and insightful instead of a karma whore who has no true value to add to a discussion. Because of this I now read posts at a moderation of 3 or higher.

    3a.)What is the slashdot official position on the phantom discussion groups e.g. Trolltalk [slashdot.org] or Moderation [slashdot.org]?
    I notice that some of the early posts to these discussions have disappeared (probably archived);
    3b.)How do I get to read the old posts to the phantom groups since there's no assosciated story to do a search on?

    And finally I have only moderated once and this was about a month after I got an account. Since then I have not moderated...
    4a.)I would like to know if this is because of the rule that users who view slashdot excessively don't get to moderate?
    4b.)And if so exactly how many page views per day/week/month is viewed as excessive by whatever algorithm does the selection?

  • Personal life? (Score:5)

    by Mark A. Storer ( 122997 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2000 @07:33AM (#1406892) Homepage
    (this is not a yes/no question)

    I guess this is a question for both of you:

    How's life in meatspace?

    Lets just lay all technical issues aside for a moment. I want to know Who You Are, as people, not webmasters.

    We have a pretty good idea of the comings and goings of your professional lives, but what about your friends, family, and groupies? Mmmm... groupies.

    I guess this is more of a request for a biography than any particular question, but don't let that put you off.

    Oh, one other question: Any plans on visiting KLUG any time soon?
  • While others have commented on the degrading S/N ratio of the user comments, I would like to bring attention to the degrading S/N ratio of the stories.

    I believe Slashdot got much of its "mature" geek following back when most of the headlines were apolotical in nature. A couple years ago, the biggest threads were generated while discussing new microarchitectures, physical limits of the lithography process, the size of the universe, and other *real* high-tech news. Since the stories were less subject to political debate, the S/N ratio was good. Now, the only "tech" stories are about nanotech (thanks hemos!) or the Aibo.

    With Andover.net now owning Slashdot, am I just SOL? I know that most of the stories are going to be Linux/GPL/Open Source related, and that's fine. But please, Please, *PLEASE*, don't forget that many of your readers are well educated, and would like to spend time thinking about something new and exciting in the tech world rather than reading 500 posts ending with M$ $ucks...
  • Rather than just a forum for the Linux/Open Source community, /. seems to be becoming more and more a general geek portal.

    Actually, in the beginning, /. actually posted stories on engineering, physics, space, philosophy and other topics that were actually interesting. Only in the last 12-18 months has it become a dedicated Linux/Open Source forum. I for one, would like it to go back to the "News for Nerds" theme, rather than the "Politics for Nerds" it is today.

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