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IRC Forum w/ CmdrTaco & Hemos Tonight at 8pm Eastern 433

Posted by CmdrTaco from the come-one-come-all dept.
Tonight on irc.slashnet.org in #Forum Hemos & I will be hanging out answering users' questions. This is your chance to ask about the moderation system, story selection, or the technology upon which Slashdot is built. (No Biz questions please ;) It's been a long time since we last did this, and we're hoping we can answer questions and get some feedback on some new ideas too. We'll see ya there.
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IRC Forum w/ CmdrTaco & Hemos Tonight at 8pm Eastern More

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

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  • Log-File? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hemabe ( 532570 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:02AM (#6182526)
    I would like to see a log-file. Is this planned?

  • oh dear (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Library Spoff ( 582122 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:02AM (#6182529) Journal
    something tells me the trolls are rubbing their hands with glee.....

  • Stats and background (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:04AM (#6182559) Homepage Journal
    Hey, what I have always wondered about Slashdot is some of the stats and demographics of the Slashdot crowd. Not from a business perspective (although I am sure some would kill for that info), but from a purely academic perspective. Additionally, I've wondered if there is any social science thesis work behind the growth and evolution of the friends/foes dynamic of the Slashdot crowd.

  • The question I'll ask if I'm around... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MathJMendl ( 144298 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:05AM (#6182577) Homepage
    ..what ever happened to JonKatz?

  • Why not have an actual slashdot interview? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:06AM (#6182591) Homepage Journal
    And why no biz questions? Is this only to protect you from enbarasment, or what?

  • Supply a log... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:07AM (#6182609) Homepage Journal

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

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

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

  • I recently reinstalled mIRC after a couple of years of not accessing IRC. I am about ready to uninstall as it is full of the terminately brain dead and so few people who actually type an English sentence of five words or more. Sooo, I am looking for this - it may elevate the norm.

    So again, what time?????

  • Bad timing, but.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by irc.goatse.cx troll ( 593289 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:08AM (#6182615) Journal
    I'm sure I'll end up sleeping through it (sleep schedual is a bit off currently), but I'd love to know why they never publicly announce when/what they change? Many users would love if there were a slash.slashdot.org or something to just post storys whenever slashdot.org syncs with the newest slashcode, whats changed, etc.

    • Re:Bad timing, but.. (Score:5, Funny)

      by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:47AM (#6183018) Journal
      What would be the point in that???

      Slashcode/Slashdot Merge News

      Thu Jun 12 09:15 2003: Merged to get new design change to games section... Something got fucked up.

      Thu Jun 19 10:18 2003: Merged to get new friend/foe improvements... Something got fucked up.

      Thu Jun 26 05:27 2003: Merged to get new moderation system improvements... Something got fucked up.

      Thu Jul 5 8:02 2003: Merged to get new friend/foe improvements... Something got fucked up.

      Etc...

      Thu Nov 31 10:11 2004: Merged to solve all the problems we've had for the past 2 years... Expect things to be fucked up for the next few weeks.

  • Could you give the actual time, for the benefit of those of us who don't use fuzzy clocks?
    • ummm nevermind.. didn't RTFheadline.
    • As this is a global site, UTC is more appropriate when quoting time.

      None of that daylight savings bullshit for me!

      • Re:0000 hrs UTC (Score:5, Insightful)

        by morgajel ( 568462 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:35AM (#6182915)
        as has been repeated many times, this is not a global site. it's an US site run by people in the US. Hemos and company are from michigan (originally), which is in EST. if they want to use it, their choice.

        While I agree that it would have been nice to have utc for those in other countries, I get sick of people bitching at the american websites for thinking in familiar terms. Ever notice how they list stuff in terms of USD? that's cause that's what they have in their piggy bank.

        Quit being so fricking politically correct- I hate people that pull that crap. /me apologizes for the flame

        • Re:0000 hrs UTC (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:47AM (#6183019)
          One thing Ive often wondered about regarding the development of HTML was : Why did nobody, not MS, not netscape... nobody ever implement a time tag extension. ie some thing like this

          <time timezone="UTC+8">
          13:00
          </time>

          Then the broswer could just translate it into the readers timezone automagically.
          • I'm not quite sure where this would fit in (server, HTTP protocol, browser, ???) or if it already exists and just isn't widely used...

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

            Wouldn't it be nice if webservers would timestamp a page and say whe

        • Re:0000 hrs UTC (Score:2, Insightful)

          by BJH ( 11355 )
          And as has been stated many times before, you only think it's not a global site because you live in the US.
          A poll a while ago showed that around half of /. readers are actually living outside the US. Showing UTC is not being "politically correct" - it's being helpful to all those people who don't know and don't care what EST is.

        • Re:0000 hrs UTC (Score:3, Insightful)

          by 1u3hr ( 530656 )
          Quit being so fricking politically correct

          Most people know which time zone they're in (as in GMT+/-x, personally I'm in +8), but if you're not an American, have no idea when "8pm Eastern" is.

          And I know that you don't care; so we can just leave it at that.

      • In fact, it's a global world. I'd love to see UTC adopted universally (heh, er, worldly!). When I bring it up to my co-workers, they just look at me like I'm crazy though. ;)
  • ... that this will be a huge troll/slashdot hater fest? The few voices who actually want to talk will probably be drowned out. But good luck anyway.
  • will there be a duplicate session on IRC tomorrow night too?

  • curious why no biz questions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ron_ivi ( 607351 ) <sdotno@NOSpAM.cheapcomplexdevices.com> on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:12AM (#6182662)
    would q's like "when a slashcode site scales does it (HW, bandwidth, etc) become prohibitively expensive / would a lighterweight discussion framework scale more cheaply" be too close to a biz questions?


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

  • how long it will take to /. the irc server? :)
  • I want to know how you become a programmer or editor for Slashdot. As much time as I spend on here (and other message forums) it seems I should be getting paid in some way. ;)

  • Duplicate selection process? (Score:5, Funny)

    by donutz ( 195717 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:14AM (#6182684) Homepage Journal
    This is your chance to ask about the moderation system, story selection, or the technology upon which Slashdot is built.

    I've noticed that not all stories on Slashdot are duplicates. How do you choose which stories to duplicate (and triplicate, and possibly in some circumstances quadricate)?

    Thanks!

    ---

    • On a more serious note, can someone please ask... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @12:07PM (#6183260) Journal
      I'm not going to be able to make it to this tonight (whenever "tonight" is for the editors, it's going to be really late in the night here), so could someone please bring up the following:

      1. Congratulate the editors on finally cutting down on the number of dupes posted - it's been ages since I've seen one.

      How has this been acheived: via technology or a more human factor?

      2. Ask the editors when they plan to:

      i) start checking story submissions for basic spelling and grammar errors;
      ii) start checking that the actual stories aren't well-known hoaxes;
      iii) start editing the story titles so that they are more easily found via searches (eg, a chess story should have some chess reference in the story title, rather than being called "Man Last Stand vs Machine" or whatever); and
      iv) start offering bittorrents straight off the bat when it's relevant (eg, a story on a new movie trailer being made available for download, latest patch for a popular game, new distro launch).

      3. Ask the editors to update polls more frequently.

      Now that ChrisD's left, polls seem to linger well past their sell-by-dates. Chris said once that he posted new polls after x number of days or y number of votes, whichever came first. If I remember correctly, x was about 3-4 and y was roughly 25,000-30,000, so the recent poll about "Favorite fictitious drink" went on for far too long (7 days, nearly 60,000 votes). I'm sure some sort of automation could be used here.

      That's it really.
  • When story submissions are rejected, are they deleted from the database immediately?

    I ask because I'm curious if rejects could be redirected or resubmitted elsewhere with less effort than is currently required.

    If either A) Slashdot users could read their rejected story submissions at least for a little while after they're rejected, they could do things like easily submit them to my user-moderated open Slashdot queue [slashdot.org] or B) if there was some hook so they could dual-submit to your queue and someone elses jou

  • It's a fake! (Score:5, Funny)

    by FurryFeet ( 562847 ) <joudanx&yahoo,com> on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:17AM (#6182723)
    Disregarg that. It's obvious Slashdot has been hacked, and the story is bogus.
    How do I know? Read it. Proper grammar, good ortography, even a well-place apostrophe after the word "users". There's no way in hell Taco wrote this.

  • eh eh eh eh eh ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperDuG ( 134989 ) <[be] [at] [eclec.tk]> on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:17AM (#6182731) Homepage Journal
    Okay here goes ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    • Re:eh eh eh eh eh ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gwernol ( 167574 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:33AM (#6182899)
      Some very good questions here. One I would disagree with though is:

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

      While W3C compliance would definetely be a good thing, I don't think they should change the layout style just because its a few years old. I hate site that change layouts (CNN, BBC news...). Just as I'm comfortable with one organization of material it changes. For sites I visit often, stable layout is very important.

      As the old adage says, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. In general Slashdot's layout is clean and easy to read. By all means make incremental improvements but leave the basic, successful layout alone.

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

      Post something that's complete crap, have people argue against it, then change it to make those people look like idiots - Fixable by keeping old posts in a cache, and allowing readers to see what an article really followed-up on, which nobody will probably do. Personally, I think a spell-check function would be much better, and would cover the only valid use I see for this.

      Or post something pse

    • Just about every question you ask is answered in the FAQ...
      • Just about every question you ask is answered in the FAQ...

        To flame or not to flame ... that is the question ...

        I do realize that there are pat answers that could generally apply to these questions, but it would be nice since they are so frequently asked and are so frequently side stepped when answered.

        See these would be good conversation starters for an interview on irc. Where the leaders of slashdot could make an attempt to better explain or revisit some of the "Frequent" issues.

        What can I say, s

    • my tuppence (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SolemnDragon ( 593956 ) <solemndragon AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:46AM (#6183007) Homepage Journal
      oke. I like the /. format. I don't want them to get out an' i don't want to see them go slick journalism. I would like to see more substance on the read more page. I would also like to see changes in the rejected stories system. I like the basic colours and i think that there should be heavier penalties for trolls, overall penalties, not just filter points. I would like to see a mod UP point for statement coherency, as i've seen a lot of arguments that i furiously disagreed with, didn't think were all that insightful, but had to mod up for being well-put-together arguments. For those who think those don't exist on /., I've marked some of them as my friends.

      I agree that a lot of posts that are merely disagreement, sometimes with cogent argument behind them, get moderated as flamebait, etc., and this is not corrected nearly often enough in metamod.

      I have never dared submit anything conneted to stuff my geekfriends work with here in Boston, because i don't want to see them slashdotted. Fix that, get more off-beat interesting stuff.

      I won't be able to attend, so i redundantly request PUHLEEEEZE post the discussion the next day....?

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

      This is answered in the Slashdot FAQ. [slashdot.org]
      • Jesus.

        Is everyone here in favor of conformity. I'm so sorry that you just accept a faq as the end all be all of neccessary explainations. You ever think that maybe the "A" in the "FAQ" was a "LIE"?

        Unlimited mod points, that means they can mod as muich as they want to whatever they want. Think about it, not a "free/fair/open" system is it? Hence the question ...

        Get bent, please :-)

    • Answer. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Erris ( 531066 )
      If you think Slashdot sucks in all those ways, grab the Slashcode and make your own site to fill up with trolls. It's like people are getting paid to be disruptive [essential.org]. Oh wait, that's the topic. Sorry, my bad.
    • 10.) Have any of you ever thought about maybe bringing on some "professional" journalism type people? Someone who knows how to write the news and doesn't abuse the editor function as a place to put comments (michael comes to mind).

      You mean like they did with Jon Katz?
      Seriously, Slashdot's fine as it is and lately every time it has been tweaked it has only gotten worse. First it was the karma cap and then the demise of numeric karma, the zoo system is sheer idiocy, etc.
      "Slashdot is not a game" Fuck that! E
    • More than likely you're comment will suddenly be modded down to -1 and you'll notice you never seem to get that option to moderate anymore...

      All joking aside, seriously, this man has very good points. But from my experience and I have a good amount, I've been on Slashdot since January of 1998, only months after it really became live, I don't think Rob or the other guys are really going to give a damn.

      This website is their little pet project. Sure it's owned by OSDN, and sure they sell subscriptions, but
      • The only thing keeping my coming here, are the obscure things. Like the Bar Monkey or the Beer Cooler, little obscure things people build and run Linux on and stuff. The lego inventions, etc. Those are the only things I'd have a harder time finding on my own.

        Just for you, my friend...

        2003-06-09 14:16:56 Build a harpsichord/stegosaurus out of LEGO (articles,toys) (rejected)

        You can find out about it here [henrylim.org]. Personally, I thought the details about how he went about building a working LEGO harpsichord were fa

  • Music section on /. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi@yahoo.cLIONom minus cat> on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:19AM (#6182753) Journal
    Since we are coming up on the TWO YEAR anniversary of the last time the Radio section was updated, how about we put a bullet in it, and have....
    ...
    A Music Section!
    ...
    As I have mentioned before - /.ers all have one thing in common. They all listen to music. I would like to see RIAA-free bands, reviews of new independent albums, geeky stuff for the aspiring musician, news of places to see, buy, and make RIAA-free music.

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

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

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

    • Are you kidding? With Taco at the helm, the Music section would be nothing but The Who, which, although awesome since the Who rawk and all, would not amount to much independent music being heard!

  • This should be good (Score:5, Funny)

    by inc0gnito ( 443709 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:20AM (#6182767) Homepage
    If nothing else, I'm looking forward to the opportunity to see Taco spell on the fly. :)
    • If nothing else, I'm looking forward to the opportunity to see Taco spell on the fly. :)

      Your are supposed to be bitching and moaning about mod points, karma, story selection, slashcode or poor response times.

  • Daylight or standard? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HowlinMad ( 220943 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:24AM (#6182800) Homepage Journal
    So is it 8pm EST? or 8pm EDT?

  • IPV6 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by daserver ( 524964 )
    Sorry can't be there so I'll just ask here. When will slashdot be reachable from ipv6? ipv6.slashdot.org works but it points to a ipv4 adresse. Couldn't find any AAAA records with dig :(
  • Slashdot IRC Logs are always wonderful sources of wonderful information and history...

    - Question/Answer Session [slashnet.org]
    - Mirror of Signal_11 Discussion [sunir.org]
    - Another IRC log [slashnet.org]
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • UK - 1am BST (Score:4, Informative)

    by amembleton ( 411990 ) <aembleton&bigfoot,com> on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:28AM (#6182852) Homepage
    For those in the UK, it should be on at 1am tonight.

  • annoucement (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Cmd_taco and Hemos will be talking about their relationship............as lovers

  • Editor Abuses and Trolling (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Pave Low ( 566880 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:31AM (#6182876) Journal
    Why is it that you guys are constantly tweaking and fiddling with the closed moderation system with the purpose of improving discussions, and yet you continue let the editors (namely michael) troll their way around it?

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

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

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

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

  • Why is Slashdot un-indexable by Google? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:43AM (#6182986)
    Most of the links on Slashdot point to places on the site Google is forbidden from crawling by robots.txt. As a result, only the few items Google catches on the main pages, plus pages linked elsewhere, end up in Google. Try searching for some of your old stuff. I bet you don't find a lot of it. Google should also allow journals to be indexed.
  • This is going to be an ask slashdot, where we actually ask slashdot.

  • Feature requests okay? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kbielefe ( 606566 ) <karl@bielefeldt.gmail@com> on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:44AM (#6182995)
    I have to work tonight, and may not be able to join in. Can someone ask my question (more like a feature request) for me?

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

  • What's with the "Older Stuff" link not working anymore? It gives the same stuff you're already looking at. If you change the issue number back a day (from the 6th to the 5th, lets say) it works, but gives you the stuff for the 6th!

    • " What's with the "Older Stuff" link not working anymore? It gives the same stuff you're already looking at. If you change the issue number back a day (from the 6th to the 5th, lets say) it works, but gives you the stuff for the 6th!"

      I'm working on fixing that right now. Hopefully the fix will be live sometime tonight.

  • How? (Score:2, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 )

    How do I log into this IRC thing via the AOL InterWeb? My screen name is l337h4x0rzzzz@AOL.COM thanks

  • Serious Question, Not a Troll (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Goody ( 23843 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @11:54AM (#6183107) Journal
    I'm one of the folks that got $rtbl'ed for modding up the forbidden post awhile back. As a result I have never gotten moderation rights and metamoderation went away. About two months ago or so, metamoderation came back, but I still have never gotten moderation rights, so I assume I'm still $rtbl'ed.

    Was some code changed that $rtbl'ed users can now metamoderate, or is this a bug ? How are $rtbl'ed users worthy of metamoderation rights but not moderation ?
  • Looks like we get to Slashdot Slashnet! :)

  • 2 questions (Score:4, Funny)

    by smeeze ( 67566 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @12:17PM (#6183374) Homepage
    I'll ask two questions.

    1) what's with the dupes?
    and
    2) what's with the dupes?

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday June 12, 2003 @04:08PM (#6185560)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

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