Cloning and Other Fun Topics

First let me just post a little celebration:Yesterday Slashdot had a new hits high- for the first time we broke 100,000 hits in a single day (that's pages, not counting images people). I'm happy as a clam. And the Slashdot T-Shirts should be ready RSN. Now the bad news:

A lot of email and posting has been flying around about Slashdot, Geek, OpenScape.org, and several other web sites, and I want to give my 2 cents. First, I thank the many of you who appreciate Slashdot so much, that you are willing to defend it so strongly- but a few of you went to far. Other web sites are entitled to do their thing. If you don't like their thing, stay here. If you don't like my thing, go there. Or read both. I work damn hard to make sure that as many people as possible enjoy slashdot, but that doesn't mean there can't be competition. Hit the link below for more.

What I don't want to see happen is a dozen sites spring up that use Slashdot as their source. We work hard to compile news, and if another site popped up and used 75% of our articles, I would be annoyed. This has happened. In the worst cases, my name was stripped off of my writing, my images were stolen, and 75% of Slashdot was posted to other sites under another persons credit. This is wrong .

What I don't own is my layout. I didn't create the ide of putting articles on a homepage, with older articles next to it, along with other stuff. It would be tacky if somebody took the drop shadowed curved title bars, but for the most part, most of the way Slashdot looks and feels is up for the taking. I hope people credit my work if they are inspired by it- preferably by linking me back with one of my logos, but I certainly can't require it. This stuff is open guys.

Geek aimed to post primarily Original content. Slashdot aims to post a couple of original features each week, along with a hundred news bytes. OpenScape exists to talk about Netscape's source code activity. Gimp News Talks about, well, Gimp News. Freshmeat posts unix software releases. These sites all have crossover, and thats ok. The open nature of this makes it work.

Me and the rest of the guys here work hard to make this site happen. Its a pure labor of love. New sites that want to pop up and compete with us will have to work hard to achieve the kind of Quality I've tried to maintain. If they do this, then I'll need to up the ante again to compete.

I have one comment though for upcoming webmasters:Get used to flames. I bet that any web site that gets more than a few thousand hits a day has a webmaster that is used to getting his regular dose of flame. Especially when the topics is something that people are so passionate about. The Internet is a 2 way communication tool, so the more people who hear you, the greater chance that someone will vocalize their disagreement. Often in the form of flames. It sucks, but its the facts.

Anyways, I appreciate everyone sticking up for us. But please express your love by visiting Slashdot. By posting good comments. By submitting good articles. Maybe even by visiting our sponsors, or buying a CD or Book from the links on the homepage, or even by just writing and saying thank you. Flames rarely help anything, but they usually make the flamee look bad. If you are flaming in the name of Slashdot- you make all of us look bad too. Typically I screw up enough to make us look plenty bad already *grin*.