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Net Users Taking Over the News 66

Posted by Roblimo from the I'm-just-filling-in dept.
Josh Picker writes "the BBC is running a good piece about Net Journalism. '..Net users are taking over their [journalists'] role, forging a new kind of people's journalism.' it even boasts 'Slashdot Threatens Extinction' as a heading. how ominous! overall, a good article that definitely pertains to you guys."
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net users taking over the news... More

net users taking over the news...

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  • Missed the point? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    With sites like Slashdot, the journalists are not really CmdrTaco, Hemos and co, but the contributors to the discussion groups. These contributors will look at each story and respond with their own opinions and known facts that may either support the original story, refute it, or add to it.

    Another example is the French Meridian story: the original article made it look like the French were trying to change a world standard, whereas contributors from France made us see that this was really a misrepresentation of France's plans for a millenium celebration. Without the net and sites like Slahdot, we would have read the original story and probably believed every word of it.
  • I don't mean to sound like I don't appreciate Slashdot; I do. But frankly, I think too many people are taking offense at implied paternalism in the BBC's comments about taking a role as a 'trusted guide.' Even as posters here scorn them for overestimating their importance, I think they may be underestimating it.

    'Open source journalism' doesn't quite work as a term for the new journalism... 'source' means something entirely different, and while 'open sources' for a journalistic article might enable more 'peer review,' the pluses and minuses of that are not exactly unknown to print journalism.

    Still, I want to bring into the focus the idea of journalism as performed by the open source community. Why? Because as wonderful as some of the results produced by open-source methodology are, the process has a BIG structural flaw which has not gone unnoticed: people do the work they feel like doing, rather than the work that needs to be done.

    Funnily enough, some people even think this is a 'strength' of the O-S community, one that shouldn't be tampered with. Graydon Hoare, in an essay on the five flaws he thought the 'bounty software' model had, listed as two of those flaws that developers would be putting work into projects other than those which personally interested or involved them. It's true that a developer will often put special effort into a 'cool' project, or one that fills a personal need... but Linus himself has said [technetcast.com] that the kernel has some "fairly obvious deficiencies" which didn't start becoming a priority until "certain large companies" were selectively picking benchmarks that showed up those deficiencies. At which point, he said, the schedule for those elements moved from "in a year" to "next week."

    In a word, the problem is "irresponsibility." That's not an insult; it simply means that the open-source community has traditionally operated by waiting until people found something they wanted to be responsible for. That means some projects get lavished with extra loving care... while some projects wait, and wait, and wait...

    But let's be honest. The stakes are fairly low. We're not a corporation that has to make a monthly profit or go bankrupt. If a "certain large company" were to FUD us so badly that we knew we'd attract not a single new user to Linux for the next five years, we'd probably take a month or so to moan about the unfairness of it all... and then get back to improving Linux and its applications for our own benefit. That "irresponsibility" can inhibit our progress towards where we'd like to go... but in the end, isn't all progress towards those goals really just gravy?

    But when that same "irresponsibility" is brought to journalism, the stakes are decidedly different. And the irony is, most Slashdot readers already know that, looking at the traditional media outlets. OJ trial? Monica Lewinsky? Amy Fisher? Is there a Slashdotter who hasn't cursed the media for its obsession with 'junk food news' like this?

    And the picture gets darker still. What about media that manage to find important issues, but don't choose to report on them responsibly? One of the Big Three networks thought, correctly, that the school massacre at Littleton was an important event to report upon... but seemed to think that it was more "fun" or more "sexy" to describe the possible involvement of that "dark underground organization known as the Goths," than to examine whether being harassed and taunted with the apparent silent consent of the administration might have had something to do with it.

    And yet, would we do any better? I would love to believe we would... and yet just here on Slashdot, I've seen so many stories that have turned out to contain misunderstandings or errors of fact, that I don't believe we're immune to the effects of "irresponsibility." At least traditional journalism has a long tradition of standards -- standards that have eroded, true, but standards -- about verifying stories with two or more sources, not relying on hearsay, reporting more than one point of view... I don't think that grassroots Internet journalism can truly afford to decline the experience that traditional journalism is offering to share.

  • Re:Arrogance? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 02, 1999 @08:09AM (#1820615)
    This is a cry from people who feel threatened, and are trying to diminish their so-called competition.

    The 'old-school' journalists are just gripy that their hard-worked years of studying journalism through the old channels puts them side-by-side with some "uneducated" folks (or geeks, as in the case of /.) that host their own weblogs.

    I'm personally glad that now I'm not purely limited to getting the 'news' from a handful of large corporations, but just as easily I can access hundreds of weblogs, grassroots pages, and the like.

    Just like with the printing press, now a whole new wave of peoples can be heard, not just the ones with all the money.
  • Correct on both counts! And "This Old PC" on Netly News begat "Cheap Computing" @ Andover.net, which led to doing more and more work for Andover, where I'm now a senior editor (and still write Cheap Computing every week). But I still own the limo service and I still hear from Virtuanna and Peter Bell and some of the old alt.tasteless crew.

    According to The Plan, I was going to remain invisible on slashdot (except for being the same grumpy member I've been for close to two years now) for some time yet, but jumped in, unprepared, along with Cowboy Neal today to keep the site alive while Taco and Hemos were powerless.
  • The "They" part in that sentence could just as easily be referring to *ADVERTISERS* as it could be to the seething masses. Certainly, in the *context* of this article one is led to believe that they are talking about the general public at large, but this may not necessarily be the case.

    I point this out because modification of context, selective reporting, and slanted view propagation is the biggest flaw with modern journalism in this day and age, and members of the "new mammal" methods of net journalism we're all getting excited about really need to ensure we stay tuned into this sort of thing.

    I have already witnessed the perversion of a relatively cool (in its infancy) news site into a totally bizaare "traditional journalist" controlled propaganda machine ...

    CNet News http://www.news.com/ used to be a cool place to go for news about what was going on in the tech world, but it rapidly became corporate-ised and nothing less than a useless drivel engine pouring out couched statement after couched statement, totally psycho-babble and propaganda tainted in the grand style of traditional press. It was truly revealing to have encountered that transition and seen it objectively.

    On account, in my view, of the fact that they were taken over by a corporate entity that had to PROTECT THE INTERESTS OF ITS PAYING CUSTOMERS - the ADVERTISERS. The reason modern news is so bad is that it's really only relevant to the advertisers, the people who are paying the big bucks to keep the CNN machine in place, and a large percentage of news on TV and traditional media is *IRRELEVANT* to the average member of society... this is why so much effort is made to make News interesting - violence, social decay, sex, all of these things serve to attract attention, and thats why we see so much crap on TV these days.

    Who can't avoid paying attention to the dying and the desolate as they are portrayed on television these days? (This explains rubbernecking, too, btw...) Its in our nature as human beings to *care* about these things when we see them, on a very, very fundamental level - Big Bad Old Media know this all too well, and use it to keep our eyeballs fixed in place, ready for the Big Advertising Moment in between news segments or as we thumb through the advertising copy.

    That's how the News works.

    Free Information such as we encounter on the Internet is totally free news.

    But in traditional media, there IS NO SUCH THING AS FREE INFORMATION - someone is paying for it.

    The only reason we're seeing journalists start to take notice of Net News as a new social mechanism, is because a) its cutting into their profit margin by "black hole"-ing eyeballs (viewing public), and b) by reporting about it in this fashion they can scare their CUSTOMERS into paying more money for their services as they function as the "Guides" to the "New Net Media".
  • Posted by oNZeNeMo (guns'n ammo):

    This article hits it right on the head as far as how they describe /. as filling a niche, but it is wrong on several other points. While it's good to hear /. described as a discussion area, it should also be noted that such discussion groups existed long before /. but have since been assulted by a deluge of newbies and spam to the point where most competent posters have given up. (It would be interesting to see some statistics on how effective usenet spam really is.) Slashdot has grown to be a refuge for people fed up with or entirely unfamiliar with usenet. It not only offers a spam-free discussion area, but also a relatively unmoderated environment and a fairly safe place to express one's views. While it only occasionally offers it's own articles, they appear much more frequent than what you'd find in usenet. Slashdot's surveys (as unofficial as they are) also are something unseen on the usenet.

    Other things from the article scared me. For starters, all the conversation about sites like geocities and online greeting cards (will it ever be too soon for the novelty of this beast to wear thin?). While some of these sites provide needed services, I am rather tired of seeing 300 web-based e-mail services and having to be on no less than 6 instant messanger services to be able to talk to my friends (At this point, you can only reach my by good ol' IRC).

    What scares me the most is all the talk of this "new level of product integration". With all the hype about push services like pointcast, I am really glad to see that much of this has faded into obscurity. In the past, one could pick up the newspaper, get on the computer, or turn on the TV to see the news, but now it seems the news wants to see YOU. Frankly, if my coffee machine has to read me the news every morning, I'm staying in bed.
  • No, it's better than journalism: it's training in thinking for yourself.

    No journalist can be impartial. The most they can do is express their prejudice in way that allows you to divine the truth as reflected in their point of view. The sort of impartiality we've grown to accept from our media hides a whole bundle of prejudices that we're so accustomed to, many would deny they existed at all.

    And sure, that's probably more effort than we've been expected, as readers, to exercise for quite a while. But it's not hard, and it will be necessary. When a new Internet user learns to ignore a "Good News" virus warning, they're developing the kind of scepticism we bred in our journalists in order to project our own innocence. In a world where news and rumours can come from any angle, I think we're better off without that innocence.
  • One advantage that Slashdot has over CNN Wired MSNBC et al is that the newsmakers of the Open Source/Freeware community are often online revealing insights, decisions etc in real time, or reacting to breaking stories without waiting to be interviewed by journalists. a lot of journalists do a reverse slashdot by getting their stories here much like Rob links to their stories.

    My suggestion for Slashdot is to print posts from these movers and shakers of the Open Source community (RMS, ESR, Alan Cox, Rasterman, Bruce Perens etc) in a different color (maybe red) to make them easy to spot among the hundreds of posts form anonymous cowards and unknowns of the /. community. I have no idea how the list of red-letter posters would be compiled or how one qualified, but it would be nice to be able to see instantly an interesting thread involving real import instead of adolescent posturing and idle speculation.
  • If I recall correctly, roblimo used to write the "This Old PC" on the pathfinder's netly news.

    He also used to post some fairly raunchy stuff in alt.tasteless. Heh.

  • That is, on the guy from MSNBC.

    On the one hand, you've got the guy from Cox saying that the users are breaking up the gatekeeper role of journalists by doing their own news. His response is that journalism must redefine itself in the face of changing times. While his ideas aren't perfect, it's still a good start for discussing the impact aggregators such as Slashdot and Linux Today have on journalism.

    Then, the MSNBC guy stands up and blathers on about the gatekeeper role *expanding* and how the TV news model is going to *take over* the free-range Internet news model.

    And guess what MSNBC's business model is? Yep. Coordinated content on the TV and Internet sides, so "the viewer can browse the Internet site to learn more about the TV news story". Do you think he's been a bit brainwashed on their corporate vision?

    MS has this idea of people sitting in front of their WebTV, clicking on hot buttons appearing on the newscast that bring up a picture-in-picture browser with MSNBC-approved content, letting Tom Brokaw guide their browsing to the "right" sites. Baloney. If I had that, I'd find myself minimizing Tom & Co. and checking out independent online opinion on the news.

    In fact, come to think of it, since I listen to radio for local news and use the Internet for the rest, I haven't watched TV news or read a newspaper in months.

    Gee. Someone had better tell MSNBC's investors.
  • Sites like /. are the most apparent focal points for a change in news sources, but there's a lot more to it than that.

    When the Oklahoma City bombing happened, there was a lot of discussion and posting, and I spent a good bit of the following 24 hours in various IRC channels. The "real" media outlets were jabbering on and on about how it was an "obvious Mideastern terror tactic," with zero thought about other possibilities.

    Meanwhile, the net denizens on IRC had already started pointing out things like "anyone can make a truck bomb," and that the ATF had offices in the Murrow building. When someone mentioned that the bombing had happened on the anniversary date of the Branch Davidian fire, it all came together. By the middle of that evening, we had put it all in place.

    It took another six hours for someone from CNN to mention the above ("this just in"), and the print media took almost two days to start reporting it.

    The Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta was another case. When they ran the video of the explosion, I taped it at home, and figured out from the speed of the fragments that it was a gunpowder bomb. One of the folks online asked me a lot of pointed questions about it, and logged off. Half an hour later, CNN used the same points I had made, in the same order, with the same phrasing.

  • Actually a lot of the charm about /. is that there are AC postings.

    IMNSHO, AC postings make the conversation more diverse. On other sites, people just make up names
    all the time and/or the conversation is just dominated by a few people (boring!)...
    The moderation policy, as it exists, mirrors the real world quite well (if you ignore childish
    behavior, it usually goes away). Likewize if poor posts are moderated down so nobody sees them...
    Editorial control of dissussions is minimum and group controlled (just like real life)...

    I suspect the very same people who deride AC posters, have self-importance issues, controlling
    tendencies or simply have desires to dominate all discussion that they are involved with (a sign of
    a low tolerance threshold...) Really, a 6 months? Isn't that a -bit- extreme?

    On /. I just read AC postings in a different mind-set (ready to forget it at any instant and
    move on)... And from time-to-time I also glance at the Score to see what other people think...

    As for the other things, filters for posters might be a good addition for those people who don't want
    to acknowledge the existance of people that they don't ever want to be seen agreeing with...

  • "If Slashdot were a mammal, most of our news sites would be the dinosaurs. Many journalists don't understand this and don't think it's journalism."
  • slashdot is an overgrown chat room

    Nobody really knows what Slashdot is, 'cause whatever it is, it's the first of it's kind.

    It didn't pop out of no where, of course.

    Slashdot is the latest and by far the MOST EFFECTIVE culmonation of a variety of net/news/chat phenomena that have grown and mutated over the past 10-15 years.

    Slashdot is a break-through, much larger than the sum of its parts.
  • No doubt! It seemed to be forever before anyone took the Internet seriously. Back in the text-based Telnet/FTP days, you could tell something was definitely happening. However, it took flashy pictures and mouse-clicking before the businesses took notice. Well, duh, I guess I am restating the obvious here...

  • Often, /. links to other sites of interest that have nothing to do with news reporting. Rather, they link right to where it's happening, rather than the people that are talking about it and predigesting it for us.

    And don't forget such juicy "news as it happens" tidbits such as the Gentlemen's Flamewar between ESR and RMS.

    --Joe

    --

  • You too can have your own discussion thread. This may be THE MOST IMPORTANT POST YOU EVER MAKE! Pay careful attention, and then punch Reply to This .

    • Post this message as a followup to the post by the first author listed below.
    • That post, move the list of names up by one, and place your name at the bottom of the list.
    • To ensure success, make sure to place a reference to how GNOME, KDE, vi, Emacs, Qt, GTK+, Linux, *BSD or Windows 'sucks' or 'rules' as compared to one of the others. Be creative. "*BSD rules and vi sucks!"

    As long as people keep following up to these posts, we'll create an ever growing cascade of followups! Instant discussion threads of your very own! Just imagine the IPO possibilities!!!?!!!?!?!???

    • Anonymous Coward
    • Anonymous Coward
    • Anonymous Coward
    • MEEPT!
    • Mr Z
    --Joe ;-)

    --
  • I read Slashdot every day. I love it. But I don't
    consider it journalism. Journalists research their stories, and investigate all sides of the story, and try and discover the truth. CmdrTaco, Hemos, and all the other guys look at a list of interesting submissions and then put the best of those out there. The don't really check to see if it's true, or if there's more to the story. That's not really a bad thing, but you have to be aware of it. As an example, just what is the truth in the Packetstorm story? At first it seemed Harvard and the Anti-Online guy were totally evil. Now it seems maybe there's more to the story. A journalist would have spent time gleaning information from all sides of the story. Slashdot provided a quick link to one side of the story.

    Journalists do their best to tell me the truth, and when they betray that truth I get angry and stop reading their work. Slashdot gives me the opportunity to discover the truth for myself, if I want to sit down and work at it.

    And that's not journalism.
  • Interesting comments. You all might wish to read the full speech, not just the "sound bite" extracted by the BBC.

    Here [yelvington.com] is where you'll find it.

    Sorry about the tardiness of this reply; I have been vacationing in southwest England.

    I would certainly agree that traditional media, in general, do a terrible job of performing as a trusted guide -- which is exactly why I issued that challenge. If you'll read the speech you'll see that I talk about public service in the literal sense (not the ego-journalism that passes for public service in most organizations).

    -- Steve Yelvington
    editor and Linux user since 0.96 or so

  • ...inasmuch as /. is the guide, and journalists simply provide some of the raw materials. And rather than having a place in the transformation of news, they are likely to wither away as more and more information is put directly online from the sources.

    Journalists don't want us to know it, of course, but 80% of their information comes from press releases and the news wire -- essentially the same services they claim to provide us. Hence, 80% of the job of a "journalist" is that of middleman. The other 10% of stories come from people going directly to the newspaper/TV/radio station -- and they'll go to the web, eventually, too. Directly, once they realize that they can get heard that way, the way they want to be heard. (Ask someone who's been on TV if their story got told, and it's pretty much a crap shoot. It all depends on whether its the story the reporter wants to tell.)

    And that remaining 10%? The part that should be 100% -- the digging for stuff that gets missed or covered up, the part that they claim makes them so indispensable. Yet there are plenty of whistleblowers out there, digging around and finding what might get missed or, worse yet, worm its way into our consciousness without us actively analyzing it.

    Then, they usually submit it to Slashdot. :)

    phil

  • I like the analogy to a global conversation, but I don't like the comparison to a cocktail party. Cocktail parties tend to be accumulations of shallow people trying to prove to each other how important they are, in order to either bolster their egos or to get laid.

    While there are some shallow people around here (& hopefully I'm not one of them), /. has always seemed to me to be more of a bull session after a long work day: a time we gripe, joke, & brainstorm over what we know.


    Geoff
  • Slashdot makes it possible for news to be published quickly, which is good. I like Slashdot. But as other posters have pointed out, sometimes half-truths, rumours and outright lies can get published before being thoroughly checked, and the disinformation spreads so fast that those unfairly maligned have no chance of countering it.

    Someone posted above that Slashdot provides information without filters (information wants to be free and all that tired stuff), this is plainly wrong. The Slashdot staff has a bias whether they know it or not. I have submitted many storied that I thought were interesting, both from a local and an international perspective but none have been posted. Instead I get to read about Furby autopsy pages. When I asked Rob Malda about the possibility of including "World, Europe, Africa, Asia" as topics, he said that since fewer of their readers are international, they don't worry as much about international stories! Generally, negative stories about the international community are posted "Australia net censorship", "France tries to become centre of time meridian" and positive ones submitted are ignored (Ericssons Bluetooth technology, new mobile phone technology, slave decendants Sao Tome liberate their stolen domain name, and so on). At least that is my opinion.

    I like Slashdot, but I see it as a rumour mill and a discussion forum mostly, and one with a narrow choice of subjects (technology, Geek culture). When it comes to real news, I still rely on newspapers, and quality TV such as Swedish TV and the BBC to inform me.

    Cheers,
    Lars


  • "If Slashdot were a mammal, most of our news sites would be the dinosaurs. Many journalists don't understand this and don't think it's journalism."



    ...sorta makes you hope they got a decent check from Andover.net, eh?

    When crufty websites like Geocities and Ask Jeeves have/had outrageous market caps, one hopes that something with actual content would be given its due.
  • I would see it more as a cross between a cocktail party hosted at a professional conference with someone sneaking around with a mike

    What a great analogy!

    1) clear policy for submission (e.g. compulsary 6 month gag period for new subscribers while they observe the community norms)

    Six months is too long. I'd say six weeks, or maybe two months.

    3) perhaps more powerful navigation/selection features (e.g. only read articles from people who consistenty rank>2)

    Maybe we could combine the ideas, and have a newbie filter.

    4) forward/backward links to related topics (actually not as easy as it sounds) so that people can understand the context and trajectory of the information vector

    Wow. Now that would be way cool. Not too easy to implement, though, since just moving between the same "topic heading" isn't going to work, and the "department" is just useless for that purpose, since it has its own purpose of humor and commentary.
  • I disagree entirely. I think that it is the public that wants sensationalism. I don't know about your friends, but most of my friends, highly educated geeks though they are, will still drop everything to watch a police chase.

    I think that we do have a use for "guides" that keep us to task. I have in mind the example of the original ideas behind a Congress in the U.S. Constitution. (And I apologize for the inherent amerocentrism there.) The original idea was that a group of more educated and experienced people would moderate the whims of the populace at large.
  • I want to study them closely. I've found this discussion and your reactions very interesting.

    You are all going to be social-analyzed.
    You have been warned.

    Muhahaha! :)

  • I think Roblimo is a beast from ancient Greek Mythology. It has the head of a Rob and the body of a Justin.
  • I don't want to tell you what to do or anything, but because the stories themselves are (as you said) a focus point of [our] conversation, you are in general obligated to read them if you intend to contribute to the forum. This is so you personally will know what context to take each comment in, so that you can help keep the discussion on topic, answer questions, and righteously post "read the frickin article first you stupidhead" messages to people who ask questions. Oh wait, everything but the last part.
  • > 1) clear policy for submission (e.g. compulsary
    > 6 month gag period for new subscribers while
    > they observe the community norms)

    How about a 60 second gag period, to give them time to read the article they're responding to, and decide whether or not they want to be anonymous.

    Seriously though, a policy such as you suggest would kill slashdot, or at least maim it. And a mischievious minority would start hacking accounts instead of making their own to get around this problem.

    As far as the software used, AFAIK SlashDot has already released some (older version) code under the GPL and plans to do the same with future versions. If Rob tries to make money off of licensing the /. code, I won't whine about it. But I won't be back.
  • Our new role is as a trusted guide.

    OK, who's the New Age business consultant who's raking in all the dough telling these companies to be trusted guide? Before I left Gateway they were always talking about how we needed to be our clients' "trusted guide". Anybody else seen this?
  • That I suspect is oversimplifying the issue greatly. I don't know of anyone who would admit to wanting more sensationalism, but I sure do know folks that love police chases.

    So... we have two possibilies: a) We're all kidding ourselves, and we really do like drivel. or b) We're mostly capable of distinguishing entertaining drivel from useful information.

    I would like to think its the latter.

    Additionally, I think the current batch of 'guides' are more interested in their own personal careers than what is truely useful to us.

    Of course... there is at least one guide that outshines the rest by several orders of magnitude:

    Slashdot

  • Part 1:

    Journalists research their stories, and investigate all sides of the story, and try and discover the truth.

    Whoa. I've not seen this effect. You'll have to show it to me some time. I don't know what news you read or watch, but its very rarely impartial, let alone researched. The danger is NOT that its biased and sloppily researched, but that people like you seem to think that it is.

    Part 2:

    CmdrTaco, Hemos, and all the other guys look at a list of interesting submissions and then put the best of those out there. The don't really check to see if it's true, or if there's more to the story.

    As opposed to journalists, who look at all the stuff that comes off of AP and then put up the stuff that gets the best ratings of those out there. They don't really check to see if it's true, or if there's more to to story, as long as it has sex or violence and a good hook.
  • I think most regular /.'ers feel the pressure you hinted at... I know I do. I try to say things that really matter, and that I really know something about, but I often look back and realize I came up short on my goal. So as we all gain more experience with this form of journalism, and as /. matures, this forum will only get better. We will learn to express our ideas with more clarity and we will learn to express better ideas.

    (BTW don't even think of removing the AC's. A gag period is a nice idea, but don't actually gag them--make it so people who have been registered for less than 6 weeks get an automatic score of 0 instead of 1.)
  • 1.I don't need their damn "guidance." I can form a better opinion scrolling through 20 +2 comments on slashdot than in reading a 8 page opinion in wired. I will get every point of view, some NEW information (possibly from the people actually involved), and eventually form my own opinion.

    2. As far as the TRUTH what is the TRUTH? IMHO all we have is evidence (with different degrees of reliability) and different opinions about it. Just because Bob Metcalfe thinks something doesn't make it true. No one is an oracle and if you made a good call in the past that does not mean you are going to do it again.

    3. To sum it up, I don't need or want your OPINION. How many times has main stream opinion been totally clueless about things? Just give me the HARD DATA thank you, and then I can actually THINK.

    4. This also ties in with some ideas about fault - tolerance (why should I rely on one "voice of reason" when I can sample from millions of minds? -what are the respective chances of failure?)and the postmodern fractured society we live in (what makes your TRUTH more important than any other TRUTH? -The fact that you're CNN?).

    5. I think there will be a big explosion in weblogs in the next few years on every subject conceivable. Thats what the people want, give them
    the information and they will find what they want.
    Not some precanned editorials.

    ----- END OF RANT --------

  • NB - The suggestions were just that, some ideas for people to mull over. Obviously as artistic editor, CT would think very carefully over them so as to maintain the group dynamics, keep the pros coming in with their wide experience (I don't know what cocktail parties others attend but I choose ones where colleagues are either amusing or professionally relevant) and general "look and feel" of the experience :-).

    Above all, he should retain the element of choice for the user. Maybe some people would like browsing ACs comments but at other times when rushed, they may only want the highlights. Choice in the post-modern era - tsall good (see http://www.perl.com/pace/pub/perldocs/1999/03/pm.h tml for the reference, if slashdot could have something like main points are condensed at the top, it would be fantastic).

    LL

  • Slashdot = A global cocktail conversation (Score:4)

    by LL ( 20038 ) on Friday July 02, 1999 @08:52AM (#1820649)
    The success of slashdot has more to do with the fact that it is a specialist rag with a good self-selective moderation policy. I would see it more as a cross between a cocktail party hosted at a professional conference with someone sneaking around with a mike, rather than the traditional newspaper which is tailored towards a mass audience (cae we say devolution to mediocratity here?). Like any specialise rag/zine whatever, it is highly dependent on the audience in mind, in this is case, generally highly educated computer professionals which results in a better signal to noise ratio than traditional newsgroups or ad-based paper publications (which of course aids for the widest possible coverage in their field).

    I suspect that now that CT has some spare change to hire some Perl hackers, he could make a nice little sideline in licensing the software. (I personally would be interested in something similar to provide a grassroots community helpline). Some things that may be worthwhile tuning include

    1) clear policy for submission (e.g. compulsary 6 month gag period for new subscribers while they observe the community norms)
    2) more flexible extraction mechanisms (e.g. more sophisticated threading to reduce bandwidth)
    3) perhaps more powerful navigation/selection features (e.g. only read articles from people who consistenty rank>2)
    4) forward/backward links to related topics (actually not as easy as it sounds) so that people can understand the context and trajectory of the information vector

    The internet is not radio, TV or newspaper and I personally think slashdot is a good step forward in this brave gnu world :-).

    LL
  • On top of that, they think their new role is as "trusted guides" I don't trust a news-person as far as I can throw him/her.
  • True, we get what is sensational and what sells, which is exactly why /. exists i think. This site is a place of concentration for news and information about a specific topic, which is directly modeerated by reader submission. we need the toplevel news sites simply to collect. then we filter and consume. darkfell@yahoo.com
  • That is my favorite quote in the whole article. This proves that journalists don't have a real clue about what is going on.

    "They need to know what's important, what's true and what's useful."

    Does that mean that they are going to start learning what's true and useful, because overall, I don't think its been happening to date.

  • I guess this makes Matt Drudge
    a journalist.

    He started life in the news groups.

    Now there are rumors his radio show
    will be syndicated.

  • Re:Slashdot does threaten extinction (Score:4)

    by jonathanclark ( 29656 ) on Friday July 02, 1999 @08:06AM (#1820655) Homepage
    While it true that stories aren't stored on /., in many cases I never read the actual story. Besides the fact the site is probably slashdotted, I'm more interested in what people here have to say about a topic. Often you will get much more information here than is presented in the article, so it is a waste of time to read them.

    People on /. exercise brevity and with moderation it's easy to read according to how much free time you have, unlike external articles that require good skimming skills to find useful information.

    While the accuracy of information here is not as well researched, it usually doesn't need to be because it is written by engineers who know what they are talking about. Journalist generally aren't engineers.. consider the salary differences.

    I see the stories simply as a focus point of conversation, and it is Rob who is picking the conversations, not the journalist. There are literally several hundred online articles published daily by major papers, most of them don't provide much new information.
  • To me, /. is a place that I can go to get news that interests me. Since it is moderated, it is a more structured news source than your standard portal or news agency.

    /. is also a place for people like us to comment on the news of the day. We are a select group with specific ideals and interests. It is a great forum for us to participate in.

    /. is what is missing from other web sites. It is the ideal community for us. When I see a new article, I check it out even if it doesn't interest me. It's nice to have a comfortable place to get news and information from.
  • I read Slashdot every day. I love it. But I don't consider it journalism. Journalists research their stories, and investigate all sides of the story, and try and discover the truth.

    The best way to reach the truth (or to solve other optimization problems) is to have a vast number of people exploring all of the local peaks and valleys. Simulated annealing. Turn up the temperature and the entropy increases, but more possibilities are explored. Then slowly lower the temperature and settle in on the best answers. Genetic algorithms also have a similar feature - lots of possibilities explored at the same time. Another analogy might be the "effient market hypothesis" of stock pricing - a vast number of factors that no one person (or stock analyst) can fully understand emerge as a stock price to correctly value a company. The same type of emergent phenomena will make the net unbeatable for finding out "the truth" about things.

    This is why the net is able to research a topic more extensively than a journalist - there are a bunch of people out there reading the posts, and some of them are invariably intimately familiar with the topic or just a hop-skip-and-jump away. This is why the net is a perfect place for open source software to thrive - a vast source of ideas, and a vast source of peer review. The implementation of the peer review is the critical part - it is the "fitness function" that determines how quickly we converge on the best ideas.

    As an example, just what is the truth in the Packetstorm story? At first it seemed Harvard and the Anti-Online guy were totally evil. Now it seems maybe there's more to the story. A journalist would have spent time gleaning information from all sides of the story. Slashdot provided a quick link to one side of the story.

    Of course, a journalist may have made several different conclusions during the process of writing the story that you were not aware of. The net lets you examine these ideas and hypotheses unfold in real time. You must realize that you are watching a process, and that it will take a finite amount of time to converge on a set of good conclusions. An excellent excercise in critical thinking.

    The net is definately taking over the news. I can't remember the last time I even watched the news on TV. I do remember that it was very superficial. I still listen to NPR because they tend to be reasonably intellegent and usually go to good sources. Traditional media news will be forever changed.

  • but we're still bringing them revenue.

    But only until they (or their advertisers) realize how little time we spend there. I spend probably 50x more time on /., than the news sites. Things are definitely shifting and news will be a tough one, it costs a lot of money to gather the news, only to let other sites have a throwawy link and still retain the eyeballs.

    I still can't believe that the news sites don't have discussion of their own. It seems pretty basic to me, centralized discussion on each and every story. Even that sucks though, without good moderation (it's helped /. A LOT, IMHO). It's not surprising that /. is the leader though, it's the core of the core of the 'Net.

  • Arrogance? (Score:3)

    by DonkPunch ( 30957 ) on Friday July 02, 1999 @07:44AM (#1820659) Homepage Journal
    "But they still need us as guides. They need to know what's important, what's true and what's useful. Our new role is as a trusted guide."

    This is the kind of attitude that already turns me off with television and many newsmagazines -- the notion that we, the uneducated masses, are desperate for "guides" to tell us, "...what's true and what's useful". True, useful information is very rare. Instead, we get what's sensational and what sells.
  • Wow! .. agreed .. I was thinking about that the other day. What will happen when slashdot is getting slashdotted with people. I mean major major traffic. I suspect that Rob knows that his user base is growing fast and something will have to be done..

    3) perhaps more powerful navigation/selection features (e.g. only read articles from people who
    consistenty rank>2)

    I don't agree. I may not have something extremely intelligent to say all the time but there is the odd time that someone says something extremely informitive or interesting. We can't all be witfull all the time.

    I have noticed that there isn't a lot of moderating going on lately. It takes a while for a good comment to float above my threshold :) but I still love this place.

    This is a far streach from Journalism, and I'm sure that journalists are having trouble accepting this. Rob did something right when he called it "News for Nerds: Stuff that Matters" .. That's what it is, nothing more, nothing less.
  • seriously do you ever see an MLM scam on slashdot?

    /.ers do the talking here not journalists.
  • It's time broadcasting was open to the public already.

    Think /.TV, the end of DNS, NSI on welfare. Censorship resistance.
  • Of-topic but Journalists are marketeers these days not muckrakers. /.ers do the muckraking. Do you really believe Harvard would have given the backups back w/o slashdot and hackernews making it public? Common it's a hundred times easier to kill a story by deleting the content then to drag it out by being reasonable.

    You forget Rob n Jeff are the clerks here. The posters do in fact research their information often using previous /. articles to back up their claims.

    I have seen second hand posters covering the WORKING LINK IS HERE END of things.

    This is an open field of information. /. is the name of the carrier not the poster of information.
  • Journalism involves reorganizing information you find and also suplementing it hence:

    a previous comment [slashdot.org]

    MSNBCCNNNNBCABCCBSCNBCCBCBBC cannot compete.
  • I still can't see Open journalism as even half as irresponsible as TV, and print.

    how about opening up the want and needs list or projectdot.org

  • I tend to agree. The reason I come here is:

    40% Interesting news stories gathered in one place
    60% Informed/popular opinions - keeping track of what's going on...

    Slashdot is really just as much, if not more, a specialized bulletin board as a news site.
  • ...in just three easy steps I can show you how to EXPLODE your current MLM business. For free advertising help and an obligation free offer enter your mail details on the hotlink now!

    Ok... so I'm the only one laughing...please don't moderate me...noooo!
  • Yes, but you get rumors and half truths in your newspapers and tv news as well. Slashdot is actually better at telling you the complete source, whether it is a Wired or a ZDNet or a BBC article. You have to understand the sources of content.
  • The real difference between things like Slashdot and the traditional media (the BBC, who posted the original story, are a good example) is the comments.

    The threads which follow the original post are usually very informative, with references to all sorts of sources and a whole load of points being explored, often by people with real expertise.

    You simply don't get that in traditional journalism. I suppose you're supposed to believe that the journalist reporting has listened to a whole range of views and is giving you the essence, leaving out the redundant and irrelevant stuff.

    I'd rather make that judgement myself.

    Also, with comments, you get to post a reply and say "Back that up with evidence or nobody will believe you" (Anybody?).

    Try saying that to your television.
  • To many people a trend is just a fad until it's blessed by the New York Times or the BBC. While some of us have extrapolated much from this shift in where we get our news, to most people it's not yet real. Now some of them are getting it from their trusted news sources.

    As for them being our guides, I wish them luck. Many of us have tolerated terrible news sources here in the U.S. for our entire lives. Finally, we can get news stratified to our interests and expertise, when we want it, and with both sides of the issue covered. To top that all off, we get it from people who aren't journalists but, rather, people who actually *know* something about the subject in question. No, we are only using the traditional news outlets to bridge into a future where there will be original sources covering every topic. The vast number of those sources will be filtered down to a manageable number by sites like our beloved slashdot.

    It seems fitting that the BBC would recognize and report on this phenomenon. I'll bet NBC, CBS, and ABC will not be in such a hurry to speed up this process.
  • You are right in claiming /. is nothing more than a news site. That is part of why I read it, because the topics are of great interest to me. When something happens in the geek world, I want to know about it and I look here. I don't read Salon or Wired because they don't target my needs. Rob and Hemos (and cowboy Neal) are the editors, they select only the stories they think are of interest to nerds, hence their motto.

    But there is journalism inside of slashdot, it is contained in the poster's comments. Not all of them, but enough to make me scroll through the list. I like the moderation system now in place. If I set my filter to 3 or higher, I can quickly read some good, well thought out posts. If I leave it at 1, I can often pick up bits of important information that adds to the context of the original story.

    I am no longer surprised to see well written postings adding some extremely detailed information. I come to expect it in maybe half of the stories on /. And that is what I consider to be journalism. Someone with some knowledge of a topic adding to the story, so we can all read it and become more knowledgeable.

    The flames and trolls can be ignored easily enough, they don't really detract from /., and I can't see any way to eliminate them without driving away all the good stuff as well. Rob and Hemos see that as well, and have gone to great lengths to improve the site without driving anybody away. I hope the andoverNet people also realise that, and weren't lying to Rob when they bought the place.

    the AC
  • Given enough eyes, any news analysis is shallow. (Apologies to ESR.) Invariably I find many slashdot comments that are more perceptive, more informative, and better balanced than the articles they respond to.

  • Slashdot doesn't threaten extinction (Score:3)

    by HSinclair ( 64082 ) on Friday July 02, 1999 @07:30AM (#1820674) Homepage
    Everyone who doesn't go here seems to forget that few of the articles are actually stored on this server. There will still be plenty of demand for news websites like wired, msnbc, cnn, and so on because even if a billion slashdots sprung up catering to every possible intrest people would still be going through the slashdots to news sites, and the news sites would still get their advertising. We may watch less of the Evening News with Dan Rather, but we're still bringing them revenue.

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