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Wired on Slashdot 194

Posted by Hemos from the the-first-one dept.
Rolan was the first one to write with the heads-up about Wired's story about Slashdot-things are in much the same vein as other stories, but give it a gander if you'd like. And stop submitting the story *grin*.
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Wired on Slashdot More

Wired on Slashdot

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  • ...since I don't post stuff I know nothing about...

    Youll never be a journalist with that attitude.
  • "But as an advocacy community, Slashdot is upfront about its biases. Microsoft stories are identified with a graphic of Bill ates mocked up as a Borg from Star Trek Generations."

    You'd think someone writing for Wired (tired) would know something about Star Trek.

    -Sloth503

  • It's metajournalism (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think Slashdot is a kind of metajournalism. It embodies news, opinion, ignorance, expertise and spin, all of the things that define de facto journalism. However slashdot improves upon this by adding direct peer review -- I don't know how many times I've been grateful for the "collective bullshit-detector" that the comments provide.

    I read slashdot, nytimes, memepool, the onion, salon, and The New Yorker (on paper).

    Slashdot is to journalism what logic is to the study of mathematics. This worries all of the mediocre journalists out there who think that being a journalist entitles them to try to hide thier biases and agendas.

    The Slashdot era will bring newfound vitality to American Journalism, as well as a refreshing polish to the first amendment.

    -- don't hate me because I'm anonymous.


  • A point which Mr. Glave repeatedly bring up, and rightly so, is the
    issue of trustworthiness and bias in reporting. He points out that in a
    forum such as Slashdot, you have no assurance of tne legitmacy or
    truthfulness of a story. This is completely true. As he observes, the
    reader must make their own assessment of stories based on their source,
    others' comments, and whether or not facts can be confirmed through
    other sources. There is, however, the implicit assumption that this is
    not the case with traditional journalism.

    I think it may not be correct to assume that traditional journalism
    can be, should be, or is trusted. I do not believe that many (in the
    Slashdot community) distrust journalist's motives, but rather their
    technical competence. It doesn't take much work (in any field) to find
    mutually contradictory traditional articles discussing the same event or
    issue. This implies that at least one of them had their facts wrong.
    Not a rarity. Moreover, when two journalists agree about the facts, the
    interpetation, analyses, focus and conclusions are often wildly
    different. So if a reader wants any assurance of the accuray or
    insightfulness of an article, they really need to look at multiple
    articles, consider the gredibility or the journalist and his or her
    sources, and check out the primary sources themselves. Just as with
    Slashdot.

    One particulaly relevant issue is the nature of Slashdot's subject
    matter. It is usually technical and computer related. This implies two
    things: The first is that due to the highly specialized nature of the
    material, it is possible, even probable, that the journalist does not
    have enough expertise to separate truth, spin, and downright fiction.
    This is through no fault of the journalist - computing is just too broad
    a field for any magazine to have an expert in every possible subject.
    It is also the case that tech company claims are notoriously
    unreliable: Most copy is written by people who specialize in marketing
    and PR, not by engineers. Which makes it likely that the writer doesn't
    understand the truth, and (even with the best of intentions) doesn't
    want to burden the reader with technical information they won't
    understand anyway. So even with no malice, curicial errors and
    omissions are the norm. Becaus very few people really understand it,
    the computing world is driven as much by perception a fact. So
    companies have every reason to put their particular spin on things. So
    you have a lot of places for truth, and especially an understanding of
    what's significant, to get lost or distorted.

    The second is the availability of confirmation. The intenet makes is
    possible to put primary sources like unvarnished data and scholarly
    writings at the readers' fingertips. People in the technology field are
    likely to have the ability and inclination to do so. If this
    information is not available, that's information in and of itself. So
    it is a subject area that is conducive to the kind of verification that
    a forum like Slashdot calls for. Thus, Slashdot is in the enviable
    position of covering material that plays to it's own strenghts and its
    competition's weeknesses.


    "I still believe that people go to sites
    like Wired News and PC
    Week because they have this curiosity for
    the truth and this
    underlying belief that services [like
    Slashdot] don't always
    get it right, and they need an independent
    verification," said Berinato.


    "the flip side is that
    you don't have [an editor's] assurance in
    what is to be
    trusted and what isn't to be trusted."

  • Thanks for pointing out my Star Trek goof. We corrected it as soon as we could.
  • Hi there. I wrote the article, and yeah, I screwed up by overlooking the moderation system. We updated the article to add a paragraph that explains that it is here, in operation. Thank god for peer review!
  • You know what would be really cool actually, is if along w/ moderation points we allowed people to push up/down stories that were in the queue (along w/ commentary from the people who are moderators only) This would 1) satisfy all the /. addicts who need new stories every 30-60 minutes :) , get rid of the unfeasible queue and prevent stories from being duplicated. i.e. give say 400 random (post often kidz) stories and say when 10 % of the people approve of the story it gets posted. The problem w/ the system now is that (unfortunately) is that rob and friends seem to be a bit overworked and the system is (even more unfortunately) basically taking them on as our editors.. (deciding what stories are worth posting). The critique/commentary system is what makes /., it could be cool to apply it further?

    -avi
  • You forgot First Contact, which, although munges things up a LOT, still has the Borg. Who aren't in Generations.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • Thank goodness for Slashdot -- it's the most intellectually stimulating part of my daily routine.

    That's just so sad...

    ;)
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • If you had some reasons behind your banal negativism please trot them out.

    -josh
  • I agree with you. People seem to (at times) get really, really upset about the First Post! but it just doesn't bother me. And, the longer it goes on, it has just become a part of the landscape for me, or, as you said, "a cultural phemonenon". Not that its usefull--doesn't have to be--its just there. There was even one a while back that had me laughing. It was close to: (sigh). . .just can't help myself. . .First Post! Sure its silly, but Slashdot isn't our jobs.
  • "Whenever discussing do-it-yourself reporting as exemplified by Slashdot, traditional newshounds inevitably return to the issue of integrity and reliability. They say that consumers must rely on trained, professional journalists to ensure a report is unbiased and free of agendas."

    What!!??? Any journo who honestly believes they're totally free of all cultural, political & personal biases is, pretty much by defenition, not worth trusting.
  • Hmmm, I'm an expert at some things. Not so good on others. I've posted on something I thought I knew about and was blasted a time or two (rightly so). I'm not (I don't think) a complete crackpot. So I guess I'm somewhere between expert and lounger.
  • "Whenever discussing do-it-yourself reporting as exemplified by Slashdot, traditional newshounds inevitably return to the issue of integrity and reliability. They say that consumers must rely on trained, professional journalists to ensure a report is unbiased and free of agendas."


    This sort of crap gets under my skin. Slashdot is great because instead of wasting time going from site to site I can get a quick list of things that might interest me and read the ones I want. What does integrity or reliability have to do with it? It's a place for people with a common interest to post opinions and get links. Why twist it into something else...

    OTOH I question the integrity of some of the so-called tech sites (Uh..can you say Jessie Burst) ...many of them are full of pure crass sensationalism... they are driven by getting my click, not by integrity. Unfortunatly many "trained proffesional journalists" are shills.

    Why does wired remind me of MTV.. lots of flashy colors, and stuff seems to be happening, but it's all so vapid in the end.
  • I think that the term "Open Source Journalism" makes a very interesting comparison to "Open Source Software." It is very similar on many different levels.

    It seems to bring similar, mixed feelings from professional journalists as open source software brings to professional software coders. Some software companies have really gotten into the act of open source software, and love the idea. From having read the Wired article, it seems that some journalists seem to think it's a cool idea, and there is some real value there.

    On the other hand, there are software companies that feel threatened by open source software, and see no future in it. There are many journalists that feel threatened very much in the same way by open source journalism. There are other negative views as well, such as software companies believing there is no future in open source software. (I think that perhaps these sort of views are to cover up the threat they feel.) I'm sure there are journalists that claim the same of open source journalism.

    Maybe those that don't believe in Open source/journalism are very strong in sticking to the old saying, "nothing in life is free." I would say that the majority of those which subscribe to open source/journalism believe that there are a few things that are free.

    Okay, sure, if you wanna get technical, someone has to pay for the bandwidth, the electricity, the hardware. However, the information is free. YOU, the END USER, don't have to pay one red cent directly to the journalist or open source programmer.
  • Slashdot does give a minor 'reputation' to posts. This post, for example, is starting out as a 2 instead of the normal 1. The reason is that in the past, I have posted replies that were often moderated upwards. So there is a starting point for my messages to begin at.

    But there are advantages to NOT having a 'reputation tracker' running. For one, anyone can create a new ID at a whim. If your old one has a bad rap, come up with a new pen name. Second, the system seems to give the impression that every thought should be judged on its own merit. I've seen stuff that I would swear were written by Linus, but were cut down by a few Slashdotters.

    Actually, that's a good thing. Just because a well reputable person has something to say, it doesn't make it interesting by default. Judge the ideas for themselves, I say.
  • Hhahahahaah
  • I thought that the moderating system *was* a kind of 'rating' system. You can set your moderation to what you find acceptable. Might not be the most perfect system, but it works for me. In terms of 'trust', there might not be any immediate trust for any of the posts, however, like you mentioned, after you check out posts from the same people over and over and they are accurate, a kind of trust developes. 'Earned trust' rather than 'Blind trust'. Always the best kind.
  • I strongly dissagree with one comment in the Wired article:

    "I still believe that people go to sites like Wired News and PC Week because they have this curiosity for the truth and this underlying belief that services [like Slashdot] don't always get it right, and they need an independent verification," said Berinato.

    I think he has it backwards, I go to /. to get commentary on the validity of the "journalist" publications. I have very little trust of what I see in print, because I don't think journalists have enough time to do good research. Admittidly, an individual commentor is no better, but the statistical nature of the mass of commentors provides a lot of total research effort.

  • "All that seems to be missing from Slashdot-type sites is some kind of reputation rating system, where participants are assigned a trust rating based on feedback from the group and managed by a central authority."

    It's called the moderators applying a score to the message. Did the author even visit Slashdot?
  • I'm LMAO @ Marj Jo Foley's comment:

    They like to highlight things that make Microsoft look stupid.

    This coming from the Microsoft mouthpiece has to be taken for what it's worth.
  • This may have already been mentioned but I'm kinda jumpy today so I haven't read the other threads.

    A couple of quotes that kinda stuck in my head.


    They say that consumers must rely
    on trained, professional journalists to ensure a
    report is unbiased and free of agendas.

    While it's true that slashdot makes its feeling known about certain companies, since when has journalism ever been unbiased. I can only think of a few sources where I feel like they are being unbiased and agenda-free. Everyone has an agenda and everyone has biases. Have you ever heard a news person, via the tone of his voice , or read an article , via the tone of the article, that made you subtley (sp?) feel differently about the subject in the end? I have. When we hear or read something we are called to form an opinion on it in our own minds. People will try to be subtle about swaying you but they will attempt it none the less. "Enlightened racism is still racism". People who refer to people of different ethnicity with terms, while not derogetory (sp?), are still trying to get you to believe that in the context of the point they are making, the fact that this person is whatever race, is the reason for whatever. (I know that probably made no sense but maybe SOMEONE can follow my train of thought here)


    The next point that was made that bothered me was

    "I still believe that people go to sites like Wired
    News and PC Week because they have this
    curiosity for the truth and this underlying belief
    that services [like Slashdot] don't always get it
    right, and they need an independent verification,"
    said Berinato.

    Hell, more often than not I find slashdot posts to be independant discrediting of the links in the stories. Peer review obvoiusly works in the scientific and medical fields, and it works here. When someone posts something obviously wrong, there is no shortage of people to point that out.

    okay I htink I've babbled on enough. Bitch away.

    p.s. this wasnt meant to be a slam against wired or unabashed slashdot devotion. Just something that some people may have missed.



  • I had no idea it was that many. Is that pageviews?


    j-a-w-a-d------------------------------
    replace ,'s in e-mail address with .'s.
  • Does this mean that wired might be getting good again? I doubt it. -awc
  • Are they talking about, say, the trained professional journalists at the New York Times, whose pro-big-business, pro-financial-markets, pro-military bias is... well, kind of hard to miss? (See Noam Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent.)

    --
  • I think we should ignore this story completely because the author referred to the borg as being in Star Trek: Generations. Pah. Dolts. I'll never read wired again.
  • >Who could resist this classic Star Trek quote. (Uh, I think it was >from Generations.)

    Umm,no. It from one of the *WORST* classic Star Trek epidsode, "Spock's Brain". Yep someone actually stole Spock's brain. Ripped the sucker right out of his head. It's absolutely amazing that 99% of the Star Trek:The Next Generation,Deep Space 9 and Star Trek:Voyager epidsodes actually manage to make "Spock's Brain" look good. Would anyone actually notice if someone had actually stolen Westly's,Denna's or Worf's brain? I honestly don't think so...
  • Maybe it means Wired wants a lot slashdotters to visit & look around. Thing is, most slashdotters came here after finding Wired insufficient (or so I think. Believe it or not, I may be wrong)


    j-a-w-a-d------------------------------
    replace ,'s in e-mail address with .'s.

  • The stories being trustworthy is a little silly. I mean, alot of slashdots content is linking to credible sites or credible people.

    Perhaps they have a point, some of those Journalists might be a little off target on there arrows of truth. Hmm, maybe commercial news sites aren't as trustworthy as we think?

    And who here trusted that IETF guy? Or even would have fell for the april fools user friendly gag.

    Oh, err, scratch that last one...

    anyway, i'm trying to point out that slashdot readers aren't expected to be idiots, we can think; act; and judge, building trusts on there own.

  • >>> The fact that some posts default to a higher score than others is ludicrous... At least Rob should allow us to turn off these kinds of "smart" rankings.

    Yeah, I agree. I used to have my "display full post" threshold at 2 (replies with a score of 1 or less only displayed headers), but I got sick of reading mediocre posts by people whose default scores were 2. Recenlty I cranked this number up to 3, which lets me skip those mediocre yet higher-scored-than-average posts, but now I'm missing posts that got to 2 on their own merit (unless I start looking through the threads).

    Sure, it's not the end of the world or anything, but it kind of sucks.

  • The term "open source journalism" is just a little odd... since it isn't quite journalism anymore. And I feel funny participating in a peer review of a singular review of a peer review system.

    Anyhow, if journalists are afraid of an open-source journalism system, what they should get excited about is one w/compensation. The model is very close to Slashdot.

    Open participation, with random readers ranking the results. The pariticpants (story providers) are compensated by the rankings of their readers. Imagine if Slashdot paid decent money for articles that rated a "5". That's incentive for you.

    Albiet, there is a number of nagging flaws here and there, and such a system wouldn't have to be pure slashdot, but the basic concept seems to be relatively sound for providing an open-source journalism system that the journalists would buy into (or be bought into!).
  • I laughed a little when I saw your sig.. When I realized that it actually works, I laughed even more. Very nicely put.
    --

    A mind is a terrible thing to taste.

  • Comments on the ratio of Experts vs Crackpots? I don't think that there are that many crackpots, but neither do I think there are that many experts, either. At least not that many experts who post.

    Maybe we should have a Poll?
    Are you a:
    1. Expert
    2. Lounger
    3. Crackpot

    IMHO, as per.

    J:)
  • .is from Mary Jo Foley of ZDNN Tech news.

    "The slant is so weird," Foley said, citing a recent Slashdot-linked interview on the Microsoft Web site. "What they highlight from the interview is not what a journalist would highlight. They like to highlight things that make Microsoft look stupid."

    I think anyone who can make this statement is profoundly biased, more so than who they're accusing. The fact that the interview (presumably with someone important in Microsoft) contained things that makes Microsoft look stupid, and a "journalist" *wouldn't* highlight that implies that said journalist is hiding the fact that the supposed "computer industry leader" is deficient.

    It's like saying that the boy who mentioned "The Emperor has no clothes!!" is biased against the emperor. Then she goes on to say there's no editor to say what's "legitimate" ... Given what's seen coming from the direction of ZDNN Tech News, the definition of "legitimate" is tied more to finances (with clear bias favoring Microsoft) than truth.

    I think if Mary Jo Foley wants to see a balanced view of Tech news, she should have a look at C'T magazine [heise.de] and Linux news at Linux Weekly News [lwn.net] These are part of the very small group of publications I've seen who try to get to the actual meaning behind current events (and tend to do a good job of it) .. Highlighting Microsoft's "roadmap", "vision", etc., while ignoring the fact they've been known to be less than honest & unethical in the past is what strikes me as bad journalism.

  • Slashdot scoops others... er.. not. (Score:4)

    by Garpenlov ( 34711 ) on Thursday August 26, 1999 @11:21AM (#1723401) Homepage
    I like Slashdot and all that, but well over 50% of the content is just re-linking to stories on salon, news.com, or wired. I can go read news.com and wired.com in the morning, and in the afternoon there will be 3 or 4 stories posted (on Slashdot) that just point back to those. If anything, maybe Slashdot is a good way to, er, gather together the more interesting news and comment on it, but they're not 'scooping' anyone, except for when they post major software releases before they're supposed to be released, so the mirrors haven't gotten their copies yet, and the hordes kill the main site and the mirrors never get their copies.

    Mix in the occasional JonKatz yellowish journalism (it's designed to create controversy and draw more hits/pageviews/ad loads), an article a day about "amazing high storage at amazingly low price sometime in the future" (I swear, there's at least one of these a day), and ever so often an empty essay from a slashdot reader or a book review.

    And of course Slashdot "coexists" with the traditional news sites -- it's where they get half their stories.

    [But, hey, I read it for the comments.]
  • And this article is meta-meta journalism.

    We loaded up slashdot just so we could read an article in wired about slashdot, and then we popped the stack back to slashdot and wrote a message about wired's article about slashdot, which we read by going to slashdot and reading a wired article about slashdot, and then we popped...

    Of course, I write a message about your message about wired's article about slashdot which you found out from slashdot...

    I love it!

    (I wonder, will you write a message about my message which is about your message which is about wired's story about slashdot which HOSTS ALL THESE MESSAGES?????)

    OK, I'll stop now. I agree with you though, we're definitely into meta journalism.

  • I guess they missed the whole post-moderation aspect of /., not to mention they got the definition of 'slashdot' wrong.

    Also, and non-practicing 'trained and professional journalist', I can say that 'journalistic integrity' is 99% of the time, simply and excuse to tell people to fuck off.

    The truly unbiased journalist has never been invented, as heretofore they have all been somewhat-recognizably human.

    Don Negro
  • The traditional news media says the same thing about The Drudge Report. It's bad journalism, but we look at it all the time for scoops.

    The beauty of being part of the technology world is that engineering people in established companies at least recognize systems that work, even if they work differently from their own designs. Journalists seem obsessed with the orthodoxy of their process.

  • Read the Moderator Guidelines [slashdot.org], silly!
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • No... just 50,000 12-eyed aliens. Or didn't you read between the lines of that Interplanetary Internet Protocol story yesterday? heh heh

    --
    QDMerge [rmci.net] 0.21!
  • Typos a-plenty, flame away.

    Don Negro
  • did I miss something? when exactly did the general public cease to be a bunch of retards? the average american _cant_ sort out fact and fiction. hello blair witch, hello war of the worlds, hello urban legends.

  • Surely they mean pageviews. Anybody got any real stats? ;)
  • Now my question is, are moderators on /. decided by posts alone? If so, the guy who's always "I posted first! Phhht" will be in quite a good position!


    According to the moderator guidelines, moderators are chosen at random from a fairly wide cross-section of the slashdot population. Anyone who posts a bit and reads a fair bit is elligeable if I understand correctly, which means at least a third of the people visiting the site (a guess - don't flame me for this).


    The only people who can't become moderators, again if I understand correctly, are ones who either never post, never read, or constantly hit "reload". Check out the guidelines themselves for more detailed information.

  • ...we know a lot about a little.





    what does this mean?
  • The point that seems to be missed by many is that the author is talking about a reputation rating system.

    Slashdot's moderation system is in no way based upon reputation. This is in a way a good thing: posts are judged and rated according to their attributes, not biased by who wrote them. But, since each post starts with a rating of 1 (or 0 for anon.), reputation does not come into play. On eBay, the situation is quite the opposite.

    I for one think it would be a good idea for slashdot to have a rating system based upon reputation. Something as rudimentary as the average score of all posts by the particular author might even work. Something such as this, displayed apart from particular post's scores, could give the reader an overall understanding of the author's credibility which would be much more reliable than any credible-sounding posts could warrant.
  • Rob has thought about making /. available through NNTP. Unfortunately, NNTP means no ads, unless you want to append a sig-like ad to every message.

    ---
  • The point is, there is a big difference between moderation based on 'quality' of individual posts, and a rating system based on credibility.

    I might create a new account for myself, pretend to be from Cisco, or Microsoft, or Red Hat, or whoever, and post lots of interesting, detailed but totally bullshit comments. Many of them would get moderated upwards; after a while I might even become 'elite' and get all my comments posted at score=2. But unless you checked all my previous postings, you'd have no way of knowing that I were talking rubbish.

    Ideally, there would be some way of replying to a post saying 'yes, this is factually correct', or 'no, this is rubbish', citing URLs or other facts as proof. We could then build up a credibility profile of each author.

    Perhaps I'm just too paranoid.

  • Am I confused, or is it that every time someone wrights an article about Slashdot, they come up with a "better" moderation meathod - one that Rob already considered and rejected.

    Oh well. Heck, I think we should get more moderation points than 5... mabie 8 or 10, so that more moderation gets done, especially on posts 3 or four levels deep (In a thread).

  • Very funny to notice on the last page of the Wired article that the first mention of Scott Bernadito (?) is as follows:

    "With eBay you are trading goods. At Slashdot you are trading ideas," said PC Week reporter Scott Bernadito, who has been "slashdotted" . . .

    then only 7 paragraphs later in a most ironical twist:

    "I still believe that people go to sites like Wired News and PC Week because they have this curiosity for the truth and this underlying belief that services [like Slashdot] don't always get it right, and they need an independent verification," said Berinato

    ...

    I am glad to have mags like Wired that always get it right, but I wonder who Berinato is, as there is no other mention of a Berinato in the article.
    Or is this Berinato some ancient mystic that most other people know about, like Confucius.

    Very funny.
  • Professional journalist work mainly for big corporation such as News Corp, Time-Warner etc or state run orgs such as the BBC.

    They therefore tend to not to run stories which go against the status quo too much.

    In Britain we have a media dominated by Murdoch which engage in spinning favourable stories about its media operations such as Sky, supporting political parties which let Murdoch do anything he basically wants and setting the political agenda in Murdoch's terms.

    Objective journalists... Try reading the Sun newspaper.

    Murdoch is basically equivalent Bill Gates in British media terms..


  • Wired: News for herds. Stuff that splatters.

    For some reason that struck me as fsck'n hilarious.

    Guess it achieved its goal ;)

  • No way. Three people cannot replace a team of journalists. Slashdot aids them, really. Most of the things posted on Slashdot are a paragraph of commentary on, and a link to, someone else's articles. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I think it's great. I hit Slashdot probably 8 or 10 times a day looking for some new newsbit, and I'm more than happy to visit all the other sites linked to, bringing them traffic, supporting their writers and advertisers, etc.

    Save deep linking! :]
  • Unless a nerd is someone who loves Linux. Seriously though 99% of the stories are Linux Biased. I wouldn't come here as often if it wasn't for the diverse comments on the stories correcting and pointing out things I missed.

    A bit more impartial editing would be intresting.

    And what is with the urge to "Hey wouldn't this be cool if we could turn it into a Beowulf Cluster" in most of the posts? :)
  • "I still believe that people go to sites like Wired News and PC Week because they have this curiosity for the truth and this underlying belief that services [like Slashdot] don't always get it right, and they need an independent verification," said Berinato.

    I beg to differ. Other publications work behind closed doors, and hence can never be trusted. With slashdot, the sausage-making process is laid bare for all to see and critique. There are things Rob et al do that piss people off, and by golly people call them on it! A lot!

    In my estimation, this article was designed to:
    a) attract the attention of slashdotters, and

    b) remind them how important real journalists are! Like Wired! Good plan, but I don't buy it.

  • Your anecdote points out the value of Slashdot and its ilk (nee Usenet) - the comments are often more valuable to the reader than the original article, which is often no more than a spark on the tinder. Try that, "Old" Journalism!

    As an aside:

    The conversation that follows is part expert commentary, part peer review, and part cocktail-party banter, as credible sources and experts weigh in alongside crackpots in a rapid peer-review process.

    The author left out "part childish behavior" (as in 'first post.')

    As a second aside, I want to say how tiresome 'first post' is, and yet who will claim they weren't tempted to add that at the bottom of their post? Whenever I feel that temptation, it means I'm not paying enough attention to composing my comment and I go back and look it over again.

    Perhaps there could be an option to automatically moderate down the first post if it's from an AC. Then moderators could moderate down non-AC's claiming to be first.

  • Thinking about this issue, Slashdot really isn't "Open Source Journalism". It is "Open Participation Journalism" which happens to run on open-source software and covers open-source issues. There is a big difference.

    Take The Killer List of Videogames [umn.edu] (arcade games information database) for example. Open participation? Very. Open source? No. Open participation works for databases and discussions, certainly. (KLOV owns the "open participation" database, but people still contribute. Interesting, no?)

    Actually, I'm having a bit of trouble seperating some of the aspects of the two in some respects (aside that open SOURCE refers to source code, obviously). Perhaps these terms don't quite cover the full distinction of differences between, say, Slashdot, and the Linux kernel.

    ?? Help ??
  • An interesting quote :

    "I still believe that people go to sites like Wired News and PC Week because they have this curiosity for the truth and this underlying belief that services [like Slashdot] don't always get it right, and they need an independent verification," said Berinato.

    I personnally read /. because I have this curiosity for the truth and this underlying belief that trade press (like PC Week) don't always get it right, and I need peer opinion to make up my mind on a particuliar subject.

    Sure they're a lot of BS being said on Slashdot, but this BS usually end up being point out by more clueful or honest peers. In traditionnal media, the best you can expect to correct incompetent journalism is a polite "Reader's Letter" in the next issue, if anything.

    Let's face it : media independance is an utopy. Journalism always end up being tainted by the opinion of the journalist, the context in wich he gatered his information or his publication interest (sensationnalism, political correctness, etc.). IMHO, you can't trust traditionnal media any more than you can trust any stranger for truthful, unbiased, complete and verified information. It's all about using your own judgement.

    This spring, I had an urge to subscribe to as much free trade press as I could (I receive, among other, PC Week, Interactive News, Computer World, etc.). Now I feel bad about wasting so much paper. These rag carry so much bullshit, I can't believe any cluefull CIO (their target audience) can take them seriously. Blatant bias and lake of technical understanding of the subject covered is the norm, not the exception. And I am not only speaking about Linux coverage.

    So in the end, if I can't trust the "real" media, I am always left with the option of trusting (or not) peer reader of my virtual community of choice, and use my own judgement, instead of being blindly fed half-truth and outright lies.

  • The Borg (a race of cybergenetically enhanced beings) were instituted in an episode of ST-TNG where Picard denies Q a chance to be part of his crew. When Q hears this he tries to teach Picard a lesson and transports the ship to a distant part of the galaxy where they find a borg vessle which has the ability to scan them and determine that they are weak. After taking a real beating from the Borg and Picard begs for mercy Q moves them back to their current position. Another 3 episodes in the series address the borg as well. The next is one where the borg try to assimilate the planet earth. Second one happens where a crashed borg scout vessle leaves a single injured borg and he is taken and given free will and sent back to the collective in leu of killing the whole race through a interative debilitating algorithm. The next is where Lore (data's older twin brother) assists the borg in trying to become fully cyborgenetic by doing his bidding. Then we have a major break. The next we see the borg we find them in the Delta Quadrant with Janeway and that has a lot of episodes (manely because they have a person who is sort of borg herself on board constatly now. So to make a long post longer the borg were most definately not conceived in Generations.
  • At least Wired listens to readers and admits when they're wrong... and they obviously read Slashdot.
  • On the other hand, he noted that Slashdot thrives in an environment where people seek more and more fragmentation in their lives. "Instead of knowing something about a lot of things, we know a lot about a little.

    So concentrtating on a few subjects rather than many is fragmentation? I don't think so some how ...

    Chris Wareham

  • How does their being "college kids with squeaky voices" effect their ability to diferentiate between uninteresting stories and interesting stories?

  • as I registered user, I don't, how do I do this?
  • more accurate, and more inciteful, then anything in the "mainstream" media.

    Yes, and insightful too...

    No criticism meant here. /. articles can easily be both. Whether that was on purpose or not it was an insightful comment. :) Just being a pedant, ignore me.

  • Having ACs start at 0 instead of 1 is a Good Thing (TM) because it promotes getting a user account. This is good for a bunch of reasons, but the best one is that Rob and co. want people to get user acounts and are therefore promoting it.

    So, if you want to start at 1, Log In! It's not that hard, and all it does it lets people tell if the same person made two different posts. (I am ignoring the issue of people with a default rating of 2)

  • I always thought of Slashdot as a portal site, it's where I go to find the latest up to date stuff of what I'm interested in.

    The forum and comments are an aside for me - I post occassionally, but my main use is to find other articles.

    It's pretty good for finding cannon-fodder to blast those pro-Microsoft types in the IT industry.
  • Though it would seem, alas, that spelling is in the 1% you don't know.
  • Yet in the past journalists have gone to jail to protect their sources. I guess all that's going to change now?

    Heh.

    Pre........
  • When is a professional journalist unbiased? We all carry some bias. At least with /. I know what the bias is. More than I can say for the main stream media.

    I believe I have a better chance at receiving unbiased information from /. than from most of the other over paid talking heads.
  • > I think Slashdot is a kind of metajournalism.

    I do fully agree with you!
    What makes Slashdot interesting is the discussion that follows each topic, the only bad point is that sometimes the discussion will degenerate into a flame war instead of talking of really interesting topics.

    But the moderation system is really nice, it generates a "summary" of the really interesting points. Even if sometimes, it feels weird to read a reply to an unknown post.

    Unfortunately even this moderation system has limits, for example there has been recently discussion about the shortcomings of X, should it be replaced or not which generated 500+ comments of susprisingly good quality (mostly), so I was kind of lost due to the volume, but hey nothing is perfect.

    The only suggestion I could make is to have someone payed to make summaries of topics which have generated a big interest...
  • (if i may reply to my own post)

    Upon further review, maybe Wired knew that Slashdotters don't come as much as they used to? And they wanted to know their shortcomings, so a guaranteed way to be on slashdot would be.. to have a story on slashdot. That way, slashdotters annoyed with Wired would voice their comments, and bam, user (non-user?) feedback for Wired.


    j-a-w-a-d------------------------------
    replace ,'s in e-mail address with .'s.
  • I forsee a day when people will post info directly to slashdot without mucking about with the high-priced intermediaries. Like: "Hi!, I'm Linus. Let me tell you about what we're thinking about putting into kernel 2.3.x!"

    As it is, I'd say maybe 50% of "news" comes from sources other than news publications.

  • What about "Credible Source"?

    ... part expert commentary, part peer review, and part cocktail-party banter, as credible sources and experts weigh in alongside crackpots

    Hmm... I'm not credible, or an expert...

    I guess that makes me a crackpot!

    Woo-Hoo! Time to create a sig... "Official Slashdot Crackpot".. I like the sound of that..
  • Exactly.

    Although you have to agree, the summaries themselves as posted on /. do often have inaccurancies in them.

    However, the community of intelligent commenters makes up for that. It seems like 8 times out of 10, someone from the 'inside' of the story, be it someone who works for the company, or the project, or whatever, comes forward and we get a better view of the situation than any news site out there.

  • Conventional journalism as "reliable". (Score:3)

    by nyet ( 19118 ) on Thursday August 26, 1999 @12:03PM (#1723446) Homepage
    It amazes me that conventional journalists have the gall to repeat this mantra over and over again. Every single time the "conventional" news media covers a story that I, or a good friend, have personal knowledge of, they invariably screw it up and add some bizzare audience grabbing spin to it. EVERY TIME. And this isn't just for "nerd" or technical news. Anything is fair game.

    It makes you wonder about the rest of the "honest", "reliable", "unbiased" journalism they churn out that you don't have a way to independantly verify. Sure, its not all malicious and/or self serving munging of the news, but anything that can't be attributed to a conspiracy can certainly be attributed to plain laziness.

    And speaking of "un-biased" journalism... as long as the medium, or reporter, or whatever at LEAST has their "bias" out in the open, I know exactly what I'm in for. Stories that have that "I'm totally unbiased, just reporting the facts because its my job" style invariably give me the heebie jeebies.
  • Try to get to the main Slashdot page. We've been Wired(ed). Funny feeling, eh?

    -Sloth503

  • I believe since you have logged into Slashdot you know about the Preferences, from which you can select to ignore stories.

    If you don't want to listen to Jon Katz, you don't have to! And if you don't like stories from Wired, i'm sure if there's nothing there to ignore it with, Slashdot could add something.

    Suggested addition to Slashdot: A text box delimited by commas where you can ignore stories from addresses like .wired.com. You could poll what people like to ignore and add option on the preferences to ignore that specific site.

    But then again, this could already be in the works. But I haven't entirely understood the preferences, just mostly understood.

  • Just call us the Renaissance Men of Geekdom.
    :)
  • Crackpot
    Definitely
    :)
  • It is nice to have a media outlet that actually pokes bullshit stories full of holes within the hour.

    It has to be a nightmare for these journalists to find out that their piece was linked to by Slashdot.

    Poor bastards.
  • This article seemed to be kissing a lot of slashdot a**. Looks like wired has seen where having their palms greased with
    microsoft's cash is going to get them. If you've visited WebMonkey lately you've seen the articles about setting up
    apache and IP masquerading with Linux. There was also an article about gnome and another about VMware in
    wired(magazine) a couple months ago. I think wired may be coming over to the OSS side of things now. I hope they do, I
    used to look up to wired for reliable information, but lately they've been catering more to the multi-million dollar ceo's of
    large companies than to all us little geeks. This looks like an effort to clean up their act.

    --Just my dime cut in to 5 pieces
  • There is, of course, a very good system in action right here. It is caled a "username". When combined with a "brain", it allows the reader to determine whether to trust articles written by someone who they've already read before.

    When I read this in the article, I thought that it's pretty obvious the author hasn't discovered what those numbers behind the reply titles are for... (Abuse-free) moderating is a reputation rating system... And (with the exception of abuses) it works pretty damn well, IMHO.
  • Like other posters/readers, etc. I think that /. does a much better job of depth reporting and analysis than Wired, Salon, etc. and that Rob is just being a little too humble when he says that /. isn't all that deep.

    Numerous examples come to mind:

    • When an "Ask Slashdot" question gets going, often a new project or project direction will open up, improving Linux and Open Source in the process.
    • When a video card mfr or other board maker gets feedback from the screaming Linux masses via /. that we'd love to use their product -- if only it was Linux compatible...
    • When a new kernel, security item, or OS product is released for testing, /. often tips us off, and we all go bang the heck out of the code, resulting in fast bug detection.
    • When quasi- and various- governmental agencies screw up, /. blows the whistle and we nail them with the Slashdot Effect.
    • A more "mainsteam" f's up a story -- /. not only gets the corrections (via more clued in posters), we often submit replies to the mainstream media which ofter lucid, well thought out counterpoints to the original articles.
    • Finally, we compete with the Beast From Redmond by making sure that other OS's and technologies get adequate, honest reporting.
    Not bad for (as Wired puts it) "a three-person web site" in the middle of Michigan, eh? It used to be "....news at 11 (p.m.)...." IMHO what we're seeing here is....

    Slashdot--- the future of interactive journalism...why the hell wait 'til 11!!

  • Polarization (Score:3)

    by jflynn ( 61543 ) on Thursday August 26, 1999 @12:57PM (#1723486)
    If you look at articles like the recent one on evolution that split the readers into factions, something kind of different appears. I would bet that people trusted different "experts" in their evaluation of the comments following the article, depending on their own predisposition on the matter.

    Slashdot sometimes provides a multi-valued filter on stories. There are well written conflicting comments that are highly rated. I find this more interesting and yes, entertaining, than a traditional news source promoting just one view.

    Jim



  • The article said:

    Microsoft stories are identified with a graphic of Bill Gates mocked up as a Borg from Star Trek Generations.

    And another reader already pointed out that that is a _major_ flub.

    But the article was poorly done in other ways. It was, simply put, a comparison of apples and oranges: Slashdot compared to "traditional" journalism. The quotes from people from "traditional" news sites were stale and meaningless. The best part about the article was Rob's quote that he's not a journalist. Other than that it was like all of the other Slashdot stories I've read: superficial.


  • Credibility (Score:5)

    by DiningPhilosopher ( 17036 ) on Thursday August 26, 1999 @11:24AM (#1723494)
    "I still believe that people go to sites like Wired News and PC Week because they have this curiosity for the truth and this underlying belief that services [like Slashdot] don't always get it right, and they need an independent verification," said Berinato.

    As far as I'm concerned he's got it backwards. When I see a Wired News story posted on Slashdot, I usually read the story, then read through the comments looking for someone who knows more about the story's subject than the author (and I usually find such a person).

    With as many readers as Slashdot has we're bound to have SOMEBODY with more experience with a technical project, phenomenon or area of study than the author, who, well, sits in an office writing all day.

  • On the subject of Breadth vs. Depth: (Score:4)

    by fable2112 ( 46114 ) on Thursday August 26, 1999 @11:25AM (#1723499) Homepage

    IMHO, too much of either is bad. Rob is quoted as saying that now "we know a lot about a little," rather than vice-versa.

    I've seen many posts here on /. complaining that the focus here should be narrower than it is -- Star Wars, the Hellmouth series, etc aren't really "news for nerds," in their view.

    Needless to say, I disagree. As I've posted in the past, a purely Linux-focused or even computer-focused site only makes sense if "computer" is a necessary and therefore unstated modifier of "nerd." It is not. I am an English nerd (aka technical writer with a journalism degree), and I'm sure there are more of us here, as well as a good-sized handful of "science nerds," etc.

    I think that /. strikes a relatively good balance between having a main focus and having a reasonable breadth and diversity of news. (In other words, I don't think /. is necessarily "a lot about a little" -- don't sell yourself short, Rob!)

    And I think the not-strictly-computer threads are necessary in much the same way that in the SCA, you can't become a knight JUST because you're a good fighter, even though fighting is the main focus of the knighthood. At a minimum, you're also expected to teach fighters, and to know how to dance, play chess, and some other things I'm forgetting right now. ;)

    Super-hyper-overspecialization isn't a very good thing -- we still need common ground with the rest of the world. But having a major focus, and supplementing with bits and pieces slightly outside of that focus that are still interesting, is a good way to go. I like and appreciate it. :)

  • Trust (Score:5)

    by ucblockhead ( 63650 ) on Thursday August 26, 1999 @11:25AM (#1723502) Homepage Journal
    All that seems to be missing from Slashdot-type sites is some kind of reputation rating system, where participants are assigned a trust rating based on feedback from the group and managed by a central authority.

    I found this facinating... There is, of course, a very good system in action right here. It is caled a "username". When combined with a "brain", it allows the reader to determine whether to trust articles written by someone who they've already read before.

    Seems to me this used to be the way the "old" media worked.

    Anyway, I find this "old media" fascination with the need for a "trusted" source ironic in the sense that the biggest problem they face right now is a complete lack of trust among the general population. I don't for a second trust any of those I see talk about the need for sources that can be "trusted".

    To use a sadder example of web journalism, Matt Drudge, while completely lacking in the sort of reputation that would earn my trust is no different from the mainstream media in this respect. I see people I have no trust in complain about how Drudge isn't a "real journalist" because he is not trustworthy. Well, yeah... That's what makes him a journalist.

    I trust those who post to slashdot to the extent that I can check them out, and to what checking I've done, posters here are often more accurate, and more inciteful, then anything in the "mainstream" media. It is nice to have a media outlet that actually pokes bullshit stories full of holes within the hour. This is far better than the idiocy that gets printed in most newspapers or news magazines today.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • One of the more telling comments... (Score:3)

    by Maledictus ( 52013 ) on Thursday August 26, 1999 @12:30PM (#1723516)
    ...is from Mary Jo Foley of ZDNN Tech news.

    "The slant is so weird," Foley said, citing a recent Slashdot-linked interview on the Microsoft Web site. "What they highlight from the interview is not what a journalist would highlight. They like to highlight things that make Microsoft look stupid."

    Again -- "What they highlight...is not what a journalist would highlight." So? Is that supposed to detract from /.'s credibility somehow? Does Mary Jo Foley have some sort of omniscience that is granted to all journalism graduates that makes what she and others would "highlight" something I need to know, even something I need to live my technical life by? What about the things journalists wouldn't "highlight?" Are those issues that we don't need to worry our pretty little heads about?

    She then goes on to say that she checks /. five times a day...heh. To see what she should have "highlighted" I guess.

    I have bookmarked Salon, Upside, Andover, CNet, Ars Technia, Macintouch, Slashdot, TechWeb, and The Motley Fool, among others. And what isn't bookmarked is usually found as a link from one of these sites. All have different styles, different priorities and all -- including and especially the "traditional" news avenues -- highlight different issues. After I sift and filter, I think I come up with my business and technical best guess. But without the "non-traditional" avenues, I don't think I'd have the whole story. The inside, "hey, we're sittin' here working with this stuff" story.

    And I'm not some kid surfing around for kicks in the basement of the university computer building. I'm an administrative type that recommends and makes hardware purchases -- things like multiple midrange servers, workstations of all flavors, manufacturing shop floor data collection software...but I digress. The point is, I take my technology news seriously because I buy stuff and management expects that stuff to work. I track the technology market from here, among other places.

    I guess that makes /. "weird."
  • I've been thinking about something like this too. Utlimately you don't really need editors (CmrdTaco, Hemos, et al). Let anyone post a link, or a story or feature.

    Let the readers sort out what is good and bad. There are certainly some technical challenges in implementing that, but they are not insurmountable.

    If you get enough eyeballs and ad-revenue you could offer to pay the authors of the best content.

    -josh
  • I don't get it, the article contradicts itself.

    On one hand it says "Slashdot is not journalism
    but rather just a list of links to other people's
    articles", then on the other hand it questions
    the accuracy of Slashdot's journalism -- how can
    Slashdot be innaccurate if all it has is links to
    other people's articles, such as Wired and ZDNN???

    Personally I think Slashdot is /more/ accurate
    because of the moderation system. Eventually the
    truth shines through as comments get scored
    upward.A great example is yesterday's post of
    a guy who claimed he solved the IPv4 addressing
    shortage. Now, if their had been no discussion of
    the article (as on other news sites) many of us
    and many tech jouranlists would have believed the
    guy may be on to something. But here on Slashdot
    there are many techies who know better and clued
    the rest of us in that the guy is a nut -- that's
    the kind of insight you get here on Slashdot.
  • it seems as though "mainstream" journalists are more obliged to read Slashdot as a matter of user interest rather than feel like it has any true value.

    I read Slashdot for the fun of it. Sometimes the news is funny, sometimes serious, sometimes even untrue, but the way in which it is presented is the draw. Also, being run by people who *know* what they're talking about is a big plus. Big sites like ABCNews or ZD may cover more topics, but their writers/editors are rather in the dark about some things.

    As for the remark about biased news, name me a newspaper in the US whose editors aren't pro-Republican or pro-Democrat or pro-whatever. Biases exist everywhere. You can count on ABCNews having a slightly more favorable stance for Disney than MSNBC or Yahoo. They'll deny it, but its there; who wants to lose their job because of a flippant comment? Slashdot (i believe) was at first a Linux news site. Naturally, there's going to be a bias against Microsoft. Does that mean the news is any less true? No. Will the way of reporting it be different? Perhaps. But when *you* run the site, *you* get to choose how the information is conveyed.

    to end this rant, I think that mainstream journalists need to wake up to the way people are getting their information today. Slashdot attracts viewers because of its individuality and the way news is presented. It may not take over the world, but it is a force to be viewed with respect, not with disgust.

  • Imagine if Slashdot paid decent money for articles that rated a "5". That's incentive for you.
    Better yet, imagine if they paid for posts that rated a 5. You think the site is full of score whores now, wait till you get posts like "Psst... Hey buddy, moderate this up and I'll cut you in for 10%"
    --Shoeboy
  • From the article:
    "All that seems to be missing from Slashdot-type sites is some kind of reputation rating system, where participants are assigned a trust rating based on feedback from the group and managed by a central authority."

    wtf??? Isn't the moderation system like this? It seems to fit the description above, albeit it has a few flaws (probably mostly to do with varying personal opinions, tho).

    Hrm. Maybe I'm just missing what they're trying to say. Comments?


  • i sent the author a note about this (and I'm probably not the only one - poor guy :) Anyway, read the following...

    All that seems to be missing from Slashdot-type sites is some kind of reputation rating system, where participants are assigned a trust rating based on feedback from the group and managed by a central authority. One such system is up and running on eBay, ensuring that buyers and sellers on the auction site can trust one other.

    Three paragraphs later...

    A version of the eBay system is in place at Slashdot. Participants can earn moderation points, and readers can pick a threshold that will screen posts accordingly. Registered users automatically begin with a higher rating than anonymous users.

    Either the article wasn't edited well ("Wait, there is a rating system - better add this paragraph here") or I missed his point...

  • Nobody scoops anybody (almost) (Score:4)

    by dillon_rinker ( 17944 ) on Thursday August 26, 1999 @02:00PM (#1723544) Homepage
    I like Slashdot and all that, but well over 50% of the content is just re-linking to stories on salon, news.com, or wired

    i agree, BUT...

    Almost all of the tech news I read fits into one of these categories:

    1. Rehash of some company's press release "Cool new product (tm) available Real Soon Now" (I used to work for Gateway and was both saddened and amused when corporate press releases were reworded slightly and printed under a tech reporter's byline major PC magazines).

    2. Rehash of come company's financial statement - or "UberTeq posts record sales".

    3. Media / corporate collaboration to produce "news" (ZD anyone?).

    4. Opinion pieces, where one person lets their thought ricochet around their skull and writes about it. The level of interestingness depends on the cluefulness of the writer.

    5. The reporter talked to someone who knew something and then wrote about it.

    In short, there is very little originality in tech journalism. Slashdot makes an excellent filter for categories 1-3, and produces categories 4-5 by default.

  • Absence of Editorial Supervision? (Score:3)

    by dave_aiello ( 9791 ) on Thursday August 26, 1999 @11:34AM (#1723554) Homepage
    The Wired article says:

    "In this model you don't have editors deciding what is legitimate and what isn't," said Jonathan Dube, a senior associate producer with ABCNews.com.

    What are CmdrTaco and Hemos doing when they decide which stories to post? Aren't they serving as editors, and determining what is legitimate and what isn't?

  • "Old" Journalism (Score:3)

    by Indomitus ( 578 ) on Thursday August 26, 1999 @11:34AM (#1723555) Homepage Journal
    I liked this story but mostly I was interested in the views of the journalists interviewed. My favorite was the derision of the stories because there is no editor to look things over and approve them. This shows a clear lack of understanding of the process of sites like Slashdot. A perfect example was the story on the 25th about the supposed "new" way the guy found to make the ipv4 address structure last longer. I don't really have the know-how to know if this was alright or not (beyond the horrible grammar) but within 30 minutes of reading the comments here, I knew it was crap because I had a hundred people way more knowledgeable than I am reading the story and picking it apart. There's no way to do something like that in a traditional news source. They expect us to trust our info to some editor we are completely unfamiliar with, no thanks. What made me laugh the most was the fact that the reporter talked about how Slashdot was unreliable, then she says she checks the site 5 times a day looking for news. I guess as soon as she reports it the news will be reliable?

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