Related Stories
End of Day 1: Systems Update 149 comments
So, as I write this, day one has officially come to an end. I'm still somewhat in shock over it. Last night when I was editing the database to change over hostnames and such, I was thinking, man, it would be great if we got 100 regular users by tomorrow. Turns out I was wrong. By a factor of ten. Holy cow, people. I'm still in a state of disbelief, partially due to the epic turnout, but also because our very modest server hardware hasn't soiled itself from the influx (the numbers are, well, "impressive" is a way to put it). Anyway, I wanted to do a bit of a writeup of where we stand now, what works, and what doesn't. Check it out (and some raw numbers) after the break! Warning, it is a bit lengthy.
State of the Site: 02/23/2014 108 comments
Well, we've survived our first week as a functional website, and have yet to go belly up because of it. The speed and growth of our community is staggering to say the least, and we are working hard to get this site fully operational. I'm pleased to announce that a development VM is now available for public consumption, and if you're interested in site development, one should join us in #dev on irc.soylentnews.org. Beyond that though, I've got a few points to address on and updated statistics to share ...
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
What "News for Nerds" Sites Should I Use?
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 144 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(Score: 5, Informative) by kogspg on Monday February 17 2014, @08:06PM
soylentnews.org ?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by willie3204 on Monday February 17 2014, @08:09PM
This format/content takes me back and makes me feel good. I started using HTML mail format in gmail also just for the hell(and speed) of it.
(Score: 1) by ticho on Monday February 17 2014, @08:13PM
Your (or anyone else's) HTML mail is bad, and you should feel bad! :)
(Score: 1) by willie3204 on Monday February 17 2014, @08:15PM
Thanks ticho. What I meant was HTML View of the email. AKA non javascript garbage. All my mail content is text only....
(Score: 1) by ticho on Monday February 17 2014, @09:01PM
Ok, that does make sense. Having never used gmail, I couldn't guess that. :)
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Monday February 17 2014, @09:57PM
Don't forget the fact that basic HTML view's layout doesn't change every ten minutes.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by j-stroy on Tuesday February 18 2014, @09:06AM
Arrrrrrrrr! Thank gosh this site is up, kudos all! I participated in the boycott. and am not that likely to participate on the former cool place.. Checked back there and i see what seems to be a LOT more stories than usual.. and generally lower # of comments. Altho some with decent participation and NOTHING about Beta.. did we miss something? or did everyone who cared leave, and others just miss the events over those few days..
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday March 06 2014, @07:13AM
I think what we are seeing is a slow migration of people pissed at Dice for doing what they are doing, jumping ship, and coming over here.
My initial impressions, since I am straddling between one and the other, is this site has far fewer contributors, but the contributions themselves are of a much higher quality. That is Soylent is attracting the cream of the Slashdot crop. Those are the people who made Slashdot what it had become... a mecca for high-tech professionals to seriously discuss events of the day. That seems to be going away as the investors and the techies butt heads over which manner content is accessed. I do not think we want to attract the kind of people who aren't pissed off over what the new owners of Slashdot are doing to it.
So, if it must be that Slashdot be abandoned because some investor makes it so, I had just as soon leave the adolescent crap over on Slashdot and not attract them over here.
I was also a member of another top-notch group of professional oilmen over at "The Oil Drum" under the moniker "hardhat". It, too, was a wonderful gathering place to discuss our energy situation. While they were very welcoming to people with an interest in petrochemical affairs, they had little interest in attracting ones to dilute the forums with useless crap posts.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mattie_p on Monday February 17 2014, @08:07PM
So, hopefully we'll get some interesting feedback here in what sites people can go to. And then as you go to those sites you can submit articles for this community. This is the main reason I accepted this question for publication. If you have a question that you think the community can help you answer and will benefit the community to hear about, please ask!
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Monday February 17 2014, @08:44PM
My own finds during the last week or so:
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Blackmoore on Tuesday February 18 2014, @12:04AM
Boing Boing - site deals frequently with Security / NSA / Digital Liberties topics.
Ars
.. google news.
(Score: 1) by KibiByte on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:06AM
I can't second Google News as they seem to be PRWeb whores, and PRWeb reprints just about anything.
The One True Unit UID
(Score: 1) by Blackmoore on Tuesday February 18 2014, @03:03AM
i dont blame you, i have to filter out all the damn gossip and politics
(Score: 5, Informative) by AudioGuy on Tuesday February 18 2014, @12:13AM
I'm sure you will get lots of good suggestions for sites here.
One of the ways I find good sites is by tracing back where stories come from.
For example, for my last submission, I started at
http://www.sciencedaily.com/ [sciencedaily.com]
which I originally got from some Slashdot article,
Where I found
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/14021 2183713.htm [sciencedaily.com]
which led me to
http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2014/02/12/a ncient-settlements-and-modern-cities-follow-same-r ules-development-says-cu [colorado.edu]
which finally led me to the original at
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.137 1%2Fjournal.pone.0087902 [plosone.org]
Each step gave me more detail, and a less 'popularized'(i.e., dumbed down) version.
Each site may have other interesting articles.
One of the common complaints on slashdot articles was that there were too many from secondary sources, or blogs. Or really dumbed down ones.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Blackmoore on Tuesday February 18 2014, @12:31AM
I appreciate the effort - and if we can keep providing submissions with quality we can get back to what we liked about slash when it was good.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DarkMorph on Monday February 17 2014, @08:10PM
This almost seems like a joke. If you've come here to submit such a question you've already found your answer.
But I'll chip in more than the obvious. During the slashcott I had been following Ars. Their comment system isn't as... elegant as the Slash system but it's an all right destination I suppose. I hadn't ever read Ars before the slashcott for what it's worth.
There was much discussion in the comments on /. during the "fuck beta" tantrum regarding other sites like reddit. Opinions seem to go both ways, especially for reddit.
It was interesting that the article at Ars about the /. beta had a handful of commentators who were ex-/.ers!
(Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Monday February 17 2014, @08:30PM
I tried reddit -- the cat pic to content ratio was ridiculously high maybe 10/1. I like cats and all, have a bunch myself, but there's youtube for that type of content.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by scruffybeard on Monday February 17 2014, @09:06PM
I also tried reddit a while back. The lack of a moderation system made it very hard to wade through the nonsense, trolls, and general self-righteous anger in the comments.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by demonlapin on Monday February 17 2014, @09:11PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:54AM
/r/netsec [reddit.com] has a pretty good signal to noise ratio, and appears mostly used by network security professionals. As far as tech news goes, that's about the extent of my use of reddit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jonh on Monday February 17 2014, @09:01PM
I have a bit of a soft spot for Ars - they seem to attract intelligent (and courteous) commenters. It's one of the very few sites I've found it worth registering an account at.
(From my POV, there's a lot of websites where the level of commentary is either amusing or depressing, depending on mood and general level of faith in humanity.)
(Score: 1) by nukkel on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:41PM
Same here.
at the start of the 'cott I looked to Ars but it just couldn't capture my interest for more than five minutes.
Now that soylentnews is live I have my answer ;)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by The_Deacon on Monday February 17 2014, @08:13PM
This isn't exactly on-topic, but the topic got me thinking about it anyway ... does anybody have any statistics (or recommend ways to get them shy of asking Dice) of slashdot.org traffic over the past few days/weeks? It would be interesting to see if the "slashcott" made any sort of dent in their traffic.
I know for myself, it's been difficult (but I did succeeded!) in not loading slashdot as part of my regular daily litany. That's at least 15-20 page loads over the course of a week that stopped last week. I wonder how many others have done the same...
(Score: 2, Funny) by The_Deacon on Monday February 17 2014, @08:16PM
s/succeeded/succeed/
D'oh! My first post and it contains a typo. This better not be par for the course...
(Score: 1) by mhajicek on Monday February 17 2014, @08:28PM
Don't feel bad. I made a "their" / "they're" error on my first post here.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by qwade on Tuesday February 18 2014, @12:11AM
Your not to blame. Anyone could of done that
*wince* Man, that was even painful to write :/
(Score: 4, Interesting) by linsane on Monday February 17 2014, @09:34PM
Some stats on the polls, Votes per day and Comments per day going back for the last 20 SD polls. This is I reckon a slightly better proxy than the article comment count (subject to usual caveats, error factors etc):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuduJ vnvxxdhdFlYR3BvV1hMYzFnODJPR0xpOWdkcEE&usp=sharing [google.com]
Jan & Feb definitely lower tho this could be to do with folk just getting fed up rather than the slashcott which only has one data point. I'm sure it is easy enough to extend this but a glance shows that the Votes per Day 12+ months ago was considerably higher.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kru on Monday February 17 2014, @11:24PM
So the slashcott was about equal to their drop during the Christmas-New Years break. That's pretty amazing. I was expecting only a handful of people to actually go through with it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Tuesday February 18 2014, @12:41AM
I fully did the slashcott -- I didn't realize what an addict I was till I woke up, checked my instinct to click the bookmark in my toolbar, and then focused on the sites I check second. It was actually a hard week -- I didn't realize how many times I went to /. every day for a small break until I couldn't go there, and left me pretty frustrated all week.
(Score: 1) by quacking duck on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:27PM
Managed to do it myself. Typed it out on the address bar and hit enter just once, but closed it before anything loaded. And today I typed in "altslashdot" to see the progress here... still haven't loaded the old site yet.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @09:38PM
I jumped over once to check the site and they'd taken down the "We're listening" post on the main page. Also, none of the comments were about the beta, so either the slashcott people really WERE thoroughly boycotting or they're aggressively censoring anti-Beta sentiments.
Either way, pretty interesting.
(Score: 1) by dry on Tuesday February 18 2014, @03:48AM
There are still comments about the beta but generally the people that are left are sick of them and the moderation reflects it. /. for now but if the beta ever is forced I'll be gone. There's also a good chance that this site may replace /. for me, especially if users keep moving here.
One of the problems with Slashdot and probably similar sites is when a meme gets overdone and the beta hate was getting to that point.
Myself, I'll keep visiting
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday March 06 2014, @07:24AM
You probably know how Firefox ( and I guess other browsers as well ) let you put a commonly visited site's icon at the top toolbar?
I only have room for a little over a dozen of them. Soylent is on mine right next to Slashdot. When I can no longer access the Slashdot I knew, I will delete the Slashdot icon. Once I delete it, the probability is quite low I ever go there again.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Funny) by mcgrew on Monday February 17 2014, @09:45PM
Hey, why doesn't blockquote work? I re-registered this morning (I had had UID 123 before) and it's still only seven hundred something, so I doubt /.'s numbers were down much. Someone from soylent should be able to give site stats for here.
Here's a sarcastic parody from fifteen years ago this month that I think applies in this case:
----------------
I want to again thank all you folks that sent mail about that "webmaster too" article on Planet Quake. It seems I have one more regular visitor, who appears to be replacing a dropout. The rest must be Fragfest regulars, as my visitor count is actually down a bit this week (except Sunday and Monday).
Of course, Planet Quake is being boycotted again by some of the regulars at Planet Crap.
Nice timing, guys.
At the last count, the boycott has made Planet Quake's 100,000 hits per day drop steeply to, oh, about 99,994 per day. Give or take half a dozen.
Meanwhile, the boycotters' pages counts have risen to an average of a phenominal 9.5 hits per week.
The boycott stems from Planet Quake's "stealing" a domain they paid for from a site they hosted. It does sound like they aren't being exactly nice to the guy, but wtf, I don't have a domain; why should he? Unless he can afford to blow the price of a Voodoo, in which case he would have had it before PQ hosted him anyway.
Some people can't stand to see anybody make a buck. Commie bastards. 2/25/1999
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by ticho on Monday February 17 2014, @09:53PM
I don't think they really noticed any boycott either.
Ahh, the good old days of quake. The endless hours spent on q1dm4. It really was a Bad Place.
(Score: 1) by jones_supa on Monday February 17 2014, @11:08PM
(Score: 1) by mcgrew on Tuesday February 18 2014, @04:03PM
I've been re-running stuff from that site in my journal, of course it's in the guise of time travel now. I'll be posting identical journals here as well, perhaps a day earlier (soylent needs me more than slashdot does).
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Angry Jesus on Monday February 17 2014, @10:36PM
I know for myself, it's been difficult (but I did succeeded!) in not loading slashdot as part of my regular daily litany.
I still visited, I just didn't write any comments.
For some reason I rarely get mod points there anymore. I've got great karma and a low uid, typically post 10+ times a week, frequently get moderated +5, but I can easily go 6 months without getting mod points.
This morning I had 15 mod points over there. I'm not going to use any of them, now that Soylent is up, I won't even be visiting there as much. But it sure made me suspicious.
(Score: 1) by Angry Jesus on Monday February 17 2014, @10:42PM
Ack! Why doesn't the quote tag work here?
It's making me angry.
(Score: 2, Informative) by dry on Tuesday February 18 2014, @03:52AM
Ack! Why doesn't the quote tag work here?
Use the italic tag as we used to do on /.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stroucki on Monday February 17 2014, @10:37PM
Does it matter? Don't you feel better about doing what is right, rather than second guessing yourself just because it may not have had the impact you were hoping for?
(Score: 1) by efitton on Tuesday February 18 2014, @02:10AM
It matters a lot less now.
(Score: 1) by No Respect on Monday February 17 2014, @11:24PM
'Twas difficult for me as well, but I also did it. Today I went there to see what was going on, saw NO comments in any story about the beta and figured the /cott was having its desired effect. I can't be sure of that, however, without data. Maybe comments about beta aren't getting modded up like they were 2 weeks ago and fell below my viewing threshold.
I did see, however, a link to SoylentNews, came here, registered, and hope to be here for a long time.
(Score: 1) by hatta on Tuesday February 18 2014, @12:48AM
Block it at the router, and your muscle memory will soon fade.
(Score: 1) by el_oscuro on Monday February 24 2014, @03:24AM
I of course boycotted "the old site" from the scheduled 10-17 Feb. Reading and commenting on soylentnews helped keep me from clicking on that RSS feed. Venturing back into there a few days ago, and beta is gone! The boycott appears to have worked. However the damage is done. CommanderTaco is gone and dice is in charge. It won't be long before it gets crappified again.
Now we have Dopefish [dopefish.com] in charge. What could be cooler than that? An now soylentnews has an RSS feed so I can get my fix without having to go to "the old site"
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by SurvivorZ on Monday February 17 2014, @08:14PM
I've been active on Twitter #slashcott, and I have to say, as of 5 minutes ago, I have added the entry
198.58.127.22 slashdot.org
to my hosts file.
Good bye, Slashdot! After 15 years, you broke my heart ;(
(Score: 1) by ls671 on Monday February 17 2014, @11:07PM
APK, is that you?
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: 1) by JeanCroix on Tuesday February 18 2014, @02:47PM
(Score: 5, Informative) by CmdrTaco on Monday February 17 2014, @08:15PM
(Score: 1) by dr zim on Monday February 17 2014, @08:34PM
iOS only?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @10:39PM
Holy crow, is it really you? Could you prove it with a tweet? Is the design bringing back any fond memories?
Cheers
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @11:05PM
(Score: 1) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:18AM
I'm pretty sure they are *not*
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 1) by Balderdash on Tuesday February 18 2014, @04:07AM
Is it the Rove Trove?
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb201304211736 19/lil-bush/images/5/52/Screen_Shot_2013-04-21_at_ 1.44.24_PM.png [nocookie.net]
I browse at -1. Free and open discourse requires consideration and review of all attempts at participation.
(Score: 0, Troll) by toygeek on Tuesday February 18 2014, @10:09AM
Finally CmdrTaco, I have a lower UID than you! :D Thanks for supporting SN.
There is no Sig. Okay, maybe a short one. http://miscdotgeek.com
(Score: 5, Informative) by Koen on Monday February 17 2014, @08:16PM
There is an active group of slashdot refugees on Usenet [wikipedia.org]: comp.misc
You can use a usenet news reader through (among others) an account at eternal-september.org [eternal-september.org] and then use a reader like Thunderbird or Pan [rebelbase.com].
Alternatively you can get there through Google Groups [google.com] or, if you want an interface which resembles Slashdot, through s'qute [squte.com].
Here's an article about the /. refugees on Usenet [ngrblog.com].
/. refugees on Usenet: comp.misc [comp.misc]
(Score: 1) by Covalent on Monday February 17 2014, @08:43PM
Ugh. S'Qute is uglier than Beta. Pass.
I'll stick with Soylent for now, thanks.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 1) by Koen on Monday February 17 2014, @08:54PM
"Ugh. S'Qute is uglier than Beta."
True. But my beef with Beta is not the esthetics, it's the loss of functionality.
The impressive thing about s'qute is that it builds a slashdot-like interface with moderation etc... on top of Usenet. If one day Slashdot or SoylentNews folds, all old comments are gone. If s'qute or Google Groups go down, all comments are still available through Usenet's distributed database.
/. refugees on Usenet: comp.misc [comp.misc]
(Score: 5, Informative) by tdk on Monday February 17 2014, @08:58PM
I'm the developer of s'qute. It's a proof of concept not a beauty contest.
You can always use custom style sheets [mozilla.org], and when you're happy with them, send them to me and I'll add them as an option on the site.
Take back your internet [squte.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kru on Monday February 17 2014, @11:30PM
This is why Slashdot (and now Soylent and other alt sites) are awesome. Some user posts a comment about an unknown (to me) utility and the actual developer him/her-self chimes in with a brief and useful reply. That's the sort of stuff that I've been missing.
(Score: 1) by forsythe on Monday February 17 2014, @08:56PM
While I must second the recommendation for Usenet, I ask those interested to please, PLEASE not use the Google Groups interface. The post editor does strange things to quoting, provides no sane way to limit line length, etc. Posts made through Google Groups are very irritating to read unless the author formats them meticulously.
(Score: 1) by Aiwendil on Monday February 17 2014, @09:07PM
Speaking of newsreaders I'm a fan of slrn. It's a nice little commandline* newsreader that has all the functions one really wants, and take a little while to set up to taste.
I also recommend eternal september as a newsserver.
* = crossplatform, originally for unix-like platforms, dates back to 1994, last update was in 2012, and yes, it's in debian so just apt-get it.
(Score: 1) by cykros on Monday February 17 2014, @11:30PM
Tin is another reasonable option, if you're for whatever reason not happy with slrn. It's what I got the hang of quickest back in my early *nix days, and has aged just fine.
(Score: 2, Funny) by cykros on Monday February 17 2014, @11:24PM
Usenet has been almost surprisingly working quite well for us for the last week, though naturally, there's no moderation system in place. On the plus side, I get to write my posts in Vim (emacs would work too, but that'd be a questionable decision :-P)
(Score: 1) by wjwlsn on Tuesday February 18 2014, @03:53AM
Hail Vim! :)
I agree about comp.misc... it has been a good place to be during the past week. There seems to be good core group of insightful posters there, and the signal-to-noise ratio has been high. I think all of us would agree, though, that more participants would be very welcome.
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 1) by paulej72 on Tuesday February 18 2014, @12:23AM
Can someone who is already setup post to usenet about this site? They may want to hear about it.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 1) by Koen on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:45AM
At comp.misc everybody is aware of SoylentNews.
Which of the 110,000* other newsgroups on usenet would you like to inform? I'll put a note on alt.folklore.computers [alt.folklore.computers].
--
* Wikipedia estimates [wikipedia.org] that 20,000 of those are still active, but that number is tagged [citation needed].
/. refugees on Usenet: comp.misc [comp.misc]
(Score: 1) by paulej72 on Tuesday February 18 2014, @02:45AM
How about the one in your sig. I figured I did not need to mention it because of the context of this thread.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 1) by wjwlsn on Tuesday February 18 2014, @03:40AM
We've had multiple posts about SoylentNews on comp.misc during the past week. I posted the one announcing that the site had gone live, immediately after signing up here myself.
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 1) by JeanCroix on Tuesday February 18 2014, @02:57PM
(Score: 1) by dry on Tuesday February 18 2014, @04:03AM
There's also aioe.org as a free usenet server and I've been using astraweb.com as payed usenet server. Astraweb is very cheap if you only use text, something like $10 for 5GBs, at least that is what it was some years back when I signed up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @08:18PM
(Score: 1) by Open4D on Monday February 17 2014, @10:25PM
> You could try http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/ [unnecessaryquotes.com]
If you are referring to "News for Nerds" quoted in the headline then I think you're wrong. Firstly, the quote marks help to emphasize that the term really is being used as a quote (it's part of Slashdot's tag-line) rather than just generically. Secondly the quote marks tie those 3 words together for their purpose in the sentence, which is as a 'modifier' applying to the word "Sites".
Not convinced? Then why not ask the people at that blog you linked to?
Anyway, I commend you for trying, but it's probably worth you building up your expertise in this area before your next attempt.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @08:22PM
Gaynigger seed contains all the nutrition you need. While you suck, your nigger master will tell you the news. Don't forget to swallow.
(Score: 1) by animal on Monday February 17 2014, @08:29PM
Really I don't think racist comments belong here.
(Score: 1) by Koen on Monday February 17 2014, @08:39PM
"Really I don't think racist comments belong here."
I completely agree. However, there is no way to prevent this without giving up anonymous posting - and I think many of us don't want to pay that price.
Somebody with mod points will mod it down soon enough - if not: don't feed the troll and ignore him.
/. refugees on Usenet: comp.misc [comp.misc]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @08:41PM
New site needs trolls. Soylent News is White People. Crackers be tasty.
(Score: 1) by animal on Monday February 17 2014, @08:44PM
I don't mind foul language. Nothing really wrong with it. But I think we are all above racism.
I had 10 moderator points and wanted to delete the comment and couldn't find out how lol.
So please any mod can delete this AC's comment?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @08:49PM
Censor the animal! Censorship for some, bite site soy protein bars for others. Idiot.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by unitron on Monday February 17 2014, @09:11PM
Once you start deleting comments, where do you draw the line?
That's why those type of comments can be modded down to -1.
If you don't browse at -1, you never see them, but we avoid the slippery slope of censorship.
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @09:23PM
Comments such as these are the essence of the community, they are to ignored and down-moderated.
(Score: 1) by koreanbabykilla on Monday February 17 2014, @10:28PM
Speaking of mod points, it is weird seeing the familiar interface, but not having any. lol
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @08:39PM
Oh well... it even feels like the slashdot now
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @09:02PM
You must be new h... uhh, never mind.
(Score: 2, Funny) by tristram on Monday February 17 2014, @09:19PM
Well, if you're trying to replace Slashdot, then they certainly do.
This type of community is always going to attract trolls. The trick is to find ways to deal with the problem without making discussion worthless.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Iskender on Monday February 17 2014, @09:56PM
>Well, if you're trying to replace Slashdot, then they certainly do.
This a thousand times! We need junk.
We need it because it's part of the Slash culture, but also because AC is the only way for some to post about their employers, post interesting but controversial links and so on. Anonymity gives rise to bad posts, but without it everyone will behave so well, they will never manage to say the most interesting things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @10:55PM
One idiot posting racist crap has 10 others comment on it, spraying around the same subject line even on +5 posts.
(Score: 1) by koreanbabykilla on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:18AM
Thats one of the reasons we arent supposed to feed them. Duh.
(Score: 1) by wjwlsn on Monday February 17 2014, @08:25PM
There has been a good amount of message traffic in comp.misc during the past week. You can check it out at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.misc [google.com] or http://squte.com/groups/comp.misc [squte.com] ... or if you have a newsreader but no Usenet feed, sign up at http://www.eternal-september.org/ [eternal-september.org] for free text-only newsgroup read & post access.
Many people observing the Slashcott have been at comp.misc, and there have been quite a few food discussions going.
I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.
(Score: 1) by cmn32480 on Monday February 17 2014, @08:28PM
Some threads from the past week had a few hundred comments... most topped out at 100. Some as high as 600-650.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2, Interesting) by gallondr00nk on Monday February 17 2014, @09:41PM
There's a discussion on the comp.misc about the boycott entering a second week. [google.com] It's pointed out that while the comments are still plentiful, not that many are moderated as +4 or +5.
Looking at /. again today, I was initially disappointed by the small impact it seemed have on the comment numbers, but it's worth remembering the quality of comment is more important.
As for the topic, I mainly read comp.misc and Ars. I was pleasantly surprised by the comments section of the latter, which I've never bothered with before. Not /. standard, but it certainly has a decent SNR.
(Score: 1) by dmc on Tuesday February 18 2014, @04:31AM
" /. standard, but it certainly has a decent SNR.
As for the topic, I mainly read comp.misc and Ars. I was pleasantly surprised by the comments section of the latter, which I've never bothered with before. Not
"
Same basic comment here. I'll add that what I don't like about the Ars comment system is the unthreadedness of it. Combined with good moderation and high quality comments, and you get IMO a better picture of both sides of the debate. I.e. the common situation of a particular well known point getting modded highly, but then right next to it, the less known but insightful counterargument upmodded. On Ars it seems any insightful counter to a highly modded well known point gets kind of lost in the noise and distance from the 'parent' comment.
(Score: 2, Funny) by evk on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:54AM
Boycott? What boycott? Sure they changed the domain name and went from green to red, but I still think _this_ is a great site.
(Score: 2, Informative) by VLM on Monday February 17 2014, @08:37PM
We could make jokes all day about the stereotypes found on HN, because, frankly, it is extremely stereotypical, but on a regular basis you'll find something cool.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Angry Jesus on Monday February 17 2014, @10:26PM
The problem with HN is the arbitrary and opaque "hell-ban." They make it hard to even know you've been banned - your posts are only visible to your account (and other people who have set an obscure flag). I set the flag because I was just fiddling with knobs one day. I saw a few people who have been submitting stories and writing posts in good faith for months not realizing that they were invisible to everyone else. Going back through their post history to see when they got hell-banned didn't reveal anything particularly egregious either so it isn't like they "should have known."
I'm sure it isn't intentionally malicious, but the effect is just outright cruel. No notification and if you do figure it out, there is no mechanism for appeal either. Given that HN is the creation of a big famous venture capitalist, I thought it was a pretty good metaphor for the industry's focus on being clever blinding them to how their work can so easily dehumanize people.
(Score: 1) by everdred on Monday February 17 2014, @11:25PM
> but on a regular basis you'll find something cool
I subscribed to HackerNews's front page RSS feed for a little while, but found the post volume to be unbearable. For a little while, it almost seemed like the quality of the 'signal' posts was enough to make the low signal-to-noise ratio worth putting up with...
(Score: 2, Funny) by Udo Schmitz on Monday February 17 2014, @08:38PM
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Papas Fritas on Monday February 17 2014, @08:50PM
I think I will read both flavors of slash for a while.
If I find one to be more interesting I will just naturally drift over to spending more time on it to the eventual exclusion of the other.
It is all going to depend on the quality of the stories and the quality of the community that builds up.
In any case, just having Solynet News up and running is going to be a strong motivator for Dice to continue maintaining the classic version of slashdot in parallel with the beta version which is what I am most interested in.
So it's all good.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @08:55PM
How soon before Soylent Beta? It is inevitable.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday March 23 2014, @03:28AM
Same here. And Pipedot too, when I remember. (No daily mailer yet. :(
Tho of late I find myself spending more time on SN than on /.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Bruce Perens on Monday February 17 2014, @09:11PM
I am doing the last bit of work before bringing Technocrat.net back online today. The software is brand new, and not as functional as the slashcode here (moderation doesn't work yet) but it's going in a different direction that I hope will raise the level of discourse. No ACs. Extra status for people who post using their real name. Moderation of submissions once they're published (Haven't you wanted to down-moderate bad articles on Slashdot?). Moderation of comments on two axes: comportment (behavior) and content. Editors get to delete comments, the garbage we're so used to on Slashdot doesn't get to stick around. Optimized for caching (I serve through Cloudflare, so this is a scalability thing, but if you can use a proxy it helps there, too). Minimal Javascript (you need Javacript to moderate, and to submit, but not to read at all). Device agnostic. Very sparse styling.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @09:22PM
Sounds horrid. I'll stick to Soylent, but thanks for trying to poach from a brand new site!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Schafer2 on Monday February 17 2014, @09:57PM
Bruce
For those that don't recognize the name, Google Bruce Perens. He has a long, solid history with our community. He's helped define the open source movement, lead Debian, and your home router is probably running some of his code.
Technocrat.net /. beta progressed, I thought his resurrection of Technocrat.net would be the best option, and said so. While working on the site, it would have been nice if he had URL forwarded Technocrat.net to Slashdot classic--it would have been a great way to indicate who was ready to move, both to ourselves and to Dice.
As the
Technocrat.net vs. SoylentNews /. links. Of course, I'll give Technocrat.net a try once ready, but I feel really good about SN starting out from the best of what /. was in the past.
It was disappointing to see Bruce take a dig at the SoylentNews team on the Technocrat.net placeholder page. Due to the heroic efforts of the SN team, I've already changed out my
(Score: 0) by buswolley on Monday February 17 2014, @10:06PM
Well. Welcome. :)
The revolution turns on itself?
nah...there isnt a revolution.
subicular junctures
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bruce Perens on Monday February 17 2014, @10:39PM
What was I supposed to forward to? Soylent news just went live yesterday, at which point I already had news about the new site debut posted at technocrat.net.
I'm impressed by the success of the SN team with the old slashcode. But IMO, the Slashcode has always been a pain to maintain (I ran it a long time ago) and the effort to bring it forward to work with today's software will get thrown away, unless you want to stick with that software forever, which isn't the best idea. I know spending any more time with that code would have made me really unhappy. And it took me a week to bring up basic Rails code with many the features I wanted, from zero, working alone. It would have taken less time, but I've had to get up to speed with changes in Rails 3 and 4 since I've done much web development.
(Score: 2) by tdk on Monday February 17 2014, @11:03PM
When I first set up squte.com as a slashdot look-a-like, I tried to use slashcode but found it so difficult, that like you I gave it up for a more modern framework. Other people had similar problems. [kuro5hin.org]
All of which just makes the achievements of the soylent news dev team more impressive. Maybe they should move to something more modern - but the goal was to get something as similar to /. up as quickly as possible. There'll be plenty of time later to experiment.
Take back your internet [squte.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2014, @06:31AM
As others have pointed out, the "killer" feature of Slashcode is the mod/commenting system. So far, no other forum code has been able to match it feature-for-feature, but I'm sure a lot of developers out there have recently been inspired to try!
(Score: 1) by tdk on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:34PM
There are a few projects that use Slashdot type moderation. See scoop [kuro5hin.org] and slashcomments [drupal.org].
Take back your internet [squte.com]
(Score: 1) by anthem on Monday February 17 2014, @10:29PM
> No ACs.
> Extra status for people who post using their real name.
> Editors get to delete comments, the garbage we're so used to on Slashdot doesn't get to stick around.
Given the above, I have no desire to support your venture as a would be user. Just personal preference. The craziness of AC trolls or registered trolls is a force of its own, and when I don't want to see it I just filter out -1.
This is also way different than Slashdot / Soylent news philosophy - Not like that's wrong but why do you take a slight at Soylent News on your site. Or it seems like you do. Good luck sincerely, but the tone of your comment turns me off to your idea.
(Score: 1) by Bruce Perens on Monday February 17 2014, @10:51PM
Yes, I understand that I will lose some people this way. I must have the courage to lose them if I want to try new stuff. It might work, in which case it would be worth it.
I explained in another comment my feelings regarding the old slashcode, please see that.
(Score: 2) by koreanbabykilla on Monday February 17 2014, @10:33PM
But the "garbage we are used to on ./" gets handled by the moderation system. Nothing being deleted means I can surf at -1 and see all the stuff the moderators don't want on the site. There is some good shit at -1 sometimes. I think the non-ability to edit/delete posts is the best part of slashcode.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Bruce Perens on Monday February 17 2014, @10:48PM
I'm pretty sure you can present any information whatsoever without being a troll, and I'd like to promote more people learning how to do that and how to participate in a civil discussion. Unfortunately, presenting trolls at -1 rewards the trolls, because they will be read by some segment of the audience. Rewarding the trolls means they will repeat their behavior. Wiping out their mess as quickly as possible means they've wasted their time and demotivates them from repeating bad conduct.
There's a famous social study about leaving a car on a city street with a broken window, and it being on blocks with the wheels gone within a short time, when a similar car without a broken window remained untouched. Slashdot is like that, it actually promotes its bad conduct.
So, what if we try to never reward bad conduct, and consistently reward the good?
(Score: 1) by koreanbabykilla on Monday February 17 2014, @10:56PM
Interesting thought. I would always worry the "Powers that be" at any site that deletes trolls instead of modbombing them, would at some point delete a "troll" that would have been something ontopic I would like to discuss. Perhaps some notifier that a post was deleted with a link to the deleted content so people can verify what is being removed is what ought to be?
That being said, I'm no Bruce Perens, so I will for sure be trying anything you think is a good idea.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kru on Monday February 17 2014, @11:48PM
The loss of ACs is a devastating blow to the discussion of a site. Many people want to express views or admit ignorance in the security that their self wont be injured by the revelations. Anonymity allows growth in ways that its absence wont. Anonymity can also be abused for trolling, and it will be, but to remove it completely may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I was looking forward to technocrat all week, and I will likely still give it a chance. However, I am deeply disappointed in the loss of AC. I hope that you reconsider this one aspect.
(Score: 1) by Bruce Perens on Tuesday February 18 2014, @12:19AM
What is the problem with Pseudonomity, as presently exercised on Slashdot? Peolple post from handles and you don't learn their names unless you reveal them.
(Score: 1) by koreanbabykilla on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:10AM
Do you think killing anon will just up the number of sockpuppet accounts? I might as well be an AC on ./ and here, for all the good knowing "Koreanbabykilla" does anyone. I made the ./ account, and stay logged in, simply so it will remember I want to browse at -1 nested. Now, if I post enough, people will be able to form some picture of who I am. If I then want to post something that could cause loss of a job or freedom or such, I would need a sockpuppet if there is no AC option. Not anything I ever will need to worry about, but I think something to think about.
(Score: 1) by Bruce Perens on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:53AM
Yes, pseudonymity is the alternative to being an AC. A sock-puppet, on the other hand, is intended to be deceptive. I have some vague thoughts on using reputation to discourage them. It helps that I have the comportment axis for comment moderation, that might catch them. We would need to show reputation values right next to their user ID (rather than moderating the comment). I'll work on it.
(Score: 1) by Aiwendil on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:53AM
Just a crazy idea if you implement reputation. Allow registered users to post with their uid/username hidden, and apply all reputation-changing effects to the poster and as soon as it isn't possible to moderate the comment anymore (archiving or maybe time-limit) unlink all references between the "posted as hidden"-comment and the account (excepting the reputation-changes).
This would allow for an anonymity that still incurs a "cost" on the account for trolls.
(Score: 1) by Hombre on Monday February 17 2014, @10:41PM
Sounds (mostly) interesting. Not sure about letting editors delete comments (unless they're so completely off topic or unambiguously flamebait, but even then... isn't that what moderation is for?)
As someone who does not code and has no interest in coding*, will I still find Technocrat interesting? I liked /. just fine I like having a news aggregator for technical type stuff, even if much if it doesn't apply to me, and I like having it presented in a style that doesn't look like someone just puked all over my web browser. So if Technocrat fits the bill, I'll hang out there too.
Do you mind if we just call you Bruce? You know, just to keep it clear. It'll cut down on all the confusion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @10:49PM
You can't have honest commentary without the ability for people to post anonymously. Unless your site takes countermeasures, people can still make up a name; wouldn't it be better to just let people be open with their anonymity? :)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but "real" names won't improve anything over fake names in terms of concern over one's reputation, but I can see advertisers lick their fingers for that data.
I think I would prefer a site like SoylentNews instead.
(Score: 1) by Bruce Perens on Monday February 17 2014, @11:05PM
I doubt we'll be able to compete with Facebook in that market!
I have been posting under my real name for a long time. I even put my phone number on the web: 1-510-4PERENS. And my email's on my web site. It doesn't get me additional advertising. I do get additional advertising from what I look at on some store web sites, though.
(Score: 1) by chebucto on Monday February 17 2014, @11:00PM
In terms of subjects covered, with technocrat.net fill in some of the gaps left by groklaw's closure?
Thanks for your work on this. I look forward to seeing technocrat.net. After years of decline at slashdot, we now have Soylent news, pipedot, and technocrat.net . Exciting times!
(Score: 2, Informative) by Bruce Perens on Monday February 17 2014, @11:08PM
Yes, I would like to dedicate one of the first discussions on Technocrat.net to planning what we will do to replace Groklaw. I am not sure that news blog software is the right platform. Maybe a wiki?
(Score: 1) by tristram on Monday February 17 2014, @11:02PM
Haven't you already pulled the plug on technocrat.net twice already? Not to give offense, but why would anybody want to move their community to a site with that track record?
If you can contribute software that improves upon Slash, that's valuable -- but I'm not sure that trying to suck people to your site is where you should be expending your effort.
(Score: 1) by Bruce Perens on Monday February 17 2014, @11:11PM
Yes, I pulled the plug twice, mostly due to lack of readership and having more important uses of my time (because the lack of readership didn't make the activity worthwhile). The only difference now is that Slashdot stinks worse than it did back then.
This brings us back to the lack of readership issue. It's a chicken-and-egg problem, isn't it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @11:18PM
I have to disagree with your ideas. Your site failed once, due to a lack of readership. I am not interested in visiting it in the future as I feel it will probably fail again. In fact coming here to get users will likely result in neither site having enough users to make it worthwhile. Good luck to you, but I have no intention of switching again. I can appreciate that you are trying to do good things, but I have no desire in the community splintering any more then it already has.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:02AM
I don't think there will be so much competition between the sites -- Maybe I'm unique, though I doubt it -- I have a series of sites I check everyday. The existence of one does not make me avoid the others at all.
(Score: 1) by tristram on Tuesday February 18 2014, @12:28AM
Well, this response kind of tells me that when you lose interest again, you'll yank it yet again.
An obvious solution would be to try to work with those who produced this site, rather than working against them. Yes, they may not have a history of success in running a discussion site -- but at least they don't have a history of failure.
I don't know whether the administrators here are married to the idea of using Slash or not, but hopefully they're at least willing to take a look at available alternatives.
(Score: 1) by Khyber on Monday February 17 2014, @11:16PM
Despite the ribbing you get, Bruce, you've done a great service to the community as a whole over the years. For that, thanks!
Destroying Semiconductors With Style Since 2008, and scaring you ill-educated fools since 2013.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @03:38AM
Oh wow. Until someone else commented, I did not realise the who the person was.
Bruce, what time zine do you live in. I want to check http://technocrat.net/ [technocrat.net] first thing in the morning in your TZ.
(Score: 1) by Bruce Perens on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:57AM
It's not going on the air until around mid-day (US-Pacific) Tuesday. For regular articles, I have given submitters the power to choose the publication start date (although editors can override) so that you can set your articles to run when you'll be awake.
(Score: 2, Informative) by unitron on Monday February 17 2014, @09:13PM
...check out theregister.co.uk
If for no other reason than the occasional BOFH episode.
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 1) by sgleysti on Monday February 17 2014, @09:27PM
It seems to be more deep and thoughtful than most news articles on /., for instance.
(Score: 2, Informative) by aliks on Monday February 17 2014, @09:49PM
phys.org
is pretty good.
And this is my first post on Soylent!!
To err is human, to comment divine
(Score: 2, Interesting) by linuxci on Monday February 17 2014, @10:01PM
It does feel like a trip down memory lane using this old version of the slash code base. It just shows that the owners of slashdot gave up on releasing their updates long before dice.
This does mean there's a Goidelic chance this site could become a better slashdot than slashdot.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @10:08PM
(Score: 2, Funny) by tomtomtom on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:19AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2014, @02:25AM
All those pages of subreddits makes me laugh. Too funny.
(Score: 2, Informative) by lubricus on Monday February 17 2014, @10:42PM
Another vote for Ars Technica. I especially like their general science reporting. ...of course, the experience is different: the stories are reported, and the comments are less useful.
Which I prefer (the more top-down experience of a long, well reported piece, or a more bottom-up approach of a well-moderated crowd) really depends on the subject of the piece.
I have been surprised though, when I didn't expect there were any more viewpoints on a story, only to be proven wrong by the crowd.
... sorry about the typos
(Score: 1) by gilgalad55 on Tuesday February 18 2014, @02:23AM
I agree -- I find Ars to be a nice balance of science reporting and tech reporting.
I also enjoy the -- typically nostalgic -- editorial comment. E.g., the recent diatribe about the Star Wars expanded universe :)
(Score: 1) by Popeidol on Tuesday February 18 2014, @02:04AM
Everybody else has covered most of the good sites, so here's a few Australian-specific sources for those who like to keep up with local news.
http://delimiter.com.au/ [delimiter.com.au] - Independent news site. Covers most topics, but spends a lot of time on politics
http://www.itnews.com.au/ [itnews.com.au] - Primarily business IT.
http://whirlpool.net.au/ [whirlpool.net.au] - A good round-up of local news. Their discussion forums should be your first port of call to discuss anything tech.
http://www.overclockers.com.au/ [overclockers.com.au] - forums with a hardware bent, but they have regular news posts on the main page (and RSS).
(Score: 1) by bryan on Tuesday February 18 2014, @04:00AM
shameless plug - http://pipedot.org/ [pipedot.org]
(Score: 1) by tdk on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:33PM
Some sites I like:
http://www.osnews.com/ [osnews.com]
http://xkcd.com/ [xkcd.com]
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/ [lowtechmagazine.com]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/ [theregister.co.uk]
Take back your internet [squte.com]
(Score: 1) by Hyper on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:44PM
http://thedailywtf.com/ [thedailywtf.com]
They are out there. They walk among us. You will never know them until you see their code, read their helpdesk ticket or watch them work.