Slashdot Subscribers Now See The Future

We're pleased to announce the newest reason for you to subscribe to Slashdot. Besides the ability to suppress banner ads, limit journal postings to friends, and a few plums, Subscribers now see stories posted on Slashdot from The Mysterious Future! These stories are recognizable by the red title bar, and the lack of a time stamp. Subscribers will be able to beat the rush and read the links before everyone else. You can hit the link below and I'll explain exactly what this means. If this appeals to you, you could read the subscriber FAQ or just go subscribe.

First off, this feature doesn't change anything for non-subscribers. All Slashdot stories are put into the story queue before you see them. The time stamps on these stories vary tremendously. Sometimes the story is posted days in advance (like, say, a Book Review or an Ask Slashdot where time isn't critical and we post a set number a week) Other stories are "Breaking News" and are posted just seconds before they go live. But most stories are posted 20-30 minutes before they go live. This time window gives other authors a chance to take a look at them. To fix spelling, to check for dupes (HAH!) or even to reject the story outright!

So while subscribers won't see news posted at the last minute before everyone else, most of our stories will be available to them 10-20 minutes before everyone else. This means they can click through and beat the Slashdot Effect.

Another possible feature addition that we're discussing is to allow subscribers to post during this window. We haven't decided if that's a good idea or not. Since subscribers are still subject to all the same restrictions as anyone else in the forums, they could still be moderated into oblivion if they were jerks about it so it's probably not subject to all that much abuse, but this is still something we're only considering. Feel free to discuss it in this forum, or to contact me with opinions.

A couple of notes here:

• Subscribers have a variable on their subscriptions preference page that tells us how many banner ads they wish to "Spend" per day. This number must be at least 10 for you to be eligible to see the Mysterious Future plum. This means that your $5 subscription will last 100 days- or, $15-20 a year.
• You also need to hit the checkbox to disable ads on the Index. Once you hit your Max Pages for the day, you will see ads again, but you will also be eligible for the plum.
• These notes will be clarified on both the subscriptions page and in the FAQ very soon. Your feedback will help us decide how best to explain this since it's not exactly black & white here. Give us a couple weeks and it should all be blazingly obvious from the documentation how everything works.

In closing, this is a new feature and we appreciate all your feedback, both good and bad. We decided to implement this after tons of feedback from you, and we're really excited about it. This is a really great incentive for users to subscribe, but it also can give subscribers a chance to alert us in advance if stories have mistakes in them. We'll likely be expanding this sort of functionality in the future.

Now please go subscribe and help support Slashdot!

Update To clarify the timing. Right now the mysterious future is set to 20 minutes. That number is not a promise tho, since a story posted 11 minutes before "Air time" would be seen slighter later. A story posted 30 minutes in advance will be visible 20 minutes early.

Hah! First!

[sulli]

Is that a Subscriber Benefit too?

Re:Hah! First!

[gmuslera]

If you see the article hours before most of slashdot readers, I think that yes, this will be a subscriber benefit. For the others a lot of discussions will start half full just when the article is widely available.

Re:Hah! First!

[staplin]

There'd just be 2 varieties of first posts...

FPP: First Paid Post!

and

FUP: First Unpaid Post!

All it takes is a few trolls with some available cash...

Re:Hah! First!

[MCZapf]

Nope. You can't post a comment until the story goes "live." I checked.

Re:Hah! First!

[Paradise Pete]

Nope. You can't post a comment until the story goes "live." I checked.

I see. So if the subscribers were allowed to post early then we'd start off with a higher quality of posts, instead of those from people who don't read the article. Except for you, of course.

Pay Rob Malda or we'll ddos the site before you

[t0qer]

can read it is basically what this plum means. I think it sucks personally. Why didn't you implement a cache system?

Re:Hah! First!

[idiotnot]

Actually, it would be, and AC's (unless they're logged in, posting anonymously) would be 30 minutes and 100 comments behind.....

I could start reading at zero again.

FWIW, I did subscribe. It wasn't much. I just wanted to get the ads out of the story pages. Banner ads don't bother me. I went back and checked before I posted, and I've still got like 400 out of the 1000 pages left. It's been worth it, I think, and this will just convince me to renew when the time comes.

Re:Hah! First!

[JPriest]

ISP's figured out a long time ago that people would rather pay for one month of unlimited access than a bucket load of hours that would probably take them over a month to use. People, like information want to be (feel) free.

Circumvention?

[cybermace5]

So, can subscribers grab the story URL, hop into the latest public thread, and anonymously post the URL for everyone's viewing?

Re:Circumvention?

[peterpi]

I'm sure such a post would get modded fairly (i.e. -1 Offtopic). I guess most subscribers are keen posters too, so they care about their karma.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to disallow A/C posting during the subscriber-only period?

Re:Hah! First! [privoxy, transproxy, and regex]

[Bill Privatus]

Look, it's the spirit of the thing, y'know?

Go ahead and block slashdot ads if you want. I'd like to think slashdot isn't evil, like x10.com.

If you don't want to subscribe, don't. But I don't think it's virtuous to not subscribe, to kill ads, *and* to post saying "I'm bright - and you can be, too!".

Do the first two, and you're fine. The last makes you an anti-slashdot fanatic and you'll no doubt be visited by the proper authorities any time now (knock, knock...).

Just my $0.02. Very much tongue-in-cheek. CmdrTaco will be sending me the usual check for $0.02 at the end of this month...

But...

[Rudy Rodarte]

doesnt /. want to be free??
;)

Re:But...

[bellings]

doesnt /. want to be free??

No. Only information wants to be free. Slashdot has managed to avoid that for a looong time.

Re:But...

[gallen1234]

Information may want to be free but bandwidth is another story.

Re:But...

[Soko]

Tell that to the recipents of the /. effect, why don't you.

Soko

Re:But...

[Kallahar]

Actually, during an interview last year they said that the major costs were not bandwidth, but personnel. It takes a lot of money to employ people full time to administer the site.

But yeah, bandwidth ain't free :)

Travis

Re:But...

[nomadic]

Yep, that army of proofreaders and fact checkers that they've hired must be expensive.

/. effect?

[Lothar+0]

Will this now result in a pre-/. effect? Maybe the subscribers will be nice enough to mirror /.-ed sites on their own sites before the rush, but I'm not holding my breath.

Doubt it

[Salden]

There's only like 10 subscribers abd they are all CmdrTaco's family.

Re:/. effect? (Market opportunity)

[kriegsman]

Here's a great marketing opportunity for someone entrepeneurially-minded:

1. Subscribe to the Mysterious Future via ./
2. Contact Web site owners and warn them politely of impending future slashdotting
3. Offer to sell them (short-term?) service on a Content Delivery Network
4. ... Profit!

Commercial sites would love this. Academic/government ones probably wouldn't care as much. You could sell them a contract with an existing CDN (Akamai, Mirror-Image, etc.) or build out your own special purpose service, just to handle slashdot-like effects.

-Mark, founder of Clearway Technologies (now owned by Mirror-Image Internet)

Re:/. effect? (Market opportunity)

[vano2001]

I wonder if slashdot themselves offered this service, wouldn't it be coercion? As in "you will be slashdotted if we post our story - which we are going to post - so either pay up or adios!" ... hehe

Re:/. effect? (Market opportunity)

[Rick the Red]

if slashdot themselves offered this service, wouldn't it be coercion?

Yes, but the Supreme Court just ruled that coercion is legal [federalismproject.org].

Re:/. effect? (Market opportunity)

[evilviper]

I don't think it would REALLY be coercion... After-all, the webmaster COULD just remove the page... I don't think anyone will be going over their bandwidth cap if they are just serving up a "Click HERE to help pay for my bandwidth" page.

Re:/. effect? (Market opportunity)

[silvaran]

Wouldn't that be blackmail?

"Hey, I'm calling about your impending doom... I have a way out. Deny my offer, and suffer..."

Uh-Oh

[tunabomber]

"Hey, I'm calling about your impending doom... I have a way out. Deny my offer, and suffer..."

Oh wait... You're talking about a slashdotting... At first you sounded like a Microsoft rep warning me that Win2K won't be officially supported anymore and I'll have to migrate the entire IT department to XP.

Whew. (for now)

Re:Uh-Oh

[allism]

Oh, c'mon, this isn't funny at all! This is exactly what MS is doing to my company and its DOS software! Where is the '+1, Tragic' modifier?

Re:/. effect?

[cgenman]

This might be a good thing (tm) for system administrators. Getting a sudden, solid surge of slashdot referrals might trigger a webserver to htmlify dynamic content and / or switch to a text-only site in anticipation of the real flood, which might shut down any such system.

Of course, if you can't hang with the ping flood, you're screwed. But for those who aren't Dossed but merely hosed, this could be a great thing.

Re:/. effect?

[Ed Avis]

So while subscribers won't see news posted at the last minute before everyone else, most of our stories will be available to them 10-20 minutes before everyone else. This means they can click through and beat the Slashdot Effect.

...if they reload Slashdot every quarter of an hour or so. Who does that all day long?

Re:/. effect?

[CmdrTaco]

According to our logs... 10s of thousands of readers ;)

Re:/. effect?

[CmdrTaco]

If we enabled posting for subscribers during TMF window, we definitely would not allow AC posting.

WOW!

[gpinzone]

No only do you stop getting ads that even the most brain dead ad-blocker could have gotten rid of for free, you also get to be Taco's personal dupe checker! I can't wait to send my money in!

Re:no kidding

[Wraithlyn]

I agree with most of what you said, except this:

"Lose the moderation system. It doesn't work, and never has."

If you don't like it, ignore the mod scores. You can just read at -1 unsorted if you want.

And IMHO, if you think reading at -1 unsorted is the same as reading at +2, highest first (which is exactly what you're saying by stating "It doesn't work"), you're on glue.

-34th post!!!

[Bingo Foo]

I can see it now...

Re:-34th post!!!

[Rick the Red]

Actually, allowing subscribers to post before other people might greatly reduce the number of non-subscribers who bother to come here (other than the ACs, of course). I've found that those who post early are far more likely to be moderated up than anyone who posts late, no matter how insightful or informative (or funny) their (late) post may be. Therefore, subscribers would be far more likely to achieve excellent karma than non-subscribers (excepting those of us who gained excellent karma prior to the policy change). This, of course, means subscribers would be more likely to have mod points than non-subscribers, and they'd be able to moderate before non-subscribers could even post, so you'd get an effect where the subscribers would mod each other into higher karma at the expense of non-subscribers.

All that's missing is removing the karma kap to totally exclude non-subscribers from any dialog, but most of us non-subscribers would probably be long gone by then. I'm curious enough that I'd probably check back once a month or so to see if they ever do remove the karma kap -- I'm betting they will, because it's such a pretty bullet that they probably can't reist shooting themselves in the foot with it. Or maybe they'll just remove the karma kap for subscribers. Hell, why not ban non-subscribers from posting and moderating and be done with it?

Hey, Taco! How much are you gonna be able to charge for banner ads if the only people who come to Slashdot are subscribers who never see them?

Earning Karma is not Slashdots main function

[Syncdata]

I like my excellent karma as much as the next guy, but this is silly. I think nothing would be better than to have fewer hot grits, frist prosts, and the like.
If the sole reason you visit slashdot is to earn karma, then you are missing the point, which is reading the articles, and the intelligent responses that follow. Just because you're not going to get the same chance to earn the karma as subscribers doesn't mean you should stop coming, and if Karma is THAT important to you, then shell out the 20 bucks per year, and you'll have that much more of it.

Re:Earning Karma is not Slashdots main function

[Rick the Red]

You missed my point; perhaps I wasn't clear. All I meant was that if the subscribers -- as a group -- have more karma points than the non-subscribers -- as a group -- then the subscribers will dominate the discussion and non-subscribers contributions will fall below the threashold and not be seen. Yes, you can adjust your personal threashold -- to -1 if you like -- but if you go with the default settings then before long all you see are the higher-moderated posts. Under this proposed new system, those posts could easily become dominated by subscribers. As a non-subscriber, I oppose that. If my comments are not valued by the editors simply because I don't subscribe (because the system they establish favors subscribers), then I'll spend my time elsewhere.

Re:-34th post!!!

[Slime-dogg]

Most people here are not motivated by karma, contrary to what you may believe. If you've found that you are ruled by karma, you in effect have become a karma-whore. You'll do anything for karma, including:

• Blah blah : ??? : Profit!!!
• Natalie Portman / Grits / AYBABTU
• Posting the text of the article as a comment
• Mirroring high karma posts higher in the page, to hoodwink people who don't look at post times

I've seen my fair share of high moderated posts that fall into those categories. It just seems that people care less about voicing thoughts and opinions, and more about turning /. into a popularity contest.

I personally could give half a crap. I read /. because it gives the news that I usually care about.

Great! Now I can see dupes before they are posted!

[indros13]

Great! Now I can see dupes before they are posted!

Well...

[1010011010]

It will at least get the trolls to subscribe, so they can keep trying to get First Post!

Re:Well...

[Kallahar]

More importantly, the trolls will have to use a real account, so when you mod them down it'll actually do something!

travis

Future Messages?

[agrounds]

So, since I'm a subscriber, am I actually typing this in the future as well since the title bar is green? It's really red, but I am seeing it green, thus I must be operating in the future! Jeez, and I though Babylon 5 was confusing!

Is this going to be like K5?

[mhesseltine]

By that I mean, will readers be able to make suggestions, corrections, etc. to the stories? Or, once submitted, the story is "set in stone" and won't be updated?

Also, will someone begin "karma whoring" and mirroring pages and posting links to the mirrors?

Re:Is this going to be like K5?

[CmdrTaco]

Users can always make suggestions to stories by emailing the author. We do hope that subscribers will be likely to alert us to typos and stuff. No story on Slashdot is really ever set in stone. But I would consider a story from the mysterious future to be totally plastic- I will be editing and updating stories during that window without spelling out changes or putting in little "Update" comments. We've always used the last few minutes before a story goes live to make updates and corrections. This won't change, but users will be able to alert us to issues before it goes public.

Old news...

[ZenHarbinger]

I knew about this yesterday.

Hmmmm

[ZaMoose]

Didn't TotalFark already go this route? What's next, Slashdot Photoshop contests? *grin*

Re:Hmmmm

[i.r.id10t]

No, but we will be able to rate b00bies at +5, Interesting.

Re:Hmmmm

[sweetooth]

Farks a touch differant in that a lot of the total fark news items never make it to the front page at all. So you are paying more to see the list of ALL of the submitted stories and not just what's being published before it goes live. Also with Total Fark you could get a head start on the photoshop contests.

I just don't understand Slashdot ...

[pgrote]

I am a Total Fark susbcriber and the only reason I did it was to get access to EVERYTHING that was submitted.

The enjoyment in using Fark comes from the ability to see what other people think is unique and newsworthy.

Slashdot is a great clearinghouse not only for technical news, but of technical thought as well. How many times have articles been submitted that the editors don't think are relevent to their vision, but that I'll get value from?

Isn't that what Slashdot should be selling? Access to the stuff other people consider important?

When I read Taco's explanation about the early preview the only thing it does is:

1) Offer the community the ability to check dupes.
2) Offer a headstart on crushing a site.

If a site is going to get slashdotted what is the big deal if it's slashdotted by the first 100 or the last 100? It's still going to be slashdotted.

If anyone from the Slashdot editor team is listening ... why not open up the whole queue for people to read? No comments, but at least let us check out what other people think is important and relevent.

Right now your model is focused on avoiding ads. Why? Focus on the CONTENT and you'll do much much better.

Re:Hmmmm

[weave]

Think of the possibilities for a boobies topic icon, given that slashdot's topic icons are like 70x70 instead of the 70x27 on fark.

Think of it, http://boobies.slashdot.org/

Awesome

[RedWolves2]

But..
Another possible feature addition that we're discussing is to allow subscribers to post during this window. We haven't decided if that's a good idea or not. Since subscribers are still subject to all the same restrictions as anyone else in the forums, they could still be moderated into oblivion if they were jerks about it so it's probably not subject to all that much abuse, but this is still something we're only considering. Feel free to discuss it in this forum, or to contact me with opinions.

I don't think that is a good idea. I think the fact that users can read ahead of time and then they can prepare their posts. This might make better prepared comments.

Re:Awesome

[RackinFrackin]

I've personally got my prefs set at +3 just to weed out the silly stuff.

That's a silly thing to say in a comment with a score less than 3. I guess it's working. :)

well golly

[JeanBaptiste]

Thats a pretty good idea. I would still think the /. effect would be better suppressed if slashdot would mirror stories, especially if its running off of somebody's mother's DSL connection.

Still, this offering may finally make me a subscriber. And I do like the idea of a subscriber getting to post first. The types of people that would subscribe are probably not the same ones that post the goatse.cx links and such. I'd even go so far as to maybe allow a subscriber another +1 bonus to karma, or maybe allow a subscriber a higher karma cap, or even let a subscribers post get modded to +6... but what do I know...

Re:well golly

[leviramsey]

Thats a pretty good idea. I would still think the /. effect would be better suppressed if slashdot would mirror stories, especially if its running off of somebody's mother's DSL connection.

Maybe make the Slashdot mirror only for subscribers?

paying for what ???

[mirko]

1. So subscribers will pay to let you batch your weekly job ?
   
2. they will only be able to warn you about dupes before the slashdot crowd

ergo: they pay you to help you doing your job ?

(just a question : not a flamebait)

But...

[fuchsiawonder]

I already see all of Slashdots news in the future!

...Wait...never mind. My system clock is running slow.

So compelling!!!

[ThinWhiteDuke]

OSDN outsources slashdot editing to its subscribers base. These happy few will have the privilege of beta testing dupes, broken links and poor spelling and grammar. They will also be the sole beneficiaries of the prestigious first post award as well as the (somewhat less prestigious) AYBABTU, ISR and Beowulf Cluster awards.

Must find my credit card, quick!

Comments on Subscriptions

[malachid69]

After reading the article, I was prepared to just close the link since I have no interest in paying to visit ANY site. Hell, at least I registered with /., I still won't do that for the NYTimes articles that keep getting posted -- I just ignore every single one.

And pay to PARTIALLY disable banners? Very lame. I never see them anyways, since I have gotten so accustomed to ignoring them... It's amazing at how trained you can get at ignoring pretty much all graphics on all sites.

But, to top it off, I read ALL of the comments to this article so far. Not a single good one -- doesn't that hint at something?

Malachi

Maybe allow subscribers to moderate stories?

[hackstraw]

I've noticed that the shere volume of stories in the past few months has increased, yet the quality of them is kinda variable. ask slashdot hovers around unbearable, but is sometimes good.

Why can't subscribers get a chance to mod stories during this "preview" time, and possibly even keep silly stories and dups from getting posted to the "real" slashdot.

Allowing posting would be bad!

[DavidpFitz]

Another possible feature addition that we're discussing is to allow subscribers to post during this window.

But this would mean 2 things:

(1) If a story gets pulled, lots of comments could already be posted. This would be pretty annoying if you had spent some time posting.
(2) Moderation is biased torwards early posters, and as such it would provide a disincentive for non-subscribers to post, thereby reducing the amount of discussion. This could be a good thing, since subscribers (hopefully!) provide more worthwhile reading.

Re:Allowing posting would be bad!

[CmdrTaco]

(1) This is a big issue and one that we would need to consider. I guess what it would probably mean is that you post to future-dated stories at your own risk. You're seeing Slashdot behind the scenes, you should expect some dust.

(2)Moderation is already based towards early posters. But since subscribers will likely only represent a small percentage of all posting, I can't imagine more than a few dozen comments making it inside this window. And right now, the first couple dozen posts are almost always disposable anyway.

We already know pretty reliable that subscribers are statistically better moderators. (we've done a bunch of internal reports, and basically according to M2 results, they are several percent more "Fair" then the population as a whole. I don't think we've ever done any reporting to see if subscribers are better posters. I'm guessing they would be less likely to crapflood, but beyond that, I really would only be speculating.

Re:Allowing posting would be bad!

[CmdrTaco]

I don't honestly remember. I believe what we did was graphed the number of dollars a person had paid us, against their M2 fairness score. The end result was a quite linear chart- the more you paid, the more "Fair" you were. Not totally surprising I guess.

It clearly is not a coincidence, but doing anything with that information would have to be thought through very carefully- just because a user is statistically more likely to moderate fair, that doesn't mean that they aren't going to. Every now and then you see someone who uses all 5 mod points to mod up 1st posts. They get killed in M2, but it does happen. We have to keep that sort of thing in mind when we make any changes in moderation.

Re:Allowing posting would be bad!

[CmdrTaco]

We've considered such a ranking system, but we're scared that we'd create another video game out of Slashdot. We learned a lot from Karma. Users started abusing it. It's purpose was misunderstood and turned into a game. It was never really intended to be that- it was intended to be a useful indicator for moderation eligibility and a few extra features on the site.

So any ranking system we designed would have to be very carefully thought through. Frankly I don't really care to see "The top 100 Slashdot Users" on a web page... but I would like to see "The Top 100 Recent Good Journals" or something. Personally I'm not interested in "Is Joe Good or Bad" I'm interested in "Is this journal a good journal and worth my time to read". Hence the threshold based moderation system. Someday perhaps we'll apply that to journals somehow.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Ummm...

[Xaoswolf]

Tell me about it.

My only tech problem used to be trying to crimp patch cables, now I have to worry about reading slashdot right.

Re:Ummm...

[Whatsthiswhatsthis]

I am red/green colorblind. This doesn't mean that I cannot distinguish red from green. I can tell that everything on Slashdot's main page is in a green motif. It's harder to distinguish when the colors are close together or very light/dark.

This colorblindness test [umds.ac.uk] illustrates the problems I have recognizing the difference between these colors. In plate 2 I read the number "3" and in plate 3 I see "70." Try it for yourself.

If people who are red/green colorblind could really not distinguish any difference between the two, traffic lights at night would be really confusing.

No Anonymous early posts

[binaryDigit]

I'm a bit ambivilent about the early posting idea, since having an early post is directly related to the number of people likely to see your post, that "privilege" suddenly becomes a paid one. So people who might actually have something worthwhile to contribute suddenly have to become paying members.

But anyway, that is not the point of this post. I just wanted to say that if they do allow early posters, that they should NOT allow these early posts to be anonymous. This should help keep the quality of the early posts up. Maybe even have another modifier that increases any negative moderation by 1, again to try make the privilage of early posting a true privilage and keep abuse down.

Re:No Anonymous early posts

[binaryDigit]

How lame is that. If you had something interesting to say, it would be modded up no matter when you posted.

Not true. If you're post is the 748th on an article, the odds of any appreciable number of moderators seeing it are very slim. Esp. since by then, you'd be buried in amongst a lot of other non-moderated posts. You can see this effect all the time. This is esp. true for things like redundancy.

One problem I see with this...

[Champaign]

Is the fact that if subscribers post first, their postings will always be read first. If their postings are read first (or potentially the only comments read as I often get bored when reading tons of comments and stop half-way through), they will be moderated first. Assuming positive moderation, they will get the mod points and higher karma.

In a round-about way this is a bit like selling karma (something I think you've avoided).

Good show! Could I purchase 1.25 kg of enlightment please?

Beating the slashdot effect?

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

Gee, I'm sure all the web sites that are suddenly and violently knocked off the web will be happy to know that slashdot is doing this for their subscribers. This seems a little like saying, well, my movie theater is quite flammable, so if you pay me $5 more, I'll make sure to seat you by an exit so you can get out before everyone else dies. It doesn't change the core problem, i.e., that slashdot is posting stories where they know from the outset that the effect is going to be a massive web server smackdown, and providing neither a mirror or a warning to anyone that this is about to happen.

Perhaps now there will be a little bit of warning. When you start seeing the first referrals from slashdot on your web server, those are the subscribers -- the advance guard before the real assault.

a microcosm lesson for everyone

[circletimessquare]

if you pay more, you get more

unfortunate, but true

for healthcare, for the legal system, for media/ information

equality is an illusion

true in life, true in not-real-life internet communities

sad but true

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[account_deleted]

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Are subscriptions helping the bottom line?

[bear_phillips]

How well are subscriptions doing for slashdot? Does anyone know if this feature was added because subscriptions are doing well or because subscriptions are doing bad and they need more incentives to subscribe?

At $5, slashdot is getting $0.005 per ad-free page view. What does slashdot get paid per page view with an ad?

Pre-posting is a bad idea

[techmuse]

"Another possible feature addition that we're discussing is to allow subscribers to post during this window."

This is a bad idea, because earlier posts tend to be moderated higher than later posts, simply because more people see earlier posts. This will give subscribers a much louder voice in the forums, while potentially degrading the quality of the discussion.

Reasons for not subscribing.

[thatguywhoiam]

I like Slashdot a lot. I come here every day. Despite the common flames (and downright freaky displays of human frailty around -1), I think the group consensus here is fantastic. It's often very funny, and I like knowing what all the really smart mf'ers think about certain issues and topics. I feel smarter for reading Slashdot.

Having said that, my lack of subscription is for a very simple reason: it's not professional.

I won't subscribe until I never see a dupe or typo. Really, for all of our vaunted technology, if Slashdot cannot surmount these two very simple obstacles, it doesn't deserve any real monetary support. It just doesn't. And again, I say this as a real fan.

Fix that, Taco, and you've got my money. And maybe even a little more credibility.

Re:Reasons for not subscribing.

[CmdrTaco]

If you want "Professional", read CNN. Slashdot is the trenches. Its down and dirty. It has typos and dupe stories and flamewars. We do our best to avoid mistakes, but we're mistake prone humans, trying to get news out in real time. So, sometimes things will go wrong.

Personally, I think that this is half the fun ;)

Re:Reasons for not subscribing.

[EllF]

Taco, man, you're confused. Rusty [kuro5hin.org] handles news from the trenches -- you're supposed to be giving us stuff that matters! ;)

Re:Reasons for not subscribing.

[CmdrTaco]

Fortunately, I can disagree with you about the definition of "Professional". Do you believe South Park should have higher animation quality? Slashdot was designed to be an informal place. Should I change that just because there is a subscription system? I think not. Slashdot is what it is, and I think that the informal tone is part of its appeal. Part of that means you actively see mistakes happen. You may not like it, but I think that its just part of Slashdot. I work very hard to keep Slashdot consistent with my original purpose for the site.

As for a magazien or DVD, I'd love to see it happen. I just don't have the time and expertise and budget for it. If everyone clicks on banners and subscribes, then I bet such a thing would be quite possible.

Re:Reasons for not subscribing.

[CmdrTaco]

Am I being defensive? Heh. Maybe. It's just that I've been running Slashdot for five and a half years now, and trying to keep it as an Informal news source. It was built on that very premise, and I think that this is core to its appeal. But there's always a group of people who think that this is a flaw. I just don't get it! I'm not trying to be defensive, I just feel like people who make these arguments want to fundamentally change the very nature of what Slashdot is!

Re:Reasons for not subscribing.

[pjrc]

Informal news source ... is core to its appeal.

Yes, that's a big part of the appeal. But, spell_check != formal_news. You need to do so much more to be a formal news site. You're so far away from being a formal news site that the tiny incremenatal change of spell checking really is a tiny drop in the ocean of change needed to become "formal". But it would make reading slashdot less irritating (and there's spell checking software that make this easy, unlike avoiding dups...)

I just feel like people who make these arguments want to fundamentally change the very nature of what Slashdot is!

You're saying that integrating a spell checking into the story posting process would fundamentally change the very nature of slashdot.

Now if you were to investigate all stories, use a formal writing style, write your own copy instead of primarily using the submission text, and dozens of other things... then you'd be talking about changing the nature of slashdot. Integrating a spell checking into the story posting, and even into comment posting and posting to the story submission just isn't going to change the fundamental nature of slashdot.

Re:Reasons for not subscribing.

[dasmegabyte]

Allow me to rebutt this.

I don't care about dupes and I don't care about typos. I've seen much worse than this on so-called professional news sites...in fact, I'd have to say that when compared to our local fox affilitate, Slashdot looks like the goddamn BBC.

I don't visit slashdot for the regurgitated, puree'd content. I visit slashdot for the clout. I visit for the semi-high profile interviews and the "insider" info.

And most importantly, I visit for the posts. If slashdot were just Drudge for technolosers, I wouldn't come back. But we have millions of intelligent people with degrees and experience chomping at the bit to respond to everything that gets posted. At the same time, we have a bunch of assholes waiting to post the funniest eye-opening responses they can. And we've trolls willing to play devil's advocate and to hell with karma, they're going to counterargue just to get us talking.

Slashdot is like a giant block party for subversive loner technology geniuses. It's hip, it's grooving, and if they want $15, they'll get it from me.

This BS about dupe checking, typos? Come on. It's not that important, and it adds to the "news of the second" quality that makes /. so appealing.

Corrupting the time line

[dfn5]

If people can read articles from the future it will inevitably corrupt the time line and will spell certain doom for everyone. Resist the urge. Don't do it.

BSD section?

[leviramsey]

The BSD section is already red. How would stories from the future be posted to the BSD section?

I can see the replies already to this post: "*BSD is dying; it has no future!"

sounds like the coke machine fiasco

[cheesyfru]

Good marketing, Slashdot! It reminds me of the Coke machine fiasco a few years ago. They tested machines that had temperature controls -- when the temperature got hot, it would automatically raise the price of the bottles. The media caught wind of this and had a field day. If Coca Cola had only beaten them to the punch and billed it as a "machine that discounts soda in cold weather", they'd have been heros.

"Slashdot subscribers - you get news quicker!" Sounds a lot better than "Cheapskates: you get delayed news!", doesn't it?

New DDoS Alert Service Unveiled Today

[NFW]

FREMONT, CA - March 6 2003 - Slashdot, the world's largest nerd news network, announced a new distributed denial of service attack warning service for web site operators around the world. "For years now we've noticed that web sites tend to go down in flames after we direct our hordes or readers to them," said founder CmdrTaco. "And since we're having a difficult time pulling in revenue, it only seemed natural to charge for advance notice of our DDoS attacks."

Web site operators worldwide are encouraged to sign up for advance notice of port-80 DDoS attacks. "If you see it coming," said co-founder Hemos, "at least you have a chance to take down your web site before your ISP prepares a gigantic bill for that web site you put up to show your friends what you've been doing with your Lego kits."

Slashdot is a subsidiary of OSDN is a subsidiary of VA Software Corporation.

Immediate "Contact the Author" form?

[dschuetz]

...to fix spelling, to check for dupes (HAH!) or even to reject the story outright!

How about putting a simple little form underneath the stories for these previews? Something like:

Story is:
[] dupe (enter orig. url: ______)
[] fake (rebuttal url: ______)
[] mis-filed (better section: {popup})
[] mirrored (enter mirror url: _____)
Misc. Comments: [__________________]
[submit comment to editor / author]

Something like this would make it trivial for people to immediately help with the editorial process -- as opposed to having to write up a full email, etc. Plus, by allowing previewers to voluntarily announce a mirror this way, a list of mirrors could be presented once the mirror goes live, right at the top of the article. (come to think of it, it might be good to keep a mirror link list / submission form for all users, even once it's posted...)

Re:Immediate "Contact the Author" form?

[zerocool^]

it might be good to keep a mirror link list / submission form for all users, even once it's posted

As slashdot has covered this NUMEROUS times [slashdot.org] (obviously, as it's in their FAQ).

They DON'T want to do mirrors - a couple of reasons.
Slashdot hosted mirrors: Bandwidth != free.
Slashdot supported user hosted mirrors: legal and/or statistical reasons (banner ad displays, click thru's, page views, etc.)

Mirrors probably aren't going to happen on an official level, folks. Just keep posting them in the stories, like ya do now.

You know what would make me subscribe?

[ChaoticCoyote]

I'll be more likely to subscribe when I see:

• Professional Journalism
• Proper use of English
• Less flippant editorializing by the staff
• More in-depth, investigative reporting

Being able to see articles "early" just doesn't motivate me to send money.

Subscription glitch?

[nuwayser]

I was happy to subscribe the first time this idea came around. Got my 1000 page views no sweat and enjoyed it.

Then, after the initial 1000 ran out, I looked at ads again for a while. About three months ago I got sick of it and tried subscribing again. No soap.

Paypal showed my payment as unclaimed for days, and I was still looking at ads. No replies received from the relevant OSDN address after sending two emails... not even a vacation message. I eventually cancelled the payment and am back to looking at ads.

Attn: Taco and team: I want to support you, I really do. But blowing off paying subscribers is BAD. How do you expect to retain your paying customers when someone is asleep at the switch? Why should I subscribe now?

netsaint plugin

[farnsworth]

So who's going to write the netsaint plugin that detects "future story" http referers and preemptively pages the fire department so they arrive just as your webserver/db bursts into flames?

read the links?

[kolbeinn]

Subscribers will be able to beat the rush and read the links
It's nice to know that people will actually be reading the links in this Mysterious Future.

Moderators

[jbohumil]

It might be nice if moderators also got the advance reading. That might increase the chances that the moderators have had a chance to read the topic before they moderate. Plus, moderators would get a peek at what the advance viewing system would be like, and it might encourage them to subscribe.

Other more interesting ideas...

[StevenMaurer]

I doubt that as presently constituted, this is going to be counted a success. Certainly Slashdot will get some low percentage just from the good will they've built up, but this will likely wither over time as subscribers realize there isn't that much benefit.

Nearly every change made to Slashdot over the last several years has made it harder to offer any real diferentiation in a premium service. People buy totalfark subscriptions to get more time to "win photoshop contests" - while slashdot has hidden it's equivalent karma system (and most regulars have topped out anyway). The delay from story acceptance to publication isn't all that long - it can't be: Slashdot is primarily a news site. The sophisticated readership could avoid ads if they really wanted to (I suspect most don't because it's part of the social contract). Finally, there are too many people who have run afoul of Malda's notoriously thin skin to have built up a "save salon" type of outpouring. (Setting special flags on people's accounts just because they dared mod up a critique? How juvenile -- but I digress).

Still, there are a number of ideas that haven't been tried that might be of interest, if done right:

Have a special premium queue for stories, plus the promise that one story will be picked a day. Suitable markings to differentiate stories drawn
from "preferred" queues ala google.

Allow premium users additional access to html. IMG tags anyone? Maybe combine this with small level of image storage.

The ability to "challenge" a mod down. Automatic if the mod is "overrated" which doesn't get metamodded; better yet, get rid of "overrated" it's an invitation to abuse.

The option of mirroring any content mentioned in slashdot (except ads) for any site owner who is a premium member. Most site owners love the attention slashdot brings them, it's just the slashdot effect that's so hard to deal with.

The ability to be modded to a value of "6". (The post still has to earn that value from the mods on it's own merits though.)

The ability to read from low karma to high. For fans of "alternative humor".

The ability to start at a +1 karma level (editable, of course, for those so unamerican as to believe money != speech). This would be especially attractive to people with "high uid" accounts.

A higher bandwidth channel to premium customers.

A java plug-in that downloads slashdot incrementally in the background, making those annoying page-load/drill-down delays go away.

Allowing edits of your own posted comment, so long as it hasn't been modded or responded to. If it has, you can still edit it, but a link is added to the original version.

I think this is a good start on you offering enough differentiation to make a "premium" view worth money without cutting into your site's popularity.

The bill for my business advice will arrive in the morning.

New meme

[blair1q]

TotalFarkingSlashdotted

adj., describes the state of having your webserver grind to a halt four times in a day as the Total Farkers, then the Farkers, then the Total Slashdotters, then the Slashdotters, are thrown a link to one of your webpages.

do -NOT- allow early "normal" posting

[Splork]

if you allow paid subscribers to post comments in stories early you are asking for trouble. your moderation system does not work. whoever posts first always has the best chance of getting rated up no matter how stupid they are.

don't allow people to pay to sway the masses.

take a hint from kuro5hin, early posts into stories should only be -editorial- comments meant to make suggestions to the editors. they should disappear when the story goes live.

Re:It seems to me..

[cascino]

Also, the more subscribers you get, the smaller the benefit is for each subscriber. I would think that before long, the /. effect will just start when the red bar appears. Am I missing something?
The only difference between the above hypothetical situation and the current situation is that in above, everybody's paying a /. subscription. That's the intended effect.

Re:Let this day be marked.

[quantaman]

As my last day visiting slashdot.

Money hungry pigs.

Why? Did you lose any benefits as a non-subscriber? Ummmm... no. Did you gain better quality of service as a non-subscriber? Ummmm... yes (less dupes). So are they giving subscribers an extra benifit while actually positively affecting your /. experience? Yes.

So why are you saying your going to leave /. ? (we both know your not going to)

Re:But I don't see any ads now ...

[CmdrTaco]

Suppressing ads from servers is a fairly common practice. Probably 2-3% of our users do it. And that number will likely grow as browsers make it very easy to do so. Thats why we're adding plums unrelated to advertising on Slashdot. We knew that the Ad Suppression filter was really more of an Honor System kind of thing since using Junkbuster or even Mozilla's built in blocking is trivial for even the most competant of users.

However we hope that enough of our users will think beyond that and try to support us. Programmers, Editors, OC3s and Racks of web servers cost money.

Re:Disable ads on the Index?

[bmetzler]

As for liking the ads, well I guess we'll address that in the future- its not a bad idea. ALthough, depending on your reading habits, you could enable ads on the Homepage, but see them on articles & comments, which would probably allow you to still see a few ads every day.

I'd rather see all the ads, and just pay $20 a year. Perhaps you could offer 2 subscription methods. I just feel that if I turn of ads, I'll miss something someone wants to sell me that I like.

-Brent

Re:Comment Ranks

[CmdrTaco]

I think that the solution to this problem is more complex then just widening the scoring range. Read my journal for occasional thoughts on this issue.

Re:What if (max # ads to block == 0)?

[jamie]

It's the first. To be precise, the code in Subscribe.pm is:

if ($user->{hits_bought_today_max}
&& $user->{hits_bought_today_max} < $today_max_def) {
return 0;
}

So, you're cool if you set it to 0. And thanks! :)