Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot 1521
It was the summer of '97 and I was a college kid working part time as a programmer at an ad agency. I wrote a simple CMS: practically my first perl program (I was so happy to not have to write in anything Microsoft!). I got an old DEC Alpha Multia in exchange for some freelance Java work. I stuffed it under my desk at work and registered the domain name in October. Jeff "Hemos" Bates chipped in on the registration fee. Within months we were serving thousands of people per day on a system that looked remarkably similar to the Slashdot you see today. It was simple: I just was sharing stories that I stumbled on with a small group of friends.
When I wrote the essay "Simple Solutions" a few months later, we doubled in traffic almost overnight. New hardware had to be purchased. Soon we exceeded the bandwidth capacity of our ISP and had to start co-locating. This meant banner ads. I barely made it through the end of college, working night and day on a site that was growing so fast, it was all I could do to keep up. We started making a little money and I eventually was able to quit my job and dedicate myself full-time to Slashdot. I barely graduated. Soon my friends followed me, eventually forming our company Blockstackers.
As my little hobby became a full blown business, it became clear that we needed help. The burden of running Sales and Marketing and HR it was to much for us. Slashdot was sold to Andover in '99. Since Slashdot was founded, my business card has read Blockstackers, Andover, Andover.net, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, OSDN, OSTG, SourceForge, and finally Geeknet. My title has changed several times: from my first card which read "Lies and Misinformation", until today when my title read "Editor-in-Chief of Slashdot.org". During that entire time, my job has been some version of the same thing: Make Slashdot Great. I always did my best, and I'd like to think that I got it right more often than not.
In the last 14 years, Slashdot has covered so many amazing events: The explosion of Linux. The rise of Google. The return of Apple. The Dot Com Bubble. The DMCA. 9/11. Wars. Elections. Numerous successful Shuttle Launches and one Disaster. Scientific Breakthroughs galore. Cool toys. Web2.0! Social Networking. Blogging! Podcasting! Micro-Blogging! The Lord of the Rings being filmed and an entire trilogy of new Star Wars. OMG Ponies!! So many moments that I could run this paragraph for hours with moments where we shared something important, meaningful, or just stupid. But the most important to me was my marriage proposal to Kathleen. Slashdot has posted Over 114,000 stories so far. And there will be many more to come. I just won't be the one picking them.
Slashdot has been read by kernel engineers and billionaires. By sys-admins and CEOs. By high school kids and government bureaucrats. But what brings so many of them together is that we are nerds. It never ceases to amaze me the similarities that I find between us all when I climb out of my dungeon and go meet readers. From the inside of some of the most wonderful places on earth, to conference halls with useless wireless connections, to cube farms, you guys always reminded me of why I started this thing in the first place. We share something important and unquantifiable.
The internet has changed dramatically since I started here, and that's part of my reason for leaving. For me, the Slashdot of today is fused to the Slashdot of the past. This makes it really hard to objectively consider the future of the site. While my corporate overlords and I haven't seen eye to eye on every decision in the last decade, I am certain that Jeff Drobick and the other executives at Geeknet will do their best. I am unquestionably confident in the abilities of the Slashdot editors and engineers- some of whom have been here just short of forever. They have proven themselves in the best and worst of conditions to be capable and dedicated.
As part of my resignation, after this story appears I will lose the ability to post. For me, this is the most bitter pill to swallow. Posting stories has always been my favorite part of the job. I created Slashdot to share these stories with my friends from IRC and school. It was never 'work'. Now I will have to go cold turkey. I'm walking away from the soapbox I built. I wish I could continue to post stories forever, but those closest to me know that if I maintained the ability to post, I'd never move on. I'll continue to read Slashdot and hopefully my occasional story submissions will make the cut. My old mantra: News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters still holds true here today. Nobody does it better.
As for what's next, I really don't know. I don't have a job lined up. I have no plans. I'm gonna spend some time with my boys and my wife. Read some books that have been on my shelf forever. Maybe it's time to write a book of my own.
If you want to get ahold of me, my email is now malda at cmdrtaco dot net. Geeknet has graciously agreed to continue to forward malda at slashdot dot org forever, but you should still update your address books if you care. I'm available on twitter as @cmdrtaco and Google+. My homepage hasn't been updated in a decade, but it's still CmdrTaco.net. And since I'm going to have to find a job in a few months, I'm on LinkedIn as well.
Thanks to everyone who helped build Slashdot over the years: the list is far to long to fit in this textfield but you know who you are, and you all know that I've got your back in a knife fight. Lastly, thanks to every Slashdot reader for giving me your time all these years. I hope I've wasted it efficiently and enjoyably.
Pants are optional.
Succession plan? (Score:5, Funny)
Well Taco, I hope that you have a good succession plan in place as Steve Jobs does at Apple.
Presumably you've trained all your editors in the fine art of spelling mistakes, grammatical erros and story duplication. If so, the transition should be seamless.
Jokes aside, best of luck and thanks for
Steve Jobs = Rob Malda? (Score:5, Funny)
I knew it!
Good luck Steve..er...Rob...err..whoever you are actually!
Re:Succession plan? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hemos Says: "So Long, and Thanks For All The Fi (Score:5, Funny)
...what's up with all these Real Names on Google+? How am I ever going to find you guys? Sheesh.
Anyway, bon voyage CmdrTaco!
Re:Hemos Says: "So Long, and Thanks For All The Fi (Score:5, Funny)
you must be new here.
I have some difficulty understanding this (Score:5, Funny)
Car analogy please?
Re:Hemos Says: "So Long, and Thanks For All The Fi (Score:5, Funny)
uid 2, huh? I bet you just missed the first first post, too.
Re:Hemos Says: "So Long, and Thanks For All The Fi (Score:5, Funny)
I knew it! (Score:5, Funny)
I always thought it suspicious that I never saw Taco and Steve Jobs in the same room. Now I finally know for sure that they're the same person!
Thanks for giving us this forum Taco/Steve. But I still hate iOS.
Thanks (Score:4, Funny)
Slashdot has always been a beakon of good taste on the Internet.
It helps me stay grounded to the truly important stuff that matters in a chaotic world of information overload.
It helped me be confident about my own opinions.
Thanks
Peter Van Hende
'Trendwatcher' for Belagcom
First Jobs, now this? (Score:4, Funny)
Next you will be telling me that HP is getting out of the PC business.
Re:Hemos Says: "So Long, and Thanks For All The Fi (Score:2, Funny)
Is this come kind of corporate thing? If so...just not fair....they guy started the thing...he should have access and account for life...
Re:Hemos Says: "So Long, and Thanks For All The Fi (Score:5, Funny)
And to think I waited a few days before registering an account here. "Damn, yet another site wants me to register a name/password?" If only I had known then how much this UID would help me get the girls...
Re:So long and thanks for the OMG PONIES!!! (Score:4, Funny)
I'm going to have to add "making a site that doesn't post what the preview shows" instead of what I actually wrote.
Oh well, at least it's does its job consi
No wifi (Score:5, Funny)
Less impact than SJ's announcement. Lame.
Re:Hemos Says: "So Long, and Thanks For All The Fi (Score:4, Funny)
Couldn't be bothered to RTFA even for this story, eh? :)
He's just losing the ability to post stories as an editor, he says he'll still do some story submissions and post like a normal user.
MyCleanUnderwear.com (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What's up with the timing? (Score:5, Funny)
That's how restraining orders work.
Re:Succession plan? (Score:5, Funny)
Well Taco, I hope that you have a good succession plan in place as Steve Jobs does at Apple. Presumably you've trained all your editors in the fine art of spelling mistakes, grammatical erros and story duplication. If so, the transition should be seamless. Jokes aside, best of luck and thanks for /. ! :)
Rob, for old time's sake, please repost your resignation as a dupe in about a week :-)
Re:Hemos Says: "So Long, and Thanks For All The Fi (Score:4, Funny)
Tell me about it, brother.
At 5 digits (just), I'm stuck with your wife, too!
Slashdot is Dying (Score:4, Funny)
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Slashdot community when CmdrTaco confirmed that he is resigning from Slashdot, now that Slashdot market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all geek news outlets. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive geek news reading test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Slashdot because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for Slashdot. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Slashdot YRO is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core contributors. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Slashdot contributors only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Slashdot is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot leader CmdrTaco states that there are 7000 users of Slashdot. How many users of Ask Slashdot stories are there? Let's see. The number of Ask Slashdot stories versus Slashdot posts is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Ask Slashdot stories users. Slashdot book reviews (or, 'Slashvertisements') are about half of the volume of Ask Slashdot stories. Therefore there are about 700 Slashvertisments. A recent article put Slashdot Security posts at about 80 percent of the Slashdot market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Slashdot users. This is consistent with the number of Slashdot posts.
Due to the troubles of OSNews, abysmal sales and so on, OSNews went out of business and was taken over by Digg, another troubled geek news site. Now Digg is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in market share. Slashdot is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geek news dilettante dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
Re:Hemos Says: "So Long, and Thanks For All The Fi (Score:3, Funny)