Help Shape the Future of Slashdot 763
Long-time readers will know that we try not to clutter the front page of Slashdot with much stuff about the site itself; this is a rare exception, but we hope you'll like the reason: we want your opinions. You should see above a link to take a survey about Slashdot, and (just to be heavy handed) here's the direct link. The questions there are simple, but we're going to read the answers carefully. The reminder bar up there will remain active for some time, but this story will scroll down the page like all Slashdot stories. Comments are welcome below; surveys have their limitations, after all, but please don't comment without also giving the survey a visit — if it makes sense, feel free to cut-and-paste any answers from there as comments, too. The engineers who build this site (and the editors, too!) are counting on your honest opinions and hoping for some great ideas; ideas outnumber the hours we have to do things, so we hope you'll make a case for the ways that Slashdot should change (and the ways it shouldn't!).
Moderation system (Score:4, Insightful)
This really ruins the comment system as one is supposed to only have certain mindset and he is supposed to do all the same comments over and over again. Then there is the other mod abuse what happens when someone sees a comment he really doesn't like, so he goes on personal war against the poster and downmods all his comments from his comment profile, causing him bad karma and inability to post. Moderation system needs some serious work.
Re:Moderation system (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot has probably of the best comment systems on Earth. But it certainly is subject to orthodoxy. Unpopular opinions are modded down, turning some comment threads into echo chambers. I'd rather hear stuff I don't agree with than only one side.
WORK WITHOUT JAVASCRIPT (Score:5, Insightful)
Make it so I can see all the posts without logging in or Javascript. My usage of the site has gone down dramatically because it's a pain in the ass with the (relatively) new system. I have been reading the site since 1998 and this fucking sucks.
Improve Slashdot By Rewinding To What It Grew On (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop hitting the web server on my NAT box for ok.txt every time I post.
Don't assume that any cookies you set will ever be sent back.
Don't use referer fields at all, just send straight HTML.
Don't use all this horrible crashy javascript.
Re:Moderation system (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see it that way.
Being able to express a contrary opinion while retaining popular support is a skill. Being a dick about it is what gets you modded down to stay.
Targeted moderation attacks do happen, but it's easy to see when they do, and you can request that your karma be repaired and the offender be dealt with. Mod points link back to the modder.
I suppose the one change would be that you never get mod privs if you're not contributing otherwise, and the number you get starts at 1 and goes up with karma and participation. And then you can go to the marketplace and buy armor and weapons and potions and spells...
article selection (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally, a meta-thread! (Score:5, Insightful)
Better quality editing.
Sounds mean but it has to be said. Some of the stories over the last year or two have had blatant errors in the summary (one was even in the title, about some incident at a nuclear plant), I remember at least a few troll stories that got through, it's shameful. It seems like the posters are often putting more effort into the posts than the editors are putting into the articles.
What do you dislike? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad stories. Useless stories. Stories that are identifiable after reading the first couple comments that they are in fact non-stories, trolling, or something like that. Stories should be demote-able, so less of Slashdot need waste their time with them.
Re:Moderation system (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have an actual argument to make about something, then make it, and see if it flies. Moderation is to some extent the measure of how well this specific community has taken your comment. And that doesn't always fall along political/sect lines, as you seem to claim. I've seen many comments in favor of copyright and in favor of Microsoft get modded to +5. It is just rarer, perhaps because the people who typically make those comments do not share the same values as the slashdot community, or because they're just assholes.
This needs to stop (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Moderation system (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Moderation system (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
More poines.
Oh, and more selection on the moderation. -1 Insane and +1 Really Insane and -1 Fanbois and +1 Well Played, Sir
Re:Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
+1 Well Played, Sir
definitely well played sir.
Re:Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
SEARCH!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
The search function completely sucks. If I'm looking for a comment that I *KNOW* was posted in an story, but can't remember the story, good freaking luck finding it.
I usually wind up with better results by using google ("search text" +site:slashdot.org).
Re:Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
+1 Brohoof
Re:Moderation system (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, there are a lot of posts that are overrated even at Score:1.
A Few Things (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition to the moderation / meta-moderation issues noted (confirmation bias anyone?) Changes over the past year have made reading /. on a mobile device (e.g. iPhone) almost impossible. Page loads take forever and it must be trying to calculate pi to 1 billion places for each page load. Plus, clicking a collapsed story to show it will scroll to the top. That's stupid. The "More" links are lame, too. You can keep clicking "more" to get more stories (since it only displays like 5), but when you go into a story to read comments and then come out, all your extra stories are gone. A simple "next page" feature would be far more useful. AJAX is all fine, but /. abuses it to the point where it detracts from site functionality.
Oh, and more stories about ponies.
Re:Moderation system (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot has probably of the best comment systems on Earth. But it certainly is subject to orthodoxy. Unpopular opinions are modded down, turning some comment threads into echo chambers. I'd rather hear stuff I don't agree with than only one side.
I've found that one can thoughtfully articulate an unpopular opinion in a way that causes others to consider ideas and perspectives they would otherwise be unwilling to entertain. Though they do it for petty and ignorant reasons, that same rigid orthodoxy winds up serving the higher purpose of helping me sharpen a skill that is otherwise more difficult and costly to practice. If they insist on being this way, let them; I will continue to use it constructively despite their narrow-minded intentions.
If you're going to fix something about this site, you should first identify something that can be easily recognized as broken. What comes to my mind is the JS that drives the comment system. It's unresponsive as hell. Most of the time, I have to click "Preview" and "Submit" multiple times before anything happens. Even then, it often won't update to show me the finalized comment, forcing me to use my browser's Refresh button. Since this is neither consistent nor the intended functionality, I consider it a glaring and obvious bug(s). If I were the developer, I would focus on basic usability and getting fundamental functions to work smoothly before I'd move on to larger ideas.
Otherwise, it would be easier to view the staff as a group of professionals if they'd take a small portion of their revenues and hire a good copy editor. Even a part-time copy editor would help tremendously. I frequently see mistakes that even automated spell-checkers would have caught. You're telling me an article submitted to an audience of millions isn't important enough to spend a few hundred milliseconds of CPU time to run a spell-checker? That would cost nothing, even if they can't be bothered to proofread anything. The lack of even basic attempts to achieve quality sends the message that these are not professionals who really care about the quality of their work, that they're just mercenaries who are not doing something they enjoy and value.
Re:WORK WITHOUT JAVASCRIPT (Score:5, Insightful)
If classic mode is ever disabled I will never visit again. I cannot stand the default mode.
All comments (Score:5, Insightful)
I want an option to automatically load all the comments on an article. not 250 at a time, everything. Every time. Automatically.
Re:article selection (Score:5, Insightful)
This more than anything else.
I can live with the sometimes dodgy comment system, the abusable moderation, etc. Honestly, it's not perfect but it's far more palatable than 99% of the systems out there like Disqus or flat comment systems without any moderation.
However, if article selection keeps dropping, the site WILL die. The quality of the submissions is what makes or breaks a site like Slashdot, and even I feel like it's been declining of late (I'm not usually picky on things and hate people with nostalgia overload). Many articles are submitted by employees of the sites they're posted on and are of dubious value overall, often requiring commenters to give better links. If a paper is covered, good luck finding the actual link to said paper. Many times, summaries are incredibly biased and show that the editors plain and simply did not "edit", they simply took the thing from the firehose, ran a spellcheck (sometimes forgetting that step) and put it up on the main page. I find that unacceptable. If the editors are overloaded, which I would find surprising unless they happen to do a lot more work than is readily apparent, then find more editors. Perhaps implement some sort of election system for junior editors, where unpaid or paid members of the community get promoted to editor status. Anything to raise editing quality. I'd rather have a submission rewritten or denied than have horribly biased or even misleading summaries crop up on the main page.
Slashdot is one of the few sites where I can expect serious, insightful discussions in the comment threads. I wouldn't want this to die because the submissions stop fuelling said discussions.
Re:WORK WITHOUT JAVASCRIPT (Score:3, Insightful)
+1 insightful, but can't really mod you up without javascript...
Re:Moderation system (Score:5, Insightful)
When they changed the meta-moderation system I stopped meta-moderating. I'd be surprised if I were the only one that stopped. The older system of an up or down vote was a lot easier to do, without actually spending huge amounts of time, it's just too hard to figure out what the moderation should have been.
They could also provide an easier way of reporting abuses of mod points.
Re:Moderation system (Score:5, Insightful)
> he moderation system seriously needs thinking and redone. It's constantly abused on Slashdot,
Even WITH all the group think, it is _light_ years ahead of Reddit. You can't even hold a civil discussion over there. At least here people can disagree.
Re:Moderation system (Score:2, Insightful)
You and I are of one mind on this. If you do it skillfully, you can even be a dick and it will work. Sometimes it's necessary to be a bit of a dick when you're dealing with incredibly thick-headed people who do not cherish reason. It serves a purpose. It mildly shocks them out of their slumbering, almost hypnotic unwillingness to consider what is in front of them. If it doesn't do that directly, it works indirectly -- petty people who dismiss you because they don't like the (evidence-based, reasoned) things you say won't so quickly dismiss looking stupid in front of an audience.
I'll give you a great example of the mentality I'm talking about. Consider those who welcome with open arms the fascism that is accumulating in most Western nations. These are not philosophers. These are sophisticated animals who are governed by fear and cling to any promise of security offered no matter how costly. Do they deserve to have anyone tip-toe around how stupid and unreasonable they are to avoid offense at all costs? I don't believe so, though that isn't the same thing as offending them for the mere sake of some kind of personal gratification.
Being a bit of a dick isn't the same thing as malice.
Re:WORK WITHOUT JAVASCRIPT (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Moderation system (Score:5, Insightful)
Give all logged in users the ability to mod.
Hell, NO! That's the main problem with Digg. Everybody can moderate, so moderation becomes commonplace. In Slashdot, you can't always moderate, and your possible number of moderations is limited. This makes every +1/-1 more valuable.
Re:Moderation system (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm assuming meta-moderation is why I don't get mod points anymore. I've modded up some minority opinion and I've been punished for it.
Not that this comment will ever be seen, as I'm also stuck permanently on a score of 1.
Usually when I have the urge to comment I remind myself it's just Slashdot and posting is a waste of time.
If it helps, I mod up unpopular or minority opinions all the time. There is no shortage of cases when an unpopular notion that no one really wants to hear happens to be the fuckin' truth. I'd rather people grow up and work to change any truth they dislike. I won't help them do otherwise, nor should I.
I don't view it as "just Slashdot". I view it as a way to almost instantly reach a large audience of mostly intelligent people, a technological marvel no one would have imagined just a hundred years ago. Consider for a moment how easy it is to take that for granted. If Slashdot goes away, I'll do this someplace else. They don't have a monopoly on communication. What they do have is a community I appreciate that actually knows a thing or two about reason, despite the highly visible users who don't.
Eh, even if you don't like a single thing I've said, at least for now your (quoted verbatim) comment is effectively at my +3 score.
Re:Moderation system (Score:5, Insightful)
This is such a common practice nowadays that 75% of the discussion are all replies to the Frist Post and the whole thing becomes a fragmented mess.
Re:Moderation system (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like to know how metamod is supposed to work these days. What's the thing that's actually being measured?
The pre-AJAX metamod system was relatively simple to understand: "Was the moderator's action of ("Insightful" or "Troll") a reasonable moderation to apply to a given post or not?" Having the "see in context" URL handy was invaluable - a snarky one-liner might be (-1, Troll) out of context, but in context be a clear (+5, Funny)
The current metamod UI is confusing. "Below are a number of random user comments in our system. You are asked to decide if these are good or bad. Clicking the + and - indicates that you think that a comment is good or bad."
To illustrate the conundrum, this comment, as made by an AC, starts at (Score: 0). I think it's a good comment, but it hasn't been moderated yet. It could just as easily be a (Score: 1) or (Score: 2) if I'd logged in and/or applied my karma bonus. But it shouldn't be showing up in metamoderation yet, because in none of those three cases has it ever been moderated. Even if it earned a (Score: 5) and if I had mod points I might not choose to moderate it up to 5 myself, I wouldn't click "-" on it in metamod; as it's not a bad comment.
What does metamoderation actually measure these days? I see a lot of unmoderated comments in metamod (and I still don't know if my mouse clicks are working, even when Javascript is enabled. That might be my browser's fault...), so it's not like metamod can be putting the brakes on abusive moderations...
Re:Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Moderation system (Score:4, Insightful)
As it is, the entire discussion ends up being a reply to the first one or two posts, and those several starter posts tend to be the dumbest.
Temporal Displacement of Comments (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the things that I find disappointing is that probably the single largest factor in terms of whether a comment is promoted or demoted is the time after the post hits the main page. It is extremely common to see average posts (i.e. limited informational or insightful quantity/quality) rated very highly (probably too highly) simply because they are submitted shortly (within 1-2 hours, often much less) after the parent post hits the main page. Conversely, insanely high quality posts (i.e. those with tons of useful information or insight) that are submitted after the magic window either do not get voted up or are only voted up to a minor degree.
I understand why this occurs. A large influx of people are reading the comments shortly after the post and then there is an exponential decay afterwards. The result is that high quality and deserving posts do not get voted up since fewer and fewer people with mod points see them. It is completely understandable, however I think addressing this would have a significant positive impact. I know there have often been times that I would not post simply because I figured it was too late and practically no-one would read the comment so why bother. Unfortunately, I do not know how to solve this problem, just that it is real.
I do realize that the meta-moderation system does have some limited impact here, but I think it is too limited to be effective.
Re:Finally, a meta-thread! (Score:5, Insightful)
I never know when some story is going to get posted with completely false information in the headline or summary
This.
Slashdot is billing itself as "news". I'm tired of reading headlines that are spun or outright lying to maximize nerd rage. You're not doing original reporting here, so the bare minimum is the editors need to RTFA and see if the summary and headline are accurate and from a vaguely credible source. Bonus points if you actually fact-check the articles.