I really, really hope this is good news. I miss the actual "News for nerds" ethos that brought me here, and I've waded through a lot of sponsored "posts" and clickbait to sift out the kernels of actual news that remain.
New/. overlords? Get this site back to "News for nerds" and news that matters, and you'll keep me here.
I don't believe it. Is Slashdot going to stop those ridiculous paid links to forbes.com? What about the relentless left-wing social justice stories that blame nerds for everything wrong in the world? What about constant news-today-gone-tomorrow political stories that are general news, at best? I don't see any of those going away under any kind of new management. Irritating as fuck content has been around since the Jon Katz stories wouldn't stop appearing.
The deal closed less than 24 hours ago. We're going to look at all options in order to improve the experience. And, no, that doesn't mean we're going to roll out a crappy new interface without listening to user feedback. We want to make sure we get it right.
My own leading suggestion: no more AC posting, including from registered users. Let us all be known by our posting histories. Next, modding and posting in replies to the same article should be allowable, so long as it's not in the same thread.
An Edit button, usable until a post is replied to or modded, would also be nice.
Anonymous Cowards Trolls will be trolls. And given the nature of this site, people who want to troll will already have created scripts to supply them with an endless stream of new accounts. You will see exactly nothing in the posting history of some dedicated troll because there will be none. The only thing you accomplish that way is a bloated user database with tons of throwaway accounts cluttering it. Plus you will not get to see certain comments from people who happen to have some kind of insider knowledge that they cannot share using even a handle that might get traced back to them due to repercussions. People will not register an account for this, they will simply not give you that, possibly very informative and insightful, bit of information.
Posting and modding, along with editing While I would like to be able to mod again (seriously, who is reading stuff he doesn't want to comment on here?), I could see too much room for abuse. Same goes for editing. I read a post and write a comment to it, in the meantime it is being edited and its meaning turned inside out to troll.
Nope. There are a few things left that really work on/. Don't change those.
The amount of identification that needs to be given up to start an account is so small that anybody with a real insider position somewhere will not be deterred by having to set up a sing;e-purpose Gmail address in order to register here.
And having registered, use-once accounts will be immediately obvious to all. We could even introduce another number to the comment header line: number of posts this account has made, and changing the existing AC filter to being able to filter on this count. No having to tunn
The answer is a simple one, which sites like Daily Kos use, which is to require a delay after you make an account before you post. You can create an account, but you must wait three days before posting. This tends to discourage all but the most hardcore trolls.
And all but the most hardcore trolls like the cow guy, the tireless goatse enthusiast (who hasn't even noticed that his link goes into link nirvana, btw), the Golden Girls dufus or... I don't dare say his name but he peddles his software here frequently... are not really a problem.
What nondescript one-off troll has ever been a problem for/.? Be honest. And the guys mentioned above would simply register a battery of accounts to fire away when they feel like it. A three day waiting period doesn't apply to
Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only
specification is that it should run noiselessly.
Take back Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
New /. overlords? Get this site back to "News for nerds" and news that matters, and you'll keep me here.
Re: (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:-1, Troll)
Welcome, Whipslash!
My own leading suggestion: no more AC posting, including from registered users. Let us all be known by our posting histories. Next, modding and posting in replies to the same article should be allowable, so long as it's not in the same thread.
An Edit button, usable until a post is replied to or modded, would also be nice.
Re:Take back Slashdot (Score:2)
No. For many reasons:
Anonymous Cowards
Trolls will be trolls. And given the nature of this site, people who want to troll will already have created scripts to supply them with an endless stream of new accounts. You will see exactly nothing in the posting history of some dedicated troll because there will be none. The only thing you accomplish that way is a bloated user database with tons of throwaway accounts cluttering it. Plus you will not get to see certain comments from people who happen to have some kind of insider knowledge that they cannot share using even a handle that might get traced back to them due to repercussions. People will not register an account for this, they will simply not give you that, possibly very informative and insightful, bit of information.
Posting and modding, along with editing
While I would like to be able to mod again (seriously, who is reading stuff he doesn't want to comment on here?), I could see too much room for abuse. Same goes for editing. I read a post and write a comment to it, in the meantime it is being edited and its meaning turned inside out to troll.
Nope. There are a few things left that really work on /. Don't change those.
Re: (Score:2)
The amount of identification that needs to be given up to start an account is so small that anybody with a real insider position somewhere will not be deterred by having to set up a sing;e-purpose Gmail address in order to register here.
And having registered, use-once accounts will be immediately obvious to all. We could even introduce another number to the comment header line: number of posts this account has made, and changing the existing AC filter to being able to filter on this count. No having to tunn
Re: (Score:2)
The only thing you accomplish that way is a bloated user database with tons of throwaway accounts cluttering it.
Have you seen the UIDs here?
Re: (Score:2)
Now imagine it tenfold.
Re: (Score:1)
The answer is a simple one, which sites like Daily Kos use, which is to require a delay after you make an account before you post. You can create an account, but you must wait three days before posting. This tends to discourage all but the most hardcore trolls.
Re: (Score:2)
And all but the most hardcore trolls like the cow guy, the tireless goatse enthusiast (who hasn't even noticed that his link goes into link nirvana, btw), the Golden Girls dufus or ... I don't dare say his name but he peddles his software here frequently ... are not really a problem.
What nondescript one-off troll has ever been a problem for /.? Be honest. And the guys mentioned above would simply register a battery of accounts to fire away when they feel like it. A three day waiting period doesn't apply to