Re: [seul-edu] Slashdot or Linux & Education

[jeff covey <jeff.covey@pobox.com>]

[sorry this is off-topic.]

on Tue, Mar 14, 2000 at 08:32:29AM -0500%, Doug Loss said:

    Doug> You know, I've pretty much given up on trying to contribute
    Doug> to Slashdot.  They don't seem to accept new stories except
    Doug> if they come from their personal friends or are of personal
    Doug> interest to them.

pardon me for saying it, but...  well, duh!  ;^)

i disagree about their posting only items that come from friends, but
the "personal interest" bit is self-evident; all slashdot has *ever*
been about is what rob & jeff think is cool.  every so often, someone
(read: bruce perens) will berate them about how they're not doing real
journalism, but again, it's not meant to be a real news venue,
exactly.  it's not the new york times; it's more a cross between a
talk show and the gong show.

we've been talking about the future of original material on freshmeat
lately, because we've had people asking about being regular writers
there, and robin (roblimo, not malda) suggested that we break things
down by topic rather than author because in his (i think quite right)
opinion, "slashdot is a personality cult; freshmeat is a knowledge
cult."

think of it this way:  how much do you know about scoop?  (i mean, do
you even know scoop's real name?)  now how much do you know about
cmdrtaco and hemos?

freshmeat is about linux code & coding.  linuxtoday is about linux
news.  slashdot is the rob & jeff show, and you have to love it or
hate it on those terms, and accept that it's about what they think is
important, not what you think is important.

and contrary to popular conspiracy theories, andover (disclaimer:
they're the ones who make the deposits in my checking account every
two weeks) and roblimo have led to a wider variety of stuff appearing
on slashdot, including the interviews, which i think are slashdot's
2nd best invention, 2nd only to moderation (see below).

    Doug> And the S/N ratio in the comments is so low as to make it
    Doug> hardly worth wading through to find anything worth reading.

on the contrary, i find that the moderation system makes it one of the
only sites with a comment board that's worth reading.  set your
threshold to 4, and you'll only see worthwhile stuff.  there is a
downside to moderation, of course; there have been several occassions
when someone's posted speculations about something with which i'm
directly involved, and the speculations have been marked up to 4 or 5
while my reply with the facts has stayed at 1.  *sigh*

-- 
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