Journal Daengbo's Journal: Slashdot Survey Answers -- Do I Get a Cookie? 5

Lily,

Thanks for the compliment. I'm going to answer your questions, but be
aware that I've already looked at the answers from SL Baur. His post to his journal
is very indicative of one of the qualities of the Slashdot society:
we're not very trusting. I'll try not to let his opinions color my own
answers, though.

Answers are in-line. Yes, I'd like the report when you're finished.

Daniel

> Question 1:
> In your opinion, what (if so) makes Slashdot special among online discussion
> sites? Is it the content, the group of people it draws in, the discussion
> engine (e.g., content rating and filters), or possibly other factors?
The content is certainly nothing special. In fact, it is a running
joke that the admins are called "editors" when they often don't check
accuracy or even links in submissions. Slashdot started as Taco's
blog. There are many of us who remember the early days and don't judge
it too harshly WRT content.

The real strength of Slashdot (I'll abbreviate it as SD from now on)
comes from its unique combination of community and moderation. Let's
compare it to other strong community sites that I visit like Digg or
the ZDNet blogs. In SD, back before the first dot.com bubble burst, SD
was mostly a Linux / Unix site. If the news was about Sun, there were
always several Sun employees adding to the discussion. If it was VAX
or VMS, there were long-haired 70's IT guys who could talk about the
internals of the mainframes. If the story was about Free Software or
Open Source, EMS would always chime in. Any news piece about Bruce
Perens practically starred him in the discussion.

Bram talked Bittorrent up on Slashdot when he was still in pre-alpha.
Wikipedia was given its first boost there. Gentoo was first pedaled,
then fried there. When someone wanted to start a community IT project
in the early 2000's, it always seemed they went to SD first.

The wealth of knowledge there is amazing, and inaccuracy is generally
rewarded with a quick trip to score (-1, troll). There will at least
be ten people correcting you publicly. Off-topic threads are sometimes
marked as such, but are also very often insightful and informative.
Trolls (other than the GNAA and BSD kind) try to craft their posts to
trick as many people as possible. This makes me a very discriminating
reader and helps me identify logical and factual problems in any
argument.

In short, being an autistic geek is rewarded in SD. ;)

In contrast, I'm almost always the most knowledgeable IT person in any
discussion on Digg or ZDNet, and I don't even work in the field.
Trolls seem to interest people more than the real discussion. The
trolls are obvious and bad. The posters are ignorant or post guesses
instead of looking up the info and providing links to supporting
evidence. "I think I heard" isn't uncommon.

Finally, there are very few grudges when compared to other sites. I
can pretty much say anything I want and use any foul word. I might be
marked flamebait, but unless I'm consistently an asshole, no one is
going to hold anything against me. I was kind of sad when SD got the
Friends/Foes function a few years ago. It seemed to help people hold
onto grudges.

> Question 2:
>
> Compared with other discussion sites you know or/and have used, do you
> consider Slashdot's technology platform to be better? In other words, does
> it encourage (a) more sense of community or (b) more active participation?
> (In answering please also feel free to mention the other discussion site or
> sites you might be comparing to)

The Code
Let's be honest -- the technology is crap. Slashdot only proved that
Perl could be scaled if you threw enough hardware at it and used
reversed caching. Slashdot never got "Slashdotted." I guess that says
something .... :rollseyes: Until a couple of years ago, the HTML was
awful, the code was spaghetti, and the site wouldn't even validate in
HTML 3. Just moving over to HTML4/CSS took them so long that HTML4 was
out by the time SD caught up. I guess it all gave hope to the Zope and
Rails guys that they could make it all work, too.

There are a few bright points in SD technology, though.

Moderation
Foremost is the moderation system. I'm pretty sure that SD had the
first usable one and that the many others that followed suit with
their own, but few have exceeded the quality of it. Quality posters
are given mod points. Getting modded down consistently ruins your
Karma (I pine for the days when Karma was still a number and could be
lauded over others ... hehe): bad Karma means no mod points for you.
The meta-moderation system is open to almost everyone, though, and
being badly meta-moderated several times can blacklist you from
moderation for years. It all encourages good behavior from people who
want to keep the same account for any period of time. The moderation
system also encourages a distrust of recent accounts, and they are
judged almost as ACs. In political terms, Digg's moderation system is
directly democratic, SD's might be considered representative, and ZD
doesn't have any and is anarchic. I know which kind of political
system I'd rather live under, and the moderation system for SD is the
political system of Slashdot. Don't even get me started talking about
the discussion on non-tech social sites.

Anonymous Cowards and UIDs
Slashdot started without user accounts. You could post as anyone, even
pretending to be someone else. When SD started with UIDs, they left
the opportunity to post anonymously, but with a penalty. This was
great. I didn't have an account for a few years (I think my current
one is from ~2001 and I've been reading since ~1998). The AC option
has kept SD fresh. No one can take anything an AC says seriously and
at face value, but it can start an investigation into facts. Being AC
provides employees of companies to post information about a topic
without having to pass that info through PR first. Then there are the
trolls who pretend to be an employee just to stir shit up.

Journals
Long before "blogging" was a term, there were SD journals. Since there
wasn't much of a user profile, that let Slashdotters talk about
themselves, other users, or any other topic they wanted to
investigate. I even used mine to post sex stories for a while. That
got me quite a few friend AND foes. I guess journals aren't too
innovative these days, but they were a big part of the SD community
and keeping people tied together. Very few make posts there anymore
since they've all got blogs. I only use it for questions where I need
some REALLY geeky eyes on the problem.

> Question 3:

> As a unique user in slashdot, could you please rate your own reciprocity by
> assessing what you get from the community compared with what you contribute
> to it?(you can give an answer such as: i think i get more or i contribute
> more,of course we would be very appreciative for your explanation of detail)

I'm not an IT guy by trade so my first few years didn't offer anything
back to Slash except an outsider's view, some grammar Nazism, and a
check on the rabid fanboys. I was sent to SD because I had recently
started using Linux and it was the place recommended to me. I've been
reading SD almost daily for over ten years now, though, and I've
gotten further into IT and read most IT-related storied of import
during that period. These days, I can talk with confidence,
experience, and knowledge about subjects that interest me: thin
clients, FOSS in Asia (particularly Thailand and Korea),
Freedesktop.org specifications, eGroupware, and Gnome internals. I
only get modded down on days when I'm really pissy or whenever I'm
talking to the Apple fanboys (more on that later). I get modded up
pretty consistently and I try to keep my comments on-topic and
informative.

I would guess that I'm a normal Slashdotter in this respect. We take
in the beginning and give back when we mature.

Slashdot has changed over the years, though. The new crop of users
tend to be college students who have no experience at all. The
signal:noise ratio has dropped significantly. Heck, even the trolls
are weaker. I read less and less there every year. The discussions
become less informative. Sadly, it's STILL the best place to go for IT
discussion, even given the slow fall.