Louis_Wu's Journal: Why do some famous /.ers NOT have many fans?

I have realized that Zoo has some unexpected side effects. Or, rather, that the /. community hasn't done what I expected with Zoo.

I have expected the well known /.ers to have lots of fans. I had expected that /.ers would want to see comments made by the guy who co-wrote the Perl Cookbook - I thought that everyone would set gnat as a friend, and toggle the widget which raises the scores of friends. But it seems that I was wrong.

This list shows the number of fans for each person, as listed Saturday night.

• CmdrTaco has ~850 (the man who needs no intro)
• Hemos has ~240 (the man who needs a small intro [uid #2, does that tell you something?])
• CowboyNeal has ~160 (the man, the legend, the poll option :)
• chrisd has ~120 (Yet Another Slashdot Editor)
• krow has ~90 (YASE)
• jamie has ~90 (YASE)
• Cliff has ~70 (YASE)
• timothy has ~60 (YASE)
• pudge has ~60 (YASE)
• Bruce Perens has ~400 (Open Source, have you heard of it?)
• CleverNickName has ~ 350 (Wil Wheaton. Remember Star Trek: Next Generation - you may have heard of it.)
• merlyn has ~40 (Randal L. Schwartz wrote about perl)
• ESR has 14 (wrote The Cathedral and the Bazaar, if this really is him. :)
• gnat has 9 [nine] (Nat Torkington, you probably have his book near your desk, and he is project manager for perl 6)
• I have 12 (your lowely journal-ist ;)

Some of that is expected. CmdrTaco, Hemos, CowboyNeal, I expected them to have bunches of fans. Wheaton & Perens, sure, makes sense. But why are so many Slashdot editors & major software figures so, well, unpopular? That doesn't seem to be the right word, but I'm not sure what better describes it.

I have gone through the lists of slashdot editors, & major figures who seem to have a presense on /., and marked them all as friends. I also have comment bonuses for friends. Therefore, I'm more likely to see comments made by the "big shots". I thought that many people would do this. Looks like I'm wrong. Now I'm left to ponder why others did not do what I thought natural. [scratches chin] No answers here, do you have any ideas?

JonKatz

[CyberKnet]

It seems more people are fans of JonKatz (72 vs 60) than Timothy. This really puzzled me at first..

This may just be because of my own personal feelings about his journalistic style, but still... I was under the impression that most slashdot patrons were not terribly impressed by JK.

That said, I do kind of see how JonKatz could get more fans. He writes sensational "Think" pieces. Whether you think he's an idiot, or you think he's on the money, he makes you think *something*. And that is bound to result in more people thinking "Yeah! That's insightful!" than Timothy posting regular every day stuff.

Any thoughts?