dh003i's Journal: Quit slashdot today!

I hope that at least some of my fans are reading this, but if not I'll be sending an e-mail to all of my fans that I can.. I recently read an article titled, Quit Slashdot Today and basically agreed with it. Slashdot is filled with a non-thinking, group-think mentality, overseen by a dictatorship of editors, who decide which stories get accepted and which one's don't. The moderation system is insanely complex.

But the main reason I'm advocating you quit Slashdot is because we have no control over what articles get accepted. As you can note by reading a previous journal entry of mine, the most important scientific breakthrough of the year (RNAi) was rejected as an article, while complete bullshit about man's latest banal voyage into space was accepted.

I suggest that you all go to Kuro5hin instead. Kuro5hin lets everyone moderate any comment, except their own. I think this is much better than Slashdot's "let a few moderate, and then metamoderate": the law of the averages will eventually cancel out the negative effect of those who moderate unfairly. Trusted moderators can moderate troll comments down to 0 (the lowest level). Editors can also delete troll, flame, and spam comments. The best part is -- the users decide what articles get posted in the various sub-sections, and which of those get put on the front page! It isn't subject to the ad-hoc preferences of some narrow-minded editor. There is also a nice editorial feature, which allows you to receive feedback on your submitted story and modify it for 2 hours after submission, or to get feedback from the editors before posting it. This way, you're story improves. And if it's rejected, you can improve on it and resubmit it.

Another nice thing is there's a gripe section for meta-comments specically about Kuro5hin, where people can voice their requests, complaints, concerns, etc.

The other thing I like about Kuro5hin is that there is a specific subsection for diary entries...so you're diary entries go into that subsection, where the entire community has easier access to them (just as easy access to them as any other subsection). This means more people will read your journal entries.

My overall impression of Kuro5hin is that it is much more democratic than Slashdot, that better stories get put on that site, and that better comments go there.

I might still check in on Slashdot once in a while, but I doubt I'll find anything of interest. Most of the time, few of the things put up interested me in the first place, because they were so banal, or so restricted to topics I'm not particularly interested in. That's the other nice part about Kuro5hin: it covers a broader scope, including a subsection for politics.

hmm

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You know, as much as I hate to admit it, the fact that Slashdot is so incredibly lame and amateurish is part of its charm. It's not like it's my only source of news or commentary or anything, and frankly I find some of the trolls and idiots, yourself affectionately included*, to be great fun.

I've blown through K5 a few times in the past, but never stayed to check it out. I'll give it a look, though. Maybe you've got a point.

* ;-)

Re:hmm

[dh003i]

aww, thanks :-)

Btw, a few bad things about Kuro5hin: (1) Seems slower than Slashdot; (2) Images not on a separate domain, so can't block out images by adding images.kuro5hin.org to 0.0.0.0 in your hosts file. But these are minor, esp. since Kuro5hin doesn't have the annoying banner ads of Slashdot.

Re:hmm

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Yes, but does K5 crash every couple of hours? Say what you like, but Slashdot is years ahead in the crashing department.

Re:hmm

[dh003i]

Kuro5hin does have stability problems. Slashdot, on the other hand, has taken up a speciality in not only being stable itself, but also crashing other websites. ;-)

But despite the annoying occasional stability problems and slowness of Kuro5hin, the general increased intelligence level and greater democracy makes it better, imo.

Re:hmm

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Have you tried plastic.com? Based on Slashcode, but seemingly with a much more sophisticated audience.

Re:hmm

[gmhowell]

Yup, the idiocy on /. can be a good thing. Also, I prefer the right-wing, libertarian morons on /. to the left-wing, socialist morons on k5.

I see you mention plastic.com later on. Perhaps that is worth a shot.

Re:hmm

[dh003i]

There are plenty of far far right-wingers on Kuro5hin: the kind who think that its a "virtue" to be modest and not have sex -- ever. Check out some of the responses to my story, Prostitution should be legal [kuro5hin.org].

Plastic seems ok, but I've really fallen in love with Kuro5hin's democratic system for deciding what stories get published or not. Also, though the intelligence level on plastic seems to be higher, its relatively feature-impoverished compared to Slashdot (and there's enough people on Slashdot to run into a lot of smart people, even if 90% of the net community is 1337k morons).

I've also given a look at ars technica [arstechnica.com]. Very intelligent crowd in terms of technical issues regarding computers, and even scientifically intelligent: had an article about the RNAi breakthrough. However, its solely tech/science-related, and I'm interested in more than that (i.e., I'm interested in politics). However, I do plan on stopping by ars technica [arstechnica.com] for the high level of intelligence on technical issues.

Basically, what I like is a one-stop shop. Slashdot used to be that for me, but even Slashdot is pretty narowly focused on tech-issues, though lots of politech issues creep in. Kuro5hin has a very broad scope, and it serves as a great one-stop-shop for for everything I want.

Re:hmm

[GigsVT]

There are plenty of far far right-wingers on Kuro5hin: the kind who think that its a "virtue" to be modest and not have sex -- ever.

Yeah, but most of what is considered right-wing here is actually hard-line Libertarianism, which supports legal prostitution, and legal drugs, and legal $WHATEVER. :)

My self somewhat included. I get into pretty heated discussions with some of the Libertarians here, myself being in favor of what I call a "rational free market"*. I am in total agreement with the hard-line Libertarians on pretty much all social issues, however, and I always vote big L when I have the opportunity.

*The realization that there are failings to the free market that require government intervention, but also the idea that the free market solves many more problems than it creates in most cases.