Alright, I am ticked now...

Journal singularity's Journal: Alright, I am ticked now... 4

Journal by singularity on Wednesday March 06, 2002 @06:12PM

I have had just about enough of this bitching and moaning that is going on on Slashdot.

"Things are not the way they used to be."

"They need a spell-check."

"I lost moderation."

"No where in the SlashDot FAQ does it say anything about editor moderation."

"There are too many trolls."

"This place is not what it used to be."

"Kiro5hin is much better!"

"SlashDot ignored my submission."

"There is no where to discuss SlashDot."

"My informative post concerning Slashdot moderation in a story on Oracle was moderated as 'Off-topic' by one of the editors."

GET OVER YOURSELF!

You do not like SlashDot? Go somewhere else!

You like Kiro5shin's moderation system better? Go there!

You complain that Slashdot does not like stories you submit? Fine, take them somewhere else and get them to post it. Or even start your own web page to discuss stories of interest to you.

My UID, #2031, is in the bottom .5% of all UIDs (there are currently over 550000 registered users). For all of you new to this weblog, that means that I have been here longer than most other people. My UID is lower than almost half of the editors on this site.

I was here before JonKatz. I was here before moderation. I was here before Andover. I was here before Meta-moderation. I was here before goats.cx I was here before messaging. I was here before journals.

Hve things changed? Yes. Slashdot has witnessed outragous growth. To give you some idea, I used to skip storied that had over about 70 articles because they would have too much to read. These articles would come along *maybe* once a day. Now it is almost impossible to have a story on the front page that does not get 70 articles almost as soon as it goes up.

The Slashdot editors have attempted to change Slashdot to accomodate this sort of growth. Have they made mistakes along the way? Yes. In general, though, have they done a reasonable job of it? Yes. Have they done better than most people would? Yes.

Some points:

1) A post that is off-topic should be modded as such, either by users with moderation priviledges or by one of the editors. That is quite simple. Complaining about Slashdot in an off-topic post is hypocritical. In doing so, you are taking away from what Slashdot is actually about - discussion regarding topics and subjects approved by the editors. If you do not like this, complaining about it is not going to *help* these discussions.

2) Bitching that Slashdot should return to some previous, over-glorified version that you have in your head is not going to do anything. Times have changed and the readers have changed.

3) Read the articles! When a story is submitted, it almost always has a link to an original web page. Read that page before submitting a comment on that story, and especially before moderating something as informative.

4) Complaining simulataniously that Slashdot has changed and that the editors need to check their links and spelling is hypocrtical, as well.

5) If the original write-up is incorrect, correct it in a post. Do not then complain that the editors should well-research the topic at hand. That is what the users are for to a large degree - to correct, verify, and clarify the original article. I would much rather have a Slashdot user who has their PhD in Physics comment on the veracity of a physics story than an editor who spends five minutes researching the topic on Google.

6) Do not "Ask Slashdot" until such time as you have researched the topic on Google.

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