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A Pre-History of Slashdot

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Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#21

Post by jessriedel »

conesus wrote: post #11

I never publicly announced this but I loved Slashdot’s friend/foe system so much that I built it as a cross browser extension for Hacker News. It’s called Hacker Smacker and it’s on GitHub. https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker Supports not only friends and foes but also friends of friends and foes of friends. Makes it easy to scan the HN homepage and comment threads and see what’s good. Much like how Slashdot’…

I read the Slashdot FAQ on the Friend/Foe system, but I still don't understand it. Is the idea just that it lets you filter a comment thread to emphasize comments written by people you're interested in (friends)? Does it hide the comments of foes?

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#22

Post by digi_owl »

conesus wrote: post #11

I never publicly announced this but I loved Slashdot’s friend/foe system so much that I built it as a cross browser extension for Hacker News. It’s called Hacker Smacker and it’s on GitHub. https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker Supports not only friends and foes but also friends of friends and foes of friends. Makes it easy to scan the HN homepage and comment threads and see what’s good. Much like how Slashdot’…

Been looking for something like this, as i have been using RES over at Reddit for a similar purpose.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#23

Post by snerbles »

jessriedel wrote: post #21
conesus wrote: post #11

I never publicly announced this but I loved Slashdot’s friend/foe system so much that I built it as a cross browser extension for Hacker News. It’s called Hacker Smacker and it’s on GitHub. https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker Supports not only friends and foes but also friends of friends and foes of friends. Makes it easy to scan the HN homepage and comment threads and see what’s good. Much like how Slashdot’…

I read the Slashdot FAQ on the Friend/Foe system, but I still don't understand it. Is the idea just that it lets you filter a comment thread to emphasize comments written by people you're interested in (friends)? Does it hide the comments of foes?

Slashdot's score weighting is configurable. You could even add a positive score offset to foes.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#24

Post by jandrese »

conesus wrote: post #11

I never publicly announced this but I loved Slashdot’s friend/foe system so much that I built it as a cross browser extension for Hacker News. It’s called Hacker Smacker and it’s on GitHub. https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker Supports not only friends and foes but also friends of friends and foes of friends. Makes it easy to scan the HN homepage and comment threads and see what’s good. Much like how Slashdot’…

Funnily enough, every time I see the friend/foe dots/pills on a post my first thought is "that's an old-timer". I'm betting well over 75% of the current Slashdot readers don't even know it exists.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#26

Post by digi_owl »

jessriedel wrote: post #21
conesus wrote: post #11

I never publicly announced this but I loved Slashdot’s friend/foe system so much that I built it as a cross browser extension for Hacker News. It’s called Hacker Smacker and it’s on GitHub. https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker Supports not only friends and foes but also friends of friends and foes of friends. Makes it easy to scan the HN homepage and comment threads and see what’s good. Much like how Slashdot’…

I read the Slashdot FAQ on the Friend/Foe system, but I still don't understand it. Is the idea just that it lets you filter a comment thread to emphasize comments written by people you're interested in (friends)? Does it hide the comments of foes?

The impression i have is that it gives fores a personal -1 on their comment score. So unless they get some +1s from others, or you have set /. to show everything, they will vanish below the breakpoint.

Note though that anyone can look up who has them flagged as foe on /..

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#27

Post by onion2k »

blakesterz wrote: post #13
cmdrtaco wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks!

Wow, just realized something totally crazy.. Honestly, I ended up where I am today because of Slashdot. In 1999 I wanted to build a Slashdot site but had no idea what I was doing. So I sat down and just learned how all that stuff worked, ran phpSlash for a while, then Slashcode, then Drupal. All the while I kept learning to code and run servers because of my little site. All the while new doors opened, and I kept wor…

+5 Interesting

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#29

Post by jandrese »

digi_owl wrote: post #22
conesus wrote: post #11

I never publicly announced this but I loved Slashdot’s friend/foe system so much that I built it as a cross browser extension for Hacker News. It’s called Hacker Smacker and it’s on GitHub. https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker Supports not only friends and foes but also friends of friends and foes of friends. Makes it easy to scan the HN homepage and comment threads and see what’s good. Much like how Slashdot’…

Been looking for something like this, as i have been using RES over at Reddit for a similar purpose.

The one thing that the friend/foe system missed IMHO was the ability to tag posters with comments like "suspected oil shill" or "actual Intel chip designer" or stuff like that. That's often more useful than some vague idea that a poster had some especially good or poor posting in the past.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#30

Post by garyrichardson »

For me, Slashdot was the first big internet community. I wasn't materially involved in news groups before that.

It's a little weird to think I wasn't 20 when I started using /. I was also a little surprised to see there's still a website at the URL. And I can still log in with my old username.

And, for the record, my autoincrement user id was 6533. During the height of their popularity having a 4 digit id give me a bit of geek cred :)

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