Can't wait to read the same post 10 years from now.
A Pre-History of Slashdot
151–160 of 366 posts
Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot
#152Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot
#153I remember getting my house's cable modem slashdotted in 2001 when i launched a community site (half-empty.org) I built -- what a wild ride that was. (If you are reading, thanks to Tim Wilde and the rest of the DynDNS crew for all the memories helping me, a young kid, get that site into an actual DC :)) I remember always rolling my eyes at the Linux and Free Software crowd on /. and the anti-Microsoft zeitgeist that…
> The anti-Microsoft zeitgeist that you could find at the top of pretty much any thread, even if it was about something completely unrelated.
Just a side comment, I feel like Hacker News is going this way with Facebook a little. Posts that tangentially mention Facebook, there's usually a high-rated comment about how Facebook is evil and since the user left Facebook their life has improved. Those "I don't even own a TV"-like posts are a bit grating as the top comment on every thread, but hey maybe like you say, it's really pushing towards a better future in the end.
Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot
#154I enjoyed Slashdot every single day as a passive reader but not as an user. I never received feedback from the founders when I pointed them to incorrect facts in their news and the never corrected the posts there. I specially rember an important security issue discovered by the company where I worked (Core Security Technologies) that was mistakenly reported as if was found by CERT. You can say that this is very common but at that time Slashdot was the top influential place in the community and security wise.
Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot
#155Slashdot was awesome right up until the point that they forced the redesign on everybody and drove away all the users that made it great. It would be the equivalent of HN forcing autoplay videos and animated banner ads on each page. A lesson to reflect upon--monetizing is ok when it doesn't kill your userbase. My ID is under 5000 (cue the older ID replies) and I refuse to give them pageviews now.
Redesign was a contributing factor to what's been coming for a long time. The main problem was that the community had an extremely limited say in moderation of the content. Puny 5 mod points once every few months is not a way to instill a sense of belonging. Imagine being able to upvote a post or a comment on HN only once a month, and passively watch random stuff of questionable quality float up the rest of the time.…
> Puny 5 mod points once every few months is not a way to instill a sense of belonging. Imagine being able to upvote a post or a comment on HN only once a month, and passively watch random stuff of questionable quality float up the rest of the time. That ruined /. for me and I suspect I wasn't alone in that.
To be fair, they pretty much invented user moderation, Slashdot was an early experiment with user curated discussions. That they never saw past the 5 mod points is understandable, it was a foundation the site was based on, and seeing past one's foundations can be hard.
They also had to likely balance against malicious users, who were a less small % of the user base than on other sites.
Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot
#156Slashdot was a major inspiration to us as we grew Ars Technica, not to mention a major source of critical traffic and growth in those early years. Hats off to Rob! I owe you, dude. We all do :-)
You all are doing good work too.
Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
More like: 1. Group #1 joins who care about site 2. Group #1 improves site. Sense of "community" keeps things in check. 3. Site grows in popularity and group #2 joins 4. Site loses sense of community and ability to moderate itself effectively. 5. Group #1 leaves
Where's the Profit ???
from stealing underpants obviously
Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot
#158I remember getting my house's cable modem slashdotted in 2001 when i launched a community site (half-empty.org) I built -- what a wild ride that was. (If you are reading, thanks to Tim Wilde and the rest of the DynDNS crew for all the memories helping me, a young kid, get that site into an actual DC :)) I remember always rolling my eyes at the Linux and Free Software crowd on /. and the anti-Microsoft zeitgeist that…
>>In today's world of mass surveillance, corporate consolidation of internet infrastructure, and the call for censorship of speech on the web
I am going to have to call you out.
I had a low-digit ID on /.
We (people like me) have been calling this out for FUCKING DECADES.
I feel that we can talk about generational millenials etc.. but we can also call out DIGITAL millenials; those who thing they know what the fuck is up just because they "work at facebook"
I have been a whistle against NSA router backdoors since 1997...
So nobody wanted to hear it then - and the giants have surpassed me - and I concede...
but to think that this is some freaking revelation is bullshit.
We have been talking about it for literally decades. FFS FB threatened to sue me for that which I revealed even here on HN.
Today's "world" has been here since the 70s.
Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot
#159I remember Chips&Dips and got confused one day when I couldn't find it. Started searching and found it again under Slashdot and have been a fan and loyal visitor ever since.
Thanks a lot for this awesome write-up of Internet History :-)
Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot
#160I remember getting my house's cable modem slashdotted in 2001 when i launched a community site (half-empty.org) I built -- what a wild ride that was. (If you are reading, thanks to Tim Wilde and the rest of the DynDNS crew for all the memories helping me, a young kid, get that site into an actual DC :)) I remember always rolling my eyes at the Linux and Free Software crowd on /. and the anti-Microsoft zeitgeist that…
> The anti-Microsoft zeitgeist that you could find at the top of pretty much any thread, even if it was about something completely unrelated. Just a side comment, I feel like Hacker News is going this way with Facebook a little. Posts that tangentially mention Facebook, there's usually a high-rated comment about how Facebook is evil and since the user left Facebook their life has improved. Those "I don't even own a T…
Not owning a TV is pushing my kid to watch a lot of YouTube. I'm seriously considering buying a TV, after living for 30 years without one, just so that I can have a quality entertainment feed that doesn't bend to the new media's idea of what my kid should watch, because what that ends up being is endless advertisements ("open this egg! What's inside? A Ken doll!! Wow!!") and videos of pandas killing each other with chainsaws, then reaching into the body cavity to find their surprise egg.
What a world.