Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Pre-History of Slashdot

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 366 posts

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#321

Post by elkos »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #272
flukus wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The steam roller is still there from quite a few companies, make something popular and Google, MS, Facebook will clone it and force it on people. No luck about it though, these companies are only interested in mass market stuff, the long tail has only gotten longer.

First they offer to buy it. If you aren’t insane you sell it. If you think you can beat the big three you probably deserve to be crushed.

That's why as a user I tend to consider the license of software I use and sometimes even the legal status of the entity behind it.

By no means my statement implies that software developed under a free software license by a nonprofit organisation will for ever keep being fit for my use case scenarios but I do believe that changes that constitute planned obsolescence wouldn't be the case.

Of course such a model has limitations, you can't go on funding rounds but still it's an interesting model.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#322

Post by wowtip »

dredmorbius wrote: post #258
chris_wot wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone who wonders why HN mods are overly strict, then note that Kuro5hin tolerated trolls and they utterly destroyed the site. It doesn't exist any more.

It had limped along until a year or so back when the server finally fell over. The domain is parked now. But yeah, the trolls pretty much ruined it, life lesson. Rusty turned up running a Mastodon instance, though I haven't seen him for a few months.

The change in direction of content of kuro5hin, is that the trolls you refer to?

I just visited sporadically and noticed focus drifted from tech related and interesting to political and sometimes into conspiracy theory areas around the time when I stopped visiting.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#323

Post by flukus »

intended wrote: post #315
godzillabrennus wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First they offer to buy it. If you aren’t insane you sell it. If you think you can beat the big three you probably deserve to be crushed.

>If you think you can beat the big three you probably deserve to be crushed. vs > If you think you can beat the big three I cheer you on. Its funny, that on HN of all places, your statement is not challenged. The major point of HN over /. was the startup/incubatorish habits of Ycombinator.

HN attitude is about getting the big payout, Slashdot was much more "fuck the man". I think it's part of a larger trend, in the Slashdot prime we had protests like the battle of Seattle against globalisation, the hardcore left from that era would be cheering trumps trade policy, but offshoring didn't work out so we collectively sold out.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#324

Post by avenius »

I started reading slashdot around 2000-2001, being about 14 years old at the time. I would venture to say that slashdot and its community has been as educational (or even more) as school, and played a large part in my deciding to work in IT.

Since I never signed up for an account there (I was a kid and knew I had nothing to bring to the table), I never experienced the friend/foe system or participated in moderation. Still, the site has had an amazing impact on my life and given me an insight into topics I never would have learned about otherwise. Nowadays it feels HN has taken over, but I still feel a need to express my gratitude for both the site and the community.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#325

Post by [deleted] »

Yetanfou wrote: post #181
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #83

Earlier 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

There is even a term for this phenomenon: eternal September [1]. It originated as Usenet slang for a period beginning in September 1993, AOL started offering Usenet access to its users which overwhelmed the existing culture for online forums. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

[deleted]

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#326

Post by intended »

dredmorbius wrote: post #289
AndrewStephens wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The platforms that survive tend to be either incredible focused around a certain niche (ycombinator), or heavily moderated with a strong editorial hand (metafilter). Slashdot is still limping on as a much less interesting site since it had money behind it but places like Kur05hin (however it was spelled) and its ilk quickly imploded. People like to complain about heavy-handed moderation but all the experiments to try…

I'm coming to agree there's no substitute for effective moderation. And despite occasional (and strong) disagreements with dang and sctb, they do a really good job on HN.

Oh its worse -

After you make your peace with that, theres an entire world of rules and theories on moderation, all of it useful and important to get the job done.

The cheat code to cut through that mess is -

"I'm coming to agree that theres no substitute for good editorial control"

Trust me on this, the proof is to painful to reproduced regularly.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#328

Post by dredmorbius »

intended wrote: post #326
dredmorbius wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm coming to agree there's no substitute for effective moderation. And despite occasional (and strong) disagreements with dang and sctb, they do a really good job on HN.

Oh its worse - After you make your peace with that, theres an entire world of rules and theories on moderation, all of it useful and important to get the job done. The cheat code to cut through that mess is - "I'm coming to agree that theres no substitute for good editorial control" Trust me on this, the proof is to painful to reproduced regularly.

Also agreed.

(You're going to have to try harder for an argument ;-)

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#329

Post by dredmorbius »

wowtip wrote: post #322
dredmorbius wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It had limped along until a year or so back when the server finally fell over. The domain is parked now. But yeah, the trolls pretty much ruined it, life lesson. Rusty turned up running a Mastodon instance, though I haven't seen him for a few months.

The change in direction of content of kuro5hin, is that the trolls you refer to? I just visited sporadically and noticed focus drifted from tech related and interesting to political and sometimes into conspiracy theory areas around the time when I stopped visiting.

Not OP, but that was a significant part of it, yes.

Both the quality / topic of posts, and of discussion, faded quickly.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#330

Post by wowtip »

int_19h wrote: post #310
dwringer wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand the appeal of a friend/foe system. If I don't like a person, I typically try to avoid interacting with them unless/until I find a way to reevaluate them or myself so that I can find something positive, a way to like them. Pretty much the last thing I want is a computer to remind me that I don't like someone. In fact, I wish frequently that I could suppress my own internal feelings of dislike…

The whole point of friend/foe system on Slashdot is that foes' comments are less visible, and friends' are more visible. It's basically a way to say "this person tends to say ridiculous things, and I don't care to read more of them" and "this person tends to say interesting things, I'd love to hear what they have to say on other subjects". So if your approach is to "try to avoid interacting with them", it just automa…

I used the friends/foes on /., but never thought much about it. Filtered out a number of vocal nutcases.

But wouldn't this sort of create your own cozy echo chamber, where all opinion is streamlined?

I think it would be interestring going the other way around, a bit like some sub Reddits don't show comment score for a day or two, to not cause self reinforcement in moderation.

Maybe even take it a bit further by anonymizing the commenter's name for a limitid time, could be interesting as the comment would then rely fully on content, not reputation or score feedback reinforcement.

Post reply on HN