I don't visit /. anymore, but definitely grew up on it. I don't think you can understate the impact it had on a generation of geeks. Especially when it comes to Open Source, I think /. was incredibly important in educating people on a concept, history and philosophy many of us take for granted now. And hot grits aside, it really did set the bar for intelligent discussion. /. was the first site where the comments were…
One of my favorite memories from /. was refreshing to see a new version of the kernel was available. You'd spend a few hours downloading it, compiling, and reboot. Usually there were no new features you wanted, no bugs fixed, just the idea of being on the bleeding edge was "cool" enough.
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot
51–60 of 153 posts
Re: Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot
#52Re: Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot
#53Interesting decision. In practice I don't think this will change a lot, because it's been years since Slashdot was primarily the personal project of Malda; from what I can tell, he's been "just another editor" and a bit withdrawn from the decision-making for a few years now. But I can see wanting to do something else. For all its downsides, Slashdot is a quite interesting experiment imo. In terms of form: It was one…
Not only were the comments threaded, they also had an elaborate moderation and karma system in-place that still works very well. (With meta-moderation, to boot.) I often browse Slashdot at +5 to get a quick overview of the discussion. If there something interesting going on, it's easy to drill down and see the less popular posts and counterpoints related to the +5 post. I think it's a great compromise: Get karma, you…
Rob will be missed.
Re: Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot
#54user: cowboyneal pass: cowboyneal
Anyone else?
Re: Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot
#55Re: Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot
#56Interesting decision. In practice I don't think this will change a lot, because it's been years since Slashdot was primarily the personal project of Malda; from what I can tell, he's been "just another editor" and a bit withdrawn from the decision-making for a few years now. But I can see wanting to do something else. For all its downsides, Slashdot is a quite interesting experiment imo. In terms of form: It was one…
Not only were the comments threaded, they also had an elaborate moderation and karma system in-place that still works very well. (With meta-moderation, to boot.) I often browse Slashdot at +5 to get a quick overview of the discussion. If there something interesting going on, it's easy to drill down and see the less popular posts and counterpoints related to the +5 post. I think it's a great compromise: Get karma, you…
Re: Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot
#57It's a shame that Steve Job's leaving overshadows this. Slashdot has been a rock of the internet for 14 years, and I still regularly visit it. This paragraph is good: In the last 14 years, Slashdot has covered so many amazing events: The explosion of Linux. The rise of Google. The return of Apple. The Dot Com Bubble. The DMCA. 9/11. Wars. Elections. Numerous successful Shuttle Launches and one Disaster. Scientific Br…
I think the span between the Columbine shooting and 9/11 was probably their peak. So many of my memories of /. involve national disasters.
Re: Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot
#58What are the underlying linchpins of the SlashDot community? How would you rebuild it? What steps would you take, what processes would you put in place, what technology would you use?
I would never want to create a SlashDot clone, nor would I expect anyone could clone SlashDot. However, there are very important lessons in community building, management and infrastructure planning that Rob is an expert at.
Re: Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot
#59If you've followed the lifespan of VA Software, OSDN, OSTG, GeekNet...I don't think this will come as a surprise to anyone. http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?&w=400&h=220&o=f&... ; Slashdot built the community that a lot of people still have close ties to. I'll always remember reading my first few Bruce Perens posts, and adding him (and a few others) to my 'Friends' List. I'll also never forget listening to their market…
> I'll also never forget listening to their marketing person talk about how they could 'bitchslap' negative comments (about the advertiser) to -2 so that nobody could see them. Citation, please? Rob Malda's oft-cited bitchslap comment was about a script he had written to deal with Slashdot's most annoying commenters (people who used their own scripts to submit thousands of duplicate comments simultaneously), and had…