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from the I'm-so-meta-even-this-acronym dept.
jcd writes:
"I'm rather excited to get going with Soylent and to watch it grow. Nay, help it grow. I have lurked in /. for more than a decade (note: I'm not the same username over there, I know, how sneaky), and always wished I could have been involved with the beginning. So this is a great opportunity, and I joined as soon as I saw what Soylent was doing. Not to mention the fact that I felt right at home with the old style. It's very comfortable.
So here's a question for everyone. Are we going to be the same as slashdot? A clone that focuses as entirely as possible on tech related news? Or will we branch out to other topics? I'm interested to see either way. I posted a comment to this effect in one of our two existing polls, and it may be a community-wide assumption, but I do think it merits a discussion."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by dbot on Thursday February 20 2014, @04:55PM
I also lurked forever on ./, posting only AC. I'm pleased as pie for the new site.
Branch out to what? Any examples?
I'll be happy if we can *get back* to more math+science centric stuff, rather than Internet pop culture. (i.e. - reel in the focus, rather than branch out).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by martink on Thursday February 20 2014, @04:58PM
Agreed, the tech+science+math segment is really what I'd like to see as well. Otherwise this will just become 'YANA' (Yet Another News Aggregator)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:24PM
Having been is Slashdot a long long time (5digit), I thing it had always about technology, programming, internet, science, etc. Math, tended to creep in later, it wasn't a big part in the beginning, at least not bigger than the sciences.
Then it started drifting.
It may have been the Motto that caused the topic drift over the years: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters.
People forgot about the first part, and concentrated on the "Stuff that matters" part to the point that it became far to focused on Politics and Social commentary, (things that mattered to them personally), two areas where you can never reach a consensus, or even an agreement to disagree.
SoylentNews, with its motto: "Its People", (pretty broad really) has even a greater risk of topic drift into the un-settle-able (and often unsettling) area of politics.
And perhaps that is by design. Perhaps its even a good thing. But I'm sort of sick [letssingit.com] of all that.
My lawn...
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Angry Jesus on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:24PM
5-digit /. uid here too and as I get older the more important I think the social and political stuff becomes. I'm not talking about the typical nightly news about society or even the sunday morning wonk talk show politics. I mean the intersection of tech and society in general.
More and more tech sets the parameters of society and politics. Drones killing wouldn't be happening if it weren't for advanced comm systems and computers fast enough and small enough to make them semi-autonomous. License plate scanners wouldn't be a threat if it weren't for Big Data. The NSA wouldn't have been living out their biggest wet dream ever if it weren't for the internet.
The technical stuff we do has serious repercussions on the world at large and we should be talking about it because simply leaving it up to "the people in charge" doesn't eliminate our moral responsibilities.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:11PM
Agree with just about every thing you say.
Mankind can't seem to help himself from building skynet one piece at at time.
However, since we can all pretty much agree there has proven to be no significant difference between Tweedledee and Tweedledum arguments about raw politics are simply pointless.
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:36PM
As someone who was spoken at events previously regarding DRM in HTML5 at my local LUG, as well as privacy issues online during SFD 2013, I have to second this.
I got into technology originally because it was fun, but now the social and political aspects are perhaps even more important to me.
Posting as AC because I'm at work and don't have my SN account password here with me.
(Score: 1) by TheLink on Friday February 21 2014, @03:35AM
1) It can be done
2) They need to publish
3) They need $$$
Few seem to consider whether they really should do a particular thing from a longer term point of view.
For instance - human-animal hybrids or "Really Strong AIs". Is society even ready to decide which hybrids get the same rights and responsibilities as a human? What percent and how do you determine the percentage? It's all very easy to yell "luddite" but many of us have played those "Civ" style games - we have limited resources and time, there are plenty of other "tech trees" (and arguably more helpful tech trees) we could do first till society gets more ready or it becomes irrelevant (we "Ascend" or go extinct due to some other thing).
One day some bright spark may produce the "Cheap Big Red Button That Does Great Stuff But Kills Almost Everyone If You Press It Wrong" and society might not have reached the point where nobody will ever press it wrong. With Great Power comes Great Responsibility and all that, but giving everyone great power before they can use it responsibly is a recipe for disaster. No such thing? The research into creating dangerous viruses is one.
Some say "If I don't do it, someone else will", to that I say "if you don't do it now, at least it buys us a bit more time till someone else does", and history has examples where it can sometimes take a few decades before someone else does it and even more till it gets widespread.
(Score: 1) by TheRaven on Friday February 21 2014, @05:26AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2, Interesting) by dicknixondick on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:12PM
I've also been around slashdot since the days it was run on a babbage machine (1997). Lurked or posted ac...I cant even remember my old username.
I dont mind the topic drift as long as the oldtimers dont leave. Whatever the community care stand Im usually interested in reading. This quality of commentary on any subject is enlightening.
I would like to see a side bar of journal/diaries like dailykos (ugh...) since its the one redeeming quality there.
Im really relieved this new site is happening regardless.
(Score: 1) by dicknixondick on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:18PM
DOh! ...I see the journal entries over to the right AFTER I post a stupid comment...guess I picked a bad day to stop sniffing glue.
(Score: 1) by Thexalon on Friday February 21 2014, @09:35AM
I disagree with that idea:
- There's already an understanding in most political or social discussions that you're never really going to convince the "other" side to agree with you.
- If you're making arguments and not hurling insults, then the discussions clarify different worldviews, their strengths and weaknesses.
- As long as everyone is coming back to the table, there's a tacit agreement to disagree.
- On rare occasions, you find agreement where you didn't expect it. For example, a group of Occupy Wall Street folks met up with a group of Tea Party members, and promptly agreed on a number of points, mostly campaign finance and criminal penalties for bank executives.
Every task is easy if somebody else is doing it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TWiTfan on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:30PM
Agreed, don't make the same mistake that Digg did. Keep it tech related, "News for Nerds" and all that. Trying to be too many things to too many people will only help you digg your own grave.
If real life were like D&D, my Charisma score would be a negative number
(Score: 1) by EETech1 on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:26PM
Soylent News...
Feed your nerdy brain with what matters most!
(Score: 1) by philip on Friday February 21 2014, @08:45PM
Yes, please: make it "News for Nerds"
As 'nerds' have become popular in pop culture, the term has lost its meaning.
When 20-something former cheerleaders in bars claim to be nerds* it illustrates the problems we're talking about.
*this actually happened, and also, I have nothing against former cheerleaders being nerds, or former cheerleaders who aren't. I am just using this anecdotal experience to try to illustrate a point.
Also, there are so many people on /. that are very opinionated that I have become conditioned to caveat everything I say, in order to preemptively defend myself from people. I hope I can shake the habit here.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DrMag on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:48PM
The above comments I agree with completely, and I would love to have the focus remain clearly on the scientific topics. That's not to say there aren't lots of news stories that are of interest to such a site that don't deal directly with math/science/technology, but interesting insights can come by discussing such topics among a bunch of mathematicians/scientists/engineers/techies, whether they be professional, amateur, or hobbyist.
One thing I would like to see, however, that might be "branching out" from the traditional feel of this type of news site would be a change in the comment system. I know, heresy! Please, hear me out...
One of my biggest gripes with /. was that so often the comments would diverge into off-topic, or at least uninteresting-to-me-topic, and I would have to sort through *hundreds* of comments that were back and forth arguments over semantics, insults, or some such, when all I wanted was more information on the topic itself. One feature that would make a world of difference to me is the ability to instantly collapse an entire thread that diverged away in order to find the other discussions that got buried amid the frenzy more easily.
I'm certain there is a way to keep the general format and feel of the current system we have all come to love while adding in a way to collapse and hide an entire section (even if many of the comments in that section are insightful/funny/whatever). It would also help in following a discussion as comments come in later.
Just my 3.5e-5 BTC. I'd settle for just a better assortment of worthwhile articles without all the fluff.
(Score: 1) by buswolley on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:22PM
That seems reasonable.
subicular junctures
(Score: 2, Informative) by Foobar Bazbot on Friday February 21 2014, @01:20AM
It's my understanding that this greasemonkey script [userscripts.org], which is said to work [dev.soylentnews.org] on soylentnews with one slight modification, will grant you the ability you seek. (Haven't had a chance to try it myself...)
userscript: Expand/Collapse buttons on every comment [userscripts.org]
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Friday February 21 2014, @02:26AM
For what's its worth, I tried it and no dice even after following the editing instructions to the letter.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @07:53AM
Of course. "No Dice" is the whole point of Soylent News, after all. ;-)
(Score: 1) by stderr on Friday February 21 2014, @11:07AM
I have only tested this in "Nested"-mode, but if you can make some "pretty" buttons and hook them up to the following hide_comment(cid) and show_comment(cid) functions, I think we got a very simple POC...
cid is of course the comment-id, so hide_comment(4127); should hide your comment (except for the title bar) and all it's replies (including this, so don't try that!).
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" #
(Score: 1) by stderr on Friday February 21 2014, @11:15AM
The comment systems inserts a blank after every 50 character in long lines of characters to avoid spam. It should be "commentBody" and "commentSub".
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" #
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Tuesday February 25 2014, @05:24PM
NCommander, get your numbered polyhedra here. [userscripts.org] No editing needed.
userscript: Expand/Collapse buttons on every comment [userscripts.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Friday February 21 2014, @01:49AM
I second that.
Nothing is more annoying than jumping into an interesting story and find that one of the early comments (so at the top) was some tangential BS that triggers a huge meaningless thread. I mean, I know that geeks can get hung up on something, and then beat it to a pulpy death -- been there done that myself -- but being able to collapse that junk would be awesome. Keeping a count of how many times a thread was collapsed might also be interesting, and maybe apply an automatic downmod to every post in the thread above a certain threshold of collapses.
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Tuesday February 25 2014, @05:17PM
Remember the greasemonkey script I mentioned?
Fixed it! [userscripts.org]
userscript: Expand/Collapse buttons on every comment [userscripts.org]
(Score: 1) by DrMag on Tuesday February 25 2014, @07:08PM
Very nice, thank you! So far it works perfectly.
(Score: 1) by weeds on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:52PM
Mod parent up!
Get the strategic plan going! [dev.soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Fluffeh on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:07PM
I was around on /. for over a decade as well. One thing I really wanted to mention is that a lot of the articles on say space, or physics or the like, while often low in comments, please do keep these coming as they are awesome. Just because I don't join in a conversation doesn't mean that I don't really enjoy reading the summary and clicking through to the article itself.
Some of the pop stuff is mildly entertaining, but please lets not forget the original focus. The real articles are the main course, pop culture and the like are merely a garnish on the side of the plate.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mcgrew on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:09PM
Depends on what you want to add. I think part of the reason K5 died was it had other than nerd stuff, and the normals started posting (and it's happening at slashdot).
I'd like to see soylent nerd-friendly and normal-hostile. I absolutely HATE seeing comments that are uninformed, ignorant, sometimes even stupid, and written by semiliterates. Those people aren't us.
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:40PM
It may be hard, occasionally, to distinguish the semi-literate from the non English-as-mother-tongue folks. I would hope we don't mistake someone making a their/there/they're error for someone with no valid ideas.
On Slashdot, uninformed, ignorant, and stupid, are names too often (and too quickly) applied to people with which one simply disagrees. It seems far more often the case, that a pejorative will be flung into the conversation than a link or two to an educational source.
If SN could find a cure for the people who believe they have to "win the internet" every time they post, it would be miles ahead.
Perhaps we should add a mod category of "bad behavior"?
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by kebes on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:56PM
The 'agree score' would be available for everyone to click on at all times (i.e. not restricted to moderators). This score would be displayed alongside each comment, but would not affect comment visibility. Thus, it would act as a signifier of how many site readers agreed with the comment, independent of the quality of the presentation style.
Since this 'agree score' doesn't affect comment visibility, you might wonder why bother having it at all? My suspicion is that by providing an agree/disagree button, it would reinforce the idea that the usual mod-score is not related to agreement. This would (hopefully) make moderators more focused in giving mod-points. Additionally, everyone loves giving their opinion, so it's a simple way to engage the community in commenting (it's a simple way to agree with someone without posting a 'yeah I agree' in reply). Displaying the final 'agreement percentage' could then of course provide some useful information to other readers.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:17PM
Yes, the pacifier buttons.
You're starting to see those Thumbs up / Thumbs down buttons a lot. It gives people a way to feel involved without having to take the time to post a constructive rebuttal, agreement or counterpoint.
I Don't know how I feel about that, but it MIGHT soak up a lot of "Me too" posts or name calling flames.
I still think we need a "bad behavior" mod to stamp out the name calling and flaming.
There are better ways to make a point than flinging invectives.
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 2, Funny) by mtrycz on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:19PM
So much +1!
(Score: 4, Funny) by Kell on Thursday February 20 2014, @09:08PM
Don't you mean +1 agree/+1 quality?
Scientists point out problems. Engineers fix them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by lennier on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:56PM
This is a great idea, and I second this entirely. Wish I could mod you up for this post - but I'd rather have an Agree button.
Look, I enjoy using Facebook despite loathing the company, and a big part of that enjoyment is that I can click 'Like' as a very simple way of sending 1 bit of positive feedback to the author of the post I enjoyed. There are a lot of things that are evil about Facebook the company as a totalitarian privacy-devouring world-consuming financial-speculation bubble behemoth: but the Like button isn't one of them.
Slashdot was a very early implementation of crowd moderation and the strength of Soylent right now is that it's a small and passionate community of early adopters, so we have room to experiment. Let's try this thing. Separate 'Agree' vs 'Quality' ratings.
Delenda est Beta
(Score: 2, Informative) by umafuckitt on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:01PM
This is similar to how the new technocrat.net is doing it.
(Score: 1) by dmc on Friday February 21 2014, @03:10AM
mod parent up. While in some sense technocrat.net might be a competitor to SN (as both competitors to /.Beta), it seems SN has achieved critical mass already and I doubt anything will stop it. While technocrat.net seems to need more commenters. And clearly Bruce Perens' quality/comportment idea exploration is quite similar if not exactly what we are discussing in this subthread. I'd almost say you don't need to experiment with it here (anytime soon), but rather use technocrat.net as the place to explore that side of moderation. Likewise technocrat is an interesting alternate implementation. I.e. while here the path is clearly- fork the ancient slashcode, and then improve it in obvious needed ways over time, over there it is start from scratch with RoR? and an absolutely minimalist proof of concept first. Though also I don't mean to act like I'm an expert, but that's at least a start of why you should go over there and at least check it out. (Perens I think has already tried to deploy it long ago but shut it down because it didn't get enough traction. I think if we could nudge 5-10% of the traffic here over there, we'd get a 2nd good alternative to slashdot going)
(Score: 1) by umafuckitt on Friday February 21 2014, @09:06AM
That's an interesting suggestion and I'm trying to spend a little time there and submit stories. Right now there's pretty much no comment traffic on technocrat, which is a pity. However, looking at the internet archive, it looks like there never really was any: http://web.archive.org/web/20050830003758/http://t echnocrat.net/ [archive.org] No comments, or comment counts under 10 per story, were the norm.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Angry Jesus on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:35PM
I've been thinking basically the same thing for a few years now with one difference -- the "Agree Score" should be more functional. Let people choose to hide or elevate comments with large numbers of either kind of vote (or even lots of both kinds of votes, indicating controversy). At Ars getting enough disagrees will hide a comment and I think a lot of agrees will get it promoted to a special section at the end of the article. I don't think they have a way to tune the thresholds per user though.
(Score: 1) by weilawei on Friday February 21 2014, @02:14AM
(Score: 1) by weilawei on Friday February 21 2014, @02:17AM
Replying to myself because we STILL lack an edit button. I'd like to see posts with revisions, to avoid edit trollery. Original post should've been:
+1 Agree, +1 Quality. If you have both kinds of scores (and I think it's an idea worth trying), someone will make a Greasemonkey script to reorder them/display them according to their preferred metric. Rather than futz with all that, I think it'd be nice to have both (agree, quality) scores and the option to sort/filter by either.
(Further edit: the Slow Down Cowboy message makes correcting your posts really hard.)
(Score: 1) by Murdoc on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:58PM
+1 Agree. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @07:28AM
I wish there were a "disagree" button to tell you how much I disagree.
But wait, then I'd need a button to say "I agree with the second part only, while the first makes me indifferent".
You know what? I will use comments instead of a flat +1/-1, and if I just agree and have nothing to add, I will add nothing, as honest as that.
Having a head count on comments puts value on popularity.
Now, go. Back. To. Facebook. (interleaved with Castlevania IV whip sound effect)
(Sorry for the sarcasm :] )
Anonymous neagix
(Score: 1) by Thexalon on Friday February 21 2014, @11:01AM
I actually proposed that exact idea back in a forum post [dev.soylentnews.org] before we had a functioning site. I called it the "hear-hear" button, but the concept is the same.
The key reason to do this: Two posts that each have 3-5 moderators behind it may appear to be on equal footing, when in fact the real vote might be closer to 10,000 to 4. That doesn't mean the minority viewpoint isn't heard, because this wouldn't affect visibility, but it does mean that casual readers can get an idea of what the masses really think. Of course, if somebody really cared they could use various technical means to make a post appear more popular than it really was, but I think it would be a worthwhile and fairly low-cost experiment.
Every task is easy if somebody else is doing it.
(Score: 1) by neagix on Friday February 21 2014, @03:04PM
I am sorry but I am biased to think that popularity shouldn't be something we should care about. Popular != Valuable. We don't want to be popular, we want to be opinionated geeks, and to be right. That's at least my perspective
(Score: 1) by Common Joe on Saturday February 22 2014, @02:16AM
Your idea has a lot of merit, but I think there are privacy issues here to think about. Sure, as soon as one post to SoylentNews, your opinion is now made public, but having a like / dislike button (agree / disagree) reeks of Facebook and it reeks of information gathering. I mean, unless anyone can vote any number of times (and ballot stuff), it becomes a requirement to information gather. There is no other way: login and vote.
I'm not saying the purpose of SoylentNews is information gathering. That was never the goal of this project. Still that's what this idea will lead to and I think the community will ultimately reject that and it drive away some people.
Even if that were implemented, I'd stay. I don't often click those like or dislike buttons on Facebook. (Hell, I barely log in to Facebook at and the only reason I have an account it to help keep up with my friends and family in other countries.) It wouldn't be a requirement.
I'm not giving my explicit like or dislike here. I write this merely as food for thought.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:03PM
It may be hard, occasionally, to distinguish the semi-literate from the non English-as-mother-tongue folks. I would hope we don't mistake someone making a their/there/they're error for someone with no valid ideas.
That's a very good reason to point out to the aliterate and the ESL student as well. The internet is an awful place to learn written English. I don't know the stats for other English speaking countries, but although less than 1% of Americans are illiterate, 97% of them are aliterate. Teaching is never a bad thing, especially if you can make it humorous. Or humourous if you're British.
But there are commenters who make those mistakes, are corrected, yet continue. Those people are just stupid. I mean, it isn't like they can't check it out with an authority, like maybe a dictionary or something.
On Slashdot, uninformed, ignorant, and stupid, are names too often (and too quickly) applied to people with which one simply disagrees. It seems far more often the case, that a pejorative will be flung into the conversation than a link or two to an educational source.
If SN could find a cure for the people who believe they have to "win the internet" every time they post, it would be miles ahead.
Perhaps we should add a mod category of "bad behavior"?
Agreed completely... except doesn't "troll" cover "bad behavior"?
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday February 21 2014, @01:06AM
Yes and No. Troll seems to acquired a lot of baggage, and has assumed a separate category all its own. In fact, the wiki definition [wikipedia.org] seems to grow every year to include yet more things that someone somewhere objects to.
In fact modding someone troll has come to mean modding them "disagree".
One may troll politely, not calling anyone names, simply stating an unpopular view.
(And occasionally that's not always bad, people need to know their beliefs are not universally held).
But hurling insults and calling people morons or idiots just seems unnecessary, and modding them troll can't be distinguished from modding them "disagree".
There seems great reluctance to add new mod values, both here and on Slashdot. So when I suggest doing so, I may be trolling, but I'm not misbehaving. (At least not egregiously).
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday February 21 2014, @11:56AM
In fact, the wiki definition seems to grow every year to include yet more things that someone somewhere objects to.
Well, at slashdot I'd go by their FAQ definition, here I'll go with the Soylent FAQ definition (which I think is identical).
One may troll politely, not calling anyone names, simply stating an unpopular view.
As to "unpopular view", well, that depends. In many cases you're right. In a story at a nerd site about space exploration a comment that says money for space exploration should go to the poor is certainly a troll, no matter how polite. Same with logging on to an AARP messageboard and advocating the end of Social Security or Medicare, or logging on to a Christian messageboard with a statement about what great ideas Richard Dawkins has, or an athiest site saying "repent before you wind up in hell".
Just being abusive is flamebait. Some comments are both flamebait AND troll.
As to "disagree" equaling "troll", I consider that an abuse of moderation. If you simply disagree, don't moderate, comment. If someone is wrong, correct them (politely if possible).
There seems great reluctance to add new mod values, both here and on Slashdot. So when I suggest doing so, I may be trolling, but I'm not misbehaving.
I don't see it as trolling OR misbehaving. It's your honest opinion and you shouldn't be afraid to voice it.
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 1) by M. Baranczak on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:26PM
The people who make this error are almost always native English speakers. If you learn English a little later in life, like I did, you learn the spoken and written language at the same time. When you do that, it's bloody obvious that "they're" and "their" are different words.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Sir Garlon on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:44PM
When you say "normal-hostile," do you mean hostile to banality [thefreedictionary.com]? If so, then I pledge my invisible sword to your cause!
Policing comments is the moderators' job. So nipping that crap in the bud is up to you, me, and all of us.
Though, come to think of it, new moderation options could help. The closest thing we have now is "overrated," which is not quite the same thing. I'd like to see a more explicit mod option to the effect, "I've heard that before and it was shallow then."
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight who is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:14PM
Yes, that was exactly what I meant.
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 1) by Foobar Bazbot on Friday February 21 2014, @01:43AM
Back in the /. days, I've seen a number of arguments over what exactly "redundant" was appropriate for. (Most frequently because a first post or the first instance of an "obligatory webcomic" was modded down as redundant.) Some people interpret "redundant" relative to comments in the current discussion only (in which case the first post can never be redundant), some to comments+TFS, or comments+TFS+TFA (either of these consider that the first post may be redundant), and some take it even farther, to the point that anything that everyone on /. has heard plenty of times may be modded redundant, because it does and should go without saying. The third interpretation, while AFAICT a minority (at least on /.), does give the "redundant" mod substantial overlap with what you're after.
That said, I'd welcome a -1 Banal mod -- not only would it likely reduce the frequency of that tired argument of what "redundant" means, it would be handy for moderating the argument out of sight when it does occur.
userscript: Expand/Collapse buttons on every comment [userscripts.org]
(Score: 1) by hubie on Friday February 21 2014, @11:21AM
I would like to see "-1 Wrong" for those comments that are flat-out wrong. It would probably get used in the wrong way, but there are cases when someone makes their argument and they are just wrong, like arguing from the standpoint of violating physical law, or claiming A when a dozen people point out that it is actually !A.
(Score: 1) by cybro on Thursday February 20 2014, @09:42PM
>"and the normals started posting"
>"I'd like to see soylent nerd-friendly and normal-hostile"
I understand the sentiment but I don't think that will happen. It sounds like you'd prefer 4chan or something.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:51PM
I've never been to 4chan, because I've heard of it. I looked at reddit - once. When I say "discourage normals," I'm talking about modding idiotic statements down like they used to do at slashdot. Let them lurk, in fact encourage it, they might learn something. But don't encourage them to comment.
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 1) by Jerry Smith on Friday February 21 2014, @03:21AM
That's always the end of fun.
What always annoyed me that whenever something was afoot, like plans to build a space station or explore Mars or build nanobots or other fun stuff, there were always people pushing their "we can't spend money on science as long as there is hunger in $Bananistan" agenda.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday February 21 2014, @11:42AM
That's one of my pet peeves as well. At a nerd site that's nothing short of one of the three big guys Bilbo turned to stone and should be modded as such.
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 1) by JeanCroix on Friday February 21 2014, @10:05AM
Honestly, it's never been the same since that one September back in '93...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by lubricus on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:18PM
I agree with every part of this, for some reason I rarely felt comfortable posting on /., perhaps because the threads diverged so often turned absurd, political, or there was nothing to add.
Following up on the crowd [dev.soylentnews.org], I agree that math + science was the most useful to me, because it was nice to catch up on a breadth of fields, with specialists coming in for interpretation and insight.
I would add that I'd like to see tech legal issues covered for the same reason.
Basically, nerds love stuff, we want to learn about stuff, but we simply don't have the time to gain the necessary expertise to appreciate everything we some across.
... sorry about the typos
(Score: 1) by Kell on Friday February 21 2014, @04:12AM
+1 agree. I think we need a -1 Political mod - so that when people complain the topic of the story is the fault of the republicans/democrats/libertarians/bolsheviks/bona partists we can mod them into oblivion.
Scientists point out problems. Engineers fix them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by regift_of_the_gods on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:05PM
A word of caution. One way to put a damper on dinner party conversation is to object e.g when someone broaches a subject such as Obama, "Do we really want to talk about politics (religion, celebrities, etc)?" Maybe not exclusively or primarily, but then everyone starts to self-censor before bringing up any new topic.
(Score: 1) by weilawei on Friday February 21 2014, @02:21AM
(Score: 1) by osiguru on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:13PM
I was a low UID way back in the day, but somehow I managed to lose my login/id/password/email provider so I just abandoned the account and lurked. Thanks to the efforts of you all here put into a good old fashioned environment and more importantly a system deliverable reset.
The current content balance is perfectly fine so far, and it will evolve as the slashmenot users begin to discover this petri-dish of goodness.
Shoving unwanted crap at the consumer works pretty well, right? .beta too?"
"hey, can I have a chair with my
Just ask that fat chair tossing bald ogre up there in Redmond..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mojo chan on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:20PM
I'll be happy if we can *get back* to more math+science centric stuff, rather than Internet pop culture. (i.e. - reel in the focus, rather than branch out).
I don't think it has to be an either/or decision, we can have both. Generally I like the stories being posted so far more than those on Slashdot. Just keep it like Slashdot was 10 years ago, but acknowledge that the world has moved on so of course there are going to be stories about Facecock pissing away billions on some generic chat app.
PS. Allow unicode signatures.
PPS. Make it green.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:33PM
My wife uses said generic texting app for keeping in contact with friends and family members in other countries. There's a huge international market that FB just bought and will bring into their concentrated feed lot. I wonder what the general masses will think of their new corporate overlords.
(Score: 1) by mojo chan on Thursday February 20 2014, @07:23PM
I don't disagree that it is a useful app. I use QQ to chat with my GF overseas. I'm just surprised Facebook think it is worth $16bn, especially when half the user base will just move on to the next thing in six to twelve months.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:28PM
Perhaps Facebook does value it for what it is worth, and knows how much their stock is really worth too.
(Score: 1) by jcd on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:40PM
Re: PPS: I have to say I like it red. It makes me feel like I've joined the dark side and it was right all along.
"What good's an honest soldier if he can be ordered to behave like a terrorist?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @03:47AM
(Score: 1) by JeanCroix on Friday February 21 2014, @10:08AM
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:30PM
There's one thing that'll make you different from slashdot. MickLinux can't register with Create an Account. It causes a 500 Server Error one time, another time it goes to the registration page, but then entering the requested information yields an "invalid-bare" exception.
Aside from that, here's something I'd like to see: a kind of a tech startup venture method.
Here's the deal: On one branch people who have ideas for how to solve a certain tech problem post the idea. The ranking of their idea is according to their tekscore, which in turn is based on successful tech startups that have already occurred. Each individual can split his tekscore between some or all of his ideas, as he wishes.
So you have a good idea, and want to start it up, then go ahead and post your idea, and start breaking it down into subtasks, and working on everything you can, yourself... but then start helping others solve their problems. As a lead pushes towards success using your help, they credit your tekscore with a preliminary credit. When the lead succeeds, he announces that, and 1000 credits gets divided evenly according to the preliminary credits. That pushes your project up on the list, to be better noticed -- and presumably closer to fulfillment.
For this to work, the problems have to be well defined, with a clear goal.
Anyhow... just my two cents.
(Score: 2, Informative) by DECbot on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:36PM
Had a similar issue when I used an undeliverable email address during registration. I changed the address to something that I knew was working, and now I have an account.
(Score: 1) by Koen on Thursday February 20 2014, @07:42PM
"tekscore, which in turn is based on successful tech startups that have already occurred"
Are you talking about businesses? I come here to read about interesting stuff, not to read about biz fluff.
/. refugees on Usenet: comp.misc [comp.misc]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @02:29AM
(Score: 1) by MickLinux on Friday February 21 2014, @06:46AM
Yes and no (yay, I'm on!). ... but if they know how to make it and others want it, it CAN become a microbusiness, and later a business.
I'm talking about a product, not a business. People use a product
One might be a way to make mosaic tiles out of waste plastic. Another might be a better designed open-design velomobile.
One might be a design for a private network that uses relay computers just tacked to telephone poles, and lasers from optical mice.
One might be a phased network of optical telescopes that could see the asteroids as far as Saturn.
The problem of the ugly American is not so much that people dislike Yanks, as it is that they dislike jerks.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bilborg on Thursday February 20 2014, @07:08PM
I'll jump on the *get back* bandwagon. But it's less about the stories than about community, for me. /. seemed to go downhill rapidly (for my taste) when Rob Malda left the helm. Site by committee gets the PC sticker of approval, but ... boring. There's something to be said for projects and sites with benevolent dictators.
So far I like the mix of stories, many of the comments have the scent of intelligent activity behind them, and I'll be interested to see how this site grows (and grows up).
Be well.
Time enough to sleep after I'm dead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @02:32AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2014, @07:13PM
I've lurked for a while too, but I've never understood how to make a new comment thread. Help?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Qzukk on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:38PM
The top level reply button is at the very top with the rest of the controls for threading etc.
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:33PM
Agreed. What we don't want is a politics section. IMO the politics section on slashdot started its slow but inevitable downfall. Political articles regularly get 1000+ comments and clearly generate clicks and ad revenue. If I want politics, there are plenty of other popular blogs I can do that on. Slashdot or soylentnews doesn't need to try to be another one.
(Score: 1) by weilawei on Friday February 21 2014, @02:34AM
(Score: 1) by kef on Friday February 21 2014, @02:19AM
Long time lurker here as well. I absolutely agree with going back to the roots. Math, science & computer related stuff rocks my boat! Occasionally other important stuff which affect us/the world wouldn't harm me, but other people might not be so warm to those topics. No politics or wold news thank you very much...