The Standards Wars and the Sausage Factory 234
Esther Schindler writes "We all know how important tech standards are. But the making of them is sometimes a particularly ugly process. Years, millions of dollars, and endless arguments are spent arguing about standards. The reason for our fights aren't any different from those that drove Edison and Westinghouse: It's all about who benefits – and profits – from a standard. As just one example, Steven Vaughan-Nichols details the steps it took to approve a networking standard that everyone, everyone knew was needed: 'Take, for example, the long hard road for the now-universal IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi standard. There was nothing new about the multiple-in, multiple-out (MIMO) and channel-bonding techniques when companies start moving from 802.11g to 802.11n in 2003. Yet it wasn't until 2009 that the standard became official.'"
Re:Begun they have... (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent up please!
Re:I am Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
We are the product, jumping from the shelves. What's the name of the store across the street?
Re:Begun they have... (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's be clear who the combatants are: Dice vs. Slashdot users.
I have yet to hear anyone defend Beta. (If you do, you might want to post AC to preserve your karma. I doubt the moderators will be kind to someone who is so wrong.)
Re:Tech Standards Evolve (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh sweet sweet Karma. Farewell. We had a good run of it, didn't we?
Re:Begun they have... (Score:4, Insightful)
The only winning move is not to play.
Re:Begun they have... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, the users with mod points might not be kind. But there seems to be an unlimited supply of OT mods going about that are being applied to anti-beta posts. I'm sure the individual(s) doing this would be happy to supply some good karma to the turncloak.
Re:Begun they have... (Score:5, Insightful)
..the Beta wars.
I initially found the protest against annoying and juvenile, but I'm changing my mind. Slashdot is its contributors. Look what happens when they cease to contribute.
Power to the people, motherfuckers!
Re:Begun they have... (Score:5, Insightful)
And Dice is interested in exactly one thing: their revenue stream.
So, if someone with a corner office has decided this will grow revenues ... then I assume they don't give a fuck about what we want.
If that means they lose the core audience of Slashdot and turn it into the next Women's World Weekly, that's what they'll do.
Beta does look like ass -- but corporations chasing profits only care about the profits. Thee and me, well, we're just the under-performing product which isn't generating enough ad revenue.
Which was more or less a predictable outcome the moment it got sold to Dice in the first place.
I'm not Slashdot.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't feel discouraged, and don't think that this current Slashdot is the only option. New Slashdots can replace it because the website code ("Slash") is open-source. AltSlashdot is looking at getting this code up and running. Maybe there will be a variety of Slashdots in the future, who knows? In any case, we know that we don't need Dice, and we don't necessarily need the past history of Slashdot. New frameworks can be set up, people can go to a new site, and the electrons will flow elsewhere. In open-source terminology, we can fork Slashdot at anytime, and since Cowboyneal isn't an editor anymore here, I won't feel bad about leaving him behind.
DICE SUCKS. BETA SUCKS. FUCK BETA.
Re:Beta sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
What a coincidence, Dice thinks of Slashdot as another sausage coming from their factory, that needs to be standardized.
Yes, and in that briefest of moments, they epitomized everything wrong with society today. While we all talk about individuality and uniqueness, our economy is built on one-size-fits-all and making carbon copies of everything. Our houses, furniture, cars... pretty much everything we own comes off an assembly line. And the kicker? It's still more diversity than we're seeing on newly launched websites. Invariably, it's pastels, square blocks, and while it's pretty to look at, it's functionally about as useful as a flat tire on the interstate. Which is to say, you can move the car.. but you're not going to enjoy it.
The internet's standards and protocols were built to allow for a nearly limitless selection of design, every kind of spoken and written language, multimedia... it's all there. So why then, do the couple hundred people that hold all the money in the world seem to have homogenized into a single herd... charging like lemmings over cliffs while screaming "You're gonna follow us or else!?" Is it some kind of power trip? Some kind of collective psychosis?
I mean, how loudly do we have to say it before they get the message? Do we have to literally burn down their offices around them before they can see the people outside holding the signs that say "You had a good thing going. Then you fucked it up so bad nobody wants it anymore. TAKE THE HINT." ?! I am geniunely curious as to how this kind of disconnect becomes so severe without any warning indicators appearing. It's not like we haven't been telling them it sucks from day one. Do they not have focus groups? Did they not check their e-mail for the past, uhh... six months? Or is this an institutionalized case of confirmation bias and arrogance taken to a level in excess of that even seen in government?
I really do want to know how a load of fail this big happens. It's an excellent marketing study on how not to do it. We should teach this shit in classrooms.
Re:Fuck beta (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, we've all seen our share of "___ is killing slashdot, so I'm leaving" comments over the years. Video slashvertisements, other "sponsored content". However, I've never seen quite this level of outrage before.
I don't think slashdot's ever seen this level of outrage. Sure all change is met with some resistance, but this flies in the face of everything most important about the site. Moreover, it has managed to do something I've only ever seen once before [slashdot.org] - seemingly unite the whole population of slashdot users in a common purpose.
What's astonishing to me is the total lack of response. That the head editor (is that timothy now?) is silently downmodding relevant discussion about the survival of the site, without himself posting anything speaks volumes to me about how the management of slashdot has changed.
Taco, wherever you are, you are missed.
Re:Post in every story (Score:4, Insightful)
Can we please spam the firehose with articles on this? Perhaps if we can get it repeatedly on the front page itself? Just post it and get people to upvote the story on the beta, rather than just on the comments.
The beta is bad at showing comments, so maybe if the headlines are "Slashdot Beta Sucks" ..
Re:Begun they have... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's be clear who the combatants are: Dice vs. Slashdot users.
I have yet to hear anyone defend Beta. (If you do, you might want to post AC to preserve your karma. I doubt the moderators will be kind to someone who is so wrong.)
Personally, I don't have a beef with Dice. Now all of the flaming "Fuck the Beta" posts, that's a different story. The beta is far more useable than classic mode is with all of these posts, so personally, if I'm going to go to war over slashdot it will be with the people messing it up -- and that isn't Dice.
A sad day (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure how long I've been on Slashdot... at least 10 or 11 years, I guess. It's been a continuous source of enjoyment for me, even though I've never been a particularly active user. Oh, I comment every now and then, I moderate and meta-moderate occasionally, and I may have even tried submitting a story or two at some point (I honestly don't remember). There have been periods when I left Slashdot for some time, when something else really caught my interest and monopolized my attention, but I always came back. I felt like I was part of a persistent community that would last.
Now, the previously unthinkable may happen... I may leave and never come back. Beta is that bad. I hate the way it looks, the way it works, and how it will affect all the things I love about Slashdot.
This is really sad. I never thought I would feel this way about a website. I used to enjoy segfault back in the day, and I remember feeling that loss pretty keenly. The loss of slashdot will be infinitely worse. I hope it won't happen, but I fear that it will.
Please, please, please... if anyone at Dice is listening... don't kill my Slashdot.
Re: What's so bad is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Begun they have... (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, however, I believe their strategy is not a good one. If you alienate the commenters, then they will leave, and all that will be left is a stream of story digests with links to other sites. The bulk of their readership (all those people who come to Slashdot but don't comment on stories) will go to other sites (there are plenty that do a better job of finding and organizing links to interesting stories). The only differentiator that Slashdot has is its vibrant and intellectual community, which leads to interesting discussions, which in turn justifies actually visiting the site. Once the commenters leave, your revenue stream (ad impressions) will go away.
There is some truth to this. Slashdot users are probably less likely to click on ads than the average person. We are probably more aware of advertising tactics, and may thus avoid being influenced (to the extent one can). Slashdot users are probably more likely than most people to use ad-blockers. On the other hand, Slashdot users occupy a huge number of key decision-making posts in all the major tech companies. Even 'lowly' employees can have a huge impact on what their employer spends money on. I would also note that an ad is not necessarily a failure if no one clicks on it. One of the main purposes of advertising is awareness and branding. If you see ads for a given company on Slashdot, you will subconsciously become aware of them, making it more likely that you will consider them when making your next purchase. No clicking required.
I fully admit that it is difficult to quantify the 'value added' of advertising to the unique Slashdot community. I would hope that Dice has made this case to their ad partners; I guess it wasn't enough?
Actually it's not clear to me that's the case. The things I've read [prnewswire.com] indicate that revenue coming from Slashdot is decreasing with time. But this isn't the same thing as saying that Slashdot doesn't generate enough revenue to pay for operating Slashdot. From what I can gather, Slashdot is a net money-maker... it's just not making enough money, and the owners want to make more. (If someone has better info, please share!)
Re:Begun they have... (Score:5, Insightful)
The beta is far more useable than classic mode is with all of these posts,
And with no beta, these posts go away, and classic is more useful again.
f I'm going to go to war over slashdot it will be with the people messing it up -- and that isn't Dice.
The /. community didn't stir up this hornets nest. Dice did.
Their stubborn silence with respect to addressing the communities perceived shortcomings with the new site is what escalated this to where it is now.
In the end Dice can do what they want with the site. Whether it has any value to anyone once they've finished remains an open question.
Managing a community is hard. If this was anywhere but /. the insightful comments here watching the "other" site implode would put the blame squarely on the sites management for failing utterly to meet the needs of the community and audience; failing to maintain communicatation about what the community wants and needs.. And then maintaining stoic silence and apparent determination to just keep on doing what they are doing in the face of rising outrage just stems to further fuel that outrage.
You just don't get this level of outrage from the people who use a site unless you REALLY botch it good.
This event will be a great case study in managing (or failing to manage) an online community one day.
Re:I don't think Dice realizes (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, thanks for replying. It's nice to know that someone in the /. hierarchy is paying attention ...
We've implemented a number of changes since the first October rollout in response to feedback. We'll be implementing more in response to today's feedback. I'm sorry we can't make all those changes instantaneously; our engineering team is small and flooded with work. But that's why the classic site is still available.
... or are you? Because seriously, I think it's pretty obvious from the feedback that the best thing to do would be to give the overworked engineering team some time off. As in, stop having them work on the beta. Because there is no way to fix the beta. The only change we want to see is the beta deleted forever.
I can't promise that the end result will be to your exact preference; a hundred different people will have a hundred different opinions on how the site should look.
Several thousand people--which is probably just about Slashdot's entire active user base at this point--have made their single opinion quite clear. Please stop pretending there's a debate about this.
But I can promise that we'll take all the feedback to heart.
Uh-huh.
Re:Begun they have... (Score:4, Insightful)
The main thing we want is a site that doesn't look old and stale, because that will slowly drive readers and contributors away.
Driving readers and contributors away quickly is a much better strategy, huh?