Comment History

• I've picked up the domain altslash.org, and I'm looking to be a part of a join effort to create a slashdot alternative more in the style of the classic slashdot system. I picked up this domain simply because a lot of the alternatives being discussed (e.g., altslashdot.org) may end up being the target of a trademark dispute. The "trademark" for altslash.org would be altslash, with the "dot.org" being merged into .org. It reads the same way as the original "slashdot.org," but looks very clean in my opinion.

• Have you considered talking with Bruce Parens? He had a site called "technocrat.net" that some people from slashdot were quite fond of not too long ago. It seems some people on slashdot are already trying to get him to re-launch it. I don't know if the two of you would have compatible goals or not, but it might be worth sending him an email. He has a parking page up on technocrat.net right now that has his email address on it.

• I'm a professional web developer and can help. I was about to register a domain on my VPS to start something like this. If you want, I'll do what I can to help. I've built a few CMS from scratch and am downloading slashcode right now. Incidentally I'm a hybrid as I am also a digital artist (namely in UI). We need an IRC channel to talk about this I think.--Hedgie (talk) 18:34, 6 February 2014 (MST)

• I don't know about other people, but I think I would be more liable to stick with an alternative if it scraped content from original /. in addition to whatever else you do. 173.13.21.65 09:21, 6 February 2014 (MST)

• I'm against this. I don't consider it fair - they've put a lot of effort into building up their brand and community. If we are to succeed, we need to do it on our own merits."

• There are no doubt legal as well as moral objections to content scraping, but when you say "...they've put a lot of effort into building up their brand and community...", well, for over 15 years *we* have been that community and if not for us there would be some former college students who used to have a little hobby site.--unitron

• Scraping bad. Having editors dotted around the timezones that create their own better versions of the summaries, even if they contain just the same links as the /. story that inspired them, not bad. FatPhil (talk) 14:14, 6 February 2014 (MST)

• Agree with scraping bad. The general trend for the summaries has gone downhill badly over the past few years so better to have editors (re-)publish articles even if they use the same (or better) links (Qwade)

• Scraping Slashdot is pointless. It's been said many times, the discussion is the thing, not the articles. Considered purely as a news site, Slashdot is CRAP, always has been. Speaking of discussion, a Wiki is about the worst discussion medium I can imagine - is there anywhere we can move this to? - Mike Baranczak, 2014-02-07

• Maybe a wiki is the best way to do this? I see you've started with slashcode, but that might be a misstep. You have noticed by now that slashcode hasn't been updated in many years, hence it will be way behind the current slashdot.

• I think you might be better off hacking a wiki into slashdot-style functionality.

I agree, this may be a misstep (and this occurred to me independently of your note). My best guess is to attempt installing slashcode and see where that goes, and try for a new system if it's unworkable. We'll see.

• I think hacking slashcode into slashdot-style functionality would be easier and better than hammering a wiki into that round hole. Mfnickster (talk)

• [Wikinews] is Wikimedia's attempt to turn a wiki in to a news site. Not sure how easy that would be to mold in to a more Slashdotty site

• If you don't want to use the old slashcode, have you considered looking at discourse as the site server? AFAICT, it's a reasonably new project which being developed intended to address the authors' perceived flaws in the status-quo of forum software. It's written in JavaScript, but it might serve as a starting point for a new codebase, or worth a look to get some inspiration:

http://www.discourse.org/faq/

https://github.com/discourse/discourse

• Do this as a non-profit, user-run organization please. From what you write it looks like you want replace the regime, not giving the users the control over the website. Why should we trust you not to sell the website to a DICE-like company after it becomes successful? I applaud your efforts to change things, but I really believe that a Debian Project like institution that is both non-commercial and controlled/run by the community has a much higher chance of securing the goals we fight for right now in the long-term. --141.84.69.20 03:20, 6 February 2014 (MST)

• I like the comment on a Debian like project organization, also, maybe we can create a freenode IRC channel to further organize?

• In my experience, community-driven projects don't usually do well. This is not to say that no such projects succeed, but the balance of probability does not favor group management.

• There is a wide selection of projects which are successful because one person had a vision and the drive to make that vision happen - every successful business starts this way.

• I've run businesses that use a lot of volunteer help, so I've got some experience there.

• As far as selling the website, it's crossed my mind. I don't want to "sell out" and destroy the community, but it would be nice to have an "exit strategy". Commenting on Slashdot fun, but doing it as a day job will probably get tedious.

• I don't know what the answer is - it's something that we'll have to work out.