mysticgoat's Journal: Annual journal entry

It has been 10 months since my last journal entry.

I subscribed to Slashdot today: $5 for what will be around a 3 month subscription is an inexpensive way to check out what the "plums" provide. I'm not terribly interested in the ad blocking; mostly I want to harvest some of my earlier posts for raw material for some writing. I'm also curious about whether I can spot any patterns in those old posts that were moderated up.

I haven't had mod points since June, 2003: about 30 months. It will be interesting to see if I get any now that I've subscribed. I have continued to metamod daily; I've got excellent karma. I've submitted a couple of articles that were rejected and I've got a humorous one in the "pending" category right now.

I think the slashdot demographics have stabilized. There is a large contingent of students, often with some whacked out opinions that suggest some really bizarre world views. There are a lot of posts coming from this group. There are a lot of experienced geeks who generally post less often but are more worth reading. There is an active MS astroturf contingent, and two active FOSS contingents: one of these groups is emotionally whacked out but the other offers sound experience and insight on a regular basis.

Slashdot remains a good place to get some direct information from experts in several fields, though there remains a need to filter out a lot of fools. Slashdot has become for me a good place to take the pulse of a couple of vocal no-mind groups-- MS and Linux fanboys, etc.

I've got to say that I enjoy tweaking the MS fanboys from time to time. It is fun to make them squirm by bringing up history that MS would prefer to bury.