Oddest SPAM I've ever gotten (and read) - Slashdot poll

Journal SL Baur's Journal: Oddest SPAM I've ever gotten (and read) - Slashdot poll 5

Journal by SL Baur on Wednesday October 29, 2008 @04:26AM

I received the following SPAMmy email that somehow made it through all the SPAM filters between my email box and me. The questions are interesting enough so I will take the time to answer them here, but I never respond in kind to unsolicited email of this sort.

Sorry. I am never going to trust email sent from a gmail address and claiming to be originating in Hong Kong, even if it is only the next island away.

Dear SL Baur:

My name is Lily Liu. I am a PhD student carrying our a project with my supervisor Christian Wagner (iscw@cityu.edu.hk) who is a professor at City University of Hong Kong. We are trying to understand the popularity of Slashdot to its active contributor, such as you. We hope you might be able to help us in our effort by answering three questions.

Question 1:

In your opinion, what (if so) makes Slashdot special among online discussion sites? Is it the content, the group of people it draws in, the discussion engine (e.g., content rating and filters), or possibly other factors?

I find it entertaining and sometimes insightful. I have found it most useful in training my bullshit filter in order to obtain reliable information from unreliable sources.

Question 2:

Compared with other discussion sites you know or/and have used, do you consider Slashdot's technology platform to be better? In other words, does it encourage (a) more sense of community or (b) more active participation? (In answering please also feel free to mention the other discussion site or sites you might be comparing to)

There was a better sense of community in FreeRepublic.com, but only for the True Believers. As that community drifted towards neoconservatism and continued to blast the so-called "fringe" supporters such as libertarians, I drifted away from it.

Technologically speaking, the software on FreeRepublic wins hands down over the software on Slashdot.

The software driving Slashdot is irritating much of the time, but often does not get in the way of enjoying discussions. Of recent concern, it used to be easy to mostly write free text (in a message like this) with an occasional HTML tag, but they are deprecating that. It used to be easy to read article titles before clicking on an article to read, but they deprecating that as well in favor of an unreadable color scheme.

Question 3:

As a unique user in slashdot, could you please rate your own reciprocity by assessing what you get from the community compared with what you contribute to it?(you can give an answer such as: i think i get more or i contribute more,of course we would be very appreciative for your explanation of detail)

I am a "disciple" of uber cypherpunk Timothy May and believe most strongly in the principle of - if you do not like the quality of discussion, contribute higher quality discussion yourself.

Of sites worthy of spending time on, as this one (including FreeRepublic) the value of the discussion is at least 10:1 over the value of the actual articles.

I've wasted too much time editing stupid HTML tags that I would not have been forced to insert in the default editing mode. Begone!

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