Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Announcements

Journal tomhudson's Journal: [Contest] 50 Ways To Improve Slashdot 23

Journal by tomhudson
The title says it all. My entry:

Slashdot needs more topics - my top 12 suggestions

[X] Sex
[X] People
[X] Disasters (natural and man-made)
[X] Religion
[X] World politics
[X] Hoaxes and Scams
[X] Brazil (we really should cover the BRIC countries)
[X] Russia (in Soviet Russia jokes always on topic)
[X] India (so you can keep in touch with where your next job is going)
[X] China (so you can keep in touch with where your last job is going)
[X] U.K. (If we can have Oz and Kanuckistan, why not the Limeys)
[X] Contests (people like contests, and today there was another story under "Developers" that would have been better under "Contests")
[X] update: emoticons that are converted to real images. I know, it's a "chick thing" ... :-p

Why?

For one thing, these are topics that engender a LOT of off-topic discussion. They deserve their own topics. For another, they would widen the slashdot audience, so we get less of an echo-chamber effect. It's always good to have a different perspective on things.

Post your entries about how YOU would go about improving slashdot

As always, also feel free to throw rocks at my suggestions.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

[Contest] 50 Ways To Improve Slashdot More

[Contest] 50 Ways To Improve Slashdot

Comments Filter:

  • *Sponsored* Contests. 'nuffsaid!

  • When Blogs got big at the turn of the century, I would have "leveraged" JE space to the hilt - very little work actually needed, just some marketing.

    If I had missed that particular boat, I would have have definitively done it 5 years later, during the rise of Social Networking. A little more actual work needed this time around, but again, marketed probably, would have been great.

    But apparently user retention is low on the list of priorities around here, so we got the Great Split, and things got worse
    • They could probably do it, but they'd have to expand the topics list more than I proposed.

      Celebrity news and gossip, world records, downloads, sports, interviews, fashion, cars, travel, include embedded video in as many stories as possible, allow people to embed photos (we all know what the #1 photo would be), gimmicks like "editor for a day" (hey, it couldn't get worse some days :-), some interactive games, even more countries (germany, france, italy, spain, new zealand, etc.) and even major cities (new

      • OTOH it would become so broad that I probably wouldn't bother returning. I'm here *because* there is no gossip, no "people" category, no "cars", no "sports" and what the plebs bother wasting their time on instead of dealing with themselves and getting lives, improving their personal world and maybe even do something to restore democracy or something. Whatever they care about. But no, they care about Posh Spice's hairdo or some honchos chasing a ball. (Hint: Chasing the ball oneself is *much* more fun.)

        Now *

        • I know the feeling. The worst part is that sometimes you just don't want to get out of bed because the contrast is so - yuck!

          That's when I go walk the dogs or sit down with them and veg out, or try to think of an interesting problem that needs a solution. That last one is important - it not only gets the mental juices flowing again, but it also gives the sense of "maybe someone else will find this useful." It's always good to feel useful, and I think that is the real killer when you're looking for work -

  • they would widen the slashdot audience, so we get less of an echo-chamber effect. It's always good to have a different perspective on things.

    That's why I stopped reading slashdot. I turned my addiction towards reddit and hacker news, and realized how perverse slashdot's custom of not reading TFA is. Discussions basically go around what everyone skimmed from the summary. I'm not saying it's all bad; I've learned a lot from Slashdot but I've grown to like other websites' form of discussion.

    I still like your semi-daily journal entries :D

  • The set of topics should be derived from the set of purposes for which submissions are selected for appearance on Slashdot. At a top-most level I would break things down by Troll vs. Non-Troll delineations. For the former I'm thinking something like a hierarchy of categorizations, such as:

    • Troll Pieces
      • Software
        • Windows Bashing/Linux Worship
        • IE Bashing/FF Worship
        • Google Worship
        • Apple Worship
      • Programming
        • C Worship
        • C++ Bashing
        • JavaScript Bashing
        • Other Scripting Language Worship
      • Politics
        • Conservative Bashing/Democrat Worshi

    • Incredibly enough you missed out on bash bashing under programming. I know I'd bash bash.

    • Part of the fun of foe-baiting someone is having them waste their time and mod points on you instead of someone else. Then they get the inevitable meta-mod hits, and it's [nelson] haha [/nelson] time :-)

      The system works - I've got about 150 people who have foed me, and I've still got excellent karma (though it WAS strange to get the pink page of death for 3 days when my karma was at the cap).

      A lot of trolling (at least when I do it) is basically to wake people up to alternatives - get them p***ed off en

  • ... Slashdot needs working software.

    Right now the journal RSS feed is dead for and has been for 12+ hours

  • The user interface is too GUIed up. It needs simplification. Eliminate all the bouncy visual crap.

    Contests with decent rewards.

    Easier access to past journal entries.

    Improved search function for past journal entries

    Rate and publicize interesting journal entries.

    Bury but do not eliminate Idle

    More ask questions with people like Jimbo Wales, Stephen Fry, Fyodor, etc.

    Create user alliances, such that users can belong to certain groups.

    • Great points! Maybe somebody should point out this thread to the powers-that-be. There are some solid, recurring themes running through it. It shows that people care.

Slashdot Top Deals

You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. -- Superchicken

Close