Brendan Byrd's Journal: Submitting articles on Slashdot...

It seems like that with 100's of rejections a day for articles, I can understand if I don't get any articles submitted to Slashdot. But, when I have a good article rejected (like this one), and nobody else gets it up on Slashdot, I feel like the editors just aren't doing their job.

That article was newsworthy, especially for the Slashdot crowd. It pissed me off that somebody was jailed for installing a Distributed.net client on a computer, but it also pissed me off that millions of Slashdotters won't be able to see the article because the damn editors rejected a good article.

True, I mostly submit articles from The Register, but that hasn't stopped other people from getting THEIR articles from The Register submitted. It's not that The Register is blacklisted from Slashdot, just because it's another popular tech news site. There's a lot of good tech news sites, and I usually only check Slashdot and The Register. I don't have time to check them all, just like a lot of people don't have time to check The Register.

I think there should be a way to show a canned reason for rejections. This would, at the very least, tell you what's wrong with the submission, so that you can correct your mistakes on future ones. However, I think the programmers are afraid to put such a feature in because most are rejected for no reason at all, or because a story was already submitted in the last hour.

I remember a time when Slashdot wasn't all about PDA reviews, reviews on books we don't have time to read, and other useless pieces of information. Not to say that Slashdot doesn't have a lot of good content, but it's not as much as it used to be, and the way rejections are handled is part of the reason.

Comment on this piece and/or link this entry on your sig, if you argee with me.

Wrong.

[neema]

There WAS an article on this, a bit back. The whole guy getting in trouble for the distributed.net thing.

Yeah, it was posted.

[Carlos Laviola]

Months ago. Read [slashdot.org].

Seems to me like the editors are doing their job allright.

Re:Yeah, it was posted.

[Brendan Byrd]

It seems like they can at least post an update on the situation, like Register did. Why would The Register post an article that was instated months ago, unless there was some new information?'

In any case, I still don't like the way rejections are handled. We have updates on the MS case every week, but we can't have an update on this case just because it was posted over 6 months ago?

Thats nothing

[AnalogBoy]

I, just the other day, had a fairly insightful ask slashdot, well thought out, well written, rejected before submit.pl finished reloading.

Get yet facts right

[ip4noman]

"It pissed me off that somebody was jailed for installing a Distributed.net client on a computer..."

Nowhere in the Register article does it say that the guy was ever jailed. He was threatened wilth jail... not the same thing.

A journalist is someone that consumes, then condenses/filters information. A big part of the job is getting the facts exactly correct. Perhaps this contributed to why your article was rejected.

/me has had good articles (IMHO) rejected too...