Slashdot Bookmarks

Recently we've added a new bookmark function that logged in users can use to maintain public lists of URLs for tagging and sharing with the world. You can read the bookmark faq to answer a few specific questions, check out the global bookmark lists that can be tagged, journaled over, or submitted as stories. Read on for notes on what we're planning for this.

The idea is that URLs are bookmarked, either using the javascript bookmarklett thingee or by directly visiting the bookmarks page. But when you are DONE bookmarking and tagging your URL, you can then write a journal or story submission about them. On a related note, journals are now directly submittable to Slashdot editors as well.

We plan to add RSS exporting as well as a few other features, but mostly what we're going to try to do is figure out ways to mine bookmarks for stories. You can best help by tagging bookmarks on the global bookmarks pages. This is all very experimental, so your help is appreciated.

Now as always on Slashdot we appreciate your feedback and bug reports. You can do this the slashdot SF project page. Or even better you could visit the site and consider submitting patches. Ideas are never in short supply here- time to code them all ALWAYS is. Join the mailing list! Or just start bookmarking and tagging stuff. Lastly, thanks to Tim Vroom who put all of this together.

update to clarify a point for the readers- this system is primarily an extension of our submission bin. You are welcome to bookmark & tag for your own pleasure, but our intent is that this system eventually be used to help us find content for the mainpage. So of course the functionality has overlap with other sites. No huge shock there. But our intentions is to use user bookmarks & tags as another input channel for editors picking stories for the audience.

Blog ?

[karvind]

How is it too different from a blog thingee ?

Redundancy

[SarekOfVulcan]

Ok, and we should use this instead of del.icio.us why, exactly? Might be good to put on the FAQ list.

Re:Google Bookmarks

[generic-man]

...which is the same as Yahoo!'s My Web, which is similar to del.icio.us (since bought by Yahoo!), etc., etc.

But it has TAGS! They're like meta keywords but they're totally Web 2.0ified with scriptaculity!

Benefits

[truthsearch]

It seems the primary benefit is to help slashdot find good articles to post about. For bookmark management and sharing there are plenty of other places to go. However many here do read each others journals, so maybe this will turn more into a community of bookmarks instead of delicious' million random links. I guess I'm saying it has the potential to be a more social system since /. has such a large community.

Suggestion

[truthsearch]

Mentioning digg here isn't trolling or flamebait. But you could have provided a constructive comparison of /.'s new bookmarks to digg. Example:

* Digg links gain popularity through votes. It seems /.'s links are like del.icio.us. The more people add a link the more popular it'll be.
* Digg's whole site is based on link popularity. Slashdot has article posts still moderated by humans. The bookmarks are simply another source of information.
* Slashdot has a community of people who flag each other as friends and foes, read each others' journals, etc. Digg is full of only random meaningless comments.

Re:Great New Idea!

[MarkByers]

Exactly, all this is doing is splitting the online bookmarks sharing market into even smaller and smaller silos, subtracting value from end users.

Yes! Choice and competition are bad and evil! While we're at it, we should get rid of Firefox for splintering the web browser market.

Re:Redundancy

[hackwrench]

Well eventually every themed website of sufficient size is going to have them, so you can organize your bookmarks around those sites instead of wading through your bookmarks menu in your browser.

Re:To CmdrTaco

[RangerRick98]

The owners of a web site can ignore their users.

Not a smart idea when some of their users pay for the site.

If you don't like it, don't whine about it. Just leave.

Brilliant attitude. Then nothing is ever improved. Whining--or, more accurately, constructive criticism--leads to positive change if it's listened to.

Public vs. private bookmarking

[technopinion]

This and delicious may be great for making site suggestions to the masses (or promoting your own site), but how about when you want bookmarking to actually be useful? I've been using http://www.ifaves.com/ [ifaves.com] a lot and find it great for personal private bookmarking. Set it as my home page, auto-login, use their bookmarklet for adding new pages, and it saves me a ton of time trying to remember what sites I want to revisit, plus lets me share bookmarks with friends without having to do it up in an email.

Re:Great New Idea!

[pHatidic]

Your analogy is broken because Firefox doesn't take advantage of the network effect. The more people that use a particular online social bookmarking service, the more value there is for each user. I'm not saying there shouldn't be different approaches, but it would be nice if there was some sort of standard so that they could interoperate with each other.

Feature request

[caffeination]

How about giving us the ability to remove and/or modify in any way the tags we've already made. These aren't ephemeral comments that go away after a day or two, they're long term displays.

Give us some power over our own work please. Some of us work like Slashdot editors, with a tendency toward dupes and typos.

http:///..org

[tepples]

Slashdot's domain name is intended to represent stuttering: "http colon slash-slash-slash dot-dot org". How is this significantly less annoying than del.icio.us?

That's not the point...

[Vorondil28]

Ok, and we should use this instead of del.icio.us why, exactly? Might be good to put on the FAQ list.

You don't get it.

CmdrTaco:
But when you are DONE bookmarking and tagging your URL, you can then write a journal or story submission about them. On a related note, journals are now directly submittable to Slashdot editors as well.

The point is not to replace sites like del.icio.us, but to use a system similar to del.icio.us as an alternative way of submitting links/stories/etc to the editors for posting. If you want to use /. bookmarks insetead of del.ico.us, that's fine, but keep in mind that's not why it was designed and implemented.