Journal JWSmythe's Journal: Slashdot comment thread life expectancy 15
I've noticed a trend lately (like in the last couple years). Comment thread lifespans are becoming shorter and shorter. I'm usually good about going back to my messages, and keeping up conversations in the thread. It seems not everyone else is.
If anyone who programs here reads this, do your own research against the database, and see what mean life expectancy of comment threads is. I almost guarantee if you run it against all stories from the beginning, you'll see it's tapering off.
What I have observed with my comments, even the occasional first post, is that the thread will die off at about 2 to 3 days, regardless of how interesting the conversation is getting. It seems people just aren't interested in going to older stories, which isn't surprising since it's a pain to get to older stories. Look for a story from two weeks ago. Type in some keywords in the search? No way.. Pointy-clicky through the More buttons, good luck there.
Still, it's easy enough for people to keep up with running conversations. Well, I assume so. When we were forced into the new theme, I had to be sure my messages box was at the top left. Maybe I'm one of the few who actually set up for that, or most people are set for no notifications. Either way, it's becoming disappointing where conversations don't run their course. I don't think it's me... I have week and month long conversation threads going with friends and colleagues, even if every 3rd message (for colleagues at least) is "you are dumb, now send what we asked for".
So back to the topic... I wish more of you would keep up your ends of the conversation. It's hard talking about interesting subjects, and when I've written a well thought out reply, it's just exceeded the MTTL (mean time to live) for a thread, and it's abandon. Well, except for the random troll who goes back through old threads and writes TL;DR, but he barely counts as anything.
Maybe Slashdot can gear up something more conducive to actual conversations, rather than a few hundred drive-by comments that are dead end conversations. I really miss the intellectual (or quasi-intellectual, sometimes) conversations, now replaced by a short thread lifespan and high churn of stories.
Navigation issue (Score:2)
I've ended up with a text file of links to interesting conversations that I'm participating in, along with their general topic so I can tell them apart.
The ~user page is full of useless crap and my comments there don't show the number of replies to my comments. The ~user/comments page is better but still suffers from the "a complete list of comments is a perk of subscribing" only I'm not too sure that subscribers can see the full history either in the new design.
Notifications are off by default, how many p
The big reason for this (Score:1)
Ever since Slashdot was 'bought out' it has been moving away from 'nerd news' or even a 'trade rag' of sorts and towards a advertising model of articles to pick up a wider audience. It abandoned, to an extent, its technological audience for anyone who could change a lightbulb without falling off the ladder, sort of like when the Catholic Church moved away from Latin to the local language in the Mass to increase membership. They needed the money.
And the 'plastic surgery' the look is going through at random
Dammit! I screwed up a link! (Score:1)
This time with feeling:
journal, story, comment search [slashdot.org]
Sorry 'bout that
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You are spot on. I love Slashdot but it is definitely slowing down. I think I'll try keep conversations going more.
I've been going on Reddit sometimes but it does not have the same depth as Slashdot. It's like halway between Digg and Slashdot.
Flyby culture (Score:2)
I think internet culture has changed in the sense that it's not about long conversations where you manually go back and check and have a long drawn out discussion about things like on Usenet. Nowadays it is constantly moving that you read, consume, comment and move on. It's our Facebook culture. It's definitely hard to get back to conversations (besides links in your email) that you've been having with other people.
I don't like it either, it's up to us to keep things going. I like getting journal updates fr
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Thank you. :)
Unfortunat
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I like to mention the movie "idiocracy", which unfortunately seems to be the way people are headed. They can't type a paragraph, or even formulate well constructed criticism.
That's a coincidence, I saw that film yesterday out of nostalgia! I think it's a comedy that's steeped up in a very genuine point: the general public has been gradually given up thinking about subjects bit-by-bit to large corporations.
That woman sounds genuinely ignorant and her ignorance makes it impossible for her to understand what is being said because it goes against what she has been conditioned to believe by the mainstream media and her peers. Self reinforcement. I guess if you're ignorant about some
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My girlfriend has been on a kick where she's watching people's videos about atheism. There are some very intelligent, scientific people who have very good arguments for the lack of a deity. It comes down to the scientific method. If you propose that such a cr
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I had followed that link from your website to your news website and my original assumption was that it was genuine. I read an article and just assumed it was another news website with an focus on accuracy and independency. This demonstrates not only my stupidity but that people really do believe what they read. The phrase 'free internet press' mars well with my conception of what news should be - the word 'free' and 'news' appeal to my prejudices of what those words should mean. (News that is unbiased, unr
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Sorry about the quoting in the last post. Guess I should preview once in a while. :)
In an ideal world, you would never have to question what's presented. We do our best to run the u
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I am glad someone else on Earth has such a fascination and loive of with space. It proves that our education and employment system has not erased the last scraps of human curiousity left in our genepool! When it comes to space, the big interests of our society have a vested interest to block space for as long as possible. Technology companies, oil companies, automobile, arms companies and so on... Right now the 'internet' is the greatest technology in the world that the msasses enjoys. If space technology b
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There's a really good author Noam Chomsky for this sort of thing. He goes into how the meedeya manages to control the opinions of laypeople. You can get anybody to agree to anything if you withhold certain facts and spam the news with false leeds. I think the intelligence is being whittled away by encouraging a "consumption" culture - if you're not consuming, you're behind.
The big interests are also eroding the willingness to self organize. First you attack family values, make people more independent so the
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"Flyby culture (Score:1)
by improfane (855034) * Alter Relationship on 02:50 PM May 18th, 2011 (#36169308)
I think internet culture has changed in the sense that it's not about long conversations where you manually go back and check and have a long drawn out discussion about things like on Usenet. Nowadays it is constantly moving that you read, consume, comment and move on. It's our Facebook culture. It's definitely hard to get back to conversations (besides links in your email) that you've been having with