I thought I would mention one of the key activities we have been working on in recent months is our infrastructure. For a long time now, and like many companies, we have been living on older hardware and software. After some solid work by our engineers, esp. PerlJedi we finally got our DB upgraded.

One of the nice things we have now is a set of solid state disks to speed up transaction time. Additionally we will be looking at ways to improve some of the queries and as always check for other technical improvements as we progress.

We're not done yet. There are other things we intend to change in the near future including our web app server. We are also slating a number of features in 2012 that we are very excited about.

We'd love to hear feedback from you our readers. Is the site a little more responsive? Can you feel the raw power of our new servers?

I have been reviewing (again) the responses from our last user poll about what you like/dislike about /.. In summary it looks like there is a concern about commenting and story submission. We have spent the last couple of months working on those items and I think the engineering team has done a good job of fixing some problems that have been plaguing the system for some time (new comment loading, submission form, cleanup layout, etc., see: Vroom). We are in the final stages of working out some other basic system enhancements that we believe will fix the foundation of Slashdot and bring hardware and software up to date. These should provide a faster and more reliable experience. (see: PerlJedi)

We have also had some pro/con responses to the social media interaction and continue to tweak those items to make them more usable without getting in the way of really reading /. Hopefully some of these changes are making the site easier to see/use/interact with. We have also gotten a lot of feedback about abuse on the system and continue to work on that as well as providing a more robust moderation and hand out of mod points.

I have spent some time recently looking over moderation and understanding some of the tweaks around it. Also spent a lot of time looking at comments in live stories and reading emails from site users about modding. Typically the messages range from astroturfing to people with a vendetta.
So my questions to you are:
Is /. moderation broken?
Is /. moderation out of date?
What would you use to help manage signal-to-noise?

Since I have been with the team and interact more closely with /. I have come to the conclusion that this platform is really one of the original and best sites for social interaction and media. One of the key points that I have noticed though is that we have done a poor job of making it easier for people to communicate and create interaction.
First of all the registration on /. helps to create a community and causes us to be accountable for our words and deeds. If you are gonna say it, at least stand behind what you say. Second, those that are not familiar with the concept of Friend & Foe, should look into the friend feature on the site. Registered users can click on any other registered user account and choose to mark those people as friends or foes on the site. The cool part about this is that you can then see your friend's comments on the site as well as any other potential friend relationships. My experience with this is that I get a broader view of opinions from friends and from folks who are not friends too.
What I envision is not something sappy or invasive as Facebook or the many other "social media" sites, but something that allows me to more easily see and create these relationships so I can see and participate better in conversations with my friends and their friends too.
My question to you is, Do you see social ties on /. helping you get a better world view of Nerd News?