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The Media Slashdot.org

Rob CmdrTaco Malda AMA On Reddit 101

TheNextCorner writes with news on where CmdrTaco has been hiding. Quoting Malda's IamA blurb over at that Reddit thing: "In 1997 I started Slashdot.org. For several years, we pioneered news aggregation and on-line communities while exploring our niche of the 'net under the slogan, 'News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters.' Our work was later expanded upon at countless other more successful sites including Reddit and the Huffington Post. I left Slashdot last year, took a long time off, and then started work at the Washington Post Co's WaPo Labs their digital media R&D skunkworks group. I work as their Chief Strategist and Editor-at-Large, contributing what I can to a variety of projects ranging from their Social Reader, to some projects under development. From here I am able to continue to explore my interests in news, journalism, technology, and communities. ... I'll hopefully be answering from 2pm-5pm ET"
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Rob CmdrTaco Malda AMA On Reddit

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  • /r/gnaa traffic melted the line
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @03:48PM (#40677495)

    Outside of the fluke that is slashdot, what else has he done. And who really cares (besides his mom)?

    • by i kan reed ( 749298 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @03:50PM (#40677511) Homepage Journal

      I heard he posted on reddit this one time. That, like everything else, is a step up from being a slashdot editor.

    • Re:Who really cares? (Score:5, Informative)

      by SJHillman ( 1966756 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @03:53PM (#40677547)

      I think I know where he went wrong. Although he created Slashdot in college, he still went on to graduate. If only he had dropped out then Slashdot would be an Internet sensation and 28 billion people would have accounts. Taco would also be worth eighty trazillion dollars.

    • by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @04:51PM (#40678315) Journal

      Outside of the fluke that is slashdot, what else has he done.

      Slashdot is enough. What have you done?

      He should be proud of creating this lasting community. It's a worthwhile destination on the Web in my opinion (and yours, since you are here).

      How many online sites have made a big splash and then disappeared into the dustbin of history? Like MySpace and others. Slashdot goes on and there are people here whose opinions mean something to me. That's an accomplishment.

      • How many online sites have made a big splash and then disappeared into the dustbin of history?

        When Slashdot makes a big splash, that would be a valid question. Slashdot is, and always has been, a niche site that many people have never even heard of.

        • by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @10:12PM (#40681067) Journal

          When Slashdot makes a big splash, that would be a valid question. Slashdot is, and always has been, a niche site that many people have never even heard of.

          What's wrong with "niche"? Do you need the validation of mass popularity to find value in things? Do you only enjoy music that reaches the top of the Billboard charts? Do you only enjoy movies that make $50 million or more in the first weekend?

          The things of value, that last, are only occasionally the things with greatest mass appeal. And those occasions should always viewed with care, if not suspicion.

          When Slashdot makes a big splash, that would be a valid question.

          That's my point. In the swimming pool of culture, it's the big fatsos that make the biggest splash, and they often expire young.

          I've read obituaries for slashdot since I first started lurking here more than a decade ago. They are usually earnest, and often entertaining, and always wrong.

          • The biggest splash in the swimming pool of culture is usually somebody peeing in it. And what is being cultured is definitely a pathogen.
        • I use it as a metric to determine if someone is REALLY a geek. If they know /. it means they also work on tech at home as well. Usually. If they are not a part of /. they lose my respect as a geek in general.

          • If they know /. it means they also work on tech at home as well.

            I don't. So your 'metric' is useless.
             

            Usually. If they are not a part of /. they lose my respect as a geek in general.

            ROTFLMAO.

  • Why the hell does the summary include a link to Slashdot (wtf?), but not to the actual Reddit post the summary is referring to?

    • Try clicking BOTH links to see where they go. HINT: Slashdot is only half of them.

      • by hawguy ( 1600213 )

        Try clicking BOTH links to see where they go. HINT: Slashdot is only half of them.

        Still a valid question about why a summary posted to Slashdot links to Slashdot. I think most people that are reading Slashdot already know the URL.

        But my bigger pet peeve is when a summary contains five [five-berkeley.com] different [reference.com] links [webopedia.com] and you have to play "link roulette" to try to guess the one that takes you to the relevant article - hovering over them to look at the URL's doesn't always tell you which is the relevant one.

        • I think most people that are reading Slashdot already know the URL.

          Sure, it's http://www.google.com/search?q=slashdot [google.com]

          But my bigger pet peeve is when a summary contains five different links and you have to play "link roulette" to try to guess the one that takes you to the relevant article

          Admit it, you're lucky one of those links wasn't a 15-redirect goatse or a rickroll.

          This is slashdot. Slashdot editing is slashdot editing, even if TFA is about slashdot.

        • Yo dawg I heard you liked slashdot so I ...

        • by isorox ( 205688 )

          Still a valid question about why a summary posted to Slashdot links to Slashdot.

          Someone wanted to slashdot slashdot?

  • Nifty (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RyoShin ( 610051 ) <tukaro@nOSpaM.gmail.com> on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @03:51PM (#40677521) Homepage Journal

    That sounds pretty nifty, and I wish the best of luck to him, but Slashdot seems to have really lost its way without a Taco to command it.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      people have been bitching about slashdot posts for YEARS. Nothing makes this year without CmdrTaco any different, really.

      • Bullshit...I've seen plenty of bitching in the past and I didn't know what people were complaining about really. These days? I see what the bitch is about. In the past when people bitched it was not reflected in the activity. Now, activity is much lower than usual.

    • Huh? It seems pretty much the same as it always was. Except the Natalie Portman trolls moved on to other subjects more their own age.

    • by 1u3hr ( 530656 )
      Slashdot lost its way while Malda was leading it. Long before he left, Slashdot had given up fact checking, spellchecking, dupe checking. The only thing they cared about then, as now, was a headline that drew attention. Didn't matter if the story was true, or had already been posted twice in the previous 24 hours, or was a copy of a press release pasted into a SEO optimised blog. They still look out for any opportunity to bait Creationists and gun nuts into 600 post flame wars though.
    • Lost Luster (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DaKong ( 150846 )

      I have been an ardent /. fan since early days. When CmdrTaco left I was emotionally affected, as if my brother was moving to the Moon and I'd never see him again. And all these years the naysayers and haters have railed against Jon Katz and goatse and dupes and spelling errors and such when I've considered them idiosyncracies that make the place more genuine than your typical corporate clone news site (tm).

      I still read Slashdot for the comments, same as always, because I still learn about areas I don't kn

    • by Werni ( 748659 )
      yes, a shame that he left.
  • AMA? (Score:5, Funny)

    by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @04:00PM (#40677627) Homepage
    I'll probably get howled out because I shouldn't be allowed on Slashdot if I don't know, but what does AMA stand for here? Against medical advice?
  • by hessian ( 467078 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @04:05PM (#40677697) Homepage Journal

    Reddit, Digg, YouTube, and FaceBook have a standard of comments so low that Slashdot looks like the Encyclopedia Brittanica in contrast.

    Perhaps we can get CmdrTaco into a forum with more standards, or just do the chat in cryptocat and post the result here.

    • My feelings exactly. If I had mod points I'd give them instead of commenting.

    • by blind biker ( 1066130 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @04:24PM (#40677945) Journal

      Reddit, Digg, YouTube, and FaceBook have a standard of comments so low that Slashdot looks like the Encyclopedia Brittanica in contrast.

      Reddit is huge, and at least the sections I frequent, have very high standards in posts and replies. I mostly frequent /r/askscience/ and /r/science/
      My experience is phenomenal, especially after being "trained" by the awful Slashdot editors. The replies on Slashdot are, of course, great and the only good thing about the site, but the reddit sections I most follow have a higher average quality.

      • by bitt3n ( 941736 )
        quite true. with the exception of r/spacedicks that place is a cesspool
      • by Anonymous Coward
        You have to log in to remove some of the default groups that seem to bring Reddit's quality down, such as the insufferable /atheism or other trendy ones. If you can setup your filters correctly it's not a bad site.
      • by Anonymous Coward

        So OP statement stand true. Majority of reddit and especially ask/ama are below average quality.

    • by FatLittleMonkey ( 1341387 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @04:27PM (#40677975)

      You're assuming he left on good terms....

    • Yet when I same the same thing "Reddit is the Digg of /." I get down-modded... :-/

      The funny thing, the sub-reddits are actuallly great -- good S/N, almost non-existing spam/trolling.

      Its just the main page is a constant circle-jerk.

      • Actually in my experience the sub-reddits aren't that great. It's the sub-sub-reddits that are good. Eventually no one will be able to find anything because it is buried deep in the hierarchy.
    • by teadrop ( 1151099 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @05:52PM (#40678989)
      I spent a greater part of my life reading Internet comments, here's what I found...
      Hopelessly dumb:
      Yahoo News, Newswine, Foxnews, CNN, MSNBC (pretty much any news site), Youtube (depends)
      - By reading comments from these sites, you will lose all hope for mankind

      Dumb but not hopeless:
      Cnet, Endgadget, Verge, Facebook...
      - It does not speak well for mankind but we still have hope...

      OK:
      Wired, Washington Post, Huffington Post

      Best quality comments:
      Slashdot, New York Time
      - There is intelligent human out there!
    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      increasingly i find reddit to have a much higher standard of comments on it than slashdot. on slashdot there's a real theme of "everything sucks, especially if it's new or been posted about more than twice in the last month" on reddit there's almost no hate and depending on which sub-reddits (especially askscience) you are in you can find some really interesting stuff posted.

      digg is pretty much dead, youtube isn't even really a comment system, you might as well turn those off and facebook depends entir
    • by FrangoAssado ( 561740 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @07:44PM (#40680107)

      If you only see the posts on Reddit's front page, you might get the impression that Reddit is really dumb. You'll also be missing a lot of good stuff.

      I'll give an example: there was a story a while ago saying that a kid in Germany found an equation to solve a (pretty basic) open problem in classical mechanics. The discussion on slashdot [slashdot.org] had some good comments, a lot bickering about unrelated math stuff and the obligatory comments denouncing the American educational system (moderated +5 insightful, naturally).

      On Reddit, this post on the "Math" sub-reddit [reddit.com] (which sadly got nowhere near the front page) also generated a lot of inane comments, but also some really good stuff:

    • Reddit, Digg, YouTube, and FaceBook have a standard of comments so low that Slashdot looks like the Encyclopedia Brittanica in contrast.

      I disagree at least WRT reddit. Reddit has none of the first post and GNAA trolling. The moderation system works to fast to give it any voice. The article yesterday about the guy who got bashed in McDonalds had racist statements all through the slashdot thread, and little like that in the reddit version.

  • How time have changed. Entropy is real, you have gone from /. To WaPo and reddit. What's next? Digg? Myspace? 4chan?
  • Is it like Digg? :-)

  • Cmdr Taco.

    No new ideas. Less editorial ability than Ben Bradlee. Lame.

  • Gosh, this is my first post since 2008. I can't believe how time flies. Sometimes I think about Slashdot. Most of the time I don't though. ...but it was my go to site for many years when I was boredd.

    Nowadays I hit Reddit when I am bored.

    Wow! When did user ids get longer than 6 digits? That's craaaazzzzy!

    • I see reddit mentioned often on slashdot. Everytime I'm like "Since slashdotters mention it, it must be a very good tech site". And everytime I look, I'm immediately appaled, thinking I'm looking at 4chan. Here's what I currently saw at the frontpage of reddit:

      Well shit... (i.imgur.com)
      That's correctRehosted webcomic -removed (i.imgur.com)
      Dead mayflies at a gas station in Minnesota. I think I'll pass. (i.imgur.com)
      A NYC man is suing to protect his First Amendment right to flip cops the bird. He had raised h

      • Reddit's default homepage is horrible, I'm not going to beat around the bush about that... But when you sign up, and find subreddits you like, you can add them to /your/ frontpage, and usually, the most upvoted content (The stuff people like) from each of those subreddits gets aggregated onto your front page, meaning if you have made subscriptions according to your interests, it's /far/ more interesting than most sites.

        The default subreddits are often there because of people that just want to quickly browse
      • by Roujo ( 2577771 )

        reddit is really a collection of sections pertaining to different subjects, called subreddits. As such, your experience on reddit will vary wildly depending on which subreddits you subscribe to, as they each have difference themes, rules and degrees of moderation. For example, /r/pics is pretty much a catch-all place for any midly interesting picture, and as such posts there probably won't lead to deep, insightful discussion in the comment section. However, if you swing by /r/askscience, you'll get a whole

      • The Reddit front page is hopeless. It's like the Firehose on this site. The Subreddits are where the action is really at, and most seem to have enough moderators who are interested in the specific subject matter to handle the large number of dupes, bin spam, etc. that get posted. Here are some examples of great parts of Reddit:

        http://www.reddit.com/r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu/ [reddit.com] popularized Rage Comics. Anyone can make a comic and the moderation system works pretty well for those.

        http://www.reddit.com/r/todayil [reddit.com]

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