Comment K38F Re: Story selection

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Why I Love Pipedot

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Story selection (Score: 3, Informative)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2015-08-28 11:55 (#JQF2)

I completely gave up and quit Slashdot, then later SoylentNews, because of poor story selection. Before giving-up on discussion sites all together, I tried Pipedot, and found higher standards. If it had gone differently, I wouldn't be here, and over the past year, Pipedot might have been very much dead.

The reasons why are many... You can mod-down users spouting trash, but not front-page stories (or their editors). It has cascading effects, as well... When a story is trash, nearly all the comments on it will be ripping it apart, while anything about the subject gets lost in the noise. And the kinds of stories a site gets greatly influences the community of readers and contributors... It was the technical focus that gave Slashdot its audience and high-quality contributors, while it was likely the politics and other trash that have driven its decline.

While the site has some good features, it's got plenty of bad ones, too. Replies are still sent as a link in a bare-bones e-mail. Some things you can do under stories you can't do under direct comment links (like moderation). There's no nice user-summary page that shows your comments, moderation, reply counts, and submissions. Instead that info is spread across multiple info pages, harder to get at and therefor less useful. Pipedot works, and quite well, mostly because it's still small. Things like the RSS Comments Feed are great, but would be nearly worthless on a bigger site.

Re: Story selection (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2015-08-29 02:12 (#JSKA)

I agree with you. From Pipedot's earliest days, I thought it was important to keep this place focused on tech, and avoid a lot of the crap that seems to be invading other sites.

You've done some awesome work here over the past year (even longer than that!) The fact that Pipedot has had such high quality subject matter is attributable largely to your hard work and perseverance. Many thanks for it. You just have to glance at the history of the pipe to see who has kept this place alive. Thanks for all the good reads.

Re: Story selection (Score: 1)

by billshooterofbul@pipedot.org on 2015-08-31 20:24 (#K0Z4)

That's a noble goal. The trick is to avoid the press release crap of non-noteworthy products like the recent apple pay hardware thing. That's putrid man, really bad.

Re: Story selection (Score: -1, Flamebait)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-09-01 13:05 (#K370)

Screw you and the boat you came on. I hate slashvertisements as much as the next riled up dice bashing anti-wtfhappened to my fav news site and ffs fix the damn mobile view antislash person but that was useful information because it may change the visa / mastercard duopoly to breaking point. OK. OK. Those righteous screwblls who tender POS CC need to be kicked off the planet. I am biased.

Re: Story selection (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-09-01 13:22 (#K38E)

Sigh. So. Yeah. A friend of mine was screwed over by the asshats who currently provide POS CC facilities. He bought out his partners in a computer shop, mostly single systems and parts sales. This was in the 90s. Business was growing. He had good credit and lots of cashflow. When the business changed hands they cut off the CC POS service citing contract termination due to ownership change. Reducing the number of owners to one person. Right. He applied for a new service. They responded by sending out a technician to retrieve the POS machine. The technician never showed. My friend applied for a new service. After weeks of being able to only accept cash or cheque they declined the request and put it on hold. He contacted other banks. No one would provide a credit card point of sale device and account while a business had an existing request pending or denied. One year later he had to close his shop. The lack of credit card facility crippled him. According to the bank, when he assumed full ownership the business ended and started again as a brand new business. A business with no history. With one owner. And, over time, a business with dwindling sales.

The option being offered by Apple is interesting news, to me. YMMV. TFA mentions an Android version soon from Google and Samsung.

Re: Story selection (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-09-01 13:26 (#K38F)

OTOH perhaps I just hate banks for their horrible terrible soul sucking demonic more terrible than a cat on catnip dropped into a cold bath in winter attitude to their customers. Read a mortgage contract and disagree if you will.

Junk Status

Marked as [Not Junk] by bryan@pipedot.org on 2016-05-06 23:24