Funny. Dr. Dobb's Journal has an interesting little blurb on Slashdot whereby Michael Swaine basically hails all things Matts on 2002-04-03T12:55:58
Slashdot have themselves in a tough spot. They're basically over-staffed, in my (admittedly 10,000 miles away) view.
From what I can tell, they've got 2 full time story editors. At least one fully paid writer (Katz). A managing editor. Several network admins. Sales people. Two full time developers. And possibly more.
I can't see how they can possibly generate enough revenue from ads for so many staff, and still pay for bandwidth off the top of that. Well actually we know that they're not...
Secondly, the new ads don't seem to be intrusive enough. I haven't had any trouble just scrolling past them. If they were full-page ads, with "click to get to the comments" then maybe it would be quite different.
But yeah, I agree - I mean if CmdrTaco went out looking for news, and actually posted grammatically correct and interesting stories with original content, then maybe people wouldn't feel so bad about paying for it. But as it is, I can't see people being too chuffed about having to pay for stuff they basically submitted themselves.
Re:Overpriced
gizmo_mathboy on 2002-04-03T18:23:54
What is the need for Katz? I don't think he writes all that well (especially his movie reviews). He does probably bring up a lot of page-views since a lot of folks on/. despise him, I just think they should stop paying him.
It does look like some decisions need to be made concerning staff. I would think bandwidth and sysadmins should be at the top of the list. Everything else should be looked at with a cold, hard eye towards the bottom line. But that's from a/. regular :-) Re:Overpriced
pudge on 2002-04-15T17:49:28
Hey man... say what you want, but don't say that Slashdot is overstaffed. I have a family to feed. :) Re:Overpriced
Matts on 2002-04-15T18:16:23
I happen to believe you're more important to it than Taco.Re:Overpriced
pudge on 2002-04-15T18:21:57
OUCH.
