June 12, 2004

Slashdot effect: a force for good? On November 8th, 2001, Distributed Proofreaders was slashdotted for the first time, with others over the years (third graph down). OK, so it's bad form to link to a site where they need to sign in, just so they can read a post, but really....everyone should be in distributed proofreading anyway.
  • Good idea. Could I get the rest of you monkeys to help me proofread my next TV review?
  • The slashdot effect is fine if you can afford the bandwidth, but otherwise, it's not a good thing. It would be better if slashdot mirrored the site in question (with permission) for a short time until the story fell off the front page. We don't have such a problem here with the small audience, but slashdot is basically a force for bandwidth evil.
  • Maybe the posters could warn the site admins before they put the story on slashdot. Then one could be prepared.
  • Dammit, polychrome, you guilted me into reading paragraphs like: He adored being poor. When his canvas gave out, he painted his ankles to caricature the violent creations that were the pride of Chatterton, who was a nabob. When his credit at one restaurant expired, he strode confidently up to another proprietor, and announced with the air of one bestowing a favor: "I am Rantoul, the portrait-painter. In five years my portraits will sell for five thousand francs, in ten for twenty thousand. I will eat one meal a day at your distinguished establishment, and paint your portrait to make your walls famous. At the end of the month I will immortalize your wife; on the same terms, your sister, your father, your mother, and all the little children. Besides, every Saturday night I will bring here a band of my comrades who pay in good hard silver. Remember that if you had bought a Corot for twenty francs in 1870, you could have sold it for five thousand francs in 1880, fifty thousand in 1890. Does the idea appeal to you?" I'm having a lot of fun with it, actually.