You know what website I really hate? Slashdot.
As you may be aware, we launched the ICFP contest on Friday morning. Before we did, we submitted a story to Slashdot announcing that we'd done so. Very relevant to Slashdot, right? I mean, they've run a story about the contest every year for the past three or four years at least, and for last year's they actually ran three stories (maybe more). So we figured, people will be expecting to hear about it from Slashdot, we'll submit a story about it. We even gave away the contest overview a little bit early to them so that even if it took a while to get posted the information would still be relevant when it was.
Then we waited. 9:00 AM rolled around, and no slashdot. No worries, they're pretty slow with every story anyway, though it sure would've been good to get it on that page Friday morning so all the start-the-workday-with-Slashdot folks would see it (and maybe participate). But whatever, we figured, it'll get posted soon enough.
And we waited some more. We went to lunch. We came back. But every time we checked, the story was still 'pending'. At around 3:00PM or so, right as the workday window was closing, we decided to we should submit something else, shorter and punchier maybe. So we submit another story that points people to the contest, this one carefully edited to fit on the slashdot frontpage, no problem. And we waited some more. Nothing.
Saturday morning, both of us who had submitted stories checked, and both had been rejected during the night. Oh well, we decide, Slashdot must just not be interested in the ICFP contest this year. Its their website, they make the rules.
So now, today, halfway through the contest, they run some random guy's link to the contest web page that's basically the same thing we submitted. Thanks a whole friggin' lot, Slashdot. I guess you do want to run stories about the contest after all, but only after enough time has passed that there's no way anyone reading the article could actually participate in it if they wanted to. You guys are awesome.
Yes I'm grumpy about it.
As you may be aware, we launched the ICFP contest on Friday morning. Before we did, we submitted a story to Slashdot announcing that we'd done so. Very relevant to Slashdot, right? I mean, they've run a story about the contest every year for the past three or four years at least, and for last year's they actually ran three stories (maybe more). So we figured, people will be expecting to hear about it from Slashdot, we'll submit a story about it. We even gave away the contest overview a little bit early to them so that even if it took a while to get posted the information would still be relevant when it was.
Then we waited. 9:00 AM rolled around, and no slashdot. No worries, they're pretty slow with every story anyway, though it sure would've been good to get it on that page Friday morning so all the start-the-workday-with-Slashdot folks would see it (and maybe participate). But whatever, we figured, it'll get posted soon enough.
And we waited some more. We went to lunch. We came back. But every time we checked, the story was still 'pending'. At around 3:00PM or so, right as the workday window was closing, we decided to we should submit something else, shorter and punchier maybe. So we submit another story that points people to the contest, this one carefully edited to fit on the slashdot frontpage, no problem. And we waited some more. Nothing.
Saturday morning, both of us who had submitted stories checked, and both had been rejected during the night. Oh well, we decide, Slashdot must just not be interested in the ICFP contest this year. Its their website, they make the rules.
So now, today, halfway through the contest, they run some random guy's link to the contest web page that's basically the same thing we submitted. Thanks a whole friggin' lot, Slashdot. I guess you do want to run stories about the contest after all, but only after enough time has passed that there's no way anyone reading the article could actually participate in it if they wanted to. You guys are awesome.
Yes I'm grumpy about it.
posted by Jacob Matthews at
20:40
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