Becoming a Slash Guru: A Roadmap

The ideal place to start is to explore an existing Slash site. It will demonstrate the current possibilities, perhaps inspiring fresh ideas. There’s no shame in imitating a successful site, either. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and sincere flattery is usually good currency for the technical crowds.[4] Being a user on another site gives a unique perspective. How does the site work? Who does it attract? How has its focus changed over time? How does it handle conflict and growth? You will probably also come up with a list of things you’d handle differently. They may be philosophical, or they may be as simple as a different color scheme or as complicated as a new moderation system.

Most users don’t get to see the seamy underbelly of Slash. Site administrators spend most of their time working with a special interface. The underlying metaphor of Stories comes into play. The essential mechanisms are exposed as pulleys and trapdoors. Slash has a staggering wealth of editorial tools, but just knowing what’s available returns things to manageable levels.

With theories and introductions out of the way, it’s time to install the beast. All of this power comes at a price--someone has to understand the underlying components well enough to put them together. The Slash team has spent a tremendous amount of time smoothing things out. Gone are the days of reading Malda’s mind. With a little Unix experience, a handy installation guide, maybe some junk food to bribe your local teenaged hacker, Slash will be up and running.

Of course, the default installation produces a rather generic site, looking just like unconfigured Slashcode and behaving much like Slashdot does. Site customization will fill the days of the site administrators. The first order of business is to recruit other people to ease the administrative burden. The second is to fill in some of the blanks. Slash has dozens of configuration options, and it’s easy to control everything from presentation to algorithmic behavior.

With surprisingly little experience, administrators can quickly begin to post Stories. Slash’s most developed and polished feature gives Authors power to schedule, promote, annotate, and weed out everything from user suggestions to original content. A normal, Slashdot-like site will rely heavily on Stories. It’s what weblogs do.

Slash’s powerful user comment system is arguably its biggest draw. It has a wealth of options for viewing and posting comments. It is easily customized to user preferences. It has powerful features for filtering out unwanted content, and it has a powerful moderation system. Understanding the comment system is essential to developing a good community, and part of being a good host is guiding the conversation. The types of things discussed influence the site audience, which influences the types of things discussed. To help organize things, Slash provides two axes for Story classification. Understanding the feedback loops and exploiting the taxonomy will help you shape your site’s evolution.

To avoid devolution into messy anarchy, a site must consider its purpose. Why does it exist? A simple hobbyist site has different goals than a mainstream journalism site, but they both must address similar questions to earn the loyalty of their users. Asking these questions before trouble starts could save a lot of time and grief.

As the site grows, the details will become more important. Publishing information is one thing, doing it with style is another. Without commentary, a weblog is just a bookmark list. Without context and direction, it’s just a voice crying in the wilderness. Slash allows users many customization options, but administrators must make the raw materials available. As usual, Slash makes some common tasks easy.

A certain class of people finds the guts of a thing fascinating. Slash obliges them, with miles of dark, squalid entrails to explore. The rest of the world just needs to know how it works. A little preventative maintenance keeps a site running smoothly, and learning the basics of Slash anatomy makes this possible. It also lays the groundwork for advanced surgery, like grafting on an extra arm.

Sites evolve, and many move into new ecological niches. Others run up against artificial boundaries. As free software, Slash can be modified to change with the site. The task may seem imposing, but a moderate Perl programmer armed with a good idea and a map can drastically change the look and feel of the site, add new behavior, or even modify the underlying code directly. It’s not only possible, it’s recommended and encouraged. If you’re not the person to do this, several others are capable and willing to do it for you. The price may even be right.



[4] (Root) Beer and pizza also work.

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