it’s unix, not eunuchs

Dell is funding one of my my favorite websites, Ars Technica, so that they can launch a new forum that will focus on the server room.  I’ve always liked Ars but they were a bit more engineering and gaming focused than I ever was.  They had a linux forum, but it was mostly guys just playing around with small boxes for projects.

Hopefully this launch will help bring more people up to speed on what many businesses in America really need, good system administration, network design, open discussion, etc.  In fact, it may be one of the initiatives that address my concerns about the future of IT in America.  I just hope that Dell doesn’t overwhelm the environment that Ars has put together.

I’ve always liked forums that award titles for participation.  Ars did this in the past but it was just based off of your number of posts.  But it did also mention how long the users had been a member of the forums.  The number of posts thing used to really upset a roommate of mine as he thought seniority or GPA or IQ or some other metric should be how everyone is measured.  But then again, he only worked for about 5 months of the year and never seemed to get along with anyone.

I tend to prefer forums more like HPs ITRC where you are awarded points by other members based on how useful your participation was.  Slashdot, perlmonks and kuro5hin have the same sort of structure.  I prefer these arrangements because they allow you to gauge how likely a person is to have the right answer to your questions.

Expert-exchange had something similar, but now they’ve taken years of good natured people exchanging information and now force people to pay in order to look through the results.  Needless to say, I’m pretty disappointed with their decision.  It’s only abated by the fact that if you click on the “cached” web page in your google results, you can still view the information.

Anyhow, hopefully Ars and Dell will have a happy engagement/marriage/partnership/whatever.