SlashGeo vs GISdirtbag - and the gloves come off!
Wednesday, 5. July 2006, 14:50:55
Looks like things are heating up a bit online between gis blogger "GISdirtbag" and Slashgeo... not that this is totally relevant or even of interest to anyone but its a bit fun to watch it unfold! Dirtbag figures that slashgeo has no point, spams wikis, and basically has nothing original to point out. I have to tell you, much of what dirtbag brings up makes sense.. I've often wondered what the purpose is, although the site is an amazingly nice slashdot knock-off. News aggregation is providing a service to some, no doubt (although automated feed grabs are definitely the way to go - ala plantegs)... likely the people that are really benefiting from such a service though are the publishers who are craving links in to their valuable content and in return serving up banner ads. I'm not knocking slashgeo (heck... GISuser articles appear their.. albeit rarely!) but to the site's credit they do a fine job of reposting pretty much everything directionsmag publishes... value??? You be the judge I guess. Ok.. I'm going to leave this one alone.. one last question though.. who the hell is GISdirtbag?? To his/her credit, people may take this blog a bit more serious by knowing who's behind the scenes. IF this topic is of any interest to you then you might like to follow up on what James had to say about this and more! James does a great job ripping WikiPedia.. man, I swear some days I'm thinking exactly like James.. creepy man! Agreed totally... the Internet World is raving about Wikis but really.. how valuable can an open system like this really be... aren't most wiki's simply fodder for shameless self promotion where people add their own promotional blurbs, remove their competitors ads yadayada... it's pretty crazy!
WIDGETIZE
Anonymous # 6. July 2006, 12:58
Hi Glenn, you probably already have read my reaction on Spatially Adjusted, but here's some more :-) You're right, slashgeo's value should mainly come from the comments, but we haven't reached a state where we have that many comments (yet? :-). slashgeo has no ads, no revenue. I'm doing this for the community, not for personal benefit.
gisuser # 6. July 2006, 15:14
Finally.. I had to laugh when I saw you comment on spatiallyadjusted that read... "I want slashgeo.org to be an aggregator, such as slashdot.org is (and All Points Blogs to some extent)"
This is freaking hilarious! no doubt you'll ruffle Adena's feathers on this one when she reads that you imply that her "blog" is an aggregator.. too! I once offered up a comparisson in some capacity of GISuser and Directionsmag (indeed they are both leading GIS news resources) and holy crap... Joe F flew off and pretty near went postal.. "how dare I compare... yadayada...." it really was quite comical --- how dare I!!! LOL
Keep it up