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By Brian Proffitt
Managing Editor

About every two years or so, Linux Today passes a significant milestone: another hundred thousand posted talkbacks for the site. This time, it's 300,000. Needless to say, I am not a little amazed.

While Linux Today is primarily a news and news digest site, the talkbacks have always been a unique aspect of managing this site. With the exception of dedicated forum sites, Linux Today is the only Jupitermedia news site that continues to have a reader discussion area. It is unique in this company and there have been many occasions to make my colleagues stop and examine Linux Today.

Moderating talkbacks is almost the most time consuming part of my job (locating stories is still number 1), and the fact that I have personally read and posted over 100,000 talkbacks is staggering to me. Sometimes a post is frustrating, others downright insulting. Most of the time, however, the talkbacks are enlightening. Right or wrong, inspired or not, talkbacks, like the stories posted on LT, show the overall tone of the Linux community.

I am often asked what criteria I use to select stories to run on Linux Today. It's a hodge-podge of choices, but I can tell you this: talkbacks are a significant part of what helps me select one story's topic over another. For instance, initially I was not convinced that all the European patent hubbub was worth a lot of coverage on Linux Today. Sure, it was on-topic, but it was very broad and not terribly Linux-specific.

But when the few patent stories I did decide to post were run, the level of talkback participation in those articles soon convinced me that there was something to it. I did some more research and discovered that this indeed was something of high import to open source.

Talkbacks are not just a way to blow off some steam (though they serve that purpose as well). They help guide the editorial decisions of Linux Today just as much as the directly contributed stories.

They are your voice, the voice of the reader. Sometimes triumphant, sometimes angry.

Rest assured, this voice is always heard and always listened to.

So who posted the 300,000th talkback? Philip Stephens, in his comment on last night's article "Galatea: The Open Source Monopoly." Thanks to Philip and all the tens of thousands of other readers who have contributed their voice.

Other stats:

• 1st talkback, submitted by Xeno Campanoli on September 30, 1998 in "Intel Invests in Red Hat--Is It a Good Thing?."
• 100,000th talkback, submitted by JFM on Dec. 7, 2000 in "CNET News.com/Meta Group: Hewlett-Packard takes out Linux insurance."
• 200,000th talkback, submitted by Anonymous Coward on July 10, 2002 in "LinuxPlanet: Gentoo Linux 1.2: Getting Better Every Day."

Index Mode   |   Flat Mode   |   Thread Mode   |   Thread Flat     Talkback(s) Name  and Date   Ont thing I dont like    Sasa Ostrouska Jan 11, 2005, 17:21:00     Congrats    a.fan Jan 11, 2005, 17:28:48     300,001!    Bob Robertson Jan 11, 2005, 18:00:16     Just stick to the subject, or    Lars Jan 11, 2005, 19:09:17     Keep up the good work    Robert C. Miller Jan 12, 2005, 01:38:53     Re: Ont thing I dont like    Paul A. Rombouts Jan 12, 2005, 15:51:12     Home | Search Talkbacks | Customize View    Top of Page   Enter your comments below: * Your Name: * Your Email Address: * Subject: CC: [will also send this talkback to an E-Mail address] * Comments: Tags allowed:<I>,<B> and <U>. See our talkback-policy for more about talkback content. Fields marked with * are required!