So the better alternative to Slashdot and possibly Groklaw (Technocrat.net) all comes down to a single decision by your wife? Man. I've heard of wives influencing the guy's good times, but that's next level ;)
Well Slashdot has gone to major suckage lately. I've had a terribly hard time just coming back to posts and finding comments that I wrote, let alone finding a comment that I was looking at right before I closed the tab accidentally. That was after the last great "improvements" in the comment system. It's become *less* functional and enjoyable to me since I joined, and that's not a good thing for any website.
There are reasons that I think Technocrat.net can work:
1) While I disagree that javascript is terrible, it's good at what it does do. Primarily ajax calls to post without leaving the page. That's nice. I'm sure there really are only a few things that benefit that much from javascript and you could cut the rest out to considerably slim down the pages. That should appease the people that are determined to disable javascript on everything, while preserving major site functionality without it which leads to the most important thing I think everybody agrees with....
2) Clean and simple. Another poster here said it very well. The Beta is all about cashing in on new pseudo-touch design fads that waste space and have no real purpose other than being shiny. I'm sure you and others you work with are more than capable of creating an information dense site designed to service the core business of Slashdot. That core business is just articles, posts, and comments. Most Slashdot readers could not care less about the shiny. We love function over form.
3) I'm guessing that you won't have corporate wastes of human skin breathing down your neck with advice from fancy marketing firms demanding you "fix" something that is not broken just to play buzzword bingo. Maybe that's a bit harsh, but I have my own experience with PHB's making inane/insane demands that are straight out of a Dilbert strip.
4) As another poster said, Slashdot has been pulling this crap for awhile and been going downhill in overall quality across the board. Perhaps, this time if you build it they really will come. I don't see Slashdot with its corporate masters allowing us to go back to clean and simple ever again. ( I really do think you can do clean and simple with minimum javascript too, so flame away guys)
5) Technocrat.net could start right off the bat with a few policies that could stop spammers and trolls right in their tracks instead of just allowing a Wild West mentality. I support freedom as much as anybody, but there have been instances in which Slashdot has outright refused to even protect itself in ways that everyone would find reasonable. Not an easy thing to do, but you don't also have all the restrictions that Slashdot has, and your not mired down in it's viewpoints, processes, and methods. You could start from scratch, which is something Slashdot is not capable of clearly.
6) If you're involved I'm sure that many, such as myself, would give our patronage (I've subscribed to Slashdot a few times) to a site that would mostly likely support the concepts and ideas of Open Source.
If you make another site I promise that I would join and at least submit a couple of articles a month that I find elsewhere. I don't have many approved submissions here, but I do have a few. I also comment prolifically and I'm only slightly trollish.
I came here to read news for nerds that matters and post comments. Let's face it, Slashdot hasn't been getting it done, and the last few days people have revolted and we don't even discuss the news anymore. Maybe this is the time to make a change?