We listened to them from the beginning, and tried to modify the Beta to suit their needs better. It didn't work, so we closed it down.
Also, development is not a fast process, particularly for a codebase like Slashdot's.
There were multiple opt-out links for all users.
The bug will be fixed, and the feature will be back.
I'm not on the Engineering team, and I don't make the Product decisions, so I'm not going to be of much help with your question. Yeah, the bugs probably should have been squashed before releasing -- but the Slashdot codebase is a monster, and there are a lot of edges cases among users, so I think the release is done under the "perfect is the enemy of good" philosophy. Hopefully we can get the big ones taken care of in short order.
The Older/Newer buttons broke with our code push yesterday (tags went into hiding, too). Hope to have them fixed soon. My apologies!
Until it's fixed, you can use this link as a workaround if you'd like: http://slashdot.org/?page=1
If you increment the page number, you can see successive pages.
We revamped the header and removed the left hand nav links, which hardly anybody used. There were some bugs introduced in the process, which we're now taking care of. That's pretty much it!
Yeah, we updated the header and removed the left-hand navigation links, which hardly anybody used. The "Post" button is still there at the top left of the comments section, but it's really hard to see unless you hover over it. Apologies for that! We're working on getting that fixed, along with a few other issues.
Actually, we scrubbed the beta. Announcement here. The only thing we've rolled out today was a new header and removing the left-hand nav links, which hardly anybody used.
Just a bug. Will be back.
Thanks for the reports.
The rate at which a disease spreads through a corn field is a precise measurement of the speed of blight.