I'll join the crowd and help post in every thread that pops up, and upvote all the other comments I can find doing the same.
Slashdot Beta is not fixable - it is trash code that should be abandoned as a "lessons learned" exercise. It's not even a close decision - it's pretty much unanimous amongst the users - the ones that provide 90+% of any meaningful content on this particular site in particular.
If this advice that everyone is giving isn't honored by the local 'beta' admins, I believe it's time to start communicating with the people in charge, and pulling the levers of power a bit - and hopefully get these folks a stern talking to about what they were throwing away.
Shorter version: THE BETA SUCKS. LOSE IT.
Ryan Fenton
I wasn't able to post this until I logged in, and found a way to reach this url without the beta:
Holy crap, the beta is just useless! I don't think it can be patched - it really, really should be abandoned if this is where it is after all this time. Use it for 'lessons learned' but that's it.
Ryan Fenton
We want to create puppets that pull their own strings. - Ann Marion