Comment Re:Please File Things Under Idle Where They Belong (Score 1) 799
This site was established as a personal blog for whatever shit Rob Malda (CmdrTaco) found interesting or relevant. The fact that it's mostly technology stuff is purely because Rob Malda is a nerd, like most of the rest of us. But that doesn't mean it all has to be technical stuff.
Whatever Rob Malda's intentions were when he started this site nearly 14 years ago is of little relevance now. Rob doesn't own the site. Geek.net is the owner and it is managed by these people. Since Geek.net is a public company we can see exactly what they think Slashdot's purpose is. I quote from their latest annual report filing:
Slashdot serves technology professionals and technology enthusiasts with timely, peer-produced and peer-moderated technology news and discussion. Slashdot's lively and robust on-line conversations and interactions leverage its innovative comment and moderation system. Slashdot served 3.8 million unique visitors in December 2009.
That is what the owners and managers of Slashdot say the purpose of Slashdot is.
Legal stupidity is interesting and relevant to all of us, because you never know when this brain rot is going to affect you directly, through no fault of your own. Just because it's not a case involving computers doesn't mean a thing.
I know what you are saying, but there is enough legal craziness to fill a web site all on its own. I think it's important that we pick the stories that would be relevant to us, not just those that are sensationalist. For example, look at the original story. It gives a broad overview and that's it. There's no investigation and no discussion of the judges decision or why he or she might have ruled they way that they did. It's just newspaper filler.
Where a site like Slashdot could easily add value is to look up the case in PACER, preferably using a tool like RECAP for Firefox so that the public documents are then automatically uploaded to the Internet Archive. That would make the court documents available to everyone for free enabling all of us to read the judge's decision and rational as well as see what case law was cited for the decision.
The discussions on Slashdot are one of the site's strengths. Having this little extra bit of information would allow us to examine the real story behind this case and have a meaningful discussion about it. There are several practicing lawyers that post on Slashdot and they may be able to offer insight into the case. Instead, we can only argue about it from a position of ignorance and supposition. I don't get much value out of that, and so I and others complain. We complain because we care. We like Slashdot and want to see it improve. If the Slashdot team were willing to add this extra value then it's something I would gladly pay for.