I have been reading Slashdot since 1997 or thereabouts. Every single day after 1998; of that I am sure. Even when I went out on vacation; when I got married; when I was convalescing after angioplasty- when I returned to work; I would read every single article; and if interested; the comments as well.
Some days back, I stumbled onto Slashdot Beta; I felt it sucked, so I came back to the old design. Today when I open any article; the only comments I find are those complaining about Beta. I use Opera for the past 14 years; so I couldn't understand why many readers found it difficult to just get back to Classic.
Then I started Firefox and opened Slashdot in that. I just couldn't believe the shit I was seeing. The main storythere was about the New Zealand Spy Agency. I carefully looked for 3 more recent stories; and couldnt find them at all. The reason was simple: the top 3 stories were disguised as ads; bcos that's how ads look in the regular site.
Then I clicked on those stories and tried to comment. Firefox went into a never-ending loop; I waited for 7 minutes, and killed the browser. I gave up on the beta.
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The reasons I visit Slashdot are:
1% - to look at the ads; and click on them
5% - to read the stories
3% - to read the linked artices
the rest - to read tons of Insightful comments from fellow Slashdotters
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But in the Beta; I couldn't even get to the Comments section on my 6-yr old Compaq laptop after 10 minutes. So I went back to Opera and Classic Slashdot. Already the Snowden article had comments cursing Beta. So I prepared this post in Notepad.
From now on, I will try for First Post with this one; in every new article.
Slashdotters I admire very much; and we are very successful people as a rule; minus of course the paid shills. I am sure I will keep this up and burn my karma until everyone else including those not fortunate enough to be using Opera; also stop complaining; and Beta goes away. Like Vista Shitsta; Millennium and Microsoft Bob.
Cheers.