What is your problem with this? Nobody said you should work for peanuts, and more important, nobody said you want to take advantage of the situation. It's just easier to get the client's attention about the idiot expert's failures when they cost money. Also, you shouldn't be paying for the expert's failures with your own time. If your client trusts you and you manage to structure contracts like this, the problem might even take care of itself.

A lot of times there is NO solution:
- problem is badly described,
- idiot expert promises quick, simple solution and explaining why it won't work takes an excessive amount of time or knowledge that the client doesn't have,
- idiot expert knows client from college,
- idiot expert lives next door and you work offshore from South America,
- client company is populated by alpha males who like quick decisions and never back down,
- a combination of the above (I have first hand knowledge about this situation).

Sometimes the best option is to watch the explosion from far away enough that you're not killed and near enough to be the first responder.

How about protesting (and not commenting) on even days and commenting normally on odd days? That way, Dice will be able to gauge how much of their so called "audience" that creates the actual deliverable of the site is leaving for good, while still preserving some value just in case they see the error of their ways soon.

"User base responds", "Commenters respond" would also have been good options. Audience is a passive crowd, which might be what Dice wants to monetize, but they better make sure the "product" (the active part of the user base) doesn't jump off the new shelves. So please, change the title to show that you understand. Otherwise, this spontaneous protest will not stop, because everybody will remain pissed off.

TL;DR: Apology not accepted because of your choice of words.

underlined doesn't work

Ok - let's hope that changes are made quickly, before all the producers of the real content get bored of complaining and take their wit elsewhere. You could at least send a signal that feedback is being received and changes are at least being considered, perhaps that will help get things back to normal.

We are the product, jumping from the shelves. What's the name of the store across the street?

Mod parent up please!

What a coincidence, Dice thinks of Slashdot as another sausage coming from their factory, that needs to be standardized.

This site is dead anyway. It reminds me of The Scarlet Plague - it is the end of Slashdot as we know it.

Boycott ... and EXODUS.

Boycott will never happen. This will be dead even before the boycott, it's already almost dead now. I have only seen one comment on the article. The spirit of Slashdot has already departed.