A lot of trust has been lost between users and management. And the first problem with a discussion site staying successful is keeping enough users. So, the question as to whether technocrat.net will succeed hinges on whether enough trust has been lost at slashdot to prompt enough people to move.
Assuming enough users do move, the second problem will be running the site. Editorship at slashdot, jokes aside, is a full-time job. So, another question is, will there be enough editor-hours to keep the machine running.
Will enough slashdot readers leave? I'm really not sure. There are a lot of upset readers, but the one thing that will really cause a big exodus, a forced switch to the new interface, won't happen for months. So, users who leave would have to leave a slashdot that is still, on the surface at least, passably acceptable.
Personally, I would like to see a few-month trial of technocrat.net. If things get moving, good; if not, then there will still be some time before slashdot becomes unusuable, and so some time to work with.
Either way, thank you for looking into this.
Regards
Why? We want to take our current content and all the stuff that matters to this community and deliver it on a site that still speaks to the interests and habits of our current audience, but that is, at the same time, more accessible and shareable by a wider audience. We want to give our current audience the space where they are comfortable. And we want a platform where we can experiment with different views of both comments and stories
A few points.
- What exactly do you mean by 'make content more sharaeble'? I can already link to individual comments; there's even a 'share' link below each comment. I've never used it, but surely that would be the place to start if your goal is to make content more shareable.
- If your goal was to make content more shareable, then why, at this late stage in the game, is it still impossible to link to single comments in Beta?
- Nothing is stopping you from experimenting with the current layout
Incremental change is how the current slashdot was built. Taco, Hemos, et al slowly added pieces and tweaks together, according to the needs of the day, to create what we now know as the moderation system and the classic comment layout. Over fifteen years of design thought have gone into the current system.
You can accomplish all the goals you have laid out by continuing in the same, incremental-improvement spirit. Throwing out all of that work and starting fresh is unnecessary, wasteful, and pretty much bound to fail.
Please post this to new articles if it hasn't been posted yet.
On February 5, 2014, Slashdot announced through a javascript popup that they are starting to "move in to" the new Slashdot Beta design.
Slashdot Beta is a trend-following attempt to give Slashdot a fresh look, an approach that has led to less space for text and an abandonment of the traditional Slashdot look. Much worse than that, Slashdot Beta fundamentally breaks the classic Slashdot discussion and moderation system. If you haven't seen Slashdot Beta already, open this in a new tab. After seeing that, click here to return to classic Slashdot.
We should boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta until Dice abandons the project.
We should boycott slashdot entirely during the week of Feb 10 to Feb 17 as part of the wider slashcott
Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta
http://slashdot.org/recent [slashdot.org] - Vote up the Fuck Beta stories
Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention. Links of note:
Discussion of Beta: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=56395415
Discussion of where to go if Beta goes live: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=submission&id=3321441
Alternative Slashdot: altslashdot.org
IRC Discussion: freenode #slashdot-refugees
IRC Discussion: slashnet.org #slashdot
Marked-up text of this comment: http://pastebin.com/mc2rhHBh
Slashdot users are extremely unhappy with the new Slashdot Beta design. The comment section of every single post is devoted to dissatisfaction with the new design.
... ... The thing to keep in mind about community sites devoted to user generated content is that the users generate the content.
A list is only as strong as its weakest link. -- Don Knuth