I agree that if/. is changed, it should change for the better. My big question is why should we believe you're listening now? At the beta rollout in October you solicited comments about what to improve on the beta. The users responded with >1100 comments and lots of emails. However, many of the same problems (most notably a broken comment system) are still there. Five months and functionality that is foundational to the way people use this site is still not there.
The comment system isn't finished yet, that's for sure -- but we've implemented a number of changes and improvements in response to the feedback from the October launch.
We can't implement every suggestion -- some contradict each other, and there's only so much time in the day. But we are listening and incrementally improving the experience based on what users are telling us.
I've got to say that the initial post on this topic perpetuates one of the paradigms that is sticking in the craws of Slashdot users. We are not an audience. We might be users, we might be members, we most certainly are contributors. But we are not an audience.
If you persist in thinking of us that way, then you're going to get it wrong. You serve an audience differently than you serve contributing members of a community. Most of the complaints hinge on that difference.
As I said (late) in the previous thread [slashdot.org], the people over at Fark gave an incredible talk [youtube.com] on this very issue, after figuring out how to recover from their "You'll get over it" incident. It is literally the perfect discussion of the ways/. is failing hard right now.
As you say, it's about a fundamental miss-understanding of relationship, by thinking of your members as an "audience", and not peers. Even worse, they are peers that are only here because it's the current familiar ploace to "hang out" at. Piss them off - or even simply surprise them the wrong way and they will simply go hang out somewhere else.
(*sigh* - the/. staff doing the beta *REALLY* needs to watch this talk ASAP, because they are currently doing basically *every* single bad move discussed in the talk. Yes, you there, slashdot staff - drop what you're doing and watch this talk right now. There's a good chance you know the incident I'm refering to with the phrase "You'll get over it", and you need to listen to these lessons from those that walked the path your're currently on. You still have time to reverse course, if you change right now)
And that's exactly what I asked for. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for acknowledging us. I'd like to see a new SlashDot that's even better than the old. Please let us help you define it.
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that if /. is changed, it should change for the better. My big question is why should we believe you're listening now? At the beta rollout in October you solicited comments about what to improve on the beta. The users responded with >1100 comments and lots of emails. However, many of the same problems (most notably a broken comment system) are still there. Five months and functionality that is foundational to the way people use this site is still not there.
The folks at /. might be listening, but
Re: (Score:4, Informative)
The comment system isn't finished yet, that's for sure -- but we've implemented a number of changes and improvements in response to the feedback from the October launch.
We can't implement every suggestion -- some contradict each other, and there's only so much time in the day. But we are listening and incrementally improving the experience based on what users are telling us.
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got to say that the initial post on this topic perpetuates one of the paradigms that is sticking in the craws of Slashdot users. We are not an audience. We might be users, we might be members, we most certainly are contributors. But we are not an audience.
If you persist in thinking of us that way, then you're going to get it wrong. You serve an audience differently than you serve contributing members of a community. Most of the complaints hinge on that difference.
If we were an audience, we'd be co
Re:And that's exactly what I asked for. (Score:4, Informative)
As I said (late) in the previous thread [slashdot.org], the people over at Fark gave an incredible talk [youtube.com] on this very issue, after figuring out how to recover from their "You'll get over it" incident. It is literally the perfect discussion of the ways /. is failing hard right now.
As you say, it's about a fundamental miss-understanding of relationship, by thinking of your members as an "audience", and not peers. Even worse, they are peers that are only here because it's the current familiar ploace to "hang out" at. Piss them off - or even simply surprise them the wrong way and they will simply go hang out somewhere else.
(*sigh* - the /. staff doing the beta *REALLY* needs to watch this talk ASAP, because they are currently doing basically *every* single bad move discussed in the talk. Yes, you there, slashdot staff - drop what you're doing and watch this talk right now. There's a good chance you know the incident I'm refering to with the phrase "You'll get over it", and you need to listen to these lessons from those that walked the path your're currently on. You still have time to reverse course, if you change right now)