kebes's Journal: AMD Vendor section sucks

This is not a rant about how slashdot has "sold out" with the recent inclusion of a "Vendors" section. Slashdot has always been a commercially-supported community-driven site (i.e.: we look at ads to support the bandwidth costs). That's fine. I actually think the "Vendors" section is a great idea. We get the slashvertisements put into a logical place, so that people can easily ignore them if need be.

However, the AMD vendor section (as of this writing there is only an AMD in the vendor list) is worthless. Apparently it's up to the vendor to post stories into their section, so AMD can decide what to post and how often to post. What have they chosen to do? They have wasted an opportunity by making their section useless and worthless. They have posted literally dozens of stories every day. All of the stories (of course) point to new AMD products, or articles about how AMD is cool and whatnot. This in and of itself is fine... but the fact is that they've killed the part of slashdot that actually makes it fun and useful: the comments. Each story has a comments section, but NO ONE ever posts comments.

The reason that people avoid it is simple. No, it's not because we dislike talking about commercial products (lots of stories are about our fav. commercial products)... it's because they've overloaded that section, making it impossible to find a good place to have a discussion about the product or news release.

It's too late. The damage is done. What they *should* have done is to release one (or two) stories when the vendor section first started. Slashdotters would have been intrigued, and we would have gone there and added some comments; had a few discussions (both about the vendor section, and AMD products, no doubt). As the days went by, people with an interest in AMD would go and look at the latest items, and probably interesting discussions would evolve in the AMD section. This would generate alot of interest in the products, as we would be able to advise each other on what to buy, etc.

Instead, every slashdotter (it would seem) has been turned off from the whole notion of using that section. Based on the number of comments that appear (which is to say, almost none), no one is interested in that section. And it's too late. AMD wasted their chance, and this also means that future vendors won't bother listing in the Slashdot vendor section, since it's obviously useless.

No one is reading those press releases, because there are hundreds and they are not differentiated. If only they had chosen a more sensible route, they could really have generated some interest in the community.

Oh well, another good idea destroyed by over-eager PR-types.