Journal BarbaraHudson's Journal: If you want to see just how sucky slashdot has become ... 15
I took some time to read a few stories from the past - part of the whole Novell-SCO/SCOS/SCOXE mess. The difference in quality of the discussions then and now is really telling.
It's like mass-produced chocolate chip cookies. The bean counters slowly remove one or 2 chocolate chips from the mix "because nobody will notice", until one day you wake up and go "What happened?"
I don't think there's any fixing it, for the simple reason that tech has changed. That attracts a different clientele. One with different priorities and interests. Welcome to Facedot
links? (Score:2)
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Remember the whole SCO vs NOVELL "linux infringes our copyrights" scam and their paid shill being exposed [slashdot.org]?
Plus it inspired me to write this [slashdot.org], which for a while was the #2 search result for Maureen O'Gara.
Fatal flaws identified (Score:2)
Besides the platform itself, the things that made Slashdot great were:
1. The general community
> This appears to have shrunk possible due to an ageing user base.
2. The feature articles
> Great journalism is more often being done by bloggers and freelancers. Slashdot seems to overlook this.
3. Evangelists and experts
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Hell, just having editors doing their job would be an 100% improvement.
i.e. Removing duplicate links, fixing the spelling and grammar, etc.
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Hey, it's Christmas ... maybe we can hope? Nah, more likely they'll do it for one day as an April Fools joke.
Journals were a way for people to meet and discuss stuff that wasn't on the front page, and they have SO de-emphasized them that I kind of wonder how many users even bother any more. And the polls now really, really suck.
The place to discuss things like politics is in journals, not the main page. But given that people want to discuss it, and most couldn't find the "post to journal" link because it'
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Unlike any given item of technology, _everyone_'s got an opinion on politics. And they tend to be strong opinions. Simply drives more page views. I think for example Ars Leftica had even surpassed /. in Leftie froth-bait. It's just better business.
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A lot of us have moved to Soylent News, which started with slashdot's stupid "beta" interface debacle. I moved on because the nerd-to-normal ratio has dropped so badly here. I seldom look at the front page any more, only surfing the journals.
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Different (Score:1)
It still is one of the better places for tech news on the Internet. Ars is decent, but I rarely stick to the comment section.
If you find a decent slashdot alternative, I'm listening,
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How about a few improvements. Get the off-topic discussions off the comments in articles and into journals by (1) making it easier to find the "write in journal" link, and (2) enabling topics in journal entries so people receiving a notification of a post will know what it's about before looking at it, and (3) with topics in journals, make a slashbox letting readers see a feed of, say, the 5 latest journal entries in the database, including the topic.
Or skip (2), should still be better than what we have no
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You don't like SoylentNews?
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Soylent News [soylentnews.org] ("Soylent News is people")