I don't envy your position; nobody likes being a spokesman in front of an angry mob. Thank you for keeping things calm.

Here's the situation: you've got an old codebase which you'd like to get rid of, and an old userbase which you'd like to keep. Unfortunately they're part and parcel, and it's sounding like divorcing the two isn't much of an option. The question thus comes down to which is more important.

If I may ask: has anyone in the userbase specifically requested that classic view support be dropped?

I'm not talking about those who have asked for updates and added functionality, or the corporate personnel who are driven toward new shininess for some reason. Their suggestions and desires ought to be considered! But enhancements don't need to come at the expense of existing systems.

Now we're not idiots here; we recognize that keeping classic mode may very well require a few small modifications in order to maintain compatibility with this new revision. But these would be a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of effort expended so far, and should be well worth it to maintain a satisfied and contributing user base.

What are your thoughts? Have any contradicting user suggestions been made? Has a cost analysis been done? Or is it simply a few people with power in a closed room saying, "Let's make a change to get with The Future!(c)" Without evidence to the contrary, it feels like the latter, which makes everyone all the more butt-hurt.

I've been here awhile, and have watched Slashdot go through a lot. Every time there's been a major change, a significant section of the user base has left and eventually been replaced. (The significance has not always been in terms of sheer numbers, but more often in longevity, character, personality and other less tangible demographics.)

I'm sure it will "survive" beta in the same way, which makes me sad. More pillars of the Slashdot community will leave, to be replaced with shills, trolls and youths who simply don't have the history to carry on anymore.

There are (at least) two things Dice fails to understand:

1.) 1,000,000 users != 1,000,000 users. Every UID is different, and when someone leaves, you can't simply "undo" that by getting another person to sign up.

2.) We don't want change. We're happy not being reddit, or 4chan, or (ugh) web 2.0, or whatever social media site or crap technology is the current buzzword this week. We're Slashdot. We come here because it's an old and familiar community. If you change too much, it's no longer familiar and we leave. Or if too many people leave, it's no longer a community and people stop coming back.

Please, I seriously recommend you keep the old UI codebase around for those of us who use classic mode. It's not going to kill your servers and we've been here long enough to deserve this little concession. Remember, each of us are a vital part of the conversations that happen here, and it is the comments that make Slashdot. Don't force us old-timers away with unnecessary change. Thank you.

Mod parent up. This comment could be applied far beyond this UI discussion.

The "insignificant but essential changes" justification is especially prevalent when said changes are being mandated rather than made optional, as in a government/citizen or employer/employee relationship. It is often paired with lines such as, "you'll come to like it!" or, "be a team player!"

These are good points.

Also, new technologies are highly overrated. 98% of them will go by the wayside in a few years, and you don't want to waste your time becoming an expert in the newest square wheel.

Understand now that your learning ability will not last forever, and there will always be someone coming in after you that management will see as more valuable later on because they know #Whizbang 20x6 and you don't. So when that day comes, and come it will, what skills do you want to have?

As the parent said, soft skills are helpful, as are business and management. These can be useful to you because they age gracefully and migrate well between fields. If that's the sort of thing you want to be doing when you're "older", great. If not, what is?

I personally am enjoying learning older technologies, such as Spencerian handwriting, astronomy and land navigation, cooking well with simple ingredients, and other things that have been around for a very long time. I'm not doing it to help my career, but to make me happy. The fact that I'm happy probably shows in my daily life at work, which may help my career, but that's a side benefit. I'm mostly looking forward to having fun stuff to do if and when I can afford to quit working with computers for a living.

See, this is why we need better documentation. I'm not sure why the scientists thought the bees would help (perhaps division of labor/hive mind or something?) but really, if the OEMs had made proper documentation for the sensors easily available, none of this would have been necessary.

Before you even think of going to college you need to go to elementary, my dear Watson.

I was just wondering: aside from more general laws against inciting to actual violence, what are the repercussions against lawyers for taking intentional actions to incite unlawful behavior, especially for the purpose of business?

Surely practitioners of the law have an ethical obligation, if not a legal one, to NOT incite unlawful behavior. Whether inciting others to do something unlawful so that they can represent them, or inciting an unlawful act against themselves (such as assault, vandalism or restriction of freedoms,) the point is the same.

It seems like this ought to be grounds for disbarment, at the very least. I don't know how much disbarment would affect them since they could represent themselves regardless of their actual licensed status, but any step towards shutting their twisted business model down would be a good thing as I see it.

I second this, very much. "Community, not commodity" is a wonderfully concise way of looking at it.

Many of us are tired of being gone over with a fine-toothed comb any time we venture online or in public. We submit when we feel we have to, for the purposes of maintaining contact with distant family members, or accessing information that is required for our jobs, or when we are forced to use goverment-"secured" means of travel.

The reason we come HERE, rather than going to some other site, is to get away from all the PII-tracking, big corporation, big brother insanity that is going on out there. We don't WANT integration to Facebook. We don't want to tweet our comments. We don't want job offers that are "relevent" to the things we say or look at, whether here or elsewhere on the internet. We don't want to sign in with our real names. We just want to come here and be left in peace to discuss things with each other, as we always have.

Granted, Slashdot is noisy, ridiculous, and slow sometimes. But this is how we've made it. We know each other and we recognize outsiders. We have our own memes and we have our own values. We don't want changes. Just keep the site up and leave us be, and we'll stay. Try to take over and remake the place, and we'll likely be forced to leave.

It was hard enough seeing Rob leave, but I understand his decision and totally support him in it. After 13+ years of being here, I decided that I would keep on here as long as I could to keep the community alive. I don't want to say goodbye, but at such time as there's no community left, there will be no more reason for me to stay.

I'm very happy for you, Rob, and wish you the very best in your future endeavors. Try not to give in to the siren call of wanting to work on another "small project." Enjoy your family time! That's stuff that matters!

P.S. It's been great seeing all the old farts chiming in here. It's like an old-timey convention. I wish they could have put the original UI back for slashdot for this story. :-)

My thoughts exactly. Akamai will be pretty threatened by this, but I'm not sure what they can do about it other than offer superior service.

I wonder if Google will try to buy them out, though -- Akamai has lost about half of its stock value over the past three quarters for some reason.

Such a move would definitely cause alarm, though. I personally would not feel comfortable concentrating so much of the internet in one company. Single points of failure are bad.

Oh, but it will have one, provided the tyrannosaurs are ready by then. :-)

While I have no wish to demean their efforts, this approach still seems somewhat brutal to me. I'm no neurologist, but isn't this still a rather macro-level view of things, with the cutting process still causing damage to the fine structures they want to study?

It seems likely to me that future scientists will look back at this in not too long with stifled laugher and perhaps a little shock at the approach.

I read that and my inner monologue immediately thought, "Now I'm on a horse."