Who the fuck takes the audience into consideration when designing a website??? That's crazy talk!! No, the way to do it is to just decide that this is the way it's going to be and if our audience doesn't like it, then fuck 'em! That's the principle Digg used when they started making changes to their site back in the day, and it seemed to work out fine for them.

But...but...they're LISTENING. Timothy PROMISES!

Hell, AFAICT, the beta hasn't really changed at all since it launched. If they've changed anything (based on input or otherwise), I can't see it. For all that "We're listening to you" horseshit, I would like to know if they've even changed one damn thing. I bet they paid a contractor to design it and don't even have him working on it anymore (except maybe for maintenance).

He's not reaching out. Read his post more carefully. It says nothing. It's a long-winded equivalent of a form letter that says "Dear valued customer: We take customer complaints very seriously and also value your suggestions. We always take our customers' valuable input into consideration. Thank you for shopping at Walmart!" Notices that he promises nothing, refuses to back down on abolishing Classic, and basically just says "Yeah, we're listening, honest--now STFU."

Plenty of people have complained that there is no way in the beta to see a simple list of a user's comments (with replies and mods), the way you can in Classic. This makes it very difficult to follow long-term discussions or even respond to replies. Now the functionality is clearly THERE (since you can do this in Classic). So someone has clearly made the decision to NOT include it in the beta.

Lots of people have complained about this and other issue. Nothing has changed. In fact, AFAICT, not a single thing about the beta has been changed since I first tried it out months ago.

You have clearly NOT listened to us. And I doubt you have any intentions of EVER listening to us. And your bullshit post is the most verbose pile of shit that says ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that I have read in a long time. Allow me to summarize, for those who don't wish to read a huge paragraph of unadulterated horseshit:

The Dice execs should visit Kevin Rose's box and ask him how that works out in the end.

That's one of the real nasty bits of it. Any kind of long-lasting discussion is out of the question. Some of the best threads I've ever seen on /. came from deep, ongoing discussions between knowledgeable people. The beta makes it difficult to have any real back-and-forth.

My mother was a Beta, you insensitive clod!

They may well have *listened* to it. It was the fact that they then *disregarded it* that's the problem.

Gee, who do you think has unlimited mod points and a vested interest in shutting down the anti-beta posts?

The funny thing is, as another poster pointed out, the /. editors would be the first ones to cry "Censorship!" if some other site attempted to silence *their* users.

You guys are going to drive poor Beta to suicide! Then you'll feel guilty!!

Timothy is mass downmodding everyone who posts on the beta. Look at the comment sections in the Amazon story.

It's fucking timothy. Look at who's been posting all the stories today.

Yeah, keep modding down timothy. Shutting the door after the horses have already gotten out. Might be better off spending that time updating your resume.

Oh man, Digg. Remember how *fast* Kevin Rose went from former TV host to the most cocky motherfucker on the planet? Must have been a hard fall for a guy who had forgotten than his shit stinks.

Look at the Amazon double-helix comments. Mass downmods everywhere.