Anonymous for over 10 years, joined, first post (Score 2)

I have been anonymously reading Slashdot's *comments* for the majority of my IT career. I browse the site compulsively, multiple times a day. I have introduced countless people to the site. I spread interesting links to colleagues and family. In my small way I drive traffic to Slashdot.

I have been tempted to join Slashdot many times, but for one reason or another never completed the process, until today. I do sometimes contribute as an Anonymous Coward. My miniscule contributions are nothing to cherish, but it is the comments and the contributions of the rest of the community that make this site.

I created an account to add my voice to the conversation, because this matters to me deeply. The way you are going about introducing change here will not work. Others have mentioned that this site doesn't have an audience, but they are only partially correct.

There isn't really, to me, a distinction between the site and the community - they are synonymous and I have been an avid consumer of all the myrid ideas and information flow that this community has put on display over the years. I am an audience, though a small audience. The show I'm here to see really has nothing to do with the submissions. What I am here to see is the community, the comments, the current conversation.

Let me beat a dead horse: There are brilliant people here. There is high quality discourse here. There is an incredible amount of information here. (OK, there's also metric tons of bullshit :) ) But - the value here is the people, generating content by the thousands of lines. If you change the site in ways that alienate these people who've built it, or if you make it difficult to sustain the conversation then it dies. And when those brilliant folks scatter to wherever they wind up, then Slashdot really will be left with just an audience. And I can tell you, Slashdot with an audience and no contributors will only have that audience for about a week.

-The Other Curtis