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Whatever happened to Slashdot? Did the slowness of new stories appearing + their comments system turn people off eventually, compared to interfaces like here?

Whatever happened to Slashdot? Did the slowness of new stories appearing + their comments system turn people off eventually, compared to interfaces like here? I used to read them daily.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
10 years ago I scraped a representative slice of all /. postings from the fall of every year. It was apparent that the rate of new UIDs was falling and that the bulk of the posting was done by a limited and shrinking cohort in the range of 100K to 400K. Mobile boosted the prevalence of AC posts but that didn't compensate for the drop off. I ran a regression out and predicted they'd be dead by 2023. Looks like they're on track.
g051051 6y ago
After several management shakeups, the editors went off onto some weird tangents with video segments, allowing off-topic posts, and paid content masquerading as stories. That's when I quit. Why did you stop?
- dasil003 6y ago
  /. -> Digg -> Reddit -> HN
  - totetsu 6y ago
    Sometimes I feel bad for HN, full of all us fleeing Reddittors
    - andykx 6y ago
      I use both Reddit and HN. HN has much better content (both links and comments), but it has a singular focus on tech/things tech people generally like. On the other hand, there’s a subreddit for practically every hobby. In many cases, Reddit is home to the largest community related to a hobby. Sometimes things related to my interests outside of tech pop up on here, but the discussion is rarely in depth.
    - JdeBP 6y ago
      Enjoy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23731299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23731299 . (-:
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  I still read it once a month or so, when I've "finished" HN for the day and bored.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  I stopped because they were clearly monetizing content and the comments were overrun by nazis and they clearly didn't care Edit: I coulda just said the nazis part but some folks here don’t wanna see ads so
eps 6y ago
Not being able to up/downvote comments was a major turn off. They'd throw whooping 5 voting credits in your direction every few weeks, but that only served to antagonize people even more. They tried to fix that by giving away meta-mod rights (to let you decide if other people's up/downvoting were fair), but again that wasn't what was needed. So as soon as HN had enough momentum and started to become a viable alternative people left in droves. It was a true exodus. Not really sure who stayed there...
stoolpigeon 6y ago
I think the best part about Slashdot in its best days were the people. You could be reading and article about Python and it was possible to see Guido in the comments. And while that was rare, the other upvoted comments were usually high quality from really knowledgable people and the noise was held down pretty well. As the good commentors left, all that was left is the noise. If you go now and look at comments often everything is downvoted excepted for a small number of o.k. comments. But most of the experts and really knowledgable people are gone. HN seems to have filled some of the gap it left but I don't know of any other site since that has the same volume of really high quality content. I see some comments here blaming the inability for everyone to do metamoderation - but I'd say it was the opposite. When they had decent editors things were great. Your content will be as good as your moderators and I think reddit proves that simply having more of them doesn't assure better content.

Whatever happened to Slashdot? Did the slowness of new stories appearing + their comments system turn people off eventually, compared to interfaces like here? I used to read them daily.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago

10 years ago I scraped a representative slice of all /. postings from the fall of every year. It was apparent that the rate of new UIDs was falling and that the bulk of the posting was done by a limited and shrinking cohort in the range of 100K to 400K. Mobile boosted the prevalence of AC posts but that didn't compensate for the drop off. I ran a regression out and predicted they'd be dead by 2023. Looks like they're on track.

g051051 6y ago

After several management shakeups, the editors went off onto some weird tangents with video segments, allowing off-topic posts, and paid content masquerading as stories. That's when I quit. Why did you stop?

dasil003 6y ago
/. -> Digg -> Reddit -> HN
- totetsu 6y ago
  Sometimes I feel bad for HN, full of all us fleeing Reddittors
  - andykx 6y ago
    I use both Reddit and HN. HN has much better content (both links and comments), but it has a singular focus on tech/things tech people generally like. On the other hand, there’s a subreddit for practically every hobby. In many cases, Reddit is home to the largest community related to a hobby. Sometimes things related to my interests outside of tech pop up on here, but the discussion is rarely in depth.
  - JdeBP 6y ago
    Enjoy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23731299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23731299 . (-:
mixmastamyk 6y ago
I still read it once a month or so, when I've "finished" HN for the day and bored.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
I stopped because they were clearly monetizing content and the comments were overrun by nazis and they clearly didn't care Edit: I coulda just said the nazis part but some folks here don’t wanna see ads so

eps 6y ago

Not being able to up/downvote comments was a major turn off. They'd throw whooping 5 voting credits in your direction every few weeks, but that only served to antagonize people even more. They tried to fix that by giving away meta-mod rights (to let you decide if other people's up/downvoting were fair), but again that wasn't what was needed. So as soon as HN had enough momentum and started to become a viable alternative people left in droves. It was a true exodus. Not really sure who stayed there...

stoolpigeon 6y ago

I think the best part about Slashdot in its best days were the people. You could be reading and article about Python and it was possible to see Guido in the comments. And while that was rare, the other upvoted comments were usually high quality from really knowledgable people and the noise was held down pretty well. As the good commentors left, all that was left is the noise. If you go now and look at comments often everything is downvoted excepted for a small number of o.k. comments. But most of the experts and really knowledgable people are gone. HN seems to have filled some of the gap it left but I don't know of any other site since that has the same volume of really high quality content. I see some comments here blaming the inability for everyone to do metamoderation - but I'd say it was the opposite. When they had decent editors things were great. Your content will be as good as your moderators and I think reddit proves that simply having more of them doesn't assure better content.