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I don't think it was ever meant to be that. "stuff that matters" was always a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that other sites' content, being not-for-nerds, didn
by Torgo 12y ago
I don't think it was ever meant to be that. "stuff that matters" was always a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that other sites' content, being not-for-nerds, didn't matter. There is an obvious problem with posting general news and proclaiming "nerds are people too and politics interest people". What you're talking about was mainly a result of Slashdot adding a politics section after repeated articles about the Iraq War generated more discussion (and therefore traffic) by far than any other content, short of the SCO lawsuit. Before that point it was pretty good at staying on topic.
I consider it analogous to the SciFi channel showing professional wrestling, or MTV showing reality TV, or the gradual slide of TLC and History channel into slop. Niche media is destroyed by pejoration toward the mainstream.
- glesica 12y agoI disagree. "Stuff that matters" was frequently applied and upvoted as a tag to articles during the period of time when article tags were more editorial than they are now. This was quite some time ago. Not to say that no one felt as you describe, but I think an equal number of people, at least, took the interpretation I described. Also, I didn't mean to imply that the site creators intended for the motto to be applied in the way I described, just that it was applied that way in many cases. The point is that sometimes making the rules a little fuzzy can allow a community to moderate itself more flexibly and prevent the "lawyers" from taking over. HN is similar, where though there are loose guidelines, the rules for appropriate content are (deliberately, I believe) kept vague.