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I really hope someone can turnaround Slashdot. To this day I find it to have the highest quality discussion threads on average out of any tech news site, largel

I really hope someone can turnaround Slashdot. To this day I find it to have the highest quality discussion threads on average out of any tech news site, largely due to its very mature community and quirky but effective moderation system. I've moderated on Slashdot for years and watched as the site's original low tech but functional UX has been degraded by half-hearted attempts to make it a modern web application. There was a time when Slashcode was considered to be one of the best open source comment systems you could set up for your own website. I think above all else, the Slashdot team should start shooting for that again. Build something with a UI that blows Disqus and reddit out of the water, continue to use the Slashdot-style moderation system (with possibly some tweaks to improve it), open source it, and be relevant again.

muraiki 11y ago
I also greatly liked the Slashdot moderation system. But I left slash for HN because I was sick of editorializing in the summary, along with completely inaccurate summaries unchecked by the editors. Sometimes I wish HN had support for small summaries under the article titles, but then I realize that at least this way I don't have to deal with the above two problems!
- kethinov 11y ago
  I remain active on both (along with reddit and Ars Technica too). I see value in each community's ways of doing things, and it doesn't bother me one bit that Slashdot's editors have bias, so long as they're transparent about it when posting opinions which tends to be the case.
  - muraiki 11y ago
    Yeah, I realize that bias is impossible to completely eliminate. The greater reason for me was consistently coming across summaries that were inaccurate and an editor failed to correct it before posting. This was also a number of years ago, so I don't know what things are like there now.
VLM 11y ago
"Slashcode was considered to be one of the best open source comment systems" The SoylentNews people have put some effort into improving slashcode... utf8, ipv6, modern perl, modern apache, tor .onion gateway, modern everything. https://github.com/SoylentNews/slashcode https://github.com/SoylentNews/slashcode Note that the last release of slashcode was a VERY long time ago so its /. from 2009 not /. from last week.
- kethinov 11y ago
  I have great admiration for their work, but it's missing two key things: 1. Their backend advancements have come at the expense of a focus on a more modern user experience. Their fork of Slashcode simply is not competitive with modern web forums from a UX perspective. It needs to be at least as usable as Disqus or reddit to be competitive, ideally better, as both of those takes on the web forum concept have plenty of room for improvement themselves. 2. Relevance. Try as they might, there has never been a mass exodus from Slashdot or anywhere else to Soylent. Until that happens, Slashdot still posses a much more robust bully pulpit from which to popularize a modernized Slashcode. Slashdot's relevance may be fading year after year, but it still has plenty left. That's why we're discussing it on HN right now. They need to seize that while they still can and make the most of it.

muraiki 11y ago

I also greatly liked the Slashdot moderation system. But I left slash for HN because I was sick of editorializing in the summary, along with completely inaccurate summaries unchecked by the editors. Sometimes I wish HN had support for small summaries under the article titles, but then I realize that at least this way I don't have to deal with the above two problems!

kethinov 11y ago
I remain active on both (along with reddit and Ars Technica too). I see value in each community's ways of doing things, and it doesn't bother me one bit that Slashdot's editors have bias, so long as they're transparent about it when posting opinions which tends to be the case.
- muraiki 11y ago
  Yeah, I realize that bias is impossible to completely eliminate. The greater reason for me was consistently coming across summaries that were inaccurate and an editor failed to correct it before posting. This was also a number of years ago, so I don't know what things are like there now.

VLM 11y ago

"Slashcode was considered to be one of the best open source comment systems" The SoylentNews people have put some effort into improving slashcode... utf8, ipv6, modern perl, modern apache, tor .onion gateway, modern everything. https://github.com/SoylentNews/slashcode https://github.com/SoylentNews/slashcode Note that the last release of slashcode was a VERY long time ago so its /. from 2009 not /. from last week.

kethinov 11y ago
I have great admiration for their work, but it's missing two key things: 1. Their backend advancements have come at the expense of a focus on a more modern user experience. Their fork of Slashcode simply is not competitive with modern web forums from a UX perspective. It needs to be at least as usable as Disqus or reddit to be competitive, ideally better, as both of those takes on the web forum concept have plenty of room for improvement themselves. 2. Relevance. Try as they might, there has never been a mass exodus from Slashdot or anywhere else to Soylent. Until that happens, Slashdot still posses a much more robust bully pulpit from which to popularize a modernized Slashcode. Slashdot's relevance may be fading year after year, but it still has plenty left. That's why we're discussing it on HN right now. They need to seize that while they still can and make the most of it.