CmdrTaco Looks Back on Fifteen Years of Slashdot 178
CmdrTaco sent in a link to his weblog post looking back on his experience running Slashdot for fifteen years: "For me the story of Slashdot is utterly inseparable from my own life. I built it while still in college: when normal people did their homework or had personal lives, I spent my evenings making icons in The Gimp, crafting perl in vim or writing a new story to share with my friends. I’ll never forget the nights spent tailing the access_log and celebrating a line from microsoft.com or mit.edu with friends like Jeff, Dave, Nate, and Kurt."
The Problem with Trading Hands (Score:5, Interesting)
We found one that could: Selling Slashdot was the right decision at the time: we never could have survived the growth, and the lean years after the bubble burst. However, the long term consequences of the decision wouldn’t be clear for years.
This is so obvious to me. It's like watching a band sign a big contract thinking it's the greatest thing to ever happen to them. Even with the latest move Slashdot editors think it's only a good thing [slashdot.org]. If you sell, you need to consider that you're selling your freedom, your control and your future. The bigger the company you're sold to, the most abstracted away from you all those things are. So consider all that and price it accordingly. I mean, now it'll probably go to the highest bidder ... what if a giant just wanted to buy Slashdot to shut it down because of the negative press it generates for them?
AC the whole time (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been here since the start, but I've never wanted or felt I needed to create an account.
In an age where we'll soon see sites require a facebook login for access (Or worse yet, a "like") despite all the "Natalie Portman, naked and petrified" and "Hot grits" and page widening trolls, thanks for keeping anonymous access an option.
AC- Anonymous before "Anonymous"
Thank you! (Score:5, Interesting)
For spending that time to create this community. I've had many years of enjoyment from your work!
From an early admirer...
Farrell
Re:Yeah, welcome to the club, pal (Score:3, Interesting)
By the time you're collecting Social Security, it's pretty much 95% bitching (the other 5% consisting mostly of bragging about your retarded grandkids, who you think are geniuses for some reason).
The slashdot population will no doubt spend that 5% doing something else. Probably bitching to new programmers about how their language is crap because it was designed for retards, as opposed to the ones we used to have that really exercised the brain.
Interesting navel gazing (Score:4, Interesting)
Welcome to the new slashdot - facebook news for conservatives.
Re:Interesting navel gazing (Score:5, Interesting)
At least he recognizes that the site was in decline when it was sold. Some might criticize him for not doubling down and putting himself back in to it, but he made his choice. Welcome to the new slashdot - facebook news for conservatives.
Yea, I've been seeing that strawman pop up here pretty much daily for the last decade: "Oh, there's a bunch of posters with whom I disagree, Slashdot is falling apart, becoming a haven for the [insert group you don't like]!
The behavior would be astonishing, if I weren't as well versed in human nature.
Thanks for creating a legend (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Problem with Trading Hands (Score:4, Interesting)
Thanks for All The Fish (Score:5, Interesting)
CmdrTaco, a /. account was the first one I created on the Web proper when i returned from China. I lost that 4 digit userID then due to economic & geographic dislocations, to my ongoing regret now. But in the ensuing years I came to feel like you were a brother I had never met. When you left Slashdot, it felt like a death in the family.
I don't say that to be maudlin, but to mean your time at Slashdot was not just a chapter in your life and its, but in the lives of many. May we all do so well in life.
Re:A good read (Score:3, Interesting)
yeah. wow....thinking about this has made me nostalgic and slightly depressed.
WTF. (Score:4, Interesting)
"Before it was the famous nerd hub, Slashdot was simply my homepage. When I left, I was denied the right to continue to post on the page that I still called home".
Why?
Re:lol slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
what a dump.
reddit has destroyed you. please unplug your last server.
This is the phenomenon I wonder about. So many ACs moan about how bad /. is for whatever reason, yet they're still here. Why? Haters just gotta hate? Do you enjoy figuratively stirring entrails? You've nothing better to do than subject yourself to what you clearly see no need for?
That's just sad. That's a self-abusive personality. No, your character flaws have no effect on me, btw.
Re:Interesting navel gazing (Score:5, Interesting)
Go ahead, don't just make claims like that. Back them up with actual links. I want you to show me a consistent, frequent pattern of what you have just stated.
No, you have to show that this is the case. You have yet to do so.
Slashdot's doing well, the internet at large isn't (Score:5, Interesting)
This was interesting reading. Bittersweet, because there's always doubt over a sale. No matter what anyone says, if you created it, it's yours and you have a moral right to it. In the hands of commerce however, others control it, and use facts/figures to justify actions based on knowledge from the past.
I think it makes sense instead for Slashdot to think of the future. There is always going to be room for a site that covers geek topics, and no one does it like Slashdot. It's a potent mix of technology, culture and politics that has always been at the forefront of changes in the technology field. If anything, it's time for Slashdot's "owners" (the community is the real owner) to re-invest in updating the site, and to stay the course. Don't try to make it into Facebook, because Slashdot and its appeal are fundamentally different.
What's dying is the internet as it has become in successive iterations: post-1996, post-2002, and whatever came after that. AOL wrecked the internet and died, Myspace died, Facebook is failing because the power users are leaving, since the site has become basically a work-day time-waster for cube slaves. The branching of the internet audience into niches is the real story here, not the attempt of a few people (even Wikipedia) to control what everyone is thinking.
If I had one suggestion, it would be to cover more of the underground. People are living outside the grid, even if from within the grid, in more ways and more interesting ways than ever before.