Slashdot Tries Something New; Audience Responds! 2219
We've had only a few major redesigns since 1997; we think it's time for another. But we really do take to heart the comments you've made about the look and functionality of the beta site that houses Slashdot's future look. So let's all slow down. Right now, we're directing 25 percent of non-logged-in users to the beta; it's a significant number, but it's the best way for us to test drive this new design, to have you show us what pieces need to be fixed, and how. If you want to move back to Classic Slashdot, that path is available: from the Slashdot Beta page, you just need to select the "Slashdot Classic" link from the footer (or this link). We're committed to keep you informed of the plans as changes are implemented; we can't
promise that every user will like every change, but we don't want anything to come as a surprise. Most
importantly, we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that
the new site is ready. And — okay, we've got it — it's not ready. We have work to do on four big areas:
feature parity (especially for commenting); the overall UI, especially in terms of information density and
headline scanning; plain old bugs; and, lastly, the need for a better framework for communicating about
the How and the Why of this process. Some of you have suggested we're not listening; on the contrary,
some of us are 'listening' pretty much full-time. We're keeping you informed of this process, because
we're a community and we want to take everyone with us. But, yes, we're trying something new. Why?
We want to take our current content and all the stuff that matters to this community and deliver it on
a site that still speaks to the interests and habits of our current audience, but that is, at the same time,
more accessible and shareable by a wider audience. We want to give our current audience the space
where they are comfortable. And we want a platform where we can experiment with different views
of both comments and stories. It's not an either/or. It's going to be both. If we haven't communicated
that well enough, consider this post a first step to fixing that. And in the meantime, we're not sorry
to have received a flood of feedback, most of it specific, constructive and substantive. Please keep it coming. We will be adding more specific info here in the days to come.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. If they were really listening they would just stop doing what they're doing. Instead of just plowing forward pretending to listen.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
If they gave a flip about what we thought about the site, it would probably look the same as it did 10 years ago. If it ain't broke, etc.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. What they're doing to Slashdot is so symptomatic of the way web developers work, and indeed the whole modern software industry works. There's no notion of evolutionary change, of fixing bugs, adding enhancements in a controlled manner but with an eye towards familiarity and ease of use.
Why this need for a radical departure?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
We want to take our current content and all the stuff that matters to this community and deliver it on a site that still speaks to the interests and habits of our current audience, but that is, at the same time, more accessible and shareable by a wider audience.
I think the problem is that if you build an engine for a wider audience at the cost of the community, you'll be left with nothing. There are plenty of other "shiny" websites for the mass audience. The community that was built at Slashdot is the real value of the brand. If the parent company wants to build a website with a mass appeal, they should build one from scratch and spin Slashdot off into a separate company.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah I've been 'happy' with the classic site, aside from the well-known bugs such as
- unicode support - i.e. mangling a person's name if they have any of those characters/accents found in continental European languages.
- comment spill past 100 comments, repeats a significant number of comments on page 2.
- having to zoom to read the summary with all that sidebar crap when viewing on a 4" smartphone - though reading the comments is trouble free compared to the abomination that is slashdot mobile
But given these problems have existed for a decade, they're either not fixable in the classic code base (easily) or the designers just like experimenting with fancy CSS3 layouts.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
This post indicates that our concerns have been heard. Give them a chance. Clearly discussions are taking place and some changes will be made. Whether those changes will be acceptable to the community can only be judged after we have seen them; but in view of this post it is most unfair to say that our concerns have not been heard. Why do you suppose they used the megaphone graphic?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the community has made it pretty clear that the beta is unwanted and will lead to Slashdot's demise. Toss it, bugfix the classic version and make slow incremental improvements. Maybe we'll end up where the Beta team wanted us to go (though I doubt it), but at least it's not like "At some unspecified time in the near future we're going to stick a flaming bag of shit in your mouth. Get Ready!!!!"
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Really all that needs changed about slashdot is support for unicode (which could be copy and pasted from slashdot japans site) and fixes for auto compacting/baning the mycleanpc spam and gnaa trolls.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
OK. Ok. First a disclaimer - I have not even looked at the Beta. Now, onto my observation - at a company I worked at we took the existing UI for a massive product and wrote a new UI from the ground up. Sent to evaluate it my overall comment was - it is NOT ready. However, so much time and effort was put into it that it was moved out to production anyway, over my protests. ALL the customers stuck with it did not like it, bug reports ballooned out of all control, and we spent the next year and a half fixing problems while our credibility was hit REAL hard.
On the other hand, the change was needed in the end, it did provide a lot more flexibility, allowed for new features that could not be done in the old one, and it looked snazzier.
However, the lesson to take here is that if it not ready, do NOT push it out anyway. We had a basically captive audience due to the nature of our software. We should have taken that extra 6 months to a year to iron things out. Slashdot does not have a captive audience. Please keep that in mind. Do NOT release it until it is at least as good as the current system - no matter how long that takes (or how much it hurts to keep spending on it).
I may not have a 4 digit id, but I have a 5 digit one. Please listen to the voices of experience here.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
I may not have a 4 digit id, but I have a 5 digit one. Please listen to the voices of experience here.
Shush, you.
Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Time to move on guys and gals.
I haven't heard that much managementspeak in years, and rookie managementspeak at that. I especially like the "more accessible and shareable by a wider audience" comment. Let me paraphrase that for you, [We are going to bind our logins with FB, twitter, intrusive ads, and everything else we can get our hands on to make sure no one is anonymous. We have implemented part of this already with googleapis and bootstrapcdn. We will sell that information to the highest bidder. Everything you write will be used against you in the future. This includes any resume you have every posted with us. That way employers get a full picture of the people they are hiring, or at least the picture we want to give them. We are committed to treating everyone like simple minded sheep and keeping them informed of the upcoming reaming. We can't promise every sheep will like it. But rest assured our velcro gloves are there to reassure you of this process.]
Bye bye.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hi, a couple thoughts here. First, thanks to timothy for reaching out like this - it's the result of the #fuckbeta protest, so good job to everybody. But if we have a better avenue for communicating our concerns then we can tone down the protesting I think. At least maybe not destroy the comment threads any more.
My biggest concern for the beta is it seems to destroy the tools needed for a robust commenting and conversation, including notification of new posts, easy ways to quote prior posts, easy way to link directly to comments, etc. If this is going to be reintegrated for sure (and maybe expanded?) then I'm probably cool with it.
Maybe this is a better approach? what would you need to be cool with the beta?
inb4 shill: i doubt that if you look at my posting history you could accuse me of being a shill. :ducks:
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
My biggest concern is that frankly, the beta just plain sucks. It sucks in every single possible way. I get that they're saying it isn't ready, but the concern for many of us isn't just that the beta is just bloody horrible now, but that the direction its going suggests that it will never be an adequate replacement for the current "classic" Slashdot.
Re: Why? (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't say it sucks in EVERY way. It does seem to work better on my tablet, except for when I login and have to expand every single comment to read it. Hence the reason I am posting anonymously, I wouldn't be able to read the comments if I logged in.
That said, I do think it sucks overall.
BoogeyOfTheMan
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
READY OR NOT IS NOT THE ISSUE!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready.
Nobody gives a flying fuck about if it is 5%, 50%, 95% or 100% ready when they kill off the classic interface.
WE WANT THE CLASSIC SLASHDOT TO REMAIN AS AN OPTION!!!
They can go and fuck themselves with their beta thing. 3+ million accounts were opened on the classic interface.
We like it. It's fine. Leave it THE FUCK ALONE!
Some of you have suggested we're not listening; on the contrary, some of us are 'listening' pretty much full-time.
Nobody gives a fuck if any of you are " listening " timothy (emphasis on quotation marks there), as it is obvious that you are NOT HEARING US!
There, in that quote above. Clear as day.
Or you would not talk about Classic Slashdot going away.
So... in conclusion... Fuck Beta!
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is, "WHY does the beta suck?" I can point to a few key points.
1) White Space is noisy. As Noisy as overly dense is. Hard to read, hard to navigate ... hard on eyes.
2) Dumbing down the interface is Dumb. What the beta does, is take take away the information needed to be intelligent. We don't need that, as we are (typically, mostly) bright, intelligent, capable people. We aren't your "http://www.nbcnews.com/" who wants pretty pictures. STOP IT.
3) Removing information is dumb. For example (glaring IMHO) my comments section, the difference between the old site and the new site pretty much makes the new site unusable. I know what I wrote, I want to see what the response is THAT is important information to me. I realize that there is a "selfie" craze going on, but I am not that self centered. I need to know what it is modded to, how many responded etc. As it is in the Beta, none of that information is anywhere near available. Useless.
In short, I don't need a dumb blonde site, I need an intelligent site who can have a conversation with me, on multiple subjects, THIS is what /. was for me.
Thanks
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
My biggest concern for the beta is it seems to destroy the tools needed for a robust commenting and conversation, including notification of new posts, easy ways to quote prior posts, easy way to link directly to comments, etc. If this is going to be reintegrated for sure (and maybe expanded?) then I'm probably cool with it.
This shortcoming was recognized and pointed out again and again back in October when they revealed the beta. Now here we sit five months on with the same problems. That's why I have little hope that anything substantive will be done to keep the current community.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
My concern? My Biggest Concern? That the current "Beta" incarnation shows horrible judgement and lack of basic understanding of the slashdot audience. Think about that.
There's no mystery as to who the visitors are. There's no mystery as to who the content providers are. There's no mystery as to what the end users want. And yet Dice, et al, chose to thrust this Beta abomination upon us as though it was ready for "beta testing". SMFHOMGICMFBTTTWAGI
Beta is not salvageable. The fact that we as a community have reached this point of protest because Dice, et al, don't know or care who we are and what we use this site for proves that slashdot is not salvageable.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see a reason for the change for one.
I'm on classic at the moment and I can't see just what is so great about the new one at all, other than a site layout change and aesthetics. Mostly aesthetics, which is not a reason to change something that works.
As someone who has subscribed a few times to support Slashdot, I would be sad to leave. All things change though and I'm sure I could live without Slashdot and find other competitors that deliver tech news I want to hear.
So if they really are listening, clean up all the *crap* code and fire whoever is doing it. May sound harsh, but seriously, how can a development team release a Beta that was pre-Alpha at best with quality? Were they drunk? "Feature Parity" should have been something 100% resolved before the Beta.
Information density is interesting as a concept and I understand what others are saying, but you never even made it to the point where you could have the luxury of such decisions.
Just make it work. That's it. Have all the same features and the *exact* same ability to write comments, especially the line spacing and markups. The beta was absolutely horrible to get anything done that classic did without a problem. It's an unmitigated disaster.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Good lord! Are you still running Netscape Navigator on a 386? It's 2014, you can get a full featured browser on a wrist watch. There are MANY reasons to hate the beta but using Javascript is not one of them.
Re:The title says it all. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry Dice, but you don't make Slashdot great - we do! Piss us off and we'll leave, and you can enjoy the eye-atrocious tumbleweeds and crickets.
Re:The title says it all. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right. Always some post catches my eye, I read most of the comments. And the comments are always better than the post itself (which, by the way, is usually submitted by someone from the community). The discussion at slashdot is (most of the time) high quality. Actually, I don't know any other site with such high quality discussion (yes, it could be better, but if you feel down about the quality here, go check the discussion on youtube).
Slashdot is all about it's contributors. Without you, people, this site would be a empty shithole.
Re:The title says it all. (Score:5, Insightful)
_THIS_
Without the community, why would anyone bother with slashdot? There are better & faster sites for tech news, but the commenting is linear & low SNR.
The beta is like watching a "turnaround" CEO trying to save a company by firing the "high cost workforce" (experience & knowledgeable talent); posting a few good quarters and then getting dumbstruck when the company starts to tank.
If the community quality drops, slashdot WILL die.
Slashdot BETA Sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot BETA Sucks.
Your post here is a steaming pile because you know "Timothy" that You folks have absolutely NO intention of backing away from the new un-needed and useless "design" for the sake of "design" design. "Web Designers" and marketers have a lot in common, they want to foist "pretty" shit that serves no real benefit.
Hopfully Bruce Perens will reserect his Slashdot alternative that failed when Slashdot didn't SUCK as much as it does now.
Join the boycott 10-17 February!
Trying to clone Digg version 4? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot BETA Sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
the problem with the boycott is that 99%+ of the users aren't active contributors, just passive viewers. So a boycott won't change the viewership numbers very much. heck, most of the people who would boycott are probably no script/adblock anyway, so there's no lost impressions there.
this is why the protest works better
Re:Slashdot BETA Sucks. (Score:5, Informative)
I remember when Bruce postsed his office telephone number in a slashdot story. I'd make use of that right now to tell him to get moving, if it wasn't for the fact that it was about 5 jobs back!
bruce@perens.com
And that's exactly what I asked for. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for acknowledging us. I'd like to see a new SlashDot that's even better than the old. Please let us help you define it.
Re:And that's exactly what I asked for. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that if /. is changed, it should change for the better. My big question is why should we believe you're listening now? At the beta rollout in October you solicited comments about what to improve on the beta. The users responded with >1100 comments and lots of emails. However, many of the same problems (most notably a broken comment system) are still there. Five months and functionality that is foundational to the way people use this site is still not there.
The folks at /. might be listening, but are they going to do anything with what they hear?
Re:And that's exactly what I asked for. (Score:5, Insightful)
How about not implementing anything at all, and just keep fixing the existing site?
Re:And that's exactly what I asked for. (Score:5, Insightful)
The comment system isn't finished yet, that's for sure
But that's the most frustrating thing of all! This is /. Comments should have been the first thing you got right. The comments make the site.
Re:And that's exactly what I asked for. (Score:5, Insightful)
But we are listening and incrementally improving the experience based on what users are telling us.
If you were listening, you would know that we do not want incremental improvements.
It's time to abort, and start with a blank sheet. Really.
Re:And that's exactly what I asked for. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got to say that the initial post on this topic perpetuates one of the paradigms that is sticking in the craws of Slashdot users. We are not an audience. We might be users, we might be members, we most certainly are contributors. But we are not an audience.
If you persist in thinking of us that way, then you're going to get it wrong. You serve an audience differently than you serve contributing members of a community. Most of the complaints hinge on that difference.
If we were an audience, we'd be coming here for the articles. Most of the complaints are about the comment system, how difficult it is to follow a conversation, how difficult it is leave a comment, etc. I come here, most of us come here, to read what my/our fellow slashdotters have to say. The value here is the community, and the most important contributors are other members, not the site or the editors.
If you don't get that straight, then you aren't going to "get" why we're upset, so there's no chance that you'll deliver us something that we can live with. And that community is going to vanish, leaving you with nothing of value.
You can take suggestions and maybe reduce the implosion, but unless you understand *why* we're upset, you're going to be heading in fundamentally the wrong direction.
Re:And that's exactly what I asked for. (Score:5, Insightful)
Use the Slashdot poll for something useful for a once. Put the top requested features, in a poll, and use the results to help shape your development cycle.
Those are just off the top of my head.
Re:And that's exactly what I asked for. (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep some space for ads if you want; I don't give a shit and I realize you've got bills to pay. I have the option of turning them off, but I don't because I like the site.
That said, information density is important. If you bump the font size and line spacing or significantly drop the comments column width, we can't read the comments or their surrounding comments' context. There'd better be a lot of lines before I have to "click for more", and I never want to have to "click for more" on the front page. This might mean reducing the size of those terrible banner images.
We need to be able to easily see the information on posts and navigate the discussion. Links to parent posts are absolutely necessary, current score, subject, and at least a preview of the post content if it's collapsed. Other useful information provided that I'd like to see stay prominent includes the username and UID number of poster. It was tough for me to get used to the collapsed/non-collapsed system with the last redesign, but it actually ended up giving a lot of information in a tight space and generally reserved more for better comments.
As it currently stands, the two problems cited above alone will kill the discussion oriented nature of Slashdot, users will desert, and revenue will tank.
Since there's a redesign in the works, this _could_ be a good chance to make some things actually work better! The "full" "collapsed" and "hidden" threshold sliders never seemed to work right for me. Obviously better encoding support would be nice. Maybe someday I won't have to type html to do simple formatting stuff. Since many of us are coders, perhaps some support for inline code could be cool? I won't harp on speed or javascript much, but I'm sure others will.
Re:And that's exactly what I asked for. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And that's exactly what I asked for. (Score:5, Insightful)
I vote for "I don't care how it looks as long as it has feature parity." Make it look any way you want but the comment system should be considered sacrosanct.
Classic Slashdot is ugly, amateurish, and extremely dated looking. Beta is ugly, amateurish, slightly less dated looking. It would have looked up to date in 2000 or so. Maybe.
Still, I understand the Dice wants to bring new users on board,and that some young 'uns may be put off with the frankly weird aesthetic of classic Slashdot. So I can live with the new look. But I can also live with Windows 8, and that puts me in a very small minority. If you want to expand your community by keeping the regulars and bringing in fresh customers, you have to bend over backwards to make the regulars feel valued.
Anyhow, isn't it feasible these days to give people whatever styling they prefer? Changing a community site like Slashdot (or Digg, or fark, both of which have had instructively disastrous redesigns) is a bit like changing the neighborhood bar to attract a younger, hipper crowd. The very idea puts the regulars off. But *unlike* a bar, you can contrive things so the old-timers still feel like they're in the same old ugly but comfortable place.
Okay that is better (Score:5, Insightful)
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
that's pretty much it, if you do insist on redesigning slashdot, at least keep it slashdot, this change was drastic and generic. we dont need another news site thats exactly like all the other news sites, we want this site, as is if you really really want to change a font somewhere sure, go nuts tinker that css a little bit
but do not expect us to react well to turning this site into generic garbage.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
When they say "we can't promise that every user will like every change", I think they mean "we won't promise that a majority will like the change".
The solution is simple: can Beta as a failure. Be grown-up enough to admit that it did not work, and start again from scratch, designing with the contributors in mind. You know, the guys who provide the majority of the content people come here for - the discussions.
It takes courage to admit that you've been wrong. That would be respected. But polishing a turd is not going to win anyone's admiration, or even sympathy.
Exactly Correct (Score:5, Insightful)
I decided to log in with my slashdot account to share this, something that I haven't done in years, for one single reason: with every new slashdot "redesign", the USABILITY of the site gets far, far worse (despite the site looking more "designy"). It really is clear that you guys have no idea how users actually USE your site. For example:
1. With all this copious whitespace, I can fit like 1 or 2 comments on the screen. Finding valuable or highly rated is like finding a needle in a haystack.
2. Everything is expanded by default, which, again makes it tiresome to skip through pages of low-rated comments.
3. The comment sort order makes no sense.
You don't seem to understand that the main value of Slashdot is (or rather was, from a long time ago) the comment section, and with each successive revision it just gets progressively worse. No one give a fuck about your flat, "techcrunchy", "Androidy" design when you keep making the site so much harder to use.
I've popped over to slashdot every week or so when all my links on reddit turn purple, just to see if you guys have improved, and it's kind of astonishing how absolutely backwards you view the design process.
Hey theres a new beta slashdot? (Score:5, Funny)
How do I check it out? Anyone got a link, or care to comment on if its any good or not?
Re:Hey theres a new beta slashdot? (Score:5, Funny)
I hear it's best viewed in Internet Explorer.
Just be honest - it's not for *US* (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that the one unifying opinion of those critical of the changes is that *no changes are necessary*. So, clearly this is NOT something that is meant to benefit the users - it's more likely part of some monetization plan.
Just admit it and move on - stop blowing smoke up our asses like our opinion actually matters. Maybe it did once, but that hasn't been the case for quite a while now.
Re:Just be honest - it's not for *US* (Score:5, Insightful)
Can someone from the /. team explain what exactly is wrong with the Classic site and why it can't be fixed? I just don't see why you had to start over with a completely new design when the old one works so well. A few tweaks is all that is needed.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just be honest - it's not for *US* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just be honest - it's not for *US* (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not?
Are you saying that in 2018 user expectations are going to be lower?
What the trend of your new design is pointing to is a lower information density. If you believe that such low density will meet the expectation of your users, that seems to indicate you are expecting different users.
Thanks for telling us you don't want us anymore.
Patch Notes (Score:5, Interesting)
"isn't going away until..." (Score:5, Insightful)
... If classic slashdot goes away then I will stop visiting slashdot. Partly out of the way this has been handled, but partly because "beta" slashdot doesn't work properly without javascript.
If you don't support people who don't wish to have needless code execution on their machine - then I am not visiting. Simple.
And here is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
We want to give our current audience the space where they are comfortable.
This is the fundamental problem between how the corporate overlords think and how the community thinks. Until this difference is resolved you will get the continual complaints and the eventual mass exodus. We are a community. We are not an audience.
I submit stories. I read stories. I add comments. I moderate comments. I am the reason that there is ad revenue.
I am Slashdot.
Re:And here is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
This. Don't think the community won't up sticks and leave en-masse either. Like most communities we will protect what we value, even if it means building a new town and moving everyone there.
No new users will come to Slashdot when it's just another crappy news blog with the standard retarded internet comments.
Credit where credit is due (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, they've said they're applying the brakes so don't attack then for doing what you want.
Re:Credit where credit is due (Score:5, Insightful)
We want them in reverse gear. And we want an apology, and an admission of total incompetence amongst those who were in decision-making positions.
Comments Are The Content (Score:5, Insightful)
Subject is rule #1.
Don't put anything in the way of that.
"Shareable by a wider audience" is too vague. What is difficult with the current design?
Re:Comments Are The Content (Score:5, Insightful)
From this and some of the things on the Beta FAQ [slashdot.org] I get the sinking feeling they're trying to move in the same direction that so many other sites are... into being "Web 2.0" and "social" and becoming SlashFaceBook.* They really don't grasp that a good chunk of the community doesn't care for that. (Heck, they don't even grasp that we are a community as opposed to being their "audience".)
* Comparing that bland and meaningless FAQ to the original [slashdot.org] tells you all you need to know. They're dumbing it down.
Why not keep classic forever? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most importantly, we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready. And — okay, we've got it — it's not ready.
Why are you so inflexible on the idea of keeping classic slashdot *forever*. Think of it as a protected historical landmark in the internet space. To help future generations understand where this 'blogging' thing really came from? Computers are good like that, keep classic.slashdot.org FOREVER and your audience^H^H^H CONTRIBUTORS might stop rallying against you.
Don't like Beta. (Score:5, Insightful)
I got redirected once. Was once too often. For some reason the current process seems to think that content comes last, and fancy headers, deasign and pages mean more. They don't. The beta page wasted a ton of space, showed me less content, was less clear and more invasive. I did not like it, did not enjoy it.
Why is it somehow we have ended up with people who are making things like Slashdot beta, Microsoft Metro, the new IOS, Gnome. A bunch of people who came out of the worst design schools ever? A bad decade at the schools? We just got unlucky?
I like slashdot, and have been around for a long time. But I'm not your damn plaything. Mess with the site, content and my usage - be warned, I can go away. So can others.
Your goals are diametrically opposed. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is nice that you speak about what YOU want. However, in the scheme of things, what you want is diametrically opposed to the community you claim to cherish. The appeal of Slashdot is the pedantry, the technical nature of things, and the overall level of the discussion. If I want to interact with a "wider audience" I can go talk on the Disqus comments that litter CNN, CNBC, etc. Short of having Wiki articles linked to every single in depth commenter's response I don't know how you are going to make things more "accessible" to a "wider" audience.
Also, please stop with calling us your "audience." It is demeaning. If you value our contributions to the functioning of your site so little that you consider us passive players, then I hope you press forward with your train wreck of a beta so that you can see just how much the "audience" actually contributes.
Lastly, tell the MBAs and PR guys/gals to lay off the BS and have a straightforward honest conversation with us. We are far from the drooling idiots you seem to think we are.
We really would like a new interface (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, exactly like the old interface, but with unicode.
There are lots of things that are annoying about slashdot, but almost none of them are found in the interface. None of them really need changing, except the lack of unicode support. Instead of wasting time trying to change the way slashdot looks when it looks just fine (It's not fancy, but it's clean compared to most of the web and it doesn't waste horrible amounts of space) you should spend the time on unicode. It's not sexy, but it is important.
Listening? Not too sure. (Score:5, Insightful)
In the words of Homer Simpson - "Just because I don't care doesn't mean that I don't understand".
I think the recent slashdot poll was directly tied to the redesign. Slashdot audience is getting older, the crowd is now mid-to later in their careers. I can see that - I've been a consistent reader since 1997.
So, Dice decides it is time to rejuvenate the website. I suspect that the objective is to pare down the number of crusty old coots, who block ads and otherwise freeload, and get the "hip, young" crowd that now hangs on Reddit and what not. It sounds like someone with experience in marketing had a hand in this.
The problem as I see it is that Slashdot is more of a Saab of web/news industry. You have a specific image, and a dedicated customer base. Historically, attempts at rebranding and reinventing oneself, in particular for a company with that kind of background, are generally not successful. This is particularly so when a rebranding is done in such an obvious, hamfisted way.
Dice was never a particularly web-savvy company. I've been using them as long as I've been a slashdot reader. Dice (no offense) is a poorly designed concentrator for all the spammy recruiters out there. It's a bit of a cesspool, but it serves its purpose. However, given their history and performance - it is highly unlikely they have sufficient web/social/marketing expertise to turn this site around.
Slashdot hasn't been as exciting as in the past for a while now. What it needed is fresh ideas, better ways to get involved in duscussion, *more* interactivity and possibly ability to connect among its users (I don't suggest it become a facebook, but it's has a long way to go in improving social side). Slashdot will not, in my view, benefit from gaudy pictures, "web 3.0" design and general dumbing down. You will not get the "hip crowd" and you will lose your current user base. Look at Saab for guidance.
sux (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment filter (Score:5, Insightful)
I tried the beta this morning. There was no obvious way to show only the comments rated 4* and above. There are ways of seeing funny or insightful posts, but you don't get to control how many.
The new design seems less space efficient. More clicks are required to read stories (including this one).
No plans to change in the near future.
Thank You For Listening (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for listening, and for taking our passion for this site and its battle-tested interface to heart. I look forward to seeing how serious you are about providing -- at least as an option -- the kind of lean, dense, static UI that made Slashdot work so well for so long.
Two comments (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I've got reasonable karma on here and the very few who recognise my login probably think I don't post total drivel *all* of the time, so I'd like to put in my two bob's worth. I don't like the beta as it is at the minute. The front page looks fine to me: lots of white space, but I can live with white space and it's no different from other websites, although I could very much do without the constant targetted videos from advertiers; but it's the comments pages that are distinctly compromised compared to the present setup. It's far harder to close an entire thread; it's far harder to close sections and leave others open and see quickly which comments have been added since the last refresh; far less content is onscreen at one time; and the comments screen is far too narrow, which compounds the previous issues. I'm sure that with more reflection I could think of other issues with the comments, but those are probably my greatest complaints.
Over the last few days the comments pages have been increasingly dominated by childish anti-beta messages. I understand these are probably born out of frustration and irritation (even anger on some parts), but they've made the website far less usable than if the beta had been rolled out without argument. This is the flipside of it: no redesign is worth fucking up a website over, and certainly doesn't justify the sheer amount of petulant whining the boards have been filled with.
And that said, over the last couple of days, when I've had mod points I've tended to use them to at least reverse the modding down of people protesting the new beta, since there seem to be no other avenues for people who genuinely care about how the comments sections of slashdot are presented. I have no issue with a redesign, but diminishing the usability of a service is a pretty hamfisted way of increasing its profitability.
Good ol' corporate speak (Score:5, Insightful)
I've heard all this shit before - that the guys in charge are listening to your efforts, that your concerns are being taken under advisement and that the end result will something everyone will appreciate. What people here especially hate most of all is fucking corporate speak they've heard a thousand times before and despite from the bottom of their hearts. It's patronizing to the audience who know exactly how things will play out. They always follow the same formula
People complained loudly to Microsoft regarding the all-caps of Visual Studio 2012/13 and Office 2013 during their pre-releases. What happened? They remained there, shouting back at the user in the finals. People complained to Microsoft regarding the lack of contrast between the various elements of the Office 2013 GUI as well as the default eye-melting white theme. What happened? Some very minor tweaks and the same eye-melting theme with minimal contract. They threw in a couple of darker themes which do add more contrast, but also make the software far more drab and miserable looking compared to say Office 2010, which in my mind is a thing of beauty.
Companies don't care. They don't give a shit unless there's a real threat to their bottom line. I'm honestly surprised though that the powers that be aren't scrambling to push out the news that they're throwing away the beta as a failed experiment before more people sign off permanently and move to greener pastures.
We're not the audience! (Score:5, Insightful)
We are not the audience. We are the performers!
Communication (Score:5, Insightful)
"The new site is a work in progress so Classic Slashdot will be available from the footer for several more months."
The ONLY reasonable interpretation is that after that it will not be. full stop.
"It's not an either/or. It's going to be both. If we haven't communicated that well enough, consider this post a first step to fixing that."
Did anyone anywhere ever think the the former communicates the latter?
"And â" okay, we've got it â" it's not ready."
So stop redirecting 25% of us until you've had a another good run at fixing it. And then, maybe put it out there and invite people to check it out instead of redirecting 1/4 of us while threatening us that its just months away from being the only site. You do realize a lot of us would have checked it out, given you feedback, and probably without having a nuclear meltdown over it.
"We have work to do on four big areas: feature parity (especially for commenting); the overall UI, especially in terms of information density and headline scanning; plain old bugs; "
So... The new logo design was good then!
" the need for a better framework for communicating about the How and the Why of this process."
If only this site had had a mechanism by which you could communicate with us and get feedback, perhaps in the form of comments! And if that mechanism itself had a mechanism with which to bubble the more interesting comments to the surface... why you'd really have something there!
Are you just trolling us? :p
The Why (Score:5, Insightful)
communicating about the How and the Why of this process
I think this is one of the biggest reasons you are getting such negative pushback. A very large part of the active and vocal Slashdot audience (the "community") probably share a similar viewpoint when it comes to change. Change for change's sake is bad, and if you want to change something that works just fine then you'd better be able to give me a good, objective reason. So far that just isn't something we've seen. What I see is a site that's been redesigned with two goals in mind:
We want to take our current content and all the stuff that matters to this community and deliver it on a site [that is] more accessible and shareable by a wider audience.
What exactly is it about the current site that makes it inaccessible? Which audience are you trying to reach? I'm quite serious -- knowing this may make it easier for people to accept change (assuming that the audiences you're reaching out to aren't "advertisers" and "market analytics"). Just going based on what you've said it sounds like you want to make Slashdot Yet Another generic news aggregator. Don't you remember Digg? That sad story should have taught you a few lessons about the value of a generic news aggregator and the results of alienating a community.
Will the new site finally support (even a small subset of) Unicode? Just adding support for that would probably make Slashdot accessible to more people than this absurd proposed redesign. No, I'm not kidding.
A fair critique of Slashdot beta. (Score:5, Informative)
The mixture of serifed and sans-serif fonts feels disorganized, and does not seem to serve a clear purpose.
Comments are the heart of Slashdot, and the current beta offering is not complete. It is more of an alpha... functionality is woefully inadequate.
Curated articles are what set Slashdot apart from hive-thought sites like Reddit. Keep the articles unique and on topic, that is why I visit.
Listening (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're listening, there's no evidence of it. You were plainly and clearly told of the flaws in the Beta site back in October and you have completely failed to fix them in the intervening months. It's not like you missed a minor bug or two, or got the color wrong by one hex numeral... it's a complete failure to grasp how badly the new site is broken and how ugly it is or to do anything about it. We gave you months, and you've wasted them.
No, you don't "got" it. Not even close, despite having a thermonuclear weapon detonate in your lap.
And this shows just hopelessly you don't "got" it - we are not your audience, we are a community, we are Slashdot.
#46177459 (Score:5, Insightful)
Sort out:
Black text, white background, anything else is absurd.
Ditch the boxes round the comments they are seriously ugly and not helpful.
When I ask for the desktop version, I want the desktop version FFS, my phones screen has the same resolution as some laptop screens.
Get rid of the option to choose all insightful, all interesting etc comments - it's pointless because of the crossover between these things and it would lead to some bizarre meaningless threads being displayed. Not useful.
Bring back the user info, friend foe, userid etc, slashdot looks raped without it.
Things worth keeping:
The ability to mod without scrolling to the bottom of the page and hitting the mod button (I open the post in a new page to mod it so as not to lose my place/it's quicker)
The ability to collapse threads.
But that's it, the rest is a seriously bad downgrade.
Things that should have been improved, why weren't they?
The text box I'm typing in right now is tiny - why?
There is 'allowed html' It would be nice to have some buttons to put those tags around some text when you highlight it.
To any damn fool who's answer is well 'why don't you go and re-write the code yourself', I have the question - why didn't you build your own house and car?
Why not just use the poll... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think
a) I like the beta, please do it asap
b) It's not there yet but keep working on it, but don't turn it on now.
c) It's an abomination. Do not use it ever.
d) I don't read Slashdot you insensitive clod.
If c) greatly exceeds the sum of a) and b) responses don't do it. All d) votes, for obvious reasons, don't count.
Feedback (Score:5, Interesting)
Heres your feedback: The site is AWFUL.
The reason I have thus far not taking your survey is it is HOPELESSLY biased in your favor and useless.
Scrap the new site, or don't expect me to be here when it's implemented. Social media is fickle, and this site will be a myspace memory if you continue to ignore the userbase. We can always go tolerate reddit for a while until something else takes it's place. I've been coming here for 10 years, but this may end it for me.
The 'Beta' Brand (Score:5, Funny)
The new Slashdot Beta is so horrible its not just destroying Slashdot its destroying Beta.
Remember when a Beta was cool? When you got to try the invite only gmail beta? When you got to beta test the next game in your favorite franchise? All that beta cool, destroyed in one fell swoop.
I don't even want to teach my kids the alphabet now, just because it kinda has Beta in it. Hell, even Alpha is less cool now just because its fucking associated with Beta. Even Omega is a bit less glamorous.
Shit, I'm going to have to switch to some sort of Early Testing, Testing, Final Testing sort of nomenclature for software releases now. Beta is that bad that just releasing other software labeled as a Beta is going to make me cringe.
And Beta Carotene, well, right the fuck out of my diet, health consequences be damned.
Fuck Beta,
-Greg
"omg it sucks!"? Come on, we're more articulate (Score:5, Interesting)
TFS says:
> okay, we've got it — it's not ready. We have work to do on four big areas:
> feature parity (especially for commenting); the overall UI, especially in terms of information density and headline scanning;
> plain old bugs; and, lastly, the need for a better framework for communicating about the How and the Why of this process.
Let's pretend for a moment that the folks making the decisions aren't so dense that they can't hear what everyone is telling them
Let's pretend they don't want to pull a "new Coke". They DID put up the beta as an option for a long time and actively solicit feedback,
after all, so maybe they are trying to get it right. What, specifically, are the problems that bother YOU? Any idiot on Twitter can squeal
"omg it sucks!", but I think we have some people on Slashdot who are more capable and articulate than that. We can come up with
better, more specific feedback than "omg it sucks!", can't we?
For me, the biggest thing is I want to be able to see the subject lines of comments like I can on the classic site. If I down-modded
comment has "hosts file" in the subject line, I know why it's down-modded and hidden - it's not something anyone wants to read,
and I'm not going to read it. Conversely, a down-modded comment with "MPAA is right about ONE thing" in the subject line is probably
down-modded because it challenges the groupthink of the Slashdot herd. That's something I'll click to read.
OzPeter makes a great point in http://meta-beta.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org] /.ers submit the stories, vote for the stories in the firehouse, comment, moderate the comments, and meta-moderate the moderation. We pretty well run the site, leaving Dice to just run the _server_. We are not the "current audience", we are a _community_, not an _audience_. An audience is passive. There are a ten thousand news aggregators trying to get an audience. If Dice wants yet another site chasing the audience, you can sure go build one. Don't throw away the Slashdot community first though. Just go build DiceNews.com and advertise it on Slashdot. You want to leverage the Slashdot brand for a site that's supposed to appeal to a broad audience? Sorry, if you turn Slashdot into yet another a broad audience site the Slashdot brand will immediately have the same value as the Enron brand. That brand value just won't transfer if you mess up the community that is loyal to that brand.
Subjects suck. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most importantly, we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready.
Well, that's a pretty weaselly statement, since you guys were confident enough in your new site to start redirecting a significant portion of your users there.
How about this instead -- "We will not remove Classic Slashdot." Make it an option if you really, truly believe that your beta site is actually better. You can set the new interface as the default, just make it easy to switch to the standard interface. Then everybody goes home satisfied.
death of a "brand" (Score:5, Insightful)
Why did you remove the Slashdot Green Title Bars from the comment threads? (the green title bars create an easy to see delineation between the comments and are easy to see even when scrolling fast. (they are also part of that Slashdot Brand I was talking about)
Over the past decade the Slashdot logo, the Slashdot green, the title bars and icons, unique details and config options have become part and parcel of the "Slashdot Brand". It's what makes Slashdot unique. By ignoring this you weaken your brand and your reader's loyalty. You are basically stripping away all that is Slashdot without adding anything useful or new!!!!
I Already Told You (Score:5, Interesting)
I already told you what was wrong with it and how to fix it.
You didn't listen.
Here it is again: http://i.imgur.com/rNPke5p.jpg [imgur.com]
Abandon beta as a failed experiment (Score:5, Insightful)
The good and the bad (Score:5, Insightful)
First, thank you for to Timothy and the rest of Slashdot's management for taking the time to reply. Maintaining communications between the site owner and the community it serves is important to creating trust between the two groups.
Nonetheless, a large part of me is screaming "about damn time", because this uproar could have been headed off twenty four hours ago if you had said exactly what you did with the above statement. That's not to say people would have believed you any more than do do now, but by remaining silent for a whole day you gave the impression that not only do you not care about what we think, but that it was corporate needs (legal, marketing, whatever) that kept you from issuing a statement. Smaller, individually owned websites tend to be quicker and more forthcoming with their responses because they don't have to go through various levels of approval first, and the Slashdot community - many of whom work in companies and are saddled with layers of middle-management pointlessly micromanaging their workflow - have little trust or love for corporate shenanigans. We tend to respect people more who speak bluntly and from their gut.
Still, at long last we did get a response, so I am grateful for that. Even better, you claim to be taking our feedback into consideration. I'm wary as to the truthfulness of this statement, but - for the time being - I'm willing to offer an olive branch.
Nonetheless, I think there is an onus upon Dice to be more forthright with their intentions with the redesign if they hope to regain some of the community's trust. Simple platitudes that you are "listening" are not sufficient. The biggest question we all have is to the overall goal of the redesign, especially since so many of the community feel it sacrifices what they consider the strength and draw of Slashdot: the community and the comments. We all understand that Dice is a business and needs to make money. We comprehend that increasing the audience is one method of achieving this goal. None of us, I think, are opposed to helping Slashdot become a more popular website. A redesign could draw in a new and larger readership. We get that. We just feel that your redesign is aimed solely at attracting new eyeballs while sacrificing your current user base.
Community websites like Slashdot are not like CNet or NYTimes or Apple. Those websites are unidirectional; the information is pumped down to the readership by the owners and the community involvement is minimal. But Slashdot - and other similar sites - are bi-directional; as much (if not more) of the website's value comes from the readership; is it any wonder the readers feel a sense of ownership and pride of "their" website? Is it no wonder that they feel betrayed when one side unilaterally forces their vision onto the community?
So I recommend that one of the web-designers at Slashdot take the time to walk us through the changes, both those we have already seen in beta and those you intend to work on moving forward. Let us know your reasoning for the different bits, how you came to these decisions, what your goals are. Have the designers write it up and - as much as possible - keep legal's and marketing's hands out of it. Be explicit, be detailed, be technical; we are, after all, the sort of audience who appreciates that sort of thing. Talk about your inspirations, and some of the feedback you have gotten. LET US KNOW WHY YOU ARE DOING WHAT YOU ARE DOING.
You also need to take the community's feedback into real consideration. Offer them different examples that they can vote on. Fark.com showed off preliminary Photoshop mock-ups of its redesigns long before the first line of HTML was written to its paying customers; you could try the same thing here. Let the audience pick which one they think is the best and then work from that one. Engage your audience and make them feel they have a voice.
Follow-up with slow changes. One of the biggest problems with beta.slashdot is it is a complete redesign, and un-necessarily so. Don't change everythin
At the risk of sounding cynical.. (Score:5, Insightful)
But this doesn't actually concede anything, does it?
Main points in this statement:
1: One in four users are still being redirected to the new beta.
2: The current Slashdot layout is still disappearing, to be replaced by the beta.
3: The beta needs development.
So what's so groundbreaking about this announcement? Where's the concession? I'm supposed to be happy about this, I suppose?
This is the part that bothers me:
We want to take our current content and all the stuff that matters to this community and deliver it on a site that still speaks to the interests and habits of our current audience, but that is, at the same time, more accessible and shareable by a wider audience.
So Dice wants the best of both worlds; the tech oriented, intelligent userbase contributions, and a wide audience to monetise those contributions to? It isn't going to work.
Specific Complains (Score:5, Informative)
In honor of you posting recognition of today's complaints, I've posted this using the beta. Even if some consider it pro forma at this point, here are some specific complaints:
1) "Oops! You do not appear to have javascript enabled. We're making progress in getting things working without JavaScript." Glad to hear it. No one should be "migrated" so long as javascript is mandatory.
2) White space and wasted space. Enough have made detailed complaints about this, so I'll just register my chagrin. I will say this: the people who come to this site are used to, indeed prefer, a denser presentation of information. This includes the text editor, which is absurdly restrictive on the x-axis.
3) Font size. Perhaps this falls under wasted space, but it's atrocious enough to deserve its own comment.
4) Incomplete summaries. Waste less space and use as much of the old summary as "Classic". (I recognize the drop-down menu allows one to switch between "Standard", "Classic", and "Headlines", but this, again, requires javascript. What is more, Standard adds nothing. Changes shouldn't be made for the sake of changing something. A change should be an improvement.)
5) Absurd margins on the right.
6) Obnoxious or irrelevant photos. We're literate here. Many of us read books that go on for hundreds of pages without a picture. We don't need pictures added like some security blanked.
7) Load more? The old system gave preference to higher modded comments but did not require that you filter for higher comments to see them. Of course when there are a great many comments, a load more button is useful. But such a button should not be obscuring high ranked comments within moments of an article being posted.
8) I just found another as I went to "Preview Comment." Why does the p tag produce what looks like four lines of white space?
9) Above all, all changes should be subjected to this test: Do they get in the way of the conversation? Do they make it harder to scan through the conversation, looking for interesting comments. If so, they are not improvements. They detract from the reason people come to Slashdot.
The formatting matters are some of the most obvious and often discussed. They should also be the easiest to fix.
"more accessible" != less information (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok slashdot...I love y'all and I am always in favor of improving things...
but look: making something "more accessible" to a "wider audience" to "share" absolutely does NOT mean dumbing down the UI, hiding menus, removing sidebars, and reducing content!
thanks so much for what you do, I genuinely love /.
but you *must* understand...****less complexity does not mean more accessible****
people come to /. because it is not dumbed down and over-marketed to 'the average reader'!!!
In plane English, not corporate speak..... (Score:5, Insightful)
the beta site that houses Slashdot's future look.
So this is how it is going to be
we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready
You will have this forced upon you at some point
Some of you have suggested we're not listening; on the contrary, some of us are 'listening' pretty much full-time.
and ignoring any suggestions because we are owned by Dice, and this is how they want it
because we're a community and we want to take everyone with us.
and advertise crap to you
Why? We want to take our current content and all the stuff that matters to this community and deliver it on a site that still speaks to the interests and habits of our current audience, but that is, at the same time, more accessible and shareable by a wider audience.
and advertise crap to you
And we want a platform where we can experiment with different views of both comments and stories.
and sell your information, and advertise crap to you
It's not an either/or. It's going to be both.
So shut up and take it
If we haven't communicated that well enough, consider this post a first step to fixing that.
So Fuck You and thanks for all the Fish
Thank you for replying Timothy (Score:5, Insightful)
I really do appreciate that you and Soulskill did at least break the silence that up until now has been deafening, but really, the nature of your reply does not fill me with confidence, and with the replies I am reading by other users, it looks as if that feeling is well represented, and that I am not alone.
I just want you to know that I am listening to you as well.
With that in mind, I have some difficult questions for you.
You say that you have been reading and contemplating our feedback. It is clear that you have been at least observing the fallout that has occured over the past few days here in the comments sections of some very promising and nice looking stories, as the quality of the community provided content dropped to levels that would make even /b/ look intelligent. Your colleague Soulskill even made some well received commentary recently, and we've eagerly awaited this public level of ice-breaking on the discussion. For this I, and clearly many others are greatful.
However, since you claim to have been receiving valuable feedback about the beta experiment since at least 5 months ago, why is it that the nature of the beta has not radically changed to accommodate that feedback? Why did you allow this situation to come to a head like this, if you have been observing and seriously considering the feedback provided?
I see in your announcement that you and slashmedia believe it is time for a change in the site's layout. What factors does slashmedia use to make these determinations, and why do you believe that a radical change instead of a refinement and polish of the current system is in order?
Can you please elaborate on some of the design choices that slashmedia has taken in the beta, ans why they felt these were good decisions, and why they have apparently completely ignored 5 months of user feedback about the beta?
I understand that nobody really profits from continuing the public protest, or from relentless, mindless trolling. That's why we need to have a real, and valuable discussion here about this, and why a show of good will about our feedback actually being considered, and how it is considered, in detail, is clearly needed for our community to resolve its differences with slashmedia's choices in performing its services as the community's host.
I am sure it would mean a great deal to all of us if the dialog did not end here. We, as a community need answers to these questions if we are going to stay and continue to contribute to what makes slashdot great.
I hate to say it, but ignoring us and leaving these kinds of questions unanswered is likely to be seen as a worse slap in the face than hearing only silence was. Please continue this dialog.
Re:Tempest in a teapot (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tempest in a teapot (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. The reason no-one RTFA is because it's usually shit, and they probably read it two days ago anyway. The comments are the interesting bit. Slashdot isn't a news site, it's a debate site.
Re:Tempest in a teapot (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. The reason no-one RTFA is because it's usually shit, and they probably read it two days ago anyway. The comments are the interesting bit. Slashdot isn't a news site, it's a debate site.
And when you do read the comments a lot of the time you end up seeing well reasoned arguments by people who are knowledgeable about TFA but can explain it without needing to water down the information.
Re:Tempest in a teapot (Score:5, Interesting)
I also don't care about the stories in and of themselves on Slashdot. I occasionally RTFM. Most of the time I read the comments. I like the moderation and I can easily adjust up or down depending on how much I want to read about a particular subject.
The comments on this site are generally intelligent and have added greatly to my tech knowledge over the years. I'd also add I have a deeper respect for different types of people and people pursuing different careers as a result of reading their comments.
I was on another web forum and just quit outright. With no moderation the comments on that site became a waste of time to read.
I like the current Slashdot site. Please don't change it. Slashdot it perfect as is.
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
These days "new and improved" usually means "we found a way to increase our profits by making it worse".
Re:Time to leave, Slashdot is dead. (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot is dying; Netcraft confirms it.
Fuckbeta (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fuckbeta (Score:5, Funny)
Also I can't see anyone's userid# damnit
Definitely a priority-1 critical problem!
Re:The Real Travesty (Score:5, Insightful)
But you seem to have failed to notice how badly the site was broken - and their announced intent to end support for Classic. Offering a choice between chocolate and rotting fish guts for dinner tonight is nice and all, but being told that regardless of what we chose tonight that from Tuesday onward it would be forever rotting fish guts... well, that kinda takes the pleasure away from the chocolate.
We did give constructive feedback - back in October when the Beta debuted. They completely failed to take that feedback into account or to make material changes to the Beta. We told them comments were broken, they're still broken. We told them the UI was unacceptable and broken, it's still unacceptable and broken. (Etc... etc...) That is why everyone so pissed.