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A Pre-History of Slashdot

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61–70 of 366 posts

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#61
Ah, slashdot. Things were good in the beginning. Then they sold out to Dice. And Dice took it in a bad direction. So bad that a bunch of us abandoned it for the comp.misc Usenet group.

And in my case, I have simply not returned, and don't plan to return, even though they 'claim' to be past the Dice era now. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#62
Slashdot was awesome right up until the point that they forced the redesign on everybody and drove away all the users that made it great. It would be the equivalent of HN forcing autoplay videos and animated banner ads on each page.

A lesson to reflect upon--monetizing is ok when it doesn't kill your userbase. My ID is under 5000 (cue the older ID replies) and I refuse to give them pageviews now.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#63
wow, crazy, how time flies. i stumbled onto slashdot in late '97 as a side effect of wanting to put together a computer for a project. i still think it had the best moderation system, however complicated it was. it gave you lots of control on how you wanted to view comments.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#64
Is there a way to figure out when you joined? Not seeing a "member since" date. My id # is 7xxxxx (6 digits). I was reading it regularly for quite a few years, maybe 4-5 years IIRC, before finally deciding to sign up. No idea why I waited so long, I guess I was more into the articles than the commenting side of things. Dumb of me!

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#65
post #64

Is there a way to figure out when you joined? Not seeing a "member since" date. My id # is 7xxxxx (6 digits). I was reading it regularly for quite a few years, maybe 4-5 years IIRC, before finally deciding to sign up. No idea why I waited so long, I guess I was more into the articles than the commenting side of things. Dumb of me!

Ditto. I just logged in to check. Mine is 2xxxxx (also 6 digits) and I, too, regret not signing up when I first started browsing -- was probably more like 2-3 years for me though. I'm guessing 1998-1999? But I really have no idea.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#66

Slashdot was awesome right up until the point that they forced the redesign on everybody and drove away all the users that made it great. It would be the equivalent of HN forcing autoplay videos and animated banner ads on each page. A lesson to reflect upon--monetizing is ok when it doesn't kill your userbase. My ID is under 5000 (cue the older ID replies) and I refuse to give them pageviews now.

Same here. I actively refuse to click on any url that goes to slashdot anymore.

I've only been back, by accident, a handful of times when a "short link" actually expanded out to slashdot, and every time, I closed the page as soon as I realized where the shortened url was really headed.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#67

Slashdot was a major inspiration to us as we grew Ars Technica, not to mention a major source of critical traffic and growth in those early years. Hats off to Rob! I owe you, dude. We all do :-)

You seem to write almost exclusively CPU and tech articles. Good for you. I wish your co-workers would stick to technology and lay off pushing politics.

[edit] Wow, the moderators couldn't even tell I was complimenting the guy.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#68
User #5825 here. Here are a few of my favorites:

The whole anti-Microsoft movement on /. Thy were the evil empire and Google was saintly. It’s funny how times change.

The weather station we sent you in hopes of doing a promotion for our weather equipment site, weathertools.com.

OOG THE CAVEMAN. He was DevOpsBorat at least a decade before Twitter.

The launch of Mac OS X and the launch of the first titanium PowerBook.

That CPU startup that Linus was a part of. Most disappointing build-up ever. LOL

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#69

Slashdot was awesome right up until the point that they forced the redesign on everybody and drove away all the users that made it great. It would be the equivalent of HN forcing autoplay videos and animated banner ads on each page. A lesson to reflect upon--monetizing is ok when it doesn't kill your userbase. My ID is under 5000 (cue the older ID replies) and I refuse to give them pageviews now.

> Slashdot was awesome right up until the point that they forced the redesign on everybody and drove away all the users that made it great.

The redesign wasn't what killed it. The constant astroturfing and (what I assumed to be) collusion between astroturfers and site maintainers killed it real dead.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#70
I hope this doesn't come off as dickish but it's not intended as such:

I was really expecting more... well... history. As soon as I get interested "he's gotta upgrade for the onslaught of users! How will he handle it?", the article stops.

p.s. Just realized Mr. Taco submitted it himself. So let me add, "Hope your having a great day, and thanks for contributing to the internet and hacker culture." ... But I still want to hear more about your history. ;) I've thought about starting my own IT-centric social site so I'm dying for info.

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