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A Pre-History of Slashdot

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Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#121
How convenient he left out the parts about how people used to trade pirated software and kiddie porn regularly in the comment section in the early days. They made a lot of money off of that, I can see how he'd want to forget about that unfortunate truth.

Sure the internet was a much different place in the 90s, but still, it was practically encouraged by the admins.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#122
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the redesign made it unusable, with an inscrutable learning curve. The astroturfers then took over once the organic traffic dropped off a cliff.

I recall that the redesign might have been very ugly but didn't increased the learning curve. Yet, the userbase stuck around and pushed for at least a way to get their old slashdot back. Complaining about slashdot's lack of unicode support was a in-joke. But then the astroturfing problem blew up and in no time killed slashdot. The community tolerated trolls, even the infamous GNAA, but slashdot's industrial-level ast…

The redesign changed the filtering and visibility settings and the way they worked. It was virtually impossible to read the way I did prior to the redesign.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#123
post #71

Slashdot user #578 here. :) Besides pre-web stuff like Usenet and BBS boards /. was the first place I really felt like part of a community. I still remember fondly the times that stuff I submitted made it to the front page (like the story announcing the title of Star Wars Episode 1), like I was now "famous" with a bunch of people I really wanted to impress. Like most of us, I drifted away a long time ago but I'm alwa…

Like most of us, I drifted away a long time ago I just checked and was shocked I remembered my password there.

Wow, good memory, assuming your username, boasting of your new high speed acoustic coupler modem, is any indication of when you registered your account :-)

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#124

Thanks cmdrtaco! Throughout the years, I'd turn to /. to keep up to date on latest shakings and goings ons. I first heard about MythTV there back in the heady days before the home media landscape was bought up and "civilized". I got to see a constant reminders of the failings for the RIAA and so....many....patent troll cases. I remember the crap packt publishing reviews too - basically getting someone to pimp their b…

I remember the endless IBM vs. SCO lawsuit discussions.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#127

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.

I honestly agree that ArsTechnica has lost something since Jon quit (or he quit because the writing was on the door).

And not as much the politics, as the feeling that the site has become more "partisan" in the tech world.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#128

I remember the early days of slashdot fondly, although I didn't actually make an account until a few years later. It was such an interesting mix of serious discussion, in-jokes, and amusing trolls (even the infamous goatsx troll that I fell for more than once.) I still think that the moderation and meta-moderation was one of the most interesting experiments in a self-governing commenting system, even though it was cl…

More like: 1. Group #1 joins who care about site 2. Group #1 improves site. Sense of "community" keeps things in check. 3. Site grows in popularity and group #2 joins 4. Site loses sense of community and ability to moderate itself effectively. 5. Group #1 leaves

also see: twitter, the internet, tech in general...

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#129
I wish that people would stop blogging on Medium, especially about Free software topics. I click the link and get an obnoxiously animated popup shoved in my face that tells me that I've read my two articles for the month and that I should log in for the full experience. Why should people be asked to sign in to follow a blog when there is RSS/Atom? Learning how to use Hugo, Metalsmith, Hexo, Pelican, or Jekyll is not difficult.

Re: A Pre-History of Slashdot

#130
Fact: Slashdot is dying

It is official. Netcraft now confirms: Slashdot is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Slashdot community when CmdrTaco confirmed that he is resigning from Slashdot, now that Slashdot market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all geek news outlets. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive geek news reading test.

You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Slashdot because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for Slashdot. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Slashdot YRO is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core contributors. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Slashdot contributors only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Slashdot is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Slashdot leader CmdrTaco states that there are 7000 users of Slashdot. How many users of Ask Slashdot stories are there? Let's see. The number of Ask Slashdot stories versus Slashdot posts is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Ask Slashdot stories users. Slashdot book reviews (or, 'Slashvertisements') are about half of the volume of Ask Slashdot stories. Therefore there are about 700 Slashvertisments. A recent article put Slashdot Security posts at about 80 percent of the Slashdot market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Slashdot users. This is consistent with the number of Slashdot posts.

Due to the troubles of OSNews, abysmal sales and so on, OSNews went out of business and was taken over by Digg, another troubled geek news site. Now Digg is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Slashdot has steadily declined in market share. Slashdot is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Slashdot is to survive at all it will be among geek news dilettante dabblers. Slashdot continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dead.

Fact: Slashdot is dying

(source from Thursday August 25, 2011 @12:39PM: https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2397584&cid=37209054 also notice I got a n00b to respond to me... oh, such simpler times ;) )

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