
Slashdot alternative in the works - pferde
http://www.soylentnews.org
======
GFischer
The interesting news for me were:

\- Slashdot was redesigned (it seems I really haven't been there in ages, and
I had a 6 digit ID starting in 1 :) )

\- Slashdot Media is doing badly:

[http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dice-holdings-inc-
re...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dice-holdings-inc-reports-
fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2013-results-243471811.html)

"revenues decreased 9% year-over-year to $4.3 million for the quarter ended
December 31, 2013 from the comparable 2012 period, due primarily to the
financial results at Slashdot Media"

"advertising revenue has declined over the past year and there is no
improvement expected in the future financial performance of Slashdot Media's
underlying advertising business. Therefore, $7.2 million of intangible assets
and $6.3 million of goodwill related to Slashdot Media were reduced to zero"

On SoylentNews itself, I don't think a MediaWiki install will take away users
from Slashdot, I see they're trying to install SlashCode, good luck with that.

~~~
mahranch
" _Slashdot Media is doing badly_ "

I've always believed that admin moderated link aggregators have a ceiling as
far as traffic/popularity goes. And so far, I seem to be correct in that
belief. Sites like mefi, /. and fark all hit a peak than plateau or more
commonly, drastically decline. I firmly believe a large part of that is due to
the moderation itself. When you have the same group of minds selecting the
content that gets seen, over the course of years, the users eventually get
burnt out seeing the same type of stuff, chosen by the same people over and
over again. The content becomes stale even if its fresh (if that makes sense).

There is one exception to this, however. That's reddit. Reddit's genius lies
in its subreddits. That, in short, is the ability for users to create _their
own_ link aggregators within the site. In this, the content can never 'get
stale' because if you get bored visiting /r/Cars, and your interests are now
about photography, there are a dozen different subreddits focusing on that
niche. There is always something there to keep your attention. Maybe you're a
political nut, maybe you're into botany, or even my little pony. There's
literally something for everyone. It's a link aggregator with virtually no
limits.

I think the biggest thing that separates reddit from all the rest, however, is
that the links aren't moderated by the admins or paid employees of the site.
Each subreddit/community has its own mods who make the rules. Some communities
are modded very laissez faire-ish while others like /r/askscience are modded
with an iron fist. The drawback to that is it can give rise to internal drama,
but I believe that's easily offset by the limitless potential. I think reddit
will eventually be spoken in the same breath as twitter and facebook a few
years from now and sites like slashdot, fark and mefi will all but be gone or
forgotten.

~~~
jeremysmyth
The corrollary to this is that all community-moderated sites (including this
very one we sit in) tend toward Digg, and ultimately toward Cheezburger.

There's a cycle: Clique with narrow shared self-moderated interests, becomes
cool, attracts more people with broader interests, self-moderation becomes
wider and people vote up things with more general appeal, until ultimately it
all becomes a new "cool things on the internet" bucket. I tend to prefer sites
with stronger guidelines and stronger moderation.

Stack Overflow has strong guidelines but still gets its share of detractors,
because it doesn't allow "cool things on the internet".

Slashdot is still mod-curated, has sections, but stories don't hit the front
page unless voted up. It's a different model to HN, but not _that_ different.
It still relies on other people's clicks to make me see it, and in that model
the community becomes the key factor. Is Slashdot's community dead? That's the
question, not just the infrastructure.

------
TuringTest
Meanwhile, many people have (re)installed a newsgroup client and are actively
commenting at comp.misc.

(Or reading it through Google Groups:
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.misc](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.misc)
)

~~~
ionwake
What other groups do HN users recommend?

~~~
tdk
There is a usenet thread discussing groups for geeks here:
[http://squte.com/usenet/comp.misc-list-active-
newsgroups](http://squte.com/usenet/comp.misc-list-active-newsgroups)

Among those recommended are: comp.editors, comp.os.linux.advocacy,
sci.electronics.repair, rec.games.roguelike.nethack, sci.logic,
sci.physics.relativity, alt.philosophy & uk.rec.sheds

------
wila
I do wish soylentnews all the luck with the new news site. If it is any good
people will come.

But do not tell your readers what to do. The "don't visit slashdot during this
week" advice is a bit weird and isn't helping. Focus on your project, not on
another one. It is my decision to visit if I want.

If slashdot serves me a beta page (which they just did) I'm out and they will
see less of me that way.

------
freehunter
>SoylentNews is people!

>"News fresh as processed corpses"

I can't even describe how bad this is. I guess it's slightly better than if
they called it "The Cake is a Lie News".

------
jccalhoun
For those who haven't gone to slashdot for a while, here's the beta site which
seems to be the source of controversy:
[http://beta.slashdot.org/](http://beta.slashdot.org/)

Personally, I don't think the design is the problem but the person who seems
to be selecting the stories...

------
davidgerard
The actual problem is that approximately nobody reads Slashdot any more.

Ten years ago, a Slashdotting was in the hundreds of thousands of hits.
Nowadays, it's a couple of thousand over maybe six hours.

So this is an attempt at a rump community forking a dead product.

------
SchizoDuckie
>>> Check out the look and feel of the new site

>>>
[http://imgbin.org/index.php?page=image&id=16688%7C](http://imgbin.org/index.php?page=image&id=16688%7C)

Really? Are they kidding?

~~~
freehunter
I'm beginning to believe this is an early april fool's joke.

~~~
SchizoDuckie
I actually checked the dates to see if this wasn't a project that was started
back in 2002, but the article is actually recent.

~~~
ancientt
Yup. Slashdot was driven by open source software before Dice.com took over.
Now you have to go back to that point to get source code and yes, it's ugly
and mind bending to try to work with it. But it has been done before:
[http://barrapunto.com/](http://barrapunto.com/)

