

Slashdot redesign is now in beta - WestCoastJustin
http://beta.slashdot.org/

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breckinloggins
It looks... okay. I'll leave the technical issues (such as non-responsive
elements) to people with more skill to critique them.

My main issue with the redesign is that it's too generic. It doesn't look that
much different than any other site. My personal preference would be something
very much _like_ this new design but that incorporates more of the signature
things that make Slashdot look like, well, Slashdot.

A good example of a site that pulls this off is reddit. Reddit actually looks
quite a bit different from the way it did when it launched, but it still looks
like reddit. I think this is primarily because reddit doesn't like launching
"THE" new design every once in a while. Its strategy is more of constantly
tweaking the look of the site. I think Slashdot should take this approach.

~~~
taftster
I mean, that's nice and all. But Slashdot, in design terms, has been locked in
the past for so long without incremental design updates - it's likely that
anything more than very simple cosmetics would be perceived as a radical
change (much like this).

If Slashdot would have been doing incremental design changes like Reddit, then
possibly this beta wouldn't look "unlike" Slashdot. It's just that they are
attempting to radically catch up or risk being left a relic of Web 1.0
forever.

Slashdot's previous design changes have always, for me, made the experience
worse, not better - so I for one appreciate this new direction and welcome our
new /. design overlords.

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AmVess
Longtime /. user here, and this redesign will probably kill the site...not
that it's as healthy as it used to be.

I'm not being melodramatic here, but it's crystal clear that Dice have no idea
what /. is about.

At least HN and Ars haven't been ruined by PHB's.

~~~
dombili
Agreed. That commenting system looks so bad. I don't know what they were
thinking.

~~~
taftster
As opposed to the old commenting system? If slashdot would have just stayed
with the original commenting system (which didn't look much unlike HN), they
would have likely stayed relevant. I don't think this beta does any more harm
than previous design efforts.

~~~
dombili
Just because I'm not a fan of the new commenting system, doesn't mean I like
the old one. I certainly don't. But I definitely prefer the old system to the
new one.

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Amadou
What are they trying to fix?

Maybe they have a requirements document somewhere that defines the goals of
this redesign, but I don't see anything like it on their blog post. Just a
couple of hand-wavy statements that don't describe the changes in any level of
detail.

If they can't tell us their goals and how the changes achieve those goals, all
I can do is take the changes at face value which is basically too much white-
space and reduced functionality for reading comments.

Also not happy about the reliance on googleapis - as far as I can tell, every
significant amount of javascript added to slashdot over the years has been of
questionable usability at best. Maybe it is nicer under the hood, but from the
user's perspective all they've done is add complexity without any
corresponding improvement of the user experience.

~~~
alphakappa
Slashdot has never been a beautiful website. I remember the previous redesign
- it made the site look a bit different, but it was essentially the same. (And
the html is not very pretty either)

However, Slashdot has also always been about the discussion, so a lack of
prettiness is easily forgiven. I feel that this redesign fails on this count,
since the new design while being still average, it makes the discussion page
less usable. Instead of the wide discussion page that made it easier to
navigate large threaded discussions, you now have a narrower page that makes
the comments feel like an added afterthought.

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prawn
Looks a couple years behind but my main criticism is of those images. In most
cases, they appear largely irrelevant but are quite visually dominating and
not strongly tied to their respective stories. I instinctively check the note
beneath it for a clue as to which story it relates to and see just the image
credit.

It seems like they're using images for the sake of it and the end result is
less useful information in each screenful of content.

Imagine if Hacker News put in an image like that every 5-10 headlines!

~~~
rwg
I Twitter-whinged about this a few weeks ago, except I used an Ars Technica
story as the example.[1]

I think it's a case of "everyone else is doing it, so we should, too!" Or
maybe I'm completely underestimating the "oooh, shiny!" effect on a website's
average visit duration.

\---

1\.
[https://twitter.com/areuugee/status/380384096762867712/photo...](https://twitter.com/areuugee/status/380384096762867712/photo/1/large)

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Miyamoto
Slashdot should be imitating HN or Reddit's design. Liberal usage of
whitespace is NOT a good idea for news aggregators. (too slow to scan content)

~~~
toomuchtodo
I'm surprised Reddit doesn't offer a service where you can have your own
"clone" of Reddit (similar to how you can pay for a white label Stackoverflow
subdomain). Like a SaaS replacement of vBulletin or PHPBB.

~~~
taspeotis
> similar to how you can pay for a white label Stackoverflow subdomain

[citation needed]

~~~
mhp
You cannot pay for a white label subdomain. You can however license the engine
for internal use only (but pricing makes it only make sense for large
institutions).

citation: [http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/16054/is-the-
stack-e...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/16054/is-the-stack-
exchange-engine-available)

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bmslieght
OMG they killing it slowly. The new owners do not get that the most important
part is able to read the comments. I dont^wdidn't go to /. because each
article had photo. I wnet because it filter news to news for nerds and the
comments were informative/funny/insightful/interesting or just plain troll.

Poor CmdrTaco

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elorant
Too much white space. Plus it looks more like a blog rather than a news site.
Why go with only two columns and not taking advantage of the rest of the
screen real estate. Sure it looks tidy, clean and it’s responsive but I can’t
say I’m impressed.

By the way, what happened to the tags? I don’t see them in any article.

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lyndonh
I gave up reading Slashdot* but I have started reading it again occasionally.
The new design looks like any other blog; I might give up again if they go
with this look.

Problems with Slashdot that caused me to leave: * Stories getting later * Less
relevant stories * Stories posted with opinionated comments in the summary *
Commenting got slower and waiting unusably long for a preview * Horrible
moderation; e.g. add lots of irrelevant links to Wikipedia = +5; too many
(un)"funny" comments; way too many meme comments * Anti patent stance with no
understanding of what patents actually are

I don't see Reddit as an alternative. Reddit is where you go to waste time.
I'm not interested in captioned photos, TIL or AMA.

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bane
Well, this absolutely destroys the commenting system.

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joeblau
Was the problem the design of the site or the community? I was never really a
big /. user but from everything I've read, it seemed like the community was
the main issue.

~~~
toomuchtodo
The community. Definitely the community. I used to be a frequent Slashdot
reader, but moved on to Reddit.

~~~
taspeotis
For me, Slashdot killed Slashdot. The editors increasingly did not care about
editing the content that was submitted (and not just from a grammatical
standpoint). I stopped subscribing to Slashdot's RSS feed just in time to
avoid shit like this [1] appearing in Feedly.

To be fair to Slashdot, however, they have removed the "stuff that matters"
tagline from visibility on their site (it's in the source).

That, and Hacker News seems to be about 3 days ahead of /. so it's kind of
redundant to read it. Unless I want to learn about new keyboard shortcuts. I
read Ars too, which is sometimes a bit behind HN but also covers different
material.

[1] [http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/08/26/0010239/the-
greatest...](http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/08/26/0010239/the-greatest-
keyboard-shortcut-ever)

~~~
rgbrenner
I started reading slashdot in like 99.. the editors didn't 'edit' the stories
back then either. In fact, as far back as I can remember people have been
complaining about the editors no longer doing their jobs.. which is weird
because as far as I could tell, they never did them to begin with.

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toomuchtodo
So they're going for the Lifehacker/Gizmodo/Engadget sort of look. Huh.

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colmvp
Doesn't seem responsive to wider screens, i.e. fixed width beyond a certain
point and wasted space.

Images also seem way too big. Seems like they want to go more of editorial
(de-emphasis on ratings, emphasis on visuals).

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flycaliguy
I'm reading some slash dot comment sections and although the jokes remind me
of the good old days (hot grits, n __ __*...) the quality stinks. That site is
better left a 15 year old memory.

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contextual
Slashdot, concentrate on the mobile version. Most of us read /. when we're in
bed and supposed to be sleeping.

~~~
_sh
I do my sleeping at work, you insensitive clod!

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nl
I remember Slashdot before it went green (circa 1997?) From memory it was
black & white I think.

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richbradshaw
Wasn't it only designed a couple of years back? They had that competition to
redesign it IIRC.

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pippy
I still frequent Slashdot - I'm not that impressed. I'm reminded by digg 2.0

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kunai
Seems to be following all of the recent clichéd design trends. /. always had a
distinctive style, and that's been bastardized. Not impressed.

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SeanLuke
Fixed width. :-(

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rhizome
Looks like Talking Points Memo.

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InclinedPlane
Neat, now it looks like every other blog out there. That's.... good for them I
guess, they're brand didn't seem to have much value of late. Seems like maybe
there are better things to put effort into though

