Hrothgar The Great's Journal: Gone To Shit

Slashdot had already lost most of my interest some time ago, as you'll be able to quite easily tell if you are bored enough to read through my recent comment history; however, I still have been reading it regularly for the last couple of years. A couple of days ago, however, I stumbled across what was by far the most atrocious article summary I have ever seen on Slashdot, and I can't keep my mouth shut about it any longer.

Heartless Gamer writes:

"2old2play has another great story up looking into how games have become more complicated due to strategy guides. From the article; "Strategy guides have affected gaming by making games harder for all of us. That's right, it's not a typo -- strategy guides have created more difficult games. Lend me your eyes and attention spans, and I'll explain. Admittedly, it may be a rambling explanation, but bare with me and we should get there eventually."

Ya know I always find a strategy guide for things like Final Fantasy just because some puzzles are just ridiculous and I have no interest in trial & erroring for an hour when I'd rather kill monsters. But there really is somethign to this.

The spelling errors are bad enough; although I can't hold them against the original poster - one was from the submitted article, and the other was obviously just a typo, which anyone might do when submitting something to a site like this. I do, however, question what, exactly, anyone who works for Slashdot is DOING when article summaries such as this one are obviously posted verbatim with no editing whatsoever. Seriously, do you guys WORK for a living? How in the hell hard would it be to CHECK YOUR SUBMISSIONS?

What REALLY offends me about this entry though, is the casual use of language in the posting. "Ya know" and "Trial & Erroring" are both just extremely lazy ways to phrase something, and once again, I am not going to blame the original poster, because frankly, that kid is NOT PAID by Slashdot for his submissions, so why should he give a rat's ass about the professional quality of his summary? He's just some guy who plays video games. There are EDITORS who are PAID to put these articles on the front of Slashdot - WHERE ARE YOU GUYS? How much effort would it take for you to GLANCE at this entry and say to yourself "PERHAPS I SHOULD SPELL CHECK AND CORRECT THIS FOR GRAMMAR"? Have any of you passed the second grade?

The discussion forum was even worse. Since this is a video game article, any talk of professionalism was, as usual, overrun by extremely irritating fourteen year old grammar apologists, convinced that proper grammar is unnecessary as long as you might understand the underlying CONCEPTS their poorly worded speech attempts to convey. And naturally, anyone who complained about the submission had their own grammatical flaws pointed out to them, as if somehow the situation of some jackass posting in a discussion forum is in ANY WAY similar to that of a professional "news website" posting articles ON ITS FRONT PAGE. Guess what, assholes, neither I nor any other grammar nazi here am paid to write articles, nor post. SLASHDOT'S EDITORS ARE.

This site is terrible, and you should feel terrible if you work for it.

Sad, but true...

[TopShelf]

I can't find the link now, but there was a JE entry a few months back by one of the "editors" here who basically said grammer doesn't matter, we all know what's being said, etc.

They just don't give a $hit, and like you, I'd be ashamed to put stuff up like that under an editorial banner. Whatever they're getting paid, anything over $6 an hour is flat-out robbery.