Journal Daniel Dvorkin's Journal: beta beta beta 4
To whom it may concern:
A while back, I was invited to take a look at the Slashdot beta. I looked at it and quickly decided that it was too painful to use, and hoped (vainly, I knew) that it would die a quiet death. Today, when logging into Slashdot, I was greeted with this cheery message:
MOVIN' ON UP. You are on Slashdot Classic. We are starting to move into new digs in February by automatically redirecting greater numbers of you. The new site is a work in progress so Classic Slashdot will be available from the footer for several more months. As we migrate our audience, we want to hear from you to make sure that the redesigned page has all the features you expect. Find out more.
In other words, we have here all the signs of a corporate "beta" site that will be rolled out regardless of user reaction. Let me be quite clear: "all the features I expect" are already on Slashdot (what you're adorably calling "Classic"). It works. It's not broken. Don't try to "fix" it, because the proposed "fix" irrevocably breaks the entire Slashdot look and feel.
When the beta becomes the only option (and I know it's almost certainly "when" at this point, not "if") Slashdot will become a ghost town. You will have killed what was once one of the most lively, interesting, and important sites on the web. I've loved this site for fifteen years now, but I'm not going to make myself suffer for the zombie wreck of something that used to be great.
Sincerely,
Daniel Dvorkin
UID 106857
Sadly... (Score:2)
Dice MUST be trying to kill slashdot purposly. I suspect that someone with a lot of shares of Dice stock owns that gawdoffal geek,com. I've already registered at a new slashdot [slashdot.org] (which has no content as yet).
When classic is gone, I'm gone too.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm in the "never attribute to malice ..." camp; I don't actually think they're trying to kill it, although it may well be that the higher-ups don't care much one way or another.
Altslashdot.org looks interesting, but I have to admit I'm not holding my breath for anything to come of it. I'll keep checking back in, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, K5 was a god site back in the day before Rusty abandoned it for, uh, some liberal site, even with a thriving slashdot, which I don't think will exist much longer. So if they don't do anything too stupid maybe they'll thrive. I hope so, I have a 3 digit UID there, 123.
I didn't come here much before Jongular, k5's troll admin, annoyed me enough to leave there. I came back to slashdot when I found they'd instituted journals (I sincerely hope the new site institutes them).
Re:Sadly... (PS) (Score:2)
I answer Hanlon's razor with my own, never attribute to incompetence when greedy self-interest will explain. I suspect Dice is owned by someone who has always hated slashdot and wants it dead. I simply can't believe anybody could push forward with something that is obviously going to kill the site, or that they're stupid enough to think it won't.