May 15, 2001
8:58 PM   Subscribe

Slashdot addict? Time to kick the habit.
posted by darukaru (13 comments total)
 
Whoops, apparently this made memepool and I didn't notice.
posted by darukaru at 8:59 PM on May 15, 2001


Hmm, well, I'm addicted to slashdot. Though I do go through a cycle of sites to get info, including most of those listed below.
posted by ericdano at 9:18 PM on May 15, 2001


How come MeFi isn't listed with the links posed as alternatives for Slashdot? I never go to Slashdot myself, and I'm not sure why people still do. I found it to be unworthy of my time over a year ago.
posted by ZachsMind at 9:28 PM on May 15, 2001


I was momentarily interested, but if I wanted to read a bunch of Katz bashing, well I'd just read slashdot now, wouldn't I?
posted by sudama at 9:36 PM on May 15, 2001


Ars Technica is too hard to read - interface is too dark
& too busy. Darn it! Wonder what the writer's real beef
with Jon Katz is....
posted by Lynsey at 10:04 PM on May 15, 2001


is it ok to mention the other site? Kuro5hin.
BooYah for democratic article review.
posted by tiamat at 10:16 PM on May 15, 2001


I dunno what's up with the writer, but my beef with Jon Katz is that, uh, he's a long-winded moron. Taco & Co. keep him around because he lends *some* kind of journalistic cred to the place, which is otherwise just a bunch of propellerheads. But he can only ride the Hellmouth stories so far...

As for kuro5hin: 99% of discussion on an article takes place while it's still inside the moderation queue (and some people consider this a feature!) Kinda defeats the purpose of story moderation.
posted by darukaru at 10:25 PM on May 15, 2001


In reason #7 he criticises slashdot for letting the average public control the moderation of discussion. In reason #2 he criticises slashdot for not letting the average public have more control. Hrmm. He also doesn't understand a lot of the motivations for some of the things slashdot does. I agree with some of the stuff he said (personally I'm getting sick of ego-rich maturity-lacking hacker types), but he demonstrates that he is equally clueless.

I think everyone is off the mark. Public moderated sites (kuro5hin) get bogged down in the democratic process. By the time you see something on kuro5hin, it's 2 weeks old. Old-media style edited sites like the ones the author mention tend to be boring, me-too stuff you see everywhere. They are very "professional" and also very predictable. Slashdot tries to kind of mix it all, but they post the same five stories every day with different words. I could write a script that would randomly generate a page daily that could probably pass for any given day on slashdot (1 part DCMA discussion,2 parts linux advocacy, 1 part GPL misuse stories, etc). It gets really boring.

All three of those designs are fundementally flawed. The ultimate site DOES exist, but I'm not going to tell you the address. ha!
posted by bonzo at 10:27 PM on May 15, 2001


I still really like ./, my only quibble is their audience's complete knee-jerk anti-Microsoft venom, which lessens the impact when it's truly warranted. That and the delusion that Linux can be a consumer os. Otherwise, one of my daily surfs...
posted by owillis at 12:40 AM on May 16, 2001


I'm just as glad MeFi didn't make the list; we seem to be getting more than our share of flamers without any help.
posted by harmful at 6:29 AM on May 16, 2001


Hmm, I wonder if we need a Quit Metafilter movement. Hell, I've lost so many hours here, I need a MetaMetafilter to keep track of the good stuff before it gets worse.
posted by norm at 9:20 AM on May 16, 2001


skallas, you can go here to see all the stories accepted to slashdot, including the ones that don't make the front page.

Slashdot has had a rough run the last two weeks, but it's still a must read for me.
posted by NortonDC at 7:28 PM on May 16, 2001


I'll have to admit that Slashdot can be exasperating. It's a mix of everything ranging from the extremely technical to teen-aged, pimply-faced, testosterone-overdosed flamers with no linguistic ability and less education. However, there ARE coders there..., serious ones who post and discuss often. I've learned much, so "karma" doesn't matter. I go there for information. I must say that finding that info is more like fishing for a diamond in a cesspool than searching for a needle in a haystack. To sum it up, /. is like a big city. It has neighborhoods to avoid. And as for those pimply-faced ados who post between SlashZit sessions before the mirror when they're not masturbating to the music of Metallica..., I'd rather see them concentrated on the Slashdot boards than here for example. Besides, you'd be surprised how intelligent some of them really can be when they're not under the influence of a toxic reaction to Clearasil.
posted by Glanz at 8:14 AM on May 19, 2001


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