Slashdot’s new interface could kill what keeps Slashdot relevant

Flashy revamp seeks to draw new faces to the community—at the cost of the old.

Read the whole story

 

[VulcanTourist]

Lee, you're a very sneaky guy; I see what you did here. I'm twiddling my thumbs now, waiting to see how long it takes for this article to hit Slashdot's front page... or will the editors give every submission of it a smackdown? Let the fun ensue.

 

[achbed]

VulcanTourist[/url]":1mz0f9lm]Lee, you're a very sneaky guy; I see what you did here. I'm twiddling my thumbs now, waiting to see how long it takes for this article to hit Slashdot's front page... or will the editors give every submission of it a smackdown? Let the fun ensue.

Give it a couple days. They usually have a 48 hour backlog of news.

 

[wvmikep]

Eventually, you run out of the old guard. Slashdot was running the risk of turning into one of those restaurants that only old people go to and which closes because they started running out of old people.

 

[thebonafortuna]

I had completely forgotten about /. Completely. I used to be a regular contributor there, but for some reason stopped visiting the site a while back. After reading this, I went and logged in. My last comment was 2008 (!!!?). My last contributed article, 2007. I had no idea how much time had passed. What's more, I hadn't thought about visiting again since.

I moved on because I found better tech sites with less belligerent user bases. Not sure the owners can fix that with a design update. Good luck to them.

 

[potato44819]

Let me know when we get confirmation from netcraft.

 

[Bengie25]

Black_Obsidian[/url]":2yvj1o4p]I'm torn because I consider the "old" UI (and thus UX) to be fucking horrific, but then the content has rarely impressed me, and the comments have their own special UI/UX hell, with a bonus that they're seemingly overflowing with garbage anyway.

Because of that, I've probably visited Slashdot six times in the past decade, so I'm obviously not a user, and I don't have any "skin in the game" as far as redesigns go. The reason I'm torn is because a less-shitty UI might actually incline me to visit the site more often, but if it drives away the very people creating the content, then what's the point of drawing new visitors?

The UI is fine, but not to say it couldn't be better. If you can't appreciate /. as it is or has been, then you probably won't add much value to the user base. I've been reading their comments since around '98. Many are a waste of time, but some people can make some really great arguments. Lots of great back-and-forth. I read at -1, which means I read everything, even the fully down-ranked comments.

 

[cateye]

thebonafortuna[/url]":3tygkzv4]I moved on because I found better tech sites with less belligerent user bases. Not sure the owners can fix that with a design update. Good luck to them.

Pretty much. When the abuse from your self-appointed cognoscenti is worse than 4Chan, you have a problem that can only be solved by burning the whole thing to the ground and starting over, which may be what they're trying to do. I don't know, I don't intend to resuscitate my low-5-digit ID to find out.

 

[achbed]

wvmikep[/url]":36u3lwp9]Eventually, you run out of the old guard. Slashdot was running the risk of turning into one of those restaurants that only old people go to and which closes because they started running out of old people.

More like they remodelled a small-town cafe into a hip new trendy club with a concentration on bar business, and half the people stop coming because that's not what they wanted - they liked the old way. They also don't get the hipster crowd because it's not in the city, and besides, there's old people there. So they lose 50% of their revenue and close up within a few months.

 

[VulcanTourist]

Scorp1us[/url]":t8l27d1g]

Wheels Of Confusion[/url]":t8l27d1g]

Scorp1us[/url]":t8l27d1g][SNIP]
The other thing is you never get notification of replies to your comments.

ucp.php > Board preferences > Edit Posting Defaults > Notify me upon replies by default.

When I tried this last, it seemed to send me every comment posted to the article, not the ones where I was replied to. Maybe that's changed?

No, it hasn't. Wheels of Confusion apparently doesn't actually use the feature, he was just trying to rub your nose in being wrong... which you weren't.

I've always assumed that this feature notifying of *all* replies was deliberate and intended to discourage bias and encourage wider engagement. Can anyone confirm or deny that assumption?

 

[Kevinv]

i feel so freaking old that my slashdot user number is #21462. And that logging into find that was the first time in years that i logged on.

 

[Tijger]

I wasnt aware Slashdot is still relevant to begin with

 

[benabena]

I went to check it out since I hadn't been in a while. Only one Linux story on the homepage and no Windows bashing. This is not the /. I grew up with. You can never truly go home I guess.

 

[Chuck Knucka]

Scorp1us[/url]":1mgr7v4l]
Another thing Ars could learn is.. I don't know. That's about all I can complain about. I do believe Ars has a very vocal pro-anthropogenic global-warming bias, but that's not software related, that's people.

Yes, they are biased toward facts.

 

[DaedalusIcarusHelios]

I stopped reading Slashdot a long time ago. As others have mentioned, the summaries were short and devoid of any value, and it was always a few days late. The comments could be interesting, for me the important part is good editorials and write-ups like Ars provides, then on top of that I read the comments. I much prefer the Ars Technica approach. I only recently added Slashdot to my Feedly feeds, and only just recently actually visited the site and saw they changed some things.

 

[Jimmy McNulty]

cateye[/url]":1ejcpgq9]

thebonafortuna[/url]":1ejcpgq9]I moved on because I found better tech sites with less belligerent user bases. Not sure the owners can fix that with a design update. Good luck to them.

Pretty much. When the abuse from your self-appointed cognoscenti is worse than 4Chan, you have a problem that can only be solved by burning the whole thing to the ground and starting over, which may be what they're trying to do. I don't know, I don't intend to resuscitate my low-5-digit ID to find out.

That's a pretty bad mis-characterization. Maybe if you read at a moderation level of under +2, but it is exceptionally rare for an abusive post to make it over +3 for any extended period of time. Read at +4 and you may well never see a mean-spirited posting.

 

[ChrisSD]

VulcanTourist[/url]":3jqfhde0]I've always assumed that this feature notifying of *all* replies was deliberate and intended to discourage bias and encourage wider engagement. Can anyone confirm or deny that assumption?

Nah, it's just the way the forum system works. Vanilla phpBB has no real way of knowing if you're replying to a specific post or not. Some people do mod their installation to add the functionality (with varying degrees of success).

 

[joshv]

I stopped contributing at Slashdot for two reasons, one, their comment moderation and filtering system became so byzantine I couldn't wrap my head around it, and the default presentation sucked. At some point slashdot discussions became totally broken for me, and I lacked the patience to figure out why. And secondarily, but related to the first point, the quality of slashdot discussions was low enough that it just wasn't worth it to me to figure it out.

One nice thing slashdot did for me was to link to a young new technology news site named Arstechnica.

 

[Machtyn]

Reasons I come to Ars, /., and Fark (back when I visited frequently) were for the comments. Even news articles, I look to the comments to see if I can argue or troll or join the discussion in some meaningful, insightful way. I've not seen a system quite as good as /. Ars' comment system is pretty good. Enough downvotes produces a hidden comment. It also helps that Ars readers' comments are generally intelligent and topical.

Other systems pale. Disqus is somewhat nice, but you can't follow threads of conversation, especially in a heated, quick submission topic forum. Disqus can be more of a game... see how many likes to post ratio I can get (2.749). If you've ever been to TheBlaze, their system is HORRENDOUS, hardly worth mentioning. (I'm not talking content of the comments, but the comment system itself. Much like any politically motivated website, liberal or conservative or libertarian or whatever, the comments will bring your intelligence down and have you hoping for the world to smolder.) I've seen some sites simply give up and let user post using facebook and allow the facebook widget to do the work. For techies who are concerned about perceived anonymity, this doesn't work.

Sure, there are other systems out there. Slashdot's old style is a favorite of mine. And if I can get my idea of a site up and running, I hope to mimic their comment system behavior.

/. I 759119. I could have had a 5 digit but I never signed up until much later.

 

[KnightRT]

thebonafortuna[/url]":2zjmfmh6]I moved on because I found better tech sites with less belligerent user bases. Not sure the owners can fix that with a design update. Good luck to them.

I did something similar. I was never part of the core group. My user ID is probably eleventy-billion, and the fact that I'd notice at all was part of the problem. While there are plenty of interesting comments, it's very, very hard to penetrate the moderation system. I've put serious thought into a number of comments over the years, usually drawing from unique experience, and they were just buried.

It's like showing up to an event where everyone's known each other for the last twenty years, and no one cares to know anyone else. It's not enough to be insightful; you have to be insightful and established. And given the fluidity of the site's ownership and the fact I can't sit in my basement all day posting, I've neither the time nor inclination to establish that sort of presence.

On Reddit, I don't have to. If you post something good, people will see it. That site is massively more egalitarian than Slashdot has ever been, which is why I still use it.

 

[unitron]

#5733

Had to sign up here so I could make fun of the idea of a 6 digit UID being thought of as low. : - )

But seriously, it's not really what beta looks like that's the problem, even if it does scream WordPress, it's that when I look at it I see SlashingtonPost in the not all that distant future (and can Kardashian articles be far behind?), with stuff designed to get you to click on other stuff so they can sell ads based on big numbers, rather than anything worth our loading the site in the first place.

The sensible thing would be for Dice to take the /. name (which is really all they want) and leave us with the rest, the archives and the UIDs and nicks, but of course that won't happen, so we needed to visit them with the Ghost of Slashcott (copyright me) Future for a week to (assuming critical mass on our part) show them that we're the content and the community and not the audience, or, I suppose, to show ourselves that there aren't enough of us left for the hole left by our leaving to be big enough to deter them.

Maybe I'll go back after the week is up and enjoy classic while it lasts and while some of the posts are still good.

I'll figure that out next week.

 

[DannyB]

KnightRT[/url]":1l7uz8qx]Site redesigns like this surprise me. When you have no time pressure, why wouldn't you build something at least as capable as what you're replacing? Why should your users have to bear with you as you evolve it into something less terrible? This is web design. We've been doing it for twenty years. There's no excuse for so thoroughly misunderstanding what the users want, or worse, knowing and not bothering to implement it.

Let me venture a guess . . .

They do have time pressure. They are trying to turn the site into a TV-like spoon feed you content and advertising platform. Their own corporate speak led me to believe this. They probably are already selling the new ad platform to advertisers.

Understanding what users want, you say? Who are these users you speak of? Oh, you mean the 'audience'.

Try something novel. How about being able to mod and feedback on ads! Yes. Tell the advertiser what you like or don't like about their product or their business. Oh, wait. Those words 'feedback' and 'corporation' are incompatible.


Slashdot user 207180.
Strictly observing the Slashcott this week.

 

[Camel Light]

I remember when Ars misread their community a few times too.

"We will never have advertising on our site or charge for subscriptions!!!111" Ooops.

"Let's publish a series of articles from our IRC chat logs about one of our users the Great HooHA!" Whoops.

I would cautiously recommend Ars Staff be careful in their criticism of /. as it won't be long some Ars editor will step in it again too.

 

[unitron]

achbed[/url]":1utb4963]

wvmikep[/url]":1utb4963]Eventually, you run out of the old guard. Slashdot was running the risk of turning into one of those restaurants that only old people go to and which closes because they started running out of old people.

More like they remodelled a small-town cafe into a hip new trendy club with a concentration on bar business, and half the people stop coming because that's not what they wanted - they liked the old way. They also don't get the hipster crowd because it's not in the city, and besides, there's old people there. So they lose 50% of their revenue and close up within a few months.

achbed, excellent analogy.

Except you left out the part where the old people went there because the food was good and familiar, the fellow diners were friends, and the staff treated them well, even if there wasn't a drop of espresso or a leaf of arugula in the place .

 

[dharadvani]

Scorp1us[/url]":3h913rbg]Ars could learn a few things from /.
For instance, the moderation system here is pretty subject to fanboy-ism, since there is no meta-moderation. The simple down-vote/up-vote is _very_ subject to group-think.

Don't kid yourself. So is Slashdot's. For every "fanboy" surge, there's a countersurge by the irrationally motivated anti-fanboys, so I don't see a consistent difference in the quality of promoted comments versus Slashdot's tremendously overwrought system. Whether the more complex system adds value is entirely debatable.

The point of the system at Ars is a heat map. It's there to identify comments that, on balance, are consistently supported, consistently viewed as detrimental to a fair discussion, or just part of the thread. The highly-rated comments consistently provide the most informative and insightful parts of the thread, while I've almost never seen an Ars comment downvoted to oblivion that didn't deserve it (when if you look at discussions, it's not the opinion that gets downvoted, it's the comment). It also identifies comments like yours that have a lot of activity on both sides.

Slashdot's system allows for much more fine-tuning, but there's no real difference in quality of top-rated comments between the two.

Edit on 12 Feb 2014 18:13: This post is so meta, it proves my exact points.

Only if your point is confirmation bias. It's not fanboyism or groupthink behind your downvotes--it's the flaw in your premise that such a system is actually better at dealing with the issue.

 

[TheAwesomeJohnSmith]

redundant post

 

[jandrese]

I've been routinely annoyed at website redesigns that bump up the fonts and add tons of whitespace everywhere for no reason. It's the new fad and everybody is doing it. Even the Penny Arcade folks have so much whitespace now that you can't see the comic without scrolling, and delivering a comic is their primary job.

If I was visually impaired, I could turn up the scaling in my browser. There's no need to assume that all uses are visually impaired. I wonder if high resolution tablets are partially to blame? Building a site for a tablet with a 7" 1080p screen is probably not the same as building one for a laptop with a 15.6" 1366x768 screen.

Even that I could work around (scale down the page to start with), but the majorly cut back commenting system in the Beta is a nonstarter. Without the comment system there is no point in Slashdot, there are many news sites that do a better job now, including Ars. If Beta goes live without significant improvements, I won't keep Slashdot in my regular rotation.

Slashdot userid 485.

 

[Landak]

Speaking as someone with a prime uid on /., I heartily +1 this story. The last redesign was pretty pants, too. In fact, the only one that was any good was the April Fool's Ponies & Unicorns makeover...

 

[arcite]

gabbsmo[/url]":1nrrc158]I stopped reading Slashdot after finding Ars. Just saying.

Sad to say, Slashdot was the place to be in 2004, not so much in 2014.

 

[Katana314]

Y'know, this event reminds me of an idea I had back when a popular video game was making a shoehorning cash-in of a sequel, and many people were calling for a boycott. (Since that's no longer so uncommon, I now can't remember what game)

I'd just call it "JumpShip.net" or whatever - and let it serve as a simple community for people who like something, but don't like the changes being forced upon it. For one, it would allow basic talks without fear of having their opinions deleted from discussion. Other features might include a system of enabling people to prove their previous commitment to said game / TV show / website, and a button to donate some dollar amount to a charity, while attaching a public message "I'd be giving this money to (Shark-jumper), but I don't like them anymore!"

Honestly, just having a simple metric number of "30,000 people are against the changes to Shars Pecknica's comment system" might be much more organized than having these exchanges occur through flamewars in comments. Those statistics might also help when the reason for a site/game's mass exodus is more to do with a browser-specific navigation bug (and is easily fixable) than audience hysteria. (ie, "No one's playing Pig Shooter Arena today after the update, but there's also nothing of it on JumpShip.net!")

 

[salvarinho]

I used to LOVE slashdot so much. At least for me, it all went downhill when CmdrTaco stopped being involved. I used to find the BEST stories on the internet, and learn quite a few things by reading the comments while having a good laugh!

I just went to the beta site and for the first time in my life had to go to the 2nd page in order to find something mildly interesting (E19, anyone?)

In the end it's not just the beta, as the article said it really feels like they're shooting for the "audience" thing

So, so sad...

 

[Jimmy McNulty]

KnightRT[/url]":13rp4cdk]

thebonafortuna[/url]":13rp4cdk]I moved on because I found better tech sites with less belligerent user bases. Not sure the owners can fix that with a design update. Good luck to them.

It's like showing up to an event where everyone's known each other for the last twenty years, and no one cares to know anyone else. It's not enough to be insightful; you have to be insightful and established.

Your experience is the complete opposite of mine. I've been on slashdot since the late 90s and the only usernames I recognize there are the aholes dujour - the types who are mostly trolls but eloquent enough to get themselves modded up for a while. They tend to last a year or two at most before finding something else to do with their time.

Anytime there is a good post, the author disappears into the background and the content of his post takes center stage. Good posts that don't get modded up are a fact of life everywhere, not just slashdot.

 

[NicoleC]

jandrese[/url]":52nryvze]I've been routinely annoyed at website redesigns that bump up the fonts and add tons of whitespace everywhere for no reason. It's the new fad and everybody is doing it. Even the Penny Arcade folks have so much whitespace now that you can't see the comic without scrolling, and delivering a comic is their primary job.

If I was visually impaired, I could turn up the scaling in my browser. There's no need to assume that all uses are visually impaired. I wonder if high resolution tablets are partially to blame? Building a site for a tablet with a 7" 1080p screen is probably not the same as building one for a laptop with a 15.6" 1366x768 screen.

The whitespace gray on gray trend is a pet peeve, too. It's difficult to read in most circumstances. I can't wait for it to fall out of favor... unless the next everyone-copy-me trend is worse.

It's not for tablets. Even with high resolution, the smaller screen means you have to scroll and scroll and scroll.

That said, the Slashdot redesign doesn't look like rampant abuse of white space. They added a bunch but it's isn't total overkill.

 

[unitron]

Katana314[/url]":3hpvj7ec]Y'know, this event reminds me of an idea I had back when a popular video game was making a shoehorning cash-in of a sequel, and many people were calling for a boycott. (Since that's no longer so uncommon, I now can't remember what game)

I'd just call it "JumpShip.net" or whatever - and let it serve as a simple community for people who like something, but don't like the changes being forced upon it. For one, it would allow basic talks without fear of having their opinions deleted from discussion. Other features might include a system of enabling people to prove their previous commitment to said game / TV show / website, and a button to donate some dollar amount to a charity, while attaching a public message "I'd be giving this money to (Shark-jumper), but I don't like them anymore!"

Honestly, just having a simple metric number of "30,000 people are against the changes to Shars Pecknica's comment system" might be much more organized than having these exchanges occur through flamewars in comments. Those statistics might also help when the reason for a site/game's mass exodus is more to do with a browser-specific navigation bug (and is easily fixable) than audience hysteria. (ie, "No one's playing Pig Shooter Arena today after the update, but there's also nothing of it on JumpShip.net!")

Would you mind terribly if I stole your ideas and presented them for others to steal?

(not taking credit for them, just taking credit for knowing something worth stealing when I see it)

 

[Mike Bridge]

unitron[/url]":31ollhp2]#5733

Had to sign up here so I could make fun of the idea of a 6 digit UID being thought of as low. : - )

bah, had to go & post and make me feel ancient as #8663

 

[Bulldawg9908]

eideticex[/url]":7ivhujyv]As bad as the new design is I have to say it's better than most websites on the internet including this one. For one simple reason: it scales up to the full width of my monitor instead of taking just the middle 50% of the screen when I maximize my browser.

How do we up vote this post +1000?

 

[Pervis]

melgross[/url]":1k4w0zsi]While I used to be on Slashdot a lot, in the old days, I doubt that it's relevant anymore, if indeed, it ever was.

It always seemed to me to be people shouting past each other.

In hindsight, I think that's one of the reasons I moved past /. and over to Ars.

# 64886

 

[gruntledgoat]

Slashdot IS the comment system, so IMO the beta is broken. They pretty much created the social news template, and that was revolutionary. I was a member in the very early days, but haven't followed the site closely for more than a decade.

Having said that, the community is generally hostile, obsessed with the idea that low UID's are important (as seen in this thread, and the original article) and the moderation is often capricious and arbitrary. Even if you browse at +3 or better you still get huge numbers of comments showing up that are snarky replies to incorrect or unpopular posts, which is just noise on top of noise.

And the "Funny" tag should be replaced with "Stale Meme"

 

[mrsilver]

dharadvani[/url]":2g3bh1sl]The point of the system at Ars is a heat map. It's there to identify comments that, on balance, are consistently supported, consistently viewed as detrimental to a fair discussion, or just part of the thread. The highly-rated comments consistently provide the most informative and insightful parts of the thread, while I've almost never seen an Ars comment downvoted to oblivion that didn't deserve it (when if you look at discussions, it's not the opinion that gets downvoted, it's the comment). It also identifies comments like yours that have a lot of activity on both sides.

Except that it doesn't really work like that.

The whole premise of up/down was to indicate the posts that add value to the discussion - irrespective of whether you actually agree with them or not. The problem is that a lot of people (and in some sections, like games, a massive number of people) use them to agree/disagree with the commenter.

Whilst it does tend to work in the Apple and Android forum to weed out the trolls, it also means that you tend to end up with group-think being promoted and comments that go against the general consensus run the risk of being downvoted into oblivion.

Case in point, there was a very interesting post about how DLC stored locked on a DVD shouldn't be considered evil on the basis that when you bought the game, it was clear on what you were getting when you purchased. The medium on how this extra content is delivered to you and the timescale in which it was available was generally immaterial.

The result was that it was downvoted into oblivion by those people that automatically consider DLC to be evil. It was a perfectly valid opinion and would have contributed to a meaningful discussion - but it never got the chance. I have plenty of other examples.

My problem is that I don't think those kinds of valid opinions should be downvoted as otherwise we run the risk of sitting in our own little bubble where no-one disagrees with the common "wisdom".

I want to be educated by the comments and see views and opinions that challenge my view of the world, not have them hidden away because the majority of (what could be, potentially misinformed) people disagree with it.

 

[jsl4980]

Sounds a lot like Digg version 4 which encouraged the entire user base to switch to Reddit and a majority of the staff was laid off 2 months later.