Slashdot Mirror
Introducing SlashBI
By now you’ve noticed that Slashdot is growing. We recently introduced Slashdot TV, which offers up everything from “amateur” rocket launches to the return of Leisure Suit Larry. We revamped our newsletters. Now we’re launching some new sites devoted to very specific corners of tech. Our first one, SlashBI, focuses on the fast-changing world of business intelligence, and features articles and opinion pieces on everything from how Big Data and analytics could make salespeople extinct, to B.I. apps for your iOS device, to choosing the right database for a business. No matter what your background, chances are good you’ll find something of interest here. Swing on over, give it a look-see, and let us know what you think.
Eventually Slashdot will be nothing but a brand; a collection of minimally-viewed tech blogs that are finally sold to a media company and rolled into their large collection of robotic advertising delivery channels.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
I don't even have any specific objections... this just feels wrong somehow. Maybe I'm cynical or just following the trend of slashdot pulse, sponsored "ask slashdot", slashtv, etc.. but this feels like when a big company buys out some site you like and runs it down the drain. Obviously that's not exactly what happened here, but I'm starting to think Cmdr. Taco leaving had the same effect.. like maybe he was holding back this tide.
Right now it feels like the "gliding on legacy" phase.. coming soon is the "trying to gather new audience" stage.. then the "please come back, we're still cool and returning to our roots stage" and finally .. acceptance and forgiveness.
I hope I'm wrong. I'd love to see slashdot return to its former glory.. or at least turn into something better than what it was. It managed to turn back from it's "digg" path a few years back.. maybe it can do the same here.
So Slashdot is turning into a blog site?
Slashdot was a blog site before there were blog sites.
"No matter what your background, chances are good youâ(TM)ll find something of interest here."
Nnnnnnope.
I think Taco exited at the right time. Also, I think I might be spending less time here, if Slashdot has started focusing on keywords like BI, and away from the core idea of "News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters", which is why we joined the site in the first place & kept coming back.
Instead of doing more stuff, how about doing the stuff you should be doing better?
There have been complaints about the editing and story selection - the core aspects of /. - for many years now. It may not be true, but this second side-project feels like confirmation that one of the reasons this has never been fixed is that you're simply trying to make more money with more stuff.
I have taken a good look at this new offshot, and I can guarantee that it's the last look I have ever taken on it. I simply couldn't care less, even though I am the CEO of a small company, so I'm right there in your target audience.
But I don't come to /. for "business intelligence" (more on that in a second) and I don't expect any from /. and I don't trust /. as a source of any. One of the reasons loops back to the beginning: If you are not doing an excellent job in your core business, why should I expect you to do a good job in an offshot project?
As for "business intelligence" - that crap is a dime a dozen. If you want to enter the market, do something different. Like actual intelligence. The word largely means "information" these days, but it should mean more than that. A good intelligence source requires really good editing. And that is not exactly a strength of /.
I hope this dies a quick death and you will learn that you need to make your core business brilliant before even thinking about doing anything else.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Quick-hit tech items... check.
No context... check.
Lots of buzzwords... check.
Lots of random, cool-looking stock photography having nothing to do with the stories... check.
Why not just call this SlashPHB and be done with it?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
No matter what your background, chances are good you’ll find something of interest here
If you really believe that then why does it need a separate site? You could just post it on Slashdot with everything else.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
I too started with Slashdot in the late 90's (closer to early 2000 I suppose).
Life/work got in the way, so I quit following the site. I finally came back about 6 months or so ago, mostly lurking.
Now I get the feeling most of the articles are aimed at getting page views. If it weren't for the comments section, I think I'd be just as well off looking at the stuff from Fast Company.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to clean up the vomit.
If I were in charge of Slashdot, I'd rather concentrate on improving the quality of the posts - the summaries are eye-bleedingly horrid in every aspect. The only reason anyone ever comes to /. is the quality of some of the replies in the thread. That is, it's the readership that makes Slashdot valuable.
Piss off your readership, and you pissed away Slashdot - since the quality of the content is otherwise rubbish.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I kind of get the feeling that this sort of shift has been in the works for a while. The tag line "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" has been missing from the banner at the top of the page since early last year. Yeah, it still shows up at the top of your browser on the main page, but if you're using Chrome, like many, many people do these days, you don't get to see that; you don't see the mission statement of the site for most of the past 15 years. I think that's telling.
As you say, they're going in the wrong direction, and I get the feeling they don't think that's a bad thing.
I've been following Slashdot since the 90s and it just seems to be evolving into another unfocused blog.
See, that's where you're mistaken. It USED to be an unfocused blog (well, focused on interesting stuff, but otherwise unfocused). Now, it's focused laser-sharp at generating page views and getting us to swallow sponsored content. The focus that was missing has now been found, and it's money.
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
Not only that, but BI is as related to Nerds than ... say, knitting. Sure, it's related to CS at large, but there are no nerds interested in BI. Businesses are, not nerds. Thus, what does this have to do with slashdot?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Thank you.
Yet this is GeekNet's Jump The Shark moment, today, May 1, 2012, for anyone keeping track.
Philosophically, News for Nerds, and the concept of what /. means now has another branding barnacle: BI. I understand BI, big data, and why. I see the horizon of words and phrases like: new paradigm, hadoop(y), your OpenStack engine, and other revenue-generating phrases.
This is branding gone wrong, like putting a Continental kit onto a Kia Rio. We, the customers of /. aren't ideological customers of BIG DATA and BI. We're theorists, engineers, completely whacked out of our mind gamers, and people that make antennas with Pringles cans. I'm shocked that the publishers would believe that they can somehow meld these two concepts together. It's really frightening that they're trying as BI would have told them: only a subsection of /. readers give a rat's patootie about BI, and BI's been around for more than a decade in one form or another.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.