Slashdot Mirror
Bletchley Park's Bitter Dispute Over Its Future
An anonymous reader writes "Tensions are high at Bletchley Park between the new management who want a 21st century installment and the volunteers who want to show the whole story (and get dismissed for doing so). This report [Note: video, with sound] is from the BBC: 'The groundbreaking intelligence work carried out at Bletchley Park during the second world war was credited with bringing forward the end of the conflict. In 2011 the site was awarded a £4.6m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). But Bletchley is currently in the throes of a bitter dispute, between owners who want to create a brand new visitors centre, and volunteers who have been working on the site for years.'"
I still can't believe that this Slashdot Beta project hasn't been canned. In any other organization, a project so badly implemented would have been canceled some time ago.
The technical problems with the Slashdot Beta are still extremely severe, even after what appears to be some attempts to fix some of the problems. There's still far too much wasted, empty space. The text still renders poorly, and the sizing and spacing is disproportionate in numerous places. The large story images are pointless, excessively large, and distracting. The front page design is unusable. It's damn near impossible to read the comments. Even submitting comments is harder to do now. The beta site feels so frigging slow.
It's also clear that the users here absolutely hate the beta site, and how it's being forced upon so many of us. With the response to the beta site being one of unanimous hatred, Slashdot ought to realize that it's totally disrespectful to subject us to something we dislike so much.
The beta site is so goddamn awful that it makes the current Slashdot site look superb, and the current site was itself a shitty attempt to fix up the much better site that preceded it. The implementation of this current site drove away a lot of valued users. Putting the beta site live will most likely drive away everyone else of value.
If the beta site goes live, I think we'll unfortunately see another Digg v4-style disaster. The beta site will severely disrupt the ability of the users to consume the content here, and will make participating in the remaining fragments of community here damn near impossible. People will no longer have any reason to visit. Digg v4 going live annihilated Digg. Slashdot Beta going live will, in my view, most likely annihilate Slashdot.
The Slashdot Beta project needs to be canceled now. It's a failed software project in every sense. It's technologically worse than what we have. Basically all of the users hate it. It brings absolutely no benefits.
There's no point in keeping this failed software project alive any longer. Put an end to it, please. Stop wasting resource on it. Mistakes happen, and the Slashdot Beta project is a good example of this. When this does occur, the sensible thing to do is to terminate the project as early as possible to cut one's losses, rather than stringing it along and eventually unleashing a far bigger disaster.
Simply put, the Slashdot Beta project needs to be ended now. The code needs to be thrown out (it clearly can't be reused or salvaged). And hopefully at least something can be learned from this whole ordeal: every single aspect of the Slashdot Beta was an absolute and total failure.