Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Tries Something New; Audience Responds!
We've had only a few major redesigns since 1997; we think it's time for another. But we really do take to heart the comments you've made about the look and functionality of the beta site that houses Slashdot's future look. So let's all slow down. Right now, we're directing 25 percent of non-logged-in users to the beta; it's a significant number, but it's the best way for us to test drive this new design, to have you show us what pieces need to be fixed, and how. If you want to move back to Classic Slashdot, that path is available: from the Slashdot Beta page, you just need to select the "Slashdot Classic" link from the footer (or this link). We're committed to keep you informed of the plans as changes are implemented; we can't
promise that every user will like every change, but we don't want anything to come as a surprise. Most
importantly, we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that
the new site is ready. And — okay, we've got it — it's not ready. We have work to do on four big areas:
feature parity (especially for commenting); the overall UI, especially in terms of information density and
headline scanning; plain old bugs; and, lastly, the need for a better framework for communicating about
the How and the Why of this process. Some of you have suggested we're not listening; on the contrary,
some of us are 'listening' pretty much full-time. We're keeping you informed of this process, because
we're a community and we want to take everyone with us. But, yes, we're trying something new. Why?
We want to take our current content and all the stuff that matters to this community and deliver it on
a site that still speaks to the interests and habits of our current audience, but that is, at the same time,
more accessible and shareable by a wider audience. We want to give our current audience the space
where they are comfortable. And we want a platform where we can experiment with different views
of both comments and stories. It's not an either/or. It's going to be both. If we haven't communicated
that well enough, consider this post a first step to fixing that. And in the meantime, we're not sorry
to have received a flood of feedback, most of it specific, constructive and substantive. Please keep it coming. We will be adding more specific info here in the days to come.
Why say anything it isn't like you are going to listen or act on our concerns.
Slashdot BETA Sucks.
Your post here is a steaming pile because you know "Timothy" that You folks have absolutely NO intention of backing away from the new un-needed and useless "design" for the sake of "design" design. "Web Designers" and marketers have a lot in common, they want to foist "pretty" shit that serves no real benefit.
Hopfully Bruce Perens will reserect his Slashdot alternative that failed when Slashdot didn't SUCK as much as it does now.
Join the boycott 10-17 February!
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Thank you for acknowledging us. I'd like to see a new SlashDot that's even better than the old. Please let us help you define it.
And you can all thank me for sending my feedback in as this appeared shortly thereafter. And I am kidding of course, just a coincidence. Hopefully this isn't just lip service as so often the case in these situations. Sorry for the skepticism. But this is a good response finally by the people behind the current slashdot.
I don't think you have understood. We don't want you to slow down. We want you to stop; reverse; appologise for being so out of touch with your user base; and promise to never do anything so stupid again.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
you give us a classic page for good option and you can do what you want.
It seems to me that the one unifying opinion of those critical of the changes is that *no changes are necessary*. So, clearly this is NOT something that is meant to benefit the users - it's more likely part of some monetization plan.
Just admit it and move on - stop blowing smoke up our asses like our opinion actually matters. Maybe it did once, but that hasn't been the case for quite a while now.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
Every site that has gone beta (read YAHOO) has become worse (not better). Eventually, we are forced to upgrade to a slower, crappy, bloated site with evermore javascript!!! THANKS -- BUT NOT THANKS!
... If classic slashdot goes away then I will stop visiting slashdot. Partly out of the way this has been handled, but partly because "beta" slashdot doesn't work properly without javascript.
If you don't support people who don't wish to have needless code execution on their machine - then I am not visiting. Simple.
No need to fix that which is not broken - new is not necessarily better. Remember "New" Coke?
It's been interesting and fun since 1999, but now it's not even amusing.
Last post.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
We want to give our current audience the space where they are comfortable.
This is the fundamental problem between how the corporate overlords think and how the community thinks. Until this difference is resolved you will get the continual complaints and the eventual mass exodus. We are a community. We are not an audience.
I submit stories. I read stories. I add comments. I moderate comments. I am the reason that there is ad revenue.
I am Slashdot.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Well I guess on the bright side when Digg did that, their infrastructure costs could have gone way down as they lost most of their users and layed off 37% of their staff.
Ah well it wouldn't be the internet without people bitching about what appears, to me at least, be a relatively minor website redesign (uh a bigger font and more white space basically?) of a site that's pretty much just a sequential listing of stories with links and comments anyway.
Okay, they've said they're applying the brakes so don't attack then for doing what you want.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Subject is rule #1.
Don't put anything in the way of that.
"Shareable by a wider audience" is too vague. What is difficult with the current design?
Most importantly, we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready. And — okay, we've got it — it's not ready.
Why are you so inflexible on the idea of keeping classic slashdot *forever*. Think of it as a protected historical landmark in the internet space. To help future generations understand where this 'blogging' thing really came from? Computers are good like that, keep classic.slashdot.org FOREVER and your audience^H^H^H CONTRIBUTORS might stop rallying against you.
I got redirected once. Was once too often. For some reason the current process seems to think that content comes last, and fancy headers, deasign and pages mean more. They don't. The beta page wasted a ton of space, showed me less content, was less clear and more invasive. I did not like it, did not enjoy it.
Why is it somehow we have ended up with people who are making things like Slashdot beta, Microsoft Metro, the new IOS, Gnome. A bunch of people who came out of the worst design schools ever? A bad decade at the schools? We just got unlucky?
I like slashdot, and have been around for a long time. But I'm not your damn plaything. Mess with the site, content and my usage - be warned, I can go away. So can others.
We`re all equal
It is nice that you speak about what YOU want. However, in the scheme of things, what you want is diametrically opposed to the community you claim to cherish. The appeal of Slashdot is the pedantry, the technical nature of things, and the overall level of the discussion. If I want to interact with a "wider audience" I can go talk on the Disqus comments that litter CNN, CNBC, etc. Short of having Wiki articles linked to every single in depth commenter's response I don't know how you are going to make things more "accessible" to a "wider" audience.
Also, please stop with calling us your "audience." It is demeaning. If you value our contributions to the functioning of your site so little that you consider us passive players, then I hope you press forward with your train wreck of a beta so that you can see just how much the "audience" actually contributes.
Lastly, tell the MBAs and PR guys/gals to lay off the BS and have a straightforward honest conversation with us. We are far from the drooling idiots you seem to think we are.
You know, exactly like the old interface, but with unicode.
There are lots of things that are annoying about slashdot, but almost none of them are found in the interface. None of them really need changing, except the lack of unicode support. Instead of wasting time trying to change the way slashdot looks when it looks just fine (It's not fancy, but it's clean compared to most of the web and it doesn't waste horrible amounts of space) you should spend the time on unicode. It's not sexy, but it is important.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In the words of Homer Simpson - "Just because I don't care doesn't mean that I don't understand".
I think the recent slashdot poll was directly tied to the redesign. Slashdot audience is getting older, the crowd is now mid-to later in their careers. I can see that - I've been a consistent reader since 1997.
So, Dice decides it is time to rejuvenate the website. I suspect that the objective is to pare down the number of crusty old coots, who block ads and otherwise freeload, and get the "hip, young" crowd that now hangs on Reddit and what not. It sounds like someone with experience in marketing had a hand in this.
The problem as I see it is that Slashdot is more of a Saab of web/news industry. You have a specific image, and a dedicated customer base. Historically, attempts at rebranding and reinventing oneself, in particular for a company with that kind of background, are generally not successful. This is particularly so when a rebranding is done in such an obvious, hamfisted way.
Dice was never a particularly web-savvy company. I've been using them as long as I've been a slashdot reader. Dice (no offense) is a poorly designed concentrator for all the spammy recruiters out there. It's a bit of a cesspool, but it serves its purpose. However, given their history and performance - it is highly unlikely they have sufficient web/social/marketing expertise to turn this site around.
Slashdot hasn't been as exciting as in the past for a while now. What it needed is fresh ideas, better ways to get involved in duscussion, *more* interactivity and possibly ability to connect among its users (I don't suggest it become a facebook, but it's has a long way to go in improving social side). Slashdot will not, in my view, benefit from gaudy pictures, "web 3.0" design and general dumbing down. You will not get the "hip crowd" and you will lose your current user base. Look at Saab for guidance.
The new design adds useless eye candy, makes it harder to skim through the posts to find the ones that interest me. Slashdot works really, really well as-is. Please, please, please, leave well enough alone.
Cheers, Tim -- Tim Janke Part mad scientist, part lion tamer: sr. software engineer, global team leader, project mana
I tried the beta this morning. There was no obvious way to show only the comments rated 4* and above. There are ways of seeing funny or insightful posts, but you don't get to control how many.
The new design seems less space efficient. More clicks are required to read stories (including this one).
No plans to change in the near future.
It's nice to finally hear that they hear us, folks. Although this hasn't been handled very well, it sounds like they're trying to improve. So, let's think positive and give 'em another chance. Further cynicism isn't helpful at this point and can only lead to the demise of something that we've enjoyed for a long time. Please don't do that to yourselves.
Thank you for listening, and for taking our passion for this site and its battle-tested interface to heart. I look forward to seeing how serious you are about providing -- at least as an option -- the kind of lean, dense, static UI that made Slashdot work so well for so long.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I think I've got reasonable karma on here and the very few who recognise my login probably think I don't post total drivel *all* of the time, so I'd like to put in my two bob's worth. I don't like the beta as it is at the minute. The front page looks fine to me: lots of white space, but I can live with white space and it's no different from other websites, although I could very much do without the constant targetted videos from advertiers; but it's the comments pages that are distinctly compromised compared to the present setup. It's far harder to close an entire thread; it's far harder to close sections and leave others open and see quickly which comments have been added since the last refresh; far less content is onscreen at one time; and the comments screen is far too narrow, which compounds the previous issues. I'm sure that with more reflection I could think of other issues with the comments, but those are probably my greatest complaints.
Over the last few days the comments pages have been increasingly dominated by childish anti-beta messages. I understand these are probably born out of frustration and irritation (even anger on some parts), but they've made the website far less usable than if the beta had been rolled out without argument. This is the flipside of it: no redesign is worth fucking up a website over, and certainly doesn't justify the sheer amount of petulant whining the boards have been filled with.
And that said, over the last couple of days, when I've had mod points I've tended to use them to at least reverse the modding down of people protesting the new beta, since there seem to be no other avenues for people who genuinely care about how the comments sections of slashdot are presented. I have no issue with a redesign, but diminishing the usability of a service is a pretty hamfisted way of increasing its profitability.
I've heard all this shit before - that the guys in charge are listening to your efforts, that your concerns are being taken under advisement and that the end result will something everyone will appreciate. What people here especially hate most of all is fucking corporate speak they've heard a thousand times before and despite from the bottom of their hearts. It's patronizing to the audience who know exactly how things will play out. They always follow the same formula
People complained loudly to Microsoft regarding the all-caps of Visual Studio 2012/13 and Office 2013 during their pre-releases. What happened? They remained there, shouting back at the user in the finals. People complained to Microsoft regarding the lack of contrast between the various elements of the Office 2013 GUI as well as the default eye-melting white theme. What happened? Some very minor tweaks and the same eye-melting theme with minimal contract. They threw in a couple of darker themes which do add more contrast, but also make the software far more drab and miserable looking compared to say Office 2010, which in my mind is a thing of beauty.
Companies don't care. They don't give a shit unless there's a real threat to their bottom line. I'm honestly surprised though that the powers that be aren't scrambling to push out the news that they're throwing away the beta as a failed experiment before more people sign off permanently and move to greener pastures.
Account abandoned. I can't fucking spell for shit and Slashdot doesn't even allow time-limited edits of posts. Plus you'
Publish a log where it is easy for one to see what flaw does a new change amend, that way we can discuss the issues separately and you can better explain your reasoning.
Slashdot Tries Something New; Audience Responds!
We are not the audience. We are the performers!
First, let me state that I created my Slashdot account only days ago. And while did read Slashdot articles before a few times, I am by no means used to the "classic" view, so my opinion is not biased by being used to either version.
Yes, I cannot see anything that is better in the "beta".
And even the official statements on why that "redesign" is pursued do not provide a single compelling reason what the new design would actually better.
If "more accessible and shareable by a wider audience" means: "We want to lure more Facebook-zombies and other technically challenged people on our site" then let me tell it right away: That is the perfect way to get rid of everyone actually interested in science and technology. If you want to become yet another mainstream gossip page, that is the way to go.
The absolute no-go for me with regards to the beta is the JavaScript plague. I do not want my trusted computer to execute arbitrary code downloaded from the Net. And JavaScript adds no valuable information, just wastes CPU cycles and bandwidth - just as additional "pictures" do.
"The new site is a work in progress so Classic Slashdot will be available from the footer for several more months."
The ONLY reasonable interpretation is that after that it will not be. full stop.
"It's not an either/or. It's going to be both. If we haven't communicated that well enough, consider this post a first step to fixing that."
Did anyone anywhere ever think the the former communicates the latter?
"And â" okay, we've got it â" it's not ready."
So stop redirecting 25% of us until you've had a another good run at fixing it. And then, maybe put it out there and invite people to check it out instead of redirecting 1/4 of us while threatening us that its just months away from being the only site. You do realize a lot of us would have checked it out, given you feedback, and probably without having a nuclear meltdown over it.
"We have work to do on four big areas: feature parity (especially for commenting); the overall UI, especially in terms of information density and headline scanning; plain old bugs; "
So... The new logo design was good then!
" the need for a better framework for communicating about the How and the Why of this process."
If only this site had had a mechanism by which you could communicate with us and get feedback, perhaps in the form of comments! And if that mechanism itself had a mechanism with which to bubble the more interesting comments to the surface... why you'd really have something there!
Are you just trolling us? :p
THIS! A THOUSAND TIMES THIS!
I'm sorry Dice, but you don't make Slashdot great - we do! Piss us off and we'll leave, and you can enjoy the eye-atrocious tumbleweeds and crickets.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
I decided to log in with my slashdot account to share this, something that I haven't done in years, for one single reason: with every new slashdot "redesign", the USABILITY of the site gets far, far worse (despite the site looking more "designy"). It really is clear that you guys have no idea how users actually USE your site. For example:
1. With all this copious whitespace, I can fit like 1 or 2 comments on the screen. Finding valuable or highly rated is like finding a needle in a haystack.
2. Everything is expanded by default, which, again makes it tiresome to skip through pages of low-rated comments.
3. The comment sort order makes no sense.
You don't seem to understand that the main value of Slashdot is (or rather was, from a long time ago) the comment section, and with each successive revision it just gets progressively worse. No one give a fuck about your flat, "techcrunchy", "Androidy" design when you keep making the site so much harder to use.
I've popped over to slashdot every week or so when all my links on reddit turn purple, just to see if you guys have improved, and it's kind of astonishing how absolutely backwards you view the design process.
communicating about the How and the Why of this process
I think this is one of the biggest reasons you are getting such negative pushback. A very large part of the active and vocal Slashdot audience (the "community") probably share a similar viewpoint when it comes to change. Change for change's sake is bad, and if you want to change something that works just fine then you'd better be able to give me a good, objective reason. So far that just isn't something we've seen. What I see is a site that's been redesigned with two goals in mind:
We want to take our current content and all the stuff that matters to this community and deliver it on a site [that is] more accessible and shareable by a wider audience.
What exactly is it about the current site that makes it inaccessible? Which audience are you trying to reach? I'm quite serious -- knowing this may make it easier for people to accept change (assuming that the audiences you're reaching out to aren't "advertisers" and "market analytics"). Just going based on what you've said it sounds like you want to make Slashdot Yet Another generic news aggregator. Don't you remember Digg? That sad story should have taught you a few lessons about the value of a generic news aggregator and the results of alienating a community.
Will the new site finally support (even a small subset of) Unicode? Just adding support for that would probably make Slashdot accessible to more people than this absurd proposed redesign. No, I'm not kidding.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
I seem to have had this now misguided impression that there was a healthy professional element of the community here who would give constructive feedback but all I've seen is a mob of angry comment children. I hope you all leave when it switches over so we can build anew without you.
Hello, you must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot.
Seriously, your comment shows that you really don't understand Slashdot at all. Thread hijacking by angry comment children is part of the chaos that eventually gets filtered and distilled to yield truly interesting content. This is what makes Slashdot special.
Getting tired of Slashdot... moving to Usenet comp.misc for a while.
If you're listening, there's no evidence of it. You were plainly and clearly told of the flaws in the Beta site back in October and you have completely failed to fix them in the intervening months. It's not like you missed a minor bug or two, or got the color wrong by one hex numeral... it's a complete failure to grasp how badly the new site is broken and how ugly it is or to do anything about it. We gave you months, and you've wasted them.
No, you don't "got" it. Not even close, despite having a thermonuclear weapon detonate in your lap.
And this shows just hopelessly you don't "got" it - we are not your audience, we are a community, we are Slashdot.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sort out:
Black text, white background, anything else is absurd.
Ditch the boxes round the comments they are seriously ugly and not helpful.
When I ask for the desktop version, I want the desktop version FFS, my phones screen has the same resolution as some laptop screens.
Get rid of the option to choose all insightful, all interesting etc comments - it's pointless because of the crossover between these things and it would lead to some bizarre meaningless threads being displayed. Not useful.
Bring back the user info, friend foe, userid etc, slashdot looks raped without it.
Things worth keeping:
The ability to mod without scrolling to the bottom of the page and hitting the mod button (I open the post in a new page to mod it so as not to lose my place/it's quicker)
The ability to collapse threads.
But that's it, the rest is a seriously bad downgrade.
Things that should have been improved, why weren't they?
The text box I'm typing in right now is tiny - why?
There is 'allowed html' It would be nice to have some buttons to put those tags around some text when you highlight it.
To any damn fool who's answer is well 'why don't you go and re-write the code yourself', I have the question - why didn't you build your own house and car?
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
I think
a) I like the beta, please do it asap
b) It's not there yet but keep working on it, but don't turn it on now.
c) It's an abomination. Do not use it ever.
d) I don't read Slashdot you insensitive clod.
If c) greatly exceeds the sum of a) and b) responses don't do it. All d) votes, for obvious reasons, don't count.
At first I didn't hate it, but then I tried to, and actually did reply to a few comments, and WTF they've broken the discussion system? Also I can't see anyone's userid# damnit, what's the point in having a low six digit userid# if I can't subtly flaunt it? Really... Also hotgrits and natalie portman.
Most importantly, we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready.
Well, that's a pretty weaselly statement, since you guys were confident enough in your new site to start redirecting a significant portion of your users there.
How about this instead -- "We will not remove Classic Slashdot." Make it an option if you really, truly believe that your beta site is actually better. You can set the new interface as the default, just make it easy to switch to the standard interface. Then everybody goes home satisfied.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
You're right. Always some post catches my eye, I read most of the comments. And the comments are always better than the post itself (which, by the way, is usually submitted by someone from the community). The discussion at slashdot is (most of the time) high quality. Actually, I don't know any other site with such high quality discussion (yes, it could be better, but if you feel down about the quality here, go check the discussion on youtube).
Slashdot is all about it's contributors. Without you, people, this site would be a empty shithole.
Why did you remove the Slashdot Green Title Bars from the comment threads? (the green title bars create an easy to see delineation between the comments and are easy to see even when scrolling fast. (they are also part of that Slashdot Brand I was talking about)
Over the past decade the Slashdot logo, the Slashdot green, the title bars and icons, unique details and config options have become part and parcel of the "Slashdot Brand". It's what makes Slashdot unique. By ignoring this you weaken your brand and your reader's loyalty. You are basically stripping away all that is Slashdot without adding anything useful or new!!!!
_THIS_
Without the community, why would anyone bother with slashdot? There are better & faster sites for tech news, but the commenting is linear & low SNR.
The beta is like watching a "turnaround" CEO trying to save a company by firing the "high cost workforce" (experience & knowledgeable talent); posting a few good quarters and then getting dumbstruck when the company starts to tank.
If the community quality drops, slashdot WILL die.
Beta must be abandoned as a failed experiment. It is awful - not due to bugs, but due to the intention behind the redesign. Your existing 'audience' is what makes slashdot. If you want a larger audience I suggest you create a celebrity gossip website. Awful.
we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready.
Nobody gives a flying fuck about if it is 5%, 50%, 95% or 100% ready when they kill off the classic interface.
WE WANT THE CLASSIC SLASHDOT TO REMAIN AS AN OPTION!!!
They can go and fuck themselves with their beta thing. 3+ million accounts were opened on the classic interface.
We like it. It's fine. Leave it THE FUCK ALONE!
Some of you have suggested we're not listening; on the contrary, some of us are 'listening' pretty much full-time.
Nobody gives a fuck if any of you are " listening " timothy (emphasis on quotation marks there), as it is obvious that you are NOT HEARING US!
There, in that quote above. Clear as day.
Or you would not talk about Classic Slashdot going away.
So... in conclusion... Fuck Beta!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
First, thank you for to Timothy and the rest of Slashdot's management for taking the time to reply. Maintaining communications between the site owner and the community it serves is important to creating trust between the two groups.
Nonetheless, a large part of me is screaming "about damn time", because this uproar could have been headed off twenty four hours ago if you had said exactly what you did with the above statement. That's not to say people would have believed you any more than do do now, but by remaining silent for a whole day you gave the impression that not only do you not care about what we think, but that it was corporate needs (legal, marketing, whatever) that kept you from issuing a statement. Smaller, individually owned websites tend to be quicker and more forthcoming with their responses because they don't have to go through various levels of approval first, and the Slashdot community - many of whom work in companies and are saddled with layers of middle-management pointlessly micromanaging their workflow - have little trust or love for corporate shenanigans. We tend to respect people more who speak bluntly and from their gut.
Still, at long last we did get a response, so I am grateful for that. Even better, you claim to be taking our feedback into consideration. I'm wary as to the truthfulness of this statement, but - for the time being - I'm willing to offer an olive branch.
Nonetheless, I think there is an onus upon Dice to be more forthright with their intentions with the redesign if they hope to regain some of the community's trust. Simple platitudes that you are "listening" are not sufficient. The biggest question we all have is to the overall goal of the redesign, especially since so many of the community feel it sacrifices what they consider the strength and draw of Slashdot: the community and the comments. We all understand that Dice is a business and needs to make money. We comprehend that increasing the audience is one method of achieving this goal. None of us, I think, are opposed to helping Slashdot become a more popular website. A redesign could draw in a new and larger readership. We get that. We just feel that your redesign is aimed solely at attracting new eyeballs while sacrificing your current user base.
Community websites like Slashdot are not like CNet or NYTimes or Apple. Those websites are unidirectional; the information is pumped down to the readership by the owners and the community involvement is minimal. But Slashdot - and other similar sites - are bi-directional; as much (if not more) of the website's value comes from the readership; is it any wonder the readers feel a sense of ownership and pride of "their" website? Is it no wonder that they feel betrayed when one side unilaterally forces their vision onto the community?
So I recommend that one of the web-designers at Slashdot take the time to walk us through the changes, both those we have already seen in beta and those you intend to work on moving forward. Let us know your reasoning for the different bits, how you came to these decisions, what your goals are. Have the designers write it up and - as much as possible - keep legal's and marketing's hands out of it. Be explicit, be detailed, be technical; we are, after all, the sort of audience who appreciates that sort of thing. Talk about your inspirations, and some of the feedback you have gotten. LET US KNOW WHY YOU ARE DOING WHAT YOU ARE DOING.
You also need to take the community's feedback into real consideration. Offer them different examples that they can vote on. Fark.com showed off preliminary Photoshop mock-ups of its redesigns long before the first line of HTML was written to its paying customers; you could try the same thing here. Let the audience pick which one they think is the best and then work from that one. Engage your audience and make them feel they have a voice.
Follow-up with slow changes. One of the biggest problems with beta.slashdot is it is a complete redesign, and un-necessarily so. Don't change everythin
But this doesn't actually concede anything, does it?
Main points in this statement:
1: One in four users are still being redirected to the new beta.
2: The current Slashdot layout is still disappearing, to be replaced by the beta.
3: The beta needs development.
So what's so groundbreaking about this announcement? Where's the concession? I'm supposed to be happy about this, I suppose?
This is the part that bothers me:
We want to take our current content and all the stuff that matters to this community and deliver it on a site that still speaks to the interests and habits of our current audience, but that is, at the same time, more accessible and shareable by a wider audience.
So Dice wants the best of both worlds; the tech oriented, intelligent userbase contributions, and a wide audience to monetise those contributions to? It isn't going to work.
Ok slashdot...I love y'all and I am always in favor of improving things...
but look: making something "more accessible" to a "wider audience" to "share" absolutely does NOT mean dumbing down the UI, hiding menus, removing sidebars, and reducing content!
thanks so much for what you do, I genuinely love /.
but you *must* understand...****less complexity does not mean more accessible****
people come to /. because it is not dumbed down and over-marketed to 'the average reader'!!!
Thank you Dave Raggett
the beta site that houses Slashdot's future look.
So this is how it is going to be
we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready
You will have this forced upon you at some point
Some of you have suggested we're not listening; on the contrary, some of us are 'listening' pretty much full-time.
and ignoring any suggestions because we are owned by Dice, and this is how they want it
because we're a community and we want to take everyone with us.
and advertise crap to you
Why? We want to take our current content and all the stuff that matters to this community and deliver it on a site that still speaks to the interests and habits of our current audience, but that is, at the same time, more accessible and shareable by a wider audience.
and advertise crap to you
And we want a platform where we can experiment with different views of both comments and stories.
and sell your information, and advertise crap to you
It's not an either/or. It's going to be both.
So shut up and take it
If we haven't communicated that well enough, consider this post a first step to fixing that.
So Fuck You and thanks for all the Fish
But you seem to have failed to notice how badly the site was broken - and their announced intent to end support for Classic. Offering a choice between chocolate and rotting fish guts for dinner tonight is nice and all, but being told that regardless of what we chose tonight that from Tuesday onward it would be forever rotting fish guts... well, that kinda takes the pleasure away from the chocolate.
We did give constructive feedback - back in October when the Beta debuted. They completely failed to take that feedback into account or to make material changes to the Beta. We told them comments were broken, they're still broken. We told them the UI was unacceptable and broken, it's still unacceptable and broken. (Etc... etc...) That is why everyone so pissed.
I really do appreciate that you and Soulskill did at least break the silence that up until now has been deafening, but really, the nature of your reply does not fill me with confidence, and with the replies I am reading by other users, it looks as if that feeling is well represented, and that I am not alone.
I just want you to know that I am listening to you as well.
With that in mind, I have some difficult questions for you.
You say that you have been reading and contemplating our feedback. It is clear that you have been at least observing the fallout that has occured over the past few days here in the comments sections of some very promising and nice looking stories, as the quality of the community provided content dropped to levels that would make even /b/ look intelligent. Your colleague Soulskill even made some well received commentary recently, and we've eagerly awaited this public level of ice-breaking on the discussion. For this I, and clearly many others are greatful.
However, since you claim to have been receiving valuable feedback about the beta experiment since at least 5 months ago, why is it that the nature of the beta has not radically changed to accommodate that feedback? Why did you allow this situation to come to a head like this, if you have been observing and seriously considering the feedback provided?
I see in your announcement that you and slashmedia believe it is time for a change in the site's layout. What factors does slashmedia use to make these determinations, and why do you believe that a radical change instead of a refinement and polish of the current system is in order?
Can you please elaborate on some of the design choices that slashmedia has taken in the beta, ans why they felt these were good decisions, and why they have apparently completely ignored 5 months of user feedback about the beta?
I understand that nobody really profits from continuing the public protest, or from relentless, mindless trolling. That's why we need to have a real, and valuable discussion here about this, and why a show of good will about our feedback actually being considered, and how it is considered, in detail, is clearly needed for our community to resolve its differences with slashmedia's choices in performing its services as the community's host.
I am sure it would mean a great deal to all of us if the dialog did not end here. We, as a community need answers to these questions if we are going to stay and continue to contribute to what makes slashdot great.
I hate to say it, but ignoring us and leaving these kinds of questions unanswered is likely to be seen as a worse slap in the face than hearing only silence was. Please continue this dialog.
Why? We want to take our current content and all the stuff that matters to this community and deliver it on a site that still speaks to the interests and habits of our current audience, but that is, at the same time, more accessible and shareable by a wider audience. We want to give our current audience the space where they are comfortable. And we want a platform where we can experiment with different views of both comments and stories
A few points.
- What exactly do you mean by 'make content more sharaeble'? I can already link to individual comments; there's even a 'share' link below each comment. I've never used it, but surely that would be the place to start if your goal is to make content more shareable.
- If your goal was to make content more shareable, then why, at this late stage in the game, is it still impossible to link to single comments in Beta?
- Nothing is stopping you from experimenting with the current layout
Incremental change is how the current slashdot was built. Taco, Hemos, et al slowly added pieces and tweaks together, according to the needs of the day, to create what we now know as the moderation system and the classic comment layout. Over fifteen years of design thought have gone into the current system.
You can accomplish all the goals you have laid out by continuing in the same, incremental-improvement spirit. Throwing out all of that work and starting fresh is unnecessary, wasteful, and pretty much bound to fail.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
But we really do take to heart the comments you've made about the look and functionality of the beta site that houses Slashdot's future look.
No you don't. You get plenty of feedback on the beta site in the initial announcement of it coming online, and for the most part the comments were ignored. Ever since the beta came online, there's been people mocking it.
Most importantly, we want you to know that Classic Slashdot isn't going away until we're confident that the new site is ready. And — okay, we've got it — it's not ready.
Saying it's not ready is the understatement of the year so far. The comment section is on fire so far, and this is actually the first time that I've seen people spend their modpoints to promote offtopic discussion of this nature on this scale.
We want to take our current content and all the stuff that matters to this community and deliver it on a site that still speaks to the interests and habits of our current audience, but that is, at the same time, more accessible and shareable by a wider audience.
What? Is this the website equivalent of "We want the Call of Duty audience" ? This statement right here, goes to show how much you're out of touch with your core audience: News for NERDS... Slashdot will never be reddit, or some fancy ITBiz magazine. Reddit already exists and won't be going anywhere, and the ITBiz audience doesn't give a shit about this place since it's just another site that scrapes headlines from other places.
The writing has been on the wall for a while now, ever since the advent of SlashBIcurious and the other nonsense you've been trying to push. Your "core audience" has been telling you this for quite a while now, but you've adamantly refused to listen, stuck your fingers in your ears and gone ahead as if nothing was wrong. And now you're surprised the comments section is ablaze?
We want to give our current audience the space where they are comfortable. And we want a platform where we can experiment with different views of both comments and stories.
Experimenting with an established platform can come at a high cost. I don't mind the changes to the layout, and I don't give a damn that you want to polish the look, but in all fairness you broke the damn commenting system. It's the only thing that keeps this place worth visiting. Beta just makes we want to look for another home.
If we haven't communicated that well enough, consider this post a first step to fixing that.
Oh fuck off... You know when people start talking about communication? It's the excuse the network engineer makes to the IT Coordinator/Manager when his network melted while users have been making tickets about problems for weeks. It's the pseudo-managers way of saying "I'm not aware of any issues" despite his mailbox being a festering pit of complaints and misery.
You communicated well enough. You communicated when the beta came online, and you get plenty of feedback which you chose to ignore. Now you've got 25% of users getting an iteration of your shitty beta, and boy oh boy is your comment section a cesspool of complaints right now. And the message you send now is obvious: "It's coming, wether you like it or not. Suck it.". Yeah, the art of communicating is not lost on you guys at all.
And in the meantime, we're not sorry to have received a flood of feedback, most of it specific, constructive and substantive.
That's like the time I heard someone from management say "In hindsight, I feel that despite the negative outcome I've made the correct choice. We'll just have to adapt and move on".
Well, guess what... We'll adapt, and move on. Enjoy turning slashdot into ITBizz2.0 or whatever pipe dream you guys at Dice have.
Like your own comment that "the developers modified the SLASH software to strip out all Unicode characters that aren't on a whitelist."? So, put a bit of effort into refining the white list.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Thanks for taking the time for this, Soulskill (et al).
I really missed the ability to set comment thresholds in the GET of an article (removed in the last major UI upgrade). I have a lot of friends that do not frequent slashdot, and when I link them an article that I want them to read the better comments of, it needs to be at a threshold they'll tolerate (typically, 5/4 for full/abbrev if there are enough comments).
I have other suggestions as well, but getting comments right is by far #1. I can fix the rest with Greasemonkey.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Sum it up: changes are coming, a polite fuck you, we are culminating a new audience by sending 25% of unauthed users whi may have never heard of slashdot before, another polite fuck you, classic slashdot is still going away, we the corporate assholes are slashdot and not the community. The whole summary amounts to a colossal polite "fuck you guys."
Im assuming there's a young punk-ass web developer who made a righteous bullshitty pitch to the suits at Dice to make a new slashdot. It sold them, but he didn't add it would likely destroy the entrenched user base. But that isn't his problem. His problem is trying to get these suits to come out of the dark slimey wet putrid hole they all live in to throw cash at him for a shiny new website.
Screw this. I'm gonna go make my own news for nerds aggregator. With black jack. And hookers! In fact, forget the news aggregator...
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
I grew up reading text on paper. That's how I can intake and process information most efficiently. And that's why the web sites that I read regularly, and in which I participate, present information in much the same way as a printed page.
Aside from these basic and to my mind blindingly obvious design concerns, I'll add a couple of things. I haven't spent more than five minutes with the beta because it was so immediately not what I need or want, but I have been reading the comments here.
Finally, I'll remind people that there was a time when Byte was THE magazine for anyone involved in computers. It became Byte the web site, but carried over a lot of the same content and contributors.
Then, in the misguided quest for the almighty dollar the owners managed to kill it off entirely. It was a great loss.
Dice would be very foolish if they think that they can't manage to do the same to Slashdot.
Three Squirrels
Here's the real problem...Dice bought a niche website catering to a non-mainstream audience and is frustrated that ad revenue is not commensurate with a mainstream website, so now they want to maximize revenue by pushing the site to a wider audience. In other words, dumb it down, white space and images everywhere, probably sensational headlines...a copy of every other website out there. Here's what Dice needs to realize about Slashdot... We are your content. You are otherwise nothing more than a link page. A cheap version of Google News, and on to delay at that. We come here to make and (more importantly) read comments from the audience we have NOW. A wider audience will just mean it will turn into the CNN comments section tragedy of the commons and your content (read, us) will wander off to greener pastures. Just leave the option to use classic permanently, or make beta nearly indistinguishable from classic from a functional and feature standpoint, or best yet, do nothing. Accept that Slashdot is not going to be a cash cow for you. Maybe, if you listen to your customers and are very careful, you can pay the bills with it. But alienate your customers and that will be the end of Slashdot, slowly, but surely. Just accept that the product you purchased is for a specialized audience and stop trying it widen that audience. Instead of trying to maximize ad revenue by bringing more users that will change the community, try to maximize your profits in less obnoxious methods. Sell Slashdot apparel more openly, maybe develop a line of printed matter useful to the maker scene, consider adding a dedicated reviews section in current formatting. If you want an example of a site I think has managed to squeeze all the life out of their original classic page design while staying current would be Photo.net.
Dice can't see it, since must be new here (he he)...
The most loyal long time most avid readers of Slashdot, are not trolling the site, in protest of the failed beta. Never thought I would see the day ...
Where is GNAA, Natalie Portman grits, and frist prost when you need them!
Let me explain ...
I have been a regular visitor to Slashdot for around 15 years. For that, I get the checkbox to disable ads, though I browse with Javascript disabled so my browser does not slow down.
I come here for the discussions, and often read comments at +5, changing that only if I find a discussion interesting and warrants reading at a lower level.
The new beta uses JQuery for the comment threshold selector, and changes that on the fly. This means all the comments are loaded, but not visible, and processing any page with considerable number of comments will slow down MY computer! If I have a few tabs open to read later, my computer will be unusable.
What is worse it that they require you to click on the slider on every article to change the threshold! This is just insane!
If they insist that I enable Javascript to browse the site at the threshold I want, then they will lose me as a long time. I imagine that others long timers will hate the site too.
Dice have to remember that this site has two unmatched features, interlocked: a moderation system that is good at cutting down the trolling, spamming, and noise, and a comment section that is frequented by many people who are passionate about technology and other nerdy stuff.
If they wanted to intentionally ruin the site and drive people away, they would not have done any worse than what they are doing now.
If they manage to aggravate a lot of their users, the comment section will no longer be attractive to the audience. People are discussing alternatives already. Wisen up and kill the beta NOW!
And no, it is not about look and feel only. Lipstick on a pig does not make it pretty.
See the discussion here about CSS vs Javascript.
I wrote the above in a feedback form that I filled a while ago, and I am emailing this comment to their feedback@slashdot.org. Please send them feedback too.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
If you're really listening, then you'll say:
"We get it. You don't like Beta. So, we're going to commit to allowing you to keep classic if that's the site you are loyal to."
You've been working on Beta for a long time. We've been aware of that. We're not responding to trying something new. We're responding to this bit from the message you retracted:
> "The new site is a work in progress so Classic Slashdot will be available from the footer for several more months."
We're responding to the implication that the functional site we love will be fully replaced with the awful beta; no takesies back. This very slim time frame of several months makes it clear that in your eyes, the new "slashdot" is nearly complete. The problem is, the real reason Beta sucks is because it's a different paradigm all together. It's not something you can fix by listening to feedback and tweaking over the next few months. It's a concept that needs to be scrapped.
I think I speak for many when I say the issue goes beyond ugliness. It's a frame of mind. It's what this site represents that you're changing. We are nerds. You really need to understand nerds better if we are your intended audience anymore. We like this site because it's functional and doesn't get in the way of OUR discussion. You're turning the site into buzzfeed. Save that crap for Slashdot BI.
Slashdot is the comment system. In many ways, it's a forum in disguise, with each topic just an excuse to converse on that topic. Practically speaking, the only concrete difference between slashdot and an actual forum is that rank-and-file members can't start new topics.
So if you make the comment system suck, you have essentially put a stake through the heart of slashdot. It doesn't matter how pretty you think the front page is, or needs to be -- we come here to read the comments, not the fucking stories.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Maybe it didn't work in the past because there wasn't a vacuum to fill. People who have read Slashdot for 10+ years have come to rely on having a site like this. With the imminent death of the site, you aren't trying to convert a community, you'd be giving them a place to go.
Timothy et al, please just stop and look at what you're doing. The beta is awful. The beta is awful because it seriously fucks up the one feature that has made Slashdot a site worth using since its inception: the user contributions.
The stories themselves are rarely why I bother to check Slashdot, I've always been more interested in the discussion. The discussion on Slashdot has been more interesting than the stories for several reasons. One major reason is the discussions would almost always add information about a story that wasn't linked to by the story itself or the editors. A Slashdot post would bring up a topic and then allow a bunch of nerds with an interest in that subject to chime in and share what they knew. Many times the people being written about in the Slashdot stories were Slashdot users themselves and could give first hand information.
Besides the contributions themselves the moderation system is actually pretty damned good. Positive discussion more often than not gets highly promoted. Because of the way mod points work there's little incentive to do anything but promote interesting commentary or demote outright trolling. Because of this system it's pretty easy to find worthwhile discussion no matter the topic.
It's because of these things that Slashdot's value comes almost entirely from its user contributions rather than news aggregation. In 1997 news aggregation like Slashdot was new and interesting. Today every site does it. What every site does not have is an intelligent and interested user base that will add value to the stories themselves.
The user comments section of almost every large website is a cesspool. Not only do they not have meaningful moderation but there's no community interested in promoting discussion. The design of the sites themselves also discourage long form commentary and encourage useless drive-by commentary.
The beta is it seems to be promoting Slashdot's weaknesses and hiding or abandoning its strengths. Promote user commentary and support the users in commenting on and moderating stories. Fix the character encoding problems and support Markdown for markup. Give the comments a lot of room with readable fonts and don't add whitespace just to add whitespace. Lose the fucking JavaScript popups and animations, I should be able to park my cursor anywhere on the screen and not have to worry about some attention grabbing animation happening.
In short remember that Slashdot users are not an audience, they are a community of contributors. Without the users there is no Slashdot.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Hi!
I'd personally give it until after BETA is sorted out. If Dice somehow miraculously sorts out the commenting problem, Slashdot stands a chance as sticking around.
If they don't, then you'll definitely see an exodus.
There is, of course, the possibility that the users would migrate around to other sites that pop up in the interim (such as altslash) which would be the risk/trade off you'd make by waiting. It's difficult to assess how long you'd be able to wait before needing to actually get the site running, but I'd hazard the 'right after we hear a response from Dice about this topic' as the breaking point.
At any rate, I know I'd love to see a site like that around.
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
Dear /.
I love slashdot and have been visiting and posting AC for many years. I am alarmed at the new beta design.
- There are no links to the parent in the posts?! The removes the context of the child post - many become meaningless.
- The abbreviated comments are missing?! These are very useful in finding alternate points of view and following/skipping conversations.
- There is no way of changing the number of full/abbreviated/hidden comments. You have however kept the All/Insightful/Informative/Interesting/Funny options - in all these years I have never found a need for them. Again this removes any context.
- There is a javascript dependancy linking to ajax.googleapis.com. This is unnecessary. I block this on every site that uses it, including beta. If that results in serious functionality loss I go elsewhere.
- Why all the white space? Please be more concise, it makes looking at the comments a pain. In a similar vein please also remove the right column, the comments (with all their white space) quickly out strip it in height leaving a large redundant area. (This is not an invitation to fill it with nonsense).
- Please reduce the font size to get more content on the screen, reading the comments is more difficult with the new design.
- At 1680px width I have to large gray borders on either side of the page please let it fill my monitor. Again this lets me get more text on the page, and makes my reading easier.
- Please add a "load more/all" comments button to the top of the page. I like the addition of one at the bottom.
If you've read this far you'll notice that I frequently mention the comments - the honest truth is I visit most slashdot posts but infrequently click on TFA, like many of my fellows. This means the comment system must be made paramount. In case I'm not being clear - it's what I'm here for.
Right now beta represents what I view as a very serious regression.
Sigh, I'm reminded of the title of the last episode of TNG - All good things...
I got over that - I can get over slashdot, or at least join one or many of the alternatives that will spring up.
Anonymous Coward (Nick)
I would imagine the fact that this being, perhaps, one of the largest and most discerning groups of techno-literate and bullshit doublespeak phobic groups on the entire planet....I would imagine that would give someone in the organization some pause. Someone with enough pull that they might be able to communicate how suicidal that move would be to someone who might care, if for nothing more than profit potential concerns.
/., as it has been deemed both unprofitable and perhaps a waste of money...perhaps even a way to bury value from another investment.
We are the filters. We see through this shit. This is perhaps why we aren't as click-baitable. Why we are so ad-averse. Why typical marketing paradigms have had no effect on us. We have the wherewithal to recognize it, the technical ability to eliminate it and the common sense to disregard it.
We aren't against being monetized. Lots of us make money doing that very thing. We are indeed a fickle crowd, but we are huge. We are smart. We want to be engaged.
...I'm starting to believe, as previously suggested, that this is an effort to bury
...who knows, lets get all tinfoil-hatty...maybe a conglomeration of so many technorati is undesirable to certain elements of society. Who knows what we might come up with? Tor? Mesh network? Uncompromisable encryption? Internet3? This is a concentration of brainpower from all ends of the information industry. All ends of all spectrums in information tech, electronics, security, programming, logic, mathematics, physics, all manner of political disciplines...maybe we're just a dangerous group?
Color me jaded, but, I think this is the end.
I'd just like to say to my comrades, It's been a brilliant and illuminating journey (for the most part). I've learned much, I've laughed even more. This one last hurrah has embiggened my heart. We have all universally united against a common foe--mediocritization...likely in vain.
I'll see you guys on the other side...wherever that may be.
I'm all for modernizing UIs. Any UI that sits stagnant for an extended period can drift into a case where while it is much beloved, it is not as nice as it could be with some newer thought/style applied to it.
However, when the replacement UI does not keep, at it's core, the essence of what made the former UI so popular, one encounters significant resistance.
Many here will tell you that what makes Slashdot a part of their daily lives is not the articles. Sure the articles are topic starters and they contain some good information in many cases. But the reason many of us read Slashdot every day is that it is made up of a body of commentators who add the actual value of the website. Regardless of what the article may be, or how mundane or sensational the headline is, I have a clear "wait and see" response to it all until I've seen what the Slashdot community has made of the topic. I know that this crowd will dig into topics, look up facts, even unattractive ones, and find the interesting layers that are never part of the original articles.
Articles are the START of a conversation. The herd of intelligent, resourceful, knowledgeable detectives who live here are the actual product that I'm here to consume. I am THEIR audience, not Slashdot's.
All that being said, any changes that take away from my ability to easily consume the comments here is a step in the wrong direction. The new comments system for me is a complete non-starter. It lacks the view of the thread as the thread organically grows. It lacks the ability to see high rated comments inline while still seeing their position within the overall discussion without turning on everything. In short, it makes it harder to do what I'm here to do.
The rest is all window dressing to me. Bigger pictures, cleaner fonts and such. Yes, these things can be great when done well. I'm not suggesting that what we have in the beta is "done well" but rather that it could be done well if you scrap what you have and start over with a new focus on "what is our product" and realize that the answer is "our commenters".
Given the backlash that Slashdot is experiencing, my suggestion would be this:
Announce that you are cancelling the current beta and going back to the drawing board with a renewed focus on the site's content and purpose.
Make it clear that you do not believe that Slashdot is not "just another news site and should be formatted as such".
Show some appreciation for the legendary comment system that Slashdot has grown over the years and a dedication to remain faithful to it.
Then you can start over, and instead of going for a grand redesign, take an iterative approach. Small moves, in alignment with the community.
In the end, your readers are different than any other website news service, they know more about site design and site construction than you do. So tap into that and stop treating them like they are reading Engadget.
Hopefully this feedback helps out.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
This. Start with smart quotes and en- and em-dashes so I can copy and paste things from the articles (I read them sometimes -- I'm new here) without it shitting all over itself.
After that, add a rich-text editor for comments (or at least support markdown) so I don't need to actually write <em>code</em> just for bold and ital, and we'd be all set. Bonus: let comments be editable. I know that brings with it some issues, but once in a while it'd be nice to fix a typo.
By the way, are lists still broken?
Looks like they are. Fix that, too.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
For as long as I have been using the internet and the web I have yet to find a comment system that works as well as Slashdot does.
I don't get why no one has copied it. Slashcode is out there.
The karma system, meta-moderation, mod points...it's all there.
Disqus, stack exchange, discourse they are all shit compared to what Slashdot has grown.
You fuck with the ecosystem of curation of comments and I might as well be reading reddit, gizmodo, or some other site's 3rd rate system.
Which means I might as well not come here.
Yeah, I've been on Slashdot for awhile too. But I won't be back anymore when the classic site becomes unavailable. Since the community is the actual product here, let's just fork it and we'll all go somewhere else. Maybe we can't call it Slashdot, but who cares? Let's just start a new site for all the old Slashdot members with the classic look.
We have seen this before.
There is a vibrant, thriving CGM site. (CGM == community generated media).
An entity with money buys the site.
Things stay the same for a while. Invariably, the owning entity wants feature, UI, and usability changes made to their new property.
These changes aren't being made to serve the interests of the existing community.
Here's what happens.
Either, the community dissolves entirely, and something wonderful disappears and dies.
Or, the community mostly moves to a new site, which rallies around what people liked about the old site.
Here is a very specific example. There is a site called "Audiworld". It ran, for a very long time, a funny and antiquated forum software called "KAWF". Audiworld was the top destination on the English speaking internet for Audi enthusiasts. Absolutely excellent technical information about the cars, and many off-topic forums developed to serve the die-hard user community the site had.
Audiworld was bought by InternetBrands and converted to vBulletin. This was against the wishes and strong feedback from most of the cornerstone members of the community.
IB persisted and did the conversion.
Within a week or so, "Quattroworld" showed up as a competitor, and nearly ALL of the technical experts and cornerstone members dumped Audiworld and moved to Quattroworld.
Quattoworld simply chose to keep running the previous forum software.
Compare the two sites now:
The "converted" forum:
http://forums.audiworld.com/fo...
The rebellion forum:
http://forums.quattroworld.com...
Look at the information density in the topic listing on the KAWF based forum (the second one). The design is text heavy, information dense, not filled with ads and distractions.
It works on any device; it works on browsers from 10 years ago.
Now look at the vBulletin based forum.
Look at the quality of questions in the vBulletin form.
See any answers?
No, you don't.
Communities are the life of sites like slashdot. You piss off your community at your peril.
We are not interested in suffering so that you can expand your audience. We don't want an expanded audience. The people who should be here are here. The people who haven't found out about here yet will find out, and when they find it, they won't mind the design of the site.
How many other web forums does John Carmack post in? How many other forums get occasional visits from Linux developers? Where else do you see the occasional Microsoft and Apple employee talking about things candidly and without bashing each other?
Stack Exchange has excellent technical content and lots of very bright posters -- but it isn't a social community like this one.
When Classic is retired, and its inevitable replacement has lower information density and makes reading and participating more cumbersome, this community will leave.
Hopefully, it will go somewhere else that runs a fork of the classic code, and life will go on for us, the contributors.
But if not, then it will die entirely. The web will be a worse place; and I will consider myself worse off for the loss.
Your community doesn't need a site redesign. We haven't asked for it. We don't want it. So you're not doing it for us.
If you're not serving us, you've outlived your usefulness.
The internet routes around defects. You'd do well to remember that.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Dice has had months of feedback to change or improve the situation with Beta but has chosen instead to respond with a giant "fuck you" to its user base. That includes Timothy's non-answer, which is just another "fuck off" in so many fine words. Needless to say, it is that user base which the site is about. It is why people come here and what advertisers pay money to reach. Since Dice has demonstrated an unresponsiveness for months, including this last message from Timothy, it is time to escalate to Dice's bosses, the advertisers.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Why lynx? Because if it works with lynx it not only works with all browsers, it works with the search engines. That ensures that even the comments are searchable. As it is, the javascript is not only a major security hole it slows things down noticeably, even on fast hardware. I didn't buy this fast machine for Dice to use, I bought it because I want a snappy and responsive UI even when browsing the web. That includes Slashdot. Further, working in lynx ensures that screen readers can use the page, meaning that those with little or no sight can still use the web site. It's less work to avoid the javascript and reaches more people and search engines. Beta sucks and just needs to go away. If the powers that be still feel compelled to make changes, scrap Beta and start over beginning with usability and accessiblity.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Ok, you need to redesign the site.
We get it.
Anyone who has tried to read the comment threads on an iPhone gets it. Slashdot didn't make the transition to the separation of content and display well, limiting your flexibility when it comes to adapting to the plethora of new devices popping up. Among other things which I'm sure include "monetizing" the site more.
So, you need to redesign the site. Got it.
So, you created "Beta", whether because of an edict from the new corporate masters or whether it's an internally driven project, it was immediately obvious whoever did Beta ( on mobile especially) didn't even do a basic "This is how people use the site" survey. Or if they did, they did a really shitty job. Maybe they read the comments and thought those were the truth. Anyway.
So, here's a thought:
What if you did the redesign in an open/community driven manner?
Set up a persistent discussion (make it a tab, "Changes are a coming to Slashdot", weigh in with a comment) and explain what changes you want to make, and why. Let the community hash it out. Maybe let us vote on a feature, and allow us to test it out on some dummy (or real) stories to see how it works. Allow us to view different stories under the new look and layout. Maybe with a button that changes the CSS a la CSS Zengarden (simplest reference site) or that redirects us to the same story at beta1.slashdot.org, beta2.slashdot.org, etc if it requires serious architectural changes that can't be done with just a reskin. Or something similar.
Also, set up a persistent discussion board where you guys explain the issues you're trying to fix and why(!) and see what the community has to say. You have one of the largest dens of geeks of varying skill and knowledge levels on this site and it's quite possible they may have an actual solution for you, or a simpler one, or a better one. I know the guys who run slashdot are super-geeks, but you can't know everything (root != god, sorry). But the community has an incredible amount of combined knowledge. Use it. And read the comments at level 1 or 2, since the way the slashdot moderation system works, a lot of valid commentary will get pushed down over the most artful use of an obligatory xkcd Natalie Portman reference.
Then, instead of committing to wholesale bulk changing the site (come on, you have to know better. Who's forcing that on you? New management? Tell them what's up.), make incremental changes. Maybe to one set of features of a subsystem, or an entire section or something. If that section of the site is "Difficult" to fix because it's interwoven with other parts of the site, then spend the time to unravel it. You're going to have to anyway.
But regardless, instead of making bulk changes and driving away the people that allow this site to make enough money for it to change corporate hands a few times, include the community. Maybe we'll have feature suggestions you didn't even know about. Maybe we'll have a solution to what you thought were inexplicable problems that are easily solved because you're just aware the solution exists. Maybe you're agonizing over a feature no one uses.
But try including the community. And it's a community, not an "Audience". Nor are we users. We're a community. Of people. Online. If you need to spin it for the new corporate overlords, we are the biggest "stakeholder" in the redesign. Frame the problem that way on the whiteboards and in the meetings with the IT people.
The beta and redesign comments have spilled into way too many comment threads. Because you guys are clearly managing it poorly. Or someone from corporate is managing it poorly. You've got once change to do this right. Because if you drive the community away, like the former inhabitants of Chernobyl and mySpace, they're not coming back.
Maybe it takes a little longer than it should. Unless you've got some corporate budget target to meet, that's ok with most of us. If it takes a year, or two. Who cares if it results in a truly better slashdot? Put
Reeses
It's as simple as that - you do not understand WHY people visit Slashdot.
Nobody goes here to read amazing fresh news. It's safe to say what whatever "news" you put up have already been posted elsewhere at least half a day before. Your users come here for the discussions, to read what other Slashdot users think about the stories and to reply to those comments. That's why the comments are absolutely, 100%, the most important thing on the Slashdot website, and your beta site makes them much more annoying to read and reply to. Seriously, how can you NOT see that this will cause an exodus if it will go live? This is not a minor inconvenience people will get used to after a few days, it is a fundamental flaw, like replacing the juicy steak on someone's plate with a huge steaming turd.
Your website redesign is going in a completely wrong direction. Everybody is telling you that, you claim to hear it, but you ignore it. This won't end well.
Oh, and get rid of all that whitespace. I am using a 27" screen, not a portrait-oriented iPad, thank you very much.
Doesn't matter how fast your hardware is; it is always faster without Javascript.
Uhhhh, no. Compare load-times with AJAX-based interfaces versus full-form reloads. Yeah, it might take a bit of time to process the JS initially, but then you can significantly decrease the bandwidth needed to load new content by only sending updates etc.
One of the things that still annoys me about classic is that logging in triggers a full page reload
Gawd, I'll admit it I'm old now. I was young then... but creeping up on 50 makes me old.
If there's one thing I've learned, it's that MBAs and IT people are enemies. And this new beta site is a prime example of that. Sometimes things are "good enough". Slashdot is good enough- and has been for a long time. But the MBAs say "we need more profit". And now they are going to make things shiny.
Slashdot by itself makes money. But it needs to make more money. DIGG was destroyed that way. Didn't that site finally sell to it's new owners fro a small sum?
Want to fix Slashdot? Make it a site that technical people "graduate to" as they become seasoned. Which would mean making no changes whatsoever!
Slowly, I'm watching MBA types eviscerate, good, profitable websites for short term profit. Don't do it to Slashdot.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
Ah, but with the new reality of ownership, we are not the client. We are the product. The advertisers are the clients.
One wonders if the clients will still buy a product that ceases to be profitable once the product delivery system is broken in the name of progress.
I don't really see how the new design truly benefits the advertisers, other than giving DICE's ad execs newer, bigger, louder ad spaces to tout. The fact that it reduces the audience for those ads doesn't seem to enter into the equation.
The comments section of the beta is absolutely terrible, horribly unusable. The way it is now, the day beta's comment section is the only option, would be the last day I come here. I cannot begin to think of how it could be fixed without a complete rewrite or a kluge that puts classic's comment section in its stead. The two biggest problems:
1. The comment boxes NEED to span the full width of the page.
2. Every little feature in the classic comment boxes (UID #, moderation breakdown, parent post link, etc) MUST be retained.
3. Changing view thresholds needs to be easy, persistent, and actually work.
That having been said, I actually don't mind the beta's main page. As it is right now, it is at least usable and visually appealing. Helpful improvements:
1. Some more customization (font sizes and maybe an option for the green and white bar for the headlines).
2. If they want to keep the giant picture next to each story, the picture should be directly related to the thing being discussed. A picture next to a story about a fire at Iron Mountain should show the actual fire at iron mountain. If no picture on that level is available, stick with the small generic graphics.
I've been a reader, moderator and meta-moderator since 1998 or 1997. Last fucking century.
I've read and participated in many of the flare-up (remember John Katz?) and redesigns. All of them have been an issue, but nothing like this one. This one really is different; it's not just old people bitching about "the new thing".
To be brief, the redesign sucks. It took a layout that is simple, clean, easy to read (and more importantly, easy to skim) and turned it into a "modern" mess. UI is hard. Really hard. This time, the UI team just missed the boat. The new design makes it harder to read the site. It looks prettier to some people, but it's harder to read.
Secondly, you shouldn't even consider changing over until the comments works. The comments should be the first thing you get right. When /. was born, there wasn't much else like it, but now there's a million tech blogs. What makes slashdot different is the comments. When the comments are broken, there's not much difference between you and Engadget.
Most of us only have so much time in the day to gather "news". I can scan Google news, Ars, Engadget, Gizmodo and all the rest, but when I want to read good commentary from smart people who have an interest, I come here. Kill that, and you're no longer the innovator you started out as; you're just another copycat.
Bite the bullet, admit defeat, and try again. This time, figure out why people like me have been coming to the same website for 15 years. Slashdot and Ars have been part of my daily reading, since I got on the internet. Two sites. Please don't make it one.
We've had only a few major redesigns since 1997; we think it's time for another.
You've had one in 2009 that was so utterly horrible that it resulted in on of two times I used the journal, in over 15 years.
No, it's not time for another. There is never a time for a redesign. There can be a need for one, but that's a totally different thing. You know, a need happens to address a problem. The very people that make this site - because people come for the articles so little the abbreviation RTFA originated here - have told you strongly that there isn't a problem that needs fixing.
The argument is "broader audience". That's a business need. That basically means "we think we can make more money off this site". Which is perfectly fine if it doesn't conflict with the needs of the audience you already have. Else what you do isn't growing the audience, it's exchanging it.
People are already talking about setting up /. replacements. People with the know-how, resources and drive to actually do it. In a time where the sentiment on this site is strong enough that it could actually gain momentum. If you still haven't realized that you're playing with a live handgrenade, you are dangerously stupid.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
1) Many of us do NOT want to give up Slashdot "classic" AT ALL and have said so repeatedly and forcefully. Yet you still tell us that it will only be available until you are done fine tuning the new look. (a new look moreover that we've said we hate)
2) you claim to recognize that what makes Slashdot so special is the community, but I think you fail to recognize a key aspect of this community. We are chemists, physicists, developers, sysadmins, engineers and so on. A HUGE percentage of us are not just geeks, but professionally trained and qualified geeks in some profession that takes brains. Over the years we've self-selected that demographic. Your desire to be "more accessible and shareable by a wider audience." runs the risk of diluting what the Slashdot community is. You are courting a new Eternal September and it appears that you don't even realize you are doing so. boards.4chan.org/b/ would cease to be what it is if it became mainstream. I think you can recognize and agree with that. A flood of pop culture would destroy /. just as a flood of nice average folks would destroy /b/ and drive out the /b/tards.
3) This seriously is a New Coke vs Classic Coke moment. Like the people at Coca-cola, you want to increase your market, I get that. Like Coca-cola, you are attempting to do so by copying the kind of features found among the competition. They failed to allow for the fact that they had spent decades differentiating themselves from Pepsi. Copying the Pepsi taste threw all that away. Slashdot is not primarily a content producer, but a news aggregator, so if you go with the glossy magazine look, what is there to separate you from say Ars Technica? We geeks often make a bit of a fetish out of choosing hobbies, sources of info and social situations that are less accessible to the common herd. In other words, we kind of like being outsiders. If you expand your market, you'd be throwing away that abstract sense of clique-ishness that attracts me to this place. I'm probably not alone in that feeling...
4) At the same time, you're not fixing things that in the group opinion, should have been fixed ages ago. Where is the Unicode and foreign language support? I personally support the long standing choice to not allow full HTML in comments, but I may be in the minority on that. I still think we should be able to incorporate umlauts and other accent characters though.
Here are my straightforward suggestions for expanding your appeal and market without killing off what Slashdot is to us long loyal members: a) Allow the full Unicode set and such
b) Don't EVER "dumb it down". You can try expanding the range of news items you list, maybe add images to if they are truly relevant to the story, but do not simplify things. In fact; feel free to get MORE detailed, more in-depth. Make your own articles +5 Informative or Insightful!
c) spellcheck, spellcheck spellcheck. There should be more to editing that picking a story and copypasta the summary submitted.
d) You already have slashdot.jp , why not slashdot.ru or maybe slashdot.eu ?(which would feature multiple languages, but probably primarily French and German). While you're at it, put links to the other language sites at the bottom of the page.
e) I for one would love to be able to read the days most actively commented stories from the Japanese Slashdot. (or any other language geeky articles might be published in) I have no idea how hard it would be to implement a *decent* auto-translation of top articles in foreign languages. I think it would be easy to do shitty translation on the fly, so the challenge would be t
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