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Quarks Know Their Left From Their Right
sciencehabit writes "How an electron interacts with other matter depends on which way it's spinning as it zips along—to the right like a football thrown by a right-handed quarterback or the left like a pigskin thrown by a lefty. Now, physicists have confirmed that quarks—the particles that join in trios to form the protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei—exhibit the same asymmetry. The result could give physics a new weapon in the grand hunt for new particles and forces. Or they can search for subtle hints of exotic new things beyond their tried-and-true standard model by studying familiar particles in great detail. In the latter approach, the new experiment gives physicists a way to probe for certain kinds of new forces."
tl;dr: Fuck beta.
(This is an informative post for those who don't know about the current trend. Someone might stumble upon that lone post in this article and think "Holy fuck! Either I'm getting very old or the frosty piss trolls have gotten amazingly sophisticated.")
I wonder if they are censoring variations of the word too.
Fuck Beta
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
But your Beta abomination is the cause of most of the comments now. >:(
Yes and no -- I've heard that "fuck the beta" is now "olives and feta". Tryin' ta be a wee bit classier with our needlessly-provoked volcanic rage and contempt, by dressing it up in some Cockney rhyming slang. (Not my idea, but I saw it and liked it.)
Can't stop the Beta? Time to evacuate to ##altslashdot at webchat.freenode.net - Slashcott in effect.
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view/257866/keyboard-smash-o.gif
Honestly, it is better to keep protesting. Keep the lurkers away to drive their stats down. That is likely the only metric that Dice understands.
Title says it all. Is this recent?
I kinda feel I've been told to shut up. :(
The most annoying thing about beta is the horde of brainless morons polluting the comments.
Back to the article... Parity violation has been known in quarks for many many years - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K... (hint: CP violation means charge-parity violation, which is a special case of Parity violation)
and we want UTF-8 + MATHJAX support - the math rendering engine that is used by http://math.stackexchange.com/
MATHJAX !! + UTF-8 !!
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
Yes, We are. However, strangely all posts regarding Fuck Beta are modded down...
The Dutch will inherit the earth. If not, we'll settle for a bit of ocean. Beta delenda est!
Interesting how 90& of all FB-haters are ACs ....
The Dutch will inherit the earth. If not, we'll settle for a bit of ocean. Beta delenda est!
Does anybody remember how Slashdot never used to delete posts? Then they were forced into it by the Scientology thing. Well, that has changed.
Stories submitted to the Slashdot firehose that take a negative view on the site's redesign are being deleted. 4 hours ago, it was full of anti-beta posts. Now they are gone. That's right. A forum that usually leaves V14GRA spam in place for posterity is deleting user content.
Then there is this comment. It was the first post on the Beta discussion thread. As such, most of the best comments are attached to it. Then, in five minutes, it went from +5 to -1 flamebait and, get this, was reordered to the bottom of the thread!
Dice PR is now a valid reason for Slashdot to delete user content. Awesome!
Indeed, where can we find the new /. ?
The Dutch will inherit the earth. If not, we'll settle for a bit of ocean. Beta delenda est!
hmm I'd rather have olives and feta, the one true taste combo.
LOL I wish I can mod you up :)
but how else will people come to this site if we don't explain spinning quarks via (american)football (aka handegg) metaphors?
and of course this needs to become a site for the wider audience, it's a wide open market, noone else is doing it, they'll corner the market in no time, while keeping all the technical users currently making this site a reasonable success :).
it's the best marketing strategy since new coke!
to the right like a football thrown by a right-handed quarterback or the left like a pigskin thrown by a lefty.
Oh, thanks, I was having such trouble working out what you meant by "left" and "right." And thanks for confusing some of your non-American readers with your references to footballs that you throw (what's that about?), and then referring to them almost immediately afterwards as "pigskins" instead.
Of course it's a terrible analogy anyway, since particle spin is only loosely analogous to every-day spin.
If it was that kind of spin, wouldn't "clockwise" and "anti-clockwise" be better words for it anyway? "Left" and "right" need a decision on which point you're looking at as well as direction.
Does it all come from electrons spiralling left or right in the old particle accelerators?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Thank you.
We have to be in order produce this much noise from functional standpoint and IP blocking.
Interesting how 90& of all FB-haters are ACs ...
That is probably associated with the fact that 25% of them are forced to use it:
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.
Given how obviously horrible the beta design is, this sentiment on the best way to test drive it is quite galling. OTOH, I am thankful they are not responsible for design airplanes or automobiles:
Yes, for the first test-flight we have filled 25% of the new plane with unsuspecting passengers but this is the best way for us to test drive our new design.
It has occured to me that maybe they trying to alienate the slashdot community
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
I am misunderstood. When I mentioned FB-haters, I meant the one who hate FB-posters. My apologies for the confusion. NB: Fuck Beta
The Dutch will inherit the earth. If not, we'll settle for a bit of ocean. Beta delenda est!
An American football isn't egg shaped, so it won't be handegg. The correct term would be hand prolate spheroid.
HTH, HAND.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
http://pullup.herokuapp.com/
It is by pull request only, so you have to be able to program Node.js in order to become a user.
No discussions yet, only user submitted links.
I also have no idea how football will rotate when it is thrown by an right-handed quarterback .... footballs are meant to be kicked, hence the name. I have no idea how the addition of a quarterback will make me understand "rotates to the right" better.
Clockwise and counterclockwise are just like right and left, relative to your point of view. Perhaps orientation quaternions would have been better.
Ps: Fuck Beta
The Dutch will inherit the earth. If not, we'll settle for a bit of ocean. Beta delenda est!
"If you like Slashdot classic, you can keep Slashdot classic. Period"
+1 pedantic nerd
The very best kind.
But seriously, +1 informative. Might as well blow a *few* positive modpoints on non-FUCK B3ta posts
Slashdot quote of the day : "Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it."
Yes, We are. However, strangely all posts regarding Fuck Beta are modded down...
Of course, other than in the appropriate story, that could be from people like me. I modded a couple as 'offtopic' on stories that had nothing to do with it because THEY ARE OFF TOPIC.
On the story regarding the beta though, I modded a couple up because they were insightful (and I agree completely, the beta in its current form completely sucks and probably can not be salvaged... if they're intent on a redesign, they probably need to start from scratch).
Thunderbird is a good cross-platform solution, though its competences are basic by the standards of people who love Usenet. But it's easy to get for Mac, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, etc.
On the Mac, though you have to pay for it, there's Unison, which is nice. Otherwise you can google MT-Newsreader or Pineapple Newsreader, both of which have been updated from the old Mac OS9 days and are useful and good software.
There are a ton of newsreaders for Windows. A lot of people like Gravity or Forte, but I'm not on Windows so don't use either. At work, where I am not allowed to install software on my Windows box I use Sylpheed from a pendrive, and you can get it at pendriveapps.com
Finally, Usenet on a smartphone or tablet is awesome! If you have an Android phone, check out Phonews or NNTP Newsreader, both of which have free and paid versions. It's the number one thing I do with my smartphone. And on the Ipad there's Newstap, which provides a better UI but which I find a bit slow if you have a long list of groups that you read.
See you on comp.misc at Usenet.
If you need a newsgroup/usenet provider I recommend newsgroupreviews.com. It's a site that takes advertising but it's run by guys who love Usenet. I personally pay for a provider, as it's better quality. I got a great deal at Blocknews. Individual.net is better quality because they keep it spam-free, but they don't carry all the groups, and comp.misc is one they don't carry. There are free providers out there, but I find they are often choked with spam and occasionally drop posts. That was the case for AIOE a while ago. Albasani.net is better, and eternal-september is also good.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
To nitpick: Cockney rhyming slang does not rhyme with the obscured word. "Fuck the olives" would be more in the spirit of it, or "Donald the olives."
Hang on, what?
That's a rather random post on an article about quarks...
I really like the new Slashdot. It's 2014 after all - the site has to keep up with modern technology. Classic Slashdot was starting to look rather long in the tooth.
and I was so sure that there wasn't anything worse in life than getting duped into clicking a goatse link!
Beta Boycott '14
First of all fuck beta.
The description of the electron spinning left or right is completely wrong. Spin is an intrinsic property of the electron and it has nothing to do with it spinning left or right.
Spin relates to its angular momentum but there is no rotation. And electrons are not "balls". Period.
And don't forget to boycott Slashdot 10-17th Feb.
FUCK BETA!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaon#CP_violation_in_neutral_meson_oscillations
Wikipedia has this to say: Since neutral kaons carry strangeness, they cannot be their own antiparticles. Which, to me, may as well me an incantation to be mumbled over three skulls and a chicken. What real-world thing can be made with this knowledge?
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Clockwise or anti-clockwise depends on your direction of travel - if you're behind a clock, you see the hands moving the other way around. Left/right refers to the direction your fingers curl when you do a thumbs up - the thumb is the direction of travel, while the direction the fingers curl gives you the rotation. Left/right-handed is the usual terminology.
I think you forgot "Burma Shave" at the end.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
and SSL. And at least read access through Tor.
Give me Classic (permanently) or give me death!
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Fortunately, you don't have to rely on credibility. Here's a story more than a day old. About 15% of the comments are rated 4 or 5, which is a pretty typical percentage, and all of them are complaining about the beta. It's like that in a lot of stories. As for submissions -- well, they pass through the firehose like everything else, and why you don't ever see submissions from a week ago sticking around in it. That's why it's called the firehose.
If the spin of the particle (electron in the summary) is germaine to the observed properties of the particle does that mean there are two different particles involved. For instance if a left spinning quark or electron interacts this way and a right spinning quark or electron interacts that way, are there two different types of quarks or electrons involved.
Until now, there have been neutrons, protons and electrons. However, does this really mean there are six atomic particles instead of three?
It took a day or two, but now when I google "fuck beta" all the top results are from slashdot. Yay.
Yeah, we should be proud of that. Now slashdot has already been added to most filters, reducing access to millions of people, because of the potty mouth nerds who couldn't find a better way to articulate their frustration.
Yes, you are, or at least most people viewing slashdot are (some are contributors). If slashdot is serving up media to its viewers, the viewers of that media would be consumers, just like at the theater. However, being a consumer has an implicit financial aspect and people view slashdot without paying for it. As such, we aren't consumers but instead we are simply viewers and viewers of a media production are called the audience.
Slashdot refines it even further. The media being presented is news and the target audience for that news is nerds. Some may say that we can't be an audience because we can interact by leaving posts and the like. But, there is nothing inherent in being an audience that prohibits interaction. Just because on the Price is Right some people get to participate in the show directly, doesn't mean those watching in the studio aren't the audience. Likewise, writing a letter to the editor in the local paper, does not change one's relationship with the paper. You don't suddenly become a freelance reporter.
So, like it or not, the viewers of slashdot are an audience, some of them targeted and others not, but all are still the audience for the production called slashdot.
Yes, you are, or at least most people viewing slashdot are. Some people are contributors, those who post the articles, but the vast majority are viewers, even if they post comments.
If slashdot is serving up media to its viewers, the viewers of that media would be consumers, just like at the theater. However, being a consumer has an implicit financial aspect and people view slashdot without paying for it. As such, we aren't consumers but instead we are simply viewers and viewers of a media production are called the audience.
Slashdot refines it even further. The media being presented is news and the target audience for that news is nerds. Some may say that we can't be an audience because we can interact by leaving posts and the like. But, there is nothing inherent in being an audience that prohibits interaction. Just because on the Price is Right some people get to participate in the show directly, doesn't mean those watching in the studio aren't the audience. Likewise, writing a letter to the editor in the local paper, does not change one's relationship with the paper. You don't suddenly become a freelance reporter. You can right a letter to the editor every day and you would not be considered a contributor in that realm, but you would still be a subscriber (viewers of slashdot are not subscribers, because that implies something you ordered, being delivered to you).
So, like it or not, the viewers of slashdot are an audience, some of them targeted and others not, but all are still the audience for the production called slashdot.
It's not handegg metaphors that will get you a wider audience, it's car metaphors. It's like when your fourth and long, deep in your own territory with a manual transmission and you don't know how to drive with a stick shift. See?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Google has likely trapped you inside a filter-bubble.
Startpage.com (which serves Google-results) shows no slashdot (so far). Not even when including Adult results.
The best way to escape your filter-bubble is to simply stop using G.
Like a football thrown...
Don't you get it? Even now don't you get it?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It took a day or two, but now when I google "fuck beta" all the top results are from slashdot. Yay.
I wouldn't be surprised if that works the other way around, too.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I can't read it, because when Beta smears all over my screen I have to close my eyes :(
A prolate spheroid doesn't taper to points on the end. You'd need an infinite series of spherical harmonics to describe an American football, not just the degree-2 term. Though it's sufficiently elongated that spherical harmonics might not be the best basis set. Bessel functions?
Goatse is better than Beta.
Please don't give them any ideas! It's bad enough already.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Strangely? They're getting spammier than MyCleanPC or APK's HOSTS File Solution.
All quarks spin counter clockwise, you're just looking at it from the wrong perspective ;)
Seriously this article is a disservice to science.
#fuckbeta
I can't think of a better idiom to describe what all of you assholes are doing with this Fuck Beta business. Even if you get what you want, something that has changed from "guaranteed access to 'classic'" (even though it's not *really* classic) to "oh yeah, and not just classic, classic with X, Y and Z!!" at this point the site will be ruined because you pimply little fucks have latched onto some kind of mob mentality and will not quit.
The new shit is buggy and is missing features, they've said they'll handle it, let them. Very depressing to see that the general sorry state of discourse in this country has spread now to this site. Fuck the unreasonable vocal minority. I miss the site, quit holding it hostage.
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
http://xkcd.com/202/
Besides leaving out that the uncertainty in the reported measurements is still very large, this article is about as poorly written as possible.
Electrons do not "spin" like footballs and quarks do not go zippity doo da.
Agreed. The stories on Slashdot I generally saw the day before on Reddit or elsewhere. But I come to Slashdot for the discussion, because this is the place where I find the most knowledgeable posters. If I can't read the comments and participate in the discussion, what the fuck is the point? To read three-day-old stories? Meh.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
When beta rolled out in Oct, people expressed their opinion without the potty mouthiness. It didn't work. I think the Google filter is a GREAT by-product of using profanity because one feels helpless. This will hit Dice where it hurts... "audience" count. People leaving and nobody coming in means less revenue. This is the ONLY thing they care about.
-Audience Member
See, that's why I come to slashdot. Posters on reddit are neither knowledgeable enough to argue that point, nor pedantic enough to point it out.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Actually what the states refer to is something called helicity, not spin. However the two are closely related: helicity is the component of the spin in the particle's direction of motion. Since this is quantized electrons and quarks have only two possible states: either the spin is in the same direction as the direction of motion (right-handed) or it is opposite (left-handed).
The names come from the curl of your fingers in your left and right hands. If you pretend that the electron is a physically spinning object then for a right-handed particle if you curl your fingers in the direction of rotation your thumb points in the direction of motion. For a left handed particle you need to used your left hand.
This whole beta fiasco is a conspiracy ...
It is a way to give old timers extra karma when they post complaining about how badly beta sucks ...
Now, the question is who is behind it ... Must be Katz and Bennet Hasleton ...
Like this comment, mod it up to +5 already ...
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Stack Exchange should just go ahead and write a Slashdot replacement, I'd be over there in a second. Unlike the trained chimps at Dice, they know how to do web design, they understand the concept of a site driven by user content, and they don't have contempt for their users.
Thanks for ruining my article viewing experience. I wanted to read witty commentary about quarks, not whining post #12932456 about Slashdota Beta.
It is now clear that Quarks are sentient beings. This disproves the existance of God. Bill Nye is correct.
So your saying anyone who isnt a fool is a pretentious asshole?
A system that even a fool can use is a very well designed system that no fool could design.
fuck beta.
beta sucks.
fuck dice holdings.
dice holdings sucks.
Why is this not working? grr ..
I also have no idea how football will rotate when it is thrown by an right-handed quarterback .... footballs are meant to be kicked, hence the name.
Football does not refer to which part of the body is supposed to connect with the ball (otherwise it'd be called HeadKneeChestHandFootBall), but rather the fact that the game is played on-foot (as opposed to Polo, another old and popular game).
That reload problem is an issue with mobile browsers, especially when viewing a desktop version of a site on a touch browser.
try holding the login button for a second or two.
I'm not trying to let /. off the hook for their other design mistakes
And your comment is the worst waste of space since Slashdot beta source code.
Your comment is a waste, because watering down the summaries to metaphors such that every reader around the world will both understand and identify with them is just another way of pandering to the lowest common denominator. If you're interested in helping Slashdot spin down the drain, incessantly demanding the elimination of every scratch of American-centric (or any country's) writing is a great way to do it.
American football is called such because the kicking game used to be more important, and the ball used to be snapped with both the foot AND the hand.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
...
In progress? Are you fucking kidding me? You're going to turf us out of our perfectly adequate comment system that has lasted many years into the equivilant of a building site of a comment system that almost univerally nobody fucking wants?
The new layout looks like the abortion of the 'tablet age website layout'.
I bet someone with high authority (and fuck-all understanding of what slashdot is) at Dice said "that slash dot website we bought looks crap on my iphone, too cluttered, make it iphone friendly".
Fuck beta.
Perhaps Slashdot Beta is a scheme to consume karma.
Ditto, in the last week I've spent probably 18 points on 'Offtopic' mods.
The amount of horizontal space this new layout gives for the actual article and comments could fit into the goatse guy with room to spare. I really don't like this much of my screen being wasted on blankness.
I think you are wrong about Goatse being better than Beta...even less worse would, in my opinion, be wrong.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Well, I went to the beta site the other day to see what the fuss was about.
GHAAHH!!!
Some things you just cannot UNSEE!!!! The horror!!!
It reminded me of the time I had just finished setting up a 4 monitor desktop....Man, I can REALLY slash my dots now!
I went straight to slashdot, and quickly I had 4 different articles with comments opened, one on each screen!!!
Well, then IT happened....
I quickly ran to the restroom, okay, back to the PC...okay.
Drafty? Hmmm...*look down, zipper undone*
I start to zip up my trousers and just then stare in shock!
I had been goatse'd, tub girled, AND trolled by GNAA all at the same time!
I hurriedly finished zipping up...AHHHHH!!! GOT SCROTUM CAUGHT IN ZIPPER!!
And while all of this was going on suddenly the speakers started blaring; floor was shaking, windows shattering, dogs all over the neighborhood started howling, police sirens started coming my way.....I HAD BEEN RICK-ROLLED!!
Thought I was going to die.
And in the end, the Beta site experience was far more traumatic than anything experienced prior on slashdot for me.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
'vocal minority'? [citation needed]
The actual numbers may surprise you.
Where did you get your data for that?
I would be interested to see it.
And I have not been a 'pimply little fuck' since the mid 1960's.
You might want to brush up on obscene vocabulary and insult techniques, yours are uninspired at best.(actually quite lame)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
An American football isn't egg shaped, so it won't be handegg. The correct term would be hand prolate spheroid.
HTH, HAND.
Not only that, but football (both varieties) is so-named because it is played on foot, as opposed to polo, which is played on horseback. So handegg would be a difficult game indeed if it followed the rule.
By your reasoning, then volleyball, baseball, basketball, bowling, and many others should also be called football, because they are all played on foot.
Since we're apparently making stuff up, I say the reason we call it football is:
1.) Most Americans(USA) can't pronounce those foreign words like 'Rugby'
2.) Most Americans(USA) couldn't(and don't) understand Rugby anyway.
3.) We couldn't understand or say Rugby, but we liked the ball....didn't have to chase it as far as a round one!
And finally:
'PGC (880972)' was correct about the name....regardless of quarterbacks.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Unfortunately, an embarrassingly small percentage of us do, but we are a small minority here.
I heard that it used to be different before 'politician' was job, then a career.
Well, it just goes to show you...
If you give footballs to Americans, they'll try to sharpen the ends, and attack each other, then comes slashdot beta!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Not only that, but he pointed it out more accurately than I could have. I would have had to leave it at "but a prolate sphereoid isn't pointed".
Even so, I'm not sure that a simple series, no matter WHAT the basis, could manage the ridgings at the points of the football. That's a pretty complex curve.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
It took a day or two, but now when I google "f%ck beta" all the top results are from slashdot. Yay.
Yeah, we should be proud of that. Now slashdot has already been added to most filters, reducing access to millions of people, because of the potty mouth nerds who couldn't find a better way to articulate their frustration.
You increased the potty mouthed hit count right there. If you just used the "bleep" characters %^&*@# -- well, I guess you guys can't win for losing. The SlashDot has a lot of people who don't like change. Go figure.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
I agree with that frustration of total impotence. A lot of blogs are moving to FaceBook login credentials or Google. I've stopped blogging at a few websites just for that reason.
It seems there is a commercial anti-privacy agenda because everyone wants to make MORE MONEY per each head on their website -- rather than live with expenses to benefit from visitors, without trying to get too much out of every hit. You can't get commercial money without PROVEN eyeballs and without mixing ads with your content.
The other thing is that once you have a few execs in marketing with paychecks, they have to do stuff. It's like the food additive people think they can improve bread by removing the last bit of grain with saw dust. Eventually, people will pay more to just get back to the bread before you improved it -- and you've got "New Improved Bread -- 100% Natural."
So after all the improvements to Slashdot, I can see that we will all pay lot's of bucks to find an add-free, un flash encumbered, anonymous website where people can discuss geeky things. Also, it will be Caffeine and GMO free! Genius!
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
I've got to say that the initial post on this topic perpetuates one of the paradigms that is sticking in the craws of Slashdot users. We are not an audience. We might be users, we might be members, we most certainly are contributors. But we are not an audience.
If you persist in thinking of us that way, then you're going to get it wrong. You serve an audience differently than you serve contributing members of a community. Most of the complaints hinge on that difference.
If we were an audience, we'd be coming here for the articles. Most of the complaints are about the comment system, how difficult it is to follow a conversation, how difficult it is leave a comment, etc. I come here, most of us come here, to read what my/our fellow slashdotters have to say. The value here is the community, and the most important contributors are other members, not the site or the editors.
If you don't get that straight, then you aren't going to "get" why we're upset, so there's no chance that you'll deliver us something that we can live with. And that community is going to vanish, leaving you with nothing of value.
You can take suggestions and maybe reduce the implosion, but unless you understand *why* we're upset, you're going to be heading in fundamentally the wrong direction.
I totally agree! I've been coming 'here' regularly for years (10+) and this is only my second comment. I love and value Slashdot BECAUSE the given article summary of the day is really just a piece of meat to get the real soup going that Slashdotters gather to share, which are the regularly insightful as well as irreverent comments of other Slashdotters from all over the world! (It doesn't even have to be a particularly recent or good piece of meat of a summary article to provoke the passion, observations and analysis of Slashdotters!)
Any fool can google the summary article 100 ways from Sunday, And many do. Slashdot comments on the other hand are unique, interesting, helpful, from funny to absurd to trolls to deeply insightful. Slashdot is Slashdot (or has been) because of its members comments and the (usually!) intelligence and experience behind them that gets shared.
That's the real and dynamic product! The beta looks like Blahdot already - and there are thousands of those kinds of sites and blogs already out there - all eye candy, flash headlines (excuse me, stories) and only a very few with a regularly vibrant community of interesting, insightful and funny COMMENTERS and COMMENTATORS I want to keep reading. The new owners have it backwards and inside out.
Why don't the new owners start a new second and separate site, Blahdot (otherwise known as 'Beta'), and, quite separately, see how that goes - it does after all already look like and act like a very different and very common web animal from Slashdot - i.e. Blahdot wants an audience for blahdot's stories, whereas Slashdot is a community with a dynamic effervescent product (Community, community comments, and comment threads) interesting and attractive enough to be almost independent of whatever summary article the comments spark off (as in, for example, the present boycott of summary articles). How many other sites are interesting enough to visit and read once their (supposedly) lead-in content has gone or is ignored?
If the new owners want Slashdot to scale in some manner and become an even larger community, then why not ask the Slashdot community how their activity (community, comments and comment threads) can scale and remain as meaningful and attractive as it is? Rather than some eyeball-driven design-head pushing his/her site designs for big(ger) audiences around aggregations of stories the web is already clogged with (yawn). The Slashdot community is already full of interesting comment about what it is (community, community comments, and comment threads) and what that could be scaling up.
Blahdot isn't Slashdot. Articles and audiences are a radically different animal from Community and community comments. And you ca
I have to disagree. I''ve maintained my Slashdot notice since nearly the beginning (well over a decade at least) to catch links to insightful articles about issues of science, technology, and socio-political observations affecting science and technology.
The hateful trolling and petty squabbling in the comments are usually ignored. On rare occasions where there seems to be a significant percentage of actual thoughtful discussion of the original post, I'll skim past the trolls to catch the key points of any expansion or debate of the main topic. I was under the impression Reddit and usenet were the location of insufferably rude "communities." When Slashdot is nothing but bickering discussion threads, I'll be canceling my membership.
You don't talk about cricket and we won't talk about American footbal - fair?