DHI Group Inc. Announces Plans to Sell Slashdot Media

An anonymous reader writes: DHI Group Inc. (formerly known as Dice Holdings Inc.) announced plans to sell Slashdot Media (slashdot.org & sourceforge.net) in their Q2 financial report. This is being reported by multiple sources. Editor's note: Yep, looks like we're being sold again. We'll keep you folks updated, but for now I don't have any more information than is contained in the press release. Business as usual until we find a buyer (and hopefully after). The company prepared a statement for our blog as well — feel free to discuss the news here, there, or in both places.

Comments

My $.02

[Zibodiz]

I would love to see Slashdot purchased by an open-source-minded non-profit. That's the core audience, why not let the lunatics run the asylum?

Re:My $.02

[Soulskill]

That would be awesome.

Re:My $.02

[Monkey-Man2000]

Well, maybe float the idea to the powers that be. I remember the Free Blender movement on /. being one of the first successful crowdsourcing efforts and thought a similar strategy would get as much (or better!) support here.

Re:Everybody List What You Think Went Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how quickly after you mentioned GG that there's so many posts bashing you on it. As of this writing I even see a post telling you to stfu and grow a sack getting insightful mods

And we're told that it's the pro-GG side that has a secret cabal of misogynists going around down modding and shit posting. Clearly that's how you got your insightful mods, you dirty misogynist woman hater you.

Re:Kickstarter?

[Dadoo]

Does anyone know how much they're asking?

Given the rough estimate of a company's value (if it's not publicly traded) is about 4 times its yearly profits, I'd say Slashdot is worth somewhere between $12m and $16m.

Re:Everybody List What You Think Went Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Could you not be more wrong.

1. Bound to happen. Old slashdot was a dinosaur. Updates happen. Interfaces become more modern, for better or worse. Get over it.

2. Gamergate was ignored because gamergate is not news. It's especially not news for nerds. Its a howling circlejerk for basement dwelling antisocial fuckwits who are too dysfunctional to talk to women and express their frustration in online misogyny. Nothing notable happened. Your rights were not impinged. Claiming otherwise is a good way to make sure everyone knows exactly what kind of toxic loser you are, and will thus get you ignored.

3. Sexism is real. (See number 2) And STEM is a hot topic right now.

Nobody has an agenda against your toxic antisocial "gamer culture" or your impotent manhood. Get over it. (I've been a 'gamer' since the 2600 was new. I can tell you a thing or two about 'gamer' culture. The screaming man-babies that clustered around whatever-gate are not 'gamers' and never will be)

There are reasons to be annoyed with Dice's ownership of slashdot. How they tried to turn it in to a generic soapbox to peddle their boring products, and turn it in to a clickbait shitfest like anything gawker media runs. Or how they completely fucking destroyed sourceforge, once THE nexus of opensource software development. Now just another shitty download site that tries to push malware on to your computer.

Get your priorities in order son.

Re:Can the new buyer be worse than DICE?

[JazzLad]

Can we buy it with funding via kickstarter? How much do we need to raise?

You forgot the awful moderation.

[Anonymous Coward]

The moderation has been particularly awful lately. Many perfectly fine comments get modded down to -1. Usually they don't even show the reason for the downmod. It's even getting common to see stories with only a few comments, and all have been modded down. Moderation mistakes are to be expected, of course, but a lot of these downmoddings appear to be targeted. It isn't just GNAA or BSD-is-dying trolls being downmodded, but rather people who have dared to present an independent viewpoint. It's getting to be like Reddit or Hacker News, where if you don't barf out whatever has been deemed to be the "correct viewpoint" then you're treated as a pariah and downmodded without restraint. It wasn't always like this. Dissent and disagreement used to be one of the best parts of /.'s discussions.

Re:Eventuality?

[jfengel]

It has the advantage of once having been worth something. People have a fondness for it. It might tempt back some of the old users. Social networks have an advantage in that they're worth more when more people are there, and that history might just barely let them leverage that.

The main value of the site, at least to me, was always its user base. I didn't RTFA because the commenters would often be able to give me a better summary of what was really going on. Especially when TFA was clickbait; I could see why it was clickbait without having to read it myself. Or for sciencey stuff that's out of my domain, Slashdot often had people who could explain it at my level. (That is, more than the average layman, but less than a grad student in that field.)

I'm not gonna get my hopes up, but I'll note that I'm still here, though mostly lurking. There may be others waiting for an improvement to the site's management to contribute more.

Re:Can the new buyer be worse than DICE?

[Aighearach]

Stay tuned!

Yay! It will either get better, or finally die.

Honestly, I'd rather see it die than muddle along like this. And, it could be great again!

I see it as win-win. I'll either come here more, like I used to, or less, like I should already.

You just described SoylentNews.

[Anonymous Coward]

You've basically just described SoylentNews, a Slashdot clone that appeared when the Slashdot Beta shit really started heating up.

And you know what? I think it's clear that it's an absolute hell-hole that's worse than Slashdot today, even!

That community is small. It's small because many of the regular users there are best described as obnoxious extremists. They naturally drive away most normal users with their toxicity.

The few remaining normal users tend to get modded out of the community quite quickly, merely for daring to express ideas that the extremists dislike.

The submissions are affected, too. Many of them are pretty much identical copies of submissions that appeared on Slashdot hours or days earlier. The original submissions are typically from the extremists, and usually focus on some obscure and minor political controversy somewhere, typically without any relevant connection to science, or mathematics, or technology, or computing, or software. Good stories don't have a chance at making the front page there.

We don't need the same sort of toxic environment developing here at Slashdot. As bad as things may seem here, they are nowhere near as bad as at SoylentNews, in my view. At least there are some normal users here. Letting the extremists run the show here, too, would just drive away these normal users, resulting in yet another imbalanced, biased environment where moderation is used to attack people with original or controversial opinions.

Re:You just described SoylentNews.

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like somebody's afraid of Soylent News. Your +5 post seemingly came out of nowhere, with no prompting. How about letting your users go there and see for themselves just how "extremist" it is?

" And you know what? I think it's clear that it's an absolute hell-hole that's worse than Slashdot today, even! "

No flags, no articles masquerading as stories, no users who are corporate sockpuppets as there are here.

" That community is small. It's small because many of the regular users there are best described as obnoxious extremists. They naturally drive away most normal users with their toxicity. "

It's small because the users are real, not corporate sockpuppets, and the community is still growing. It has a long way to go but it's already better than this place.

" The few remaining normal users tend to get modded out of the community quite quickly, merely for daring to express ideas that the extremists dislike. "

People don't get modded out of the community. They may be modded down, like here, but SN doesn't permaban people for expressing unpopular opinion like Slashdot does.

" The submissions are affected, too. Many of them are pretty much identical copies of submissions that appeared on Slashdot hours or days earlier. The original submissions are typically from the extremists, and usually focus on some obscure and minor political controversy somewhere, typically without any relevant connection to science, or mathematics, or technology, or computing, or software. Good stories don't have a chance at making the front page there. "

There is some overlap, but the more political stories encourage discussion from all (dissenting viewpoints included) and your assertion that stories are not about math/tech/computing/software are complete bullshit. As examples, this, this, this, this, and this all in the past 2 days alone.

" We don't need the same sort of toxic environment developing here at Slashdot. As bad as things may seem here, they are nowhere near as bad as at SoylentNews, in my view. At least there are some normal users here. Letting the extremists run the show here, too, would just drive away these normal users, resulting in yet another imbalanced, biased environment where moderation is used to attack people with original or controversial opinions."

There are plenty of "normal" users at Soylent News, in not only the unextreme sense but the "real-and-not-a-corporate-sockpuppet" sense. And most importantly, there aren't any corporate sponsors or advertisers who have a stake in deciding what can or can't go into and be modded down in the discussions. Now, whether or not SN will sell out to Dice in another 15 years, I can't say. What I can say is that a lot of the assertions you are making are bullshit, and you should leave it up to the few remaining non-corporate-sockpuppet users you have to decide for themselves.

Signed,
-- A Longtime Slashdot and now Soylent News Reader

buy low sell high

[Nick]

I guess I should've taken that $2k offer my 3 digit UID when I chance. It's been a fun 18 years or so, but the future of /. doesn't seem to bright.

Re:buy low sell high

[mrbester]

With regards to low UIDs, it's refreshing to see so many posts from sub 1E6 users. It's a pity that the quality of /. has gone so far downhill that it is only news that we're about to get fucked over again that brings them blinking into the light...

Re:Everybody List What You Think Went Wrong

[serviscope_minor]

As someone who ends up on the side of the pro-GG side of the argument more often than not,

Out of interest, why are you pro these people:
http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/...

Or perhaps you'd like to wile away a few minutes watching "the sarkeesian" effect. I do notice that the gaters on Slashdot banging on about fraud have finally given up 12 months after literally no one asked for their money back from Sarkeesian.

much the same way that "MRA" is used and misused

I think you're confusing the men's movement with the men's rights movement. The latter is the one with return of kings, mgtow and so on and who's adherents are known as men's rights activists.

Re:Everybody List What You Think Went Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it was totally suppressed.

I think the worst suppression was when submissions like SourceForge and GIMP [Updated], nmap Maintainer Warns He Doesn't Control nmap SourceForge Mirror, SourceForge Responds To nmap Maintainer's Claims, and SourceForge Suspends Independent Project Mirroring ended up on the front page.

Re:Kickstarter?

[Zmee]

I'd say Slashdot is worth somewhere between $12m and $16m.

So in roughly 3 years, Dice/DHI slashed Slashdot's value by $4M to $8M (or 20% to 40%) from when it was purchased at $20M (Dice buys ... Slashdot ... in $20M deal).

Re:Kickstarter?

[Kjella]

Except that they're coming in way below their yearly outlook which said:

Revenue:
$18 - $20 mm
Adjusted EBITDA:
$5 - $6 mm
Net income:
$3 - $4 mm

But later they're giving Q2 figures saying for the last 6 months:

Revenue:
7,667 mm
Adjusted EBITDA:
0,852 mm
Net income:
0,316 mm

If the last half of the year is the same, they're only making about 15%-20% of their planned net income. In fact, the last quarter they made no money at all. So I'm thinking way, way less.