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: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:Can the new buyer be worse than DICE?

[JazzLad]

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

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.

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

[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.