Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot and SourceForge Sold, Now Under New Management (bizx.info)
kodiaktau writes with a link to today's announcement that DHI Group, Inc. (which you might know better as Dice, the company that bought Slashdot and sister site SourceForge in 2012) today announced that it completed the sale of its Slashdot and SourceForge businesses (together referred to as 'Slashdot Media') to BIZX, LLC in a transaction that closed on January 27, 2016. Financial terms were not disclosed. DHI first announced its plan to sell Slashdot Media in July 2015 as part of its strategy to focus on its core brands, as Slashdot Media no longer fits within the Company's core strategic initiatives. KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc. served as the Company's exclusive financial advisor for the transaction. (FOSS Force has a short article with some more info BIZX and the sale.)
Our first order of business is to get rid of any malware and deceptive advertisements. Check out the plans here: http://fossforce.com/2016/01/s...
Logan, thanks for introducing yourself to me and answering my questions posted as AC in the SpaceX article. I've been around here since around 1999, so I've seen things change a lot over time. I have some suggestions to make, and I'd be interested to hear what you and the other editors have to say.
* Bring back a focus on Linux and FOSS. While I enjoy other topics, too, this is a sister site to SourceForge and FOSS is in Slashdot's DNA. Slsahdot used to have lots of sections (Ask Slashdot, Apple, BSD, YRO, Science, etc...) and some of the stories now posted to the front page could go into those sections. There were stories whenever new versions of the Linux kernel, FreeBSD distributions, and some software packages. Those were good and placed a greater emphasis on FOSS. Renewing a focus on YRO would be great, too, because those rights are under attack now more than ever.
* There used to be a good amount of original content on Slashdot, things like interviews, book reviews, articles written by Jon Katz. I understand that it may not be worth paying someone to write original content, but why not solicit it from users? I'd love to see more of an emphasis on Ask Slashdot and interviews.
* There were also follow-ups on stories that had been posted recently, and they were grouped together into a single article. This was called Slashback. As I recall, that was posted weekly. I'd love to see that come back.
* Please eliminate the restrictions that only allow users posting at -1 to post twice a day. Yes, they're trolls, but they'd also post in journals and converse with other users in their journals. I think there's more AC trolling because of those restrictions (I'm guilty of this), more mod points and effort wasted, and perhaps less interaction between logged-in users. While they're trolls, they were also responsible for much of the culture and humor of this site (e.g., ALL YOUR BASE, IN SOVIET RUSSIA, Natalie Portman and hot grits, can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of, etc...) and were entertaining. It's part of what made the site fun for a lot of people, and I think you'd bring more people here if you relaxed some of the restrictions.
* I'd love to see the current code powering Slashdot to be released as FOSS. One of the great things about Slashdot was Slashcode. It also brought in some community involvement as people could suggest and implement improvements to the site. While this was probably quite a small percentage of users, some contributed and others ran Slash on their own sites. It was also a great gesture that a site about FOSS also released its own code as FOSS.
* Editors were generally unwilling to link to paywalled sites or sites that did sketchy things. The NY Times was the one exception to this. I'd like to see less things on sketchy sites and those with obnoxious ads (Forbes). If people like Ethan want people to read their content, I'd rather they submit the content as stories on Slashdot rather than linking to Forbes, which has served malware ads while demanding people turn off their ad blockers.
The deal closed less than 24 hours ago. We're going to look at all options in order to improve the experience. And, no, that doesn't mean we're going to roll out a crappy new interface without listening to user feedback. We want to make sure we get it right.
Hopefully it'll prosper now. We have a good team in place and we're listening to you guys.
Could you get feedback from us "veterans" that have been reading /. for the past, say, 15 years?
i.e. Some of the things I'd like to see fixed:
- Unicode support
- Fix the broken "lameness filter" -- You can't even post a reasonable length of code with it, nor provide a list of bullet points with short sentences.
- No more StartsWithAShill and other trolls
- Allow older accounts who have good standing being able to post faster. The 4 minute time-out is archaic compared to reddit
The deal closed less than 24 hours ago. We're going to look at all options in order to improve the experience. And, no, that doesn't mean we're going to roll out a crappy new interface without listening to user feedback. We want to make sure we get it right.
Hi Whiplash,
/. and SourceForge are. Presumably a sum of money exchanged hands for these sites and brands and it is not unreasonable for Bizx to expect to make that money back by some means.
First off, thank you for starting out by engaging the community but as you undoubtedly know we're a cynical, suspicious, curmudgeony lot...
Well let me put it this way, many of us would like some kind of idea as to what Bizx's long term plans for
The promises of listening to the community and doing right are all good and well... but as I said we're a cynical and curmudgeony lot so we're quick to go into "we've heard all this before" mode. Also that Bizx is a marketing company, knowing their motivations and desired outcomes would help allay many of our suspicions.
BTW, FWIW I hope for the best (experience sadly, has taught me to expect the worst). Also feature request: may we have an option to have an automatic translation of US customary measurements into Metric.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Does this mean Unicode support? Or, to put it another way, you're going to rewrite from scratch because it's completely broken?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
It only took Soylent News a few weeks to implement working Unicode support. Apparently the code supports it, but most characters are filtered to prevent trolling. Back in the early days people would do things like post long strings to widen the page, or use Unicode characters to reverse text flow direction and the like. I'm not exactly sure what Soylent did to prevent that but they seem to have it sorted out.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC