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Breaking News
posted by janrinok on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the let-the-cheering-commence! dept.

FS tells me that Ars Technica reports that Dice is selling the Slashdot and Sourceforge sites. The company in their second quarter earnings announcements stated they have "not successfully leveraged the Slashdot user base to further Dice's digital recruitment business", and are planning to divest this business.

The report goes on to note that in spite of what the report calls "an incredibly loyal and passionate following of tech professionals," Slashdot and SourceForge aren't core to DHI's business and that DHI has partnered with KeyBanc Capital Markets to advise DHI on the sale. There is no buyer lined up yet.

The report also says that Slashdot Media (the aggregate of Slashdot and SourceForge) made $1.7 million in revenue for the second quarter and that it's estimated Slashdot Media will pull somewhere between $15 million and $16 million in revenue for fiscal 2015.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:45PM

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:45PM (#214853) Journal

    I hope that the new buyers, whenever they are found, know how to treat both sites properly.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by WizardFusion on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:46PM

      by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:46PM (#214854) Journal

      I think it's too late for that, particularly for Sourceforge.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by FrogBlast on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:49PM

        by FrogBlast (21) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:49PM (#214857)

        Too late to save them maybe, but not to late to stop actively doing harm to the people who do show up there.

        • (Score: 5, Funny) by Kell on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:30PM

          by Kell (292) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:30PM (#214885)

          When our green brethren and sestren walk into the wilderness in search of succor, we will greet them with open arms and lower UIDs.

          --
          Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
          • (Score: 5, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:45PM

            by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:45PM (#214894) Journal

            and then they will curse our sudden but inevitable betrayal!!

            --
            --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
          • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Notabadguy on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:37PM

            by Notabadguy (5730) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:37PM (#215119)

            I created an account here just to test this theory.

            • (Score: 2, Interesting) by plogerjb on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:49AM

              by plogerjb (5744) <reversethis-{moc.liamg} {ta} {bjregolp}> on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:49AM (#215225)

              Just did the same thing to join you. Thanks for the inspiration, been lurking since the beginning.

              --
              I believe in doing the right thing as well as being fair. Sometimes these don't go hand in hand.
            • (Score: 3, Funny) by Kell on Wednesday July 29 2015, @06:26AM

              by Kell (292) on Wednesday July 29 2015, @06:26AM (#215288)

              Welcome! :D

              We can all feel ever so slightly smug when the 5-digit UIDs start popping up.

              --
              Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
        • (Score: 1) by mmlj4 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:23PM

          by mmlj4 (5451) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:23PM (#215109) Homepage

          Tinfoil hat time! I don't get the game plan... sure, they've been caught out and so it's time to sell, but let's think about this for a while. Sourceforge's reputation is gone, pissed away in an effort to monetize open source software. They also destroyed freshmeat --- had to, if there was ever going to be any money in sourceforge. Hmm... maybe I get the game plan after all?

          --
          Need a Linux consultant [joeykelly.net] in New Orleans?
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @07:20PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @07:20PM (#215007)

        Indeed, they've damaged the reputation of both sites, probably beyond repair. ie: Even if Dice is removed from the picture, the staff at both sites have proven that they have no problem acting against the best intentions of the community it has (or had.)

        Essentially, they'll basically do whatever the new owners expect, which can easily be the same or worse than the things Dice was making it do. (steamrolling the new beta slashdot interface out despite constant objection and criticism from the community, and all that adware bundling crap being deceptively added to software downloads on sourceforge - and the stealing of projects from their owners under the excuse that it was "abandoned" (when more accurately it was to prevent the owners who had indeed abandoned sourceforge for other hosting alternatives from returning to remove the project officially)

        • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @10:00PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @10:00PM (#215075)

          Yes, it is awful when the staff of a company has to do what the owner of the company wants. They should be able to do whatever they want!!

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @10:24PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @10:24PM (#215084)

            socialism ftw!

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:06PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:06PM (#214872) Journal

      Yeah, but I don't think they will. Who would buy it who did not intend to extract maximum value from it? I don't really see any philanthropic tech billionaire coming along to hand the scumbags at Dice a payday, since the Slashdot community has already been destroyed and the Slashdot diaspora begun.

      For me the value of Slashdot was the genesis of an idea, that being a moderation system that enables a higher signal-to-noise ratio, and thus enabling tech- and geek-minded folks to participate in a sort of community they might find it hard to connect with in the offline world. That idea, and that heritage lives on, in Soylent at least. No place else I'm aware of has managed to achieve that success in community building from such a diverse array of people. Other places might achieve community, but they are echo chambers, not places where your verities are challenged; For example, just try questioning the coronation of Hillary Clinton for President on DailyKos or asserting the legitimate American birth of Obama on Drudge and you'll see what I mean.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by jdavidb on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:29PM

        by jdavidb (5690) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:29PM (#214883) Homepage Journal

        No place else I'm aware of has managed to achieve that success in community building from such a diverse array of people.

        Absolutely. The Slashdot community changed my mind and built my thoughts on a lot of things. Sometimes I did feel like I was seeing groupthink, but there was still enough variety that there were dissenters to any "mainstream" Slashdot opinion. I'm proud to be a vital part of the mix myself in being a dissenter (hopefully respectfully) on a number of things myself.

        I might add that I think there was also great value in the "omelette" CmdrTaco and company assembled daily. Frequently there was much to find fault with, but on the whole their story selection, editing, and guidance of the site kept us coming back over and over again for years.

        --
        ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Francis on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:35PM

          by Francis (5544) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:35PM (#214890)

          The group-think is what got me as much as anything. Posting anything even remotely interesting risked having it buried because it wasn't ideologically pure and it got to the point where people wouldn't even read the summary before posting.

          I don't agree that Dice caused that, the site was already dieing when they took it over. But they certainly did hasten it's demise by all the stupid UI changes and efforts to monetize it. The more obnoxious the ads got the less in the mood I was to allow them. Visiting on a mobile device really reveals just how incompetent the design was as you have to scroll quite a ways to get past the ads.

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:53PM

            by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:53PM (#214904) Journal

            I don't agree that Dice caused that, the site was already dieing when they took it over.

            Dice wasn't the first to acquire them. I forget now who bought them out first. Was it Andover.net? Anyway I think they tried to monetize it while respecting the community as best they could, and that started the site's slide down the slope. Dice, of course, had no such scruples.

            I don't know what Andover.net did to attract riff-raff (meaning hordes of trolls and karma whores), but it was after they bought Slashdot that you started to see "laser beam" jokes and Soviet Russia jokes get moderated to 5 every time. Cowboy Neal polls vanished then, which had been as iconic as "They killed Kenny! You Bastards!" had been on South Park at the time. It was OK at first, because the core editorial staff remained and a lot of the old-timers did, too. But when Dice took over, things went to pot fast.

            --
            Washington DC delenda est.
            • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Tork on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:15PM

              by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:15PM (#214920)
              That was actually caused by the moderation system. It doesn't work by raising the signal to noise ratio, it works by turning mod points into a game. Sharks with laser-beams? Lots of people with mod-points thought that was worth a funny-mod. So what's the difference? Yesterday Slashdot posted a story that NASA's EM drive was recently ... well it wasn't proven, but failed to be disproven. One of the earliest comments was a jackass saying: "A propulsion device provides thrust? Whatever next!" Rapid snark-filled remark? Check! Fortunately this post was modded down, but guys like that make dippy comments lile that because they've seen it millions of times before. There's your noise.

              I think what happened was somewhere in the mid-2000's Slashdot gained some sort of mass-appeal. Since Slashdot decided to randomly deputize the Jox Sixpacks with mod-points the community shifted from discussion to debate. No more questions were asked, every response was a jab. I think if Slashdot had maintained a system of moderation that required responsibility the verbal combatants would have lost their incentive to snark. I only hope this site avoids Slashdot's fate. We do have a good community here, keep the youtuber's out.
              --
              🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
              • (Score: 4, Insightful) by jpkunst on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:00PM

                by jpkunst (2310) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:00PM (#214934)

                Pro tip: give "Funny" moderated posts automatically a -6 in your preferences. Works great on both Slashdot and Soylentnews, everything is much more readable. Posts moderated "Funny" almost never are, keeping them out of sight is best.

                • (Score: 4, Funny) by Nerdfest on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:57PM

                  by Nerdfest (80) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:57PM (#214964)

                  The humour on SlashDot was one of the things I liked the best. Yes, there were the ongoing meme jokes (which were still funny on rare occasions), but some of the other humour was some of the best around. I think tech people are some of the funniest around, especially with puns, which I must admit I'm a big fan of.

                  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:50PM

                    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:50PM (#214993) Homepage
                    Yeah, I like clever (typically subtle) puns, and a sarcastic barb. I try to deliver the occasional few myself, and I'm never disappointed to receive a +1 Funny moderation. I'd like to flatter myself by thinking that people who view Funny at -6 would be missing out.

                    Maybe we should keep Funny for silly/dumb funny, and Touche for my sarcasm ;-)
                    --
                    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
                  • (Score: 3, Funny) by ghost on Tuesday July 28 2015, @07:30PM

                    by ghost (4467) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @07:30PM (#215010) Journal

                    Most slashdot jokes were stale and predictable. There were some really great trolls, though.

                    ----
                    C: A Dead Language?

                    Gentlemen, the time has come for a serious discussion on whether or not to continue using C for serious programming projects. As I will explain, I feel that C needs to be retired, much the same way that Fortran, Cobol and Perl have been. Furthermore, allow me to be so bold as to suggest a superior replacement to this outdated language.

                    To give you a little background on this subject, I was recently asked to develop a client/server project on a Unix platform for a Fortune 500 company. While I've never coded in C before I have coded in VB for fifteen years, and in Java for over ten, I was stunned to see how poorly C fared compared to these two, more low-level languages.

                    C's biggest difficulty, as we all know, is the fact that it is by far one of the slowest languages in existance, especially when compared to more modern languages such as Java and C#. Although the reasons for this are varied, the main reasons seems to be the way C requires a programmer to laboriously work with chunks of memory.

                    Requiring a programmer to manipulate blocks of memory is a tedious way to program. This was satisfactory back in the early days of coding, but then again, so were punchcards. By using what are called "pointers" a C programmer is basically requiring the computer to do three sets of work rather than one. The first time requires the computer to duplicate whatever is stored in the memory space "pointed to" by the pointer. The second time requires it to perform the needed operation on this space. Finally the computer must delete the duplicate set and set the values of the original accordingly.

                    Clearly this is a horrendous use of resources and the chief reason why C is so slow. When one looks at a more modern (and a more serious) programming language like Java, C# or - even better - Visual Basic that lacks such archaic coding styles, one will also note a serious speed increase over C.

                    So what does this mean for the programming community? I think clearly that C needs to be abandonded. There are two candidates that would be a suitable replacement for it. Those are Java and Visual Basic.

                    Having programmed in both for many years, I believe that VB has the edge. Not only is it slightly faster than Java its also much easier to code in. I found C to be confusing, frightening and intimidating with its non-GUI-based coding style. Furthermore, I like to see the source code of the projects I work with. Java's source seems to be under the monopolistic thumb of Sun much the way that GCC is obscured from us by the marketing people at the FSF. Microsoft's "shared source" under which Visual Basic is released definately seems to be the most fair and reasonable of all the licenses in existance, with none of the harsh restrictions of the BSD license. It also lacks the GPLs requirement that anything coded with its tools becomes property of the FSF.

                    I hope to see a switch to VB very soon. I've already spoken with various luminaries in the *nix coding world and most are eager to begin to transition. Having just gotten off the phone with Mr. Alan Cox, I can say that he is quite thrilled with the speed increases that will occur when the Linux kernel is completely rewritten in Visual Basic. Richard Stallman plans to support this, and hopes that the great Swede himself, Linux Torvaldis, won't object to renaming Linux to VB/Linux. Although not a C coder himself, I'm told that Slashdot's very own Admiral Taco will support this on his web site. Finally, Dennis Ritchie is excited about the switch!

                    Thank you for your time. Happy coding.

                    Egg Troll

                    • (Score: 1) by Absolutely.Geek on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:28AM

                      by Absolutely.Geek (5328) on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:28AM (#215215)

                      Sometimes you need a +1 Troll mod

                      --
                      Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @11:49PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @11:49PM (#215657)

                    yes, the 'humor' of /. was what introduced us to goatse.

                    i still flinch whenever I see a picture slowly open in my browser.

              • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:23PM

                by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:23PM (#214943) Journal

                Do you think we should run the update on EMDrive? The gist is that a new group independently verified a small amount of thrust, although the article is paywalled.

                --
                [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
                • (Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:49PM

                  by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:49PM (#214992)
                  Yes, mainly because I never read the articles anyway. :D
                  --
                  🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
              • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday July 29 2015, @12:50AM

                by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 29 2015, @12:50AM (#215144) Journal

                There's three or four different problems that the moderation system needs to address. (Some of them it successfully addresses.)

                One that isn't well addressed is that some people like different subjects than other people. But they system has no abstract category awareness. (My suspicion is that this would need to be customized for each user, as people categorize differently.)

                Another is that expertise has value, can can't be automatically detected. Note that I did NOT say it should automatically be given a heavy weight. That should be user adjustable.

                Another is that the weighings need to be dynamically adjustable. This means a much more convenient interface for adjusting them as well as a much more complex set of adjustments. Whoops! Big design problem.

                Another is... well, you get the idea. When you solve all of these you'll have a major AI program. And one that isn't lightweight when running on the end-user's computer.

                So. The perfect is the enemy of the good. What can be designed that will improve things and yet still be light and easy to use? Possibly user assignable categories, with user adjustible weights. multiple profiles, and an easy way to switch between them An easy interface might imply user assignable icons, including user designed icons. (I'd prefer an svg file, but many would prefer png or jpg. Limits on resolution, because the image needs to be displayable in a small area.) These custom icons would only ever appear on the end-users system, never transmitted, so no worries about copyrights, etc.)

                OK, so I got sidetracked.

                --
                Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:46PM

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:46PM (#214957)

            Posting anything even remotely interesting risked having it buried because it wasn't ideologically pure

            Here's some far out technology or concept or new project, or factual linked correction, usually did pretty well.

            Here's the 10000th attempt at trying to make microsoft look good, usually did pretty poorly.

            Trying to think of a concrete example of something that was ideologically impure, while simultaneously being interesting, and getting downmodded. Theoretically if someone pointed out a very small corner of the SCO lawsuits as being interesting, heres a small diamond in a giant manure pile type of thing, that would probably have done it.

          • (Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @10:14PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @10:14PM (#215079)

            The group-think is what got me as much as anything.

            No kidding. I tried posting comments to the effect that 99.9% of policemen and policewomen are decent people who are serving the common good, or that Snowden's release of documents weren't as pure in motive as he suggests and that he did US citizens more harm than good, or that Assange is simply an arrogant prick who doesn't give a shit about people who leak him information as long as it keeps his name in the news, and so on. You wouldn't believe the vitriol and downward moderation I suffered, those who down-moderate any opinion, not on the merit of the argument or on pesky things like facts, but because it was filled with "evil" thoughts and phrases. You'd be surprised how many self-assured jackasses there were who, if you didn't fit in their arbitrarily-drawn box of morality, that you were some kind of amoral low-life.

            . . .

            Oops, my bad, it seems I posted that to some red-colored site, not the green site.

            . . .

            Nevermind.

        • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:42PM

          by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:42PM (#214892) Journal

          Frequently there was much to find fault with, but on the whole their story selection, editing, and guidance of the site kept us coming back over and over again for years.

          The proofreading mistakes, the basic editing missteps, those all signaled authenticity to me. I have a learned bias against slick, overly-produced anything because it means somebody evil wants to sell me something I don't need or that's bad for me. For me, rough means real. If an article makes it to the front page and the editor or submitter sounds like they're being a little opinionated or even a bit of a dick, it says to me that there's a real person there that really cares about something. I pay attention to that. When something is overly processed and designed for a specific emotional response, it says to me there's a committee chaired by a dickhead MBA who wants to see the delta in the sales numbers, People!

          May Soylent make editorial mistakes forever. May Ethanol-fueled never die, may HairyFeet never lay down the standard of Microsoft. If they go, and are not replaced, then Soylent is headed for a rough patch of road.

          --
          Washington DC delenda est.
          • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:50PM

            by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:50PM (#214899) Journal

            may HairyFeet never lay down the standard of Microsoft

            May HairyFeet never lay down the standard for linux?
            FTFY? :)

            --
            --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
          • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:33PM

            by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:33PM (#214926) Journal

            May Soylent make editorial mistakes forever.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95YdE89nTgI [youtube.com]

            --
            [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
          • (Score: 1) by jdavidb on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:02PM

            by jdavidb (5690) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:02PM (#214935) Homepage Journal

            The proofreading mistakes, the basic editing missteps, those all signaled authenticity to me.

            Yes, exactly! I couldn't put it into words, but you have done so perfectly. And I think a lot of us have an affectionate spot in our hearts for some of those guys because we saw them in the Real rather than in the Polished modes.

            --
            ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
            • (Score: 2) by tadas on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:11PM

              by tadas (3635) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:11PM (#214973)

              Yes, exactly! I couldn't put it into words, but you have done so perfectly. And I think a lot of us have an affectionate spot in our hearts for some of those guys because we saw them in the Real rather than in the Polished modes.

              I'll never forget that there was a misspelling in the post where Taco proposed to Kathleen Fent on the front page. That was definitely real....

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by fadrian on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:12PM

            by fadrian (3194) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:12PM (#215104) Homepage

            Oh come on... There's authenticity and then there's not giving a crap about doing a decent job. Fuck, I can see a few typos - that's authenticity; what the Slashdot editors were doing was closer to malfeasance. But yeah, long live Soylent, typos and all - at least folks will respond and correct relatively quickly.

            --
            That is all.
          • (Score: 4, Funny) by cmn32480 on Wednesday July 29 2015, @04:05AM

            by cmn32480 (443) <reversethis-{moc.liamg} {ta} {08423nmc}> on Wednesday July 29 2015, @04:05AM (#215235) Journal

            We editors will do our very best to continue to screw up. We promise!

            --
            "It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
          • (Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday July 29 2015, @06:34AM

            by Magic Oddball (3847) on Wednesday July 29 2015, @06:34AM (#215292) Journal

            I'm kind of surprised that anyone would need to rely on the presence of mistakes to identify slick ad copy... As a general rule, it usually contains tell-tale phrases or sentiments that won't show up in regular competent, professional, or decently-proofread work, just like there are particular styles that signal whether a novel is literary or mainstream/genre fiction.

            Also keep in mind that people with a weak grasp of English grammar, spelling & punctuation are no less likely to be using their comments or articles/posts to sell or convince people of something than those of us that try to avoid errors whenever we can. Don't forget, companies have been hiring writers for at least a few years now to promote their products & tarnish their rivals' names while playing the part of somebody from a particular socio-economic, ethnic and/or age group...

        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:07PM

          by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:07PM (#214971) Homepage

          " Absolutely. The Slashdot community changed my mind and built my thoughts on a lot of things. "

          Like trolling culture. Slashdot was well-known for its trolling culture, such that an organization (the GNAA, of which Weev was an original leader) which was originally started specifically to troll Slashdot.

          That is one thing newer members to both Slashdot and SN often forget. Slashdot and trolling went together like drinkin' beer and smokin' grass. Not many people realize that I first actively participated in Slashdot as a goody-goody non-troll poster, earning high karma, before Slashdot's trolling culture appealed to me. Unlike that of places like 4chan, Slashdot's trolling culture required a finesse, a higher standard often with some bit of research on the parts of both the troller and the trollees whether done subtly or overtly.

          All that stuff you see in my journals? The format of which was influenced by Slashdot trolling culture more than anything. Yeah, that's right, I never wrote that big and trashy before Slashdot's dark side got ahold of me. For being "news for nerds, stuff that matters," the Slashdot trolling culture provided a framework which spawned the desolate and loathsome tales you may be reading in my journal right now.

          Of all the references to Slashdot that we see today discussed and written into these fora, any references to its once-rich troll culture are conspicuously absent.

          • (Score: 2) by tadas on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:14PM

            by tadas (3635) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:14PM (#214976)

            I *do* miss OOG, THE OPEN-SOURCE CAVEMAN. He was the only guy I ever wanted to moderate as +5 Troll.

          • (Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday July 29 2015, @10:22AM

            by Rivenaleem (3400) on Wednesday July 29 2015, @10:22AM (#215362)

            How can we tell if what you are saying now is truth or trolling? You could be trolling us right now, where in fact you are a goody-goody non-troll poster, but then this runs contrary to your post where you state you are a troll, but that mean you are a troll, but then that means your post is trollish which mean you are a non-troll ..... ERROR DOES NOT COMPUTE ... NO CARRIER - SIGNAL LOST

        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:16PM

          by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:16PM (#214978)

          No place else I'm aware of has managed to achieve that success in community building from such a diverse array of people.

          Absolutely. The Slashdot community changed my mind and built my thoughts on a lot of things. Sometimes I did feel like I was seeing groupthink, but there was still enough variety that there were dissenters to any "mainstream" Slashdot opinion. I'm proud to be a vital part of the mix myself in being a dissenter (hopefully respectfully) on a number of things myself.

          What I liked about it was that no matter how obscure the subject matter, the community was large enough and diverse enough that you would eventually get beyond the trolls and the usual spouting of uninformed opinions and someone who worked in the field and genuinely knew what they were talking about would post something informative about the topic.

      • (Score: 1) by NullPtr on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:13PM

        by NullPtr (3786) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:13PM (#214975) Journal

        Don't kid yourself, noone is leaving Slashdot.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @07:02PM

          by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @07:02PM (#214998) Journal

          Do we care? If Slashdot is dominated by trolls now, why should we want them to come to this fair corner of the world?

          --
          Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:28AM

        by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:28AM (#215193) Homepage

        Irony would be Bill Gates buying 'em both.

        --
        And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:48PM (#214856)

    Long live the red site!

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by janrinok on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:56PM

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:56PM (#214861) Journal

      The green site is dead!

      Hardly, but I admire your enthusiasm.

      • (Score: 5, Funny) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:59PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:59PM (#214864)

        Remarkable forum, the Green Site, idn'it, eh? Beautiful plumage!

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:14PM

      by looorg (578) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:14PM (#214877)

      Does that mean /. is now full of zombies?

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:51PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:51PM (#214858)

    1: M$

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:57PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:57PM (#214862) Journal

      Oh, the irony. That would be like when Scientology bankrupted and bought the Cult Awareness Network. Slashdot could become part of Microsoft's campaign to re-introduce itself to the computing public by trumpeting their commitment to "Open Source." Watch it happen.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:02PM

        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:02PM (#214867) Journal
        Just in time to shill how successful and awesome Win-10 is.
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:21PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:21PM (#214879) Journal
      2. oracle
      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 4, Touché) by zocalo on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:51PM

        by zocalo (302) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:51PM (#214902)
        If 1 is "M$" and 3 is "Profit", then there's no way that 2 can possibly be "Oracle".

        Well, not unless we're talking about Oracle making the profit...
        --
        UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @10:37PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @10:37PM (#215090)

          clearly this is the perfect acquisition for SCO...

      • (Score: 2) by bryan on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:09PM

        by bryan (29) <bryan@pipedot.org> on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:09PM (#214916) Homepage Journal

        3. Facebook

        How many billions did they pay for WhatsApp again - just to get the user base? Slashdot only being in the "M's" instead of the "B's" would be a drop in the bucket in comparison.

        • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 28 2015, @07:04PM

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday July 28 2015, @07:04PM (#215001) Homepage
          > Slashdot only being in the "M's" instead of the "B's"

          Is that some extrapolative reference to Aldous Huxley's /Brave New World/?
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
          • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:15PM

            by DECbot (832) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:15PM (#215106) Journal

            "M"illions of users instead of "B"illions.

            Even the /. trolls should grade better than a M on the Brave New World scale. That's pretty harsh.

            --
            cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
            • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:07AM

              by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:07AM (#215157) Homepage
              Do you *really* think I didn't know it was millions vs. billions?!??!?
              --
              Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
          • (Score: 3, Informative) by bryan on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:30PM

            by bryan (29) <bryan@pipedot.org> on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:30PM (#215114) Homepage Journal

            No. An "M" is the first letter in Million while a "B" is the first letter in Billion. A number of Facebook's recent acquisitions [wikipedia.org] have been in the billions. Namely, Instagram at 1 billion, WhatsApp at 19 billion, and Oculus VR at 2 billion.

            In Brave New World, the population is born into classes of varying intelligence levels. The upper end of the population (the Alphas and Betas) are allowed to develop under healthy conditions, while the lower castes (Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon) are deprived of oxygen or poisoned during embryo development to stunt their abilities. The further down the Greek alphabet, the worse off the class. Even so, the Epsilons (the 5th Greek letter [wikipedia.org]) are pretty much the bottom tier. Extrapolating down to "M" or Mu (the 12th Greek letter [wikipedia.org]) would mean a pretty deranged individual! Even Slashdot doesn't deserve such as shameful label.

            P.S. The classes also dress in class appropriate colors [amazonaws.com]. Betas are red and Gammas are green!

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by meisterister on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:51PM

      by meisterister (949) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:51PM (#214994) Journal

      4. Google

      While I don't expect this to happen, Google would buy it, integrate it into their existing services, and completely destroy the site.

      --
      (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
      • (Score: 5, Funny) by tangomargarine on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:52PM

        by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:52PM (#215045)

        Google would buy it, not touch it at all, and then cancel it after a few years of general success.

        FTFY

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @09:29PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @09:29PM (#215068)

        5. Donald Trump

        Hey, he's got a lot of money and is looking for bully pulpits...and I'm sure he wants the tech vote along with the Fox News vote.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @10:14AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @10:14AM (#215358)

          What Trump has is debt.
          If all his creditors called in all his debts, he'd be in a very deep hole.

          This is a guy who lost half of the $millions he inherited before he ever made a dime.

          This is a guy who couldn't make money with a casino.

          Trump is simply a blowhard with a lot of prejudices and stupid opinions.

          ...and, btw, Bernie Sanders moved up from his 12 percent approval rating in the previous poll to a 24 percent approval in July.
          This is better than any Republican's approval rating.
          In the same period, Hillary dropped from 48 percent to 43.

          -- gewg_

          • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Saturday August 01 2015, @01:15PM

            by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 01 2015, @01:15PM (#216737) Journal

            Hillary vs Trump.

            That's like suicide by antimatter carpet bombing of your local hemisphere.

            The only thing worse would be if they declare their opponent as their VP :D

            --
            Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2015, @02:24AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2015, @02:24AM (#216912)

              Yeah. In the primary, I'll support Bernie.
              While he's not the best on the ballot, he's the one in the best position to make things better.

              If Bernie doesn't survive the primary, I'll be voting for Jill Stein (again):
              Anti-war, good on the environment, not a Wall Street whore.

              -- gewg_

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @09:51PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @09:51PM (#215072)

      6. Warren Buffet - to use to post the results of his bridge abd poker games with Bill Gates

      7. Intel & IBM and use it as a pressroom for comming tech/research

  • (Score: 2) by MrNemesis on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:58PM

    by MrNemesis (1582) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:58PM (#214863)

    To think that I was just this minute looking to see if the wonderful absurd.org existed anywhere... this seems just as relevant now as when I first read it back before I'd even heard of slashdot: Web Is Dead - A Play In Two Acts [archive.org]. Well hey, it's a change from the usual "XYZ is dying" that I'm sure will be incoming shortly :)

    Given Dice's behaviour with /. and sourceforge up until this point, I can't see them selling to anyone but the highest bidder who will either be a rich old-skooler with money to burn or a company even more rapaciously money-grabbing than Dice themselves. Maybe Oracle?

    --
    "To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:56PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:56PM (#214906)

      From the linked page:

      and invests money in now legal marijuana market.

      Coincidence? [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by janrinok on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:00PM

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:00PM (#214865) Journal

    At the time of this comment, Slashdot are not covering the story. I wonder if anyone has told them?

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by zugedneb on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:05PM

      by zugedneb (4556) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:05PM (#214870)

      1: read ur sig
      2: own up
      3: profit
      =)

      --
      old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
      • (Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:07PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:07PM (#214936)

        Exactly. Reminds me of this writing by Raymond Chen:

        "Don't just stand around saying somebody should do something: Be someone [msdn.com]".

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by MrNemesis on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:05PM

      by MrNemesis (1582) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:05PM (#214871)

      There's at least four stories about it in the firehose... hopefully we won't see them fall victim to, er, editorial fluctuations like when the sourceforge project hijacking/malware story broke...

      --
      "To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:13PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:13PM (#214875) Journal

      I feel a little bad for them. When CmdrTaco left Slashdot, it was like a death in the family and a real wake-up call. I wound up putting his new venture, Trove, in my go-to links because I thought he had really done something good at Slashdot. And even after he was gone I cut Slashdot a lot of slack. I defended their little video escapades. I tried to overlook the Slashvertisements. But things went downhill quickly from there, with their "Slashdot for Business" that was trying to "leverage" the community into CIO/CTO eyeballs. Of course, the coup de grace was Beta. Dice just wouldn't listen. It seemed Timothy and Rob Rozeboom(sp?) were doing their best to roll with the punches, but still, they stayed. At some point you have to walk away from dirtbags for integrity's sake, but they never did.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:25PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:25PM (#214882)

        Well, now the dirtbags are walking away. So maybe sticking around was not the wrong thing to do.

      • (Score: 1) by danaris on Tuesday July 28 2015, @07:00PM

        by danaris (3853) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @07:00PM (#214997)

        You know Beta died months ago, right? It was clear that Slashdot wasn't totally lost to Dice's greed for some time.

        Dan Aris

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @07:15PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @07:15PM (#215004)

          But the near similar barf that is m.slashdot.org has yet to die.

        • (Score: 1) by jmoschner on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:09AM

          by jmoschner (3296) on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:09AM (#215208)

          Beta died because Dice had already decided the slash media properties were not in their best interests. Decisions to dump properties are usually not made or executed quickly. This was likely in the works for some time as Dice realized they were never going to fully monetize the sites.

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:10PM (#214873)

    .. herding cats!

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:29PM

      by LoRdTAW (3755) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:29PM (#214884) Journal

      I see you've never owned a cat and a laser pointer at the same time.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tathra on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:57PM

        by tathra (3367) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:57PM (#214908)

        i can't get my cat to chase the laser pointer. he knows its not real, so he just ignores it.

        • (Score: 2) by mendax on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:16PM

          by mendax (2840) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:16PM (#214940)

          You must have my evil cat's clone. Well, wait... my evil cat is black.... and female. Nevermind. But she is too smart for the laser pointer.

          --
          It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
    • (Score: 1) by nnet on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:26PM

      by nnet (5716) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:26PM (#215030)
      There are a fair amount of feral cats in my neighbourhood.
      Of the 8-10 I can readily identify and see almost daily, ALL of them are petrified of my green laser. They run like they're on fire at the first sight of it on the ground.
      • (Score: 1) by Th3P4st on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:06PM

        by Th3P4st (5282) on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:06PM (#215452)

        Of course they are petrifíed, it's green. Had it been red...

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:22PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:22PM (#214881) Journal

    While we're at it, can anyone explain why Dice even remains in business at all? They really suck at their core business, which is tech recruiting. When I was a hiring manager in consulting, I placed an ad on their site for Java programmers and 99% of the people they sent us had no idea what programming was. Later I was a hiring manager at a different company that bought a slot at a hiring event at Madison Square Garden; it hadn't come out of my budget line and I did need to hire three positions so I attended the 2-day event. Out of the hundreds of people who came through, there was not one single person who was remotely qualified. The only job placement service I've ever discovered that's more worthless was TheLadders.com, which simply scrapes hiring pages from other companies and tells people it gives them "special access" to those jobs.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:52PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:52PM (#214961)

      Maybe they monetize job seekers better than the job offer side.

      Numerically there are probably always more job seekers than offers, anyway.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:10PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:10PM (#214972)

        > Numerically there are probably always more job seekers than offers, anyway.

        Not according to the H1B apologists.

  • (Score: 2) by gallondr00nk on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:33PM

    by gallondr00nk (392) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:33PM (#214888)

    That the new owner at least has some idea of what makes a site like Slashdot tick. Perhaps they'll all come here ;)

    It says everything about rise and decline on the web. 10 years ago Sourceforge and Slashdot were big fucking hitters.

    I wonder in an alternate universe what would have happened if /. had gone through with the beta changes and basically whored out its own community as Dice intended. Would they still be selling it?

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by Reziac on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:38AM

      by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:38AM (#215197) Homepage

      Yes, but for about ten cents on the dollar.

      --
      And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:35PM

    by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:35PM (#214891)

    So they have "not successfully leveraged the Slashdot user base" and are flipping the property before it becomes worthless.

    I wondered all along what Dice was trying to do. They bought a site where the audience was a watering hole the kind of technical professionals that are in demand, but ... Dice is a scum of hives and villainy, full of recruiters and crappy temp jobs (and not much else), and in-demand technical professionals aren't going to be interested in bottom-feeder employment. When you want someone with a decade of professional experience for a crappy three-month temp job, you're not going to attract quality talent. So the whole thing was an impedance mismatch from day one. How do you monetize a mismatch like this? You either need to match high-quality jobs to in-demand talent, or do what LinkedIn does, which is charge desperate recruiters to troll their database of professionals and then charge the recruiters to spam them (it's like printing your own money). I never figured out how slashdot fit into recruiting. Apparently dice didn't either.

    --
    (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by tibman on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:56PM

      by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:56PM (#214907)

      It did seem like they had no idea what they were doing. They could have started by expanding the user features by including an optional resume. Next would be a checkbox for "i am looking for a new job in x that pays y". There are fucking millions of engineers (still) on slashdot, i'm sure they could have had thousands of participants at least.

      They could have even attempted to integrate some of sourceforge into slashdot. Associate a ./ UID to your SF projects. People can see your projects from your ./ profile. You could even advertise for open positions and needs for your sourceforge projects. But they just squeezed sourceforge and made it repulsive. They tried to "modernize" slashdot against everyone's wishes and thought that would help make them money. The site was already incredibly popular! They didn't have to "improve" the look, the eyeballs were already there.

      --
      SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:08PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:08PM (#214915) Journal

        Yeah, see? They should have hired you to advise them, not some MBA flunky from Thunderbird. The integration of hiring in Slashdot could have been very good for everyone, but Dice sucked at it.

        I want to put down a marker here, on your comment. Soylent should do this, the way you have described. Being an active member of Soylent ought to not only give you the satisfaction of conversing with smart, opinionated people, but help you advance your day job career as well. It ought to help you find compadres for your open-source project. It ought to help your good-idea startup get off the ground. That would be kick-ass, and everybody could sign onto that.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 4, Funny) by janrinok on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:58PM

          by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:58PM (#214967) Journal
          Only if we could all do it as AC :)
        • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:12AM

          by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:12AM (#215209) Journal

          And while we're on the subject of improving Soylent News, I suggest this very awesome idea be presented in a way that is favorable to managers -- not recruiters and most certainly not human resources. I've been looking for a job for a long time and the single biggest hurdle I have is not being screened out by HR and recruiters who cannot understand what talents are. (Hint: It's not usually technological knowledge or experience.) Next step is to help managers understand what they're really looking at when they see a person like most of us common Joes.

          We wanted money for the site? I think we just stumbled across a way to do it. Specialize in a niche that no one seems to be able to offer.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:03PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:03PM (#214913) Journal

      So they have "not successfully leveraged the Slashdot user base" and are flipping the property before it becomes worthless.

      And isn't that phrase a perfect example of what gets crapped out the ass of an MBA? "not successfully leverages the Slashdot user base." How about not being a reductive, greedy asshole and offering great, hard-to-fill opportunities to talented, meaningful tech professionals instead? It's really not that hard.

      I know that as a hiring manager it would have been great to hire a Slashdot native. They would have questioned my taste in music. They would have accused me of being a sell-out for my choice of compiler. But they would have been fucking brilliant in the clinch.

      Alas, Dice was too stupid to see that.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 1) by Kawumpa on Wednesday July 29 2015, @08:28AM

        by Kawumpa (1187) on Wednesday July 29 2015, @08:28AM (#215335)

        What about the "reductive and greedy" arseholes who sold them the site in the first place? Why don't they get any of the blame?

    • (Score: 2) by MrNemesis on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:27PM

      by MrNemesis (1582) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:27PM (#214924)

      Whenever anyone, especially Dice, uses the word "leverage" in that context I always unwittingly transplant the speaker into Battlefield Earth [youtube.com]. Given their seeming nature as planet-trotting uber-capitalists behaving like always-crooked bad actors it's perhaps a fitting metaphor for Dice's stewardship.

      --
      "To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:01PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:01PM (#214969)

      Pure speculation is they had no idea that /. was all about the comments, and thought it was a clickbait/tabloid kind of site like gawker or whatever.

      So hey we can't buy gawker but we can put job ads on this site thats also an internet "infotainment" site, eh whats the difference?

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by chewbacon on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:09PM

      by chewbacon (1032) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:09PM (#215102)

      Gotta say I feel partially responsible for Dice's failed venture and it feels so good! Assholes.

  • (Score: 4, Touché) by chewbacon on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:44PM

    by chewbacon (1032) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:44PM (#214893)

    they couldn't mod down enough "fuck beta" comments fast enough to cover that mess up.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by GlennC on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:48PM

    by GlennC (3656) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:48PM (#214898)

    ...not successfully leveraged the Slashdot user base to further Dice's digital recruitment business.

    In other words, the Slashbots were too smart to fall for Dice's sleaze.

    --
    Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
  • (Score: 2) by bootsy on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:51PM

    by bootsy (3440) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:51PM (#214901)

    I'm actually surprised at how much money Slashdot and SourceForge were making. It would be interesting to see the breakdown of how much Slashdot made on it's own.

    If Soylent turned over less than 10 percent of that we'd be doing well. Does it all come from Ad Revenues or does that include the sale of goodies?

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:30PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:30PM (#214948) Journal

      Having advertisements and a much larger userbase helps... apparently. I wouldn't be surprised if SourceForge pulls in a lot more of the ad hit revenue due to projects with near a billion downloads, many people looking for popular software, and lower % of adblockers. Since the number is combined we don't know.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 1) by jmoschner on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:22AM

        by jmoschner (3296) on Wednesday July 29 2015, @03:22AM (#215211)

        Online ads typically don't start to make much money or attract major players until a site can deliver about 1 million unique ad views (not to be confused with site views) and has the analytical data the advertisers are looking for.

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:54PM (#214905)

    good god!
    soylentnews.org loads really really fast for me!!!

  • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:30PM (#214925)

    Beta was a fiasco, but Slashdot's young readership hasn't been willing to work with the new owners in the usual way audiences negotiate with media providers - you give us this, and in turn we'll consume (or ignore) some ads, occasional puff stories that tie in with Dice's other businesses, etc. Slashdot's response to ANY puff story or almost ANY change in format is to post obscenities, which are modded all the way up. It's a juvenile attitude IMO, and one that the editors haven't lifted a finger to discourage.

    So I'm not surprised that Dice Holdings would want to bail. Their experiment failed, because they overestimated the maturity of the site's readers.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:24PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:24PM (#214944)

      Anonymous MBA shithole, I reply in kind.

      You contradict yourself: Slashdot's readership is not young. The young submit to social media sites without concern for privacy or integrity. Slashdot's readership is grognardy and curmudgeonly and resists being taken advantage of.

      • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:16PM

        by DECbot (832) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:16PM (#214979) Journal

        The way I read the GP post was that the grognardy and cumudgeonly user base resists being taken advantage of in the most immature ways. Much like how you would expect a 13 year old userbase would react.

        --
        cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:26PM (#214945)

      I haven't kept up with Slashdot in years so I'll take your comment as fact. However I will disagree with your comment about being juvenile. The main problem with polite discourse is that it only works when you have reasonable parties involved. All effective protests are disruptive, humans generally don't pay attention otherwise. I doubt Dice, or the community at large, would pay much attention to multiple long well thought out responses to shitty articles. Its the same reason the "fuck beta" campaign took off...

      So, not necessarily juvenile, just the only effective response to a system that doesn't care about the users.

      • (Score: 2, Funny) by jdavidb on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:00PM

        by jdavidb (5690) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:00PM (#214968) Homepage Journal
        I try to keep my discourse free of swearing and even of disrespect. I don't always succeed, but it's the goal I have in mind. Even without these expressions that you might deem immature, I still didn't like Beta.
        --
        ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:41PM

          by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:41PM (#214991) Journal

          You know, there's a time and a place. It behooves a person to start out with, "I believe, good sir, that you're not taking all the facts into account." A person ought to endeavor to preserve comity with, "I have meant to impart a reasonable counterpoint to your arguments; please consider it." But in the end, sometimes nothing drives the point home like, "You're behaving like a fucking retard."

          I know I have been shaken out of my carefully constructed rationales thus. It could work for others too.

          --
          Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:30PM

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:30PM (#214947) Journal

      The vast majority of the folks who left and came here were 10+ year users. Since we left I would argue that indicates that the OLDER "audience" members were the ones most oppposed.
       
        Their experiment failed, because they overestimated the maturity of the site's readers.
       
      I would argue that they underestimated the maturity of the site itself.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:01PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:01PM (#215018)

        Yes they underestimated maturity of the site. Simply the site was mature and defined, they attempted to redefine it and failed.

      • (Score: 2) by spxero on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:39PM

        by spxero (3061) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:39PM (#215038)

        I echo the underestimated sentiment. There were three items that pushed me away, and two of them were in the direct control of the site. The first was beta. I just want to read the site in an easily viewable format with easy to view comments. The second was the video. Most, if not all, of my /.-viewing time is at work. Having to put headphones on to view the video just didn't work, and the content was far from well-produced. Most of what I saw in video could've been covered in a summary. Both of these are products of having a job where my slack-off time is valuable, and viewing something they tried to evolve into Facebook with video is far from appealing.

        The third item for me was the lack of quality comments as well as how many comments were on an article before I even saw it. Too many users without meaningful discussion.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:37PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:37PM (#214988) Journal

      That's because business schools teach you how to manage from the perspective that humans are stupid cattle, numbers. They abstract "humans" to "consumers" and "what they legitimately want" to "demand." They want everything to conform to an abstract formula that they manage from the one app they know, Excel. Ask them to actually do something or comprehend something and they'll stammer and back slowly away, "But the market will provide..."

      As such it's not surprising at all that Dice failed to monetize the Slashdot community. Retards cannot be expected to understand the why's and wherefore's of their intellectual betters. They'll shake their heads (as they have, here), back away, and blame it on the community ("we failed to monetize them...").

      Nevertheless, if an intelligent person had been empowered at Dice to work with the Slashdot, it could have worked out well for everyone.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:15AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:15AM (#215163)

        ...the one app they know, Excel

        Not all of them know Excel. I have been asked several times to "convert this spreadsheet to powerpoint, for the higher ups"

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Michelle on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:35PM

    by Michelle (4097) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:35PM (#214927)

    I cannot for the life of me believe that Dice is still around. I've had experiences with them in the past; only calls I ever got through them were from headhunters (mostly overseas). "Jobs" that don't exist when you follow up on it.

    I'm not quite clear how they thought strangling /. and driving away much of their longtime loyal userbase, and then trashing projects on SF with malware was going to help their business model.

    Good riddance, Dice. What will you destroy next?

    --
    "Right now is the only moment you'll ever have; so why be miserable?"
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Michelle on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:39PM

      by Michelle (4097) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:39PM (#214928)

      Oh, and this little gem is just plain insulting: "not successfully leveraged the Slashdot user base".

      Sorry Dice, but I'm not here for you (and your capitalist cronies) to "leverage".

      But then, the /. beta policies and site design were insulting too... If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

      --
      "Right now is the only moment you'll ever have; so why be miserable?"
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by The Archon V2.0 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:50PM

    by The Archon V2.0 (3887) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:50PM (#214932)

    Maybe they could buy it for the management team. I hear they have a need for several experienced people.

    And probably a few more before the week's out.

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by mattwrock on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:34PM

    by mattwrock (3835) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:34PM (#214986)

    LinkedIn and Monster

    --
    Ones and zeros everywhere... I even saw a 2 - Bender
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @09:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @09:44PM (#215070)

      LinkedIn could at least do a decent job.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:06PM (#215020)

    The remaining editors, perhaps with the exception of soulskill, totally sold out. Fuck them and their descendants. If they had any integrity, they would have bolted long ago.

    Tim Lord, Rob Rozeboom, you are dirty whores.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:13PM (#215024)

    I heard they're a great company :)

  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:00PM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:00PM (#215097) Homepage

    >The company in their second quarter earnings announcements stated they have "not successfully leveraged the Slashdot user base to further Dice's digital recruitment business"
    They certainly have "successfully leveraged" the Slashdot user base into oblivion. They managed to do it even faster with Sourceforge, although that site was dying to begin with.

    I mean, doesn't "Dice" sound like the name of a gambling company? Maybe they just roll dice to make important business decisions?

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
  • (Score: 2) by No Respect on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:56AM

    by No Respect (991) on Wednesday July 29 2015, @01:56AM (#215183)

    Good that Dice has failed. Bad that whoever buys them will not restore those sites to their original places of respect and esteem. Slashdot might have a chance at recovering, depending on who buys it. SourceForge is dead, Jim.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:58AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:58AM (#215204)

    Looking forward to the great Reddit apocalypse when they finally decide to start making money.