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Today we stand proud, fellow Soylentils. Two stories have been received to explain why:
Slashdot.org switches accounts to Classic-like interface
It now appears that Slashdot has now completely changed its interface to the new "beta" interface - which looks almost the same as the "old" interface. Users can no longer view the non-beta classic site, which is being reported by users all around the site.
The only official news on the matter is in the form of a journal entry.
Does this mean it's time to go after our original mission and let them know we're here?
"Beta" Delenda est!
Remember Slashdot? Remember Beta? This blog post might be tagged "sudden outbreak of common sense," if it wasn't well over a year too late:
...effective today, we've jettisoned the Slashdot Beta platform out the side portal. [...] After heavily experimenting on the Beta platform and splitting traffic between Classic and Beta, we've made some decisions about which platform changes ultimately make sense: starting today, we're unifying users back on our Classic platform.
A raft of minor changes came along with this announcement. Still no comment, though, on whether those users are a "community" or an "audience."
And frankly, that's why soylentnews is better.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday February 27 2015, @06:36PM
Dice has shown no interest in anything in userspace in the past. Everyone screamed and yelled at their destruction of Slashdot, but they bulled on ahead anyway. So I doubt they have consciously mimicked SN or any other place. More likely is their internals are showing them something a lot more worrisome. Maybe they're seeing activity from their oldest and most active members falling off a cliff. Maybe they're seeing more and more of their traffic coming from the same IP blocks and that's mostly spambots and sockpuppets. Slashdot did build a strong community reputation over a long period of years, and would have been more likely to attract PR/social media hacks trying to game the "social graph."
Remember that "Slashdot for IT Managers/Business" dreck they came out with, oh, 2-3 years ago pre-Beta? I'd warrant that was Dice's ham-fisted attempt to "monetize" that very same feature of the community. Same thing with the Slashvertisements and the videos and that sort of garbage. They knew the Slashdot comprised a lot of IT movers & shakers & do'ers and they wanted to cash in more directly on it. So, yeah, my theory is they've seen those people abandon Slashdot in droves and with them, the core value of the site, and being the rectally-cranially inverted MBAs they are, they think they can solve all of it with gimmicks and UI tricks.
They can't.
Washington DC delenda est.