The number of users on Slashdot is quite transparent, given that you can see the growth in user ID numbers over time. It doesn't seem to support your position.
I'm also rather disappointed to see the stereotype "we hate everything" characterisation of Slashdot from a couple of posters here. That's like saying HN is just full of college kids who think making a social web app with geolocation and a REST API is going to turn them into gazillionaires when they pivot to something useful (after all, the idea doesn't matter, it's the people who count) and then get acquired by Facebook for the GDP of a small country.
Obviously there really are quite a few young, delusional people on HN, but I don't think most of us spend time here because of those people. Obviously there really are quite a few very negative/selfish people on Slashdot, but I don't think most of us who spend time there do it because of those people, either.
Incidentally, as I write this, Slashdot's home page is full of topics that might have been (and in several cases have been) popular on HN as well: several articles on new technologies, several popular science articles, commentary on issues like piracy and privacy, and so on. There are some decent comments in the related discussions, too.
That all said, I don't go to Slashdot as much as I used to. Partly that's because they keep messing around with (and often breaking) the basic design and functionality of the site. Partly it's because a lot of the stories are old news by the time they get past the editors, and they've already hit the front pages of HN, relevant subreddits, etc. Partly it's because the discussions are too big for a simple chronological ordering to really work and the system for filtering by moderation score doesn't seem to help much. All of these things make the site more frustrating than it used to be, and I suspect if Slashdot is indeed on the way out there will be plenty of places to point fingers.
But please can we not descend to the level of "Oh, those people on {other site} are just {arbitrary negative stereotype}". Such generalisations can be levelled at any popular forum site on the Web, and they're about as useful in each case.
I beg to differ: the characterization is well-deserved. I'm a habitual Slashdot reader, since 1998.
The topics on Slashdot are about the same quality as they were last 5-7 years--not great, but still nice and "relevant to my interests." The wording of the article summaries is still pro-Linux anti-Microsoft (and now) anti-Apple inflammatory, and still hilariously poorly edited or vetted. However, that was always a charm of the site, in a way.
The difference is that some 5 years ago, in the face of an anti-Microsoft post, for example, people would chime and say "You know, actually I have developed a great project with ASP.NET and here's why it's good and worked well for me." Or people would post detailed responses, like we see on Hackernews.
Now, I've come to a point where I see so little of those good comments and so much of the inflammatory or ignorant or terribly-humored comments, that it's just not worth my time anymore. I can get the headlines from anywhere else and in the tech world, it's the discussion behind the headlines that's the valuable thing.
I've said this here before, as a long time /. reader.
The value of /. is that occasionally the clueless masses will piss off someone with actual knowledge, enough to set people straight with a long, detailed post.
Yeah, way back before HN/reddit/digg existed, one of the coolest things about /. was that every so often somebody like John Carmack would pop up and comment on a story they had direct knowledge about.
There's actually a technique to this, going back to Usenet. You can draw out the answer you want this way, by saying something technically incorrect as if it were correct.
Your point about the system being subtly broken is spot-on. Sane people have moved on because of the subtle breakages. The site ends up full of older people who either a.) haven't realized the world is bigger and better things exist or b.) started using /. when it was new and somehow developed a perverse loyalty to "the first tech discussion site" and they refuse to move on. People stuck in their ways don't make the best conversational partners.
Obviously not everybody there is bad, but the baddies shift the tone of the discussion towards lunacy.
I think there needs to be a new rule of the internet, something along the lines of "the worst, troll-y content of any news aggregation site will always be found in a story about Apple".
There are few companies out there more polarising in internet discussion these days.
>There are few companies out there more polarising in internet discussion these days.
I don't think they're trolls per se, but it's divided between worshipers,haters and those who don't see the point of worshiping or hating a multinational company motivated by profit.
No wonder the discussion degenerates into people who see the light vs. the people who don't.
For example, from Gruber's take on the iPhone 5 event:
>And what shows they were. When Schiller unveiled the iPhone 5, it rose from the stage floor on a smoothly-rising and rotating pedestal, pinpoint spotlights hitting the phone and only the phone. The rotation of the iPhone atop the pedestal was in perfect sync with the rotation of the iPhone projected on the big screen at the back of the stage. There’s no store where you buy such pedestals; Apple designed and engineered it specifically for this event. It was on stage for about a minute.
>Likewise, when Cook introduced the show-closing Foo Fighters, the screen rose and from behind the screen slid the band, on a raised dais that smoothly rolled to the front of the stage. Such stagecraft is one of the rewards Apple can reap from its $100 billion (and growing) war chest
For people on the opposite sides on the Apple fan spectrum, those two paragraphs elicit very different emotional responses. One HN comment said reading it make him/her feel physically sick while an Apple fan might get goosebumps.
Also curious is the fact that the Apple blogger network Gruber/Siegler etc. seem to be very bent on hating on and being snarky on all things not-Apple and rivals i.e Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook etc.
When I open a /. discussion, I expect that most of the highly-rated comments are marked Funny because they're dripping with snark or are marked Insightful when they're decidedly wrong.
Honestly, at this point the lag is kind of the draw with Slashdot. Once a story has shown up elsewhere, you can go there 6 hours later or the next day and everyone has had time to mull over the story.
Scroll down to the middle of the page past the typical trash comments and you can find some useful info, often from old hands who have had a some first hand knowledge of the subject.
Of course that is also the downside. Every troll, malcontent, joker and astroturfer has had a good 6 hours to harden their position.
> That's like saying HN is just full of college kids who think making a social web app with geolocation and a REST API is going to turn them into gazillionaires when they pivot to something useful (after all, the idea doesn't matter, it's the people who count) and then get acquired by Facebook for the GDP of a small country.
A lot of us get that impression, here. Some of us were underneath founders exactly like that and have good reason to be suspect.
I'm also rather disappointed to see the stereotype "we hate everything" characterisation of Slashdot from a couple of posters here. That's like saying HN is just full of college kids who think making a social web app with geolocation and a REST API is going to turn them into gazillionaires when they pivot to something useful (after all, the idea doesn't matter, it's the people who count) and then get acquired by Facebook for the GDP of a small country.
Obviously there really are quite a few young, delusional people on HN, but I don't think most of us spend time here because of those people. Obviously there really are quite a few very negative/selfish people on Slashdot, but I don't think most of us who spend time there do it because of those people, either.
Incidentally, as I write this, Slashdot's home page is full of topics that might have been (and in several cases have been) popular on HN as well: several articles on new technologies, several popular science articles, commentary on issues like piracy and privacy, and so on. There are some decent comments in the related discussions, too.
That all said, I don't go to Slashdot as much as I used to. Partly that's because they keep messing around with (and often breaking) the basic design and functionality of the site. Partly it's because a lot of the stories are old news by the time they get past the editors, and they've already hit the front pages of HN, relevant subreddits, etc. Partly it's because the discussions are too big for a simple chronological ordering to really work and the system for filtering by moderation score doesn't seem to help much. All of these things make the site more frustrating than it used to be, and I suspect if Slashdot is indeed on the way out there will be plenty of places to point fingers.
But please can we not descend to the level of "Oh, those people on {other site} are just {arbitrary negative stereotype}". Such generalisations can be levelled at any popular forum site on the Web, and they're about as useful in each case.