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.
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.