I’ve been a member of slashdot for many years, and I have a low-five digit member id. My karma has been maxed out for like forever. I meta-moderate once in a while, and have never gotten a bad result of my moderation being meta-moderated. I submited a few stories that were published, and I submitted many more that were rejected. I’d view myself as a moderately active member of the community. I’ve mostly enjoyed slashdot over the years, and I don’t even mind their sellout – a body’s got to make some shiny coin to afford life.
However, lately, there has been a lot of bitching about the quality of slashdot, and I am starting to agree. The so-called Slashdot editors do anything but edit. I am not even talking about the glaring spelling mistakes that still crop up sometimes; I am referring to things like duplicate stories, to name one example. But it’s worse – For example, today they posted a two liner of a story that I had submitted yesterday morning – with better links, better description, and so on. Mine was rejected. Not that I really care, but I wonder what criteria they base their selection on. First come-first serve? Then why was the story not posted yesterday? Whatever their reasons, they’re not very obvious.
Okay, so maybe I am just an evil, spiteful person. Yet here’s another example: A few days ago, slashdot posted a story about NASA developing “clean jet fuel” – which would have been a VERY huge thing, as pollution from airline traffic is hardly something we should ignore. Yet upon checking the original press release, it was immediately obvious that NASA had developed clean rocket fuel. Rocket, not jet. Hello, Slashdot? I mean, I am used that the members who comment won’t read the f-ing articles, but shouldn’t the editors at least do so?
If you run a “professional” news site, then you need to display professional work ethics and behaviour, and not just post crap without doing at least some minor checking and corrections. Slashdot isn’t even really a “geek icon” anymore. It’s just another mainstream site, and one with a really lousy staff too.
Update, January 20th 2003: As if to prove my point, Slashdot editors posted a UFO story today. Now, that’s not really a problem in my eyes; if nothing else, the UFO cult entertains like few other pseudo-religions do. However, this was a link to a really bad “article” which was obviously intended to merely sell stuff to UFO fanatics. No scientific evidence, not even pseudo-scientific. Nothing. Just a lot of junk – badly forged images, and so on. Yet still the Slashdot editors present it as a newsworthy item. The mind boggles.
