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Slashdot is obsolete and here's why

Updated: January 1, 2008October 18, 2006

It's a sad thing to admit but I've been thinking about Slashdot off and on for several months now. I'm a long-time Slashdot member, making comments about article postings, even drawing some flames at times from other posters who disagree with me. It's all good fun sharing opinions with other nerds.I think Slashdot's days are numbered. And here's why:

News arrives late.

I've found for quite some time now I will read news on other news sites such as Digg.com or Reddit.com and then 2-3 days later it will finally appear on Slashdot. It's not just every now and then, it happens multiple times daily. Why would I want to get my news days later than everyone else? I don't.

RSS feeds do not allow direct linking to the article.

To make any real usage of Slashdot's RSS feed you still have to visit the Slashdot.org site and click the URL in the article text. This is 2006. News readers are in, wasting time is out. I suppose with a little screen scraping code I could fix the problem myself, but taking into account the previous #1 problem, it's pointless.

Slashdot only provides news for nerds.

I thought for a long time this was the only real news I needed. I was wrong. When Digg.com became a bookmark in my Firefox browser about a year and a half ago, my news consumption changed for the better. I find I'm interested in many other types of news that would never make it onto Slashdot's homepage. I'm a nerd, but I'm much more than that too.

The Slashdot effect prevents reading articles.

I can't begin to count the number of times I've wanted to read an article Slashdot has linked to, only to find the site is down from all the traffic it has received. Most any big news site can have a similar effect, but with sites like Digg.com and Reddit.com there is much more content rolling down the page quicker, so the mass traffic effect is much less.In addition Slashdot could easily mirror the sites locally before destroying the webservers where the pages are hosted but they will not. I've seen it discussed many times in user comments. I suspect the Slashdot editors quite enjoy taking sites down in this manner. I probably would too if it were me.

Slashdot wants you to subscribe with $$'s.

I'm already waiting 2-3 days for the articles to appear, why would I want to spend money to lessen this 2-3 days by a few minutes? Why would I want to spend money to remove advertising from the page, I have Greasemonkey for that!I understand they have to make money to support their operation, but they don't even provide original content. They link to content other sites have already took the time to create. Making money from someone else's labor seems a bit greedy to me. I would rather spend money subscribing to the original site itself.

The future..

I invite you to explore other news sites. Search out RSS and find a good news reader if you do not have one already. Content is king and there are much better ways to get yours than Slashdot.org.

Tags: rss, slashdot, digg, reddit

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