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R.I.P Freshmeat

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Slashdot (Score: 4, Interesting)

by bryan@pipedot.org on 2014-06-19 12:43 (#267)

I guess this also means that Dice will trim off Slashdot when the page views get too low. The comment counts of Slashdot stories have been steadily dropping for the past few years, even before the beta and alt-slashdot thing from earlier this year. One could probably plot a graph and get a pretty good end time estimation.

SourceForge will pass the mark first, though. Ever since they've allowed obnoxious ads that look like download buttons on their download pages and malware to their hosted packages, that site seems to be universally hated. Most sane projects have moved to GitHub and I expect that transfer to continue.

Re: Slashdot (Score: 2, Insightful)

by vanderhoth@pipedot.org on 2014-06-19 13:08 (#269)

Totally agree with this. I don't expect it won't be long before /. gets the axe too, which is why I've moved over here and to soylent. /. is pretty much just a shill posting site now, "I've used windows 8 for 10 years and it's so easy to use my unborn child is creating super HD video of THEIR OWN BIRTH with it!!!!11!!1!1111"

Also agree with the souceforge comment. I used SF for a few different projects and to find some really great software, but now it's just a big ad fest, and a deceptive one at that. I've moved over to Github, and Git is really good. I use both SVN and Git for development, each has it's place. I find Git is much better for collaborative projects with large teams where as SVN is really good for individual or small team development.

But I digress, that's what happens when community site get sold to corporate interest. Dice paid a lot of money for the brand /. had built up because they wanted to monitorize it, which means exploiting the community.

Re: Slashdot (Score: 3, Insightful)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-06-19 13:42 (#26A)

I was thinking the same thing. Slashdot isn't dead by any measure - their current poll about what time you get to the office has received 17,000 votes, for example while ours has received 16 :) But increasingly the articles aren't great and the comment quality is on decline. I was looking around for new things to read even before the Slashcott, and so are probably the better commenters. They might not be on the chopping block yet, but they're not far away, and it's clear Dice bought things expecting them to generate revenue, and will act if they don't. That's the way business works.

It's a reminder then that these kinds of sites are best run as community projects or by small, non-corporate entities and last longest if they resist the opportunity to sell out. Cycle is always the same - generate something cool, sell to corporation, corporation ruins it and then sells it off, and everyone loses. The Gracenote database is a spectacular example of this - a user-generated database of song titles and albums got sold to a corporation who immediately restricted access to the information. Screw you, consumer!

No regrets for jumping ship. Dice Media can go get **cked.

Moderation

Time Reason Points Voter
2014-06-19 22:32 Insightful +1 pete@pipedot.org
2014-06-19 14:07 Interesting +1 vanderhoth@pipedot.org

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