[parasubvert]

I was an early Slashdot guy (# 1311), haven't posted in a year, but it was my top-3 tech news/opinion place for over 12 years. I still remember the (pointless) KDE vs. Gnome wars, the Microsoft Halloween memo, etc. I held the Toronto area Slashdot 10th anniversary party back in 2007 at a pub near U of T.

After Rob left last year, though, I felt the community shrunk a lot, and it doesn't quite have the character it used to have.

Hacker news does have a similar vibe to 1998-2002 Slashdot... instead of Microsoft vs. Linux being the dominant meme, it's Apple vs. Android. Though there are way more Apple supporters hanging here than MS supporters in the late 90's. Generally HN is more adult due to the moderation approach, but lots of posts degenerate into slug fests anyway.

[joeyo]

Another similarity between Hacker News and early Slashdot (I'm user #173) is that both, despite being link aggregators, felt like primary sources due to the commentators. For a time Slashdot was read and commented on by all of the primary Open Source figures and and Linux contributors (Alan Cox, Bruce Perens, ESR, Miguel de Icaza, to name a few) and a lot of other random technical people (I seem to recall John Carmack would occasionally post). For pretty much any technical story there would be someone relevant on-hand to comment.

Of course, at the time there was not really a well-developed online technology press and there was minimal blogging, so that degree of centralization can probably never be recreated. Still, Hacker Hews has a bit of this--certainly for anything relevant to startups or Silicon Valley. To some extent reddit does too vis-a-vis their IAmA threads.

[erik]

John Carmack did post there somewhat regularly.

http://slashdot.org/~John+Carmack/firehose

Paul Graham used to be a regular user as well.

http://slashdot.org/~bugbear/firehose

[bootload]

"... For a time Slashdot was read and commented on by all of the primary Open Source figures and and Linux contributors (Alan Cox, Bruce Perens, ESR, Miguel de Icaza, to name a few) and a lot of other random technical people (I seem to recall John Carmack would occasionally post). For pretty much any technical story there would be someone relevant on-hand to comment. ..."

#2774 here, I remember this well and it had a great effect. Every comment I was ask myself to think real hard, "is that worth posting". As for /. this is what I wrote about 6/7 years ago, sound familiar?

/. gone to seed

Since 1996 I`ve been making crappy comments and observations on slashdot. And I must say while I still like to frequently check the stories. I find them less interesting. The comments are less informative. Innovation less than inspiring. Its not just the dilution of smart readers that is a problem. ~ http://slashdot.org/journal/123931/-gone-2-seed-37