[secstate]

Amen. You said it better than I did. Slashdot is not just an aggregation site, is was Taco's baby and reflected his ambitions to curate a meta-news site and a healthy community.

The irony I find with the recent beta backlash is that Slashdot hasn't been relevant in my life in close to 10 years. The last redesign was a mess too ... and that's the nature of the audience Slashdot has. The site was always doomed to irrelevance eventually because 1) impermanence 2) their geeky audience hates change. Always have, and apparently, always will.

[eli]

I don't think it's a geek thing. Most people don't like it when something familiar changes. And this is doubly true when that something is a platform they feel invested in.

I think you are correct, though, that Slashdot probably peaked somewhere in the early 2000s.