Slashdot Announces Idle Section

For the last few months we've been beta testing Idle.slashdot.org, our offtopic humor/meme/viral video/pictures section. Like many of you, we spend most of our waking hours on-line seeking stuff to entertain our brains, but most replicators out there pick so much content that it's incredibly boring filtering through the mediocrity to find the funny. We intend to fill our idle section with a very small collection of the very best the net has to offer, making it the most efficient way to waste your time. Some of this content will make it back to the Slashdot mainpage, but much of it will be new content that we wouldn't dare soil the precious Slashdot mainpage with. We are also using it as a test bed for new functionality on Slashdot — currently the page is a reasonably dynamic/interactive experience with various voting controls and filtering options. Finally you will see occasional original content, starting with a recurring special feature today where Samzenpus shares some real tech support email from some of our most intelligent readers. We hope you will enjoy wasting a slice of your day with us, and in addition will submit content through the usual channels, but put it into the 'Idle' section so we know not to take it seriously. Now go about your day — it's mid August, so I'm sure everything you do is urgent, exciting, and oh-so-interesting.

Can you feel the excitement?

We intend to fill our idle section with a very small collection of the very best the net has to offer, making it the most efficient way to waste your time.

Translation: Porn, stupidity, and bugzappers.

I tried visiting idle.slashdot.org once. I was outright embarassed by the content. So much so that I changed my sig in response to Slashdot's, "Never visit idle.slashdot.org" teaser. My reply? "Good idea."

I hate to say this, but Slashdot does attract a lot of intelligent people. They're not always the ones who post, but they frequent the site anyway. Attempting to "entertain" the more intelligent types with the same sort of filth/LCD* they see on their television is a counterproductive goal. Slashdot and Slashdot-Idle cannot coexist.

Sorry guys, but it's time for you to go back to marketing school. Using brand recognition for a product that does not represent the brand will only devalue the brand. You may see short term gains on the new product, but in the end you will see long-term losses across the board. If you want to do something like Slashdot-Idle, try making a new site rather than lumping it in with Slashdot.

* If you don't know what LCD stands for in this context, you should turn in your geek card. Assuming you had one to begin with...

P.S. What's this fascination with making a Digg-like site, anyway? 95% of what's on Digg sucks. Stop trying to be like them.

P.P.S. Idiocracy was not a documentary. Stop trying to bring it about.

Re:Can you feel the excitement?

Agreed, the last thing we want is for the cesspool of Digg-reading, MySpace dwelling, Pokemon-playing LuSerS!!!!!1 to spill over into where the grownups are trying to have intelligent discussions.

If you think Slashdot is infantile now, just wait until idle goes live! It would be eternal September [wikipedia.org] all over again!

Re:Can you feel the excitement?

Agreed, the last thing we want is for the cesspool of Digg-reading, MySpace dwelling, Pokemon-playing LuSerS!!!!!1 to spill over into where the grownups are trying to have intelligent discussions.

You forgot "Wikipedia-linking".

Re:Can you feel the excitement?

You forgot "Wikipedia-linking".

[citation needed]

Re:Can you feel the excitement?

Indeed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia#Usefulness_as_a_reference [wikipedia.org]

Re:Can you feel the excitement?

I feel the same way. If I want content like that I'll read fark or digg.

Besides...the only times that I've been to idle they've had stories that were already featured on other websites.

Re:Can you feel the excitement?

You're missing the point, this is great news. If idle becomes a "real" section, we'll finally be able to block it from the front page.

Re:Can you feel the excitement?

* If you don't know what LCD stands for in this context, you should turn in your geek card. Assuming you had one to begin with...

Liquid crystal display, naturally. Now what about the posts with titties in them? It was made quite clear that there would be titty.

Re:Critical thinking...

Reality TV [has its] place in the life of an intellectual.

Let me see. What's the best way to phrase this?

No, no it doesn't.

Wow, I'm sorry that not everyone's tastes line up with yours. I didn't know that to be considered an intellectual everyone has to fall into some narrow regime of likes and dislikes. And this is coming from someone who personally hates reality TV and the like.

Anyone who thinks this narrowly can't be taken seriously as the intellectual that they think they are. To sum up, get off your high horse.

Re:Critical thinking...

You'll have to forgive me if you find my stance offensive, but reality TV epitomizes stupidity and Lowest Common Denominator thinking.

Fast Food? Not even sure why it was included. It's fine.
Beer? Fine.
Crude Humor? Fine on occasion.
Sitcoms? Sometimes incredibly stupid, but mostly fine.
Interest in fishing, NASCAR, sports, or other non-nerdy pursuit? Perfectly fine.

Reality TV? No.

Reality TV is a trap of the most dangerous and intellectually lethal kind. It encourages people to track the personal lives of others to a point that makes gossiping look tame. Yet like gossiping, it can become a trap that lures people in and encourages them to waste their time, judgment, and critical thinking. In effect, it causes you to stoop to the level of those who would participate in the activities of having their lives bared for all to see. (Which usually means they're the type to appeal to sex and voyeurism.)

The end result is that your thinking becomes stuck in a quagmire of complex personal matters that are not of your own. Which has negative effects on your thinking, priorities, and thus day to day life.

You may think ill of me all that you want. But "reality television" as it is defined today is NOT something I think any intelligent person should see as "entertainment". And I am highly suspect of anyone who claims otherwise. If anything, they are likely to be faux intellectuals who would rather put on a show of intelligence than actually make an effort to *be* intelligent.

Re:Can you feel the excitement?

while the rest of us can have the "enlightened" discussion we are accustomed to.

You mean such as:

• vi vs. emacs
• Firefox vs. Opera
• Gnome vs. KDE
• Kirk vs. Picard

Yes, I see what you mean.

Re:Can you feel the excitement?

Nah, I think we've all pretty much settled on the correct answers to those (vi, Firefox, KDE, and Picard of course).

Does this mean...

That the CSS on idle.slashdot.org won't suck ass and/or be ass ugly? I'd really prefer that no ass be involved in the layout or design of the page.

I have my worries, and my hopes.

I have my worries about this, and I have no doubt that we all do here on /.. What I definitely do not want to see is /. becoming another digg/reddit/delicious. On the other hand, hopefully slashdot will be able to mold the content more so that it doesn't just become a "HERE'S ANOTHER FUNNY CAPTION PIC FROM 4CHAN" fest. Don't get me wrong, those things have their place and are sometimes humorous, but it doesn't fit the niche that is /.. Remember, the slashdot tagline is "News for Nerds" - not "Funny Image of the Day for Nerds".

With any luck, it will hopefully become something more along the lines of Daily Wtf [slashdot.org], which still provides insight while remaining humorous. And in any case, congrats on rolling out a new feature for us /. staff.

I come to Slashdot because it *isn't* Digg.

If I want LOLcats, I go to Digg.
If I want Pseudo-Politics, I go to Reddit.
If I want to know about the latest announced Apple product, I go to appleinsider.
If I want to know about the worlds largest TV, I go to The Register.

If I want actual Intellectual articles with in-depth discussions, I come to slashdot.

Please don't ruin this for me.

Anyone else...

thinking CmdrTaco has hit some hard times? I mean, let us look back of the past few months...

1. No funny April Fool's this year.
2. Various off hand comments about stuff. (Java, Olympics, etc.)
3. Just up above he's kinda of an ass. I mean, some people are probably working pretty hard. I know End of Fiscal year for some people is going on.
4. I dunno, maybe getting tired of being squeezed by other sites like reddit or digg or other stuff?

Anyone know more or want to spread light on the matter?

Re:Anyone else...

1. No funny April Fool's this year.

I'm confused. When did Slashdot do funny April Fools?

Re:Anyone else...

When did Slashdot do funny April Fools?

OMG Ponies!!! [desiringmachine.org]

Re:Anyone else...

That wasn't funny. That was terrifying.

Oh, and thanks for reburning that shade of pink into my retinas. I just managed to recover, you jerk!

Uh

Horrible site. Poorly organized, old content, just terrible.
BTW, Fark already has a geek section. Just link to that.

Please don't

I frequently read slashdot.org/palm from my blackberry and this idle crap keeps appearing there. It's just horrible, not to mention that very little of the content in idle is mobile friendly. The only comments are things like "is this Digg now?" Please, don't do this. Create a whole new site if you feel like this is really what you want to do with your time, but don't associate with slashdot.

I never would have thought it possible to make slashdot appear any less credible, but you may have just found a way.

Don't do it. We've all had grand ideas that got abandoned and I know it feels bad, but you should cut your losses now before it's too late. Really. Stop.

Cool, thanks!

Thanks for making Idle official and full-time!

Because now I can adjust my preferences so that I never see this unfunny garbage again. If I want "teh funnay," I'll visit 4chan, k thx.

Conspiracy Theory!

I have a suspicion that idle might actually be a good thing to happen to slashdot. Here's my conspiracy theory:

IIRC Taco has full control over the stories and editing of slashdot, but marketing, advertisement and other things are mandated by corporate overlords. I somehow suspect that a bunch of trained monkeys in the marketing department created a lot of pressure to make Slashdot more Digg-alike and in a moment of pure genius, Taco created idle - the best parody of Digg the world has ever seen. It's colorful and flashy to please the marketing department, contains the worst stories and oldest mémes out there to convince them this isn't going to work out, all the while preserving the rest of Slashdot and consuming the least money and effort possible.

I mean just look at it and the way it's announced. It's as if the Slashdot team wants us to hate it.

Re:Natural order

Order -> chaos /. -> #$%&*

I hate examples written in Perl.

Re:Natural order

Careful, not everyone who has Tourette syndrome is a Perl programmer.