The bad side of /.

I like the Slashdot site, but I am often aggravated by some articles, and by many of the posters. The other day, for example, they were given about five screenshots of Windows Longhorn Beta1, and they then promptly tore it apart, bit by bit (if you will excuse the pun) saying how badly it looked. Despite the fact that they KNOW that it is only a beta, and that the current UI is nowhere close to what it will be when it's done. The Aero UI is not expected to be shown until beta2, and even then, it will not be the full UI.

Another example is this one review (I cannot link to it because he is having bandwidth issues) of the H2G2 movie. The person in question saw a pre-final cut and promptly went to tear it apart. He is the self proclaimed "Greatest fan of H2G2," I couldn't disagree more. He is a fanatic (fanatic being a person so possessed by it that if the smallest thing was done wrong, they stop enjoying it) and a real kneebiter. But worse than that is the reaction of the populace of Slashdot. completely forgetting to take a kilogram of salt with such a fanatical review, combined with what sometimes passes as a headline on /., the denizens of the otherwise good site start to bitch and whine, agreeing with each other that it as been a bastardization of a wonderful series of novels, radio shows and TV shows, while they have not seen the movie themselves. All they had was a fanatical review, of an incomplete cut of the film.

I seem to not be the only one that feels this way. Here is what Greg Dean, author of Real Life has to say:


"As is so often my style, I write the comic with a particular frame of mind, and then when it's all done, I realize the next day I put my damned foot in my mouth, and feel like an idiot.

So let me clarify a little bit about my stance on slashdot in the comic today. I DON'T hate slashdot itself. I'll be honest, I don't usually read it - maybe once a month, when someone posts a link to a particular slashdot posting, I might check it out, but on the average it's not really of much interest to me. But the people who run and operate slashdot are cool in my book - they do their thing, and I respect that.

What has me so peeved about slashdot is the people who POST there. There's about a 10/90 signal/noise ratio going on in those damned posts. I've never much cared for the way people who post there behave, but the beginning of my complete hatred came when /. made the post about the Daily Grind, and people just started ripping into these cartoonists for absolutely no reason whatsoever. One person starts in with a negative response, and fifteen others join in to jump on the "me too!" bandwagon. In this case, they were pissed off because a group of cartoonists started a little bet with each other, and felt that ample reason to start calling everyone in it names, ripping apart their comics, and generally being complete asshats. Now, I can understand being upset with someone's CONDUCT, but to just start tearing people down who are doing nothing more than trying to encourage one another to do their comic on a daily basis is just plain wrong, and I wasn't happy about it.

In the case mentioned in the comic, yeah - I have a bit of a problem with a fairly large, established "geek news" site choosing to link to the single most scathing review of the movie on the internet, and essentially saying "Well, looks like it won't be any good." Have I seen it? Can I prove it wrong? Not yet - not till tomorrow. But hell, i know people who HAVE. People who are die-hard HHG fans, and expected it to be utter crap, and they came out loving it. It angered me, because it immediately polarized people against it, with a review that is tantamount to "Lord of the Rings was a horrible, horrible movie, because it doesn't have Tom Bombadil in it." But again, in this case, the slashdot posters jumped into action, completely tearing apart a movie they've never seen. Classic. (Yes, I realize it's fairly stupid of me to DEFEND a movie I've both never seen, and have no involvement with. But I desperately want it to be good, and to succeed. There are talks of completing the trilogy if it does well, so dammit - I want it to do well. :) )

So, just to clarify - slashdot itslef, the website, the people who run it - they's cool. I know I said I wanted slashdot's server to go down in flames, but it wasn't anything personal to the people behind it. But the slashdot posters - 90% asshats. And that's all I have to say about that."

I say bring on the movie, and make our own decisions about it. However, if you are so inclined, I will be writing what I think about the movie after I see it tomorrow.

--the_sidewinder

(Song of the day: Broken Glass by The Crystal Method, on the album Legion of Boom)