I've followed Slashdot for years -- to me, it's a source of article links, whereas HN provides both links and valuable commentary. I suppose the real question is: "Is there a site with a community of comparable quality to HN that is less startup-focused?"
No disrespect to the /. crowd intended. I feel as though I learn as much from the HN user-base discussions as I do from the articles themselves. I simply haven't felt that way about Slashdot.