I don’t recall any user hostile practices, though I was just a passive user back in the day. I remember a few redesigns that people weren’t entirely pleased with, but nothing on the scale of the “new” Digg.
Digg had a similar issue, but was more "active" for awhile. Reddit really "solved" the problem by having subreddits so you could curate what you were interested in.
Also, the people who were using /. grew up, and there wasn't really replacement people.
This is a big thing. The internet users of the late 90s just don't exist any more. The internet isn't for nerds any more, it's as ubiquitous an infrastructure as electricity or roads, everyone uses it.
The generation before slashdot from the 80s upto Eternal September were another group
You can't recreate slashdot today, because the people don't exist.
We still exist, we're just a very small slice of a much larger pie. Also, we are likely a less profitable target for advertisers so aren't an important demographic for ad-driven companies.
The other thing you mention is huge, too, of course. All the "famous" things from the 90s were basically labours of love by individual hackers who then looked for ways to fund it. Now everything is all about ad-revenue dollars.
Historically, advertisers have really loved late teens and early 20-somethings. They're starting to earn money, but don't have a lot of obligations or expenses yet, so they have a lot of discretionary income.
I also disagree that being into computers is a "common subject" these days. Everyone uses computers (some of which have keyboards), but most people aren't "into" them any more than the average commuter is into cars.
Everyone uses computers, so computer nerds are like car nerds or sport nerds.
In the 90s very few people used computers, and even fewer used networked computers outside of an office environment. Computers were new and unique.
You still get car nerds and computer nerds, but it's not the same thing when they're nerdy about a common thing.
That! Hit me hard. May be perhaps why the internet felt so different. Sigh.
The original authors executed an exit strategy. They sold the site, got a bunch of money, and left to work on new things.
The various new owners (of which there have been a few) have never been ambitious about expanding Slashdot, either in technical or social scope.
It's still around, but there's one simple DAU measure we can look at: it used to be that stories would get 100-500 comments, and now they usually get 5-30.
But I don't think it's a good example of what the parent is complaining about. Slashdot didn't change to be more hostile, it was fairly hostile from the get go. It had a snarky commenting culture, fairly brutal moderation, etc. You'd be downvoted into oblivion for the most minor transgressions - like not hating Microsoft enough.
It just happened to be the only game in town for geek news. But then, a number of alternatives popped up - tech-related subreddits, HN, etc. I stopped using Slashdot not because of any redesign or policy change, but simply because I could get the same news elsewhere, with a lower entry bar to participate.
IMO, people who liked the user generated aspect of slashdot also liked the higher velocity of digg, reddit, and even HN better as those came along. People who liked the editorial curation angle that distinguished slashdot from these newer takes came to prefer more curation and professional editorial commentary, leaving slashdot in an odd in-between space.
I was a heavy USENET user for several years before finding Slashdot. With /. I found myself rarely going to the source link and almost never reading the editorial commentary. I'd go straight to the comments and start reading what people had to say. All these decades later and what I love about sites like HN and Reddit is immediately wading in and embracing the zeitgeist. I *loved* Twitter for a long time for the same reason.
But you're right. There are others I knew who were the exact opposite. And those people today have very different internet habits than I do.
And often any comment I made was in relation to the ongoing discussion and not necessarily the article itself.
I still do that here and elsewhere too.
In my golden era of message boards the worst you had to deal with were trolls or bad actors but today you simply don’t know who is an LLM bot
What’s the point in reading or replying to machines. It’s like a sand trap just wasting your time in the worst possible way
Over time, the civility and intelligence in the comments dropped. It didn't feel like a community anymore - or at least a community the original readers wanted to be a part of, anyway. So more and more of the original readers left until the comment sections looked like 4chan.
Slashdot had its scandals and drama, but I really believe it was the readership change that killed it.
That vicious circle destroyed the community. IMHO.