[chefandy]

The selection definitely changed. As soon as "Slashdot Video" started happening-- obviously a bunch of advertisements presented as news-- I was done.

Initially, the aggregation was only part of it-- the discussion was the best part. By the time Slashdot Video started happening, the comments had already gotten a bit 4chan-esque. I consistently saw comments rated "3: Troll" or similar because people were just using upvotes (without any specific descriptors) to counter what others had downvoted as obvious troll comments. Last time I went back, I looked into the comments to see pages-upon-pages of ascii art swastikas and just thought... why the hell would I bother with this?

The lack of moderation over there probably started as a philosophical stance that, at that early, naive juncture in the internet, I sympathize with. I'm guessing that after that, it just became a cash cow that they didn't want to bother creating an FTE to manage, and now most of the remaining users are there solely because it's a community that rewards being an obnoxious edge lord spewing out content-free insults as long as they resonate with the obnoxious majority in the comments.