Slashdot Enters the Digg Fray

It seems like every other week there's a new headline: Digg Killer, Google Killer, Facebook Killer. This time, however, it's an old dog learning a new trick, with Slashdot adding a sideshow to throw its hat into the ring with Digg, Fark, and the rest with their launch of Idle, a non-tech version of the popular site aimed at the people who don't want to endlessly discuss the idiosyncrasies of the tech industry.

I never thought I'd see the day when CmdrTaco (real name Rob Malda) was giving interviews to the New York Times and coming off as the sanest of a bunch, but sure enough, there he was, explaining Slashdot's success as well as what differentiates it from Digg and the Digg clones.

According to Malda, the difference between Slashdot and its newest incarnation, Idle, is that submissions are monitored by the Slashdot editorial staff. Idle was actually the result of the editors seeing a lot of submissions that were interesting, yet cast aside because they didn't meet the tech requirement for Slashdot posts.

Malda was able to sum up the problem that I was trying to describe in my last post about Digg; with such a small percentage of the user base deciding what topics should be floated to the top page, you really aren't getting a very wide sampling of community interests, even if it feels that way to the users. Malda used the perfect example; judging from the Digg top stories, you'd have assumed that U.S. presidential candidate Ron Paul had a huge amount of support. The actual voting in caucuses and primaries isn't reflecting what Digg is showing, however, which demonstrates that the mob mentality of determining what should be popular content doesn't always match the cultural mindset. As Malda says,

“But with sites like Digg, it’s the wisdom of the crowds or the tyranny of the mob. You never know what you’re going to get.”

From a purely content perspective, Slashdot has certainly been able to maintain a somewhat more balanced perspective, vetting each submission to provide a more varied array of stories. Sure, the comments often skew in predictable directions, but the story topics don't always follow the same topics time after time, and the site has managed to stay within its content boundaries for years as a result. Digg users often dismiss the less relevant content as anomalies, but they almost never appear on Slashdot.

Malda promises the same editorial review for submissions to Idle, which should mean that the same variations in topics should carry over to the non-tech site. Now all they need is a cool little button to add to blogs' “Share This” and they'll be off and running.