Slashdot was my first love in online geek culture/news. In recent years the preeminence of Slashdot has been threatened by sites like Digg and Reddit – some have called for Slashdot to change their story selection model from purely editorial to user-driven in order to compete.

It looks as if Slashdot has finally caved and done just that with their newly unveiled SlashRating system. Not really. The text from the SlashRating/Slashdottit explanatory text:

Your vote in the Slashdottit system will help insure the best stories are presented to our readers, with hyper accurate numbers to indicate their relevance and general awesomeness. Only by requiring the contribution of every random user of the internet can we guarantee the most scientifically perfect numbers will be generated. These numbers will guarantee that every story that appears on Slashdot will be interesting, insightful, and flawless. Vote early, vote often.

The clarity of vision and the wit of the guys behind Slashdot has consistently been brilliant. The statement above sums up many of my reservations about social news. I really gained a lot of respect for the guys of Slashdot after hearing them on the podcast FLOSS Weekly (part of Leo Laporte’s media empire). The CmdrTaco interview was especially good – the interview with Hemos is here. Take a listen and then compare against Kevin Rose.