Comment by parasubvert

"[Slashdot] never really elevated itself to a place for serious discussion."

I profoundly disagree with this, as an early Slashdot user. Slashdot had quite a bit of serious discussion - HN scarily replicates much of the feeling of discussion 1998-2002, just with different topics but all the same ups & downs. HN even has its perpetual flame war of Android vs. iOS that mimics Slashdot's Gnome vs KDE.

Yes, there was quirky trollish humour that was forgiven, but the moderating system, once it settled down in 1999, promoted quite a bit of very in-depth conversation.

Columbine and Jon Katz was the first real "political" side track for Slashdot, but it survived and moved on from there... and basically just wound up dying out due to Taco leaving and Reddit/HN.