While they have some brilliant articles these are the exception rather than the rule and as regards finding them …. dear me!

There appears to be a fixation on three topics which have assumed intense personal importance for reasons that are not clear: Apple, OSNews, and Thom.

This leads to a bunch of throw away comments with disturbing overtones. Like, ‘we will be monitoring Mr Holwerda’. Like, in reply to a comment, ‘its interesting you see it like that’. Like the idea that OSNews staff are posting there. Like, ‘they know what they have to do’.

The sense of grievance is mounting, the gap between what the public finds interesting and acceptable and what is being published editorially is widening.

We may be seeing a slow motion personal tragedy in the making. Best back off and avoid, or try to avoid, becoming part of it.

This means he has to solicit comments on stories.

However, when the comments come, they turn out to be ones he does not agree with. Now for some reason, he cannot stand to have views he disagrees with posted on the site he is running.

So, he is obliged to angrily rebut them. I have the impression that he does partly while posting anonymously, because there are some anonymous posters on OSV who use the usual hack phrases that KM himself uses. Most people just stop when he does this and go someplace else.

However, the poster who has offended him sufficiently to have him represented as yourself has not stopped when abused in this way. Or maybe there are more than one poster. (It is quite possible that others on the same ISP have joined in. At one point, one poster put up his IP address for all to inspect, and it was one of the major UK ISPs. A certain mischievous cast of mind might be unable to resist joining in at that point.)

Consequently he is obliged to first make up the theory that he is you. It seems impossible that anyone could really believe this, so it must be doubtful that he does. Then, when this accusation fails to stop him (or maybe them), he has no solution left but to delete the postings. He cannot block, since you can only block by group, and so he would shut out lots of potential people.

The reason for all this is quite simple, he cannot tolerate opinions which differ from his. Not just on Apple, but on any subject.

And so we end up with a version of technology journalism for the people which solicits comments, and receives none, and which purports to be for the people and by the people, but will not allow them to speak, and which professes to want to take technology journalism back to the community, but which, as the anonymous poster recently said, has become one of the sites from which the community really needs to take technology journalism back.

It could all be avoided by tolerating the expression of OS views…

The only way in which Slashdot is ‘better’ than OSNews is in sheer volume of readers. On all other fronts, OSNews kicks Slashdot’s ass– badly.

1) We have much, much, much, much better browser support. OSNews.com will work on any browser, no matter how old or obscure, no matter on mobiles or on pda’s or on desktops, and you are automagically redirected to the page that fits your borwser best. Slashdot cannot say the same;
2) Our page layout is cleaner and less cluttered and more usable than Slashdot’s. At OSNews.com, the news is the focus. At Slashdot… Well, there really isn’t a focus;
3) Slashdot’s commenting engine is impossibly complex and unusable. It takes a fcuking manual to understand it. OSNews’ commenting engine, while far less advanced, does not require a manual, and can be used understandably by anyone who visits the site;
4) We are faster than Slashdot. We have news faster than Slashdot. Slashdot almost always lags behind OSNews. This is because when Eugenia’s asleep, I’m awake, and vice versa;
5) We aren’t as arrogant as Slashdot. Slashdot seems to think it is king of the world, and rejects submissions if they are not formatted EXACTLY to fit their needs. We at OSNews don’t give a fcuk. If you just put the link in the submission field, we’re fine with it, we don’t care. Of course we appreciate it if people nicely format their submissions- but we don’t require it. We don’t force people into doing the work we as editors are suposed to do;
6) We have original content, Slashdot rarely has that;
7) And probably the most important point: Slashdot is populated by mostly anti-MS, pro-OSS people. And that goes for the editors as well. At OSNews, we are unbiased. Me and Eugenia, who do most of the news, use whatever tool fits the job best; we use Linux, we use OSX, we use Windows. We don’t care. And this shines through on OSNews’ front page: no bias to be found there.

So, I don’t really see how Slashdot is supposed to be better than us. Of course, if amount of users is your most important point, then I guess Windows is the best OS, and Kelly Clarkson is bigger than Elvis Presley.