I think what distinguishes Slashdot from Digg and Reddit is mainly that Slashdot retains its original specialist community whereas Digg and Reddit quickly became sites without portfolio. You can see this within Reddit: programming.reddit is not so trashy as main reddit. Whereas the Slashdot community is happily insular, Digg/Reddit submitters largely consist of sub-communities attempting to grab the attention of the wider community. This is one important thing which saves most of Wikipedia from excess: there aren’t too many central points with an audience of receptive eyeballs, so the crackpots at least get mostly sorted out into their own corners, or they at least get diluted.

Second, it sounds like you are saying, “I agree, but here’s why it doesn’t matter,” then showing that most comments on those sites are pure drudge.

I think you’re right about the drudge, but so is most of the web as well (Sturgeon’s Revelation). The beauty of an open web is that we have tools to find the good stuff amongst the drudge. The tyranny of walled gardens is that someone else can restrict our access to the good stuff.

For example, most reddit commentary is drudge. But people sometimes link to relevant Wikipedia articles or academic papers in those comments.

Good search engines can use those links to provide context. Unless reddit decides one day to provide their own search and block external search.

Anyhoo, not that big a deal. It’s far more important that people build better tools, which is why I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Thanks for the follow up!