Also, folks here may not realize it, but Slashdot still wields a mighty traffic hammer; it is not some irrelevant also-ran that redditors/diggers/HN readers might think. At least one of our websites has appeared on TechCrunch, Reddit, Hacker News, and Digg in some context (never a major story, but usually getting some votes and some discussion, and occasionally making the front page)...one time my co-founder mentioned something we were working on in a comment on Slashdot. It was the highest traffic day we've ever had (to this day, and our traffic has increased steadily since launch, so every few weeks we have a new peak; but always less than Slashdot day). Our traffic is pretty good, in general, for the kind of business we run. But Slashdot is the motherlode. I speak of it fondly, still.
Anyway, for a site with a user base that large and diverse, Slashdot isn't as entirely idiotic as it could be. It's certainly no worse than Digg, and only slightly worse than reddit. And 10+ years ago when it was the size of Hacker News, it was roughly equally interesting and smart, though its focus was somewhat different (less business, more Open Source). The signal to noise is too low for me to spend much time there, but it's silly to imagine that Hacker News would remain as good as it is with a user count in the millions, like slashdot.
My life hasn't been the same since.