I started reading slashdot in like 99.. the editors didn't 'edit' the stories back then either. In fact, as far back as I can remember people have been complaining about the editors no longer doing their jobs.. which is weird because as far as I could tell, they never did them to begin with.
To be fair to Slashdot, however, they have removed the "stuff that matters" tagline from visibility on their site (it's in the source).
That, and Hacker News seems to be about 3 days ahead of /. so it's kind of redundant to read it. Unless I want to learn about new keyboard shortcuts. I read Ars too, which is sometimes a bit behind HN but also covers different material.
[1] http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/08/26/0010239/the-greatest...