I mean, that's nice and all. But Slashdot, in design terms, has been locked in the past for so long without incremental design updates - it's likely that anything more than very simple cosmetics would be perceived as a radical change (much like this).

If Slashdot would have been doing incremental design changes like Reddit, then possibly this beta wouldn't look "unlike" Slashdot. It's just that they are attempting to radically catch up or risk being left a relic of Web 1.0 forever.

Slashdot's previous design changes have always, for me, made the experience worse, not better - so I for one appreciate this new direction and welcome our new /. design overlords.