I think the exodus from Slashdot has been beneficial. It has shown that the various problems there are in fact severe enough to drive a large number of users away.

It may not be an ideal situation, of course, but it's better than the problems continuing to build under the surface, and users remaining miserable.

Now that the discontent is much more visible, there's at least some hope that real improvement may just happen there. That would not have been the case if people had remained, even if they were merely just vocal about their discontent, without acting upon it in some measurable way.