Slashdot is the grandfather of community news sites, but it's getting long in the tooth. Editors still pick the stories to run, comments are still meta moderated and it takes some time for breaking news to reach the front page. Still, it has some of the better users in the business. 

As I was moderating the other day, I saw this interesting link I could click. It's called drinking from the firehose:

When you click on the link you're presented with a list of stories in the approval queue. You can see all the stories that other users have sent in that are awaiting approval from the editors. The links work, and as you see, you can click a thumbs up or thumbs down to approve the story like the following.

The cool thing about this is it appears Slashdot is becoming more Digg like. Sure, only a few people get to drink from the firehose, but it's a start. You must have moderator points to see the link to get to the firehose, so only those that actively participate in Slashdot will see the link. I think the Slashdot moderator points are only given to those with good karma, too. 

Unlike Digg, the process isn't open to everyone. I don't know why they made this decision, but I would think it's to let the editors have final say. I couldn't find any listing as to where stories given more thumbs up would get it on a page. I guess it's more like a pre-approval offer for stories.

Anyway, here's what an expanded story looks like. You can read the entry and help with their beta tagging as well.

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