Let’s face facts: Slashdot started this whole thing. They are the proto tech blog, the guys we all looked up to as baby bloggers. Slashdot was rocking its own forward-thinking blend of editor-driven user-generated content years ahead of any of this web 2.0 nonsense, years before the likes of Engadget landed. But as much as I do enjoy their product, it’s hard to deny Malda and co. are getting their lunch eaten by Digg. It took ‘em long enough, but it looks like they finally came up with a little something to fight back, launching the Slashdot Firehose

The name is pretty accurate: hit the Firehose and you’ll get the full stream of content from Slashdot Journals to, interestingly enough, unedited story submissions that users can actually vote on and call the editors’ attention to. (Users can also turn down the Firehosw flow and set up filters to pare down by content type and rating.) This marks the first place on Slashdot that users can actually vote on submitted stories the same way they moderate comments (and metamoderate mods). I’m into it thus far, and glad Slashdot is again trying its hand at innovation in the social news space — but it’s anyone’s guess as to whether these kinds of features could ever turn the Digg, del.icio.us, and Reddit tide.