The idea of a purely voting/community driven site as a Slashdot spinoff was also implemented, at Kuro5hin. It turned out a bit differently, though, as it mostly ended up becoming something of a site for freelance tech writers to publish long-form pieces in the era before everyone had blogs they could do it on. So, ended up diverging from the blurbs that Slashdot does, or the pure links that digg/reddit type sites do. They did keep a section for just a link and a blurb, but it was pejoratively entitled "mindless link propagation" (MLP) and not really a main focus of the site.
(These days it's something of a dive bar, with only old regulars left and a lot of miscellaneous discussion.)
(These days it's something of a dive bar, with only old regulars left and a lot of miscellaneous discussion.)