Information AboutSlashdot |
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Slashdot (often abbreviated to '''/.''') is a popular technology-related Website / Forum updated many times daily, with articles that are often short summaries of stories on other websites, links to those stories, and provisions for readers to comment on each story. Front page stories generally receive at least 70 such comments, with especially popular or controversial articles reaching totals of more than 1,000 comments. The site resembles a Blog in many ways, albeit with threaded comments. The summaries for the stories are generally submitted by Slashdot's own readers with editors accepting or rejecting these contributions for general posting. The site also sometimes features movie or book reviews, interviews, and "Ask Slashdot" queries from users requesting information from the readership. The site's slogan is " News for Nerd s. Stuff that matters." Slashdot is often criticized for posting story summaries that are typographically incorrect, factually inaccurate, biased, or defamatory (stories often incite Flamewars ), while ignoring news or commentary on issues which outsiders may consider more serious or important (see Slashdot Subculture ). It is also infamous for the Slashdot Effect , when thousands of Slashdot readers read an article and connect to the linked website, flooding it with unexpected traffic and at times bringing the site down in a manner similar to a Denial Of Service attack. The use of "slashdot" ''as a verb'' refers to this effect. Officially, the name "Slashdot" was chosen to confuse those who tried to pronounce the URL of the site (h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slash-dot-dot-org). Slashdot FAQ: What does the name "Slashdot" mean? ADMINISTRATION Created in September 1997 by Rob Malda , Slashdot is now owned by the Open Source Technology Group , part of VA Software . The site is run primarily by Malda, Jeff "Hemos" Bates (who handles articles and book reviews and sells Advertising ) and Robin "Roblimo" Miller who helps handle some of the more Managerial tasks of the site, as well as posting stories. (''See Slashdot History ''). The software that runs Slashdot is called Slash or Slashcode and is released under the terms of the Free Software Foundation 's GNU General Public License . Many other websites use various customized versions of this software for their own web forums. AUDIENCE While Slashdot's core audiences are often said to consist of video games or applications, or Microsoft security bulletins. The ongoing assumption that Slashdot is Linux-oriented comes both from historical reasons and from its famous Gates " Borg " icon. Additionally, OS results may be skewed by the fact that many Slashdot readers access the site from work, and only use Linux on their home computers. Famous or well-known "Slashdotters" include actor rover exploration projects. ARTICLE SECTIONS As of May 1 , 2006 , Slashdot articles are divided into the following sections:
COMMENTS Moderation To prevent abusive comments, a Moderation System has been implemented whereby every comment posted (including those posted anonymously) can be "moderated" up or down by Semi-randomly Chosen Moderators , changing the post's score likewise. Moderation points added to a comment are also added to a user's karma score. Having high karma gives added bonuses to users, such as the ability to autopost at higher starting values. Conversely, users with low karma have penalties imposed on them. People that post comments designed to get more karma, for example mirroring a linked article, are sometimes referred to as Karma Whore s. Those who can moderate are selected by their karma score and number of meta moderations (and maybe other criteria). Slashdot editors, including Rob Malda ("CmdrTaco"), can moderate limitlessly. Moderator access for non-editors is time limited (to a few days) and the number of 'mod points' one gets is limited (to a max of 5 points at the time of this writing). A given comment can have any integer score from −1 to +5, and Slashdot users can set a personal threshold where no comments with a lesser score are displayed. (For example, a person browsing the comments at a threshold of 1 will not see comments with a score of −1 or 0 but will see all others.) Moderators have been known to abuse the ability to increase or decrease the score of comments, and in some cases entire threads of comments have been marked down to −1. Subsequently, a Meta-moderation System was implemented to moderate the moderators and help contain abuses. Trolling of the Anti-Slashdot Jihad]] See Also: Slashdot trolling phenomena As one of the largest forums on the Internet, trolling and spamming on Slashdot is a highly evolved phenomenon. It is an offbeat and complex subculture involving sometimes repetitive and sometimes obscene comments featuring a mixture of Slashdot celebrities and other unusual juvenilia. There are many famous personalities from Slashdot's older trolling community. Craig McPherson, for example, started the well-known ''hot grits'' and '' Naked And Petrified '' Meme s while OSM and Trollaxor specialized in bizarre creative fiction regarding various Slashdot and Free/Open Source Software personalities. SpiralX, Streetlawyer/John Saul Montoya (jsm), Signal 11, Dumb Marketing Guy (dmg), Seventy Percent, 80md and others typified the classic sense of trolling both under their well-known monikers and a bevy of pseudonyms (or " Sock Puppets "). While all of the aforementioned may be well-known to Slashdotters, the earliest repeat offender was "MEEPT". Prior to MEEPT's stream of consciousness posts, Slashdot did not require posters to log in order to attribute a post to a name. MEEPT was one of the last straws that brought about username/password logins and eventually moderation. Other less-sophisticated forms of Slashdot trolling—often referred to as on Slashdot. The Slashdot editors are sometimes accused of posting (and even preferring) stories that are, themselves, thinly-disguised trolls, which encourage large numbers of postings in response, of lending unjustified credence to pseudo-science, "This is fucking embarrassing" , comment posted , 2006 in response to the story "Mysterious MilkyWay Warp Finally Explained?" . Attempts to rectify these criticisms have been made [http://slashdot.org/articles/06/01/10/1440240.shtml?tid=124 On the Matter of Slashdot Story Selection]. The "pink page of death" is an infamous feature applied to IP addresses that have been used to access Slashdot many times in a short period. It often appears on proxies used for crapflooding, although it occasionally blocks innocent users. "Slashdot software broken, bans entire subnets" , comment posted Blue Screen Of Death , and prevents users from accessing the site. CRITICISM Critics claim that the quality of materials found on Slashdot has progressively declined. Common complaints include:
SIMILAR SITES English language:
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