Information AboutSlashdot |
Slashdot, often abbreviated as '''/.''' Favicon of Slashdot.org , is a science, science fiction, and technology-related news Website owned by SourceForge, Inc. . It features user-submitted and editor-evaluated Current Affairs news with a " Nerd y" slant. Each story on the site has an Internet Forum -style comments section attached; Slashdot was one of the first popular websites to include a commentary section in such a prominent manner . The summaries for the stories are generally submitted by Slashdot's own readers with editors accepting or rejecting these contributions for general posting. While Slashdot's haphazard Editorial Style produced a unique voice in the pre-blog age, users frequently post criticisms of perceived arbitrary or biased editorial choices. Though the site predates the modern concept of the Weblog , Slashdot's architecture is commonly compared to that of modern blogs. Slashdot is notable in that its commenting system is much more robust than most blogs, with threading and user moderation having been introduced before these were commonplace in modern weblog packages . 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 -slashdot- Dot-org "). Slashdot FAQ: What does the name "Slashdot" mean? ADMINISTRATION Created in September 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda , Slashdot is now owned by SourceForge, Inc. . 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 . The software that runs Slashdot is called Slash , and is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License . The Slashdot headquarters are located in Dexter, Michigan . Moderation To prevent abusive comments, a Moderation System has been implemented whereby every comment posted (including those posted anonymously) has a starting score which can be incremented or decremented by Semi-randomly Chosen Moderators . When moderating, the moderator actually chooses a given descriptor (such as "insightful", "funny", " Troll ") and each descriptor has a positive or negative value associated with it. As such, posts not only are scored, but characterized ("20% insightful, 80% interesting"). Users can configure the value of each descriptor. The descriptors available are normal, offtopic, flamebait, troll, redundant, insightful, interesting, informative, funny, overrated, and underrated. Moderation points added to a comment are also added to a user's karma score. Having high karma gives one bonus point to posts made by that author. (Being a registered poster adds one more, so that the highest normally achieved starting score is two). 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 or presenting a banal groupthink opinion or lame joke, are referred to as karma whores . 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 at a time is limited to a total of 5 points. 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. 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. A Meta-moderation System was implemented to moderate the moderators and help contain abuses. Karma is implemented in the Slash Content Management System and hence is generally used by all the sites that use this software. Meta-moderation Meta-moderation is a Slashdot mechanism whereby a reader can volunteer to review the correctness of moderation decisions. The reader is presented with ten moderation decisions made by other readers and is asked to say whether or not those moderation choices were fair, by reading the article which was moderated and considering the moderation given. It is likely that the correctness of moderation decisions affects how often readers are given moderation points ; so a reader who moderates but constantly has his moderation decisions marked incorrect under meta-moderation will only infrequently be given moderation points. SLASHDOTTING See Also: Slashdot effect |
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