Get Slashdotted
A Biography of the Valiant “Slashdot”
Blogs have revolutionized the way we receive and treat information that is given to us; the information revolution can now be have narrowly tailored information with certain twists and comments at the click of a button. Slashdot.org is a seasoned blog that has a slogan of, “News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters” that covers from technology to books, from politics to science and Apple to Linux. The “nerdy” website started back in September of 1997 by Rob Malda, more commonly known on his site as “CmdrTaco.” Before Slashdot Malda started a website titled “Chips and Dips” that eventually turned into what we now know as Slashdot. The site is now mainly managed by Jeff Bates or “Hemos” and is owned by OSTG which is ultimately a part of VA Software. The site’s owners run an information hub that aids with the outsourcing their information to more of the web. Besides the good information, Slashdot.org provides a little “geeky” humor. When asked if Slashdot means anything he replied:
“I wanted to make the URL silly, and unpronounceable. Try reading out the full URL to http://slashdot.org and you’ll see what I mean.”
For a more elaborate history, read a brief history by Malda. Slashdot is a competitive user-friendly blog that allows huge opportunities for stories by letting readers submit stories; they have a few rivals, but none really compare to the maturity of Slashdot.
Slashdot has a vast amount of authors at their command. Mentioned in their about section, Rob Malda is still editing with the rest of his team: Jeff Bates, Timothy Lord, Cliff Wood, Michael Sims, Jamie McCarthy, Simon Carless and Jon Pater. Each is given their section of the website from YRO and the Games sections; they each have their own style as well. Although some writing comes from the editors themselves, the majority of Slashdot is powered by the online users. Slashdot members are encouraged to submit stories and then the owners choose which story will be posted. This is an ingenious idea; all the work is done for the site by users, and then the easier part of choosing which story will go up is given to the one’s being paid. Not only is it efficient, the posters will work hard to have their information on the web—so the best stories are produced. In the editorial FAQ section on Slashdot, Malda explains the user submitted accuracy of Slashdot:
“We don’t. You do.
If something seems outrageous, we might look for some corroboration, but as a rule, we regard this as the responsibility of the submitter and the audience. This is why it’s important to read comments. You might find something that refutes, or supports, the story in the main.”
Some of their top stories include: A Windows 2000 Source Code Link, and Microsoft requesting the removal of the story. Considering this is SlashDot’s most viewed story, we can assume that this is when the site began to take off. Now with more than 670,283 views, Slashdot’s story on the source code leak has opened up other stories to come. A story a year earlier revealed some of Slashdot’s heart for their, “Nerdy” readers in their story on Geek Profiling” within the public school system. After the article was published, scores of comments from adults that faced the same in school and students who were enduring the harassment currently.
Around 80 million pages are served monthly and 3 million per day. Slashdot’s readers are reaching maximum capacity and with this massive amount, a new term has been derived—“Slashdot Effect” or “Slashdotted”. “CmdrTaco” explains the term:
“When Slashdot links a site, often a lot of readers will hit the link to read the story or see the purty pictures. This can easily throw thousands of hits at the site in minutes. Most of the time, large professional websites have no problem with this, but often a site we link will be a smaller site, used to getting only a few thousand hits a day. When all those Slashdot readers start crashing the party, it can saturate the site completely, causing the site to buckle under the strain.”
The term has now become more main-stream than just a segregated term for just one site.
Although Slashdot has become a powerhouse for geeky and nerdy news, a young competitor has risen in the past few years. Digg is a blog that resembles “Slashdot” for user-submitted content, but lacks in editors. Digg describes their site as a place:
“where people can collectively determine the value of content and we’re changing the way people consume information online.”
Jason Kottke describes that “Digg” is now getting more traffic on their server but don’t stand up to the influence of Slashdot. If you don’t believe me read these two headlines from the competing blogs: Chris Brown Not Attending Kids’ Choice Awards, from Digg and Suspect Freed After Exposing Cop’s Facebook Status, from Slashdot. It is obvious that Slashdot’s content and influence surpasses the immature reader submitted content that Digg posts.
Slashdot’s comment system seems a little unorthodox. For a blog to work, comments are vital, but when viewing a more popular blog such as Slashdot, moderation is necessary. Malda describes Slashdot’s comment network:
“Your “threshold” is the minimum score that a comment needs to have if it is to be displayed to you. Comments are scored from -1 to 5, and you can set your threshold at any score within that range. So, for example, if you set your threshold at 2, only comments with scores of 2 or above would be displayed. Setting your threshold at -1 will display all comments. 0 is almost all comments. 1 filters out most Anonymous Cowards, and so on. Higher threshold settings reduce the number of comments you see, but (in theory, anyway) the quality of the posts you do see increases.”
Slashdot also has a “karma” system where
“If a comment you post is moderated up, your karma will rise. Consequently, if you post a comment that has been moderated down, your karma will fall.”
For more information on Slashdot’s comment system and moderation read here.
With everything that Slashdot has pioneered one might think that their source of income would be different from the majority—but they are not. Slashdot uses Sourceforge.com for their advertising. According to Sourceforge.com description their website functions for:
“media and e-commerce web sites [That] connect millions of influential technology professionals and enthusiasts each day. Combining user-developed content, online marketplaces and e-commerce, SourceForge is the global technology community’s nexus for information exchange, goods for geeks, and open source software distribution and services.”
Not much is left for Slashdot to accomplish, maybe a TV or web show is in next in line. No other site compares to the easily user accessed layout of Slashdot. One thing is for certain—Slashdot is here to stay; to bring nerds their news and keep the “non-nerds” a little up to speed with computers, video games, politics and politics.