Slashdot

Slashdot (http://slashdot.org/) is a technology oriented weblog. Created in September 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, today it is owned by the Open Source Development Network (http://osdn.com/). Most of Slashdot's content consists of short summaries of stories on other sites, with links to them, and provisions for readers to comment on the story. These summaries are generally provided by the Slashdot readers, with the editors accepting or rejecting these contributions. Also mixed in are movie and book reviews, as well as "Ask Slashdot" queries from users requesting information from the readership.

Slashdot is run primarily by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, Jeff "Hemos" Bates (who posts stories, sells advertising, and handles the book reviews) and Robin "Roblimo" Miller (who came on board to help handle some of the more managerial sides of the site, as well as posting stories). Bandwidth comes from Exodus.Net.

Slashdot is a premier source for "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." Nupedia and Wikipedia were Slashdotted (see Slashdot effect) on Thursday July 26 2001, @03:10AM.

The core audience for Slashdot are Linux users. The Slashdot crowd is extremely hip to free software, free content, etc. They should love Wikipedia a lot, and indeed several Wikipedia contributors started contributing as a result of Slashdot's mention of Wikipedia.

As anonymous posting is allowed on Slashdot, trolling and spamming on Slashdot is a highly evolved phenomenon. It is a bizarre and complex subculture involving attempts at the "first post", Naked and Petrified Natalie Portman, hot grits, the trollsid, goatse.cx, Beowulf clusters, mock-gay erotica featuring an admixture of Slashdot celebrities and topics (e.g. Star Trek, Linux, BSD), and other unusual juvenalia. Geekizoid, at www.geekizoid.com, is a site devoted to that culture which disappeared as of fall 2001. It can currently be found at slash.geekizoid.com.

Links:

• [Slashdot]
• [A campaign] that Slashdot is counter-productive and that it should be boycotted has been started
• The third (July 26, 2001) [Slashdot post] to mention Wikipedia, and the first to focus in on it

/Talk